NashvilleArts.com
July 2O12 | 5
AT THE FRIST THROUGH SEPTEMBER 30 ~\
Exhibition organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
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This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
615-244-3340 Members/Youth 18 and younger FREE
John Constable. Brighton Beach, with Fishing Boat and Crew, 1824. Oil on paper, 24 1/2 x 30 in . Victoria and Albert Museum , London , 782-1888. Š Victoria and Albert Museum I V&A images
That, coupled with funky and rich symbolism, might have you thinking of “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Consider his painting Sinner Man. In the foreground he has executed a portrait of chanteuse Nina Simone. Beyond her is a floating man bearing an umbrella, a clear nod to René Magritte’s work. There are also references to Adam and Eve and even a reference to the motion picture the Thomas Crown Affair.
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So while McBride’s paintings might originally appear to be a collection of disparate items, they are carefully planned devices. He knows exactly what he is doing.
”
When McBride is not teaching at Tennessee State University, you can often find him at his commercial studio. It’s located in the old May Hosiery Mill on Chestnut Street in South Nashville, and it is space he shares with fellow artist James Threalkill. The men work and sell art from the place while manager Derell Stinson keeps the operation in check. “The studio is a place where people love to come and chill,” McBride observes. “There’s art all around you without the intimidation of a gallery.”
Sinner Man, Oil on canvas, 60" x 48"
Indeed, the studio décor has an eclectic ambiance. It is chockablock with reading materials, oft-used sofas, mismatched stools, easels, and scads of artist materials. The walls are lined gallery style with paintings by both of the men. Smooth jazz plays seductively from a music system, and fans push the air playfully around the room. You can’t help but notice “Bucky,” a life-size skeleton with a jaunty Kangol hat that’s oh so very Samuel L. Jackson. It is a comfortable destination. And the artist himself is delightful company, with his positive outlook and sense of humor. The 55-year-old McBride has enjoyed widespread success. His paintings have appeared on the sets of television programs including Living Single, the Wayans Bros., and the Jamie Foxx Show. He has illustrated children’s books for several publishers.
Island Breeze, Oil on canvas, 30" x 40" 24 | July 2O12 NashvilleArts.com
McBride was featured in Visions of My People, Sixty Years of African American Art in Tennessee, an exhibit organized by the Tennessee State Museum. The museum purchased one of his pieces for its permanent collection.
He has served as an artist-in-residence at the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art in that country. He also participated in an exhibition exchange program with the city of Belfast, Ireland. McBride has been the lead artist on several community-based public works of art, and he currently serves on the boards of the Frist Center for the Visual Arts and Arts at the Airport. All said, the man’s career is downright amazing considering he did not see his first “real” painting until he entered college. Michael McBride was raised in rural West Tennessee by his “preacher farmer” father and his mother, a hairdresser. Neither had attended high school. Their son began drawing at four and had a knack for copying Superman cartoons and other pictures. By age eight, he declared his intention to become an artist. That proclamation seems all the more precocious considering that he had never had an art class. His tiny school did not offer such classes. Yet his father was supportive, encouraging him to illustrate the Sunday school lessons he taught and to copy the rich illustrations depicted in his Bible.
Serenity, Oil on canvas, 30" x 36"
And so McBride graduated from high school, earning a basketball scholarship to Meramec, a St. Louis, Missouri, community college. There, he studied to be an illustrator.
McBride never wavered in his conviction. He tells the story: “When I was 17 and going to college, my dad said, ‘An artist? Now don’t those people starve?’ And I told him, ‘Well Dad, I don’t intend to do that.’” Once in St. Louis, McBride was able to see his first painting outside of the pages of a book. He visited his first art galleries and art museums. Eventually, he transferred to TSU to complete his undergraduate degree in art. After TSU he opened a commercial studio that he ran from 1979 to 1991. He was hired by a mass-production art company to paint sepia-toned works of early African American genre. By 1984 he was making a very good living, with $37,000 in annual art sales. In 1986, he ventured into fine art and began doing private shows. Then, at the age of 36, he went back to school. Why? He already was a success as a commercial and fine artist. “I loved knowledge and learning, but I needed to be able to speak in a scholarly way about art,” he says. “I wanted to be able to write about what I did, to speak about it, to lecture about it.”
Family Tradition, Oil on canvas, 48" x 36" NashvilleArts.com
July 2O12 | 25
The End of Day (detail), Oil on canvas, 30" x 34"
Malcom X, Acrylic on canvas, 36" x 36"
He wanted to study under Dr. Harold Gregor at Illinois State University, a man whom he credits with providing a “world-class artistic mentorship” as he earned his MFA. He has also been influenced by the Harlem Renaissance painter Aaron Douglas for his subject matter, Picasso for his cubism, and Matisse for his color.
Next step for McBride? He is about to embark on a series called My Father Speaks. In this homage, he plans to do a series of contemporary paintings based on twenty-five of his father’s favorite sermons. The paintings will be installed in conjunction with recordings of those sermons. And viewers themselves will have an opportunity to record their opinions as part of this fullcycle installation.
“I like being able to take them from where they are now—maybe with a poster of a rap star in their room—to where I want them to be, with an appreciation of Vincent Van Gogh,” he says. “I want them to understand the similarities of both types of art and the contrasts. That way, it is relevant to their lives today. As an artist, I like to give a view that people haven’t seen before with their own eyes or through the lens of a camera,” he says.
“This project means everything to me,” the artist muses. For more information about Michael McBride visit ww2.tnstate.edu/ library/art_corner/bride/Michale_McBride_about.htm or view his current exhibit at Centennial Art Center. http://www.nashville.gov/ parks/arts/cac.asp
The Sentential, Oil on canvas, 24" x 48" 26 | July 2O12 NashvilleArts.com
exhibit
Thornton Dial
and the Gee's Bend Quilters at The Frist Center for the Visual Arts and The Arts Company by Kevin Gordon
T
hornton Dial and the quilters of Gee’s Bend are the principal representatives of a long-hidden culture of African-American art, that in the last few decades has just begun to be exposed, documented, and understood as an important part of the art-historical canon. Through
numerous recent exhibitions such as the current show at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts (Creation Story: Gee’s Bend Quilts and the Art of Thornton Dial), this work is finally being given overdue attention and respect from a mainstream art world that has been slow in accepting that which is created beyond its political or aesthetic influence. On July 7, Great American Art: Thornton Dial and the Gee’s Bend Quilters opens at the Arts Company (215 5th Avenue N.) and features a selection of early two-dimensional work from Mr. Dial and new quilts and etchings by the women of Gee’s Bend, Alabama. An excellent complement to the Frist exhibition, the Arts Company show expands the viewer’s knowledge of the chronological progress of these artists’ works with thoughtful selections.
Art and Nature, Mixed, 95 1/4" x 71 1/2" x 5 1/2" (The Frist Center)
Downtown Traveling, Mixed, 29.5" x 41.5" (The Arts Company)
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Dial does make a special pleading for the African-American people, but it is always wound into or signifies about the whole people . . . so that Dial invariably makes his sharpest thematic statements about the doubly and triply oppressed, but resonates about all exploitation, all oppression.
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– Amiri Baraka
NashvilleArts.com
July 2O12 | 29
photo: Steve Pitkin courtesy of Souls Grown Deep Foundation
Lady Will Stand by Her Tiger, Mixed, 22" x 30" (The Arts Company)
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For someone who’s never seen the work of Thornton Dial, I would say go with, first of all, a clear mind, and carry your own experiences to the work, because you’re not going to see what everybody else has been doing. And that’s the uniqueness of what Dial is about.
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– David C. Driskell, scholar in the field of African-American art, artist, and emeritus professor at the University of Maryland, College Park
Thornton Dial
Looking Up! I first met Thornton Dial in April of 1998. He was attending the opening of his first show in Nashville, at the Arts Company; damage from the recent tornado was still evident in tall mirrored walls of office buildings around us, now pocked with jagged holes from wind-shattered glass. We were introduced on the sidewalk, in front of the gallery there on 5th Avenue. I must have been nervous, babbling about some minor domestic crisis, being then married with a one-year-old child and another due that fall, trying to provide for them via the unsteady income of a working songwriter/ musician. He listened intently, then related my situation to that of the struggling tiger—a figure especially prominent in Dial’s earlier work, one that is consistently referred to in scholarship on Dial as being both autobiographical and tied more generally to the enduring African-American fight for social and economic justice. Based on this, the application of the tiger metaphor was exactly inappropriate. But I felt that he was talking to me as a (wiser) fellow man and father, finding common ground somewhere between our obvious differences in race, generation, and background. Maybe he was just being polite—or surreptitiously suggesting that if I thought my troubles were serious, to consider his people’s legacy, a very different fate: try a few hundred years of slavery, prejudice, and cultural marginalization, kid. Perhaps he was trying to steer the conversation back to the art, what brought us both there.
Life Go On, Mixed, 30" x 22" (The Arts Company)
30 | July 2O12 NashvilleArts.com
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T
inney Contemporary’s summer show has special significance for gallery director Sarah Hays Wilson. It’s
the first one she’s organized completely on her own for the gallery, and it focuses on a style close to her own heart: realism. The New Real, an exhibition of work by six nationally recognized artists from around the country, celebrates representational art. It will perhaps surprise (and delight) with its diversity of subjects, and in this way it might also, Wilson hopes, dispel some of the disdain heaped on the genre in the contemporary art world. “I’ve always gotten frustrated by the notion that realism is something that’s very dated, that has been done before, and that the only way to do meaningful art is to do something that’s totally different than what anyone else is doing,” Wilson says. “I understand that, but at the same time I feel like realism is one of the few genres of art that have continued to be done throughout time.” The New Real showcases fresco portraiture by Ali Cavanaugh, Danny Heller’s interpretations of mid-century architecture, Ron Porter’s surrealistic combinations of tractor-trailers and landscape, and Kay Ruane’s dreamy graphite-and-gouache scenes dabbed with color. Brian Tull’s large-scale cropped images are photorealistic and nostalgic, while Eric Zener explores the depths of swimming pools in his large paintings.
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By showing the depth of the genre, Wilson seeks to underscore the relevance of realism in the contemporary art world.
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Wilson found four of the artists by scouring gallery websites and art blogs, but she didn’t have to do any research to find local artist Ron Porter. Wilson was determined to include Porter—who is represented locally by Cumberland Gallery—because she’d admired his work since studying with him while a student at Vanderbilt. In fact, he was her mentor for her senior show. St. Louis-based Cavanaugh was also familiar as an artist on Tinney’s roster, though she had not yet exhibited in the gallery. Cavanaugh developed a new process of painting frescoes several years ago while living in New Mexico. Her watercolor-on-plaster panels include Predisposed to a Place of Understanding, a portrait of an auburnhaired young woman wearing a green-and-white-striped shirt. She covers her eyes but peeks out from between her hands. Similar to clean photographic portraits of a subject standing before a pale gray background, the paintings are small at 16” x 16”. The largest, a horizontal, stretches to 36” across. Ali Cavanaugh, Predisposed to a Place of Understanding Kay Ruane, Wildfire top right: Brian Tull, Somewhere Tonight bottom right: Danny Heller, GMC Truck opposite top:
opposite bottom:
this issue's cover), the larger of these, captures the power of a diver moving through teal water, arms outstretched before her, a stream of bubbles around her. “I am so excited to see that piece in person because it’s really big—54” x 66”. The scale alone, much less how graphic it is, is going to be pretty amazing,” Wilson says. The plan is to hang this painting directly across from the gallery entrance. Danny Heller’s architectural paintings are also well suited for Tinney Contemporary’s sleek interior. Heller grew up in Southern California and incorporates the region’s iconic architecture into his work. His close-up view of Eames House, otherwise known as the home of husband-and-wife design legends Charles and Rae Eames, puts the viewer just a few steps from the structure. Large trees frame the distinctive modular house and cast mottled shadows on the truncated view of the lawn. The house itself is shown on an angle, highlighting the lines made by the black-framed rectangular windows alternating with brightly colored panels.
Brian Tull, My Favorite Gal Back Home
“A lot of people wonder why cars or houses are presented a lot with realism. It really shows how technically well [the artists] have been trained and that they’ve got such a mastery over their skill that they can have it look so exact,” Wilson says. In Heller’s Twin Palms, the deep foreground of intersecting grass-filled circles leads viewers to Frank Sinatra’s former estate in the center of the picture. The Palm Springs house has a raised V roof over a row of clerestory windows through which Heller offers a tantalizing glimpse of a painting inside and clouds on the other side. Contrails in the blue sky and a view of distant mountains complete the composition. Heller revisits the house in Backyard at Dusk, which recalls Julius Shulman’s nocturnal photographs of similar mid-century masterpieces. “Though I’m putting them under the broad label of realism, there definitely is a range,” Wilson says of the works in The New Real. Eric Zener’s stuff is almost hyper-realistic, whereas Ron Porter’s is more surrealistic. Brian Tull and Danny Heller do more nostalgic work that is period- or time-based. Ruane’s has that mystical dreamlike element to it.” By showing the depth of the genre, Wilson seeks to underscore the relevance of realism in the contemporary art world. The New Real continues through August 18 at Tinney Contemporary and will include receptions on July 7 and August 4, as well as a Collectors Art Night on August 3. www.tinneycontemporary.com
Danny Heller, Backyard At Dusk
“Her work is on a smaller scale, which is interesting because when you think fresco you think of larger pieces,” Wilson says. “The [smaller] scale fits the quiet, reflective nature of Cavanaugh’s work.” On the opposite end of the size spectrum are Eric Zener’s intriguing underwater paintings. Moving Through (featured on
Ron Porter, Decoys
44 | July 2O12 NashvilleArts.com
County Fair, Oil on canvas, 18" x 36"
was 10 years old when the stock market crashed. At the end of World War II, she was 27. She was 50 years old in 1969 during the Vietnam War. She witnessed the Great Depression and segregation, and today she is still alive, with a sound mind, a quiet wry wit, and a paintbrush in her hand.
In her 40s, LaFrance eventually made enough money to buy art supplies and began painting off and on between loading dried tobacco onto conveyor belts in the tobacco barns, cleaning offices, and painting novelty whiskey bottles at a ceramics plant. In 1986, she began painting full time. Even now she laughs at the memory: “That paint’d smell so good, it’d give me a fit. I still like the smell of the paint, the paper, and the canvas.” LaFrance tries to explain her compulsion to paint by saying, “Sometimes something gets on my mind and I try to paint it. I just try to tell the truth. I
photo Courtesy of Kathy Moses
Farmyard, Oil on canvas, 24" x 48"
guess I’m just good at it because it’s what I like to do. I just thank the Lord that I have tried.” A favorite reminiscence about Helen LaFrance concerns one of my last visits with her, this time in a nursing home. LaFrance had commandeered a corner of the day room and made it into a studio. A nurse led us to her and said with some awe, “I didn’t know we had such a famous artist in residence.” LaFrance, with paintbrush in hand, replied matter-of-factly without missing a beat, “You don’t.” Her circumstances had changed, of course, but Helen LaFrance looked no different than she did when I first met her almost twenty years ago, in the studio on her property down the road from where she grew up. She was still painting. Several of LaFrance’s works will be on display at the Helen LaFrance: Folk Art Memories exhibit opening July 1 at the Tennessee State Museum. www.tnmuseum.org Kathy Moses Shelton is the author of Outsider Art of the South and the recently published Helen LaFrance: Folk Art Memories available at www.just-looking-antiques.com and locally at Parnassus Books.
Farmstand, Oil on canvas, 18" x 24"
NashvilleArts.com
July 2O12 | 47
ArtHouse
Landy Gardner
Art and Interiors by KAREN PARR-MOODY
64 | July 2O12 NashvilleArts.com
O
h to be stylish, energetic, and passionate about collecting art, all while running a successful interior design business.
Landy Gardner, a longtime Nashville fixture, is the very picture of that description. He buzzes about the fabric swatches of his Green Hills office wearing all white—the jeans, vest, and shirt—topped off with black fleurde-lis-on-white cufflinks. But something isn't quite right. He doesn't want to talk about his success, his history, his biography. That's so been done. He wants to talk about art. How art works in a room, in his house, in other homes, how it is an integral part of what he does as a designer. "If I weren't an interior designer, my passion would be to have an art gallery," says this connoisseur of all things top-drawer. "That's what I would love to do. And that's why I so love shopping for art. I love travelling and looking at art. Art, to me, is the one thing in the house that causes you over and over again to smile, to feel good, to have an emotional reaction."
Now, when Gardner is infusing top-drawer homes with interior fabulousness, he draws from a well of favorites. These include James Garrett, Brad Robertson, Miles Bennett, Cathy Lancaster, Ed Nash, Sid Smith, Bruce Peebles, Charlotte Terrell, and Mario Vélez. In his own home, Gardner features Corrine Colarusso, Gail Foster, Tom Swanston, and a number of English, Ukrainian, and American painters from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
NashvilleArts.com
photo: jerry atnip
A skosh of history: While Gardner has been living in Nashville since the mid '70s, he grew up near Chicago, where he spent many hours at the Art Institute of Chicago. He specifically ogled that most famous of Georges Seurat's works of pointillism, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. "From being taken to art galleries before I even really wanted to go, I developed a love for art," Gardner says.
July 2O12 | 65
Over a mantel he keeps one of his favorite pieces, a painting of abstracted boats by Colin Hayes, one of that famous staff at the Royal College of Art in London that shaped Britain's pop art movement. He bought it from the Throckmorton family at Coughton Court, the famous English home. "It was something that I just could not get away from," he said of the Hayes painting. "The color, the mood, it was just thrilling." Gardner shops for art in galleries in Nashville, Atlanta, Chicago, and Miami. One of his favorite places is Toronto, where he has taken two clients for two-day buying sprees. "Now it's incredible how great the art scene is here in Nashville," he says. "To see what's evolved in the art scene in the last fifteen years . . . I'm seeing pieces that I have seen in Miami or Atlanta. The artists represented there are now showing here in Nashville galleries." Gardner says some clients buy their own art, while others find that overwhelming. When helping these decide what's right, he shows them a piece and waits for their response. "I look for that instant gut reaction."
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I don't want anyone to be coerced into buying something. That's not how to buy art. You buy art out of emotion. When I show you the piece, if you go oh my gosh, that's amazing, that's what I want.
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Price isn't important, he says. Even when he and his wife were first married, Gardner knew they couldn't afford the furniture he wanted. But he still bought art. "We had a living room and we had art on the walls," he says. "My wife said, 'We're the only people I know who have art on the wall but people have to sit on the floor to look at the art.'" Gardner incorporates the allure of contrasts by putting contemporary art in traditional settings and vice versa. In a Georgian home, he furnished a library with an eighteenth-century pine mantel, above which he put a colorful painting by Dutch artist Ton Schulten, who is known for painting abstract landscapes in bright blocks of color. "You've got something completely unexpected there," he said of the Schulten piece. "We did that in the whole house. There were a lot of contemporary glass pieces and art in this Georgian house." Above another mantel, this one in a pristinely elegant dining room, Gardner hung a bright contemporary painting, also done with blocks of color, by Georgia artist Corrine Colarusso. Then there was a wall in a Tuscan-style house. At the base, Gardner set a traditional English chair, but above it he hung a deep-blue abstract painting by Columbian artist Mario Vélez. 66 | July 2O12 NashvilleArts.com
artist profile
Kurt Wenner
Master Illusionist Comes to Town by Joe Pagetta
K
urt Wenner has a problem with art and creativity. Not his own, mind you, but in the way art is being taught in schools and the way we as a society have come to define creativity. To illustrate the point, he refers to the definition of creativity from Wikipedia.
“It’s a ‘phenomenon’ and uses the word ‘create’ to define itself, then it has to have ‘value,’” the San Juan Islands-based artist says, placing extra emphasis on the words he finds most absurd. “I think creativity has nothing do with something having value, and nothing to do with the product. It‘s a process. So the definition is completely flawed.”
photos courtesy of kurt wenner
Creativity will be the topic of Wenner’s talk, “Creativity Redefined,” when he speaks at the Create2012 conference this month in Mufreesboro at MTSU. He plans to stress the importance of going back and figuring out what creativity really means and redefining it “in order to be able to even hope to teach it or have it become a part of our didactic.” Wenner has been going back to explore creativity his entire career. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design and Art Center College of Design before working for NASA as an advanced scientific space illustrator. In 1982 he left NASA for Italy to pursue his love of classical art, studying the works of the great masters and drawing from classical sculpture. He discovered the language of form in Western figurative art, and got the neoclassical training necessary to follow the style he was most interested in. To finance his travels and studies he became a Madonnaro and created chalk paintings on the streets of Rome, in the process inventing an art form all his own known as anamorphic or 3D pavement art. It required a new geometry—now known as Wenner’s hyperbolic perspective—that resulted in compositions that appear to rise and fall into the ground. He is recognized as a master of the art form and, in 1985, was the subject of National Geographic’s documentary Masterpieces in Chalk.
72 | July 2O12 NashvilleArts.com
His studies also influenced a sometimes-polarizing view on the way art is taught, and even what art is. He has come to the conclusion that we have lost our way. “It was all public art in the Renaissance,” he says. “If you had asked Leonardo (Da Vinci) whether he had expressed himself, he wouldn’t have known what you meant. An artist would have looked at you as if ‘what are you talking about?’ So the function of the artist in those societies, in effect, was very different than it is now, and I don’t think we’re in a great position. I don’t think there has been a positive evolution.” Part of the problem, Wenner believes, is that figurative art and classical art are no longer considered art. “Most students, art students and otherwise, that’s what they want to learn,” he says. “But society and educational institutions have told them no, you can’t do this, because now we’ve had Pollock and Warhol, and we don’t do that anymore. But that’s something that we tell the students. It’s not the natural tendency of the students to want to go that way. Rhode Island, as well as every other institution, doesn’t treat figurative art as fine art. You can’t even get a degree in it. So a lot of what I’ve questioned is why. Is this really important; is this the way to go? Should someone who likes Caravaggio study illustration? I don’t think so. I think it’s an absurdity. It hasn’t helped, and it hasn’t worked. It has made the arts peripheral. “The visual arts are unlike any other art form. If you look at music and dance, they keep their classical form, and then they improvise and do new things as well, but the visual arts don’t do that. They decided that they had to destroy their tradition in order to go forward.
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Art schools no longer even consider Michelangelo art, Wenner insists. “I just think it’s wrong,” he adds. “I don’t really take an exception to conceptual art. I just think the idea of denigrating figures in art as we’ve done was a huge mistake.
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Wenner’s appearance at Create2012 won’t be his first in the Nashville area. In 2001, he created a chalk drawing, Danae, outside the Frist Center for the Visual Arts to celebrate the museum’s grand opening. The artist’s comfortable relationship with the impermanence of that piece, as well as many of his early and most famous chalk drawings, goes back to his original point about the process inherent to creativity.
“I do permanent work, and it’s nice to leave a legacy of some works,” he says. “But what it taught me was that art was really process. And if it’s process, whether it stays around or not is inconsequential. If it stays around, it’s really more a benefit to who might be collecting it or using it as decoration or for whatever other reason. It doesn’t really change my relationship to the painting at all. I don‘t keep them around. I don’t even have pictures of them.” For more information on Create2012, see our education section on page 57. For contributing writer Joe Pagetta’s extended interview with Wenner, please visit www.nashvillearts.com. For more about Kurt Wenner, visit www.kurtwenner.com.
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1st Place
Claire Coleman, Pierced
Hutton Hotel
Art Competition
2nd Place
by Deborah Walden arlier this year, Nashville Arts Magazine and the Hutton Hotel announced an exciting opportunity for students in our area. The Hutton
Hotel Art Competition gave fine arts students enrolled in local colleges the chance to win thousands of dollars to put towards their education. The hotel awarded $10,000 in scholarship money through the competition. Nashville Arts Magazine received dozens of applications for the contest. The selection process could not have been more difficult for us, even in the initial stages. The Hutton Hotel and Nashville Arts Magazine were seriously impressed by the level of talent that our local students displayed. Picking a group of thirty finalists for the competition proved to be a daunting task. A panel of six arts experts judged the work on June 5 in the ballroom of the Hutton Hotel. Sculptor Buddy Jackson, Tinney Contemporary owner Susan Tinney, photographer Jerry Atnip, Leiper’s Creek Gallery owner Lisa Fox, wood artist Doug Regen, and Ruth Crnkovich of Haynes Galleries judged the competition. They selected three artists as scholarship recipients. First place and $5,000 went to Middle Tennessee State University student Claire Coleman for her sculpture Pierced. The work features a curved ribbon of laminated Masonite, pierced by an eight-foot pole. The large-scale work commanded the space in the judging room
3rd Place
photo: Damon Bagwell
E
Christopher Bogle, From the Earth? #3
Hutton Art Judges Lisa Fox, Susan Tinney, Buddy Jackson, Doug Regen, and Ruth Crnkovich (Jerry Atnip not pictured)
and is sure to be a topic of conversation in the Hutton Hotel lobby. Second place, with a scholarship of $3,000, was awarded to Tennessee Tech University senior Chris Bogle. His work From the Earth? #3 made of mica and glass presented a visual puzzle to viewers. A spectacular detailed creation, this sculpture indicates a bright future for the young artist. Holly Carden, a Watkins College of Art, Design & Film sophomore, took home third place and $2,000 for her watercolor painting Who Killed Cock Robin? The detailed composition demonstrates Carden’s talent for line and color. Nashville Arts Magazine and the Hutton Hotel look forward to brilliant careers and future successes from each of this year’s contestants.
Holly Carden, Who Killed Cock Robin? 74 | July 2O12 NashvilleArts.com
To see works by all of the competition finalists, visit our website at www.nashvillearts.com. www.huttonhotel.com
beyond words by Marshall Chapman
Late-night Urges
H
ave you ever found yourself in
a
situation
where
your
Photo: Anthony Scarlati
physical urges defy all logic? You're
thinking I can't believe I'm doing this! yet you continue doing it? Well, that's exactly what happened to me late last Saturday night. I was sitting at my computer minding my own business when all of a sudden I got a jones for some hot chicken. Not just any hot chicken, but Prince's hot chicken.
At 2:25 a.m., I jumped up from my computer and announced to my husband, I've got to have some Prince's hot chicken right now. You want to drive out there with me? "Nope."
“ ”
"Aren't you scared for me to drive out there by myself?" "Nope." "Okay, then. I'll see you later." I first ate at Prince's in 1968, back when it was located in a house on Charlotte Avenue. I was a sophomore at Vanderbilt. A bunch of us had gone there late on a Saturday night because we'd been told the grease and white bread would "put the hurt on any potential hangover." I remember asking for a cup of coffee and being told they didn't have coffee.
first thursday
five til eight p.m.
July 14th
FREE FOOD, FUN, CRAFTS, ART, MUSIC FOR EVERYONE! Shop of the Month
Jackson’s Bar & Bistro
We will be moving the July Art Walk to Saturday, July 14th in order to celebrate BASTILLE DAY!!
"Well then, could I have a Coke on ice?" "We don't have ice, but you're welcome to use the machine," said the man, as he nodded toward the Coke machine. Prince's is now located in a strip mall off Dickerson Road out beyond Trinity Lane. Other than the location, not much else has changed. The Prince family still runs things; orders still have to be placed in person at the counter (even the mayor has to show up and place his order); a fried chicken breast with wing is still served on white bread with a couple of sour pickle slices held in place by a toothpick; and orders still have to be specified "plain," "mild," "medium," or "hot." (Mild is usually plenty hot for most palates.) Oh, and best of all, considering my recent after-hours urge, they still serve until 4 a.m. Friday and Saturday nights. www.tallgirl.com
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HillsboroVillage.com www.facebook.com/hillsborovillageevents M e di a Sp onS or
Rosemary Frank
MBA, CDFA™, CFDP ®, CFDS Divorce Financial Expert Certified Divorce Financial Analyst Certified Financial Divorce Practitioner Certified Financial Divorce Specialist Collaborative Law Financial Neutral Rule 31 Listed Family Mediator
Recognized as the First Divorce Financial Professional in the Nation to have been awarded three certifications in the specialty 5115 Maryland Way, Brentwood, TN 37027 615-595-6850 • www.DollarsOfDivorce.com
NashvilleArts.com
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Photo: jerry atnip
my favorite painting
First Lady
Crissy Haslam B
ill and I have the privilege of living in the Tennessee Residence, which holds artwork on loan from museums across the state. I am inspired daily
by the artists, whose collective talent lends itself beautifully to help make the Residence a warm and inviting home that is so characteristic of Tennessee. The Frugal Repast, by Willie Betty Newman, hangs in the entrance hall of the Tennessee Residence. Each morning as I leave, and each evening as I return home, I am greeted by the beautiful face of this young French peasant. Both the title of the painting and her doleful expression reflect her heaviness of heart, but her gentle face is captured brilliantly. Willie Betty Newman was a woman from Murfreesboro, and learning about her life has given me an even greater appreciation for her work. We are surrounded by artwork in our home, and we are grateful to the museums for allowing us to enjoy it and share with others who visit the Tennessee Residence. The art collection at the Executive Residence will be featured in our upcoming August issue.
A r t i s t i nfo Painter Willie Betty Newman was a well-educated female artist who was recognized for her powerful portraiture during her lifetime. She was born in 1863 to Colonel William Francis Betty and Sophie Rucker Betty. Newman remained in Murfreesboro through her studies at Soule College and Greenwood Seminary in Lebanon, Tennessee. During her twelve years in Paris, France, she studied with master portraitists at the Julian Academy and exhibited at the Paris Salon. She returned to Nashville and established a studio at the Vauxhall apartments and painted portraits of distinguished leaders such as John T. Moore, Governor James Frazier, and President James K. Polk, to name a few. Her works belong to the Neville-Strass Collection, the U.S. Capitol Building, and Cheekwood Museum among others.
The Frugal Repast by Willie Betty Newman (1863-1935)
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