Nashville Arts Magazine - January 2018

Michael BANKS Ben CLEMONS Maggie ROSE Mary Cash JOSKA Dax van AALTEN

NothinG OrdinAry

Suite in all natural colored diamonds, 18k gold

SMILE Debuted Statewide in Nashville New and Minimally-invasive Surgery for Myopia (Nearsightedness) is First Major Advance in LASIK Technology in 25 Years, Reducing Dependence on Glasses and Contacts which causes the corneal shape to change, permanently changing the prescription.

SMILE has a proven track record of success. It has been used internationally since 2011 and more than 750,000 procedures have been performed worldwide. Dr. Wang noted that currently, the procedure has not been approved to treat large amounts of astigmatism and cannot treat farsightedness and that LASIK is still a better option for a majority of the patients seeking laser vision correction.

The first major advance in LASIK technology in 25 years, the SMILE procedure, was performed in Nashville recently at Wang Vision 3D Cataract & LASIK Center by its director, internationally renowned ophthalmologist Dr. Ming Wang, Harvard & MIYT (MD, magna cum laude); PhD (laser physics).

“We are extremely very excited to be the first again to introduce the next generation laser correction procedure to the state, helping out patients with this new and minimally invasive procedure,” said Dr. Wang.

Myopia is a common eye condition in which close objects can be seen clearly but distant objects are blurry without correction. LASIK and PRK have been the main stay treatments for myopia for over two decades. But SMILE, which stands for SMall Incision Lenticule Extraction, has unique advantages over LASIK. The SMILE surgery is minimally invasive as the surgeon needs only to create a small, precise opening to correct vision.

No flap is needed. The laser incision is smaller than 5 millimeters for SMILE, compared to approximately 20 millimeters for LASIK. This helps the cornea to retain more of its natural strength and reduces

the risk of rare flap complications. Dry eye after SMILE is also reduced compared with LASIK, as nerves responsible for tear production during the cornea remain more intact in SMILE. One of the state’s first SMILE patients was Margaret Coleman, 34, a manager of the world-famous Bluebird Café, in Nashville, which was prominently featured in the ABC TV drama Nashville, among others. Ms. Coleman has had poor eyesight all of her life, legally blind in both eyes without correction. Ms. Coleman’s 3D Laser SMILE procedure went beautifully and she is thrilled to have her crystal clear new vision and newly gained independence on glasses or contacts and being one of the first patients in the state to receive SMILE! “I am so happy!!!” exclaimed Margaret at her postop visit.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the VisuMax Femtosecond Laser for SMILE procedure for -1 to -8 D myopia with up to 0.5D astigmatism. During a SMILE procedure, a femtosecond laser with precise short pulses is used to make small incision in the cornea to create a discshaped piece of tissue. This tissue is then removed by the surgeon though the opening

Dr. Ming Wang, a Harvard & MIT graduate (MD, magna cum laude), is the CEO of Aier-USA, Director of Wang Vision 3D Cataract & LASIK Center and one of the few laser eye surgeons in the world today who holds a doctorate degree in laser physics. He has performed over 55,000 procedures, including on over 4,000 doctors. Dr. Wang published 8 textbooks and a paper in the world-renowned journal Nature, holds several US patents and performed the world’s first laser-assisted artificial cornea implantation. He established a 501c(3) non-profit charity, Wang Foundation for Sight Restoration, which to date has helped patients from more than 40 states in the U.S. and 55 countries, with all sight restoration surgeries performed free-of-charge. Dr. Wang is the Kiwanis Nashvillian of the Year.

Dr. Ming Wang can be reached at: Wang Vision 3D Cataract & LASIK Center, 1801 West End Ave, Ste 1150 Nashville, TN 37203, 615-321-8881 drwang@wangvisioninstitute.com www.wangcataractLASIK.com

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FRESH. ORIGINAL. CONTEMPORARY.

“Little Harbour 6” ©Jan Chenoweth

215 5th A v e o f t he A r t s N. Na s hville, TN 37219 • 615.254.2040 • thear ts compan y. c o m

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Columns HUNTER ARMISTEAD FYEye MARSHALL CHAPMAN Beyond Words ERICA CICCARONE Open Spaces LINDA DYER Appraise It RACHAEL MCCAMPBELL And So It Goes JOSEPH E. MORGAN Sounding Off ANNE POPE Tennessee Roundup JIM REYLAND Theatre Correspondent MARK W. SCALA As I See It Nashville Arts Magazine is a monthly publication by St. Claire Media Group, LLC. This publication is free, one per reader. Removal of more than one magazine from any distribution point constitutes theft, and violators are subject to prosecution. Back issues are available at our office, or by mail for $6.65 a copy. Email: All email addresses consist of the employee’s first name followed by @nashvillearts.com; to reach contributing writers, email info@ nashvillearts.com. Editorial Policy: Nashville Arts Magazine covers art, news, events, entertainment, and culture in Nashville and surrounding areas. The views and opinions expressed in the magazine do not necessarily represent those of the publisher. Subscriptions: Subscriptions are available at $45 per year for 12 issues. Please note: Due to the nature of third-class mail and postal regulations, issues could be delayed by as much as two or three weeks.

There will be no refunds issued. Please allow four to six weeks for processing new subscriptions and address changes. Call 615-383-0278 to order by phone with your credit card number.

THE RYMER GALLERY presents

Nashville Street Artists: Local Walls to Canvas

BUKO

January 6–31, 2018 The Rymer Gallery / 233 Fifth Avenue / Nashville 37219 / 615.752.6030 / www.therymergallery.com

5 T H AV E N U E O F T H E A R T S DOWNTOWN NASHVILLE

HISTORY EMBR ACING A RT

Painting—Joe Parrott Appalachian Sunrise, Papier Maché and Found Objects Sculpture—Emily Allison, Turned Wood Bowl—Ken Gaidos, Blown Glass—Randy Schaffer, Antique Sideboard, 19th c.

202 2nd Ave. South, Franklin, TN 37064

•

www.gallery202art.com

•

615-472-1134

TINNEY CONTEMPORARY

©Carol Mode

SEQUENCES NEW WORK BY CAROL MODE January 6 - February 10, 2018

237 5th Ave N . Nashville 37219 . 615.255.7816 . tinneycontemporary.com

5 T H AV E N U E O F T H E A R T S DOWNTOWN NASHVILLE

On the Cover

January 2018 22

Features 20 Antiques & Garden Show

Music City Center February 2–4 22 The Layers of Robert Schoolfield

On Display at the Customs House

January 3–30 28 The Balkan Dispatches

Nick Dantona’s Journey through a

World Hidden in Plain Sight

28

Michael Banks

R.E.M., 2017, Enamel on paneling, 24” x 24” Photograph by Ronald Higgins See page 50.

68 States of Matter at Zeitgeist 72

Lexie Abra Millikan at Marnie Sheridan Gallery at Harpeth Hall School January 7 through February 16

74 In the Gallery

Julia Martin at Julia Martin Gallery

through January 27 76 The Other Side of Ben Clemons 80 An Impossible Approach

Dax van Aalten’s Transmission

80

32 Excavating the Materials of Time

Alexandra Jo Sutton Reconstructs

Memory and Earth 36 Mary Cash Joska

Exploring the Essence of Color

36

Columns 16 Crawl Guide 48 The Bookmark

Hot Books and Cool Reads 56 Arts & Business Council 84 Open Spaces

by Erica Ciccarone 86 And So It Goes

by Rachael McCampbell

50

42 Q&A with Audra Almond-Harvey

Executive Director, abrasiveMedia.

Writer. A lover of words.

88 Art Around

44 Maggie Rose: Stone, Flesh, Paint

A Renegotiation of the Canonical Body

94 FYEye

by Hunter Armistead

50 Michael Banks

The Evolution of American Folk Art

96 Theatre

by Jim Reyland

58 Narrative Illusions: The Visions of

Mindy Herrin

98 ArtSee

62

105 Beyond Words

by Marshall Chapman

Taking Flight Printmaker Bryce McCloud hand picks Nashville artists to tell the city’s history at the newly renovated Noelle

91 Art Smart

by Rebecca Pierce

100 NPT

106 My Favorite Painting

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Publisher’s Note

A Great City Deserves Great Art

A

INTERIOR

Happy New Art Year

ANTHOLOGY

to all of you from all of us!

∑

COLLECTION www.interioranthology.com

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DESIGN 615.400.1912

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The Nashville Arts team & Beano

Beano

F E B R UA RY 9 –11, 2018 T PAC ’ S P O L K T H E AT E R

“Art doesn’t change the world...people change the world.

This project can be the catalyst.”

– STEPHEN MILL S, CHOREOGR APHER

Tickets at (615) 782-4040 or www.nashvilleballet.com

Presenting Sponsor:

Supporting Sponsor:

Media Sponsor:

Additional Funding Provided by:

BENNET T GALLERIES Featuring

LISA MOORE

You’ve Been on my Mind, Oil and charcoal on canvas, 36” x 42”

2104 Crestmoor Road in Green Hills, Nashville, TN 37215 Hours: Mon-Fri 9:30 to 5:30 • Sat 9:30 to 5:00 Phone: 615-297-3201 • www.bennettgalleriesnashville.com

Cathy Batliner, Hatch Show Print’s Haley Gallery

January Crawl Guide Franklin Art Scene

Friday, January 5, from 6 until 9 p.m.

Experience historic downtown Franklin and enjoy a variety of art during the Franklin Art Scene. Academy Park Enrichment and Performing Arts Center is showing Ann Light’s series of new work entitled My Mind’s Eye. The self-taught artist used color, design, and her sense of humor to inspire this collection, which she calls funky folk art. CJ’s Off the Square is featuring painter, fiber artist, knitting designer, and calligrapher Lenita Rich, an eclectic artist who is intrigued with all wild things in nature. At Imaginebox Emporium see paintings

by Cory Basil as well as sculpture, art prints, and Basil’s published works of literature and poetry, including The Perils of Fishboy. Scout’s Barbershop is showcasing photography by Robert Joel Barnett, Williamson County Archives, Upleger. Williamson County Archives is exhibiting Joel Barnett’s collection High Tide/Low Tide, abstract expressionist work using concentrated dye, acrylic, and resin on birch plywood. For more information and the trolley schedule, visit www.downtownfranklintn.com/thefranklin-art-scene.

First Saturday Art Crawl Downtown

Saturday, January 6, from 6 until 9 p.m.

Enjoy an evening of art under the lights on 5th Avenue. The Arts Company presents Of Things To Come 2018, their annual gallery preview of new art, artists, and artwork coming to the gallery this year featuring photography, painting, sculpture, mixed media, traditional Carol Mode, Tinney Contemporary and modern folk art.

Tinney Contemporary is exhibiting Sequences, new work by Carol Mode, in the front gallery and work by Arden Bendler Browning in the rear gallery. The Rymer Gallery is featuring work by street artists Buko, Mobe, Sam Dunson, Emily Miller, Zidekahedron, Nathan Brown, Troy Duff, Herb Williams, and Brian Wooden. The Browsing Mandy Rogers Horton, The Arts Company

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Room Gallery at Downtown Presbyterian Church is hosting a reception for Cary Gibson’s Declaration of Independence: What I will become is not what I have been, a mixed-media installation that continues an exploration of fragmenting national identity.

In the historic Arcade, visit Blend Studio, Blue Fig Editions, Andy Anh Ha Gallery, Valentina Design, UltraViolet Gallery, Craig Brabson Fine Art Photography, L Gallery, and “O” Gallery to see a wide variety of art.

Hatch Show Print’s Haley Gallery is showing Moonlightin’, an exhibit of custom artwork by Hatch designer-printers Celene Aubry, Devin Goebel, Cathy Batliner, Heather Moulder, Jennifer Bronstein, and more. While at Hatch Show Print guests are invited to participate in the Block Party where they can work with the shop’s image blocks and ink to create a design to hand print onto paper, a tote bag, or a T-shirt. For parking and trolley information, visit www.nashvilledowntown. com/play/first-saturday-art-crawl.

Arts & Music @ Wedgewood/Houston Saturday, January 6, from 6 until 9 p.m.

Grant Gasser, Open Gallery

From Hagen to Houston to Chestnut and beyond, Arts & Music @ Wedgewood/Houston offers a broad range of artistic experience. David Lusk Gallery is presenting three solo shows this January. Memphis-based mixed-media artists Tim Crowder and Don Estes, and Kentucky-based artist Derrick Meads offer work that is energetic and thought provoking.

Watkins Art Gallery (WAG) is featuring the work of alumnus Xavier Payne, who is passionate about creating artwork with a nostalgic quality and rich colors. His narrative work typically mixes subject matter such as fantasy, violence, human rights, love and hate, race and identity. Seed Space is showing the live-action animation exhibition The Beginning of Stories (Part

1 of Many) by Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi. Channel to Channel is hosting Knoxville-based painter Austin Pratt. Zeitgeist is unveiling Sentinels by Karen Seapker and States of Matter featuring sculpture created by women (see page 68). Julia Martin Gallery is exhibiting Austin Pratt, Channel to Channel Hypnagogic, a solo exhibition of new work by Julia Martin (see page 74).

COOP Gallery is opening Material Passage, an exhibition of multidisciplinary work by the gallery’s newest members Tina Gionis and Alexandra Jo Sutton (see page 32). At East Side Project Space, see Anna Jensen’s The Bait Hides the Hook, presented and curated by Gallery Luperca. Enjoy collagebased work by Lipscomb University graphic design major Grant Gasser at Open Gallery. Fort Houston is presenting Chatterpool 2: Figure Pool featuring artists Bridget Bailey, Alexine Rioux, Liz Scofield, David Hellams, Chelsea Velaga, Michael Hampton, Kayla Saito, Sarah McDonald, Jaime Raybin, Luisi Mera, and Marlos E’van. Though all are working in various practices, the figure is the common theme. For more information, visit www.artsmusicweho.wordpress.com.

Dax van Aalten, Red Arrow Gallery

Kimberly Fox, Southern Grist Brewery

East Side Art Stumble

Saturday, January 13, from 6 until 10 p.m.

Take a drive down Gallatin Pike to Red Arrow Gallery to see Transmission by Dax van Aalten. Southern Grist Brewery is showing photorealistic paintings by Kimberly Fox. For updates on the East Side Art Stumble, visit www.facebook.com/ eastsideartstumble.

Germantown Art Crawl

Saturday, January 20, from 6 until 9 p.m.

Tour the non-traditional art spaces of Germantown to see an array of artworks by a variety of artists. As you make your way through the neighborhood, stop at these key art spots: 100 Taylor Arts Collective, Abednego, Wilder, Bits & Pieces, Bearded Iris Brewing, and Alexis & Bolt. For updates and more information, visit www.facebook.com/ germantownartcrawl.

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Photograph by Hunter Armistead

Antiques& Garden Show Music City Center February 2–4 WORDS Amanda Dobra Hope

W

here can you listen to Diana, Princess of Wales’s brother, Charles, 9th Earl Spencer, speak; stroll through indoor gardens, and find a one-of-a-kind historical item that will be the perfect fit for your home, all while supporting myriad great causes? The Antiques & Garden Show, right here in Nashville!

From February 2 through 4 at the Music City Center, you can get three days’ worth of garden strolls, world-class lecturers, music, one-of-a-kind antiques, and parties. Admission to the show itself is only $20 for the whole weekend when you purchase your tickets by January 28, with party and lecture tickets being an extra fee. “We wanted to make the show affordable. We didn’t want income to be an issue,” say this year’s co-chairs Robin Puryear and Kim Holbrook. Longtime friends, volunteers, and show supporters Puryear and

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Charles, 9th Earl Spencer

Holbrook have a very special mission in mind for this year’s show. The theme “A Sense of Place…” is something the pair came up with based on their love of family heirlooms and history. They define a sense of place as what makes your surroundings important to you in particular; what’s in your house that matters to you. These things all come together to give you your sense of place. “Everyone has things in their home that have history and a story to tell,” Puryear says.

“The history of them is important to me to pass on to my children.”

So how were the pair able to secure the 9th Earl Spencer, and how does he fit in with this year’s theme? The Earl is currently in the process of renovating and restoring portions of Althorp and will be opening new rooms to the public so he can continue to share the nineteen generations of

Photograph by Peyton Hoge

Spencer heirlooms in the estate. Coincidentally, Cheekwood, one of the major non-profit recipients of the funds raised by the show, is also currently undergoing restoration and renovations in order to offer even more learning and outreach programs to the public. When Holbrook decided the Earl Spencer was the perfect person to serve as the keynote speaker, she was delighted that he received the invitation with enthusiasm and complete resonance with the theme. Other world-class speakers on the roster include master floral designer Lewis Miller, award-winning architect Gil Schafer, and English interior designer Rita Konig, as well as a panel of leading interior designers, decorators, and stylists. Another interesting draw is the opportunity to purchase a book from each of the speakers and have them signed by their authors right on the spot.

Photograph by Peyton Hoge

Holbrook and Puryear hope the show serves as a memorable experience for all attendees. “One of the most fun things I’ve ever seen at this show is when people come in and someone says oh my gosh, my grandmother had that! It doesn’t have to be the most expensive piece—everything has a history and a story,” Puryear exclaims.

Holbrook and Puryear also want you to know that this event is not only beautiful, informative, and fun, but that its main purpose is its philanthropy. Funds raised benefit Cheekwood and its programs as well as the Economic Club of Nashville, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting more than twenty charities focused on children and families in the Nashville area. Now in its 28th year, the Antiques & Garden Show, managed by an army of over 150 volunteers, has raised more than $7 million for both beneficiaries. na

Photograph by Peyton Hoge

Photograph by Hunter Armistead

Get advance tickets now at www.antiquesandgardenshow.com.

NASHVILLEARTS.COM

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The Happening, 2016, Mixed media on canvas, 36” x 24”

of

Robert Schoolfield

WORDS Peter Chawaga

The Layers

Notes Written along the Horizon Line, 2017, Mixed media on canvas, 48” x 48”

On Display at the Customs House January 3–30

O

ne of art’s most astounding qualities is its power to elicit an undeniable feeling while holding articulated meaning out of reach. It is a dynamic well understood by Robert Schoolfield, one of twelve artists selected for solo exhibitions at the Customs House’s Peg Harvill Gallery in Clarksville, following a call for entry by Nashville Arts Magazine. His show, Robert Schoolfield: The Layers of Up & Down, will be the first in a year of month-long exhibitions by the selected artists.

“I thought that entering this show would be a good opportunity for me to get more exposure,” Schoolfield says of his decision to apply. “It was just something that I was fortunate enough to stumble upon, and I’m really excited to be showing in a new city.”

During the show, Schoolfield will be bringing his unique combination of drawn, written, painted, and applied-material work to a new audience. His process can range widely— delicately applying paint or slinging it onto the canvas; utilizing newspaper clippings, money, and documents from mental hospitals; adhering cigarettes and brushes—and this brings to life in his pieces the indecisiveness and ambiguity he feels about the work.

“I really like my major and minor keys to be in the right places to really get across what I’m

NASHVILLEARTS.COM

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Though the result is unknown until it appears on the canvas, Schoolfield’s works for the show share some common qualities. They are colorful and dynamic, shapes emerging from scrawled, chaotic backgrounds peppered with recognizable words and objects. Schoolfield says that, if it connects to anything in the work, the exhibition’s title may reflect the emotional ups and downs that are evident in the pieces or their exploration of the sides of ourselves that are uncomfortable.

“The works I have selected for the show are all pieces that reflect my own unique style,” he continues. “I like when all of the attention is drawn to one of my paintings just because it is present in a room, where you notice it just because

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Treasure Chest, 2017, Mixed media, 48” x 24”

Casual Tendencies, 2017, Mixed media on canvas, 36” x 24”

trying to say,” Schoolfield explains. “And I’m not even sure if I know exactly what it is that I’m trying to say . . . I never really have a result that I already have imagined in my mind.

It’s more of an experiment every time that always reflects my life and things that are going on in the world around me.

It’s an intuitive process; watching me work is like watching a creature in its natural habitat.”

it’s there. People come to look, and I like to give them something that they can view multiple times and still see something different every time.”

If there’s one lesson that visitors will gather from The Layers of Up & Down, it will be a sense that the rules don’t matter, that expression comes in many forms, and that creating is more important than self-consciousness. “Don’t be afraid to express or expose yourself,” Schoolfield says of his hope for what a viewer will take away from the show. “I want them to be inspired to go do that certain thing that they have been thinking about for their entire lives but keep putting off until ‘one day.’ Whatever the source of creativity is that flows through me, it also flows through you.” na Robert Schoolfield: The Layers of Up & Down is the first in a yearlong series of exhibits curated by Nashville Arts Magazine at Customs House Museum’s Peg Harvill Gallery, 200 S. 2nd Street in Clarksville. The exhibit is on view January 3 through 30. Schoolfield will be on hand to talk about his work at the Customs House Winter Exhibits opening reception January 18 from 5 to 7 p.m. For more information, visit www.customshousemuseum.org.To see more of Schoolfield’s art, visit www.schoolfieldart.com.

Molly Tuttle

1938 Martin 00-42

GUITAR LOVE FIND IT AT

19-21st Century American and European Paintings and Sculpture

Mary Cash Joska

Skylight, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches Also represented by: G&G Interiors, Nashville and Knoxville, Tennessee and Mark Murray Fine Paintings, New York, New York

6608A Highway 100 • Nashville, TN 37205 • 615.352.5050 • www.stanfordfineart.com

Photograph by Mark Mosrie

Balkan

The

Dispatches

My Journey through a World Hidden in Plain Sight

by Nick Dantona 28

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was hijacked. OK, maybe not by any sort of fiend, but by the fertile imagination of my old friend Brian, with whom I share a fascination for Alan Furst historical spy novels. So when I mentioned that I was intending to take a nice drive down the Adriatic coast of Croatia he shanghaied that vacation into a journey through several former Soviet Bloc countries of Eastern Europe. What emerged was a staggered narrative depicting four countries with a scruffy beauty still intact and hidden in plain sight. This story is told through a series of twenty-nine photographs, eight written dispatches, and a map. I call them The Balkan Dispatches.

The collection chronicles an excursion through the post-Yugoslav War countries of Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, and Albania.

Highlights include the reclaiming of Sarajevo; Dubrovnik with its Game of Thrones locations, the Accursed Mountains of Albania, and environmental portraits that expose a proud local identity. These words and pictures paint a

region finally free of conflicted nationalism that looks westward for inspiration and guidance.

We begin in Bosnia. Sarajevo is still licking its wounds. The artillery and sniper fire from the war of the 1990s marred the buildings and scarred the psyche of the locals. The Sarajevans tell story after story of how each ethnic group helped the other through the conflict, sheltering, feeding, and clothing each other. They were neighbors before the war. They would be neighbors after the war. It was ever thus in Bosnia. Their sadness is still very much apparent. Yet there is a new story emerging, one of rebuilding, one of civic pride as they restore the municipal buildings, the museums and libraries, along with the churches, mosques, and synagogues that house their culture.

On to Croatia. There is little evidence left that Serbian leader Slobodan Miloševic‘ started his campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing here at the “Pearl of the Adriatic,” Dubrovnik, Croatia.

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Impossibly steep, narrow streets lead to the fortress walls that were no match for modern artillery. This seaside jewel has rebuilt itself into both a living museum of a walled medieval city and a world-class resort for people of all ethnicities and class. In fact, the city is so perfectly restored that the producers of Game of Thrones do little else than costume their actors to turn these streets into King’s Landing, the capital of Westeros. But to most locals it’s just a great place to take a swim.

Montenegro was on the Serbian side of the equation, so I don’t get much recent history out of the locals. Instead, my attention is guided towards breathtaking mountains that nose-dive into a craggy coastline and the Adriatic Sea. We step further back in time and enter the city of Perast, once the home of many a successful seafaring captain. Several empires throughout the centuries have battled for control of its port and shipyards. Along with the walled city of Kotor, they represented one the few viable competitive threats to Venice. So the Venetians conquered and held sway here for almost four centuries.

Back in the present, Brian and I experience some car trouble and are escorted to the Border Control. We have to walk across to the Albanian side where a cab is supposed to be waiting. Brian and I cross like refugees, without a full understanding of what lies ahead, dragging our worldly goods behind. Two middle-aged guys with beard stubble who do not speak English await in what can only be described as a funerary vehicle. Without salutation or ceremony they take us to our guest-house in the Albanian city of Shkodër.

Tony Bennett may have left his heart in San Francisco,

Albania

but mine is a captive of Albania. It is here that Brian and I make the arduous trek through the Accursed Mountains with our “Viking” guide, Ermal, and navigate the unique beauty of Lake Komani. We skim across Albania’s coastline. This part of Albania can provide a seaside vacation on a human scale. Think small, family-run hotels and restaurants, not high-rise chain resorts and themed eateries. Families (mostly Albanians, I think) are having a ball. So are young couples. It reminds me of the rural Southern Italy I was brought to as a youngster. The beauty of Albania’s mountains, countryside, and seaboard is staggering.

Before returning home, we stop for a few days in Madrid, Spain to acclimate to the familiar fit and entitlements of Western culture and custom. I can’t seem to shake a deep-seated uneasiness. From the perspective of these Balkan countries, the troubles that retarded their growth, that threatened their lives, began with a welling of nationalism. Or at least nationalism as a mask for political, economic, and I dare say, cultural agendas. If I were to have a wish for The Balkan Dispatches it would be that they prompt my fellow Americans to pause and reflect on our place in the world community; how our principles of inclusion, our vigilance of basic human rights and civil liberties are still the envy of the world and our greatest shield against hatred. Every portrait in the collection is looking straight into the lens, looking at us. They are presenting their best selves. Are they challenging us to do the same? I believe they are. na

For more information, visit www.ndantona.com.

Montenegro

Bosnia

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The Sarajevans tell story after story of how each ethnic group helped the other through the conflict, sheltering, feeding, and clothing each other. They were neighbors before the war. They would be neighbors after the war.

Dubrovnik

WORDS Megan Kelley

Excavating the materials of

time:

Alexandra Jo Sutton reconstructs memory and earth COOP Gallery

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January 6–27

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Eclipse, 2017, Magnolia leaves, thread, graphite, 7” x 4”

andscape is “dis-membered” and “re-membered” through the labor of memory in new works by Alexandra Jo Sutton in a series of installations, groupings, and fabricated artifacts whose creative bulk comes from “fieldwork” that Sutton has done over the past year. “I needed to get my hands into a landscape that had always called to me but that I had never been to,” Sutton explains. Gathering objects, sensory impressions, and rituals of collection from a trip through the American Southwest—Marfa, the Guadalupe Mountains, Taos, Colorado, and Spiral Jetty, to name a few—the artist enters into extended conversations with the palette, effects, shapes, and dialogues of land and memory both far and close to home.

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Magnolia leaves are gathered with thread, and the cool fluidity of cyanotypes balances beside bone and stone and manmade geodes. In each, cycles of building and erosion—sun, air, time, wear, and decay—all come into form. Ceramics hold geodes of grown crystals, constructions of patience. The cyanotypes require the artist to hold poses, materials, and stencils, caught in a performative labor of waiting in the sun for each image to form. The practice records the passage of time even as it documents the nature of materials in this unique chemical process: salt and sand from Spiral Jetty spilled across the paper to create gentle blues, their original debris disguised as swaths of abstracted landscape, while herbs—more recognizable in form—hide secret origins of a grandmother’s garden and the family history grown there.

Plaster sculptures resemble fossils, their strange and yet familiar twists preserving the crook of an elbow, the impressions of hands, or the curve of a neck into baked dried shapes. “I’m fascinated by fossilization, the difficulty of reconstructing something whole from fragments,” says Sutton.

The works play with a sense of universal scale compressed into time. “[The concept] is very comforting to me. The age of the rocks in the desert, the idea that my life is only a small part of a cycle of something larger.” Resolution is a fragile concept, as work is often revisited. The practice and labor echo the unending nature of these universal cycles and our place in retracing what was. Each inclusion is a ritual of labor

Ritual Document, 2017, Plaster, ceramics, sodium tetraborate crystals, cyanotype photographs, gouache, graphite, found papers, jasmine vines, wood, opossum bone, wild flowers, sage harvested by hand from Taos, New Mexico, 3.5’ x 2.5’ x 4”

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I’m fascinated by fossilization, the difficulty of reconstructing something whole from fragments.

filled with tiny notations and efforts to understand, change, observe, preserve. “I take leaves and draw on them with gouache, pour resin, dip them into plaster. I find ways to separate ourselves from the actual artifact, to mimic the way that we do that in how we recreate history.”

These artifacts and documents are curated in fluid installations that recall historical cabinets of curiosities and other personal archives. “It’s the little things that convince me they have a history I don’t know: what it was, what it experienced getting to me, the connection of uncovering or imagining that history. The objects become myth; they begin to have significance outside of me.”

Common threads and unified fascinations are clear, even if the ties aren’t immediately visible.

Confronted by connection, the viewer begins to investigate, listening to the ways the different threads speak to each other and slowly overlap into a reverberating topography. Ultimately, the installation forms a physical exploration of space that attempts to recreate key landmarks from the original experience—memory as map, stylized, simplified, and presented so that the viewer can retrace the path, wander the dirt, and exist with the artist in a moment of time. na

Love Letter, 2017, Magnolia leaves, thread, cyanotype photographs, 26” x 14”

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Alexandra Jo Sutton

Photograph by Leah Cunningham

Alexandra Jo Sutton’s work is on view January 6 through 27 as part of Material Passage at COOP Gallery, 507 Hagan Street, Nashville. To see the works, visit Tuesday through Thursday 2 to 6 p.m. and Saturdays 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, please visit www.coopgallery.org.

Photograph by Jerry Atnip

MARY CASH JOSKA

Flame, Acrylic on canvas, 48” x 36” Mary Cash Joska

WORDS John Pitcher Songbird, Acrylic on canvas, 36” x 48”

Exploring the Essence of Color “Paris is all about red,”

insists Mary Cash Joska. “All of my Parisian friends wear red, and that is so different from the United States. We seem to be afraid of color in America. Here in New York City, people seem to prefer neutral shades of gray and black.”

Joska, a Nashville resident, was on the phone from the Big Apple, holding forth on a series of topics near to her heart. A former international model, Joska certainly knows a thing or two about fashion, and as a world traveler she likewise knows her way around the City of Lights. She describes Paris and New York as her two favorite places, noting that “the gentleness [of Paris] feeds the heart as the aggressiveness [of New York] feeds the brain.” Above all, as a gifted abstract artist, Joska knows her way around the color wheel.

Color figures prominently in Joska’s most recent series of abstract paintings, which will be on exhibit in Paris later this year. Joska’s beloved red is the focus of one these works, titled Flame. Color is not static in this painting. Rather, darker tints of red seem to rise from the bottom of the painting, consuming the canvas as they streak upward. And like a real flickering flame, Joska’s Flame contains hints of blue, suggesting the fire’s hot inner core burning to the surface of the canvas.

Other paintings in this vein include expressive studies in purple and turquoise, harmonious groupings of line and color that capture not just the tint and hue but the feelings and emotions that these colors elicit. Joska says her paintings were created with techniques that are altogether new, a description that reminds one of the composer Joseph Haydn’s assertion about the novel quality of his early string quartets.

“These new paintings are totally original in thought and idea,” she says. “I like it best when I’m working alone on my own ideas rather than responding to outside forces and pressures. That’s what I’m doing with these new paintings.”

Joska’s current approach to painting has been a long time coming. Born in 1971, she grew up in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, a quaint New England town near the New Hampshire

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Azure, Acrylic on canvas, 48” x 36”

Spring Rain, Acrylic on canvas, 48” x 36”

Daybreak, Acrylic on canvas, 40” x 40”

Meridian, Acrylic on canvas, 30” x 30”

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Pathways, Acrylic on canvas, 36” x 48”

border. Her stepfather, William Olson, was a successful businessman who ran a plastics company called Spectra Polymer. As a child, she would play with sample polymer kits filled with colorful chips. She ascribes her lifelong fascination with color to these vibrant plastics.

When she was older, she began taking a train into Boston with friends. Her interest in art led her to the Boston Museum of Fine Art where, as a high school student, she had been selected from a pool of top statewide art students to take studio art classes. She was eventually accepted into the museum’s school full time, but an unexpected romance changed her plans.

Joska’s parents owned a vacation home in Port Richey, Florida, located on the Gulf Coast near Tampa. The house was a peaceful place, save for one noisy neighbor who liked to ride his three-wheel all-terrain vehicle around the neighborhood. “I wondered who the heck that guy was,” Joska recalls.

A true-blue New England Yankee who listened to punk rock, Joska didn’t realize her neighbor was one of the world’s best-known country musicians. Turns out the house next door

had once belonged to Grand Ole Opry star Maybelle Carter.

She left the place to daughter June and her husband, Johnny Cash. Cash liked to unwind from his busy schedule by riding his ATV along Port Richey’s Pithlachascotee River.

The famed singer and his wife proved to be an easily approachable, neighborly Southern couple. Their son, John Carter Cash, made an especially strong impression on Joska.

“I was literally the girl next door, and John and I clicked right away,” she says.

John Carter Cash and Mary Joska married in 1995 and had one son. During the four years they were together, she worked as a model in Europe while pursuing her artistic endeavors. She created several paintings for the Cash family, winning high praise from the singer. “Mary creates masterpieces,” Johnny Cash said.

Naturally, after marrying into the House of Cash, Joska moved to Nashville. The city remains her home and artistic headquarters, with G&G Interiors of Nashville and Knoxville and Stanford Fine Art both representing her work. She’s also represented by Mark Murray Fine Paintings in New York City.

Joska started out creating representational art—the last

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Landscape, Acrylic on canvas, 36” x 48”

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I like it best when I’m working alone on my own ideas rather than responding to outside forces and pressures.

painting she did for Johnny Cash was an oil titled Still Life in Fall. But as she strived for greater artistic freedom, her artwork became increasingly abstract.

An admirer of the Post-Impressionist Les Nabis artists, Joska began her own deeply personal and abstract explorations of color. Some of her paintings included fields of color reminiscent of Rothko. Expressive tints of blue and turquoise in other works called to mind O’Keeffe’s Blue series.

Texture has always been an important feature of her art.

She has devised a process of putting down a layer of acrylic on canvas before adding a layer of oil. The glossy surface seemingly makes the colors pop off the canvas.

When she’s not painting, you can often find Joska on one of her daily excursions through Warner Park. The shapes and colors she sees on her walks through parks and cities tend to spark her muse. “Just looking at a pigeon, you see cobalt and green paired in a way that is translucent and beautiful,” she says. “Those natural colors are very inspiring.”

Given her penchant for color, Joska’s next project should prove challenging. Her intention is to work with the most achromatic of colors. “I’m now going to start working in black,” she says. Johnny Cash would have been pleased. na For more information, visit www.marycashjoska.com.

Arc en Ciel, Acrylic on canvas, 30” x 30”

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February 9-11, 2018

Featured Artist Vicki Denaburg

80 artists featuring paintings, jewelry, wood, and metal.

Free Admission · All Proceeds Benefit Lipscomb Academy · www.LipscombArtEvent.com

@arteventatlipscomb

@thearteventatlipscomb

Thank you to our Sponsors

“

What people can do and what people will do is often very different.

Audra Almond-Harvey Executive Director, abrasiveMedia.

Writer.

A lover of words. www.abrasivemedia.org

WORDS Paul Polycarpou PHOTOGRAPHY Nina Covington

What brought you to Nashville?

In 2001 my husband and I were living on the beach just outside of Jacksonville and he convinced me that we should move to Nashville. It was going to be a two-year stop. That was sixteen years ago and we’re still here.

follow, but I am also not primarily interested in them for their “hero” moments. As a writer, I really want to understand what makes people tick. I’m interested in who the person is when they’re not being a hero. Also, truthfully, books have been one of the biggest influences on me.

What were your first impressions?

Really; can you tell us which ones?

It was a hard city to get to know, and at first, I wasn’t too keen.

It took me a long time to find my groove here. We were living in Salemtown during the 2010 flood. Our neighbors were coming round making sure we were ok and that we were safe.

Something in my heart broke loose, and I came to love this place. I think at first I was too focused on making my mark and not enough on recognizing what a beautiful place this is.

Sure, Sherlock Holmes was my first obsession. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle blew my mind early on. I love Ray Bradbury, and there are many poets I read. Dumas was another obsession. And one of my all-time favorites is by Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore.

So how do you perceive Nashville now?

I think we have our strengths and we have our weaknesses.

I want to do whatever I can to shore up the weaknesses, address our challenges, and highlight our strengths, which are numerous.

You are very active in the arts community. What are your impressions?

We have a lot of people here who love this city with their eyes open. We’re still able to see the challenges before us— inequality, discrimination, segregation—but rather than letting that cripple the creative community, people are doing more and more to counter that.

Are you optimistic about where Nashville is going artistically and culturally?

Yes and no. I believe we have immense potential. What people can do and what people will do is often very different. So I would say cautiously optimistic.

Which artists have impressed you?

Danny Broadway, an artist from Memphis; Nina Covington, the photographer, always impresses me. Omari Booker is a personal favorite.

What’s your vision for abrasiveMedia?

A large state-of-the-art facility with specialized as well as shared spaces. To provide a place for cross-pollination of all the art disciplines.

Who would you most like to sit and have a long conversation with?

I have a long list but, right now, Michelle Obama. She strikes me as a person whom we only got to see one side of as the First Lady. I’d like to meet the other sides of her.

Are you optimistic about where America is right now?

That’s a difficult question. I am heartbroken but also not surprised about where we are now. I would hate to think we are going to continue to dig into the greed and the fear. Nothing good comes out of that.

Who has most influenced you?

I have many influences, heroes whom I have been able to

Which movies have stayed with you?

Recently I enjoyed Arrival, a science-fiction movie, and Get Out

by Jordan Peele.

What do you do well?

I’m good at telling a story, and I’m working on listening. I’m good at spotting what other people are good at and seeing the thing that would allow them to shine. I’m good at providing a safe place for people to be provoked and challenged.

And what do you not do well?

I’m a very independent person and sometimes things can exist in my head but I forget to communicate them. Historically I have had a lot of insecurity; I’ve had a lot of rough situations that I went through and they implanted a lot of insecurities in me. My goal is to get past those insecurities, to lead without them. I’m working on it What’s your greatest extravagance?

My library and tea. I love the scents of herbs and tea, all the sensual things that can be enjoyed while reading a book.

What do you do for fun?

I’m a huge nerd. Science fiction, fantasy, comic books.

What do you sing when you’re alone?

I like finding my own melody. I’m always humming something that sounds almost familiar but isn’t. I’ve also had Oh Christmas Tree stuck in my head since 1987. If I ever snap you’ll know why.

What would the old Audra tell the young Audra?

To not let so many people name her.

Do you have an annoying habit?

I can find a teaching moment in almost any situation. Possibly, too often.

What would surprise people to know about you?

That depends on where you meet me. I am extremely introverted. In social situations I can step up and do what’s necessary, but in my own habitat I am a very introverted person.

What do you wish for yourself?

That I will get to a place where I fear the past and the future less and take life as it comes. Developing a disability has forced me to slow down and live in a slightly smaller world. But that can be beautiful too. na

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Cavalry, Oil on linen, 30� x 40�

WORDS Audrey Molloy

Stone, Flesh, Paint A Renegotiation of the Canonical Body Maggie Rose at LeQuire Gallery through January 27

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eQuire Gallery presents Maggie Rose: Stone, Flesh, Paint, an austere exhibition of figurative oil paintings which envision the marble-white and phallocentric paragons of classical antiquity in color. The Toronto-based artist is best known for her masterful and near-photo-realistic paintings of classical still life, objects related to body-identity, and the translucence of pale skin.

Stone, Flesh, Paint is a continued investigation by Rose into embedded signifiers of bodily form through the canon of ancient Grecian and Roman sculptural artifacts.

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In these new works, Rose relinquishes symbolic figuration of the human body, opting instead for a historicist method of representation. Her subject matter in Stone, Flesh, Paint directly references statues, friezes, and sculptural artifacts bound to the Hellenistic period (323 B.C.E. to 31 B.C.), marking an emergent concern in the artist’s practice with the reproducibility of venerated cultural signs and symbols.

Notably, the ancient Greek and Roman sculptures made during this time serve as the basis for a canonical depiction of the human form; a deterministic measure, or rule, for depicting a harmonious and sublimely proportional nude human physique in sculpture.

“

Rose’s reinterpretation of these classical sculptural forms onto a two-dimensional plane negotiates the scale, materiality, spatiality, and context that these subjects denote.

Ascribed significance in art history as the progenitor of classical realism and contrapposto—a term used in the visual arts to describe the dynamic composition of a human figure standing with most of its weight on one foot—Rose’s negotiation of the canon denotes a more complex inquiry into bodily occupied objects and ideals.

In works such as Revisiting Venus (2017), Rose reproduces Alexandros of Antioch’s iconoclastic Greek statue of Aphrodite, or Venus de Milo (120 B.C.), transposing the disarmed marble sculptural form in pale, translucent tones, the classical drapery over the hips rendered a redolent crimson. The torso of the Venus figures centrally in the canvas amid a darkly abstracted background, the neck and lower legs—undisclosed limbs—cropped by the edge of the frame. Reign (2017) follows similarly; the dismembered and partial figure of the classic Venus wades in an impressionistic expanse of resplendent mark-making, its surface a provocative pink flesh.

Revisiting Venus, Oil on linen, 48” x 34”

The painterly adaption of these vernacular aesthetic objects in color demarcates a necessary revision of the historically whitewashed characteristics attributed to these icons. Art historian Max Hollein in the introduction to The Polychromy of Antique and Mediaeval Sculpture (2008), states, “The educated middle-class’s ideal of a pure, marble-white Antiquity has prevailed unchallenged into the twenty-first century.” He continues, citing the discovery of polychromy— the painting of ancient sculptures, pottery, and architecture Osuan Bull, Oil on linen, 36” x 48”

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Femina, Oil on panel, 60” x 20”

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Gynaika, Oil on panel, 60” x 20”

in multiple colors—as an integral feature of Greek and Roman art, but which has been marginalized because it directly opposes public conception of classical art as highly formalized, monochromatic, and white.

With Femina (2017) and Gynaika (2017), Rose asserts a highly charged palette of revisionist polychromy in her referential depiction of Greek and Roman terracotta statues. The works both figure a single elongated female form on narrow wall panels, their bodies deeply ensconced in a vibrant slew of wraps and drapery. In these compositions, Rose takes care to exemplify the arrangement of forms in contrapposto. This adaptation of polychromy as a stylistic trope is represented in Cavalry (2017) as well; based on a section of marble frieze on the Parthenon, the work—somewhat of a flattened tableau—features three women astride decorated horses, their soft-edged faces receding with anonymity above varying rich costuming.

Rose’s reinterpretation of these classical sculptural forms onto a two-dimensional plane negotiates the scale, materiality, spatiality, and context that these subjects denote—their authenticity of representation manifest in Rose’s painterly expression of them. As in Pilgrimage (2017), Rose composites the figures from several Grecian relief sculptures to construct a singular scene, an amalgamation of symbolic iconographic tropes denied their original context.

It is the translation of these precisely canonized sculptures as expressive and pastiche figurations where the artist is most successful.

The selection of these particular ancient Hellenistic subjects by the artist in the form of paint on canvas is referential to several points of inquiry: the use of historically canonized signs and symbols in contemporary painting, the polychromous stylization of iconoclastically white figures, a renegotiation of significant sculptural spatiality, and our collective reverence for bodily forms reproduced by a deterministic canon.

Faustina, Graphite on paper, 20” x 16”

The work in Stone, Flesh, Paint is best negotiated in consideration of Rose’s original experience of these ancient Greek and Roman icons that occupy her paintings. More than likely, the artist responded to these objects antecedent to visiting a public institution of art or a museum collection held in a country not of origin to the artifacts. The inference of the museum as a producer of cultural goods and as a site of implied meaning presupposes the significance of these works. Rose has effectively relegated an experience of these figures, plates, reliefs, outside of the museum archive through her multifarious and masterful reinterpretation of them. na Maggie Rose: Stone, Flesh, Paint is on view at LeQuire Gallery through January 27. Nashville Arts Magazine is leading a conversation with the artist on January 24 from 6 until 8 p.m.

For more information, visit www.lequiregallery.com.

Maggie Rose in her Toronto studio

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THEBOOKMARK

A MONTHLY LOOK AT HOT BOOKS AND COOL READS

Women & Power: A Manifesto Mary Beard There is no better time in which to explore the origins of misogyny and no better woman to do it than Mary Beard. This book explores the roots of sexism from the classical age to today’s climate in the thoroughly researched, accessible fashion for which Beard is renowned.

A L L

The Immortalists A novel brimming with love, mysticism, and mortality, The Immortalists is a stunning accomplishment. The Gold children sneak out to meet a mystic, and the fortunes they receive go on to guide their entire lives. For the reader who loves being swept up in a story about familial bonds and the power of belief. See Chloe Benjamin at Parnassus books on January 20.

See Chloe Benjamin at Parnassus books on January 20.

T H E

B E S T

Winter: A Novel

When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

Chloe Benjamin

I N

Daniel H. Pink What is it about timing? We spend our lives cursing and praising its magic. But what if it’s not magic? Daniel Pink has pulled from psychology, biology, and economics to write a compulsively readable book that argues timing isn’t luck but science, and who wouldn’t want practical methods for creating their own perfect timing.

F I N E

Ali Smith After Autumn comes Winter, the next installment in a brilliant Seasonal Quartet

by Man Booker Prize finalist Ali Smith. With this stunning portrait of time, lovers of literary fiction will be engrossed in the prose and ephemeral language and atmosphere of Winter.

J E W E L RY

5101 Harding Road  Nashville, Tennessee 37205  615.353.1823

A Branch of Daigh Rick Landscape Architects

J O N AT H A N TO D D G R E E N E

YORK & Friends fine art Nashville • Memphis

Selected works from our 40 artists will be Red ay d r u Tagged for Sat uary 3 r incredible Feb m-5pm savings.

10a and ay d n Su ary 4 ru pm b e F -4 m p 12

IN THE FUTURE, EVERYTHING IS FREE O p e n i n g J a n u a r y 11 t h , 2 0 1 8 Galerie Tangerine is free + open Monday through Friday, 9 AM - 5 PM 900 South Street, Suite 104 www.ga le r ie ta n g e r in e .co m

A Nashville tradition for over 20 years!

107 Harding Place • Tues-Sat 10-5 615.352.3316 • yorkandfriends@att.net www.yorkandfriends.com Follow us on

at York & Friends Fine Art

Photograph by Marcia Weber

WORDS Karen Parr-Moody

Michael Banks

American The Evolution of

Folk Art A

s sociologists peel back the layers of childhood’s impact on adult behavior, they discover the secrets behind outliers such as Michael Banks, who escaped what many would call a “disadvantaged” youth to become a successful American folk artist.

The Relationship, Acrylic, mixed media on wood, 24” x 20”

Growing up in a Guntersville, Alabama, housing project, Banks experienced no trips to art museums and saw no coffee-table books about famous artists. There wasn’t a 72-count box of Prismacolor pencils in his apartment, and there was no “art world” in his world. Yet he didn’t just survive as an artist; he thrived.

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to buy milk or art supplies?” His mother bought milk. The young Banks understood the situation. But the resilient boy still found ways to fuel his burgeoning art talent.

He explains: “The only vision I really had was the internal vision that was influenced by the world outside my window, which was fast-moving with a lot of drinking and fighting going on. Because of that, I had to stay in the house. My mom was a good mother; she was always making sure we were kept out of harm’s way and could just be children. And I would get things—like my mom’s lipstick and blush, just stuff that was around—and make art with it.”

With so many children in the home, Banks had an ample supply of art models. In elementary school, he began drawing their portraits to great fanfare. “The audience, my family, was blown away by the things I was doing,” he says.

His mother was his biggest fan. One day he was creating a portrait from a magazine photo and she saw it. “She said, ‘Oh my God! Boy, you’re gonna be something someday,’” he says. “It was powerful. If you dream it, you can be it.

When people genuinely have your back in any aspect of life, it’s encouraging, and you never forget it. Some things in your childhood you carry with you for the rest of your life—and that was one of them.”

Due to Banks’s socioeconomically disadvantaged upbringing, sociologists would say he had the greatest potential for benefiting from the interest of informal mentors, such as teachers or community members. Not only did Banks have a supportive family, he was propelled throughout his youth by a series of adults who took an interest in him and his abilities.

Initially, these supporters were found at school. Later on, incredibly, they were discovered in the folk art world as a bevy of famous artists, including Jimmie Lee Sudduth, Mose Tolliver, and Woodie Long, took him under their wings.

Philosophy, Acrylic, mixed media on wood, 24” x 12”

Back then, there were many mouths to feed. Banks’s mother, Ann, had her own five children at home, and when her mother and sister died young, she took over the care of their children. Despite working hard at the Department of Human Resources, she had to make tough financial choices.

“What are you going to do?” Banks said. “Are you going

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The first such mentor to appear was the late Marilyn Head, Banks’s middle school art teacher. “She saw something that probably no one else could see: the raw talent,” he says. “And she just opened up a whole new world to me.”

Through Head, he learned about Francesco Clemente, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol.

Banks explains: “She said, ‘You have a lot in common with them. You could be an amazing pop artist.’ I will never forget

He began to study the work of Pablo Picasso and, with the help of his next art instructor at school, Rita Green, he began to create portraits in graphite. Banks knew he wanted to be a professional artist.

Float, Mixed media on wood, 19” x 24”

System, Mixed media on panel, 41” x 48”

that experience, because she let me know that I was an original artist deep down inside.”

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Some things in your childhood you carry with you for the rest of your life.

“It was going to happen, regardless, even if I had to live on my hands and knees,” he says.

Last Supper, Mixed media on panel, 24” x 24”

Banks calls his guidance counselor at the school, Jeannie Wallace, “one of my greatest mentors.” Banks opened up to her about his life story, and she lined up a job for him at a local screen-printing shop.

Before long, Banks was repurposing the shop’s old silkscreen frames—“junk”— into art. He also transitioned into a form of portraiture beyond the classical, into what he calls “original art.” His portraits became unique and otherworldly, comprised of salvaged boards and, at one point, roofing tar.

As an adult, Banks continued to live in Guntersville, a picturesque town that overlooks the Tennessee River. Here, bass fishing is the main event and summer days bring out the bikinis, boats, and beer.

When he was in his mid-20s, he entered the Panoply Arts Festival in nearby Huntsville, Alabama. This annual art show pivoted Banks’s career to its ultimate conclusion, because while there he had

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Blue Cow Girls, 2002, Acrylic, mixed media on canvas, 41” x 41” x 2”

the enormous fortune to meet the late Georgine Clarke, the founding director of the Kentuck Association and Kentuck Festival of the Arts. Impressed by his art, she invited him to show at the Kentuck Festival. He did so the following year and met the Who’s Who of the folk art world: Mose Tolliver, Bernice Sims, Woodie Long, Lonnie Holley, Charlie Lucas, Butch Anthony, and Sam the Dot Man.

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who befriended him and supported him artistically.

Banks’s gratitude toward his many mentors is palpable, as is his way of viewing the housing projects of his childhood.

“I said, ‘These are my people!’ I really felt like this is where I belonged.”

“God placed me there so that I could be original,” he says.

“If I was placed in an upper-class household, where I had all of these things at my fingertips, I don’t think I would have been the artist I am today. I would have gone to college, become more academic. I have no regrets. Those were some of the best years of my life.” na

Banks sold all 95 of his paintings the next day, grossing $60,000. But the real victory was entering this world of artists

See more of Banks’s work at www.bennettgalleriesnashville.com and www.marciaweberartobjects.com.

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Creative Incubation through Fiscal Sponsorship

Like an incubator for the creative sector, the Arts & Business Council recently launched its fiscal sponsorship program in order to further support and grow Nashville’s creative community. Through fiscal sponsorship, we are able to offer our legal status to qualified projects and emerging organizations that align with our mission and may benefit from tax-exempt status and administrative support.

This alternative to starting your own nonprofit, or interim solution while waiting for your organization’s determination to come back from the IRS, is a great way to test the waters before striking out on your own. Fiscal sponsorship can give you time to see if your idea works, and it can also give confidence to potential funders who are often reluctant to support brand-new nonprofits. Often, the most valuable advantage is that it allows your project to receive many of the benefits of a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, such as seeking grants and soliciting tax-deductible donations.

Through our program, the Arts & Business Council also offers valuable guidance about nonprofit governance; assistance with report filing and recordkeeping; and access to our other services, including Volunteer Lawyers & Professionals for the Arts, Education for the Creative Community, and more.

It also feels good to know that we have a partner like the Arts & Business Council that ties their success to our success through mentorship, training, and the sharing of community resources.”

Do you have a creative endeavor that you’re hoping to get off the ground? Fiscal sponsorship may be the perfect spark to ignite your new venture. Learn more about fiscal sponsorship and submit your project through the Arts & Business Council’s website at abcnashville.org.

Creatives’ Day 2017

Photograph by Ethan Palm

The Arts & Business Council currently sponsors approximately ten Nashville-based creative projects and recently reopened applications for the program. A project currently thriving under fiscal sponsorship is Creatives’ Day—Tennessee’s largest celebration for creatives and organizations that support Tennessee’s creative economy. Brian Sexton, Chair of Creatives’ Day, explains: “The fiscal sponsorship program that the Arts & Business Council offers gives us a platform to focus on meeting our mission without having to deal with the stress that comes with building an emerging nonprofit by ourselves.

Jill McMillan

Jill McMillan is the Executive Director of the Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville, where she is thrilled to serve the cultural sector at the intersection of arts and business. You can reach her at jmcmillan@abcnashville.org.

Brian Somerville at Creatives’ Day 2017 56

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Photograph by Elizabeth Ratliff

Starting a new venture can be daunting. Whether it’s a new job, a new relationship, or even a new sandwich at your favorite restaurant, trying anything new in life comes with potential risks. However, when it comes to your creative endeavors, the Arts & Business Council hopes to remove possible obstacles and reduce risks through our new program: fiscal sponsorship.

Photograph by Elizabeth Ratliff

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Narrative Illusions:

The Visions of Mindy Herrin

Customs House Museum

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January 16 through April 30

WORDS Margaret F. M. Walker

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arrative Illusions: The Visions of Mindy Herrin at the Customs House Museum this January through April is an aptly titled show. Herrin’s threedimensional work incorporates realism, organic imagery, and found objects in imaginative ways. There is a trance-like quality to her figures, and sculptures laden with symbolism act like puzzles, leaving the viewer to decipher her vision.

Herrin, trained as a metalsmith, primarily makes small-scale sculptures.

Her approach to the use of other sculptural materials, especially clay and fabric, are highly experimental, and each work tends to blend a number of media. Some pieces, such as Flowers for Alice I and II are tiny, at only 6.5” high. Intricately incorporating clay, copper, fiber, and encaustic, each one is a wearable brooch. The skin on these two faces is a mottled pink, flesh-like and yet also not. Discussing this, Herrin remarked that it “looks like there is a rawness to the flesh; it isn’t pretty or idealistic and is filled with imperfections.” This idea of our roughness being made visible is at the heart of the artist’s practice.

The narrative is key to all of Herrin’s art. The story often is not linear, but it is wholly intuitive to her creative process. The artist describes it “like journaling. I record my thoughts daily,

but in paint, sculpture, and metal.”

For the most part, she uses figurative and distinctly female imagery. These works are, in some respects, selfportraits. They deal with women’s issues—societal roles such as wife, mother, breadwinner, and struggles such as infertility, medical issues, and child-rearing—in thoughtful ways. The topics that Herrin contemplates in creating her work and that the figures, in turn, appear to mull over are often unpleasant, but they encapsulate the idea of process, of a journey, of thinking through ideas, images, and experiences, and of growing and learning through them.

At the heart of it, Herrin wants viewers of her art to ponder it: to find it confusing, to wonder what is going on, to guess at the content behind the form. Her symbolism is quite literal, rewarding the diligent observer.

Past, Present, and Future is about 25” high, just over the size of a large doll. The woman wears a tutu made of copper mesh, has two horn-like flowers sprouting from her midsection, holds a small animal skeleton, and has three heads, all looking in the same direction. The heads clearly are this past, present, and future self, with the past further echoed by the skeleton so centrally placed. The tutu adds a soft, whimsical touch and creates a platform Top image: Growth Ring, 2012, Clay, copper, bronze, mixed media, encaustic, found object, 5” x 4” x 3” Bottom image: Ring Worm, 2012, Clay, copper, mixed media, encaustic, found object, 5” x 3” x 2”

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The Maker, 2016, Low fire white slip, glaze, mixed media, encaustic, found object, fibers, 42” x 25” x 20”

Laparoscopy I, 2009, Copper, silver, plastic, bone, rubber, 10” x 5” x 3”

Training Wheels, 2011, Silver, found objects, 6” x 3” x 2”

The Journey, 2012, Clay, steel, copper mesh, found objects, copper, leather, feathers, mixed media, encaustic, 26”x 22” x 12”

Trophy, 2015, Low fire white underglaze, glaze, bronze, copper, copper mesh, silver, mixed media, encaustic, 29” x 10” x 9”

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The narrative is key to all of Herrin’s art. The story often is not linear, but it is wholly intuitive to her creative process.

Venus, 2011, Silver, coated wire, brass, nickel silver, 4” x 4” x 1”

for the curious horns. Flowerlike, their placement reveals that they are external fallopian tubes. The legs, veiny as though covered in vines, I am still teasing out and hope that you are, too.

When asked about the reasoning for tutus to adorn this and other figures, Herrin shared that “I make my sculptures very anatomically correct.

The tutu softens this for viewers. It helps them continue to look at the art and all of its elements rather than be scared off. And the copper mesh plays nicely against clay.”

The external fallopian tube appears again in Laparoscopy, a 10” sculpture made of copper, silver, plastic, bone, and rubber. This woman with an exoskeleton appropriately has little bug legs and wings. Her skirt does not hide her body, simply adding shape and motion to the curving figure.

Mars, 2011, Silver, coated wire, brass, nickel silver, 4” x 3” x 2”

Wires on each side of the meditative face are a stethoscope leading back to the reproductive organs. A laparoscopy is a surgical procedure that can make our insides visible; specifically, it can be used to diagnose causes of infertility in women. This has been a personal struggle of Herrin’s, who is now the mother of a four-yearold, and her clever approach to this topic may be of comfort to others in this quiet struggle.

The Maker is a rare life-sized sculpture. A woman sits on a little wheeled object, with a flat facial expression and fixated gaze, her hands angled as though at work. The woman is covered in tattoos. Base designs in light blue contrast with vibrant flowers in warm colors. Flowers even sprout like mushrooms off her right upper body. Though she has no tattoos herself, Herrin expressed a fascination with the idea of telling

stories on the surface of the body. The little cart that supports The Maker’s form is a found object from a factory near her Johnson City home.

In The Maker and many other works, there is a delicate balance between mechanisms and the body—the angular and functional versus the soft and fleshy. These mechanical elements add to the story: Does it help or hinder? Did the figure choose it? Is it in their way? Such are the questions the artist considers and asks us to do so as well. na

Narrative Illusions: The Visions of Mindy Herrin opens at the Customs House Museum on January 16 and runs through the end of April. The show will be included in the Winter Exhibits reception on January 18 from 5 to 7 p.m. For more information, please visit www.customshousemuseum.org. See more of Herrin’s work at www.mindyherrin.com.

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Photograph by Rob Lindsay

Taking Flight Printmaker Bryce McCloud hand picks Nashville artists to tell the city’s history at the newly renovated Noelle 62

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WORDS Megan Kelley Mr. Hooper, William Edmondson, 2017, Acrylic on board, 12” x 12”

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ith 224 rooms, Noelle—formerly known as Noel Place—reimagines a historic hotel built in 1930. As one of Nashville’s first luxury hotels opened by the prominent Noel family, Noel Place was the most modern space at the time, gracing the city with beautiful Art Deco design. As Nashville evolved, the hotel transitioned away from its original purpose, but its strong architectural bones created a unique opportunity 78 years later for MAKEREADY to step in.

In collaboration with parent company Rockbridge and partner Tribute Portfolio, MAKEREADY’s approach to hotel design focuses on unique, independent experiences that cultivate connections between guests, locals, and community. In preparing their team, the hotel turns to local talent both for sourcing artwork for the building as well as organizing it. “[The building] provides a one-of-akind opportunity to celebrate Nashville and what makes Nashville unique,” says Bryce McCloud, the hotel’s art director and curator. “Our intention is to create a place that Nashvillians will want to use—a space guided and directed by locals, thoughtful to how it sits with the community.”

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Photograph by Emily Dorio

It is this same sense of welcome, gathering, and sharing

that drives McCloud’s curatorial approach to Noelle: “I wanted to do more than just put art on the walls; we wanted to focus on the creative experience that makes art and community happen.” The floors of the hotel contain an extensive portrait series, heralding Nashvillians of note with an explanation of their historical importance, “to share the community and inclusive strength we have in moving culture forward.”

Eleven corridor artists were also handpicked by McCloud, each using their unique vision. “Portraiture is a vessel, a form that is specific but also open-ended. It’s an opportunity for a lot of different visions of how identification happens.”

Among the artists are Lesley Patterson-Marx, whose printmaking and paper work evoke quilts, stitching, and folkloric symbolism; the no-holds-barred, powerful portraiture approach of LeXander Bryant; Paul Collins’s sensitivity of line and story; and Samuel Dunson’s charged, symbolic allegories. Among the portraits are contemporary heroes like Renata Soto, whose forward-thinking work with Conexion Americas shapes the future for New Americans in Nashville; Thaxton Waters, an artist turning the landmarks, voices, and history of his home into a living library; as well as historic heroes like champion wrestler Tojo Yamamoto, whose career and work as a trainer defined the landscape of wrestling for generations to come; and Ella Sheppard, a musician who rose from slavery to become the first black professor at Fisk University and whose talent and work led the Fisk Jubilee Singers to sustain the school.

“There are so many more layers to Nashville’s history that are inspiring,” says McCloud. “I see the hotel as an entire

Renovated room at Noelle

Rob Matthews, John Lewis, 2017, Block print, 16” x 12”

Rob Matthews, Bernard Lafayette, 2017, Block print, 16” x 12”

Rob Matthews, Gloria Johnson Powell, 2017, Block print, 16” x 12”

McCloud has long been known within Nashville for his community focus and for Isle of Printing, a shop whose talents work to engage community conversations through printmaking practice. Isle of Printing’s Our Town project brought together neighborhoods, capturing the faces of Nashville through hands-on, handprinting processes and documenting the diverse demographics and dialogues of a growing city. The Uncommissioned Public Art series inserts beautiful letterpress designs in ordinary places accessible to everyone, covering walls, electrical boxes, and side streets with iconic images promoting kindness and goodness. The All Are Welcome project brought Nashville natives and New Americans into conversation through cultural ambassadors and printed shirts whose designs gave welcome in immigrant languages.

Sam Dunson, Bishop Joseph Durick, 2017, Acrylic on canvas, 30” x 31”

Alex Lockwood, Tom Wills, 2017, Mixed candy, 24” x 24” x 2”

installation to tell the story in different ways, so that walking through it becomes a living guide book that will keep evolving. Visitors get to see another side of the story, feel an impetus to visit other parts of the city that aren’t always on the tourist map, but are all part of the history and present that makes us Nashville.”

Gathering spaces, like the lobby and restaurant, also embrace the idea of engagement and evolution. The lobby boasts an exquisite corpse machine built in collaboration with “Cardboard Karl” Bitikofer, providing a space to investigate large-scale portraits through a dialogue of how we perceive people. Keep Shop, curated by powerhouse creative Libby Calloway, enlists Nashville-made one-of-a-kind pieces in a retail space exclusive to Noelle. Andy Mumma brings his Barista Parlor style to Noelle’s Drug Store Coffee, and the restaurant is host to McCloud’s Little Prints, an experiential art space with a working vintage press, bringing printing back to Printers Alley.

“The best experiences are incubators. I want to encourage local creative people to be a part of it, entice interesting people to come stay, and then for them all to talk and generate ideas together. When you build art and creativity into a place, you inspire everyone to build a better version of themselves and to make a better Nashville for everyone.” na Noelle soft-opened in December, with a grand opening scheduled for early spring 2018. For more information on the hotel, its offerings and events, follow www.noelle-nashville.com, or on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. See more of Bryce McCloud’s work at www.isleofprinting.com.

Bryce McCloud, Heaven Lee: Woman with Heart, 2017, Block print, 20” x 16” NASHVILLEARTS.COM

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PRESS PLAY RECORD

ART MADE TO MOVE YOU. Chicago-based artist Nick Cave creates work in a wide range of mediums, including sculpture, installation, video, and performance.

His creations, bursting with color and texture, are optical delights that can be enjoyed by audiences of all ages and backgrounds. A deeper look reveals that they speak to issues surrounding identity and social justice.

THROUGH JUNE 24

Downtown Nashville 919 Broadway Nashville, TN 37203 FristCenter.org/NickCave #NickCaveFeat

Kids 18 and under are always free.

Nick Cave Feat. is supported in part by Silver Sponsor

The Frist Center is supported in part by

Nick Cave. Soundsuit, 2016. Mixed media, including vintage toys, wire, metal and mannequin, 84 x 45 x 40 in. Courtesy of the Lewis Family. Š Nick Cave. Photo: James Prinz Photography

States of Matter Alison Schulnik, Eager, 2014, Clay-animated, stop-motion video, 8 minutes, 25 seconds

Zeitgeist

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January 6 through February 24

WORDS Kathleen Boyle

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hroughout the last quarter of 2017, accusations of powerful, high-profile, public male figures committing sexual misconduct towards female colleagues dominated national headlines. Both the volume of cases and the high esteem of the offenders thrusted sex and gender politics into the limelight of popular dialogue, with conversations surrounding these issues proving difficult, transient, and sometimes impossible, albeit integral in the multifaceted, ever-complicated discourse that surrounds womanhood. So as I met curators and artists Karen Seapker, Vadis Turner, and gallery director Anna Zeitlin to discuss the upcoming exhibition States of Matter, the conversation about their work was informed by a sense of deeper meaning.

States of Matter is an exhibition whose install date is serendipitous.

Curated by Seapker and Turner, this exhibition delves into the intricacies of the female form by establishing a conceptual association between the body and three scientific states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas—a difficult act considering that this is primarily a sculpture exhibition. It features nine women artists—Amy Brener, Kristen Jensen, Ellie Krakow, Shari Mendelson, Allison Schulnik, Lava Thomas, Vadis Turner, Patrice Renee Washington, and Saya Woolfalk—nearly all of whom will be showing in Nashville for the first time. The work in States of Matter demonstrates great aesthetic variance while cementing common ground in its inquiry of feminine multiplicities. “States of Matter is about the shared state of womanhood, about the malleability and hybridity of the female form,” stated Turner. “It’s exciting to talk about this, because there are many layers to this show.”

Turner and Seapker, both visual artists, began organizing exhibitions together two years ago with the premier of the pop-up show 5 Rooms, a downtown-Nashville collaboration that featured artists organizing their own work. “We were inspired by the space as well as the romance of just making something happen,” explained Turner.

“To just do it yourself.”

While States of Matter receives the support of the established Zeitgeist Gallery (with further financial backing from a handful of local women-owned businesses), the DIY mentality resonates throughout the exhibition. This is due to the flow of the show’s conceptual development, a collaborative partnership between Turner and Seapker. “Vadis [Turner] and I stumbled upon this idea of states of matter, a topic that meant shifting forms,” stated Seapker. “We

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Copyright Saya Woolfalk, courtesy Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York

Saya Woolfalk, ChimaCloud and the Pose System, 2017 (Installation View) Left: ChimaCloud Augmented Reality Garment, 2017, Digitally printed cotton, linen, silk brocade, 75” x 16” x 16”

Further influencing the theme of States of Matter is the aspect of motherhood; both Seapker and Turner experienced the birth of their second children within a similar timeframe of the exhibition’s incarnation. The physical transition these women experienced during pregnancy further heightened their awareness of the female’s ability to evolve, a natural achievement that, while extraordinary, is perhaps underestimated due to its frequency. While they laughed that much of the exhibition planning occurred during their children’s nap and bed times, the curators also acknowledged a “powerful” feeling that permeates through pregnancy and motherhood. Seapker explained that this notion is integral to the exhibition: “There is this idea of understanding power and feeling and the shifting physical shapes. Finding the idea of how States of Matter would shift from solids, to liquids, to gas felt like a good way to talk about feminine energy and power.”

So how exactly are these ideas conveyed through art? States of Matter features nine sculptural works that bear little likeness to each other. In fact, works such as Krakow’s Stone Smile—a jagged alabaster carving that has received little

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Amy Brener, Flexi-Shield (peri), 2016, Silicone, pigment, found objects, 79” x 22” x 2”

talked about how the topic of women and women’s issues is something we both feel passionate about.” (Seapker’s paintings will be on view at Zeitgeist during the run of this exhibition in a solo show titled Sentinels.)

“

… how States of Matter would shift from solids, to liquids, to gas felt like a good way to talk about feminine energy and power. intervention from the human hand except a meticulously chiseled wry grin camouflaged in the stone’s rugged vein— harbor neither an immediate likeness to cliché images of the feminine, nor, for that matter, to the liquid and gas states of matter. Rather, each of these works requires viewers to pay attention on an individual basis, to decipher meanings of their own accord. The curators do not give away the answers, and the gallery is not a science lab . . . Or is it?

One of the most interesting qualities of States of Matter is its connection to artistic process. Take, for example, Washington’s Hoodoo Jug, a craggy, biomorphic-shaped ceramic vessel glazed brown, whose form resembles a dimpled organ hardened and sealed by cork. In order for this object to exist, one must recognize its medium—clay excavated from the earth—that was pushed and pulled by hand to achieve its desired form, saturated in a protective pigment, heated and fired in a kiln. This object required hard physical and intellectual work. It is one of a kind, produced by and thus reflective of the ideas of a particular woman.

One must then consider the choice of object—a vessel—and decide if connection to the maternal is deliberate.

States of Matter is not a casual exhibition. It is tough; it is difficult; it is interesting. And it is beautiful. na

States of Matter opens with a reception on January 6 from 6 until 8 p.m. at Zeitgeist and remains on view until February 24. For more information, visit www.zeitgeist-art.com.

Shari Mendelson, Four Vessels with Exoskeleton (Pink and Gold), 2017, Repurposed plastic, hot glue, resin, acrylic polymer, paint, found metal, mica, 37” x 10” x 9”

Vadis Turner, Artifacts, 2016, Breast milk, resin, charred sticks, ribbon, tacks, 54” diameter

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WORDS Leigh R. Hendry

Lexie Abra Millikan

January 7 through February 16

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he work of textile artist Lexie Abra Millikan, literally woven with the metaphorical hearts and souls of her family and friends by using their old jeans (particularly those of her father), shirts and pants, is a pure reflection of both her personal relationships as well as the cloth’s history.

The 33-year-old Midwestern native, a recent Southern convert by virtue of her marriage to a Kentucky gent last summer, confides that “everyone knows to give their worn-out jeans” to her. Reinvented domestic items such as curtains, and selvage ends from a North Carolina weaving mill, also occasionally surface in her work.

Equipped with a B.F.A. in fiber from the Kansas City Art Institute, this engaging fine artist says she devotes almost as much time to preparing the fabric used in her work (washing, tearing the material into strips, and sorting them by color) as she does to actually fabricating the pieces, some of which are woven on an oversized loom while others are cut and then painstakingly joined together.

AA Step #6, 2017, Found work jeans, thread, 12”x 12”

AA Step #3, 2017, Denim work jeans, thread, 12” x 12”

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AA Step #1, 2017, Denim work jeans, thread, 12” x 12”

Marnie Sheridan Gallery at Harpeth Hall School

in Nashville last January, she astonished her students by disassembling old school uniforms (imagine the audacity) for use in the two large tapestries they were all producing together, a collaborative process she views as a way to teach the crucial life skill of “problem solving as a team.”

She delighted in showing her technologically adept secondary-school students that weaving, with its intricacies and thousands-of-years-old history, remains a decidedly low-tech art form which can be accomplished without “fancy equipment or technology,” its major requirement being four strips of simple, old-school wool.

Millikan’s bright, large-scale, rug-like weavings, along with her constructed denim pieces, are being showcased in her

In fact, during Millikan’s Harpeth Hall Winterim residency

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Lexie Abra Millikan

Photograph by Paul Aho

Though she’s gratified that her work incorporates the practice of sustainability, what she embraces even more enthusiastically about her art is the idea that utilizing handed-down garments allows her to transform “parts of people,” so to speak, into fresh, unrecognizable forms.

Fine Art & Gifts

by Olga Alexeeva & Local Artists

www.OGalleryArt.com 615-416-2537

Olga Alexeeva, artist and owner, is available for commissioned works for home and business

Reconstruction, 2017, Found clothing, weaving mill selvage ends, linen and cotton yarn, 5’ x 5’

solo exhibition at Harpeth Hall’s Marnie Sheridan Gallery continuing through February 16. Visitors to Color Field can experiment with the art form themselves on a ten-foot loom.

Currently a fiber artist-in-residence at the Paducah (Kentucky) School of Art & Design, Millikan formerly held a similar position at Yellow Bird Farm in Woodbury, Tennessee.

Most recently, she added arts management expertise to her achievement list during a stint as Interim Director of Paducah’s Yeiser Art Center, yet she still squeezes time into her schedule to teach fabric dyeing classes. She’ll be doing that on three Saturdays this month at the 12th Avenue South artists’ co-op, Art & Soul.

This adventurous, multi-faceted woman acquired an abundance of talents on her circuitous journey toward becoming a full-time artist: from supporting herself by learning the complex art of making French pastries to cultivating the equally enviable skill of growing organic cherry tomatoes in compostable pots (which she created herself from old cotton denim and banana leaves, no less), the common thread between Millikan’s wide-ranging capabilities is her abiding reverence for the diverse tapestry of life.

Legacy of Destruction, 2017, Found fabric and clothing, weaving mill selvage ends, carpet yarn, 5’ x 5’

Color Field by Lexie Abra Millikan is on view in the Marnie Sheridan Gallery at Harpeth Hall School January 7 through February 16. The opening reception will be held on Sunday, January 7, from 3 until 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.harpethhall.org. See more of Millikan’s work at www.lexieabra.com.

Art classes

by Olga are conducted weekly Olga Alexeeva, Flora, Acrylic, 30” x 24”

Open 7 Days a Week • Monday-Saturday 10-6 • Sunday 11-5 1305 Clinton St. Ste. 120 • Nashville, TN 37203

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IN the GALLERY

Julia Martin at Julia Martin Gallery through January 27 WORDS Noah Saterstrom

Welcome Aboard, 2017, Oil on canvas, 20” x 16”

“

The artist should call forth all of his energy, his sincerity, and the greatest possible modesty in order to push aside during his work the old clichés that come so readily to his hand and can suffocate the small flower that itself never turns out as one expected. —Henri Matisse

T

his glimpse into the mind of Matisse, and the implied conflict of his self-directed admonition, came to mind when I was talking with Julia Martin about her newest body of work.

For nearly twenty years, she has become known for paintings of imagined female faces. Pleasantly rendered and easy on the eye, these paintings have a solid following; however, that rarely is a good enough reason for an artist to hold course.

Hypnagogic

Martin speaks plainly about her desire to depart from this creative cul-de-sac and surrender her “old clichés,” as Matisse would have it, for something riskier, meatier, more exploratory.

Most artists are familiar with the aesthetic ruts that can form when gestures or themes are repeated. Even as others respond well to the work, there’s a quiet, private disappointment when you make a piece and there, in relief, are your “default” marks and subjects.

The Voice, 2017, Oil on canvas, 10” x 8”

Conceptual artists have devised all kinds of ways to avoid such ruts and propel the work forward; minimalists restrict themselves to absolutes. But Martin is not a conceptual artist. Her approach is warm, confessional, and exposed— qualities that are not easily limited or controlled—without coming off as contrived.

How then did she go about expanding the possibilities in her work? The same way—and with the same success— that she runs her gallery: intuitively. She lost the training wheels and started pedaling. This show looks like her studio practice, wobbling and stabilizing and veering into the bushes and back out again, popping wheelies along the way, with both the dedication and freedom those images imply.

No Sir, 2017, Oil on canvas, 10” x 8”

Note to Self, 2017, Oil on canvas, 40” x 30”

The name of the show—Hypnagogic—is a scientific term referring to the moment between wakefulness and sleep, the liminal space that marks not only a loss of conscious control, but a gain of unconscious creativity. The rational mind clocks out, the dreaming mind clocks in, and things go all big and squirrely.

Hypnagogic includes some figurative paintings, some abstract paintings, and one painting of Martin by someone else over which Martin has painted. The latter embraces a welcome, galvanizing recklessness that was not feasible in her previous work. There is also a squat wooden queen-like figure and a wooden relief reminiscent of an altarpiece. The figurative paintings careen from place to place, like the path of that newly freed bicycle. Some have kinship with her previous work; others are spare and gestural; still others hint at surrealist automatism, while in others, the physicality of the paint seems almost hostile to attempts at depiction. The range of work is destabilizing.

Antoni Tàpies said: “My wish is that we might progressively lose confidence in what we believe and the things we consider stable and secure, in order to remind ourselves of the infinite number of things still waiting to be discovered.” With this show, Martin seems to be publicly accepting the goal of art as being, in essence, an act of discovery. na You are invited to an artist talk with Julia Martin and Noah Saterstrom at Julia Martin Gallery, Thursday, January 18, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. The exhibit is on view at the gallery through January 27. For more information, visit www.juliamartingallery.com.

The Wind, 2017, Oil on canvas, 12” x 9”

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I needed to visualize the things that had happened and were happening, and the way I processed them was by painting.

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PHOTOGRAPHY Allen Clark

WORDS Cat Acree

BEN The other side of

CLEMONS You may already know something about Ben Clemons, bartender of twenty-four years, musician, and co-owner of bar No. 308. He insists that he keeps his personal and professional lives separate, but not so separate that you can’t make some assumptions, if you want to. For starters, the name of No. 308 is the proverbial heart on the sleeve; it references the hotel room where he and his fiancée got engaged. Their love story’s rise and fall is public and, for as long as the bar stands, memorialized.

It’s clear that his personal life will likely always be public. Clemons began painting in early 2017, more as a way to survive heartbreak than anything, and the resulting artwork is intimate, even painfully private.

Heartbreak is not so different from grief.

We all have our own poisonous or socially acceptable ways of dealing with both.

After Clemons’s divorce, he describes coping through drinking, drugs, sex. Little more than a year later, his mom died; he

threw himself into work, buried himself, and lost the girl he was dating at the time.

Then last June, a new love had come into Clemons’s life, and she confessed to cheating on him. “It ripped my heart apart,” Clemons says in an empty 308. “I was kind of faced with a crossroads of how to repair myself emotionally.”

This time, Clemons dove full force into a style of fast, emotive action painting.

During the 45 minutes before work and in the last moments before he would fall

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It’s the Weekend Baby (UK Edition), Mixed media, 49” x 35”

Just Visiting Friends, Mixed media, 21” x 15”

asleep, Clemons found himself wildly slapping, scraping, and splattering ink and acrylic onto canvas that he rolls down from his ceiling. If paintings could be described as guttural, these would be.

The manic colors and off-kilter imagery of these paintings are falsely cheerful—like when a child knows you’re faking a smile.

“I would stay up all night, till 7 a.m., painting, chain-smoking cigarettes, and drinking coffee,” Clemons says with a laugh.

(This is some beatnik-level romantic misery.) “Paint till I was physically exhausted, and it would put me to bed. I would get all of this stuff out of my body . . . I’d be vibrating and tired, and then I could sleep.”

His first paintings attempted to conceptualize single emotions, featuring what he calls “bubble people” in a blend of abstract expressionism and childlike pop art. He depicts himself as an animated, loopy form without limbs, tethered to another bubble person that looms over him (the cheating ex), to the moon that glows above him (insomnia), to an actual balloon (“Gotta stay happy! Everyone else is happy!” he says), and finally to a broken, mangled heart.

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“I wanted it to just flow out of the body,” Clemons says of painting these early works. “So I would practice this balloon person, and I would go through an entire memo pad, like the little throwaway yellow-lined paper, and just [draw the shape] until it became a natural auto-response, until it was part of my body. It was like signing your signature.”

Soon, his paintings took on that auto-response, and from it came something explicit and violent: Sketchy and raw, It’s the Weekend Baby and Just Visiting Friends depict his exgirlfriend having sex with the guy with whom she cheated.

The canvas is devoid of color except for her blond hair and some blue splatters. In each, the woman’s face is turned away, and the man’s eyes are blacked out.

“I needed to visualize the things that had happened and

Darmstadt Balcony, Mixed media, 31” x 46”

were happening, and the way I processed them was by painting,” Clemons says. “Every time I did it, I was able to make leaps and bounds in recovery of my heart and head.”

In his most recent work, multicolored abstract faces barely squeeze into the oversize frame. Sometimes it seems like they don’t fit in their homes, or we’ve pulled in too close to our own reflections. With these paintings, Clemons’s personal life has started to become a shared experience— even literally. The big close-up, abstract portrait We Are was essentially created by Clemons’s bar staff. He invited his coworkers to his house to paint, and afterward, he took their creation and transformed it into this squinty-eyed, looming skull.

“It was no longer this personal journey of my broken heart.

I wasn’t just telling that one story,” he says. “So many artists will create only in one avenue of their emotion: It has to be raining, and I have to be sad; I just had chicken noodle soup, and now I can write a song. So you’re only getting this one dynamic of your personality as an artist, and it’s disrespectful to the full blossom of whatever you’re capable of.”

After only four months of painting, Clemons found himself participating in the 5th Avenue art crawl. In an act of “guerrilla marketing,” he and several artist friends transformed the Lola Event Space into a temporary gallery.

As we speak, he’s planning to do it again.

This is all happening very fast, but with Clemons, there’s probably not another way to do it. na

Cold Moon Coming, Mixed media, 24” x 17”

WORDS Annette Griffin

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Interruption, 2017, Oil on panel, 24” x 24”

A

n Impossible pproach Dax van Aalten’s Transmission

Couple, 2016, Oil on wood, 10” x 9”

Red Arrow Gallery

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What If, 2017, Oil on panel, 16” x 16”

January 13–February 4

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n a cellular level, Dax van Aalten’s work will float strange tides into your bloodstream. Dreams, after all, rattle your entire body, not just the open face of your sleep. In them, as in van Aalten’s paintings, operatic colors divulge the transparency of skin, marking a startlement of memory.

When I asked van Aalten what Transmission, his upcoming show at Red Arrow Gallery, is about, he replied, “It’s not really a theme. It’s not really a show.” When pressed, he asserted, “I don’t like to do anything that’s narrative.”

Transmission, he argues, is a muscle movement of the artist’s subconscious.

The obvious training yawns of my mind would like to insist that his rejection of narrative cannibalizes my own ability to interpret, but I draw nearer to the truth when I admit that it’s my willingness to interpret that suffers. It’s almost too painful to imagine empathy for the sake of an article, but I don’t read the news for nothing, so ultimately I’m faced with a choice: In which way is it better to be a coward? Shall I shy from interpretation by means of description, veering from a higher practice of writing out of my dutiful sense of shame, or shall I relinquish credibility for the sake of speculation?

Either way, I’m ill-equipped to wax anybody’s subconscious.

The painter is as much a symbol as an actor to me, which further confounds the effort. “To me a painting should never

Pink Mountains, 2017, Oil on panel, 9” x 12”

really reveal itself,” van Aalten told me. This seemed of a piece with his aims until he mused, “It’s taken me a while to realize these things are poetry, in a way.” Because, he disclosed, they’re revealing.

The work, being vernacular and at times bewildering, is not transcendental; though, like Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, it occurs throughout time and space, rooted only in a notion of the figure. In fact, despite van Aalten’s stance against narrative, the paintings read like a funny, forgotten work by one of the great Southern writers. They’re absolutely haunted, not to mention riddled with depressing romance.

(The title Transmission, I suspect, has as much to do with

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That, 2017, Oil on Plexiglas, 37” x 49”

Working within that vernacular, as if to upend the popular rank of adorable, disturbing work that monetizes our sense of the uncanny, van Aalten disseminates a community of figures that may rightly be called endearing, or even cute, bathed in the melancholy of their own lives. Though some of them have the look of a tonal Brothers Mingarro, their button-eyed eeriness sees beyond the kitsch to something older, operating within a gradient of distinctive realization.

Here, intimacy is wrought with tender, wild brush strokes that bend its faces into darkness.

In this case, is the act of sharing as good as the certainty of possessing? Ultimately, these transmissions become all one could ever ask for in a painting: a paradoxical attempt to make contact and synchronous diagram of our inability to swim out into the overlap of each other.

Dax van Aalten will display Transmission at the Red Arrow Gallery from January 13 to February 4.

Regardless of how hard I look, there is a part of me that feels locked out of the van Aalten paintings, that disfavors being both passively and actively forbidden from their understanding. “Being an artist is about more than sculptures or making art, right?” the painter said to me, pointing out that the undertaking demands so much observation and record keeping that it requires an entire life, replete with willing disposition, to serve its course. The cycling of subconscious, revelations, dark passages, and droll sweetness is a hall of mirrors we might all walk, though none of our eyes can hit the same blaze of light as van Aalten’s.

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Dax van Aalten

Photograph by Prudence van Aalten

ghosts as it does the subconscious. Synonyms of this nature are best gathered wearily, by the hair of a brush.)

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Photograph by Tony Youngblood

OPENSPACES

BY ERICA CICCARONE

Erica Ciccarone is an independent writer. She holds an M.F.A. from the New School in Creative Writing.

She blogs about art at nycnash.com.

Photograph by Daniel Meigs

Painting as Loving Your Neighbor executive and legislative branches of our government move to limit civil liberties and environmental protections and each week brings a new invitation to a protest or sit-in, how does the socially engaged artist justify the often-solitary nature of making work? Guston’s question—“What kind of man am I?”—is analogous to the more current language of recognizing privilege, which I talk to artists about all the time.

For painter Jodi Hays, there was a point where she started making work about how she saw the world. This included the boundaries of urban landscape: nets, construction barriers, fences––hard angles brought to bear in paintings that slip between representation and abstraction. After the 2016 election, she began using red ink. Its contexts––editing, alarm signals, blood––and the color’s political party association, speak to feelings of separation and a desire for revision.

Hays’s new work uses that monochromatic palette of diluted red ink for paintings on paper and canvas that are hyperlocal. Inspired by walks in her East Nashville neighborhood, Hays considered how her work in the studio could reflect and give back to her immediate community, thus bridging a gap between her backyard studio and the streets and alleys that connect her to others, regardless of their income, social status, or political leanings.

Jodi Hays

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ate in his career and at the height of abstract expressionism, painter Philip Guston made a radical shift from abstraction to representational works. The often-cartoonish paintings were deeply personal, expressing angst and struggle––but also, strangely, hope.

“So when the 1960s came along,” Guston told the New York Post in 1977, “I was feeling split, schizophrenic. The war, what was happening to America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything—and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue?”

In 2017, the sentiment might translate to this: As both the

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The series was exhibited at Red Arrow Gallery in November.

Titles have always been important to Hays. She long kept scraps of paper scrawled with them in a cigar box, now translated to a note on her smartphone. She wants titles to act as entry points for viewers, a way to open a door and nudge us toward a conversation, even if it’s just internal. She titled the Red Arrow show Keeper. It’s inspired to a large extent by two community members who, until recently, Hays hadn’t met.

For years, she’s called them “sister walkers.” The two elderly women walk around the neighborhood, one slightly ahead, the other close behind, her hands on the small of her back.

Hays began photographing them when she was out on the porch and on walks with her kids. They became like animated elements of urban landscape. “I am my brother’s keeper” is the inherent message in the show’s title, and the sister walkers become symbolic keepers of both each other and Hays’s sense of place. At the same time, walking has a rich history in Nashville because of the Civil Rights movement, when walking and marching were a form of resistance.

Other symbols unfurl in the paintings. Trellises, porches, fences, gates, and signs––like the letters ERS from the

“

For painter Jodi Hays, there was a point where she started making work about how she saw the world.

Sisters/Encouragement (sisters), 2017, Ink on paper, 30” x 40”

blazing-red Hunters Custom Automotive sign on E. Trinity Lane––make the neighborhood recognizable to those who live nearby, but the regular markings of a neighborhood will be familiar to all. In a small way, Hays also addresses the economic disparity that makes art accessible to some but not all: She sold $15 prints at the opening, along with a gorgeous $30 artist book published by the local independent publisher Extended Play. And she eventually did meet the sister walkers to give them a painting and invite them to Keeper. They came, probably more curious than anything, and recognized the specific way they walk and interact with their neighborhood.

ERS (Emergency Recovery System)/PeaceLily, 2017, Oil on canvas over panel, 64” x 48”

To get back to Guston, Hays has sold me on the idea that it’s possible to think of painting as resistance. Making art during uncertain times is an act of faith, of hope that we can do better and that we can influence the arc of justice, in however small a way. In a conversation I had with Hays for BURNAWAY last year, she said, “ . . . making your small mark in the midst of a larger world fraught with decay or cynicism––that’s hopeful.”

So is making a daily commitment to being a good neighbor, and trying again if we fail. na Learn more about Jodi Hays at www.jodihays.com.

Turf (Entrance/Exit), 2017, Oil and spray paint on sewn canvas over panel, 64” x 48”

Vista (Be), 2017, Oil, ink and spray paint on canvas over panel, 48” x 32”

Photograph by Ron Manville

ANDSOITGOES

BY RACHAEL McCAMPBELL

Rachael McCampbell is an artist, teacher, curator, and writer who resides in the small hamlet of Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee. For more about her, please visit www.rachaelmccampbell.com.

The Art Journal Challenge help release stress and keep my creative juices flowing—I have committed myself to the practice of Art Journaling. Each morning, before anything else happens (phone and laptop turned off), I devote thirty minutes to my sketchbook. This is an unedited time of play, exploration, and subconscious dumping of my feelings and thoughts (and their visual interpretations) onto a page.

My purpose? To release through words and images what I’m processing in my mind, unclutter it, let go of pent-up worries, and clarify what is truly important. This unedited art play allows me to experiment and try new things (perfectionism has no place here), which can lead to unexpected new ideas and creative techniques that I can apply later to my studio work.

30-minute journal entries in McCampbell’s sketch pad, 11” x 14”

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t’s January—time to take a moment to reflect on the past year and create intentions for the next one. For freelance artists (painters, writers, musicians, etc.), New Year’s resolutions often merge with business ones as our personal well-being is intrinsically related to our work life. Since we don’t get employee “sick days,” self-care is paramount for an artist’s survival. So, at the top of the list are resolutions such as exercising more, giving up fast foods, and getting more sleep.

After that, time structure is a top concern.

Artists need a great deal of time to make art, promote it, and sell it, which is very time-consuming and often creatively draining. When my artistic side suffers, I seek balance. To

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Many famous artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Gauguin, and Picasso, kept art journals. Frida Kahlo kept an intriguing visual diary that documented what seems to be subconscious musings expressed without definitions or explanations. Not everyone is as fearless as Frida—it can be intimidating to stare at a blank page—where do I start? I suggest setting out a mixture of tools: watercolors, acrylics, colored pencils, pen and inks, charcoal pencils, acrylic pens, glue, and old magazines. Then take a breath, let go of your to-do list and start writing. Don’t edit—just write about the first thing that comes to mind. It might be a dream you had, a joyful thought, or a worry. If you are stuck, find a line from a favorite song or poem, write that down and see what imagery follows. Tear out images or words from magazines and glue them down—how do they speak to you? Maybe draw a self-portrait, a secret wish or something you are afraid of. What about a childhood memory? Just start making marks, cover them over, write again, paint again. Let the process guide you instead of the other way around.

Art Journaling can be combined with Travel Journaling where you sketch what you see combined with your internal feelings about that place. I’m leading a trip to the Cotswolds this summer where I’m encouraging both subconscious and conscious journaling— sketching what we see or don’t see. Our impressions and feelings of an experience are often much more impactful than a literal record of it.

I invite you to join me in an art journaling practice in 2018. Please send me pictures of your outcome. Give yourself the gift of a few minutes a day to write and sketch about your internal life or simply paint your coffee mug . . . I promise, somehow your whole life will appear in that, too.

One tip: Keep a table with all your supplies set out and don’t move them. If you put them away, you are less likely to journal. na Join Artistic Adventures Abroad to the Cotswolds, July 23–August 3, with Rachael McCampbell. www.rachaelmccampbell.com.

FEBRUARY 16-18

FEBRUARY 27 – MARCH 4

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ARTAROUND

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Maria Fernanda Lairet Created to Transcend

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n the photography series Mi Espejo, Bolivia Reflejada, Venezuelan artist Maria Fernanda Lairet created images that convey what she calls “a surrealist vision of the Bolivian Altiplano, its amazing geological formations, geothermal slopes, and salty lagoons.” Set in the largest salt bed in the world, the photographs were born of an adventure the artist took with a group of eleven art enthusiasts invited to explore the Salar de Uni. Lairet’s description of the place speaks to the artist’s inspiration: “The perfect blend of salt, the reflexes, the horizon, and the sky that look like a single surface. They break the thin imaginary line that separates us from the landscape. As an act of magic, gravity disappears, the being becomes light. Then you perceive that you were created to transcend, that you were conceived to extend the wings of your inner world, and in this way, elevate yourself.”

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Lairet creates tension in her photography with figurative compositions that express disciplined formal interest. The dynamic curving red lines and peaceful horizontal and vertical lines evoke a sense of energy and rest. The artist’s signature contrast of primary and secondary colors activates the figures that exist within the flat planes of pale hues. The approach surpassed a typical photo shoot; it was holistic in that the act of taking the photographs in that profound setting became a practice of performance art. She recalls, “The magic that was generated at that time, in the middle of nowhere, was very special.” They document what was a feeling shared and present the filtered perspective of the artist’s eye.

One of the most striking elements is the incorporation of cloth and ponchos purchased in Bolivia at an Oruro market. The fabric clings to various figures, even stretching to cleave two distant people. It defines the figures from their background, and the use of red has specific connotations for the artist: “It symbolizes action, vitality, power, ambition, and an optimistic attitude towards life.”

Taken metaphorically by any viewer, the expressive textiles can be seen as relating to the interconnectedness between people, their complicated relationships, the whimsy of life, and the awkward and beautiful aspects of existence. The series taken as a whole, the visually striking images she presents compel curiosity, consideration, and instantaneous feeling. na See more of Maria Fernanda Lairet’s work at www.mariafernandalairet.com.

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JANUARY 7–FEBRUARY 16, 2018 • MARNIE SHERIDAN GALLERY • ACCESS GALLERY FROM ESTESWOOD DRIVE

Lexie Abra Millikan: COLOR FIELD

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EXPLORE • LEARN • CREATE Community Art Programs at Vanderbilt ADULT CLASSES FOR AGES 18 + Dance classes begin Tuesday, January 16, 2018 Art studio classes begin Monday, January 22, 2018 www.vanderbilt.edu/sarrattart

http://studentorg.vanderbilt.edu/ danceprogram

A monthly guide to art education

TENNESSEE ROUNDUP

ARTSMART

Courtesy of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts

Frist Center’s Martin ArtQuest Gallery Makes Way for 21st Century Learning

Courtesy of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts

MAQ was one of the early leaders in the art museum world providing an experiential space focused on art-making, which, according to Anne Henderson, Director of Education and Outreach at the Frist, makes the gallery unique. “We have museum colleagues across the country who still come through to see the [MAQ] space and gain insight and ideas for their institutions.” Even with its demonstrated success, MAQ plans to reinvent their offerings. “We did a major research project between 2007 and 2011, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, on family learning and interactive galleries, which examined programs of the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and us. The Speed

has a new building; the High is renovating, and we are renovating, too. It’s time.”

With such a high-touch gallery, 16 years have taken a toll on equipment and furnishings. The renovations will enhance the gallery’s ability to serve the community by reworking the space to accommodate visitors of all abilities with accessible stations, installing clear glass windows to showcase large collaborative art projects and draw in museum goers, and incorporating sound baffling to improve acoustics, especially vital with an increased capacity of 150 people. According to Henderson, the goal is to “keep the things we love but add some new elements and focus on 21st-century learning skills—critical thinking, collaboration, creativity—many of the same things that we did but just more so [to build] community.”

In addition to renovating the physical space, MAQ will expand the animation and technology offerings and install a 16-foot color wall comprised of lights representing all colors of the spectrum— think color wheel but for the 21st century—especially relevant as arts educators are thinking beyond the restraints of the traditional color wheel. As part of the renovation, there will be a loom for weaving to encourage intergenerational collaboration. In coming years, the museum staff plans to involve contemporary artists in the design of new interactive stations and keep the space fresh and engaging.

While the Martin ArtQuest Gallery will be closed during renovation, the museum will offer artmaking in studio spaces. MAQ is set to reopen at the end of May 2018. To support the renovation, or to learn more, contact Crystal Churchwell, Associate Director of Development, at cchurchwell@fristcenter.org.

by Ann Talbott Brown Director of Arts Education Tennessee Arts Commission

Photograph courtesy of State Photography

The Frist Center for the Visual Arts begins renovation of the Martin ArtQuest Gallery (MAQ) this month. Since its opening in 2001, MAQ has served more than 1.5 million visitors of all ages by providing hands-on art-making opportunities in a 4,000-square-foot interactive art gallery space. Almost half of all Frist Center visitors utilize the gallery as part of their experience, which equates to 100,000 people each year exploring drawing, printmaking, painting, sculpture, and more with the guidance of professional educators and access to high-quality arts materials.

The MET Singers perform during Upon These Shoulders

Photograph by Briana Cooper

Photograph by Briana Cooper

ARTSMART

The MET Singers in the Nashville Symphony’s “Let Freedom Sing” concert

Choral Arts Link: Collective Magic For the past 20 years, Choral Arts Link (CAL, Inc.) has encouraged and mentored children as they step outside their individual comfort zones to grow artistically and to experience the collective magic of the choral ensemble.

A nonprofit (501c3) founded by Margaret Campbelle-Holman, Choral Arts Link expands traditional arts education, fostering a child’s love of music as a positive power for change. Students grades 2–12 from all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds receive access to equitable, quality choral training. “One of our goals is to have a group that looks like Nashville, reflecting its diversity,” says Campbelle-Holman. The universality of music connects and weaves all who are a part of CAL (teachers, students, volunteers, and parents) into a tapestry of love, support, and musicality—one more beautiful reflection of Music City Campbelle-Holman points out that choral development is different from, while building upon, the private lesson experience. “Whereas with individual training they have only to tune to themselves, in a group ensemble they must listen not only to themselves, but also be constantly listening to those around them,” she explains. “It’s a sound community—an invisible bond of what it means to all work collaboratively and to sing as one.”

CAL’s signature program, The MET Singers, currently has over 80 participating youth who meet each week to develop artistically and professionally. Originally called The Metropolitan Nashville Public School Singers, the name change reflects the inspired creativity of the students themselves who believed The MET garners images of New York’s Metropolitan Opera while building on the Metropolitan history of Nashville/Davidson County.

Photograph by Drew Cox

“The children changed it,” she says, pointing to yet another

by DeeGee Lester Director of Education The Parthenon

staple in the success of CAL in the concept of 360 Mentoring— the full circle of teachers, students, and volunteers learning from each other.

As seasoned students advance to “section leaders” for their respective voice parts within the ensemble, they mentor fellow singers and assist with rehearsals and acclimating new members to MET ensemble methods for working toward a common goal.

In addition to professional opportunities including MET Honor Choir performances with the Nashville Symphony, young singers gain 21st-century skills, including discipline, leadership, and diligence in working collaboratively, which will benefit them throughout life.

Students have opportunities (September and January) to register with MET Singers. In addition, CAL offers a summer camp experience (MET Choral Camp) and MET Academy, the educational arm for intersecting with arts learning initiatives.

Beyond familiar songs associated with choral performance, young singers explore in-depth musical concepts—for example, how through dissonance and discord, tension and release, kids can experience harmony. They also gain a working appreciation for various music genres—everything from opera and gospel to the harmonizing of barbershop and the diversity of world music traditions. Choral Arts Link continuously expands musical partnership, adding organizations such as the Barbershop Harmony Society, Conexion Americas, and Plaza Mariachi.

Whether planning a career in music or developing a lifelong deeper appreciation for music, these talented young singers have the opportunity to share the universal language and to fully experience the joy of collective magic.

For more information, visit www.choralartslink.org.

ARTSMART If you’ve never been to the Clay Lady’s Campus in Donelson, you are missing out. It’s a magical community of (mostly) ceramic artists who create, offer classes, and sell their wares in this wonderful space. You are welcome to visit anytime during their business hours and, when you do, you’ll be immediately greeted by an artist who will take you on a tour of the studios of dozens of artists. The Clay Lady’s Campus is the brainchild of the Clay Lady, aka Danielle McDaniel. It is at this amazing space that I met several artists, one of them being Becca Jane Koehler.

I first “met” Becca Jane at this past summer’s Tennessee Craft fair.

She’d won the honor of being recognized for her work, and I could totally see why. Her pieces are not the usual thrown and glazed pots. Instead, they are delicate white platters, plates, bowls, even mushroom-shaped vases that are painted with cobalt-blue designs.

The painting on her pottery features snakes, animals, and plants.

Each piece feels as though it has a story to tell.

After chatting with her a pinch at the fair, I slyly took a business card with the intent of reaching out to her at a later date. I knew this was an artist I would love to share with my students. So I sent her a message asking if I could visit her studio space. She graciously agreed and, just a few days later, with my tripod and camera in hand, I arrived on the Clay Lady’s Campus to hang with Becca Jane.

Now, the Clay Lady’s Campus is mostly filled with open-concept studios. That means most of them are set up in such a way that artists can communicate, critique, and share ideas. Becca’s studio was just beyond the gallery space. She shares the space with her sole studio mate, her sweet pup Eleanor. After a brief chat, Becca shared her process of creating with me (and my students).

Surprisingly, Becca is fairly new to wheel throwing, although you’d never know that by her work. But she isn’t limited to just thrown pots: Many of her pieces are slab-created platters and trays. What really speaks to me in her work are her beautiful blue painted designs. Y’all, I can’t tell you how delicate and exquisite each line and design is. I was so smitten with her work, I bought several pieces!

I cannot wait to share the work of Becca with my students. I believe they’ll gather so many ideas from her unique process and her beautiful narrative designs. Feel free to give Becca Jane and all the other artists on the Clay Lady’s Campus a visit. You’ll be so thrilled and excited by what you find there!

For more information, visit www.beccajane.com and www.theclaylady.com.

by Cassie Stephens Art Teacher Johnson Elementary

Photograph by Juan Pont Lezica

Becca Jane in her studio

Photography by Tammy Gentuso

Video Field Trip to Becca Jane’s Studio

TEXT & PHOTOGRAPHY

BY HUNTER ARMISTEAD

Photograph by Jerry Atnip

FYEYE Instagram: @hunterarmistead

A Frame of Film, A Line of Words, Capture the Creative Culture of Our City

Audrey Rhodes Former Tomboy, Funky Fashionista, Fashion Blogger, Ex-Cop

Fashion Police No way the six-year-old Instagram picture of the diminutive woman in a police uniform peering meekly from a cop car could be the same swaggering, luminous creature showing it to me.

Way. Ashley Rhodes gives a whole new meaning to the term “Fashion Police.”

The 29-year old fashion blogger was on the police force for nine years in her hometown, Warner Robins, Georgia (pop. 70,000) before moving to Nashville in October 2014. Home-schooled in a traditional family, she started as a forensics intern in fingerprinting at 15 and moved through crime scene investigation to patrol, becoming the only woman in her class to graduate from officer training. “It was the hardest thing I ever did,” says Rhodes.

“You are catching everyone on their worst day,” she says of being a patrol officer. Still, she managed to find joy in helping others, especially juveniles calling in.

Rhodes moved to Nashville for a fresh start and to develop her fashion blog Affectionately Audrey. Taking her first year here to refine her style, Rhodes has emerged as one of the most distinctive figures in town. A mashup of vintage and couture over a porcelain-skinned 5’11” frame, she’s minty fresh, often rocking bold colors and patterns for a funky and edgy yet always classic look. As manager of the West End branch of high-end fashion liquidators UAL, Rhodes can combine her thrifty finds with off-the-rack chic.

ARRATT GALLERY AT VANDERBILT

The Art of Manipulation January 15 - February 23, 2018

“I do wish Nashville would take more risks,” says Rhodes of the fashion scene here. In her well-shot blog, we see her modeling her own bold choices. It’s been a process. A former tomboy who struggled with her looks, Rhodes easily relates to her customers’ body-image issues and helps build their confidence by steering them to pieces they’d normally be too shy to wear.

Tina Maier, fiber sculptures

Underneath her daring exterior, Rhodes is a complicated, soft soul who won’t let anyone see her cry. Taking fashion risks emboldens her.

“Mostly, though, I enjoy being an oddball,” she says.

Follow Audrey on Instagram: @affectionatelyaudrey and on the web at affectionately-audrey.com.

Amy Meissner, art quilts

Maryanna Williams, printmaking

LOCATED ON THE MAIN FLOOR OF SARRATT STUDENT CENTER AT 2301 VANDERBILT PLACE, NASHVILLE, TN 37235 Visit us 7 days a week from 9 a.m–9 p.m. during the academic year.

Summer and holiday schedule hours are Monday–Friday 9 a.m.–4 p.m.

www.vanderbilt.edu/sarrattgallery

THEATRE

Handmade: Friendships Famous, Infamous, Real, and Imagined by Jim Reyland is available at Amazon.com.

Purchase an autographed copy and support a 2017 high school tour of his award-winning play STAND at writersstage.com. jreyland@audioproductions.com

BY JIM REYLAND

Photograph by Rick Malkin

Left to right (including the head on the floor in the left corner), Joe Leitess as Tybalt, Nat McIntyre as Lord Capulet, Corrie Maxwell as Lady Capulet, Denice Hicks as the Nurse, René Millán as the Prince, Danny Martinez as Mercutio, Tristan Whitney as Balthazar, Chance Rule as Abram in Romeo & Juliet

Shakespeare in the Park

“The Hamlet cast is the strongest ensemble we’ve ever assembled,” says Artistic Director Denice Hicks. “It’s marvelously diverse with regular NSF favorites and many new faces.”

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Photograph by Rick Malkin

Nashville Shakes Celebrates 30 Years Kicks off Season with Hamlet!

N

o matter how much you may enjoy something, at one point (or maybe two) after more than 30 years of doing it, you may say to yourself, let’s do something else. Fortunately, Denice Hicks, and her dedicated predecessors, have never given up on their gilded trust to keep alive for the rest of us the words and themes of the greatest writer who ever lived.

From their first 1988 production of As You Like It in Centennial Park (not the band shell, the other side) to their 2018 30th Anniversary production of Shakespeare’s most famous work, Hamlet, for those in charge of the Bard the waiver never came.

In case you’ve forgotten, Hamlet takes us on a journey into the minds and hearts of the royal family of Denmark in dark times.

Prince Hamlet is torn between two unbearable situations: either living with his father’s murderer or committing murder himself . . . well, I’m not going to tell you. You should have paid attention in high school.

Much Ado About Nothing, 1992

As always, it’s powerful stuff, masterfully staged, and loaded with special Shakespearian performers. Making his Nashville theatre debut in the title role is Sam Ashdown, a magnetic up-and-coming film and stage actor. Also a standout among the cast is Cheryl White (Gertrude), a Los Angeles transplant who has over 60 TV shows under her belt. The rest of the cast includes: Chelsea Bell (Ophelia), Roger Csaki (Claudius), Ethan Jones (Polonius), Audrey Tchoukoua (Laertes), Brian Russell (Ghost), Shawn Knight (Bernardo/Osric), Andy Kanies (Rosencrantz), and Santiago Sosa (Guildenstern).

“Two of the traditionally male roles in the play are being played by women. Horatio, Hamlet’s best friend, will be played

by Melinda Paul, and Lauren Berst will play Marcellus. Of the gender-bent casting, Denise Hicks says simply, “They were the best actors for those parts.”

Up next in Nashville Shakes’ 30th Anniversary season, in April, is a benefit performance by Denice Hicks of a new one-woman show called The Maiden Phoenix, written and directed

by Mark Cabus. Next up will be a special Bard’s Birthday Bash on April 23 in collaboration with Vanderbilt University.

The 30th Anniversary Shakespeare in the Park in August/ September 2018 will be a magical celebratory production of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And in the Pop-Upright Shakespeare series, six directors will mobilize Shakespearean casts in diverse locations around Nashville to perform edited versions of Shakespeare’s most unusual plays “Upright” style.

The Tempest, 1999

NSF Highlights of the last 30 years include: 1988: Since Shakespeare in the Park’s first performance of As You Like It, over 250,000 people have attended Shakespeare in the Park. 1992: First Shakespeare Sampler performance of Macbeth toured to local schools. 1999: First Apprentice Company for Shakespeare in the Park—The Tempest. 2008: First Winter Shakespeare—Hamlet at Belmont University.

2012: Eddie George’s Shakespearean debut in Winter Shakespeare Julius Caesar, receiving rave reviews. 2014: The Nashville Shakespeare Festival is chosen as one of fourteen Shakespeare theaters in North America to be featured in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust documentary and archives in Stratford-upon-Avon. 2016: Nashville Shakespeare Festival takes Shakespeare in the Park to Franklin’s new Academy Park. 2018: 30th Anniversary season! na

There you go, Groundlings, Cast, and Kings, you’ve done it again. Congratulations to Nashville Shakes for an amazing 30 years. Here’s hoping you’ll continue to imagine the majesty of our greatest scribe for another 30, and for those who come after you, many more.

Performances of Hamlet are at Belmont’s Troutt Theater January 4–28, Thursdays–Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. You can also see Hamlet at MTSU’s Tucker Theatre with performances January 31–February 3, Wednesday–Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $29 in advance, $32 at the door. Purchase tickets and VIP Royal Packages at nashvilleshakes.org.

For more information, visit www.nashvilleshakes.org.

Henry V Alan Lee (King of France) and Matt Rosenbaum (Dauphin)

Ana Brickowski, Ashley Metivier, and Drew Ford

ARTSEE

Eric Parker and Hannah Wells

Photograph by Hunter Armistead

Photograph by Dane Carder

Lynn and Ron L. Samuels

Lauren Markham and Jake Trot

Aimee Stubbs

Lauren Cierzan, Melissa Fuller, Cass Teague and Emma Supica

ARTSEE

ARTSEE

Emma Arms, Jocelyn Smith and Kristina Smith

Tonya Langley, Latashaja, Sky Webb, Emilee Langley

Deb and Neal Havener

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Larissa Maestro

Photograph by Hunter Armistead

Carol L. Saffell

Andy Harding

Photograph by Hunter Armistead

Jonesy and Cynthia Hofstetter

Nancy Smith and Gregory Flittner

Jennifer and George Lasezkay

Dan Lucas, Kelly Harwood, and Marilyn Lucas

Stephanie and Dustin Carpenter

ARTSEE

ARTSEE

Vicki Shultz, Emma Shultz, and Aliah Tayyun

Kelsey Oesmann and Lucas Onan

Ashley Segroves and Ian Ross

Jaclyn and Jeff Ledbetter

Photograph by Madge Franklin

Anne Goetze, Anton Weiss and Lanie Neal

Phil, Lisa, and Jillian Savage

Photograph by Dane Carder

PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY BY TIFFANI BING

ARTSEE

Ana Lisa Matthews and Chandra Adkins

Anita Powell and Nelia Kimbrough

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Arts Worth Watching Butterfly hat by Arturo Rios, from Articulate with Jim Cotte

Literary Figures

long before that. Inspired by a line from a Langston Hughes poem, the play tackles segregation and racism in Chicago’s neighborhoods. Hansberry grew up in an educated middle-class family in Chicago, where her real estate agent father fought against housing covenants and other racially based restrictions. These themes would later appear in her work, which is explored in Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, a new American Masters documentary airing Friday, January 19, at 8 p.m.

Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and Ruby Dee are among those appearing in the film.

Season 2 of Articulate with Jim Cotter airs Sundays at 10:30 p.m. and profiles visual and performance artists as well as writers. It’s no unfortunate event that Daniel Handler, aka children’s author Lemony Snicket, is featured January 7. On January 14, the show highlights Janet Echelman’s large-scale, floating net sculptures, milliner Arturo Rios’s whimsical creations, and photographer Justin Bettman’s public “sets.”

Music Men

Nashville audiences may remember Eddie George’s turn in Nashville Rep’s 2017 production, but Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun was a Broadway success

Tony Bennett’s collaboration with Lady Gaga is the subject of Great Performances: Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga: Cheek to Cheek Live, returning

Tim Pigott-Smith as Charles in King Charles III on Masterpiece

Courtesy of Drama Republic for BBC and MASTERPIECE

I Am Not Your Negro, airing Monday, January 15, at 8 p.m. on Independent Lens, is Raoul Peck’s vision of James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript, a radical examination of race in America. NPT featured the documentary in our Indie Lens Pop-Up series last fall. Our next free Indie Lens Pop-Up event is Thursday, February 8, at Watkins College of Art. We’ll screen Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities.

Find more information at wnpt.org/events.

Friday, January 5, at 8 p.m. Bennett is the latest recipient of The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. The all-star tribute included host Bruce Willis and performers Chris Botti, Michael Bublé, Josh Groban, Wynton Marsalis, and Vanessa Williams. Recorded last fall in Washington, D.C., the program premieres Friday, January 12, at 8 p.m.

The March 2016 John D. Loudermilk Tribute Concert was recorded closer to home, at the Franklin Theatre. Music journalist/historian Peter Cooper hosts, with Emmylou Harris, Rosanne Cash, Ricky Skaggs, and Rodney Crowell performing “Tobacco Road,” “Abilene,” and other Loudermilk classics. This Music Gone Public Special airs Friday, January 19, at 11 p.m.

Late-night note: Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity airs Tuesday, January 23, at 11 p.m. on Independent Lens.

SEA, the choreographer’s “extreme action” and aerial dance troupe, performs at OZ Arts Nashville January 27 and 28.

Start the new year off right by showing your support for NPT by making a donation at wnpt.org. Encore presentations of many of our shows are broadcast on NPT2; enjoy 24/7 children’s programming on NPT3 PBS Kids.

James Baldwin at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963. From I Am Not Your Negro

Courtesy of © Dan Budnik

Queen Victoria’s long reign came to a close in January 1901, but this January she continues to rule on NPT. The second season of Victoria on Masterpiece begins Sunday, January 14, at 8 p.m. Victoria’s record of 64 years on the throne has been beaten by her great-great-granddaughter, Elizabeth II. But what happens next?

King Charles III, a television adaptation of the critically acclaimed play, imagines the coming monarch. See the encore Masterpiece presentation with its shades of Elizabethan drama Saturday, January 20, at 8:30 p.m.

January 2018 Weekend Schedule 5:00 5:30 6:00 6:30 7:00 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:00 9:30 10:00 10:30 11:00 11:30 12:00 12:30 1:00 1:30 2:00 2:30 3:00 3:30 4:00 4:30 5:00 5:30 6:00 6:30

5:00 5:30 6:00 6:30 7:00 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:00 9:30 10:00 10:30 11:30 12:00 12:30 1:00 1:30 2:00 3:00 3:30 4:00 4:30 5:00 6:00

Saturday

am Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood Dinosaur Train Bob the Builder Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Splash and Bubbles Curious George Nature Cat Sewing with Nancy Sew It All Garden Smart Martha Bakes Ellie’s Real Good Food Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television noon America’s Test Kitchen pm Cook’s Country Kitchen Pati’s Mexican Table Lidia’s Kitchen A Chef’s Life Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting Best of Joy of Painting Woodwright’s Shop American Woodshop This Old House Ask This Old House A Craftsman’s Legacy PBS NewsHour Weekend Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville

This Month on Nashville Public Television Victoria on Masterpiece Season 2 begins Sunday, Jan. 14, 8 pm

Sunday

am Sid the Science Kid Cyberchase Sesame Street Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Splash and Bubbles Curious George Nature Cat Tennessee’s Wild Side Volunteer Gardener Tennessee Crossroads Nature Washington Week noon To the Contrary pm Destination Craft with Jim West Dream of Italy Curious Traveler Globe Trekker Roadtrip Nation Bare Feet in NYC w/Mickela Mallozzi Rudy Maxa’s World Rick Steves’ Europe Antiques Roadshow PBS NewsHour Weekend

Weekday Schedule 5:00 5:30 6:00 6:30 7:00 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:00 9:30 10:00 10:30 11:00 11:30 12:00 12:30 1:00 1:30 2:00 2:30 3:00 3:30 4:00 4:30 5:00 6:00

am Classical Stretch Sit and Be Fit Ready Jet Go! Cat in the Hat Nature Cat Curious George Curious George Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Splash and Bubbles Sesame Street Super Why! Dinosaur Train Peg + Cat noon Sesame Street pm Splash and Bubbles Curious George Nature Cat Nature Cat Wild Kratts Wild Kratts Odd Squad Odd Squad Arthur NPT Favorites PBS NewsHour

Lorraine Hansberry: American Masters The A Raisin in the Sun playwright.

Nashville Public Television

Friday, Jan. 19, 8 pm

A Place to Call Home Season 2 of the Australian drama series.

Begins Saturday, Jan. 27, 8:30 pm

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7:00 Tesla: American Experience 8:00 Secret of Tuxedo Park: American Experience The secret World War II lab of Wall Street tycoon Alfred Lee Loomis.

9:00 Frontline Rape on the Night Shift.

10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Portraits of Professional Caregivers: Their Passion. Their Pain .

7:00 Theodore Roosevelt: A Cowboy’s Ride to the White House A look at the nation’s 26th president; filmed on location at his North Dakota ranches.

8:00 Into the Amazon: American Experience Teddy Roosevelt’s perilous 1914 journey into the Amazonian rainforest.

10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Saving the Great Swamp: Battle to Defeat the Jetport

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7:00 Antiques Roadshow Harrisburg, Hour 1.

8:00 Antiques Roadshow Knoxville, Hour 2.

9:00 Independent Lens Unrest. A filmmaker copes with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 BBC World News 11:30 Aging Matters: Nutrition & Aging An NPT original production.

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7:00 The Forgotten Plague: American Experience The impact of tuberculous on social habits, public policy and other areas of life.

8:00 Influenza 1918: American Experience Influenza 1918. The epidemic that killed 600,000 people.

9:00 Frontline Abacus: Small Enough to Jail.

10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 BBC World News 11:30 Next Door Neighbors: New Beginnings

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Tuesday

7:00 Antiques Roadshow Knoxville, Hour 1.

8:00 Great Performances From Vienna: The New Year’s Celebration 2018.

9:30 Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi Waltzing in Vienna.

10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Independent Lens The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin.

How the Tales of the City creator evolved from conservative Southerner to gay rights pioneer.

Monday

7:00 Victoria on Masterpiece 7:00 Antiques Roadshow Harrisburg, Hour 2.

Young England.

8:00 Independent Lens Season 1 conclusion.

I Am Not Your Negro.

8:00 Victoria on Masterpiece Raoul Peck’s vision of A Soldier’s Daughter; James Baldwin’s The Green-Eyed unfinished Monster. Season 2 autobiography. premiere. Victoria is 9:30 The Early Black anxious to return to Press: Tennessee work; Albert meets Voices Lifted Ada Lovelace.

10:00 BBC World News 10:00 Start Up 10:30 Last of Summer Wine Pedaling Cakes.

11:00 Turn the Page 10:30 Articulate with A jail-based Jim Cotter literacy program Janet Echelman connects inmates Looms Large. and their children.

11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show

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7:00 Victoria on Masterpiece The Queen’s Husband.

8:00 Victoria on Masterpiece Engine of Change.

9:00 Victoria on Masterpiece Young England.

Season 1 conclusion.

10:00 Start Up Wine Wardrobe.

10:30 Articulate with Jim Cotter The Very Fortunate Daniel Handler.

11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show

Tuesday, Jan. 9, 8 pm

Into the Amazon: American Experience

Sunday

Nashville Public Television’s Primetime Evening Schedule

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Thursday

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7:00 Nature 7:00 Tennessee Crossroads Arctic Wolf Pack.

7:30 Volunteer Gardener The white wolf, one of 8:00 The Roosevelts: An nature’s most Intimate History hardened predators.

The Fire of Life 8:00 NOVA (1910-1919). Teddy Building Wonders: Roosevelt splits Hagia Sophia – his party and goes Istanbul’s Ancient to the Amazon. FDR Mystery. becomes Asst. Secy. of 9:00 Understanding the the Navy.

Opioid Epidemic 10:00 BBC World News 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Victoria on Masterpiece 11:00 Austin City Limits Season 2 premiere.

Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit; Amanda Shires

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7:00 Nature 7:00 Tennessee Crossroads Yosemite. The delicate 7:30 Volunteer Gardener balance of wildfire and 8:00 The Roosevelts: An water in this great Intimate History wilderness.

In the Arena (1901-1910).

8:00 Black Hole Theodore Roosevelt Apocalypse becomes president and Astrophysicist and transforms the office. novelist Janna Levin FDR weds Eleanor, reveals the latest Theodore’s niece. discoveries about 10:00 BBC World News these enigmatic forces 10:30 Last of Summer Wine of nature.

11:00 Selling Sunshine: 10:00 BBC World News The Florida Trains 10:30 Last of Summer Wine Rail service in the 11:01 Austin City Limits NYC – Miami market.

Father John Misty; The Black Angels.

7:00 Nature 7:00 Tennessee Crossroads Snow Monkeys.

7:30 Volunteer Gardener 8:00 NOVA 8:00 Roosevelts: An Invisible Universe Intimate History Revealed. The Hubble Get Action Telescope.

(1858-1901). Frail 9:00 Aurora – Fire in Teddy Roosevelt the Sky transforms into a Legends and myths vigorous outdoorsman. about the polar 10:00 BBC World News phenomenon.

10:30 Last of Summer Wine 10:00 BBC World News 11:00 Journey Home to 10:30 Last of Summer Wine the USS Arizona 11:00 Austin City Limits Kendrick Lamar.

Wednesday

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7:00 A Place to Call Home New Beginning.

8:00 Lorraine Hansberry: American Masters Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart. The life and work of the A Raisin in the Sun playwright and activist.

10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 J.D. Loudermilk Tribute Concert A Music Gone Public Special. Recorded March 2016 at The Franklin Theatre.

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7:00 A Place to Call Home True to Your Heart.

8:00 Tony Bennett: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song An all-star tribute recorded in fall 2017.

9:30 Opera Reimagined: Animating the Cunning Little Vixen 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:01 Andrea Bocelli – Landmarks Live in Concert A Great Performances special.

7:00 A Place to Call Home Lest We Forget.

8:00 Great Performances Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga: Cheek to Cheek Live!

9:00 Alicia Keys – Landmarks Live in Concert A Great Performances special.

10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Live from the Artists Den Fleet Foxes. Recorded at the Knockdown Center in Queens, N.Y.

Friday

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7:00 Lawrence Welk Show Do You Remember?

8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 King Charles III on Masterpiece The hit Broadway drama imagining Prince Charles’ ascension to the throne.

10:30 The Songwriters Roger Murrah.

11:00 Globe Trekker Food Hour: Provence, France.

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7:00 Lawrence Welk Show Highways and Byways.

8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 Dickensian Inspector Bucket has solved Marley’s murder.

9:30 Dickensian Amelia Havisham prepares for the wedding of the year.

11:00 Globe Trekker Art Trails of the French Riviera.

7:00 Lawrence Welk Show Youman’s Salute.

8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 Dickensian Compeyson is up to no good.

9:30 Dickensian Edward Barbary comes into Inspector Bucket’s sights.

10:30 The Songwriters Mark James.

11:00 Globe Trekker Tough Trains: The Transcontinental Railroad, USA.

Saturday

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We’ll Meet Again Tuesday, Jan. 23 & 30, 7 pm

Wednesday, Jan. 10, 8 pm

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Wednesday, Jan. 17, 7 pm

FEB

for NPT, NPT2, and NPT3 PBS Kids.

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7:00 Tennessee Crossroads 7:00 Music City Roots Live 7:30 Volunteer Gardener from the Factory 8:00 The Roosevelts: An 8:00 Great Performances Intimate History Nas: Live from the The Rising Road Kennedy Center.

(1933-1939). FDR’s 9:00 I’ll Have What Phil’s New Deal tackles the Having Depression; Eleanor Hong Kong. rejects the traditional Century eggs. role of first lady.

10:00 BBC World News 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:01 Front and Center 11:01 Victoria on Masterpiece CMA Songwriters Entente Cordiale.

Series Presents: Luke Combs and Kane Brow.

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7:00 Tennessee Crossroads 7:00 A Place to Call Home 7:30 Volunteer Gardener Secret Love.

8:00 The Roosevelts: An 8:00 I’ll Have What Phil’s Intimate History Having The Storm (1920-1933).

Tokyo. TV host and FDR’s 1920 vice comedian David presidential bid and Spector.

1921 bout with polio.

9:00 I’ll Have What Phil’s Later, FDR is elected Having president in 1932.

Italy. Chef Nancy 10:00 BBC World News Silverton’s Umbrian 10:30 Last of Summer Wine home.

11:00 Victoria on Masterpiece 10:00 BBC World News Warp & Weft; The Sins 10:30 Last of Summer Wine of the Father.

11:01 Front and Center Liam Gallagher.

Nature: Arctic Wolf Pack

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7:00 Animals with Cameras A Nature miniseries.

8:00 NOVA The Impossible Flight.

Two pilots fly the first solar-powered airplane around the world.

10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:01 Austin City Limits

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7:00 Nature Animal Misfits.

8:00 NOVA Petra – Lost City of Stone.

9:00 Secrets of the Dead Scanning the Pyramids. A team of 3-D technology experts explore the Great Pyramid of Khufu.

10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Austin City Limits Herbie Hancock.

NOVA: Black Hole Apocalypse

7:00 We’ll Meet Again Rescued from Mount St. Helens. Survivors of the May 1980 volcanic eruption.

8:00 Triangle Fire: American Experience The March 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

9:00 Frontline North Korea’s Deadly Dictator.

10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:01 Roadtrip Nation: Changing Gears The auto industry.

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7:00 Antiques Roadshow New Orleans, Hour 1.

8:00 Antiques Roadshow Knoxville, Hour 3.

9:00 Independent Lens I Am Another You. A Chinese filmmaker and a drifter embark on a mysterious cross-cultural road trip.

10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 BBC World News 11:30 Aging Matters: Practical Nutrition Food safety and nutrition tips for older adults.

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7:00 Antiques Roadshow 7:00 We’ll Meet Again Harrisburg, Hour 3.

Children of WWII. Ann 8:00 Independent Lens Curry hosts reunions The Force. Inside the featuring a long-troubled Oakland, Japanese-American Calif., police force. and a Holocaust 9:30 One Night in March survivor.

The March 1963 game 8:00 Frontline between the integrated Exodus: The Journey Loyola (Chicago) and Continues. People the all-white caught in Europe’s Mississippi State tightened borders. basketball teams.

10:00 BBC World News 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:01 Independent Lens 11:00 Remembering Born to Fly: Elizabeth Leonard Nimoy Streb vs. Gravity.

Aerial choreography.

Visit wnpt.org for complete 24-hour schedules

7:00 Tutankhamun Episode 3.

8:00 Victoria on Masterpiece Faith, Hope & Charity.

The queen learns of the horrific famine in Ireland.

9:00 Queen Elizabeth’s Secret Agents Part 2. Enemies within Elizabeth I’s court.

10:00 Make48 The teams test their prototypes.

10:30 Articulate with Jim Cotter Reuben Margolin Loves Making Waves.

11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show

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7:00 Tutankhamun Episode 2.

8:00 Victoria on Masterpiece Entente Cordiale.

Victoria takes the royal court to France.

9:00 Queen Elizabeth’s Secret Agents Part 1. Elizabeth I. 10:00 Make48 The teams create prototypes.

10:30 Articulate with Jim Cotter Gene Yang: Drawing on Knowledge.

11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show

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7:00 Tutankhamun Episode 1. WWI interrupts the search for King Tut’s tomb.

8:00 Victoria on Masterpiece Warp and Weft; The Sins of the Father.

Victoria hosts a costume ball; Albert deals with tragedy.

10:00 Make48 10:30 Articulate with Jim Cotter Ian Brennan and the Democratization of Music.

11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show

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7:00 Lawrence Welk Show Salute to Nat King Cole.

8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 A Place to Call Home A Kiss to Build a Dream On. 9:17 A Place to Call Home What Your Heart Says.

10:03 Music Voyager 11:00 Globe Trekker Road Trip: Patagonia.

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7:00 Lawrence Welk Show Winter.

8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 A Place to Call Home No Secrets, Ever.

Season 2 premiere.

9:14 A Place to Call Home I Believe.

10:00 Music Voyager Making a Bollywood musical in Mumbai.

10:30 The Songwriters Bob Morrison.

11:00 Globe Trekker Tough Boats: The Nile, Egypt.

Like “Fall Fest at The Hermitage” on Facebook

Featuring Some of America’s Top Bluegrass Talent

44th ANNUAL BLUEGRASS AWARDS SHOW & 35th NATIONAL CONVENTION

CALL TO ARTISTS Arts Festival October 6-7

February 1-4, 2018 Sheraton Music City Hotel

FALL FEST AT THE HERMITAGE is produced by the Hermitage, home of President Andrew Jackson, a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, advocate, and support original visual art and artists.

777 McGavock Pike, Nashville, TN 37214

Lots of jamming and showcases!!!

Schedule posted at www.spbgma.com Reserve seats available • Email stephanie@spbgma.com

Nathan Gunn, baritone and Julie Gunn, piano 8 p.m. January 16 Ingram Hall Sponsored by the Mary Cortner Ragland Master Series Fund

2400 Blakemore Ave. Nashville, TN 37212

For more information and to apply visit: www.zapplication.org

New and improved ...

Have you ever gone shopping for a favorite item—something personal like underwear or toothpaste—only to discover it’d been discontinued? Or even worse, upgraded to “new and improved,” which usually means of inferior quality and more expensive?

I have been buying the same brand of toothpaste for as long as I can remember.

And always in the same medium-sized tube. The jumbo-sized tubes are too cumbersome. Plus, they seem to dry out before the toothpaste gets used up. Also, I prefer a flip-top cap rather than the ones that screw on. Toothpaste is personal. It’s one of those things we use two or three times a day, so it has to be just right.

Williamson County Culture

BEYONDWORDS

Photograph by Anthony Scarlati

ry Eve st fir ! ay Frid

BY MARSHALL CHAPMAN

Okay. So I’m in the Oral Care aisle at Walgreens, scanning the shelf where my toothpaste is usually stocked in its familiar little red and white box. But I can’t seem to find it, because all the boxes look too big. Finally, I open one of the big boxes only to discover a medium-sized tube rattling around inside. So I reluctantly purchased it. All the while thinking How weird!

Had toothpaste gone the way of tortilla chips? Remember when those cellophane bags contained 90% chips? Then one day, the top half of those bags was air, with only 50% chips. Supposedly “settled in transit.” Remember?

But back to toothpaste. As it turned out, the cost of the medium tube in the large box was indeed more than my old medium tube in the medium box. But even worse ... after I got home, I noticed the tube felt different in my hand. It didn’t feel compact or solid like my old tube. It was like there was a pocket of air inside the tube containing yet another tube that held the toothpaste. A tube-within-a-tube, if you will.

This was really weird. So I compared the weight listed on the new tube with that of my old. Sure enough, the net weight of the new tube was lighter.

At this point, I’m laughing. I’d been had and I knew it. Strike one up for corporate America! Bigger packaging, less product, for a higher price. And with no “new and improved” warning. They just snuck it in.

Oh, well. At least the toothpaste tasted the same.

Marshall Chapman is a Nashville-based singer/songwriter, author, and actress. For more information, visit www.tallgirl.com.

NASHVILLEARTS.COM

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MYFAVORITEPAINTING ELIOT MICHAEL, OWNER, RUMBLE SEAT MUSIC, NASHVILLE

ARTIST BIO: Fritz Scholder Fritz Scholder was born in 1937 in Breckenridge, Minnesota. In 1967 his new series on the Native American caused immediate controversy as some of his subjects were depicted with the American flag and other symbols thought to be at odds with the culture. His work would become a major influence on a generation of Native American artists. His revolutionary paintings broke away from stereotypical roles and changed forever the concept of Indian art. His style is well known for its distortions, explosive brushwork, and vivid colors. His expressionist paintings are in museum collections around the world.

Scholder died in 2005.

Fritz Scholder, Untitled, 2001, Oil on canvas, 36” x 30”

Eliot Michael with Apache

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NASHVILLEARTS.COM

Photograph by Sheri Oneal

M

y wife, Toni, and I lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for many years and grew to love Southwestern art and culture. Although our home is now in Nashville, it is full of Southwest artifacts: Paintings, furniture, pottery, rugs, jewelry . . . we’re surrounded by it. The work of Fritz Scholder appeals to me, and of all the pieces by him that we own, this is one of my favorites. I like the artist’s rebellious spirit and his unconventional approach to painting Native Americans. No one before him had ever portrayed Indians in this manner. He had a rock-androll attitude to his work that I can easily identify with.

We bought this in 2008 from a private collection in Phoenix, Arizona. Scholder spent a lot of time in New York City, most notably in the company of Andy Warhol. This painting reminds me a lot of the sixties; it has that vibe. na

HAYNES GALLERIES PRESENTS

PHILIP MICHELSON

H AY N E S G A L L E R I E S . C O M