Vadis TURNER Carla CIUFFO 21c MUSEUM HOTEL Sloane BIBB Renee LOWERY
Jalan-Jalan Showroom Ancient Modern • Antiques • Accessories
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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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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
For The Time Being
New Paintings by Kevin Palme July 1 – August 2, 2017 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
Clementines, Oil on Panel
Featured Artist
M E LV I N
TOL E DO
Artist Reception • July 7, 6-9pm 202 2nd Ave. South, Franklin, TN 37064
•
www.gallery202art.com
•
615-472-1134
TINNEY CONTEMPORARY
ANNUAL RETROSPECTIVE July 14 - August 12, 2017 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 Sebastiaan Bremer (Dutch)
July 2017
Die Liebe, 2012, Unique hand-painted chromogenic print with mixed media See page 32.
Features 18 Catching up with Muralist Guido van Helten in The Nations
70 Olga and the Power of Choice
20 Ceiba Gallery: Connecting Cultures A New Artistic Endeavor at Plaza Mariachi
72 Cincinnati’s Visual Art Scene The Queen City Is Busting at the Seams with Contemporary Art
22 Andrey Poletaev Creates Lasting Masterpieces with a Ballpoint Pen
84 Really? Group Show at David Lusk Gallery
26 Sloane Bibb An Intricately Complicated Simple World
88 Renee Lowery All the Pretty Little Horses
30 Murals at Little’s Fish Company Make Big Splash for Germantown
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32 Contemporary Conversations at 21c
Columns 16 Crawl Guide 42 The Bookmark Hot Books and Cool Reads
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79 Poet’s Corner 43 Vadis Turner Rite of Passage
80 Sounding Off by Joseph E. Morgan
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82 And So It Goes by Rachael McCampbell
Rendered in Praise: American Artists and the Legacy of the Grand Tour, 1880–1960 at Vanderbilt University’s Fine Arts Gallery
53 Best of Show Guadalupe Lanning Robinson’s Roots Are Showing
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92 Art Smart by Rebecca Pierce 96 FYEye by Hunter Armistead 98 ArtSee 100 NPT 104 Appraise It by Linda Dyer 105 Beyond Words by Marshall Chapman 106 My Favorite Painting
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56 Carla Ciuffo French Twist: A New Photographic Series 62 State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now 68 Fresh Paint New Works by Kate Harrold
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Publisher’s Note
A Great City Deserves Great Art With all the fanfare of a major art opening, 21c Museum Hotel opened its doors this past month. Located in a sympathetically renovated building on 2nd Avenue North, the new hotel is a stellar addition to our growing contemporary art scene. The downstairs main gallery features artists from around the world, as do the hallways and guest rooms. Art is everywhere. Even the elevators are adorned with digital art. The exhibits will rotate frequently so be sure to check back often for thought-provoking contemporary art in a unique setting. The gallery is open and free to the public. You can read about it on page 32. Another great addition to the cultural fiber of our city was the return of the American Artisan Festival. Samantha Saturn picked up the torch left by her mother, Nancy, and relaunched this Nashville event. Joining the Labyrinth at the American Artisan Festival artisans from around the country was a site-specific installation by California artists Tracy Ginsberg and Theodore Lillie. A giant labyrinth in the shape of a magnolia leaf was erected in the space between the Parthenon and the festival. Walking through the labyrinth proved to be a fun yet meditative experience. The installation really came to life after dark when giant projectors illuminated the structure with time-lapse images of magnolia leaves and the temple ruins in Greece. I loved it; my only regret is that it was there for only two days. I’m thrilled that a record crowd showed up at Julia Martin Gallery for Jessi Zazu’s opening. Jessi was on our cover last month. She is a talented artist with a lot to say, and I’m glad that Nashville was listening. It’s going to be a long hot summer. You should buy some art to quench your thirst. Paul Polycarpou | Publisher
Broken Mic
J O H N PA U L K E S L I N G M i s s i n g t h e B u s | 2016 | 16 1/ 2 x 24 inches
OPE NI NG A U G U S T 3 , 6 - 9 PM S h o w i n g through Oc tober 6 th
Galerie Tangerine is free + open by appointment Monday through Friday, 9 AM - 5 PM 615 454.4103 Located at 900 South Street, Suite 104
ww w.g a leri etangeri ne.c om
280 White Bridge Pike, Nashville, TN 37209 615.356.9596 www.lumenlamps.com
BENNET T GALLERIES Now Representing
NICK CAPACI
Midway Acrylic on canvas, 48” x 60” 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
July Crawl Guide Saturday, July 1, from 6 until 9 p.m.
Enjoy an evening of art under the lights on 5th Avenue. The Arts Company is introducing two new artists to Nashville with the exhibitions Boundaries of Color by artist Laura Nugent, and Her Flags by Marilyn Artus. Boundaries of Color features large acrylic paintings and smaller framed works. For Her Flag, the artist brings together Kevin Palme, The Rymer Gallery a diverse display of ordinary materials cut up and sewn together onto vinyl. This is the final weekend to see The Prophet’s Library, a solo show of new work by Wesley Clark at Tinney Contemporary. The Rymer Gallery is opening For The Time Being, new paintings Micaela Herrera, WAG by Kevin Palme, and will continue showing Travis Adams’s glass show and Desiderium, new paintings by Shane Miller. The Browsing Room Gallery in the Downtown Presbyterian Church is presenting Resident Artists of the Downtown Presbyterian Church, including work by Cary Gibson, Sarah Jorden, William Steven Stone, Hans Schmitt-Matzen, and Richard Feaster. In the historic Arcade, “O” Gallery, the oldest gallery in the Arcade, is showcasing work by emerging artists such as Stephen Sligh (see page 70). At Watkins Arcade Gallery, see videos by Micaela Herrera and Henry Jeck. Herrera’s work examines identity as a Mexican American by illustrating the differences within each culture. Jeck’s work addresses the saturation of sports imagery that exists in American culture. For parking and trolley information, visit www.nashvilledowntown.com/play/first-saturday-art-crawl.
Arts & Music @ Wedgewood/Houston Saturday, July 1, from 6 until 9 p.m.
Lars Strandh, Zeitgeist
Brett Douglas Hunter, Julia Martin Gallery
From Hagen to Houston to Chestnut and beyond, Arts & Music @ Wedgewood/Houston offers a broad range of artistic experience. At Zeitgeist, see Selected Poems—works on paper by Lars Strandh. In his third solo show at Zeitgeist,
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Strandh shows a series of small color-ink drawings, which like his paintings are built up by fine lines and layers, creating visual poems for the viewer. Open Gallery is showing work by Memphis artist Noah Miller, whose art is a self-analysis of the space and time we occupy. mild climate is hosting artists Basima Mohamed, Steffen Sornpao, Quay Quinn Wolf, and Bettina Yung. COOP Gallery presents House Guests, its second annual summer series of exhibitions. For July guest curator Daniel Fuller from Atlanta Contemporary brings to Nashville King Tide, a four-person exhibition with works by Tyler Beard, Jamie Bull, Jane Garver, and Kelly Kristin Jones. During the months of July and August Channel to Channel is exhibiting work by Knoxville-based artist, Zach Searcy. Bevy 2017, Julia Martin Gallery’s annual summer group show, is opening with a reception and includes work by artists John Paul Kessling, Brett Douglas Hunter, Olivia Leigh Martin, Rebecca Blevins, Georganna Greene, Clint Colburn, Kelly Ahrens, and Kevin Reilly. David Lusk Gallery is exhibiting Outsider Artists: Bridging Communities by guest curator John Jerit, which includes works by Mose Tolliver, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Howard Finster, Purvis Young, and more. On July 5, David Lusk Gallery opens the group show Really? (see page 84). 365 Days | Ben C. Vitualla curated by May Hwen and presented by Sticky Rice Collective is on view at East Side Project Space. For more information, visit www.artsmusicweho.wordpress.com.
Franklin Art Scene
Friday, July 7, from 6 until 9 p.m.
Melvin Toledo, Gallery 202
This month’s Franklin Art Scene celebrates pets because Mars Petcare has partnered with Franklin to launch a pilot program BETTER CITIES FOR PETS™, which was created to help communities become more pet-friendly. Gallery 202 is featuring painter Melvin Toledo, whose work continues to focus on still life but has broadened to include figurative work in which he acknowledges the people and culture of his home country of Nicaragua. See a variety of dog paintings by Susan Napolitano at Hope Church Franklin. Parks Realty is showing oil and metallic paintings by Katie Neal and animal paintings by Mary Margaret Glass. Finnleys is hosting Sheila Ann Smith, who specializes in acrylic paintings of pets, people, and homes. Enjoy paintings by mother and daughter artists Lisa and Leah Boorse at Historic Franklin Presbyterian Church. boutique MMM is presenting paintings by Emily Newman. Imaginebox Emporium is featuring the original illustrations created by Cory Basil for his young reader novel The Perils
Randy L Purcell, Jack Yacoubian Jewelers
First Saturday Art Crawl Downtown
of Fishboy and a large selection of original works. Jack Yacoubian Jewelers is exhibiting work by mixed-media artist Randy L Purcell. Christopher Green is displaying his colorful encaustic paintings at Williamson County Visitor Center. Williamson County Archives is showcasing watercolors, drawings, and oil paintings by Barbara Blanks Bullard. See Amanda Harrison’s watercolors at Williamson County Enrichment Center. For more information, visit www.downtownfranklintn.com/the-franklin-art-scene.
East Side Art Stumble
Saturday, July 8, from 6 until 10 p.m. Take a drive down Gallatin Pike for the opening of Light of Day by Vicki Sher at Red Arrow Gallery. In this series of new work, Sher mines the border between indoor and outdoor space with many of the drawings having a window-like presence, in the form of a square or rectangle, inserted in the picture. Stop in to Sami Wideberg’s mobile art gallery The Box just outside of Red Arrow Gallery. Southern Grist Brewery is displaying mixed-media paintings by Andrew
Andrew Smith, Southern Grist Brewery
Paper Quilt #66, 26” x 26”
Jim Sherraden
Smith. Michael Weintrob Photography Studio and Gallery, Nashville Community Darkroom, Raven & Whale Gallery, The Green Gallery at Turnip Green Creative Reuse, Platetone Printmaking and Make Nashville are also participating. For updates, visit www.eastsideartstumble.com.
Germantown Art Crawl
JIM SHERRADEN: NEW WORK
Saturday, July 15, 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 arts spots: 100 Taylor Arts Collective, Abednego, Wilder, Bits & Pieces, Bearded Iris Brewing, and Alexis & Bolt.
Jefferson Street Art Crawl
SHOWING JULY 1 - SEPTEMBER 1
Woodcuts Gallery and Framing is exhibiting Omari Booker’s I Live Here series documenting and celebrating North Nashville during this period of growth. One Drop Ink, Garden Brunch Cafe, and The Loft at Ella Jean’s Café are also participating. Stay posted on event details at Facebook.com/jsactn.
Omari Booker, Woodcuts Gallery and Framing
Saturday, July 22, from 6 until 9 p.m.
OPENING RECEPTION: JULY 1 • 6-9 pm
#PressPlayRecord • @HatchShowPrint HatchShowPrint.com • Downtown Nashville
PHOTOGRAPHY Those Drones
WORDS Éva Boros
Catching up with Muralist Guido van Helten in The Nations So . . . what do you think of Nashville? Nashville is a great place and from what I gather has some powerful momentum in the arts and culture. I’ve enjoyed being here, but mostly my focus has been on the area of the Nations and West Nashville. I like to focus on a community in the content of the mural and also lifestyle while I’m working in a place, so I have mostly stayed local, worked and spent my time in the neighborhood while I’ve been here.
about 14 years old. My first piece was on the train tracks in Melbourne, Australia, which me and a couple of friends did in broad daylight with bucket paint and cheap spray cans from the two-dollar shop. Since then it has been a progression of different styles that has brought me to this point in my career. na For more information, visit www.nashvillewallsproject.com.
Seen any cool art while here? I have seen some great mural works downtown also facilitated by Nashville Walls Project but mostly have just been working and focused on my task at hand. Can you tell me about Mr. Estes, the gentleman you painted on the silo? It is important for me and my process to reflect a community’s character in my work, and through this aim I engage in a process of discovering and learning about a place through community engagement and consultation. Mr. Estes has been part of this group for many years. To me he stands symbolic against the inevitable tide of gentrification. This is an issue that in some cases has left the underprivileged in worse positions, as developers and real estate agents move to capitalize on the Nashville housing boom. I find the relationship between murals and gentrification conflicting, and in this work there is this conflicting yet harmonious composite of the two sides of social change. There is juxtaposition between a mural that discusses and commemorates the blue-collar demographic while at the same time being a powerful part of the change in the area. This is a dialogue and talking point that I hope this mural can create. And the kids? I feel it’s important to try to give something back to young people while working on my projects, including them in the process in some way. The composition of Mr. Estes and the children is intended to push the idea that this mural stands not for a single individual but the community as a whole. What’s next? I will be working on a few projects around internationally and hopefully more in the USA in the future. Over the next few months I plan to work in Finland, Europe, and India before returning to Australia later this year. When did you start painting graffiti? How long have you been painting murals? I’ve been practicing murals with aerosol since I was probably
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Silos on 51st Avenue N. in The Nations
SUMMER EXHIBITIONS
4107 Hillsboro Circle | 615 297 0296 | www.cumberlandgallery.com
PHOTOGRAPHY Keep3
WORDS DeeGee Lester
Ceiba Gallery: Connecting Cultures A New Artistic Endeavor at Plaza Mariachi
Esencia de Maestros y Artistas, 2012, Oil on canvas, 50” x 44”
Plaza de Santo Domingo, 2008, Oil on canvas, 48” x 36”
H
eld in awe and prominent in mythologies across tropical regions (Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, and West Africa), the Ceiba tree is a microcosm of the world. Often growing to a height over 200 feet, the Ceiba (pronounced SAYba) can have buttress roots taller than a man, and the massive umbrella shape of its canopy is home to diverse species of birds, insects, and animals, while its base pools shelter tadpoles and other creatures—a reminder of the connectedness of all creation. Jorge Yances, curator/director of Ceiba Gallery at the new Plaza Mariachi, hopes this unique space likewise serves as a broad artistic canopy uniting cultures and traditions. “My passion is my art, and I don’t want to leave that behind,” says Colombian-born Yances, “but I want the gallery to be a Ceiba, 2017, Graphite on canvas, 50” x 36”
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place where Latin artists can feel proud to display their work. It starts with Latin artists, but we want to expand to include artists from a diversity of cultures and age groups.” Encouraged by the sponsoring Hispanic Family Foundation to open with his own stunning Realismo Mágico paintings— selections focusing on the architecture of Cartagena— Yances expanded the artistic conversation to include a powerful installation, The Journey, on the story of immigration.
Future exhibitions will focus on artists from Cuba and Argentina, as well as Nashville artist Michael McBride. Through it all, Yances is taking the traditional art gallery concept and, like the great Ceiba tree, allowing it to expand, house, and connect a diversity of cultures and artistic voices. na For more information, please visit www.plazamariachi.com/business/hff-ceiba-art-gallery.
Adjacent to the fine art gallery is an Artisan Studio focusing on education, crafts, and emerging artists. This space currently features complex works of art by Piedad Camacho Ayala using figue (rope) and other natural fibers, as well as the artistic construction of guitars by Ricardo Sanchez (Ricardo S. Guitars). The educational component of the gallery within this space offers kids an opportunity to explore the history of fiber, decorate ceramic vases with Aztec designs, or create mini guitars or their own fiber art. On Saturdays and Sundays (2 to 4 p.m.) Ceiba Kids programs based on current exhibitions tumble into a large adjacent hallway, with educational activities led by Monica Reyna and Diane Janbakhsh who, with her husband, Mark, conceptualized and parented the exciting Plaza Mariachi complex on Nolensville Pike. Upcoming exhibitions bring a diversity of cultural and artistic traditions beginning with Mexico. Manuel, the maestro of fashion in entertainment, will showcase his magnificent jackets as works of art, alongside experimental “stream of consciousness” paintings by Yuri Figueroa, and Rafael Saenz Felix’s Pinton Popular (popular art)—works reminiscent, in theme and use of color, of the tradition of Frida Kahlo.
Interior of Ceiba Gallery
Jorge Yances in front of his installation The Journey
NASHVILLEARTS.COM
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WORDS John Pitcher
Andrey Poletaev Creates Lasting Masterpieces with a Ballpoint Pen
Y
ou can think of the ballpoint pen as the illegitimate stepchild of the high-art world. Lowly and commonplace, this five-and-dime-store writing instrument has long been the tool of choice for doodling daydreamers and pedestrian sketch artists. Not surprisingly, many critics have rejected this pen as being unworthy as a painterly medium.
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Audrey
Citylife
Snowy New York
Don’t tell that to Andrey Poletaev, a Ukrainian-born artist who has done much to transform the ordinary Bic pen into a Cinderella of creativity. His numerous ink-on-paper drawings have transcended the static linearity of the ballpoint pen, creating works that are remarkable for their shading, nuance, and expression. “Andrey’s works are incredibly detailed, though he does not like to be known as a hyperrealist artist,” says Alexander Shegelsky, the director of Poletaev Art in Nashville. “But each one of his artworks can contain over twenty layers of ink and take over 300 hours to complete.” Despite his demurs, Poletaev’s portraits pop off the page with the liveliness, and uncanny believability, of photographs. His likenesses of Hollywood icons are especially appealing, since they readily call to mind familiar vintage black-andwhite publicity photos. Audrey Hepburn looks at the viewer with mouth wide open, as if a fan has unexpectedly entered her dressing room. Humphrey Bogart, pistol in hand, is partially framed by his own inky silhouette. But Poletaev’s real genius is seen in his miraculous cityscapes. These works take Poletaev far from Eastern Ukraine to the streets of Paris, New York, Istanbul, and Prague. His drawings boast a master draftsman’s sense of detail. Yet it would be a mistake to dismiss these works as mere architectural sketches. In a 2015 interview with the online journal The Ballpointer, Poletaev noted that cities have their own history and rhythm of life. “The life of a city happens not in its main attractions, but on the most common streets and alleys,” the artist told The Ballpointer. So Poletaev’s rendering of a Parisian street scene at night relegates the Eifel Tower to the background, while the eye is drawn to charming street-side cafes and to a lone
Parisian Street
motorcycle illuminating the evening with its headlight. Other Paris drawings show cyclists and pedestrians seemingly on their way to work or the store. Poletaev reminds us of the pleasant routines of life that are too often taken for granted. Sometimes, Poletaev’s artistry is best seen in what he doesn’t draw. Much the same way a great musical work balances sounds with silence, Poletaev uses the white of his paper to highlight images and create nuance. His depiction of a New York City street in winter uses the whiteness of his paper to create the illusion of snow. “Poletaev’s art hasn’t been seen much in America,” says Shegelsky. “I’m hoping that will soon change.” For more information, contact Alexander Shegelsky at alexander.shegelsky@gmail.com. To see more of Andrey Poletaev’s work, visit www.poletaevart.com.
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Bottle Surfing, 2016, Mixed media, 60” x 48”
An Intricately Complicated Simple World At The Copper Fox
WORDS Karen Parr-Moody
Sloane Bibb W
ith a diluted solution of Elmer’s glue, artist Sloane Bibb pastes a rootin’ tootin’ cowboy from a bygone era’s catalog onto a piece of plywood. He then carefully traces the lad’s splayed fingers, poised in a decades-old wave, with the thin drill bit of a scroll saw, gingerly excising each tiny finger from the surrounding wood. The drill bit pokes into the wood swiftly, like a chicken pecking the earth in a quest for bugs. With Bibb’s mixed media and assemblage art, everything is intensively process-oriented. The art’s production demands many skills from Bibb’s repertoire: welding, woodworking, painting, and graphic design. The process begins with a hefty stack of Spiegel and Montgomery Ward catalogs from the early half of the last century. On a recent day in his studio in Decatur, Alabama, Bibb leafed through a catalog from 1945, stopping to admire the beauty of a spread that featured handbags in a mélange of rich autumn tones. “I love the old advertisements, the type, everything—the style and design of the 1940s and 1950s,” he says. Bibb then points to another page torn from another publication. It
Sloane Bibb in his studio
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I love the old advertisements, the type, everything—the style and design of the 1940s and 1950s.
features a policeman standing in a relaxed posture in the foreground. The saturated colors and composition are high in quality; it belies belief to think they simply form an ad and not a photograph hanging on some museum wall. “With the older stuff, it has more to do with image quality than with a time period,” Bibb explains. “That’s photography, but it almost has an illustrative feel to it that I can’t really explain. It may be the printing process, plus it’s the style of it, too. And with the older stuff, you get the nicer paper.” For his meticulous compositions, Bibb uses the figures, such as the little boy dressed up as a cowboy, and affixes them to a wooden canvas (which he also builds) into whatever scenario he has contrived. The backdrop might be an abstraction created with acrylic paint, drips sometimes oozing downward. The figures—nattily dressed men and women from the 1940s, birds, antique cars—are affixed at staggered levels, giving the sense of a realm created in various planes. It makes sense that his work, which is almost sculptural, is represented by The Copper Fox in Leiper’s Fork, which specializes in this aesthetic. Bibb began his studies at Auburn University in industrial design, then switched to the art department, where he worked on his BFA in graphic design. He graduated in 1996 and spent most of his career working in graphic design and on museum installations. A tall man with the smoothest of Southern drawls, he descended from the illustrious Bibb family of Alabama, from which the state’s first and second governors emerged. His recent family tree also includes figures of law and order: His father was a judge, as were his grandfather and great-grandfather. “I would not be a very good attorney,” Bibb says. Indeed, one could see that this particular Bibb would not be content buried in legal briefs. But he is perfectly content among the shelves filled with boxes, the contents of each one labeled with a variety of items meant for his art: people, hands, legs, shoes, insects, animals, reptiles, birds, and deer. The list goes on and on. The sight reminds one of another collage artist, Joseph Cornell, an American pioneer of assemblage art. In his Queens, New York, home Cornell housed stacks of shoeboxes, each filled with categories of items that might find their way into one of his famous shadowboxes. In fact, it is more than Bibb’s systematic organization of birds and body parts that reminds one of Cornell. As did the innovative artist from Queens, Bibb includes
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House of the Rising Sun, 2015, Mixed media, 108” x 60”
mechanical workings in his pieces, as well as words and photos snipped from magazines. Bibb is a natural heir of Cornell, who, despite exhibiting with the Surrealists, could not be easily categorized. As did Cornell, Bibb exhibits a fascination with birds, such as the swallows and quails he includes in some works. In one piece, Bibb created a bird from a side fin from a 1955 Cadillac, piano keys, and pieces of metal. One of Bibb’s particularly involved works, a piece called Canary in the Coal Mine, recreated Davison Coal and Feed, an old store that was once located in Decatur. The surface of the work reveals the back walls of the store, which appear to be wallpapered in an abstract print. In the next plane float seed packets from Wayside flower catalogs from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. A few millimeters beyond that, chickens and a canary appear, as well as the store owner’s feet propped up on a desk, appearing significantly larger than the man standing before them. In one area, a chicken (snipped from an old Spiegel catalog) stands slightly taller than a young boy. Bibb plays with perspective and proportion in many of his works. “Obviously if you put something out of proportion, that will make it more noticeable,” Bibb says. “So I will do that with the pieces that I want to have the most emphasis on.”
Bad Dog!, 2016, Mixed media, 36” x 32”
At a certain point in the examination of an artwork so multilayered and complex, a viewer might think, What rabbit hole did this guy fall into? Clearly, he fell down the right one. And when he came out, he brought with him the contents of a vast imagination. na
See Sloane Bibb’s work at The Copper Fox in Leiper’s Fork. For more information, visit www.thecopperfoxgallery.com. See more of Sloane Bibb’s work at www.sloanebibb.com.
The Whirla-Whip, 2017, Mixed media, 25” x 48” NASHVILLEARTS.COM
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ermantown’s iconic Little’s Fish Company became even more so last month as five Nashville artists each adorned the building with an original mural. Each mural takes up a 4-foot by 8-foot blocked-in window on the building. They depict scenes that illustrate the history of the neighborhood, from prominent residents and architecture to Germantown’s ever-popular Oktoberfest.
Mark Cowden, Scene from Oktoberfest
Photography by Kats Barry
WORDS Peter Chawaga
Murals at Little’s Fish Company Make Big Splash for Germantown
The project was spearheaded by Historic Germantown Nashville (HGN), which received a $5,100 Creative Placemaking award from the Tennessee Arts Commission. HGN chose Little’s because of its 50-year history of operation in the neighborhood and its prominent location. “The building, which started life as a Salvation Army Church in the 1930s, sits at the heart of Germantown, and the blocked-in windows face Monroe Street, a major corridor through the neighborhood,” a spokesperson for HGN’s public art committee explains. HGN selected the five participating artists from a batch of applicants, with the goal of featuring a range of experience, unique points of view, and varying styles. They were Audie Adams, a local muralist with 20 years of experience in Nashville’s art scene; Jake and Hana Elliott, public artists whose work can be seen around the city; Mark and Yvette Cowden, who specialize in large-scale, neighborhoodthemed artwork incorporating mixed media; Michelle Faro, a classically trained observational painter; and Shea Moore, a professional makeup artist. “The diversity of styles provides something for everyone,” the spokesperson says. “Each artist’s style is unique and appeals to a different audience. By bringing various styles together, we were able to serve up a little something for everyone in the neighborhood.” The murals will serve as another reason for outsiders to visit Germantown and as inspiration for those residents who come across them almost every day. By celebrating the history that shaped Germantown, the project may be able to rekindle some of the spirit that helped form it.
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Audie Adams, Little Fish Market Scene
“One hope is that the murals spark interest and conversations between residents and visitors and add to the welcoming feel of the neighborhood,” says the spokesperson. “Even more important is the hope that the murals create connections between longtime and newer residents and help foster the sense of neighborhood that has been diminished by the rapid growth which has occurred.” In addition to paying the artists for their mural work, the Creative Placemaking award was used to provide arts activities for Buena Vista Elementary, a local school serving predominately low-income children. Moore visited the school to talk about the importance of art and lead a drawing session. na The murals can be seen at Little’s Fish Company, 1234 6th Avenue North.
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John Frederick Kensett Oil, Catalogue Raisonne, Caldwell Estate
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21c Nashville Museum Manager Brian Downey and 21c Museum Director and Chief Curator Alice Gray Stites
PHOTOGRAPHY Jerry Atnip
WORDS Sara Lee Burd
Alain Pino (Cuban), From the series Lo Profundo [The Deep], 2009, Lambda print
W
Contemporary Conversations at
21c
hen Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson founded the 21c boutique art museum hotel in Louisville, Kentucky, they envisioned an innovative space to exhibit their vast collection of international contemporary art. The concept centered on breaking boundaries between art and guests, diners, and gallery visitors who pass freely through the hotel. Artworks are not there to fall away as a design element; rather they command the hotel experience. Long-time Nashville resident and 21c Nashville Museum Manager Brian Downey enthusiastically relates, “Nashville has such great contemporary galleries and museums, but I’ve always wanted Nashville to have a contemporary art center, a museum strictly devoted to contemporary art.” Nashville’s 21c, located in the fully renovated 19th-century Gray and Dudley Hardware building downtown, boasts 124 guest rooms, conference areas, and 10,500 square feet of gallery space. It’s certainly not a typical hotel or a typical art museum.
Committed to connecting with the Nashville community, 21c hosts public talks and dedicated exhibition space for local artists. Downey heads the Elevate program in Nashville, which promotes significant art being made in Nashville. For the first installations, he curated Vadis Turner’s dynamic compositions and Alicia Henry’s captivating mask-like cutouts into four locations on the guest floors. Explaining the significance of his choice, Downey says, “They are both incredible female artists that work with materials considered to be feminine, such as ribbon, felt, and lace stitched together. I thought this was a good presentation for the Nashville spaces.” 21c Museum Director and Chief Curator Alice Gray Stites’s curatorial vision for 21c is driven by her desire to organize alluring exhibitions that expose the public to current conversations in contemporary art. At any given time, Stites is working on twenty different shows around all of the seven 21c locations and is constantly looking for ways to strike curiosity with art and ideas. Explaining her process, the curator says she begins by brainstorming how the works in the collection can combine to make a compelling
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Committed to connecting with the Nashville community, 21c hosts public talks and dedicated exhibition space for local artists.
The main gallery
statement. Stites particularly appreciates that the work the museum acquires provides cross-cultural exposure. “It is evident that if you are going to be showcasing 21st-century art, it should be global in nature. That is the world that we live in. It’s also far more interesting to see images of cultures of which we are not familiar alongside things that we recognize.” She concludes, “What is timely? What is a current theme or idea that people would enjoy thinking about, learning about, talking about, arguing about . . . that’s the kind of thing I want to do.” The first exhibition to fill the three floors of dedicated museum space, lower level, first floor, and second floor, is Truth or Dare: A Reality Show. The expansive exhibition, featuring over 100 works, unfolds with the very spirit of relevance, diversity, and globalism Stites seeks in her curatorial practice. In Truth or Dare she organized art from the permanent collection that asks questions about what “reality” is in the 21st century. Focusing on the fluidity of information over time, the uncertainty that comes with technological advances, the effects of environmental degradation, the subjectivity of boundaries, and the unconstrained nature of imagination, she provides a range of exemplary artworks to consider. She promotes examination of human constructions, positing that the way we interpret our cultural expectations, personal identity, geography, and sources of truth may have a limited connection to
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“truth” and “reality” when viewed from other perspectives. Including recurring references to common items such as books, maps, games, and videos, Stites captivates viewers immediately, and in doing so mediates hesitations to exploring the complex philosophical queries she inspires. The exhibition also includes confounding works that require time and creativity on the part of the visitor to resolve. Inquisitions of boundary, technology, and expectations of privacy arise with the site-specific installation in the hotel lobby by Turkish artist Serkan Özkaya, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Nashville. Video cameras record the action that occurs in the spaces physically blocked from view by the lobby walls, and projectors display that footage real-time onto the lobby walls. The voyeuristic aspect of the experience is enticing as one can imagine the dramatic changes the electronic eye captures as bustling business workers that populate the area during the day subside to the entertainment seekers who come out at night. Drawing this work into a serious contemporary conversation on transparency, Stites notes, “Watching the passersby projected in real-time surveillance footage is a reminder of our constant negotiations with privacy and safety within public spaces.” Stites selects art that challenges expectations by subverting traditional fine art styles and subjects. Alejandro Diaz’s
Daniele Papuli (Italian), Centrica, 2016, Hand-cut paper
mixed-media tromp l’oeil installation Please Do Not Touch looks like an unfinished electrical repair, but is really a mixedmedia installation. Miss the museum label and you may walk away unaware that what you thought was mundane was not. In Alejandro Almanza Pereda’s A Glass of Fruit, a still-life is created underwater. The submerged fruit forms a random arrangement as some float up to be stopped by a sheet of glass, and others are weighted down onto that same sheet of glass. The effect is offsetting and humorous. Questions abound: What am I looking at? Is it a mirror reflection? Why can’t I stop watching?
negotiable and shifting than it was in Goya’s day. It was a way of visually enshrining someone as a wealthy person to now it being something we trust far less.” Stites challenges the fixity of knowledge with artworks that employ “outdated, obsolete, or unreliable sources of truth in the 21st century.” According to the curator, Brian Dettmer uses books as his medium in an attempt to preserve them in art as we move away from print. In Funk and Wag he forms a sculptural assemblage with series of encyclopedias. Using a subtractive process, he carves out selections from
Another classic subject, the portrait, is presented through a quizzical lens in the exhibition. As Stites explains, “We project and perceive different versions of ourselves and others all the time.” In a portrait that blends a photograph of himself with a printed reproduction of a portrait made by the 18thcentury Spanish artist Francisco Goya, Albano Afonso created a way to insert himself into the European art historical tradition of portraiture. By focusing on reproduction and manipulation, Stites notes that the Brazilian artist’s Self Portrait with Goya “destabilizes the idea of what portraiture is and calls attention to the instability of identity in the digital age. Identity is more
Alejandro Diaz (American), Please Do Not Touch, 2009, Wood, electrical wires, cardboard sign
Brian Dettmer (American), Funk and Wag, 2016, Hardcover books, acrylic varnish
Jorge Mayet (Cuban), Renaissance, 2014, Mixed media
the books in layers to reveal words and images that appear on disparate pages. The unexpected juxtapositions he creates relay new stories with new meanings unrelated to the intention of the original text. Jane Hammond’s All Souls (Bielawa) explores what Stites describes as “the bodilessness of information today and pays homage to paper and handwritten information it contains.” The mixed-media map presents Hammond’s reinterpretation of the borders that divide European countries and honors the lives lost in war to draw political lines in handwritten text. Stites explains, “In a world of GPS, we know where we are with a keystroke. Paper maps are becoming artifacts now.” By securing paper butterflies in a migration pattern across the map, the artist contrasts the fixed exactness of nature with the shifting political constructs that shape our conception of individual nations.
Another reference to cartography in the exhibition includes Daniele Papuli’s Centrica, which addresses the real and perceived interconnectedness of places and cultures. The Italian artist’s meticulous assemblage of geometrically fragmented maps recalls ornate Islamic tiles referencing both European and Arabic traditions. Stites explains that the prominently placed circles in the composition present protest slogans that were used in Egypt at the beginning of the Arab Spring. She elaborates, “It is a global world, and if something happens in Egypt it will affect people around the globe.” In this work Papuli asserts that interchange has occurred for centuries and continues despite the religious and political interests that further notions of difference. Interactive artworks in this show encourage people to entangle themselves with the fluidity of reality. For example, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer has six cameras that scan constantly
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Pietro Ruffo (Italian), European Spring, 2012, Cutouts, gesso and acrylic on paper
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Nicolas Grospierre (Swiss), The Bank, 2009–2015, Lambda prints on aluminum, lamps and mirrors
The richness and variety of international artworks on exhibit and in the collection are promising signs that this new arts space will provide continued access to new compelling art in Nashville.
Shahzia Sikander (Pakistani), Disruption as Rapture, 2016, HD video animation with 7.1 surround sound, running time 10:07 minutes
Leandro Erlich (Argentinian), La Vitrina Cloud Collection (Venice), 2011, Wood, glass, acrylic
for faces in his surveillance-technologybased Redundant Assembly. Once found, the computer begins combining the features of people standing before it. The resulting hybrid portrait displayed on the monitor shifts and reformulates in real time as the “sitters” move. In Win Win (Flamingo’s Dream) by Trong Gia Nguyen a Ping-Pong table gives visitors a chance to play a round against themselves. The mirrored backboard that gives the sense of playing against a real opponent becomes a humorous struggle of strategizing how to beat yourself. The restaurants in all of the 21cs contain curated rotating galleries. Nashville’s Gray and Dudley currently features Beth Cavener Stichter’s installation Menagerie, which includes well-crafted, yet somewhat grotesque mixed-media sculptures of suspended goats and sheep. While some may find these a bizarre choice for a dining area, their
Trong Gia Nguyen (Vietnamese), Win Win (Flamingo’s Dream), 2015, Acrylic paint, vinyl, wood and mirror NASHVILLEARTS.COM
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Albano Afonso (Brazilian) Self-Portrait with Goya, 2003–2007, Photograph, perforated RC paper
Manuel Antonio Domíngueaz (Spanish), Es una función menor [It Is a Minor Function], 2015, Gouache and watercolor on map
impact successfully demands that diners engage in conversation about the art surrounding them. What is to come at 21c? The richness and variety of international artworks on exhibit and in the collection are promising signs that this new arts space will provide continued access to new compelling art in Nashville. When asked what she won’t do, Stites responded, “What I think about any community is that I have too much respect for the public to decide that we shouldn’t share something, particularly when it is asking tough questions.”
Leo Villareal (American), Cloud Drawing, 2016, LEDs, acrylic, custom software and electrical hardware
Pedro Reyes (Mexican) Lady Liberty (as Trojan horse), 2016, Wood
She concludes that the future knows no bounds, and in her experience, “The only thing I know after twenty years of being a curator is that you can’t predict how people are going to react. The most important thing is to think about the art itself and how can we present art in a way that creates a compelling, articulate story that raises questions.” na Truth or Dare: A Reality Show and Menagerie are on exhibit now at 21c. For more information, please visit www.21cmuseumhotels.com/nashville.
Vibha Galhotra (Indian), Earth 1978, 2015, Nickel-coated ghungroos, fabric, polyurethane coat
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615.400.1912
info@interioranthology.com
THEBOOKMARK
A MONTHLY LOOK AT HOT BOOKS AND COOL READS
Do Not Become Alarmed Maile Meloy
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
House of Spies Daniel Silva
Roxane Gay If you love sitting down to start a book and not lifting your head until you turn the last page, this is the novel for you— an addictive and utterly brilliant book about race, safety, and a vacation gone terribly wrong. We crown Do Not Become Alarmed the adrenalinepumping novel of the summer.
In striking prose, Roxane Gay offers us a personal look into a crisis of her own childhood with searing honesty. Ultimately she teaches us how to treat ourselves and others with compassion. Anyone with a body should read this beautiful, heart-wrenching book. And see Roxane Gay at Blair School of Music on July 14! See Salon@615.org for details.
From a true master of the white-knuckle thriller comes House of Spies, an adventure that takes us from Saint-Tropez to Casablanca in pursuit of a mysterious ISIS mastermind. Whether you are familiar with protagonist Gabriel Allon (spy, assassin, and art restorer) or not, don’t miss the latest from Daniel Silva. It will add a little intrigue to your summer vacation.
Everything All at Once: How to Unleash Your Inner Nerd, Tap into Radical Curiosity and Solve Any Problem Bill Nye We’ve all got a little nerdiness in us, and it’s time to celebrate that. In his signature accessible approach, Bill Nye has written about how to engage our curiosity and (dare we say) change the world. Peppered with stories from his personal journey, this book illustrates once and for all that Bill Nye is way more than just the “science guy.”
VADIS
Precipitation, 2014, Ribbon, dyed textiles, acrylic paint and mixed media, 60” x 84” x 4”
Rite of Passage Vadis Turner at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts through September 10
WORDS Erica Ciccarone PHOTOGRAPHY Gina Binkley
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he yellowing ribbon from a once-loved dress, a bit of lace from Grandma’s curtains, the dregs of breast milk leftover as the baby sleeps, and tears shed by an ovulating woman all recall moments, memories, and narratives. They’re also all materials you might find in Vadis Turner’s affecting exhibition Tempest at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. Three different series comprise Tempest, each marking a specific rite of passage in a woman’s life. Turner’s first solo museum exhibition checks all the boxes: It’s eye-poppingly gorgeous with compositions that appear so effortless that they hide the artist’s tremendous skill; it’s built on a smart
Ritual Heirloom 1, Three Seasons and a Winter Flower, 2017, Hand-stitched quilts, ribbon, fabric dye, charred wood, resin, acrylic paint and mixed media, 80” x 72”
conceptual framework that feels organic and evolved; and it’s responsive to the contemporary world in a way that welcomes dialogue. The first room of the gallery is named for the Wild Woman. Here, Turner’s large-scale textile paintings evoke a life lived passionately. Turner creates these with recycled materials like ribbon, quilts, yarn, and balled-up fabric that she dyes and paints. She scrunches, loops, and drapes these materials, transitioning them to brush strokes that lead the eye as if by a wild wind. There is something dark and dangerous about these paintings, like they are just barely containing gusts of energy that twist and whirl within.
The second room is devoted to The Mother, and the materials change. Turner uses charred branches, ashes, and resin to consider the rite of motherhood through metaphor. In several wall pieces, she has suspended ribbon in resin to show the swelling potential of the womb, its arc of triumph, and the emptiness that follows. In the center of the floor, a large puddle of Turner’s breast milk is mixed with paint and resin. It holds the charred remains of sticks, set in pairs, like an offering. The third room is for The Elder, and though it seems the most organic evolution of the exhibition, it still surprises. The series, Heirlooms, grew out of Turner’s work with Metro Arts
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Storm System, 2016, Fabric, ribbon and mixed media, 60” x 84” x 4”
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I’m learning to have the confidence to say ‘This is it’ and not jumble it up with a lot of bells and whistles.
Commission’s Learning Lab, a professional development program designed to train Nashville artists in civic, social, and public art-making. Turner interviewed senior-aged women, asking what they learned from their mothers and their grandmothers. She calls it “collecting wisdoms.” One raised champion roses. Another at 101 years old is in five book clubs this year. She spoke to a woman who escaped the Holocaust via Shanghai. Turner curated these stories into her work, creating sculptural and wall pieces that show her at the height of her powers. The Heirlooms are disarming, intimate, and strange, but the strength of their composition carries the weight like magic.
and not know how to talk about it, and you’ve got to figure it out. I had to figure out how to visually talk about my own fertility, all the while thinking, Is it enough to make work about motherhood? It’s been done so many times. How do I want to present it?
Turner spoke to Nashville Arts Magazine about Tempest. NAM: I feel such a strong sense of sisterhood when I experience your work. Tell me what inspired each series. VT:
My relationships with women have leapt off from making this work. In the Wild Woman series, the subject matter came from me riffing off famous literary heroines, creating new lives for them and looking at their impact on their own environment.
The Mother series was the first time I made myself the subject of the work. It was hard. But as an artist, you want everything to be hard. You want to get your ass kicked a little bit each time and be uncomfortable
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Before making the work for The Elder, I interviewed women whom I did not know to collect wisdoms. I was touched by the generosity of the human spirit when people were willing to just to sit down and tell me what it is they’ve learned from their mothers and grandmothers. I would say that in the majority of conversations, somebody was crying in the first couple of minutes. It meant something. You could sit down with a stranger and turn on a recording device and get to what matters . . . I felt such a sense of gratitude and responsibility for all of these stories that I didn’t know how to turn it into my own work, which, by the way, is abstract.
NAM: I love how you took on that challenge. I’m interested in the communal aspect of art-making and in what happens when artists purposefully intersect with people and their narratives out in the world and then bring it back to the studio. What have you learned in this process? VT:
I’ve been making art for a while now, and I need to have confidence in my own idea, in what’s worth
bringing into the world. I learned that it’s so hard to keep it simple and edit out everything and boil it down to what really matters––to find the essence of the thing. I’m learning to have the confidence to say “This is it” and not jumble it up with a lot of bells and whistles. It’s more vulnerable for me, but it is also more honest; compositionally it’s harder. And I learned from these women that you’ve gotta enjoy your life. Your work needs to matter.
the burn piles that are scattered about our property. My mom tends to the trees and gathers limbs that fall after a storm and wash up from the lake. She creates these massive hive-like, womb-like mounds of collected sticks. They’re like witch hair meets a hive meets a dwelling. They’re amazing. I go for walks a lot when I need a break from the studio, and they’re part of the landscape. The burn piles are wild and wicked when they’re piled up, and then they get burned in a bonfire. They become charred nuggets. I wanted to consider fire less as a destructive force and more as a regenerative force. The bell and the burn pile need each other. After the birth or the fire happens, the bell is empty and the womb becomes this ghost. Life is out of it. That’s when the story leaves the wall and transfers to the floor and becomes those breast-milk pieces [in Pairs.]
NAM: The Mother series acts as a palette cleanser between these two visually dense series. Visually it’s more muted, and conceptually it’s a bit daunting. Can you talk more about this work and how it came to be?
The body of work is called Bells and Burn Piles. Bell is a word that I use interchangeably for a vessel, a head, my sons, and a womb. A bell has the potential to make sound even in silence. A womb, even when it’s inactive or dormant, is forever associated with creating energy, life, or activity. I started making the work when I became pregnant with my second son and last child, knowing that this was the last time I’d ever do this, the last time my body would ever fulfill its potential as a system. If you think about system as heirloom, this was it for me. I partnered that moment, that rite of passage, with
What interests me is not the notion of death or destruction but of new beginnings . . . to nourish and heal these charred remains lets them take on a whole new activity and life . . . to become artifacts and specimens. In this show, they partner together and start to create relationships. That’s my two boys.
Tempest is on view in the Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts through September 10. Learn more at www.vadisturner.com and www.fristcenter.org.
Spirit Heirloom, Moonlight on a Shimmering Rock, 2017, Hand-stitched quilts, ribbon, fabric dye and mixed media, 72” x 120”
VT:
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Open to All • Ages 3–Adult REGISTER ONLINE Clay Mask by Nan Jacobson
Nan Jacobsohn Clay Mask with mixed Media Week-Long Workshop
August 7-11, 9:00-3:00 each day Call to Register 615-242-0346 1416 Lebanon Pike, Nashville, TN, 37210 • 615.242.0346 Hours: M-F 8am-4:30pm, Sat 10am-2pm
ENSWORTH.COM/DANCE
FILL YOUR SUMMER WITH CONTEMPORARY ART.
Looking for something to do this summer that’s fresher than squeezed lemonade? Come to the Frist to see amazing contemporary art now on display.
DOWNTOWN NASHVILLE 919 BROADWAY NASHVILLE, TN 37203 FRISTCENTER.ORG
STATE OF THE ART
VADIS TURNER
May 26—September 10
May 26—September 10
Organized by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas
Organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts
DISCOVERING AMERICAN ART NOW
Platinum Sponsor
Contributing Sponsor
TEMPEST
ANCESTRAL MODERN
AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL ART FROM THE KAPLAN & LEVI COLLECTION June 23—October 15 Organized by the American Federation of Arts and the Seattle Art Museum
Hospitality Sponsor
Supported in part by
Admission to all exhibits included in the Frist Summer Pass. Details at Fristcenter.org/SummerPass
From State of the Art: Jonathan Monaghan (b. 1986). Rainbow Narcosis, 2012. High-definition computer-animated video, 8 minutes, 46 seconds. Courtesy Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Curator’s Office, Washington, DC
WORDS Megan Kelley
Rendered in Praise: American Artists and the Legacy of the Grand Tour, 1880–1960 Vanderbilt University’s Fine Arts Gallery
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or generations, the allure of Europe has stood as a cathedral to culture, and the Grand Tour, its pilgrimage. As an educational travel tour of Europe, undertaken by young nobles often accompanied by an artist, the Grand Tour served to develop tastes and refine young minds through the temper of history. American Artists and the Legacy of the Grand Tour, 1880–1960 pays respect to these traditions, following the footsteps of American artists as they pursued the precedents of artists past, creating bodies of work that praised this legacy. Displaying gorgeous works by Joseph Pennell, Jonathan Janson, and Frank Crawford Penfold, the exhibition also includes several works by master printmaker John Taylor
John Taylor Arms, La Mangia, Siena, 1927, Etching on wove paper, 19” x 11”
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Joseph Pennell, Bridge of Alcantara, Toledo, 1904, Etching on wove paper, 10” x 8”
Abbott H. Thayer, Sunrise, San Remo, ca. 1908-09, Oil on canvas, 38” x 28”
A.C. Webb, St. Tropez, 1925, Oil on canvas, 23” x 28”
Arms. Arms’s sensitivity is breathtaking, the care in the work matched by his attention to details, many of which can best be viewed only through a magnifying glass. As a printmaker working during a social period in American history that preached morals, praised temperance, and questioned issues such as labor rights and women’s voting, Arms, too, used his work to highlight ideals: He believed that gothic architecture conveyed moral rectitude, and the vast cathedrals—built by generations over hundreds of years— stood as monuments to the vision of working together for something greater than oneself. “[Arms] saw himself as the last link in a long line of craftsmen,” explains curator Margaret Walker. “Creating and disseminating these prints as art allowed their messages to reach audiences who might not ever be able to visit otherwise.” Buried in the corners of Arms’s prints are signs of modernity, eloquently included as a footnote to the times. Beside the sweeping buttresses are the notations of billboards, storefronts, and advertising signs. It’s a delightful and wistful contrast, juxtaposing Arms’s beautifully rendered awe of the architecture beside the smallness of contemporary life. For a country poised on the rise of Dada, his carefully wrought stones and towers are his last bastions of true beauty, forming a dialogue with the past pitted against the relentless march of the present. The struggle between past and present, ideal and real echoes in the luscious works of A.C. Webb. Webb renders the weight of the crowd and foliage in thick and dark lines
against the more delicate spiderwebbing of the architecture. Webb’s compositional choices seem to suggest a heaviness to humanity’s presence, the shapes of landscaping and figures creating blocks and obstacles to a clear view of sanctity and beauty. Light pours across the lines of balconies and buttresses, lifting them towards the viewer even as their occupants pin them down. This attention to the past forms the basis of social commentary pulling through the exhibition. “We see people going to the French coast, flocking to see peasants in traditional clothing, living traditional lives. It’s a fascination with the old culture that has yet to modernize.” Walker notes that for the artists, even these scenes were steeped in the idea of cultural refinement and heritage. American Artists includes works by Nashville painter Willie Betty Newman, who studied the classical Academic Style in Paris even as French artists pursued new styles of Impressionism, and prints by Timothy Cole, whose engravings were done “after”—or as studies of—famous paintings held in European regard. Estates in Nashville were decorated in prints done in such styles. “They sought out studies of art,” Walker notes, because studies implied travel to observe the original and time invested in recreating it in detail. “It was a legacy, brought home.” na American Artists and the Legacy of the Grand Tour, 1880–1960 is on view through August 26 at the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery, located within Cohen Hall at 1220 21st Avenue South. For more information and summer visiting hours, view www.vanderbilt.edu.
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Tennessee State Museum Alan Shuptrine: Appalachian Watercolors of the Serpentine Chain
On View through October 1, 2017 505 Deaderick Street
Downtown Nashville
Free Admission
615.741.2692
tnmuseum.org
WORDS Karen Parr-Moody
Guadalupe Lanning Robinson’s Roots Are Showing
Mexican Inspired Pottery Receives the Stand Out Award at This Year’s Tennessee Craft Festival
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nder the blazing Mexican sun, potters still shape clay into artistic wares, as did their ancestors for more than 2,000 years. This rich heritage remains in the pottery-making centers of Atzompa, Oaxaca, and Metepec, as well as in the hands of Mexican artist Guadalupe Lanning Robinson, for whom stoneware pottery is a longtime love. Robinson, who was born in Mexico City, creates pottery adorned with hand-tooled designs made in geometric and organic patterns. The aesthetic seems familiar, as though it were inspired by the ancients. “I think that when you see my work, even though all the designs are my own and are in some way contemporary, you can see my background,” Robinson says. While she works, two chatty cockatiels flit around in circles above a riot of unfinished clay pots waiting to be fired. Named Gray and Sunshine, they are Robinson’s companions in a lofty studio in Huntsville, Alabama. It is one of many workspaces at Lowe Mill, a renovated textile mill where artists and other creative types do their thing. Cheery and easygoing, Robinson works in a flouncy, floral skirt that she made. As she puts it, everyone in Mexico sews. So she creates her skirts, as well as elaborate, colorful quilts that occupy a corner room in her studio. She often darts into this quilting room when she finds herself artistically stymied by a piece of pottery. “One feeds from the other,” she explains. Robinson peppers her story of artistic success with phrases like “I’ve been so lucky” and “I’m fortunate.” Of course luck and fortune offer little to an artist who isn’t talented. But Robinson is talented, immensely so, and for
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When I moved away from Mexico City, I knew I was going to have to do something like this. It’s such a connection that I have with Mexico, it’s like my umbilical cord when I’m doing this pottery.
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Robinson says. “Somebody told me one time, ‘That looks very tedious.’ I was so offended. Tedious? It’s not tedious. That has a negative connotation. But it does take a lot of time.” Some motifs are revisited, such as her “woman with attitude,” a female figure with her hands on her hips. This motif was inspired by the emerging intensity of her daughter at the age of nine. Robinson also creates pots featuring “dress” motifs that she invented in homage to the traditional dress worn by women from Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec and popularized by painter Frida Kahlo. Thoughts of Mexico are never far from her work. “When I moved away from Mexico City, I knew I was going to have to do something like this,” she says. “It’s such a connection that I have with Mexico, it’s like my umbilical cord when I’m doing this pottery.” her ability to create highly decorative pottery she has won many awards and has been featured in multiple museums. Last May, Robinson was awarded the Nashville Arts Stand Out Winner award from the Tennessee Crafts Fair, one of a handful of annual fairs at which she sells her work. Such events comprise her sole distribution channel. Robinson landed in Huntsville in 1985 with her husband, an Alabama native she met in Mexico City. She had a ceramics degree from Centro de Artes Plásticas y Artesanias Independencia, a university for artisans in Mexico City.
Then she divulges her motive for making such exquisite, time-consuming art. “How do I contribute to a craft that’s been going on for thousands of years?” she says. “I want to contribute in a positive way. There are a lot of bad pots out there. That’s something that I want to be conscious of. I want to do something that’s going to bring joy to the person who has it for a long time. I want to produce something that is lasting. And that is a challenge.” It is a challenge that Robinson is fully equipped to take on. na For more information, visit www.guadalupepots.com.
Now, after more than thirty years, Robinson has continuously produced her distinctive pottery that is mostly wheel-thrown and crafted impeccably. Her multi-layered process begins with various colors of clay that she mixes herself and then alters. She might add food coloring to the mix or manganese, which infuses the clay with black specks that emphasize the clay’s texture.
Robinson also creates her own glazes, which she applies after an initial bisque firing to the interiors and exteriors of small pieces, such as mugs and salt cellars, but only to the interiors of her larger art pieces. “Stoneware clay has so much texture and color that I hate to put a glaze on top of it,” she explains. The final step is firing each piece a second time at 2,250 degrees Fahrenheit. “It takes a long time to do a pot,”
Guadalupe Robinson in her studio
Courtesy of Sarah Cole Photography
Robinson often builds up texture by adding layers of clay to surface areas. And she covers her works with incised designs that she creates with needles of various sizes. “It’s not something I learned somewhere,” she says. “It’s just experimenting.”
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WORDS Bob Doerschuk Silver Lining “It’s funny how, when things seem the darkest, moments of beauty present themselves in the most unexpected places.” —Karen Marie Moning
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round nine years ago, after two decades in Manhattan’s corporate world, a sojourn to Sedona, Arizona, and a brief return to New York City, Carla Ciuffo moved to Nashville. Her plan was to open a massage center in East Nashville. It’s still there—the O.Liv Body Bar on Main Street. Ciuffo, though, isn’t. She spends her days now at home in East Nashville, in a somewhat cramped studio, working on projects that synthesize different new media, most recently through her work as artist-in-residence at an unlikely learning center: Harvard University’s Disease and Biophysics Group. The Agony of Defeat “No animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.” —Fyodor Dostoyevsky
One recent sunny morning, on the patio at Barista Parlor, she revealed the results of her explorations. “These are nanofibers,” she says, opening a plastic container and removing a small patch of white material. It’s thin, almost translucent, nearly weightless, deceptively strong. “See how it almost feels alive, the way it bounces around in your hand?”
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Shuttered
Swan Dive
“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”
“Diving is a leap of faith plus gravity.” —Gabrielle Zevin
—Isaac Asimov
Ciuffo seems to be in a state of perpetual enthusiasm. That, however, is understandable. Though she never formally studied art or photography, she felt inspired when she first picked up her mother’s camera, in 2006. “My mom had just died a month or so before,” Ciuffo remembers. “And I became obsessed with her camera. I couldn’t put it down. I started experimenting and seeing all the fantastic things I could do to create my own world.” Perhaps unfettered by training, Ciuffo followed her own instinct and imagination. These led her to connect with Kit Parker, professor of bioengineering and applied physics at Harvard and a friend of Nashville gallery owner Susan Tinney. While Parker’s goal was to apply nanofibers to healing wounds and regenerating tissues, Ciuffo sensed a more aesthetic potential. For example, in her French Twist series, Ciuffo applies her appreciation for nanofiber to a series of photographs featuring Becca Place from Nashville’s New Dialect
Invisible “You don’t have to be invisible to disappear.” —Rebecca McNutt
World’s Fair “You can’t carry the world on yer shoulders, broad as they are.” —Jana Oliver
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Throwing Shade “People only throw shade on what’s shining.” —Genereux Philip
dance collective. “I really longed to put the nanofiber onto an actual human being but I couldn’t get enough of it—it takes a year to make a fishbowl-sized amount,” she says. “So we wrapped and veiled Becca in gauze. Veils can be symbols of oppression or they can be sensual. [Multimedia concert artist] Robbie Hunsinger and I had this incredible day, capturing Becca in movement with this beautiful imagery of trailing gauze.” There was one technical problem. “I inherited all these slides from my parents, which I brought to the shoot. They’d traveled all over the world and gotten all these cool images, which I wanted to project on this blank brick wall behind Becca. But the slide projector died, so I had to digitally scan those slides to get the imagery you see now.” Even now, in this series, Ciuffo senses the presence of her parents, as much as she felt the camera had connected her to her mother. “This work is very intense for me,” she says. “The French Twist series is like a spiritual collaboration with my mom and dad. It’s a lovely feeling to integrate them into what I’m doing.” na Ciuffo has an exhibit slated for August 19 to September 30 at Tinney Contemporary. For more information, visit www.carlaciuffophotography.com and www.tinneycontemporary.com.
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Carla Ciuffo
THEATRE On Sale Now
Part of the Plan WORLD PREMIERE
A New American Musical Featuring the Songbook of Dan Fogelberg September 8-24, 2017, at TPAC
Part of the Plan
, a new American musical, is a powerful story spanning three decades, scored with the music and lyrics of the late, celebrated singersongwriter Dan Fogelberg. Directed by Tony-nominee Lynne Taylor-Corbett (Swing!), with a book by Kate Atkinson & Karen Harris, the show interweaves 20 iconic Fogelberg songs arranged by Grammy Award winners Victor Vanacore (Ray Charles) and Laurence Juber (Paul McCartney), including “Leader of the Band,” “Longer,” and
Broadway Series sponsored by
“Same Old Lang Syne.” The original story follows the lives of an adopted boy and the teenaged girl who is forced to give him up. While exploring themes of love, loss, renewal, and how everything in life happens for a reason, Part of the Plan brings Fogelberg’s music to a new generation as well as to the many diehard fans who long to hear his music in all forms. Buy tickets at TPAC.org or by calling 615-782-4040. Groups of 10 or more call 615-782-4060.
State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now Frist Center for the Visual Arts through September 10
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1. James Lavadour, Tiichum, 2013, Oil on panel, 102” x 152” x 2” 2. Bob Trotman, Shaker, 2013, Wood, tempera, wax, motor, plywood, PVC pipe, and latex, 67” x 53” x 28” 3. Ligia Bouton, Understudy for Animal Farm, 2012-14, Fabric with painted wood, mirror and mixed media, 82” x 128” x 96” 4. Mark Wagner, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN THERE IS NO CAUSE FOR ALARM, 2016, Currency collage on panel, 96” x 72
WORDS Elaine Slayton Akin
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ach grouping is like a show within a show,” explains Frist Center chief curator Mark Scala of the organizational strategy behind State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now, an ambitiously comprehensive sampling of contemporary art from across the United States. This seemingly small insight from Scala, aside from liberating the visitor to wander at her own pace, is arguably one of the most important clues to understanding the layered effect of State of the Art. “The exhibition was intended to convey the breadth, quality, and generous spirit of much of the art being made across the country in recent years,” with special focus on artists working outside gallery and museum hotbeds, and consequently, the curators amassed a wide range of imagery, emotion, and media over 100 works of art.
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Originally co-curated in 2014 by Don Bacigalupi and Chad Alligood for the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, State of the Art is the final product of hours upon hours of travel and research and approximately one thousand artist visits coast to coast. Though half the size of Crystal Bridges’ original presentation, the Frist Center’s smaller version of 45 works doesn’t feel small at all. The novelty of medium contrasted with the familiarity of subject matter for many pieces vastly occupies the mind, conveying a fullness of space and experience. State of the Art “features artworks that are intellectually accessible and deeply personal and that open us to a consideration of things important to everyone: the environment, family, politics, race, and the need for transcendent beauty,” according to Scala. The widespread layout of State of the Art can be overwhelming, and while they are not designed to be seen in any particular order, the exhibition’s thematic divisions
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work as a catalyst for both comprehension and thoughtful analysis: Nature’s Edge; Anxious Americans; Self, Family, and Community; Process and Materials; and Transformation. Selections from Joel S. Allen’s Hooked on Svelte (Colorado, 2012–2014) series greet viewers at the entrance of the exhibition and set us up well for the study of contradiction to come. As part of Nature’s Edge, blue- and orange-colored pom-poms hang from the ceiling on long ropes and, at first look, belie a natural textile form. Upon closer inspection, the pom-pom strands not only consist of twine, but also wine corks and plastic prescription pill bottles—a reminder of our population’s vices (substance abuse) and virtues (capacity to create). Following the same theme, Tennessee’s own John Douglas Powers mesmerizes with Ialu (2011), a kinetic sculpture that imitates the rustling of field vegetation against a cloudy blue sky. It would be a peaceful vision of reeds
Perhaps more than anything in State of the Art, what hits home for me are works that address issues of poverty, immigration, and race. Artists addressing these issues do not happen to be from Nashville, yet these are front of mind for many Americans, here as elsewhere.
Dan Witz, Byronesque III, 2015, Oil and digital media on canvas, 47” x 71”
—Mark Scala
Kim Cadmus Owens, Smoke and Mirrors: Coming and Going, 2011, Acrylic and oil on canvas, diptych, 48” x 156” x 2”
Moving into Anxious Americans, you can still hear the squeak of Powers’ Ialu, an interesting layer atop Bob Trotman’s Shaker (North Carolina, 2013), a rotating bust of a questionable businessman-type, and Kirk Crippens’ The Great Recession: Foreclosure, USA series (California, 2009), comprising four photographs that document abandoned office interiors in the wake of the housing crisis of 2008. “I am moved by the unexpected beauty, virtuosic technique, and often offbeat humor, which show how artists live and negotiate with uncertainty,” Scala comments. For example, Trotman’s Shaker rotates in the center of the room with his foreboding hand extended, by no accident monopolizing the visitor’s attention (and actively causing anxiety), and Crippens has ironically titled the empty scene of a lone dried-up plant sitting on an office shelf Plant on the Job, a lighthearted choice for such an unsavory time in recent American history. Dan Witz’s Byronesque III (New York, 2015) presents another brand of anxiety, depicting a mosh pit of entangled bodies caught somewhere between an ecstatic tribe and an angry mob, evoking discomfort and nervousness in the viewer. Witz’s academic, realist style of painting departs dramatically from the gritty subject matter, a refreshing juxtaposition. Perhaps one of the most eye-catching works in the exhibition is Vanessa German’s White Naphtha Soap, or Contemporary Lessons in Shapeshifting (Pennsylvania, 2013). In the section Self, Family, and Community, we are grounded by the deeper, more intimate connections of childhood, heritage, and spirituality. The concept and mixed media of German’s “power dolls” are drawn from West African effigies thought to embody the magical power of protection over at-risk children. The cultural diversity of the American people-scape
is also highlighted in Process and Materials by Lauren Was and Adam Eckstrom’s Forever, Almost (New York, 2012). The missed opportunity represented by thousands of losing lottery tickets is redeemed through the beautiful geometric pattern they create, reminiscent of an Islamic prayer rug invoking self-reflection and contemplation.
Vanessa L. German, White Naphtha Soap, or Contemporary Lessons in Shapeshifting, 2013, Mixed-media assemblage, 55” x 15” x 26”
swaying back and forth if the reeds weren’t obviously metal and the clouds weren’t obviously a video projection, not to mention the pesky squeak of Powers’ motorized fabrication. Both works demonstrate our nation’s negligence of the natural environment and our false confidence to reproduce and adapt to a lesser version of it.
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The exhibition was intended to convey the breadth, quality, and generous spirit of much of the art being made across the country in recent years.
Joel S. Allen, Hooked on Svelte, 2012–2014, Hand-wrapped twine with mixed media
Lauren Was and Adam Ecstrom, Forever, Almost, 2012, Discarded lottery tickets with UV coat on panel, 60” x 132” x 3”
Pam Longobardi, Ghosts of Consumption (for Piet M.), 2013, Found ocean plastic from Hawaii, Alaska, Greece, Costa Rica, Italy, and the Gulf of Mexico, 75” x 110” x 5”
State of the Art comes full circle with works of Transformation, such as Kim Cadmus Owens’ Smoke and Mirrors: Coming and Going (Texas, 2011) and Elizabeth Alexander’s Tea series (Massachusetts, 2014). Owens transports us from physical to virtual reality by incorporating the appearance of digital glitches in her cityscape painting, much like when a computer or phone screen freezes, calling into question the reliability of technology. Alexander’s work is equally as lofty in concept, examining the necessity of beauty in our lives. With their decorative floral elements invasively removed, three teacups are devoid of their original utilitarian purpose and therefore useless. Maybe beauty isn’t as frivolous as we thought. “Perhaps more than anything in State of the Art, what hits home for me are works that address issues of poverty, immigration, and race. Artists addressing these issues do not happen to be from Nashville, yet these are front of mind for many Americans, here as elsewhere,” remarks Scala. Humans aren’t simpletons that are concerned with only, for example, climate change and not racial inequality. So why wouldn’t you hear the hum of Powers’ kinetic sculpture while viewing German’s “power dolls” two rooms over, or, thinking more broadly, why couldn’t you live in Tennessee yet be affected by the same injustices as Pennsylvania? By nature, State of the Art is a microcosm of a much bigger, messier, and more glorious picture, producing a veritable orchestra of senses as it mimics a human’s complex ability to process more than one feeling at a time. na See State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts through September 10. For more information, visit www.fristcenter.org.
John Douglas Powers, Ialu, 2011, Wood, steel, plastic, electric motor, and video projection, 57” x 80” x 108”
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WORDS Kate Harrold
Fresh Paint
Lion Tamer, 8” x 12”
New Works by Kate Harrold
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As I sit here trying to think about the best way to describe the direction of my work and where my influences have come from, I’m distracted. There is news of terrorist attacks in London, investigations in the White House, and the U.S. pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord. The Predators won last night and tied up the series against the Penguins. (Go Preds!) I have a new image that I’m nearly done with that I can’t wait to get back to and a few prints that are waiting to be matted and framed. Above all else, what I find most distracting is the tiny human that we’ve named Max, who is kicking, elbowing, and apparently doing some sort of acrobatic routine inside my abdomen.
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Kate Harrold
Photography by Jason Brueck
’m often asked about my inspiration and where my ideas come from. I find those questions hard to answer. I could say that I’m influenced by surrealist painters like Dali and Magritte or photographers like Man Ray, because, of course, I am. But my ideas don’t come from studying art history, and they don’t appear to me in dreams. I have to search for the right answer.
On the surface, my work is sweet, playful, and whimsical. Beneath the surface are elements of looming danger, internal struggles, and dreams that are so much bigger than the subject’s current circumstances. My end goal is to create a world the child has constructed through limitless imagination, where the conclusions they draw and decisions they make are entirely their own. A toy ship lost at sea must be the result of a giant sea creature lurking in the depths below. The best way to light up the night is by gathering fireflies to guide your way home. Lions should be set free
Safari, 40” x 18”
Shipwreck, 30” x 20”
It occurs to me that these are exactly the things that are influencing and inspiring my work. I’ve found myself focused on the dreams and imagination of children. As I worry about the state of our country, our environment, and humanity, it is heartening to look at children, my child, as our future. Their fearlessness, innocence, and imagination are inspiring. They have the power to care for our environment, love without bias, and make decisions for themselves. It is this pureness in the face of adversity that I try and convey in my images.
and will happily follow your lead. Shooting for the stars isn’t just a mantra, but an achievable reality in a child’s world. The same can be said for an impending flood and a makeshift “ark,” or the moment a hunter comes face to face with what might have been her prey. I want an emotional reaction to my work, whether it makes you happy for the courage of youth or sad and sentimental for the innocence and memory that still live in you as the viewer. I’m photographing real children, real places, real animals, and weaving these images together until the story told becomes a blurred mixture of reality, dreams, and imagination. I’m telling stories about who these children are and all the places they go in their imagination and later on in life. Their minds and their future are wide open, and that is a wonderful thing. na
See more of Kate Harrold’s work at Raven and Whale Gallery, www.ravenandwhalegallery.com, and www.kateharroldart.com.
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Invitation, 2015, Acrylic, 48” x 48”
WORDS Peter Chawaga
Olga
“C
hoice” was not a word to be found in Olga Alexeeva’s vocabulary when she still lived under the KGB in Moscow. It wasn’t choice that brought her to Nashville, but an opportunity that had to be seized, a chance to escape the regime that controlled her life, she says. In 1991, she had little choice but to join a sister here who had come as a refugee. “When I came to the U.S., it was my second life,” Alexeeva explains. “I started all over, with a new language, customs, with everything.” Since then, choice has become firmly established in her lexicon. An actor by training, she would never have been allowed to explore visual art in her home country, where vocation is strictly regimented based on formal degrees. As she became rooted in the American South and established financially, she developed an artistic yearning that drew her toward painting. But starting relatively late in life and without institutional backing, she found it difficult to find a home for her work. So she established her first gallery in 2009, “O” Gallery, in downtown Nashville’s Arcade.
and the Power of Choice
“I started the gallery because I was not accepted anywhere,” she says. “I went through every step of doubts, every step of tears, hurt, everything. But I continued doing it because I love it . . . I took a leap of faith and opened my gallery.” Owning her own gallery allows Alexeeva to paint whatever moves her, and she regularly exercises her freedom to pursue different styles. Her work deviates from abstract to impressionistic to surreal. “I am painting stories, emotions, and relationships,” she says. “That could be through flowers, buildings, portraits. I am united by an underlying idea rather than a subject or style . . . I use different methods to bring the ideas about emotions.”
Golden Touch 1, 2015, Acrylic, 36” x 24”
Though it has yielded a captivating medley of work, Alexeeva’s variety has made her difficult for the art community to peg and has possibly hurt her chances of being embraced more widely.
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“I still have problems with being accepted because of my variety of styles,” Alexeeva says. “I try different things; if I don’t like it, I don’t do it. But at least I tried . . . My curiosity is my leading quality. I’m curious about life, about people, about events. I’m not afraid of anything new. I’m not afraid.” Today, celebrating ten years as a professional painter, Alexeeva makes no apologies for her pursuit of disparate styles or her embrace of the freedom to choose. na For more information, visit www.ogalleryart.com.
Fine Art & Gifts by Olga Alexeeva & Local Artists
www.OGalleryArt.com
Olga Alexeeva, artist and owner, is available for commissioned works for home and business Art classes by Olga are conducted weekly
Tom Towhey, (in progress), oil on canvas, 6’ x 8’
Midsummer Dreams we are such stuff
Shakespeare’s poetic observations of our passions and imperfections inspire this visual voyage through landscapes—enchanted and real, and dreams— light and dark. Selected works in celebration of the gallery’s newest neighbor, the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company.
July 14 – September 23
“What a piece of work is a man!” Hamlet, Hamlet II.ii Nicole Trimble Gummy Bear Redux Oil on canvas, 36” x 24”
1215 Elm Street, Cincinnati, OTR
“And sing our bondage freely.” Aviragus, Cymbeline III.iii Tina Gutierrez Shibari Color pigment print
A gallery of carefully curated art and thought, along Cincinnati’s Classical Arts Corridor, between Music Hall and the Shakespeare Theatre, on Washington Park, in historic Over-The-Rhine
www.washparkart.com
Olga Alexeeva, Attraction (2017), Oil, 60 x 20
615-416-2537
Open 7 Days a Week • Monday-Saturday 10-6 • Sunday 11-5 1305 Clinton St. Ste. 120 • Nashville, TN 37203
WORDS Rick Pender
Artful Excursion Cincinnati’s Visual Art Scene The Queen City Is Busting at the Seams with Contemporary Art
Eduardo Kobra, Armstrong, Fifth Third Bank Headquarters, Central Business District
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or more than two centuries, art lovers have headed to Cincinnati for beautiful creations. When America expanded westward early in the 19th century, the “Queen City of the West” quickly became the nation’s fourth-largest city, topped only by New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Even today it’s still a top destination for the arts, with numerous high-quality offerings not found in most Midwestern cities. In a weekend trip you can take in a lot. Begin with a historical perspective via the Cincinnati Art Museum’s Cincinnati
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Wing in picturesque Eden Park. (It’s a quick cab ride from downtown hotels.) The oldest art museum west of the Allegheny Mountains, the comprehensive museum (more than 60,000 objects spanning 6,000 years) was the first in the nation to add permanent galleries, providing evidence of the city’s early arts prominence (1839–1900)—from paintings by noteworthy 19th-century artists to gorgeous Rookwood pottery and numerous examples of art-carved furniture. Contemporary South African artist William Kentridge’s More Sweetly Play the Dance is currently making its North
American museum premiere at the Cincinnati Art Museum through November 5. The Art Academy of Cincinnati, initially part of the museum, has been making artists since 1869, the same year the Cincinnati Reds became America’s first professional baseball team. Painter Frank Duveneck (1848–1919) trained there, then became an influential teacher and ultimately its president. Painter John Singer Sargent termed him “the greatest talent of the brush of this generation.” Duveneck taught many American impressionists, including Dixie Selden and John Henry Twachtman. (Their works and others are on display at Cincinnati Art Galleries, 225 E. Sixth Street, through June 17.) Galleries can be found throughout downtown and historic Over-the-Rhine, a neighborhood immediately north of the city’s heart where Victorian Italianate architecture and redevelopment have blended in a spectacular renaissance of urban living and commerce. The Art Academy, offering six B.F.A. degrees, is today a neighborhood (1212 Jackson Street), as is the School for Creative and Performing Arts (108 W. Central Parkway), America’s only K–12 public school for the arts. The heart of Over-the-Rhine is Washington Park, dating from 1850, today featuring verdant vistas, fountains, a public green, a playground, and a dog park. (It has its own underground garage.)
Where to stay? 21c Museum Hotel (609 Walnut Street) is made for art lovers, with its own gallery offering changing exhibitions of modern art. Its next-door neighbor is the Contemporary Arts Center (44 E. Sixth Street), a startlingly contemporary building designed by the late Zaha Hadid, a Pritzker Prize winner and the first woman to design a major art museum in the United States. The Center proudly exhibits “art of the last 15 minutes.” Across Walnut Street from 21c, in the Aronoff Center for the Arts, is the Weston Art Gallery (650 Walnut Street), presenting an eclectic mix of emerging and professional artists.
Photograph by Joe Simon
Courtesy of Cincinnati Parks
Washington Park and Music Hall
Mandela: The Journey to Ubuntu
Courtesy of UNRFC
To travel to numerous art attractions, step onto the newly launched streetcar the Cincinnati Bell Connector with several stops on Walnut Street along its 3.6-mile loop. At Fountain Square you can visit the 1871 Tyler Davidson Fountain, cast in Munich by August von Kreiling. The (continued on page 76)
Another important stop for art lovers is the beautifully
Smale Riverfront Park
restored Taft Museum of Art (316 Pike Street), an 1820 example of Federal architecture in the Palladian style, today the city’s oldest domestic wooden structure. It subsequently was home to the legendary political family that included a president, a Supreme Court justice, and a U.S. senator. Art collectors Charles and Anna Taft furnished it with paintings, ceramics, and art from around the world. They donated it all to the city in 1927, and it became a popular small “house museum” featuring a gorgeous garden and space for temporary exhibitions.
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Photograph by Robert Webber
Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal
BLINK 4 Day Light and Art Festival in October 2017
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Galleries can be found throughout downtown and historic Over-the-Rhine, a neighborhood immediately north of the city’s heart where Victorian Italianate architecture and redevelopment have blended in a spectacular renaissance of urban living and commerce.
fountain’s gracious Genius of Water offers numerous portrayals of how water impacts people’s lives. A bit farther south, the streetcar can drop you near the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center (50 E. Freedom Way). It features powerful historic displays as well as art focused on broader issues of freedom and justice. Mandela: The Journey to Ubuntu, an exhibit commemorating the life and legacy of former South African President Nelson Mandela through photography by Matthew Willman is currently on view. The Freedom Center is on the northern edge of downtown’s beautiful Smale Riverfront Park with public sculptures and recreational areas.
Wash Park Art Gallery Parlor
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Courtesy of Wash Park Art
Project Manager Scott Donaldson, Garden Party at the Taft
All along the streetcar route, keep an eye out for murals adorning downtown walls. Talented young artists work under the auspices of ArtWorks, a nonprofit offering teens summer employment while beautifying the city. More than 130 murals can be found on walls across Greater Cincinnati, including nearly twenty in the downtown area. (Walking tours are available.) As the streetcar heads north you’ll journey past the Art Academy and Washington Park, where Elm Street is experiencing multimillion-dollar construction renovation of performance venues, including a new Cincinnati Shakespeare Company theater and the legendary 1878 Music Hall, home of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra,
Photograph by Liz Dufour
Photograph by Michael Alberry
Inside Findlay Market
Cincinnati Opera, and Cincinnati Ballet. Wash Park Art Gallery (1215 Elm Street) is nestled among these attractive buildings and is unveiling their exhibit Midsummer Dreams / We Are Such Stuff with a reception on July 14 from 5 until 8 p.m. The streetcar strikes north for a few more blocks to loop around historic Findlay Market, dating from 1850, the oldest continuously operating public market in Ohio. In addition to vendors of produce, meat, cheese, candy, and more, it’s easy to find the work of local craftsmen during busy weekend hours. A unique stop for art lovers is the new home of Rookwood Pottery, with roots in the 19th century when Maria Longworth launched a studio in 1889 that made award-winning art pottery and ceramic tiles that still grace many a Cincinnati fireplace. Rookwood nearly dropped out of existence in the late 20th century, but it’s been brought back and today manufactures beautiful decorative items in a former produce warehouse just north of Findlay Market (1920 Race Street). There’s a showroom there that’s open to the public, as well as a retail shop (1209 Jackson Street), close to a streetcar stop on 12th Street, close to the Art Academy.
Courtesy of 21c Museum Hotel
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
Courtesy of UNRFC
William Kentridge, More Sweetly Play the Dance, 2015
Lobby at 21c Museum Hotel
Also worth a visit: Marta Hewett Gallery (1310 Pendleton Street, in the east end of Over-the-Rhine) has a special emphasis on glass. It’s part of the Pendleton Art Center, once an eight-story furniture warehouse that is today a honeycomb of artist studios, open for gallery walks on the final Friday of every month. As many as a half-million art lovers are expected to flock to Southwest Ohio for BLINK Cincinnati October 12–15, 2017, a four-day light and art festival. The free event, covering 20 blocks along the city’s new modern streetcar line, will feature large-scale architectural projections and interactive animation bringing to life murals and other iconic urban facades. Traveling from the city’s gorgeously landscaped Ohio River banks to Findlay Market, attendees will see dozens of light sculptures and street-level creations. Corporate sponsors have lined up to cover the festival’s $3 million price tag. If art’s your thing, your next destination should be Cincinnati. na For more information, please visit www.cincyusa.com and www.cincinnatiusa.com.
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Filmmaker John Warren Puts Focus On Nashville
Film stills from Honky Tonky
Broadway has always embodied a certain aspect of the city’s spirit, be that a celebration of its famous country music atmosphere, a delirious fever dream of tourist traps, or something in between. Utilizing an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Tennessee Arts Commission, local filmmaker John Warren has made Broadway the subject of his latest short film, Honky Tonky. The piece, completed last year using a 16-millimeter Bolex camera, is a woozy compilation of the street lights and neon signs, offering a sensational, overwhelming, and sometimes tense take on a night spent exploring the strip. It will premiere at the Nashville Film Festival this month.
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parking lots and shuttered storefronts that would morph into the tourist-friendly, if illusory, Broadway of today. “My artistic approach is informed by a mix of memory, dreams, emotions, revelation, and poetry,” Warren said. “Each piece is a record of discovery, connecting my emotional state with the inner life of my subject. All of my projects are concerned with a spirit of inquiry into the deep nature of film, of substance, of luminosity, and shadow.” Warren moved away from Nashville to study film in Boston and Los Angeles. He moved back in 2013 and started teaching film classes at Vanderbilt University.
“As the film traces the geography of the landscape, the overlapping imagery reveals embedded poetry and history,” explained Warren. “I am interested in how layers of film emulsion can reference layers of history, layers of meaning, and layers of perception.”
Honky Tonky was the first film Warren completed through the $5,000 fellowship, which he received last summer. He is also working on several other projects that confront Nashville as a character, including a film installation, Future Tense, that focuses on the plethora of construction cranes downtown.
It was filmed using a technique that Warren terms “polytonal vision,” utilizing in-camera double exposures to overlap images. The short’s surreal qualities were inspired by Warren’s experiences in high school, skateboarding along the then-empty
Warren’s 2011 film Notturno is on display in the Pattern Recognition: Art and Music Videos in Middle Tennessee exhibit at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, which runs until October 8. During Frist First Friday on July 28, Warren will screen some of his 16 mm films and answer questions. For more information, visit www.fristcenter.org.
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POET’SCORNER BY STARSHIELD LORTIE
Photography by Nanci Gregg
StarShield lives in Murfreesboro where she tutors, teaches English, and writes and performs her poetry at the occasional open mic night. Learn more at www.starshieldlortie.wordpress.com.
Bless Our Hearts the cotton fields the poke weed the run down row houses far away from the tree lined streets and old empty slave quarters on plantation tours. the southern pride the legacy of southern hospitality the Confederate flag and the heritage that runs through the land like blood in family veins. the long history the deeply scarring epithets the creaking magnolia trees and the men in masks burning wooden crosses in front yards. the million stereotypes, at once both living legacies and ancient stories passed down on porches as the summer locust songs swell and fade, swell and fade. we leave things unsaid because we are deathly afraid it will all start again, or that it never really ended, and drown out the courage in the face of so much hate. BackgroundNASHVILLEARTS.COM photograph by Carla Ciuffo 79
SOUNDINGOFF BY JOSEPH E. MORGAN
Courtesy of Karyn Photography
Emergence Closes Nashville Ballet Season
On June 1–3, 2017, the Nashville Ballet closed its season with a performance in its experimental series Emergence. The performance presented three new and extremely diverse choreographies that reflected the uniqueness of the Nashville music scene and exemplified the series’ purpose, which is to curate “different genres of movement and sound that can challenge how we think about ballet.” The evening opened with the four-movement work Test Drive, choreography by Susan Shields and music written and performed by Nashville-based singer Jonny P, whose authentic soul compositions channeled Otis Redding. The dances of all four movements were remarkable and reflected an ideal synthesis of popular dance with classical expression. Kayla Rowser, who we know from her performance in Layla & the Majnun last year, brought the same pathos and charisma to her part in the first movement’s “Good to You.” Katie Eliason and Bridge Taylor’s entwined dance in “Book” was remarkable as well. In Superstitions, Jennifer Archibald’s choreography brought Cristina Spinei’s delicate polyphony to life, abstracting the “specifically Southern Italian (Sicilian and Calabrese) superstitions” that inspired Spinei in this composition. The last piece, sketchbook of one reflecting on CHANGE,
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was choreographed by Shabaz Ujima to “Another Mirage,” a South Asian composition by Indian tabla virtuoso Kirby Shelstad, who credits the work to his collaboration with the “dancers and the Ancestors.” Rather than emphasizing exoticism, this work highlighted collaboration, first between the dancers and the musicians, then with the audience too, some of whom were brought on stage and told to “pick your favorite concept to inspire you to move freely around the space.” One of the things I like most about the Nashville Ballet is its diversity and interest in treating all music—traditional, classical, popular, Western, and non-Western—with the same reverence in expression. This is the perfect ballet company for the Music City. For more information, visit www.nashvilleballet.com.
D RESSING D OWNTON AT T H E N E W LY R E S TO R E D C H E E K WO O D M A N S I O N
O N D I S P L AY J U N E 1 7 - S E P T 1 0 Journey back in time with the costumes of Downton Abbey®. Exhibition is included with admission or membership, but timed entry is required. Reserve your time today! Exhibition produced by Exhibits Development Group in cooperation with Cosprop Ltd., London. Downton™ and Downton Abbey®. ©2017 Carnival Film & Television Limited. All Rights Reserved.
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YORK & Friends fine art Nashville • Memphis
SHARI LACY 107 Harding Place • Tues-Sat 10-5 615.352.3316 • yorkandfriends@att.net www.yorkandfriends.com Follow us on at York & Friends Fine Art Listen to the Music, Mixed media on canvas, 36” x 48”
BY RACHAEL McCAMPBELL
Photograph by Ron Manville
ANDSOITGOES
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.
Michelangelo, Expulsion del paraíso, Sistine Chapel
Michelangelo: Painter or Illustrator?
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raditionally, illustrations are meant to tell a story through art, whereas fine art is personal work created for the artist’s satisfaction. Illustrators are hired to create art, while fine artists paint “on spec,” unless they are commissioned. Michelangelo illustrated nine major biblical scenes from the book of Genesis for the Sistine Chapel, and his client, Pope Julius II, paid him to design and paint it. Does that make Michelangelo an illustrator? Norman Rockwell, the famous illustrator who created hundreds of magazine covers in his lifetime, was hired to paint, like Michelangelo, but because his art was used to sell magazines, he is considered to be an illustrator. If his famous Saturday Evening Post cover of the Thanksgiving dinner, entitled Freedom from Want, hung in a posh New York City art gallery, then it would have been considered fine art. But collectors snubbed Rockwell as a sentimental illustrator. He wasn’t in the same league with the avant-garde artists of his time such as Willem de Kooning, Pollock, and Rothko. Yet ironically, Rockwell’s Saying Grace (1951) sold at Sotheby’s
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in 2013 for $46 million. Does that sort of price tag elevate Rockwell to the fine art status? I question this because I’m an artist who for many years has worked both as an illustrator and fine artist, and I often wonder what differentiates them. I’m currently working on three different types of art jobs. Firstly, I’m creating new labels for Coca-Cola’s healthy drink called Honest Tea, which will be out next year. (I painted six labels for them several years ago.) It’s clearly an illustration job as I was paid to paint an image to be mass-produced with the intention of selling a product. Secondly, I’m completing a public art commission for a hospital where I created designs, for a committee’s approval, then painted and sculpted these designs for pay. This falls under the Public Art tab of the fine art category. Lastly, I’m painting two privately commissioned sky-scape paintings for patrons who hired me to paint something particular for their homes. Although I was hired to design and paint these, just as Michelangelo was by the Pope, they’re not illustrations; they’re fine art.
Rachael McCampbell, Pomegranate and Label for Honest Tea
Norman Rockwell, The Ouija Board, 1920
I see the
Summer Sale
July 13, 14, and 15
The interesting part for me is that the principles in making all of this art are the same for Honest Tea, Public Art, private commissions, or for myself. I have to consider the audience and their needs. I ask myself, what mood do I want to evoke and how best do I get there? I design the composition considering the elements of design and principles of art, such as the rule of thirds and odds, patterns, proportion, unity, values, perspective, emphasis, color, etcetera. Both Michelangelo and Norman Rockwell also considered these things when they created their work. I suggest you look around at all the art that surrounds you, from product designs, to magazine illustrations, to museum shows, and ask yourself, is this art? And is it good art? Just because it’s fine art doesn’t make it better art than illustrations. I have seen strong illustrations and weak fine art—the defining difference being only their usage. If Rockwell’s Freedom from Want decorated the Sistine Chapel, this would be a wholly different conversation. The important thing is to observe the art around you and remember that it wasn’t created in a vacuum. Whether or not it’s illustration or fine art, a great deal of thought and care went into creating the images we see. I believe that at the end of the day a great idea, strong design, and superior execution create good art. I think both Michelangelo and Norman Rockwell would agree with that. na
A L L T H E B E S T I N F I N E J E W E L RY 5101 Harding Road Nashville, Tennessee 37205 615.353.1823
WORDS Noah Saterstrom
Really?
Mary Sims, Ship of Fools, 1980, Acrylic on canvas, 83” x 117”
Group Show at David Lusk Gallery: July 5 – 29
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ne viewer might associate meticulousness in painting with the established traditions of high art, with the well-hewn craft of a dedicated artist. Think of the luxurious history of art acquisitions: Precious objects are slowly made, proudly bought, and carefully preserved. Another viewer might associate the same meticulousness in painting with retrograde anti-modern piety. Fastidious easel painters buttoned up against their own animal instincts carefully blend away evidence of chaos with no. 1 filbert brushes. The joy of art, of course, is that either is true, neither is true, or both are true. This month at David Lusk Gallery the walls are hung with paintings and drawings defined by deliberate and conscientious mark-making.
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The epic gestures that crashed onto the history of painting in the early 20th century reframed how painters think of themselves. Iconic images of Edwardian painters in waistcoats, replete with easels and lounging house cats, were turned on their heads by improvisational deviants who painted on the floor and ashed cigarettes while scrubbing brush to canvas. The result of this oppositional dichotomy is that modernday artists can choose for themselves not only what but how to paint. Mark-makers can be highly experimental with a painstaking approach to painting (e.g., Nozkowski), and as a result representational or figurative painting is no longer fighting for its life. Really? which opens on July 5, includes the work of Rocky
Rocky Horton, Fiori 2, 2017, Oil on canvas, 49” x 96” Beth Edwards, Meadow II, 2009, Oil on canvas, 18” x 19”
Horton, Beth Edwards, Bonnie Maygarden, Luisi Mera, and Mary Sims. Ostensibly, the link between this varied selection of work is the highly detailed rendering across images. The brushwork or graphic mark is patient and descriptive, while the images are developed slowly. Beyond that, the artists definitively diverge, each implementing their own faithfully wrought method. Rocky Horton’s flower painting, Fiori 2, is a regal symmetry. Brueghel the Elder’s flowers are plucked straight out of 16thcentury Brussels and given cosmic significance, while the grim sophistication of oil painting’s early days is maintained. In contrast, Beth Edwards’s works are more light-hearted contrivances, colorful and dreamy, gleaming with atmosphere. Meadow II is a curious pastoral scene bursting with simultaneously complementary and discordant images: giant flowers, a bee, a toy duck, and a single cloud. Even as the crowded scene disorients any sense of scale, distance, or reason, the clean airiness of Edwards’s works gives a feeling of euphoria. The least tucked-in of the group, Mary Sims, brings to Really? a more illustrative sensibility. Her characters gaze out from a theatrical vignette with the cryptic imagery and graphic quality of tarot cards. Art terms can sometimes be nebulous or flexible, but Realism, which has curiously been used in reference to this show, has fairly well-defined qualities: faithfulness to lived experience (irrespective of beauty or ugliness); avoidance of artificiality or allegory; the depiction of ordinary subjects. And while this show weaves through many subjects, Realism is not one. The works do pull from the richness of art history, the flagrant joyfulness of Pop Art and Kitsch, the theatre of illustration, and more. Perhaps, however, the one true thing that these artists share
is a love of meticulous painting. Even the Flemish oil painters with their one-haired brushes rendering individual feathers on pheasants knew there comes a point at which you must estimate the infinite. Some artworks take a long time to make. Some artworks happen in minutes. How to value these things is up to the market. But is there not an inherent value in slowing down, in both the making and the viewing of painting? The connection here, then, is perhaps best said by Theodore Roethke: “Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It’s what everything else isn’t.” na Really? Is on view at David Lusk Gallery July 5 through 29. An opening reception is slated for July 8 from 5 to 8 p.m. For more information, visit www.davidluskgallery.com.
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registration for fall classes opens August 1
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All the Pretty Little Horses WORDS Catherine Randall Berresheim
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enee Lowery’s Horses of Iceland photographs are not merely snapshot images of these magnificent creatures; they are indeed classic wildlife portraitures, which capture the personality, mood, and power of her favorite subject. In addition, this equestrian collection features panoramic frozen landscapes that highlight the harsh tundra these Icelandic horses inhabit. Lowery began her career focused on shooting landscapes of the Mississippi Delta and Tennessee landmarks. The accidental death of her father five years ago brought her an unexpected gift. She inherited his Tennessee walking horse farm and two-dozen horses. Lowery began photographing horses simply as a tool to find homes for these animals. “I started taking my camera with me as I worked on the estate. I fell in love with them,” she says.
So how does a country girl end up in Iceland? “I’ve seen pictures of Iceland and wanted to visit there for a long time. Two girlfriends from my Wyoming trip invited me to go with them,” Lowery explains. She made this journey for the sole purpose of photographing these special beasts. She spent ten days on the South Coast of Iceland in late May. These images are truly breathtaking. They are a work of contrasts between the brutal climate balanced with the beauty and the brightness of the sunlight against the snowcaps and the majesty of the Icelandic horse. This breed is specific only to this place. The coats of Icelandic horses are noticeably thicker, almost fury compared to other breeds. “They have a double layer coat, to keep them warm in the winter wind,” Lowery says. In May they were just starting to shed. It is also a smaller horse, standing only thirteen hands high. Vikings brought these horses over mainly to be used as pack animals and to herd sheep in the Highlands. Over the next few years her passion took her to Wyoming and to Craig, Colorado, for the Great American Horse Drive. Each spring cowboys from the Sombrero Ranch herd horses across 60 miles of Colorado countryside from their winter pasture to their summer fields. “It brings you to tears to see 600 horses go past you. I’ve never seen anything like this,” Lowery says.
Icelandic horses are bred to be friendly. “They come running as soon as they see you. They pull on your hat; nip you in the back of the leg. They pester you to death to pet them.” Unable to hide her childlike enthusiasm she adds, “It was the best trip ever!
In one image, a pure-white horse is caught prancing in front of an old barn. Another features a herd of chestnuts suspended in full gallop. Lowery’s favorite photo was taken at the Vatnajökull Glacier located in Vatnajökull National Park. Emma, the white horse, and Eric, the dark horse, appear as if they posed for their photo. The jagged swells of ice frame their soft bodies, echoing the extreme contrasts. In another color shot at the same location, a palomino stands tall, her blond mane blowing in the wind as if she were on a fashion shoot. The clear sky and the glacier background only accentuate her demure demeanor.
and began shooting. I was right up in there with them,” Lowery says, “waiting for the right moment.” For hours they circled one another. The compositions themselves dictate whether she will print in black and white or in full color. The work with the horses offers a connection to her father. “He was a difficult person sometimes. I could never be close to him when he was alive . . . ” her voice trails off and grows quiet, even reverent. “I kind of feel like this is a connection we never had,” Lowery says. Lowery is already planning her return trip next year. “I just saw such a small portion of the land. Around every corner there is something beautiful,” she says. “I just have to go back.” na For more information visit www.reneeloweryphotography.com.
When asked about her creative process she said, “You can’t plan it. You can’t tell what they are going to do.” Instead, “I started shooting as they were running. I love to shoot their movements.” She then took the field shots of the environment. Afterward, she studied the possibilities. “I sat down on the ground and just looked. I looked at the background and the light. And then I started walking around
Renee Lowery
Photograph by Kerry Hendry
“The morning at the Skógafoss Falls there were 50-mph winds, and the temperatures were below freezing,” Lowery says. The spray soaked the lens as she worked. “It froze over, and I’d wipe the lens clean and then turn back around to shoot more.” This black-and-white shot of a lone horse midstep on the dark river rock, set against the backdrop of the water paused in ripples, appears otherworldly.
ARTSMART
A monthly guide to art education
TENNESSEE ROUNDUP Understanding Access to Arts Education
Discovering poetry
You are likely reading this publication because the arts have played a significant part in your life. You may have meaningful arts experiences that contributed to who you are today. I remember the first time hearing a symphony in third grade, holding an oboe in beginning band, performing as a chorus member in Oliver!, and taking visual arts classes throughout high school. As a child growing up in a rural town from a working-class neighborhood, the arts were enjoyable, a source of intellectual stimulation, and taught me how to understand the world and imagine possibilities for the future.
First meaningful arts experiences often happen in school. If we compared what was available to each of us in school, we might have slightly different or perhaps very different answers. This variation exists for students today as well.
Photograph courtesy of State Photography
One of the strategies under the Arts Essential to Learning goal in the Tennessee Arts Commission strategic plan is to work to assure that every public school student has access to highquality arts education in school. This is ambitious taking into account over 1,800 K–12 public schools in 140+ school districts
by Ann Talbott Brown Director of Arts Education Tennessee Arts Commission
Learning to paint on clay
with nearly 65,000 teachers and nearly one million students in Tennessee. To implement this strategy, we have to think about it in two parts: measuring access and assessing quality. Over the next several months, we will focus first on examining access to arts education. Information about access is valuable for several reasons, by: • Increasing awareness of who has access and to what. • Informing decision-making at the district level by equipping leaders with data. • Propelling districts to share best practices in offering arts education. • Educating funders who review financial requests for arts education and allowing responsible allocation of funds. • Highlighting needs and assets for local arts organizations to build within the existing arts education landscape. Thinking back to the skills gained from my own arts education, making sense of the existing arts education landscape and imagining future possibilities are essential as we work to implement this strategy. To quote Oliver Twist, “Please, sir, I want some more.” More understanding of access and more access itself are worth the effort.
VSA Tennessee’s inaugural class of Teapot Diplomats with keynote speaker Charlie Kellett
Photography by Keep3
ARTSMART
VSA Tennessee’s Teapot Diplomats: Art and Service
Teapot Diplomats grew out of Charlie Kellett’s experience with the Peace Corps in Morocco where hospitality, conversation, and understanding were an intrinsic part of the serving of tea by hosts. With his devotion to “serving” rather than being served, Kellett established a habit of carrying his own teapot into homes to serve others. As he journeyed, he would often photograph individuals who personified kindness and compassion posing with his teapot. Those images soon filled a little book he called Teapot Diplomacy. In 2015, VSA Tennessee, the state organization on arts and disability, was completing work on their 40 Days Project—an International Quilt which was shown at the U.S. Department of State before traveling as part of its Art in Embassies Program.
idea of Teapot Diplomats and asked Charlie if we could use that name for our program.” A group of motivated individuals attended workshops and agreed to take home materials to complete projects on their own. The goal was to see who could use their own initiative, both inside and outside the workshop setting, to make ten items during the year. On Saturday, June 10, at The Clay Lady’s Studios on Lebanon Pike, ten participants who completed the project were initiated as VSA Tennessee’s inaugural class of Teapot Diplomats, including: Adam A.J. Boyd, Bethany Dillon, Austin King, Hope McKee, Collin Ranson, Alyssa Ray, Jennifer Scallorn, Wanda Sowell, Torie Summers, and Morgan Vice.
“By that time Charlie, who was working for the State Department, ended up taking my photo with the quilt and his teapot,” says Lori Kissinger, Executive Director for VSA Tennessee.
The event showcased items created by these talented artists and sold on-site with funds divided (one-third each) among participants, VSA Tennessee, and the UN Zero Hunger program. Keynote speaker for the event was Charlie Kellett, who talked about his time in the Peace Corps and what led to the creation of Teapot Diplomats, as well as offering special insights into initiatives for the disabled on the international level.
“Some of our participants in the quilt project told us they wanted to continue to do projects in which they could use their talents to help others and have an international impact,” Kissinger explains. “With a grant from the Tennessee Arts Commission, pilot workshops and training in arts community service were launched. However, we didn’t have a name. I always liked the
“VSA Tennessee, along with Charlie Kellett, have once again provided the disabled community a way to display their creative abilities through the arts with the Teapot Diplomat program, and I look forward to seeing the effect that it will have not only on the participants, but also on the community,” says VSA Tennessee intern Kori Cupp.
Keynote speaker Charlie Kellett and The Clay Lady Danielle McDaniel
by DeeGee Lester Director of Education The Parthenon
Photograph by Drew Cox
Across centuries and cultures, the international symbols of hospitality, comfort, care, and service have surrounded the sharing of a cup of tea.
ARTSMART
Cassie Stephens with art students
Face painting at the art show
One wall of art at the show
Cassie Stephens arranges a table of 3D student art
Some folks go above and beyond what would ever be asked or expected of them. Even fewer people would do this solely out of the kindness of their heart, without expectancy of recognition, a congratulations, or even a high five. They are truly a rare breed. If you find folks like this, cherish them and consider yourself a very lucky person. I’m one such lucky art teacher. When it came time for our annual Johnson Elementary Art Show, a huge event which showcases every masterpiece that my 300-plus young artists have created throughout the course of the school year, I was fortunate to have my Art Show Moms. These lovely ladies dedicated nearly three solid weeks of their time matting, hanging, and transforming our school halls into a salon-style art gallery. You cannot even imagine the amount of work that goes into a large art show like this . . . but I’ll try to paint you a picture.
Photograph by Juan Pont Lezica
The Art Show Moms, who are Molly Brewer, her mom Donna Miller, Lori Fitts, and Terri Coffman, started by hanging deer mesh on the walls of our halls. That’s right, the stuff you put in your yard to keep Bambi from devouring your garden. Because our school walls are cinder-block that literally nothing will stick to (trust me, we’ve tried masking tape, hot glue, sticky tac . . . these walls are determined to be bare), we have found that hanging
by Cassie Stephens Art Teacher Johnson Elementary
mesh with a strip of Gaffer’s tape at the top is the best way to hang artwork. Once the mesh is hung, artwork can be pinned to the mesh with clothespins. After several days of hanging the mesh, the moms start helping me mat student artwork. My students work very hard to create their masterpieces all year, and showcasing them with a mat of something as simple as construction paper really makes a difference. But with hundreds of pieces of artwork, it can be very time-consuming. Thank goodness I have these amazing mamas as backup! Once the work is matted, it’s ready to be hung, and that is where the Art Show Moms really show their stuff. They have become experts at figuring out this Tetris-style game of how to hang so many pieces of art on limited wall space. It’s not just a matter of making sure the artwork is hung but that it’s displayed in such a way that it is beautiful to see. It really is amazing to see so much student artwork on display. What a way to celebrate a year of creating! On the night of the art show, it truly is amazing to see the number of families who come out to celebrate their young artists. Happy artists are everywhere, pointing to their artwork, smiling from ear to ear while their proud parents snap photos. Moments like that would not be possible without the help of the Art Show Moms. I’m very lucky to have such supportive parents who make a difference in our school and our young artists. I cannot thank them enough!
ARTSMART
by DeeGee Lester
Cheekwood Summer Camps: A Taste of Downton
Photography Courtesy of Cheekwood
“Alas, I am beyond impropriety.” —Lady Violet Grantham, Downton Abbey
For years, their parents halted everything on Sunday night, absorbed in the latest episode of Downton Abbey; they’ve overheard snippets of conversation about Lady Mary or Mr. Barrow, or heard cheers and tears when Mr. Carson married Mrs. Hughes. Now through August 4, the kids, too, have an opportunity to become absorbed in all things Downton through Cheekwood education’s camp activities surrounding the Dressing Downton exhibition. The exhibit coincides with the unveiling of the refurnished Cheekwood mansion, sparking imaginations about life within privileged circles in the early decades of the 20th century. “Kids can learn a lot about the era through the camp,” says Megan Rust, Cheekwood’s Public Programs Manager. “They may initially sign up for the camp because they like jewelry-making, but the kids discover how fashion is intrinsically tied to culture and to the times.” Through travels and movement within international aristocratic circles, Americans such as the Cheek family emulated the fashion standards (gloves, hats, corsets), the social standards (receiving guests in the drawing room, hosting elegant dinners and balls), and the architectural styles and design elements of the grand homes of Europe. There are exciting camp options for various age groups. Fashion classes explore early-20th-century fashion and the basics of details such as embroidery and hand-stitching, followed by the opportunity to create their own fashion sketches. Radio Live allows students the chance to discover radio shows of the era and experiment with the fun of replicating sounds for radio dramas before trying their hand at script-writing and performing. Jewelry classes explore the history and techniques of jewelry design before designing their own. And Car Camp ties art with automobiles, offering kids a chance to see classic cars (many from Nashville’s Lane Motor Museum), and explore unique elements of body style/parts and the 20th-century introduction of assembly lines, before creating an art project. Combined with the exhibition, the camps will stir interest in a unique and elegant period and, through the Cheek family, connect it all to Nashville. For more information, visit www.cheekwood.org.
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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
Amanda Cramer Singer/songwriter, metal band vocalist
Girl Powerful Fayetteville, Arkansas, 2012: Suffering from a bout of teenage boredom, heavy-metal singer Amanda Cramer made a snap decision to go to a prayer meeting. There, the high school senior was surprised to see a new friend reputedly relaying messages from God. Initially skeptical until told several things about herself she had never shared, she knew to believe the medium when he told her, “Remember you are a queen in God’s eyes.”
ARRATT GALLERY AT VANDERBILT
Color in Space Matt Paskiet Glass Sculpture
July 10 - August 11, 2017
This, she was sure, was no coincidence. Only two weeks earlier, Cramer had become suddenly taken with the great Queen Elizabeth l of England. “An oddball who didn’t fit in the cookie cutter for the women” of Fayetteville, Cramer found in Elizabeth a role model who worked within and around tradition. “She was very intelligent and funny, traditionalist and also modern,” says Cramer, “Labeled a bastard child, Elizabeth defeated all odds.” After the meeting, Cramer knew her mission. Having been pressured to pursue country music, for which she has a searing voice, she recommitted to following her own path. Soon as she graduated, the singer was here in Nashville to get her dream going. Now with her terrific band, Chariot of the Moon, she focuses on her music and her message. “Metal is not sexy and pretty, but it is badass and powerful,” she says. Onstage, with her black outfits, alabaster skin, and fiery hair, she is exactly a badass. Her commanding presence goes with her megawatt voice as she sings of the stories and goals of her life. Cramer could well be a star. When I asked her to be in my series on the Divine Feminine, Cramer’s choice was obvious. “Elizabeth was more than a queen, she was mother to her country, which she even called her child. She remains a spiritual symbol to me,” says the singer. Each morning Cramer arises to work on the final piece the medium gave her: “I see you in a crown with two rings of jewels, green under purple.” The green signifies the growth she knows must take place before she comes into her full power. Even so, Cramer’s noble aspirations, the road she is taking, and distance have a force and a beauty. That said, More power to you, Amanda.
LOCATED ON THE MAIN FLOOR OF SARRATT STUDENT CENTER AT 2301 VANDERBILT PLACE NASHVILLE, TN 37235 Summer and holiday schedule hours are Monday–Friday 9 a.m.–4 p.m.
Find out more about Amanda Cramer on Facebook: Chariot of the Moon and her Instagram: @amandajocramer
www.vanderbilt.edu/sarrattart
Desere Carlson, Michael Gaskell and Joseph Bartolo at The Arts Company
Britt Terrell and Ferrin Lawrence at Channel to Channel
JB Cohen and Kevin Sear at David Lusk Gallery
Robinson Regen, Ellen Pryor and Doug Regen at The Arts Company
ARTSEE
Phyllis, Courtney, and Kenneth Clark at Tinney Contemporary
ARTSEE
Desiree, Jeffrey and Kindred Redding at The Arts Company
ARTSEE
Carolyn and Anani Kelly at The Rymer Gallery
Nick Thompson and Andra Milstead at The Arts Company
Diego Estrada and Espe Magaly at Zeitgeist
Priscilla Mullins and Andres Bustamante at Zeitgeist
James Lavadour and David Sweat at Cumberland Gallery
Tim May, Alan Shuptrine and Gretchen Priest-May at Tennessee State Museum
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Steven Abernathy and Kristin Lagan at Tinney Contemporary
Eriny Hannah, Bekka Depew, and Clark Stallings at The Arts Company
Shaun Giles and Katherine Wagner at Ground Floor Gallery
Greg Freeman at The Rymer Gallery
Casey Campbell and Lauren Willoughby at Cumberland Gallery
Elaine Wood, Scott Chambers, David Lusk, and Carol Mode at David Lusk Gallery
Gabriel Pozzo and Mark Wood at Zeitgeist
PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY BY TIFFANY ALVES
ARTSEE
ARTSEE
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Kayla Burnett and Chesney Hensley at The Rymer Gallery
Candace Newson and Jasmine Cole at The Rymer Gallery
Noah Bartfield, Kim Bartfield, Kerri Horowitz, Sasha Morfam and Josh Euighton at David Lusk Gallery
Daniel Supensky and Tamara Kreigh at Tinney Contemporary
Lees Romano and Amelia Briggs at Zeitgeist
Bruce Hughes and Nancy Kirkland at David Lusk Gallery
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Samantha Montgomery, aka “Princess Shaw,” subject of Ido Haar’s documentary Presenting Princess Shaw
National Geographic fellow Joel Sartore is on a quest to document all the earth’s species, particularly those on the brink of extinction. Rare—Creatures of the Photo Ark follows his worldwide travels Tuesdays, July 18 through August 1, at 8 p.m. Also on those nights, watch for NPT’s original video shorts about conservation efforts at the Nashville Zoo. Articulate with Jim Cotter continues Sundays at 10:30 p.m. Among this month’s episodes are “Scents and Sensibility” (July 9) which includes choreographer Elizabeth Streb. Streb’s
NPT is the national presenting station for The Tokens Show: Dayton airing Friday, July 7, at 7 p.m. This entertaining show about the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, features Nashville musicians and songwriters in a blend of cultural analysis, lecture, and performance. In his last outing, Geoffrey Baer took viewers on cross-country architectural tours in 10 That Changed America. Now he heads to Havana and into the lives and homes of dancers, musicians, architects, and writers. Weekend in Havana airs Tuesday, July 18, at 7 p.m.
INDEPENDENT FILMS Presenting Princess Shaw, airing Monday, July 17, at 9 p.m. on POV, opens with video projections on the Guggenheim’s distinctive spirals during a performance by Israeli artist Kutiman. Kutiman creates mixes of music and video from footage he finds on YouTube, and his “collaborators” don’t know they are
Choreographer Elizabeth Streb (center), from Articulate with Jim Cotter
part of his work. Neither does Samantha, a New Orleans-based nurse who uploads her a capella performances to her channel. Kutiman pairs her songs with music by his orchestra and other YouTube posters; the results are magical. In 2014, Polish-born New Yorker Joseph Feingold heeded a public radio station’s call for donations of musical instruments to be distributed to area students. His violin—purchased for a carton of cigarettes at a flea market in 1947—made its way to 12-year-old Brianna Perez in the Bronx via the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation. Joe’s Violin, the moving short film about the violin and these two music lovers, airs Monday, July 24, at 9 p.m. on POV. It will be paired with Shalom Italia, an amusing “on the road” film in which three Italian Jewish brothers return to the Tuscan cave where they hid from Nazis during World War II. For the still-athletic middle brother, those years were one great adventure; for the eldest, it was miserable; while the youngest barely remembers the cave.
Please support NPT this month online at wnpt.org or through our on-air pledge programming. Encore presentations of many of our shows are broadcast on NPT2, our secondary channel.
Brothers Bubi, Andrea and Emmanuel in Shalom Italia on POV
Courtesy of Tamar Tal Anati
ARTISTIC EXPLORERS
acrobatic, unusual choreography was the focus of Born to Fly on Independent Lens in 2015, and her troupe will perform at OZ Arts Nashville in January 2018. Other episodes highlight rapper Watsky and quilter Dindga McCannon (July 16) as well as opera tenor Stephen Costello (July 30).
Courtesy of IWHYY
Spend time with nature this month on NPT. Big Pacific continues Wednesdays at 7 p.m., concluding July 19 with a behind-the-scenes special. Nature’s Great Race runs Wednesdays, July 12 through 26, at 8 p.m. and chronicles long and treacherous animal migrations in North America and Africa. The most ambitious nature program this month is Wild Alaska Live, a three-night live broadcast airing July 23, 26, and 30 at 7 p.m. A co-production of PBS and the BBC, the special will be hosted by Emmy Award-winning zoologists Chris Kratt and Martin Kratt, the producers and stars of the popular PBS Kids show Wild Kratts.
Courtesy of Ido Haar. Courtesy of Atzmor Productions
Arts Worth Watching
July 2017 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 6:30
Saturday
am Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood Thomas & Friends 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 Pati’s Mexican Tab;e Martha Stewart’s Cooking School Julie Taboulie’s Lebanese Kitchen noon America’s Test Kitchen pm Cook’s Country Kitchen Hubert Keller: Secrets of a Chef Lidia’s Kitchen Simply Ming Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting Best of Joy of Painting Baby Makes 3 American Woodshop This Old House Ask This Old House A Craftsman’s Legacy PBS NewsHour Weekend Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville
Sunday
am Sid the Science Kid Cyberchase Sesame Street Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Cat in the Hat Curious George Nature Cat Tennessee’s Wild Side Volunteer Gardener Tennessee Crossroads Nature Washington Week noon To the Contrary pm Born to Explore Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi Family Travel with Colleen Kelly Globe Trekker California’s Gold Burt Wolf: Travels & Traditions America’s Heartland Rick Steves’ Europe Antiques Roadshow PBS NewsHour Weekend Charlie Rose: The Week
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 5:30 6:00
This Month on Nashville Public Television
am Classical Stretch Body Electric Ready Jet Go! Wild Kratts Thomas & Friends Curious George Curious George Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Splash and Bubbles Splash and Bubbles Sesame Street Sesame Street Super Why! noon Peg + Cat pm Dinosaur Train Ready Jet Go! Bob the Builder Nature Cat Wild Kratts Wild Kratts Odd Squad Odd Squad Arthur Arthur Martha Speaks PBS NewsHour
3 NIGHT LIVE EVENT PREMIERES SUNDAY, JULY 23, 7 PM A PRODUCTION OF
FOR PBS
A Place to Call Home A nurse goes home to Australia after World War II. Nashville Public Television
Saturdays, July 1 – Aug. 5, 8:30 & 9:15 pm
Rare – Creatures of the Photo Ark
Joel Sartore’s global quest to photograph beautiful, endangered species. Tuesdays, July 18 – Aug. 1, 8 pm
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7:00 My Mother and Other Strangers Episode 4.Rose and the captain get more serious. 8:00 Grantchester on Masterpiece Part 4. 9:00 Prime Suspect: Tennison on Masterpiece Episode 3. Conclusion. 10:30 Articulate with Jim Cotter Scents and Sensibility. 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
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7:00 The Story of China The Last Empire/The Age of Revolution. The fall of the empire is followed by revolution and the rise of modern China. 9:00 Frontline Terror in Europe. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Chinese Couplets The impact of America’s Chinese Exclusion Acts on one family over two centuries, three countries and four generations of women.
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7:00 Antiques Roadshow Vintage Cleveland. 8:00 Antiques Roadshow Vintage Rochester. 9:00 POV Last Men in Aleppo. Syria today, through the eyes of the White Helmets volunteer rescue group. 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 BBC World News 11:30 Next Door Neighbors Belonging.
7:00 A Capitol Fourth The annual musical Independence Day celebration live from D.C. 8:30 A Capitol Fourth 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 3, 2, 1 Fireworks 11:30 Next Door Neighbors Becoming American. An NPT original documentary about four Middle Tennessee immigrants.
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7:00 Antiques Roadshow Vintage Austin. 8:00 Antiques Roadshow Vintage Milwaukee. 9:00 POV The War Show. A four-year, ground-level look at the Syrian civil war. 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 BBC World News 11:30 West of the West: Tales from California’s Channel Island Return. .
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13 7:00 Big Pacific 7:00 Tennessee Crossroads Passionate. The quest 7:30 Volunteer Gardener to multiply has spawned 8:00 Edison: American a stunning array of Experience unusual behaviors and The man who is adaptations. remembered as the 8:00 Nature’s Great Race genius who created the Elephants. The annual modern world. gathering of a thousand 10:00 BBC World News elephants in northern 10:30 Last of Summer Wine Kenya. 11:00 The Tunnel: Sabotage 9:00 NOVA Episode 5. Rosa Mystery of Easter Island. reveals a vital clue; 10:00 BBC World News Elise struggles to 10:30 Last of Summer Wine face her past. 11:00 Austin City Limits Cyndi Lauper.
7:00 Big Pacific 7:00 Tennessee Crossroads Voracious. The search 7:30 Volunteer Gardener for food drives all life in 8:00 White House: Inside the Pacific. Story 8:00 Great Yellowstone The 200-year story of Thaw the White House is also Summer arrives the story of the U.S. itself. with soaring 10:00 BBC World News temperatures, drought 10:30 Last of Summer Wine and the risk of wildfires. 11:00 The Tunnel: Sabotage 9:00 NOVA Episode 4. Laura Making North America: receives a disturbing Human. package. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Austin City Limits Band of Horses; Parker Millsap.
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7:00 Great Houses with Julian Fellowes Burghley House. 8:00 Great British Baking Show Botanical. A leafy challenge and floral designs. 9:00 Great British Baking Show Masterclass 2. Tipsy trifle, floating islands, wobbly apricot tart, and spanakopita. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 The Kate Rosanne Cash.
7:00 The Tokens Show: Dayton Nashville musicians explore the Scopes Monkey Trial with humor, music and spoken word. 8:00 Great British Baking Show Pastry. Danish breakfast; a British tart. 9:00 Great British Baking Show Masterclass 1. Cakes, muffins and bread sticks. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 The Kate Maurice Hines.
Monday, July 10, 9:00 pm
Friday, July 7, 7:00 pm
Sundays, July 2 & 9, 9:00 pm
Sundays, through July 30, 8:00 pm
POV: Last Men in Aleppo
The Tokens Show: Dayton
Prime Suspect: Tennison
Friday
Grantchester on Masterpiece
Thursday
Wednesday
Tuesday
Monday
7:00 My Mother and Other Strangers on Masterpiece Episode 3. Stolen paint provokes a theological crisis. 8:00 Grantchester on Masterpiece Part 3. 9:00 Prime Suspect: Tennison on Masterpiece Episode 2. 10:30 Articulate with Jim Cotter Kevin Barnes. 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
Sunday
Nashville Public Television’s Primetime Evening Schedule
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7:00 Lawrence Welk Show Show Stoppers. 8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 A Place to Call Home Boom! 9:15 A Place to Call Home Worlds Apart. 10:00 Bluegrass Underground Hurray for the Riff Raff. 10:30 David Holt’s State of Music Doyle Lawson, St. John Unity Choir. 11:00 Globe Trekker Food Hour: Ireland.
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7:00 Lawrence Welk Show Keep a Song in Your Heart. 8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 A Place to Call Home Day of Atonement. 9:15 A Place to Call Home That’s Amore. 10:00 Bluegrass Underground Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen. 10:30 David Holt’s State of Music The Kruger Brothers. 11:00 Globe Trekker Tough Trains: Cuba’s Sugar Railroads.
7:00 Lawrence Welk Show The Vacation Show. 8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 A Place to Call Home Truth Will Out. 9:15 A Place to Call Home The Mona Lisa Smile. 10:00 Bluegrass Underground The Suffers. 10:30 David Holt’s State of Music Amythyst Kiah; Mipso. 11:00 Globe Trekker Top 10 South American Adventures.
Saturday
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7:00 Boys of ’36: American Experience The 1936 U.S. Rowing Team competes in Nazi Germany. 8:00 Rare – Creatures of the Photo Ark Joel Sartore photographs endangered animals in Budapest, Prague and New Zealand. 9:00 Frontline 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine
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7:00 Ireland’s Wild Coast 9:00 NOVA Secrets of the Sky Tombs. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Austin City Limits Sam Smith; Future Islands.
3 7:00 Tennessee Crossroads 7:30 Volunteer Gardener 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 The Tunnel: Sabotage Episode 8. The season ends with a terrifying showdown.
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4 8:00 Great British Baking Show Patisserie. 9:00 Great British Baking Show The Final. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Infinity Hall Live
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Sundays, July 16 – 30, 9:00 pm
Remember Me
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7:00 Lawrence Welk Show Tribute to Bing. 8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 A Place to Call Home True to Your Heart. 9:15 A Place to Call Home New Beginning. 10:00 Bluegrass Underground JJ Grey & Mofro. 10:30 David Holt’s State of Music David Holt’s State of Music – Onstage! 11:30 Globe Trekker Papua New Guinea Islands.
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7:00 Tennessee Crossroads 7:00 Great Houses with 7:00 Lawrence Welk Show 7:30 Volunteer Gardener Julian Fellowes 25th Anniversary. 8:00 Tesla: American Goodwood House. 8:00 Keeping Appearances Experience 8:00 Great British Baking 8:30 A Place to Call Home 9:00 The Early Black Press: Show Cane Toad. Tennessee Voices Desserts. Sweet 9:15 A Place to Call Home Lifted challenges bring a Lest We Forget. 9:30 Aging Matters: Aging bitter end for one baker. 10:00 Bluegrass & the Workplace 9:00 Great British Baking Underground 10:00 BBC World News Show Mac McAnally. 10:30 Last of Summer Wine Masterclass 3. Ginger 10:30 David Holt’s State of 11:00 The Tunnel: Sabotage spiced traybake, Music Episode 6. The technically tricky tuiles Dom Flemson, connection between with chocolate mousse. David Holt. Elise and Eryka 10:00 BBC World News 11:00 Globe Trekker intensifies. 10:30 Last of Summer Wine Hawaii. 11:00 Infinity Hall Live
7:00 Wild Alaska Live 7:00 More Manners of Nature programming 7:00 Tennessee Crossroads Downton Abbey: A presented live. 7:30 Volunteer Gardener Masterpiece Special 8:00 Nature’s Great Race 8:00 In Defense of Food 8:00 Great British Baking Zebra. Africa’s longest Michael Pollan explains Show land migration crosses how to eat well and stay Tudor Week. Historical Botswana’s wilderness. healthy. challenges include 9:00 NOVA 10:00 BBC World News marzipan and a savory Wild Ways. 10:30 Last of Summer Wine pie. Wildlife corridors. 11:00 The Tunnel: Sabotage 9:00 Great British Baking 10:00 BBC World News Episode 7. Will Karl and Show 10:30 Last of Summer Wine Elise get to Vanessa in Masterclass 4. Opera 11:00 Austin City Limits time? cake; sweet and savory Ryan Adams/ pretzels. Jenny Lewis. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Infinity Hall Live
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7:00 Summer of Love: American Experience 1960s counter-culture movement. 8:00 Rare – Creatures of the Photo Ark Joel photographs endangered animals in Spain, China and Cameroon. 9:00 Frontline 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 It’s “Just” Anxiety People of various backgrounds describe their struggles with anxiety.
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7:00 Big Pacific Behind the Scenes Special. 8:00 Nature’s Great Race Caribou. A 3,000-mile migration through the arctic wilderness of Canada and Alaska. 9:00 NOVA Life’s Rocky Start. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Austin City Limits Cece Winans; St. Paul & The Broken Bones.
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Visit wnpt.org for complete 24-hour schedules for NPT and NPT2.
7:00 Antiques Roadshow Vintage Charlotte. 8:00 Antiques Roadshow Vintage Richmond. 9:00 POV Memories of a Penitent Heart. Filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo investigates her uncle’s 1980s death of AIDS. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Denial: The Dad Who Wanted to Save the World The energy debate and transgender issues.
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7:00 Wild Alaska Live The final live night from Alaska. 8:00 Grantchester on Masterpiece Part 7. A boy goes missing in the conclusion. 9:00 Remember Me Episode 3. The police question Tom. 10:00 Start Up Room for Lunch. 10:30 Articulate with Jim Cotter It Takes Two. 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
7:00 Antiques Roadshow Vintage Kansas City. 8:00 Antiques Roadshow Vintage Hartford. 9:00 POV Joe’s Violin/Shalom Italia. A violin forges a friendship between a Holocaust survivor and a Bronx schoolgirl. 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 BBC World News 11:30 Amazing Grace The story of Missouri attorney Grace Day who was the lone woman in her law school class in 1948.
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7:00 Antiques Roadshow 7:00 Weekend in Havana Vintage Seattle. Cuban artists and 8:00 Antiques Roadshow architects. Vintage Louisville. 8:00 Rare – Creatures of 9:00 POV the Photo Ark Presenting Princess Joel Sartore photographs Shaw. An aspiring endangered animals in musician teams up Madagascar and the with YouTube artist, Florida Keys. Kutiman. 9:00 Frontline 10:30 Last of Summer Wine Life on Parole. 11:00 BBC World News 10:00 BBC World News 11:30 Return to Normandy 10:30 Last of Summer Wine WWII veterans return 11:00 Cuba: The Forgotten for the 70th D-Day Revolution anniversary. Two men who fought to overthrow dictator Fulgencio Batista.
7:00 Wild Alaska Live The Wild Kratts brothers host this live, natural-history program. 8:00 Grantchester on Masterpiece Part 6. 9:00 Remember Me Episode 2. 10:00 Start Up A Coffee Date. 10:30 Articulate with Jim Cotter The Cutting Edge of Stained Glass. 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
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7:00 My Mother and Other Strangers Episode 5. Conclusion. 8:00 Grantchester on Masterpiece Part 5. 9:00 Remember Me Episode 1. A social worker falls to her death. 10:00 Start Up The Cheese Board. 10:30 Articulate with Jim Cotter Watsky on How to Ruin Everything. 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
Photograph by Jerry Atnip
Linda Dyer serves as an appraiser, broker, and consultant in the field of antiques and fine art. She has appeared on the PBS production Antiques Roadshow since season one, which aired in 1997, as an appraiser of Tribal Arts. If you would like Linda to consider appraising one of your antiques, send a clear, detailed image to info@nashvillearts.com. Or send photo to Antiques, Nashville Arts Magazine, 644 West Iris Dr., Nashville, TN 37204.
APPRAISEIT BY LINDA DYER
Chinese Miniature Famille Rose Vase
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his diminutive piece of porcelain, of historical and cultural value, was made during possibly the shortest reign of an emperor of China. Starting In 1912, Yuan Shikai, a general, war lord, and reformist minister under the Qing dynasty, played an important role in bringing about the end of 2,000 years of imperial rule. However, while serving as the first president of the new “Republic of China,” he promptly resorted to absolutist tactics, one of which was announcing, in 1915, a new imperial dynasty, proclaiming his reign as Emperor of the Chinese Empire under the era name of Hongxian (Constitutional Abundance). The Hongxian Dynasty was ended in March of 1916 when opposition to his arrogant, ruthless behaviors lined up against him, forcing him to abdicate and permanently ending the rule of monarchy in China. His self-appointed position as “Emperor” lasted less than 100 days. The effects of years of China’s internal discourse, with the end of monarchs and the coming age of republican rule, was a time of profound hardship for Chinese artisans. With the loss of imperial patronage, no longer could an artist devote endless hours to the creation of a masterwork. The master artisans of this period often had to abandon their arts for service in the continual wars of the times or to find labor that would support their families. Should this beautifully painted, baluster-form vase from the short-lived Hongxian Dynasty go to auction, it may find its way back to the land of its creation. A quality piece that has been in private hands for close to 100 years would be very attractive to the Chinese buyers who are actively pursuing outstanding historic examples of their heritage. A conservative estimate for this eggshell-thin porcelain vase, at auction, would be $700 to $900. na
Seal mark: Consists of the name of the Chinese dynasty and the reign of the emperor during which the piece was made. It comprises four or six Chinese characters and is usually found on the base of a work of art commissioned for the emperor or his imperial household.
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Hongxian seal mark and of the period (1916) Painted with two rectangular cartouches depicting figures at leisure, height 3½ inches Collected in China, circa 1918 – descended in family
Rhoda Vera ... My late brother was Richard-Pryor funny and bad to the bone. He was born James Alfred Chapman IV, but everybody called him Jamie. He was tall—six feet, seven inches—and he lived only forty years, which may explain why he cut such a wide swath during his life span. To this day I run into people who knew and loved him. I’ll be out signing books somewhere and, inevitably, someone will come up and say, “God, I loved your brother!” then proceed to tell me some wild story. Often these stories came with a photograph. The one below was taken after Jamie had redecorated a recreational vehicle belonging to Jimbo and Kim Harrelson, family friends from Sumter, South Carolina.
Williamson County Culture
Jamie was a gifted interior designer who worked out of Atlanta. Every now and then, he’d take on a project just for the hell of it. In this case, a deal was struck—Jamie would redecorate the Harrelsons’ RV, if they’d let him take it to Connecticut for a Big Hair Convention. (Don’t ask.) Anyway, Jamie described his decorative style for this project as “a cross between railroad baron and Call of the Wild.” Let’s just say a lot of tapestry fabrics with wild animals woven in were involved.
James Alfred Chapman IV
Okay. So a few days after the newly decorated RV had been returned to the Harrelsons, their phone rang. Acording to Kim (who answered the call), the exchange went like this: “Hello.” “What’s her name?” “What’s whose name?” “The RV ... what’s her name?” “Oh, hi Jamie. Well, we don’t really name our vehicles.” Click. A few hours later, their phone rang again. This time the exchange was even more brief. “Hello?” “RHODA. VERA.” Click. Marshall Chapman is a Nashville-based singer/songwriter, author, and actress. For more information, visit www.tallgirl.com.
BEYONDWORDS
Photograph by Anthony Scarlati
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BY MARSHALL CHAPMAN
MYFAVORITEPAINTING
Suzanne Economopoulos, Mares of Janow, Acrylic on canvas, 24” x 36”
KIMBERLY DOUGLAS, FAMILY RISK MANAGER, BB&T INSURANCE SERVICES
For more information on the artist, visit www.facebook.com/ZanEconomopoulos
I first saw this painting at the annual Egyptian Event and Show
The artist took a picture of these alabaster mares, which are sisters, at Janow National Stud in Poland. The Janow Podlaski Stud, established in 1817, is the oldest state-owned-and-operated horse stud in Poland and is also the most beautiful. All of these mares were daughters of Negatiw, a very prominent sire for all Arabian bloodstock. Fun fact: One of the mares in this picture was purchased by Shirley Watts, wife of the Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts. She was at the Stud at the same time Suzanne was there. I have found that a great picture prompts the arrival of a new animal in my life. The purchase of this auction piece lead me to my grey Arabian gelding. Ironically, my grey gelding is also of Polish decent. When I look at this picture I dream. na
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Kimberly Douglas
Photograph by Jerry Atnip
to celebrate the Straight Egyptian horse. It is held each June in Lexington, Kentucky, at the Kentucky Horse Park. At every event there is always a silent auction with very distinguished equine art. This particular work, much inspired by 18th-century English painter George Stubbs, was done by artist Suzanne “Zan” Economopoulos.