Paul HARMON Bob NUGENT Aretha McKINNEY Devin GOEBEL Joel Daniel PHILLIPS Michi MEKO
The first major exhibition to explore the various ways American artists responded to the First World War.
October 6–January 21
Organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
World War I and American Art at PAFA was made possible in part by major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor, and from the Henry Luce Foundation. The PAFA Presenting Sponsor for this exhibition is the Exelon Foundation and PECO.
Downtown Nashville 919 Broadway Nashville, TN 37203 fristcenter.org/wwi #WWIFCVA
The Frist Center is supported in part by the FRIENDS OF AMERICAN ART and
Childe Hassam (1859–1935). Early Morning on the Avenue in May 1917, 1917. Oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 361/8 in. Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, Bequest of Candace C. Stimson, 1944.20. Photo: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover/Art Resource, NY
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
SOUTHERN NARRATIVE Artof Ke Francis The
October 7-26 paintings woodblocks woodcut prints books sculpture watercolor
Harpy, Rabbit, and Mojo Hat (12 Color Woodcut, 58.5x40in.)
THE
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5 T H AV ENU E O F THE ARTS • D OWNTOWN NASHVI LLE
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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
MASTERHEIST
New Work by Herb Williams
Stolen Starry Night
“Bad artists copy, good artists steal” – Picasso “Good artists copy, great artists steal” – Warhol
October 7–31, 2017 5 T H AV E N U E O F T H E A R T S
DOWNTOWN NASHVILLE The Rymer Gallery / 233 Fifth Avenue / Nashville 37219 / 615.752.6030 / www.therymergallery.com
HISTORY EMBR ACING A RT
Stitches, Acrylic on canvas, 60” x 48”
J UL I E
A .
H A RV E Y
Artist Reception • October 6, 6-9pm
202 2nd Ave. South, Franklin, TN 37064
•
www.gallery202art.com
•
615-472-1134
TINNEY CONTEMPORARY
©Joel Daniel Phillips
WELCOME TO THE ORANGE WEST NEW WORK BY JOEL DANIEL PHILLIPS October 7 - November 11, 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
October 2017 26
Features
Loup Garou by Louviere + Vanessa
on view through October 20 at MTSU Baldwin Gallery Photograph courtesy of Obscura Gallery
74 Joel Daniel Phillips Welcome to the Orange West
74
20 The Main Event 22
32
Remembering My Father Watkins College Unveils Two Sculptures that Honor the Memory of Art Patron Walter Schatz
26 Michi Meko Mekovision - How Far We Haven’t Come 32 Paul Harmon Still Making Discoveries After All These Years 39 Devin Goebel Yard Sale 42 Aretha McKinney Iyengar Yoga Instructor Showcases Her Paintings at Jalan-Jalan
54
46 Artclectic At University School of Nashville 48 World War I and American Art At the Frist Center for the Visual Arts
48
78 Dave Pomeroy Connecting Sound and Sight 80 Bennet LeMaster Artclectic October 19-21 84 Above It All Aerial Innovations Bird’s Eye View of Nashville
88 The Spirit of Man Tennessee State University Art Gallery October 9 to November 20 100 Leslie Haines Beyond the C Word
Columns 16 Crawl Guide
42
92 As I See It by Liz Clayton Scofield 54 To Move into Knowing The Sentido throughout Bob Nugent’s Ecos de Inhotim 59 Jazzmania At The Factory at Franklin October 14 62 Haunted Making Room for Nashville’s Ghosts 64 In the Gallery Herb Williams 66 The Southern Festival of Books Puts Emphasis on Art of the Written Word 68 Love It or Loathe It Nashville Walls Project Is Here to Stay
96 And So It Goes by Rachael McCampbell 98 Sounding Off by Joseph E. Morgan 102 Art Smart by Rebecca Pierce 106 NPT 110 ArtSee 113 Beyond Words by Marshall Chapman 114 My Favorite Painting
LAURA BAUGH 615.330.3051
The Baugh Group
worth properties, llc
laurabaugh3@gmail.com | brshawrealtor@gmail.com | cherylf@worthproperties.com GATED COMMUNITY OF AVALON
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Mediterranean luxury home in gated community adjoins Richland Country Club. Fabulous updates, chef ’s kitchen, great for entertaining. Putting green overlooking private outdoor oasis.
Brick & Stone home on a private cul-de-sac. Two-story entry, paneled study and elevator. Professional kitchen open to breakfast and family room. Enclosed porch with fireplace.
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4 HOMES FROM $799,000-$999,900
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LAURA BAUGH 615.330.3051(M) | 615.250.7880 (O) LAURABAUGH3@GMAIL.COM
ANNANDALE WITH RESORT INSPIRED POOL
Donna Rizzo
291 JONES PARKWAY | $3,750,000 European style home on private 1+acre lot. Cooks kitchen with Calcutta Gold marble open to breakfast & family room. Walnut hardwoods, theater, resort pool with slide, cabana, outdoor kitchen, fireplace & bath. Wine cellar, and in-law suite.
MAJOR PRICE REDUCTION
28 GOVERNORS WAY | $4,198,000 Stunning estate on 18th Fairway. Open floorplan. Beautiful hardwood floors. Outdoor living with gunite pool, hot tub and kitchen. Theatre. Billiard. Safe room.
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A Fine-Artisan Gallery Located in the Historic Village of Leiper’s Fork, TN
308 WHITE SWANS CROSSING | $5,294,000 Sophisticated Mediterranean Estate, exquisite finishes, chef ’s kitchen, inviting indoor/outdoor living. 4 ensuite bedrooms, theater, exercise, elevator, private pool & cabana, gran loggia, copper windows, porte-cochere, and gated drive.
4136 Old Hillsboro Road 37064 www.thecopperfoxgallery.com (615) 861-6769
Shaking the Twilight, Reeds, Rain, and Vapors 84 x 66 inches | 2017
A Great City Deserves Great Art I think the whole of Nashville shed a collective tear with Jessi Zazu’s passing. Young, immensely talented, and a true artist in every sense of the word. The body of work she leaves us is inspired and inspirational. We have one of her pieces Jessi Zazu hanging in our office, a constant reminder to take nothing and no one for granted. Thank you, Jessi. The eclipse came and went. I enjoyed every second of it. Despite the hours of ponderous, laborious, analysis paralysis by all the news media on the planet about the hows and wherefores, it finally came down to our own personal reaction to the celestial phenomenon. Sometimes it’s good to be quiet, stand, and admire. Much like looking at a work of art. Paul Harmon has been a guiding figure in our local and international art scene for a long time, and Bennet LeMaster is taking her first steps in that direction. I’m delighted they are both featured in this issue. Paul Polycarpou | Publisher
A Branch of Anne Daigh Landscape Architect
S ha k i n g th e Twilig ht O p e n i n g O c t . 1 9 TH, 6 - 9 P M Galerie Tangerine is free + open by appointment Monday through Friday, 9 AM - 5 PM 615 454.4103 Located at 900 South Street, Suite 104
w w w.g a le r i etangeri ne.c om
280 White Bridge Pike, Nashville, TN 37209 615.356.9596 www.lumenlamps.com
Photograph by Alysse Gafkjen
CORRINE COLARUSSO
Publisher’s Note
BENNET T GALLERIES Opening Reception Friday, November 10 • 6:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. Featuring New Works From
TRACY SHARP
STEPHEN BACH
The Promise, Oil on canvas, 40” x 40”
SCOTT E. HILL
Destiny, Mixed media on paper, 12” x 20”
Raise the Flag, Oil on board, 48” x 54”
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
Judith Poirier, Hatch Show Print’s Haley Gallery
October Crawl Guide Franklin Art Scene Friday, October 6, from 6 until 9 p.m.
Experience historic downtown Franklin and enjoy a variety of art during the Franklin Art Scene. Gallery 202 is showcasing large-scale abstract works on canvas by Julie Harvey. Danielle Del Valle, Moyer Financial The guest artist at Parks on Main is jewelry maker Linda Burns. Jack Yacoubian Jewelry welcomes artist and printmaker Mike Martino. Moyer Financial is hosting local photographer Danielle Del Valle. Wood turner John Green from Southern Vintage Woodworks is displaying his heirloom pieces at Bagbey House. Enjoy performaces by singer songwriter Heide Buyck at Scout’s Barbershop. Academy Park Enrichment and Performing Arts is exhibiting fiber art by Wendy Franklin and paintings by Samantha Nolloth. Willow Plunge Arts at The Factory at Franklin is featuring photographs of the Julie Harvey, Gallery 202 endangered wild mustangs of Utah by photographer Kisa Kavass. San Francisco-based artist Chloé Meyer is showing her abstract oil paintings at Williamson County Archives and Museum. The Arts Company and O’More College of Design are presenting The Gee’s Bend Quilt Collection Rugs at the Robert Moore Gallery on campus. See original illustrations created by Cory Basil for his young-reader novel The Perils of Fishboy at Imaginebox Emporium. Hope Church Franklin is exhibiting a variety of work by Linda Watson. At Franklin First United Methodist Church find custom handcrafted gifts utilizing mostly local hand harvested woods by Reid Jacobs and a collaborative display of art from students at Pearre Creek Elementary. Wellspring Financial is featuring recent work by Lauren Ann Markham. Winchester Antiques is hosting Linda Gale Boyles, owner and creative director of Southern Inspirations by Linda Gale. The Farmhouseby: Zula & Mac is showcasing paintings by Harrison Houlé. For more information and the trolley schedule, visit www.downtownfranklintn.com/the-franklin-art-scene.
sculpture, paintings, woodcuts, and engravings. Tinney Contemporary is unveiling Joel Daniel Phillips: Welcome to the Orange West, an exhibition of hyperrealistic charcoal and graphite drawings (see page 74). The Rymer Gallery is exhibiting Masterheist, a new series of Herb Williams’s crayon sculptures (see page 64). The Browsing Room Gallery at the Downtown Presbyterian Church is showing Michael Dickins’s installation Wailing Wall, where faceless voices cry out from a slick, manufactured wall. In the historic Arcade, Blend Studio is hosting an artists’ reception for Off the Beaten Path: Breanna Kincaid, William Kooienga, Abraham Pardee, and Amy Potter. The show includes textiles and felted wool, sculpture, fine woodwork, architectural ceramics, and hand-forged metal sculpture and furnishings. Blue Fig Gallery is showcasing large format landscape screen prints by printmaker Mike Martino. Opening at noon, “O” Gallery is highlighting bold abstract paintings by Diane Lee. Hatch Show Print’s Haley Gallery is displaying Setting West: From Print to Film to Print, work by this year’s Artist in Residence Judith Poirier. While at Hatch Show Print guests are invited to participate in Block Party where they can work with the shop’s image blocks and ink to create a design to hand print onto paper, a tote bag, or a t-shirt. Mary Hong Gallery at 414 Union Street inside the Bank of America building is featuring fine art painting with glass. For more, visit www.nashvilledowntown.com/play/first- saturday-art-crawl.
Arts & Music @ Wedgewood/Houston Saturday, October 7, from 6 until 9 p.m.
From Hagen to Houston to Chestnut and beyond, Arts & Music @ Wedgewood/Houston offers a broad range of artistic experience. Zeitgeist is showing Alex Blau’s Night Swimming and Lain York’s Ghost collection. Julia Martin Gallery is unveiling Yard Sale by Devin Goebel (see page 39). David Lusk Gallery is exhibiting Thin Air by Catherine Erb. Enjoy Shadyville by Heather Hartman and Eleanor Aldrich at Channel to Channel. At East Side
First Saturday Art Crawl Downtown
Saturday, October 7, from 6 until 9 p.m. The Arts Company is presenting Southern Narrative: The Art of Ke Francis, a comprehensive diverse art exhibit representing one of the most prolific artists in the Southeast. A narrative artist, his darkly humorous stories are conveyed through a variety of art genres, including book arts, Brian Edmonds, East Side Project Space
Ke Francis, The Arts Company
Project Space curator Jodi Hays is presenting Eyes Like Enemies, new work by Mark Brosseau and Brian Edmonds. A panel discussion titled The Position of the Painter (in “political” times) is scheduled for Friday, October 6, at 3 p.m. Open Gallery is featuring Mind Garden, a series of paintings by local artist Evan Boutte. COOP Gallery is hosting an opening reception for Evan Boutte, Open Gallery Everybody Screen Grabbed My Extinction, a collection of works by Elisabeth Pellathy. This series is a part of a larger print-based body of work dealing with digital screen culture, which explores the casual nature of browser-based imagery juxtaposed with the permanence of extinction. Ground Floor Gallery is showcasing Rods and Ribbons, a solo exhibition awarded to Nashville artist Gil Given after being selected as “Best in Show” by Austin Thomas, a NYC-based artist and community builder. His most recent work, the ribbon paintings, leave the two-dimensional scope of the canvas and incorporate sculptural elements. BW Gallery is holding a pop-up gallery event from 12 until 9 p.m. with more than 15 local artists participating. For more information, visit www.artsmusicweho.wordpress.com.
The Boro Crawl
Friday, October 13, from 6 until 9 p.m. Fine craft artists from the Murfreesboro Studio Tour are joining the Boro Art Crawl this month. The Murfreesboro Studio Tour Artists including fiber artists, weavers, jewelers, painters, and other craftspeople are showing their work in the former Henry’s Florist building on the corner of Church and Main Streets. The Center for the Arts will feature the fun and irreverent paintings and prints of pop artist Liz Kelly Liz Kelly, Center for the Arts Zook. Additional artists are being hosted at Bella’s Boutique, Trendy Pieces, Center for the Arts, Concert Productions, Murfreesboro City Hall Rotunda, Jimmy Fox Insurance, Vibe Nutrition, Green Dragon, Two Tone Gallery, Mayday Brewery, Murfreesboro Art League, Dreamingincolor, Sugaree’s, Quinn’s Mercantile, Funtiques, Let’s Make Wine, Simply Pure Sweets, The Boutique at Studio C Photography, and The Write Impression. In celebration of the Boro Art Crawl’s second anniversary, local cable access celebrity Murphy Borrow will be on hand. For more about the Boro Art Crawl, visit www.boroartcrawl.com.
East Side Art Stumble
Saturday, October 14, from 6 until 10 p.m. Red Arrow Gallery is presenting I am listening by Tara Walters. An extended cinema piece by Walters is scheduled to show on Friday, October 13. At Michael Weintrob Studio see the
artist’s Instrument Head work and new book. The Green Gallery at Turnip Green Creative Reuse is exhibiting Study in Blue: A Creative Journey, a culmination of mixedmedia techniques, assemblage, and the repurposing of found objects by Michelle Bukowski. Southern Michelle Bukowski, The Green Gallery Grist Brewery is featuring large and richly colored paintings by Ryan Rado. Nashville Community Darkroom is opening a show by local photographer and musician Joshua Black Wilkins, titled The Blue Pencil Project, a photographic essay on the censorship of the female breast in our social media platforms. Art & Invention Gallery is showing New Works by Sarah Kaufman. For more, visit www.facebook.com/ Sarah Kaufman, Art & Invention Gallery eastsideartstumble.
Two Old Hippies
Wednesday, October 18, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Award-winning photographer Lynn Goldsmith is signing copies of her newest book Kiss 1977–1980. Documenting what is arguably the band’s most important and prolific era, the book includes 245 black-and-white and color images, which are highlighted with Lynn Goldsmith, Two Old Hippies intimate commentary by KISS founders Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. Of the book, Simmons commented, “Working on this book with Lynn brought back memories of a magic time and place, when we all dreamt big and wanted to reach for the stars.” For more, visit www.twooldhippies.com.
Germantown Art Crawl
Saturday, October 21, from 6 until 9 p.m. Tour the non-traditional art spaces of Germantown to see an array of artworks by a variety of artists. As you make your way through the neighborhood, stop at these key art spots: 100 Taylor Arts Collective, Abednego, Wilder, Bits & Pieces, Bearded Iris Brewing, and Alexis & Bolt. For more, please visit www.facebook.com/ germantownartcrawl.
Jefferson Street Art Crawl
Saturday, October 28, from 6 until 9 p.m. Woodcuts Gallery and Framing is exhibiting Recent Works by Charly Palmer. 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.
2017 October 19-21 l
l
l
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artclectic.org
Thursday, October 19: Patrons Party 6:30 – 9:30 p.m. $125 per person Friday, October 20: ARTbash Community Party 5:30 – 8:30 p.m. Free Saturday, October 21: Artclectic 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Free Saturday, October 21: POPclectic Artisan Market 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. Free
Miles and Music Foundation
Photograph by Richard Sparkman
W
Photograph by Mike Merrill
ith all the hoopla of a world-title boxing match, the total solar eclipse finally made its appearance on August 21. For exactly 1 minute and 57 seconds we all oohed and aahed as the two celestial giants went toe to toe. And what a show it was. This time the event outweighed the hype. We asked our readers to share their once-in-a-lifetime moments with us. Here are a few of the images we received. The rest can be found online at Nashvillearts.com.
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Photograph by Stacie Huckeba
MAIN EVENT
Photograph by Jo Fields
The
Photograph by Wayne Hutton
NASHVILLEARTS.COM
Photograph by Janis Tomanek
21 Photograph by Stacie Huckeba
Photograph by Jo Fields
Photograph by Wendy Whittemore
Photograph by Bill Lund
Photograph by Jackie Rule
Remembering My Father Watkins College Unveils Two Sculptures that Honor the Memory of Art Patron Walter Schatz
Walter Schatz
WORDS F. Douglass Schatz
T
his past summer, I created and installed a new outdoor sculpture on the grounds of Watkins College of Art in Nashville, Tennessee. This piece was commissioned by the school to honor my father, Walter Schatz, a longtime member of the Watkins Board of Trustees. Walter was very influential in the arts in Nashville as an art patron, community organizer, and artist. He believed in the power of art and welcomed the chance to talk to artists and art enthusiasts whenever he could. He was certainly an instrumental voice in the Nashville art scene for as long as I can remember.
“
No sculpture can really capture his spirit, energy, or personality, but this sculpture, based on memory and place, feels like it does at least some justice to such a great champion of the arts.
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NASHVILLEARTS.COM
Though he mostly collected prints and drawings over his lifetime, he had a relatively late but intense love of sculpture. He was a trustee for the International Sculpture Center and was influential in building sculpture parks in Quebec and Chattanooga. He was particularly interested in public art, having been on the Metro Nashville Arts Commission for many years. It is my hope that this piece will be a great reminder of his willful benevolence, but also a touchstone for new artists being educated at Watkins now and in the future. This sculpture was a departure for me artistically—I rarely do site-specific works. I usually let my vision coalesce first and decide where to place a sculpture second. At the site, there were two concrete pads already in place, so I wanted to utilize them together, a call and response. One looked like a boat form and the other a circle, while in between there was a concrete path that resembled a meandering river on a topographic map. These forms all together were what generated the nautical theme and the thought process for the final sculpture.
Photograph by Sam Angel Photograph by Sam Angel
Sculptor Doug Schatz with his creations
I had always remembered my father taking me and my brother to see the barges being launched at the Nashville Bridge Company downtown, so I used this as a starting point for my concept. It was a cool event for a kid (not a lot was going on in Nashville back then), and it is a memory that always stuck with me. Since Watkins is near the Cumberland River, I wanted to use the concept of the river to tie together my memories and the college’s proximity. For this reason, I chose to make a boat—as if being launched—and some waves splashing about. I wanted the boat to function like a ghost or memory rather than a solid boat form, so I went with a light color and a visually light form. This aspect was important because my father is gone, but always still with me. The boat as a vessel or container is nonfunctioning, but still present. I chose to model it after an Adirondack guide boat—an artifact of the place I currently reside, and a classic form that is simple and relatable.
ago (as a model) that my father enjoyed. He always said, “Why don’t you make this one really big?” So, taking inspiration from his interest in that piece, I constructed a twelve-foot version. It has three large steel elements that hold a sphere among them. Inside the sphere is an anchor, which is a nod to my dad who was the person that kept me grounded the most. The anchor is forever in stasis and unable to ever be used, so it functions as a memory similar to the boat—present but inaccessible.
For the other structure, I selected a form that I had made years
For more information, visit www.watkins.edu.
Serendipitously, the project was installed one year to the day from when my father died. Though not planned, this became a highlight for me personally, given the scope and scale of the project. I feel like no sculpture can really capture his spirit, energy, or personality, but this sculpture, based on memory and place, feels like it does at least some justice to such a great champion of the arts. na
NASHVILLEARTS.COM
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Rick French 615.604.2323
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Storm Warning, 2017, Mixed media, 66” x 48”
He soaks in the complexities of navigating a mostly white space and remains open to learning from his encounters. Ultimately the artist is aware that he has no control over how people view him.
WORDS Sara Lee Burd
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Mekovision
Meko How Far We Haven’t Come
MICHI
Austin Peay State University
| October 2 through 22
M
ichi Meko finds fault in statements such as, “Look how far we’ve come; we’ve had our first black president,” saying, “but then look at what happened right after that.” With the recent displays of violence and hatred in Charlottesville, Virginia, at a white Nationalist rally in August of 2017, the existence of racism in America is undeniable. Meko stares that reality in the face to make works of art that speak from his perspective as a man entangled within our current times. The artist explains with some annoyance, “I can look back to my father’s stories and hear about living under Jim Crow in Birmingham. He’s 70+ years old. A large part of his life was dealing with that stuff. Now we are in this undertow, and we are being dragged out into this same old shit.” Clarifying his approach to conceiving ideas and making art, Meko explains, “My work is never about the trauma or woe is me. I don’t feel inferior. I thank my father for that. My work is about heroes, about the strength and perseverance of people, especially black people.”
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experienced by many in the black community. In a trip to Eastern Sierras, Lone Pine, California, Meko was set to map coordinates of where he met people that looked like him. He notes with disappointment, “I didn’t encounter another black hiker . . . I was hoping to.” Aware that misconceptions of people and places create barriers, the artist pursues his authentic interests. He soaks in the complexities of navigating a mostly white space and remains open to learning from his encounters. Ultimately the artist is aware that he has no control over how people view him. The pervasive use of nautical imagery in Meko’s art has multiple layers of significance. He has created a visual vocabulary that allows fluid interpretation but also has specific significances to himself. In Storm Before We Blast Off: The Journey of Divine Forces, 2016, Mixed media, 168” x 300” Warning, the artist presents a nautical scene that expresses anxiety and turbulence. The bottom Meko grew up a Boy Scout and has never lost his appetite half of the artwork features a sea of multi-hued black paint for being in nature. He prides himself on being a fisherman applied with ferocious brushstrokes. Bobbers and an ocean and sharpshooter but is aware that many in the black buoy are depicted struggling to withstand the choppy community do not feel safe in rural and wilderness areas. waves. The top portion of the composition contains lines The disconnection with nature felt by many people of color that indicate nautical distance and lead to the specific has been attributed to many factors, including limited coordinates of Washington, DC—perhaps the epicenter access to public and national parks during the years of of the rocking water causing the undertow. Nautical flags “separate but equal” legislation which began with the within the composition directly communicate warnings Supreme Court Ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. The of danger that Meko has encountered through his own Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned racial discrimination and journeys in the water. He explains the inspiration behind segregation in public and private spaces. Today, groups the imagery: “I felt in this past political climate we would such as Outdoor Afro continue to bridge the divide be taken out into an undertow. Much like the ocean. There are many ways of surviving that, but the initial takeout into the undertow, the unknown, is the scariest part.” In Life Preserved, Meko includes another recurring symbol, cast-iron skillets, which carries many meanings in his art—one in particular that Meko shared: “They came into the work because my mom had given me some skillets. She said, ‘These will outlive you if you take care of them correctly.’ It made me start thinking about wealth and how generational wealth works, and how in Southern history, people clamor for grandma’s skillets.” They also nod to the actuality that this isn’t the only thing that gets passed down for generations. This installation features a triptych of life preservers from the Undertow series, presented bound by rope
The Antique Blacks, 2017, Mixed media, 84” x 90”
The Thing, 2017, Wire and leather, 14” x 8” x 8”
The Last Smile, 2017, Found Google images on poster stock, packing tape, 72” x 90”
with suspended cast-iron skillets below. There is tension between the function of the floatation device and the heavy black pans weighing them down. The black paint contrasts against the bright orange fabric covering the safety vest, calling attention to the impending dangerous position people of color abide in the wake of the 2016 election.
These works are true to his own story; they trace the passage of the artist’s emotions, thoughts, and questions that arise through his lived experience. “I’m making maps of my own survival, of trying to get through all these things. The -isms,” he explains. His identity is shaped by histories not so far gone, but he rejects stereotypes that conflict with who he knows himself to be. He describes his mission as an artist: “to distill what I see and make it digestible for a viewing audience . . . or not.” That’s no small task, as he states, “I’m an artist, for God’s sake. That’s one of the hardest jobs ever.”
Showing at universities frees Meko of the need to sell his art and allows him to be more direct. Much like traversing wilderness is a political and artistic process for him, having his art exhibited in different spaces is also a way of subverting the norm just by being there. As Meko concludes, “I want to give students a museum-quality exhibition so that students can enjoy that, ask questions, or see how I worked it out. I’m not sure if they will take something from it or not, but I want it to be available.” na See How Far We Haven’t Come at Austin Peay State University’s New Gallery October 2 through 22. For more information, visit www.apsu.edu/art-design/exhibitions-speakers/newgallery.php and www.michimeko.com.
How Far We Haven’t Come at Austin Peay State University’s New Gallery features work from the Undertow series and new explorations the artist has developed assembling large-scale wall maps. The latter works are more private in that the history he preserves is his own personal memory of his family members who have passed. But Meko acknowledges the relatable public context of when and where these people lived.
Michi fishing a lake in the Owens River Valley, California
Photograph by Cara Despain
Meko uses multiple mediums, which is part of his exploration as an artist and scholar of the history of art. His recurring inclusion of gold leaf is one way in which Meko rebels from tradition. Gold leafing has been used for centuries to signify preciousness and opulence. However, the metal itself has a deeply dark history related to human rights, greed, wealth, and value. He observes the way it has been used in decoration across the globe, and how it is also bought at pawn shops at less than market price. This tension inspires him to subvert the material: “It’s not a delicate process for me. It is rough and kind of mean the way I use gold leaf. It’s also gold leaf as a design element in my work and applying it in ways that I’d like to see things gold leafed.”
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I wanted to paint my life, the things that were in my life, and I wanted to paint them in a way that has my DNA in it.
A Long, Long Sleep, A Famous Sleep (Emilie Dickinson), 2016, Oil on canvas, 45” x 78”
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WORDS Karen Parr-Moody
Paul Harmon Still Making Discoveries After All These Years Haynes Galleries at Dane Carder Studio October 5–November 18
N
ight protects Paul Harmon, its dark embrace cocooning him from the trivialities of the day, allowing him to paint straight through to morning. His studio lies at the end of a curved road in what used to be the Brentwood countryside. To get there, one must drive past his historic home, the circa-1793 Alexander Smith House. It is a white farmhouse that looms large in the evening, illuminated by a single spotlight as though it were a stage prop. Beyond the house sits the original smokehouse, built in 1812, that forms the nucleus of Harmon’s studio. Within its brightly lit rooms, in the wee hours, the outside world gets small, and Harmon’s inner world expands. “That studio light, that’s the world,” Harmon says. “Where that light doesn’t shine, the world just doesn’t exist anymore. Because painting has to be with focus. There’s a special place you go to when you’re painting.”
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Essay About Landscape, 2014, Oil on canvas, 40” x 30”
The Unwritten Ode, 2016, Oil on canvas, 40” x 30”
“I feel like I’ve been on the same track since 1961, with the first decent painting I painted,” Harmon says. The thick black lines retain the fluidity of a charcoal scribble. Critics have likened Rouault’s oil paintings to stained-glass windows due to the framework he created with lines. Similarly, Harmon likens his own work to enamel cloisonné. “With that bold line the work has had, from the 60s on up until last night, that feeling of cloisonné, in which it’s all bound by the line,” he says. “I’ve always been fond of the graphic, heavy stamp of the line.”
Woman of Algiers (for Delacroix), 2010, Oil on canvas, 36” x 48”
The nocturnal routine of this internationally known artist has existed for years and has worked to great advantage. Born in Brentwood in 1939, Harmon has spent his entire life as a working artist, garnering awards and selling his art to carefully curated collections. His work is currently represented by a dozen galleries in the U.S. alone. “I just have a great job,” he says. Like one of his favorite painters, Georges Henri Rouault, Harmon went from easily painting academically to developing a style that incorporates bold stencil lines.
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In Nashville, Harmon’s work is represented by Haynes Galleries, Gary Haynes’s prestigious gallery that also offers works from the American luminaries John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, and Andrew Wyeth. From 5 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, October 5, the gallery will introduce a retrospective exhibit of Harmon’s work with an opening reception at Houston Station’s Dane Carder Studio at 438 Houston Street, Suite 262. Entitled Paul Harmon: Inner Voices and Crossing Borders, the exhibit is designed to encompass a chronology of the artist’s work as well as his various mediums, including oil paintings, lithographs, scratchboard, pastels, and painted pottery.
Raven: Marrakesh, 2016, Oil on canvas, 40” x 30”
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Such Shaping Fantasies (from A Midsummer Night’s Dream), 2010, d’Arches paper collaged on canvas, painted in oil, 48” x 72”
The Garden, 2013, Oil on canvas, 52” x 64”
Haynes says, “This exhibit is about trying to capture the flavor and energy of his work over a period of a long time.”
“As a young painter, you want to be successful, you want to please. And you get to be an old guy like me and you just think, I need to please myself. If I’m not happy, nobody else is going to be. I’ve always loved the work, but I’m freer now than I’ve ever been.” na
When Harmon looks over his body of work, he experiences ambivalence. “Some of it was surprisingly good, and some of it was surprisingly bad,” he says as he sits by a fireplace in his studio. Nearby are massive clay vases on which he has painted designs in thick black lines. He switches up his mediums, experiencing the mechanics of different ones.
Paul Harmon: Inner Voices and Crossing Borders opens with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, October 5, at Dane Carder Studio at 438 Houston Street, Suite 262. The exhibit remains on view until November 18. For more information, please visit www.haynesgalleries.com and www.danecarder.com. See more of Harmon’s work, visit www.paulharmon.com.
“As an old guy, I’m still discovering things, and it’s still exciting and interesting for me,” he says. Covering the walls of the room are his oil paintings on canvas, blooming with a vibrant color palette that is comprised of the primaries black and violet. The paintings repeat certain motifs—rabbits, birds, chairs—but Harmon has never sought out a singular object by which to be marketed.
Harmon does remember the strong desire to be successful that comes with being a young, unknown painter. “Children sit down to paint—finger paint or paint with a brush or make things in clay—and they just have the best time,” he says. “But it’s not so easy for an adult to put aside galleries and pricing and all of these other influences and paint joyfully like a child. I’ve worked on that for a lot of years, and I think I’m pretty much there.
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Paul Harmon in his studio
Photograph by Danielle Atkins
“I wanted to have a signature, but I wanted that signature to be the way I painted, whether I was painting a ’57 Buick or a pedestal vase with fruit in it, or an odalisque,” he says. “I wanted to paint my life, the things that were in my life, and I wanted to paint them in a way that has my DNA in it. To me that was the most important thing.”
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YORK & Friends fine art Nashville • Memphis
LASSIE MCDONALD CROWDER 107 Harding Place • Tues-Sat 10-5 615.352.3316 • yorkandfriends@att.net www.yorkandfriends.com Follow us on at York & Friends Fine Art Blue Door, Greece, Oil on linen, 16” x 20”
CHRYSANTHEMUMS. HARD TO PRONOUNCE, EASY ON THE EYE. C H E E K WO O D H A RV E ST SEPT 23 - OCT 29 Enjoy the colors of the season with more than 5,000 chrysanthemums. Presented by Made possible in part by funds from the Horticultural Society of Middle Tennessee.
cheekwood.org | 1200 Forrest Park Dr, Nashville, TN 37205
Photograph by Kristine Potter
YARD SALE
Devin Goebel WORDS Noah Saterstrom
Julia Martin Gallery
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I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all. I am for an artist who vanishes.
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October 6–November 18
C
laes Oldenburg made this observation about the role of the artist and the point of Art. And Devin Goebel may turn into one of these artists who vanish. That’s not to say he doesn’t exist, for he does, of course. In fact, his very real and very visible exhibition Yard Sale opens at Julia Martin Gallery in Wedgewood/Houston on October 6.
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perfect for two cups of coffee, or just one really big one, 2017, Acrylic on panel, plexiglass, 54” x 34”
work is suffused with the sense of a series of well-executed one-liners. The show title of Yard Sale, like that of his recent body of work Pool Party, sets up plenty of amusing associations before you even get to the work itself.
Lawn Chairs, 2017, Acrylic and modified lawn chair on canvas, 72” x 23” x 15”
But the word “vanishing”—or even more, the related “evanescent”—is a good way to describe Goebel’s approach: quickly receding from sight. Goebel, like Oldenburg, has a way of making bold, funny, brightly colored works which appear deposited, almost anonymously, for the amusement of others. There may be a range of possible readings of these objects, but the artist is there to make them and vanish, not to stand and lecture about them. His simple humor has a deadpan delivery; his
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Most of us have been on both sides of the familiar ritual that is the American yard sale. One household is purging, trying in Sisyphean desperation to minimize their belongings, while strangers riffle through them with the hope they’ll find something cheap enough to consider a good deal but valuable enough to add to their own household’s stuff. It is a perennial exchange: cyclical, timeless, and exhausting. Those sitting vigil at yard sales, slouched in folding chairs with coffee, are both welcoming and dismissive—they want you to believe there are treasures there, but heck, they know it’s mostly trash. After all, they’re the ones who put on the “50-cents” stickers. Goebel welcomed me to his studio, behind a transmission repair shop in Inglewood, early one Saturday to look at his show in progress. I passed several yard sales on the way. With only a few weeks left before the opening, he has a laundry list of tasks to complete for each piece. The works—mostly over-sized, hard-edged, painted-wood constructions—are representations of specific items he has (and we have) bought at yard sales: a lamp, a shirt, a coffeepot. His decisions of what to buy, what materials to use, what size, how to construct them, what details to articulate or stylize are determined with
1. Shell Baby, 2016, Relief print, graphite, artist frame, 31” x 30” 2. Brass Lamp, 2017, Acrylic on panel, acrylic on canvas, 70” x 35” 3. Size 18 Party Shirt, 2017, Acrylic on panel, 32” x 29”
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a quiet resolve. Once an approach has been decided, it is hewed to with faith. I am reminded of Sol Le Witt’s admonition (from his Sentences on Conceptual Art) that “irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.” Goebel uses the shared visual language of yard sales as his leverage in this group of objects. We are coming with enough foreknowledge; the vocabulary is already understood. There is the ubiquitous knick-knack-covered card table. Here are the Day-Glo circle stickers marking items as twenty-five cents, fifty cents, a dollar. There is the sign, redolent with Sharpie marker ink and desperate handwriting, that points to the sale. Yard Sale is Goebel’s first solo show since moving from Indiana to Nashville in 2015 to work as a design printer at Hatch Show Print. The theme of the show came naturally as he drove to his studio on Saturday mornings and saw the neon pink and green poster board that is the agreed-upon substrate for yard sale signs. Goebel observes that yard sale signs show no attempt at composition, beauty, or even readability. The human urgency comes through the line quality, which seems to scream, “Please come get this stuff out of my life!” After the sales, Goebel collected signs, isolated the line qualities, and created intuitive compositions by faithfully reproducing them, with a printmaker’s eye to detail, in graphite on high-quality paper. The words are gone, but the no-time-to-waste quality of line has been distilled into choppy abstractions.
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I ask him about his experience of following a conceptual theme. Did his faith in the idea sustain throughout? I mean, as an artist, when things are going well, it’s easy to feel like you’re just doing your work. But if the wind leaves your sails, even for a day, art-making can feel like little more than culturally sanctioned time-wasting. “Yeah, it’s a constant cycle of this is great, this is dumb, this is great, this is dumb. But ultimately if people see the work and can relate to it, that’s a good thing.” Goebel’s show, like a yard sale itself, is a simple exchange that doesn’t need exposition but is worthy of reflection. Goebel shares some of the foolishness of Dada, but not the wartime nihilism that propelled that rebellion. His casual dismissal of overthinking but high regard for simple ideas and crisp craftmanship put him squarely in the company of Pop Art. As Jim Dine said, in what could serve well as a tagline for Yard Sale, “It [Pop Art] is the American Dream, optimistic, generous, and naïve.”
Yard Sale by Devin Goebel opens on Friday, October 6, from 6 until 9 p.m. at Julia Martin Gallery. An artist talk is slated for Friday, October 13. The exhibit is on view through November 18. For more information, visit www.juliamartingallery.com.
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A Portrait in Blue, 2017, Charcoal and pastel on paper, 30” x 22”
Little girl with balloons, 2017, Mixed media on paper, 15” x 11”
Seated Figures in Blue, 2017, Oil on linen canvas, 60” x 40”
Eyes shut, 2017, Mixed media on paper, 15” x 11”
Iyengar yoga instructor
Photograph by Buddy Jackson
Aretha McKinney showcases her paintings at Jalan-Jalan
WORDS John Pitcher
“W
hen I practice, I am a philosopher,” the famed yoga guru Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar once observed. “When I teach, I am a scientist. When I demonstrate, I am an artist.” Iyengar, whose impossibly long name is now usually shortened to just “B.K.S. Iyengar,” is often and correctly perceived as the Father of Modern Yoga. His many best-selling books on the subject helped popularize the discipline throughout the world. Moreover, his systematic approach to learning yoga, from the simplest to most complex poses, is now widely taught. An influential philosopher as well as instructor, Iyengar believed there was a nexus between yoga and art. One of Iyengar’s contemporary disciples, Aretha McKinney, has turned the late great guru’s philosophy into practice. An Iyengar yoga instructor at 12South Yoga in Nashville, McKinney is a prolific visual artist whose paintings will be on display at Jalan-Jalan Antiques in October. Like Iyengar, McKinney believes art and yoga have much in common. In creating a painting, an artist strives to achieve harmony, balance, and proportion. The creative process itself is a kind of inner journey, one that arrives at an understanding of the self that is both transcendent and timeless. Yoga gurus get that, since they are all about transcendence.
The haunting beauty of McKinney’s paintings, along with the novelty of her day job as an Iyengar instructor, captured our attention at Nashville Arts Magazine. We decided to ask her a few questions, seeking to find the intersection between her dual passions. NAM: We don’t often meet yoga instructors with important art exhibits. When did you discover yoga? AM: I started yoga when I was very young. My parents were old hippies, so when I injured myself one day my mother suggested yoga to help with the healing process. I soon discovered B.K.S. Iyengar and his methods, and I found them to be very appealing. I liked his approach because it was thoughtful and philosophical. With his approach, you build up your skills methodically, step by step, as if you were learning piano. That worked for me. NAM: Is there a relation between yoga and art? AM: Yoga is art, a science, and a philosophy. At heart, yoga’s aim is to still the mind and move us towards God, however you define that. We experience yoga through practice. It is a constant creative process, or to be more
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Three figures, 2017, Mixed media on paper, 30” x 22”
NAM: When did you first discover your love for painting? AM: I think I’ve always been creative and interested in art. My parents moved to Tennessee and I grew up on The Farm [the famed hippie commune in Lewis County]. I spent a lot of time outside, and creativity was a big part of the experience. I would make my own puppets and toys to play with, and my mother would encourage me to engage in creative play. A turning point came when I visited the Tennessee State Museum, which was showing an exhibit of Monet and Matisse paintings. I was absolutely enamored. When I was 15, I made my older sister drive me to Cheekwood to study oil painting. I probably shouldn’t say it, but I loved the smell of paint. I started using babysitting money to buy supplies, but it was very expensive. So I gave it up for a while. But fast forward to age 35 and I picked it up again. NAM: Your paintings call to mind such masters as Matisse and Picasso. Could you tell us a little about your influences? AM: I can say that I appreciate the bold palette of artists like Gaugin and Toulouse-Lautrec and even Rothko for that matter, although he is not figurative, of course. I appreciate the reduced lines of great artists like Matisse, Picasso, and even Diego Rivera. I love their ability to express feeling through simple lines and gestures. There are so many to mention it is hard to say one. Locally, I am certainly inspired by the work of my friend Buddy Jackson. And although she does not do figurative work, I love Kit Reuther’s work. These artists capture a feeling or a mood when you look at their work that makes you want to sit with their work for a while. There is an inherent intelligence and thoughtfulness that comes through in their lines and their exquisite palette choices. NAM: Your paintings are vividly colorful. Could you tell us about your use of color? AM: When my grandmother died a few years ago, I was given her old box of pastels. I had never worked with them but found that they are a lot like charcoal as you have the ability to pull, stretch, and smudge lines as you go. I played with my grandmother’s old set and
really loved their boldness and the ease of working with them. I had always thought of pastels as being for boring living-room portraits. I had no idea they were so amazing. Pastels have the vibrancy of oils but are easier in some ways to set up, although they certainly present a challenge in other ways. They have their limits, though, in terms of how much you can work over them. NAM: Your paintings are wonderfully expressive. Could you tell us a little about your subjects? AM: I have painted a handful of portraits of my neighbors. I have also painted my siblings and a few friends as well as some self-studies. Perhaps more than anyone, though, I have painted my daughter. When she was young she would sit with me while I painted. I did quite a few pieces of her then, having her sit for me. Also, I know her best. She often communicates to me silently with her face, and we have our own way of talking to each other without words. I think that comes through to me in my more recent work. I would say that I’ve been more interested in letting a feeling or a thought surface. I find that I am most at peace with the process of painting when I am not trying to confine myself to a perfect rendering but rather letting something inside of me come out. Plus, I swore off doing commissions some time ago after realizing that the process stressed me out. na Artworks by Aretha McKinney is on view at Jalan-Jalan on Saturday, October 7, from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. For more information visit Jalan-Jalan Antiques on Facebook. See more of McKinney’s work by following her on Instagram @arethanadine.
A dream, 2017, Charcoal and pastel on paper, 30” x 22”
honest, a creative struggle. Similarly, at least to me, art moves us into a space that is close to God, and it is in the creative experience of making art and/or viewing art that this happens. I think all art moves us towards something beautiful and transcendent. It’s what leaves us speechless when we stand before something truly beautiful.
University School of Nashville
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October 19–21
WORDS Stephanie Stewart-Howard
U
niversity School of Nashville again hosts its extraordinary art event and benefit, Artclectic, October 19–21, showcasing and selling remarkable works. Artclectic coordinator Susan Chapman, in her fifth year with the show, says she loved it long before she was a part of it—and for the school’s parents, alumni, and long-term patrons, the same is almost universally true. The three-day event features something for everyone, as the school’s gym transforms as though by magic into a gallery filled with glorious works of all kinds. As Chapman says, whether you want something wonderful to hang on your wall, a coffee mug or bowl for your kitchen, a garden sculpture, or a delicate and exquisite piece of jewelry, it’s all there. From the door, she says, you can easily see works from a huge percentage of artists; it’s overwhelming until you walk in and can focus on individual pieces that draw your eye. Chair Lori Fishel says, “Artclectic is more than just an art show; it’s a community party with art and jewelry. Our artists come from all over the country—and we have great representation of different mediums. Our ArtBash community party, Friday night, is a great way to see the show in a party environment. Popclectic, on Saturday, is a fun addition to the juried art in the main gallery. There’s truly something for everyone.” This year’s featured artists, all Nashville residents, are Caroline Allison, Kit Reuther, and Vadis Turner, and they are working closely with senior Sarah Knight. Knight exemplifies the impact the show has on students; having worked
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with Artclectic for several years, she plans her own long-term career in art management. Of the three spotlighted artists, Chapman says, “They all have such different work, but it’s also complementary.” Bryce McCloud will preside over a community art project this year. Additionally, Chapman says they have 25 artists new to Artclectic for 2017, including two recent USN alumni: Bennet LeMaster and Josh Yazdian. Saturday, as always, will feature art activities for kids.
Caroline Allison, Hank Williams’ Boyhood Home, Georgiana, Alabama, 2016, Archival pigment print, 36” x 46”
ARTCLECTIC
into a gym space transformed, magical. You can so easily fall in love with jewelry, paintings, ceramics, sculpture . . . you’ll begin to rethink what art is—touchable, approachable, beautiful things for your home or even to adorn yourself—down to your favorite daily coffee cup.” na Artclectic runs October 19–21 at University School of Nashville. For more information, visit www.Artclectic.org.
Artclectic provides the kind of experience that brings individuals, couples, and families in for hours—it’s an outing, not a quick visit for most. Many return for multiple days to get in the whole experience, from the lush grown-up Thursday night patrons party to family-friendly Saturday. The show brings plenty of excitement to the adult art-buying crowd at all levels, but it’s the impact on the children—lifechanging in some cases—that helps make it special. Chapman relates the story of seeing a group of 5- and 6-yearolds from USN brought in to see the show. As the doors opened, she heard a 6-year-old boy tell a slightly younger girl, “This is the most beautiful thing you’ll ever see,” with a sense of awe and wonder. Clearly, exposure to events like this one can influence these children for life. And we need more pure joy in the world.
Kit Reuther, Green #1387, 2017, Oil on linen, 40” x 40”
If you haven’t been before, Chapman advises that you be prepared to “be stunned by what you see. You’ll walk Vadis Turner, Place Heirloom 2, Kitchen Table as Landscape “Birds can’t fly upside down”, 2017, Mixed media, 87” x 69”
Jardim Inhotim #7, dyptich, 2017, oil on linen, 30” x 48”
4107 Hillsboro Circle | 615 297 0296 | www.cumberlandgallery.com
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at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts October 6 to January 21
John Singer Sargent, A Street in Arras, 1918, Watercolor on paper, 16” x 21”
WORDS Margaret F. M. Walker
World War I and American Art
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lthough the First World War has not left as prominent a mark on the cultural consciousness of the United States as it has on the European nations that were combatants, its legacy is still deeply embedded in the fabric of this country. Exhibitions, events, articles, and books debuting during the 2017–2018 centenary are providing opportunities to bring these threads into focus. World War I and American Art, at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts from October 6 to January 21, does just that. The exhibition organized by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts is, in the words of Frist curator Trinita Kennedy, “the most ambitious exhibition yet attempting to survey the connection between American Art and the First World War. The organizers have convincingly argued that this war was just as influential for modern art as the Armory show of 1913.” The buildup to World War I is often told as the story of a multinational arms race, itself a
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Childe Hassam, Early Morning on the Avenue in May 1917, Oil on canvas, 30” x 36”
Claggett Wilson, Front Line Stuff, 1919, Watercolor, pencil, and varnish on paperboard, 19” x 23”
product of the fast-paced growth in mechanized technology at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Parallel to how modernization scaled up the sizes of cities and companies, it scaled up the size of warfare, now targeting entire societies rather than just armies. This was the inaugural experience of modern total war for Europe and the United States, touching all layers of society, including art and artists. An incredible range of art is included, visually spanning cubism, American impressionism, expressionism,
Claggett Wilson, Dance of Death, 1919, Watercolor and pencil on paperboard,17” x 23”
Claggett Wilson, Symphony of Terror, 1919, Watercolor, pencil, and varnish on paperboard, 19” x 23”
photography, and illustration. The art’s purpose also runs the gamut. Of the field of battle, John Singer Sargent painted an “official” view; Claggett Wilson and Horace Pippin created expressive memories of their service, and Edward Steichen took aerial photographs to decipher the new science of camouflage, disruptive and obfuscating patterns which Charles Burchfield helped design. Great artists and illustrators of the day, including James Montgomery Flagg, Howard Chandler Christy, Edward Penfield, Joseph Pennell, Lorenzo Harris, and John Sloan, created scenes meant as mass advertising both for and against the war. Childe Hassam
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Horace Pippin, Dog Fight over the Trenches, 1935, Oil on canvas, 18” x 33”
painted flags along city avenues in patriotic fervor, and other artists reflected on the folly of this war in the many years following. With several modernist artworks long thought to be largely removed from the conflict overseas, art historians have looked closer at the stories and work of Georgia O’Keeffe, John Marin, and Charles Burchfield, making new
arguments about how the stresses of the war and some of its visually striking advances such as dazzle painting and aerial photography informed their work. Kennedy reflected on the importance of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, one of this country’s oldest museums: “It has a long history of admitting women to its school, and the exhibition appropriately includes stories of women and African Americans.” In Gifford Beal’s On the Hudson at Newburgh, a young mother watches as troops, possibly including her husband, march off to duty. Several photographs document designs by Anna Coleman Ladd of masks covering the atrocious wounds inflicted by mechanized warfare, plastic surgery being one of many notable medical advances necessitated by the war. In Red Cross Work Room by Jane Peterson, we see one of the primary ways in which women actively contributed to the war effort—as nurses and canteen workers. And George Bellows’s The Murder of Edith Cavell features one of the primary German atrocities of the war: the execution of a young British nurse. This 1915 event, along with the sinking of the Lusitania, evoked in Fred Spear’s Enlist, became rallying cries for those Americans wishing to join the fight.
Jane Peterson, Red Cross Work Room 5th Avenue, NYC during the War, 1917, Watercolor on paper, 18” x 24”
Claggett Wilson, Flower of Death—The Bursting of a Heavy Shell—Not as It Looks, but as It Feels and Sounds and Smells, 1919, Watercolor and pencil on paperboard, 17” x 22”
Edward Penfield, The Girl on the Land Serves the Nation’s Need, 1918, Poster, 25” x 30”
George Bellows, The Murder of Edith Cavell, 1918, Black chalk and black crayon over charcoal on cream wove paper, 21” x 27”
John Steuart Curry, The Return of Private Davis from the Argonne, 1928, Oil on canvas, 38” x 52”
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This was the inaugural experience of modern total war for Europe and the United States, touching all layers of society, including art and artists.
Gifford Beal, On the Hudson at Newburgh, 1918, Oil on canvas, 36” x 59” NASHVILLEARTS.COM
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John Singer Sargent, Gassed, 1919, Oil on canvas, 91” x 240”
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This scene of the blind leading the blind is also a striking metaphor for physical and moral blindness, a biting commentary on the effects wrought by war.
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The African American experience is covered from a number of angles. Photographs taken after the war by Harlem Renaissance photographer James Van Der Zee show intimate portraits and regimental victory parades. Posters, a widely distributable medium, were created to celebrate the bravery and achievements of black regiments, most of which had been attached to the French armies, which had more progressive attitudes about race relations. There are several pieces by Horace Pippin, a Harlem Hellfighter severely injured at the Meuse-Argonne. As David Lubin argues in the exhibition catalogue, Pippin’s art showed realism in its way of telling the truth of his experiences and African Americans’ heroism, even if not visually mimicking reality.
for physical and moral blindness, a biting commentary on the effects wrought by war. It points to differences in expectations and reality. Gas was a notoriously fickle weapon, blowing with the wind, and this war, entered into with enthusiasm for a short fight, ended up leaving deep physical and psychological scars on the societies involved. David Lubin comments on how Gassed demonstrates the “elusive visibility of modern warfare, its stubborn refusal to accommodate familiar forms of representation.” This hidden nature was literal, as men dug more intricate networks of trenches and mimicked the dead trees and horses of no-man’s land to conceal lookouts and sniper posts, but it was also symbolically seen in lingering shell shock and population counts lacking young men.
John Singer Sargent, by then in his sixties, was a reluctant recruit. He agreed to a British commission as a war artist in what turned out to be the final months of the conflict. The work of this American expatriate and painter of society is largely devoid of the devastating side of war, and yet the destruction of human life and property was unavoidable, peeking through the edges and backgrounds of these watercolors. An exception to this is Sargent’s masterpiece, Gassed. Normally housed in an intimate upper gallery of the Imperial War Museum, this is only the second time it has been loaned to the United States. Like so many Sargents, it is an elegant impressionist painting with a sense of nobility. But this scene of the blind leading the blind is also a striking metaphor
Perhaps this “stubborn refusal” is why so many artists processed their experience of the war in artwork that eschewed traditional realism. As seen in paintings by Claggett Wilson, even the titles, such as Flower of Death – the Bursting of a Heavy Shell – Not as It Looks, but as It Feels and Sounds and Smells, are poetic and disjointed, pointing to how a true picture of experiencing World War I eluded the methods that had been known before. na
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World War I and American Art is on view at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts from October 6 to January 21, 2018. For more information, visit www.fristcenter.org.
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Field Study #4, 2016, Watercolor, gouache and ink on paper, 21� x 17�
the Sentido throughout Bob Nugent’s Ecos de Inhotim Cumberland Gallery through November 4
Minucia CLXXXVI, 2010, Watercolor, gouache, conte and pencil on wood veneer, 12” x 11”
WORDS Megan Kelley
To Move into Knowing
Camada Vital II, 2017, Oil on canvas, 24” x 18”
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Memory guides his hand, building on not only the appearance of a thing but its smell, touch, and context.
rilliantly hued and visually complex, Bob Nugent’s Ecos de Inhotim captures place in bands of color and splashes of pigment, holding sensations of earth and water within the very grounds created from those same elements. Nugent’s works fill the senses, reflecting the artist’s approach not only toward painting, but toward the verdant spaces he observes through walking into the jungle. “There is the work of sentido: to observe with all your senses.” Landscape painting has been the primary fascination throughout his work, but “until I went to the Amazon, and even in the early years, it meant trying to visually represent the place.” The inadequacy of simple depiction frustrated Nugent, who describes the moment of change: “I said to my guide, I’ve been coming to the Amazon for years and I never see any big animals, and he said, because you’re too noisy! So I found a place and I sat quietly to just pay attention, and the jungle opened itself to me.
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Jardim Inhotim #7, 2017, Dyptich, Oil on linen, 30” x 48”
“If you come in with your preconceptions of a place, you don’t see anything.” Rather than relying on depiction, Nugent’s process shifted to one of observation. “I’m not a painter who draws a flower at the place. Nothing is a direct result of looking at the object, but rather that object as it might have been in the place, the memory of that.”
then I hide it, and then I try to bring part of it back again.” His process echoes the conservation efforts of the indigenous people, whose traditional planting processes are restorative to the Vital Layer. “There’s a grittiness”—to both Nugent’s paint and the Amazon’s Vital Layer he describes—“that you don’t want to lose.”
Memory guides his hand, building on not only the appearance of a thing but its smell, touch, and context. The entire experience—even of arriving to it and leaving it and spending the day walking—becomes as important as the image of the thing itself, the wholeness of it explored fully as the artist moves through as many as twenty canvases at the same time. “I try not to represent the flower with just looking, but remembering that I held it in my hand that day and what that entire experience felt like.”
In contrast, Minucia explores the feeling of the river itself. Color swells and bursts, blooming in abrupt forms along the surface. The panels—left raw, their woodgrain twisting beneath Nugent’s delicate drawings and spilling shapes— tap into the symbolic space of rivers and currents with their rippling grain, but also remind the viewer of their origins as harvested wood. A muted palette grounds the paintings, but their effect also highlights their colorful accents, serving to provide a similar sense of context as the jungle whose foliage Nugent evokes. “In the jungle, everything in color jumps out. You walk away saying that you’ve never seen so many red flowers, when maybe you only saw one, but it is so bright against the jungle that that red is all you can see.”
Textured and rich, the large paintings utilize the organic nature of oil paint—and of a reactive, unplanned painting process—as parallel to the Amazon’s own “Vital Layer.” Unique to the Amazon, the Vital Layer is twelve inches of fertile nutrients just beneath the feet—“not so much first but leaves and debris, compost.” Nugent’s process in these large canvases echoes the natural growth and decay rhythms of this layer, as well as the unnatural challenges it faces as ranchers clear and erode it. “Scraping, clearing, I put [paint] down and
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In contrast to the larger works, Nugent paints only two or three panels at a time, but the finished works are designed to grid together as well as serve alone. They are records of memory and sensation, and the grouped effect transforms. Much like the undertaking to sentido itself, the experience
Flora Brasiliensis #184, 2016, Watercolor, gouache, conte and pencil on handmade paper, 20” x 13”
Flora Brasiliensis #119, 2008, Watercolor, gouache, conte and ink on 1870 handmade paper, 20” x 13”
of observing the work becomes cumulative. The eye begins to step sideways from the bright colors and obvious shapes, noting instead the quiet trills and gathered moments that surround them. Much like the jungle Nugent documents, they require us to enter, observe, and reflect. You begin to understand Nugent’s true aim: “Quite often I’m interested in the places that people tend to walk on or ignore. So I look into the green of the leaves and the brown of the water and the roots that just barely start to show themselves as the water starts to get clear. The bugs, the things that are deteriorating, the algae, those are the kinds of things I tend to bring back with me, and those are what I try to bring back to the work. It’s the small things that other people might pass over. “The thing I write in my journal at the end of the day is the quenching of the leaves under my feet.” na Ecos de Inhotim is on view through November 4 at Cumberland Gallery, 4107 Hillsboro Circle, open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information or to make an appointment, visit www.cumberlandgallery.com.
Bob Nugent
SEPTEMBER 27 – NOVEMBER 10, 2017 • MARNIE SHERIDAN GALLERY • ACCESS GALLERY FROM ESTESWOOD DRIVE
Kathy Wariner David Wariner Jessi Zazu Wariner
Opening Reception Sunday, October 15 3– 5 pm
HARPETH HALL SCHOOL • 3801 HOBBS ROAD • NASHVILLE, TN 37215 • 615-297-9543 • HARPETHHALL.ORG
In Store Event Oct. 24 & 25
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 s cindiearl.com
Photograph by Duncan May
Jazzmania
The Factory at Franklin
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October 14
with how many people are coming over here to take classes. Our youngest student now is 10; the oldest is 90.”
2016 Jazzmania Party
Photograph by Duncan May
WORDS Bob Doerschuk
Kirk Whalum performs at Jazzmania
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nplug those steel guitars. Put that Stetson back in the closet. Dust off your pork pie hat, slip on those hipster shades. And most important, whip out your wallet and get ready to buy a couple of tickets to the “Jazz Party of the Year,” which takes place October 14, from 6 to 10 p.m., at The Factory at Franklin. While Nashville’s fabled community of musicians has always included more than a few world-class jazz players, those numbers have exploded in recent years. Some of it has to do with artists moving to town to seek opportunities to do session work or join bands led by country superstars. But much of the credit goes to the Nashville Jazz Workshop, whose contributions to local talent are both vital and, one might say, under-appreciated. “We do fly under the radar,” admits pianist Lori Mechem, the Workshop’s Director of Programs & Education. “But we’ve had such a surge these past five years or so. We’ve gone from hosting performances twice a month to every single weekend—sometimes twice in one weekend. I’m so happy
The Workshop also offers classes for those who play jazz and those who count themselves as fans of the genre. Its Summer Jazz Camp has grown to the point that it had to move to larger facilities at Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music. Jazz on the Move, its neighborhood concert program, has recently added new venues that include the Nashville Public Library and La Plaza Mariachi. A scholarship has been established that allows the Workshop to work with needy and committed students all the way up through high school. And the Workshop also launched Jazzmania sixteen years ago, not only to celebrate America’s music but also to help fund the Workshop’s expanding activities. This year’s event will include a dinner, live and silent auctions for prizes that include vacation packages, works of art, and in-home concerts and presentation of the NJW Heritage Award to honor the recipient’s contributions to jazz in Middle Tennessee. Live music will be provided by saxophonist and former NJW board member Kirk Whalum. “Honestly, Jazzmania really helps us keep our doors open,” says Mechem, who founded the Workshop with her husband, bassist Roger Spencer, in 1998. “We can’t just do it with grants and tuition. So I really appreciate the support we’ve gotten from artists and restaurants and our other partners and of course from people who’ve come to us from all walks of life. Two years ago I stood up on the stage at Jazzmania, looked out at the audience—and I didn’t know at least three-fourths of the people who were sitting there! It was weird!” Then, smiling, she adds, “It was great!” na For more on Jazzmania, visit www.nashvillejazz.org.
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Simple Elegance in Solid Walnut
73 White Bridge Rd • 615-352-6085 • Mon-Sat 10–6 • Sun 1-5 • 2danes.com
4301 Forsythe Place COME SEE FOR YOURSELF
www.4301ForsythePlace.com MLS# 1856327 | $2,950,000
Elaine Finucane | 615 . 300 . 5093 Betty Finucane | 615 . 327 . 4800
Fridrich & Clark Realty, LLC | 615 . 327. 4800
Haunted Photograph by Rob Lindsay
From left: Shawn Whitsell, Audra Almond-Harvey, Jessika Malone, Michael West, Jr., Kara McLeland, Natalie Risk, Rebekah Hampton Barger, Tony Youngblood and Jennifer Whitcomb-Oliva
How well have you buried your ghosts?
WORDS Audra Almond-Harvey
MAKING ROOM FOR NASHVILLE’S GHOSTS Track One in Wedgewood/Houston
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October 20–22
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ollaborative artistic work always has its challenges. Working together with other artists inherently forces each participant to confront their own territorial nature, their need to protect both the artistic process as well as the sanity of the artists involved. It’s not a method that works for every artist, nor does every project benefit from collaboration. However, in certain cases of collaborative work, an alchemy arises which transforms the source ideas into a new material in a manner which is unexpected and yet transformative for all involved. It is from such alchemy that Haunted was crafted. Haunted is an immersive, site-responsive performance in a Southern Gothic setting which was born from the questions: What does it mean for us to be haunted, in this place, this boomtown, in this time? What would it look like to create a work which is so intensely collaborative that the audience itself directly affects how we experience the event?
Curve, near what is now Belle Meade. At least 101 people lost their lives the morning on July 8, 1918. Most of the dead were people of color packed tightly in the crowded “Jim Crow” wooden cars at the front of the train. We cannot speak for the ghosts of those lost at Dutchman’s Curve; we can only make room for them. And room must be made to remember, to reflect, and to learn as the issues at the heart of Dutchman’s Curve are not unlike the issues we wrestle with today. The Dutchman’s Curve train wreck is a hub story with spokes that stretch out into so many aspects of Nashville’s collective history and culture. Here we consider geography, technology, war, race and class, gender dynamics, the justice system, loyalty, generosity of a community, and so much more.
How do we carve out time to hold a space for our ghosts to tell us their tales? Haunted is no haunted house, nor is it strictly a piece of theatre. Instead, true stories are the inspiration for a narrative woven through artistic exploration, with threads pulled from many genres, inspired by the hauntings that are real and present in our city. Our ghosts are the stories lost to us; the many people who have vanished from our histories through forgetfulness, both willful and ignorant. The work unites the living with the dead in a gathering expressed through movement, sound, and interaction with the artists and the audience. Every ticketholder will move through the event like participants in a game. All are encouraged to explore and discover. Each audience member will have an experience unique to them—it is very difficult to have the same encounters twice in the world of Haunted. The event will be unlike anything seen before in Music City. Though many tales will be told, Haunted anchors its throughline in one specific story from Nashville’s history—the nation’s deadliest train crash at a place called Dutchman’s
—Stephanie Pruitt Haunted will echo with voices once silenced by prejudice and injustice, voices buried in Nashville’s nearly forgotten history. This echo will resonate through visual and performing art installations, character narratives, aerial and contemporary dance, and an original sound score. The performance will reincarnate silenced ghosts from Nashville’s past and give them the voice they were denied. The only question is: How well have you buried your ghosts? “Death walked hand in hand with the passengers and crews … proving that while in life we are in death.” —from “The Horrors of the Wreck, A CLOSE-UP VIEWED”, by Prince Mysteria for The Chicago Defender Haunted is presented by Actors Bridge Ensemble in collaboration with abrasiveMedia and FALL. Performances will be October 20–22 at Track One in Wedgewood/Houston. Tickets start at $30. For more information, visit www.hauntedproject.com.
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Stolen LOVE, (Indiana), 2017, Crayons and mixed media, 36” x 36”
IN THE GALLERY
Stolen Map/Flag, (Johns), 2016, Crayons and mixed media, 48” x 60”
Stolen Starry Night, (Van Gogh), 2017, Crayons and mixed media, 39” x 48”
Herb Williams Bad artists copy, Good artists steal. —Picasso Good artists copy, Great artists steal. —Warhol
Stolen Soup, (Warhol), 2017, Crayons and mixed media, 48” x 36”
Stolen Wave, (Hokusai), 2017, Crayons and mixed media, 48” x 54”
Stolen Mademoiselles, (Picasso), 2017, Crayons and mixed media, 60” x 60”
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Herb Williams Stolen Flower, (O’Keeffe), 2017, Crayons and mixed media, 48” x 36”
Photograph by John Jackson
s Herb Williams the world’s greatest art thief? Well, he might be, but who really cares? Taking direction from Picasso and Warhol, Williams has embarked on stealing from the best by recreating some of the world’s greatest classic paintings in his trademark crayon style. In many ways, the results are as compelling as the originals themselves. See for yourself when Williams unveils his latest work at the Rymer Gallery October 7 through 31.
WORDS Peter Chawaga
The Southern Festival of Books Puts Emphasis on Art of the Written Word |
October 13–15 Photograph by Lisa Eveleigh
War Memorial Plaza
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The free event has long brought book enthusiasts and authors together in Nashville for readings and discussions about the art of writing. About 200 writers, some preeminent and some newcomers to the field, will be assembled to discuss their work in solo readings or panel discussions, which can range widely
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Photograph by Margaret Renkl
rom October 13 to 15, the Southern Festival of Books is returning to War Memorial Plaza for its 29th year of celebrating the written word.
Photograph by Tennesseephotographs.com
backdrop for the Southern Festival of Books,” says Gerbman.
Building on the event’s longstanding history, a few new additions will be featured this year. The festival will host some author panels and sessions at the Nashville Public Library’s downtown branch. And for the first time, the festival has partnered with Handmade and Bound, an annual event celebrating the art of bookmaking from Watkins College of Art, to present new crafters and artisans. “Handmade and Bound will have a significant presence on War Memorial Plaza and bring creative vendors to this year’s event,” says Serenity Gerbman, the director of the Southern Festival of Books. “Bookmakers, artisans, and craftsmen will bring even more literary creativity to the festival and showcase the art behind bookmaking.” This year’s event will also feature a panel with particular dedication to the visual arts. It will host Ke Francis, a narrative artist who has produced books, paintings, prints, photographs, and sculptures for over 40 years; Bill Dunlap, a writer and painter who specializes in abstracted figures and patterns; and Britt Stadig, who for over 18 years has specialized in artistic book binding and custom enclosures.
“Bill Dunlap contacted us early in the year about a session that focused on the interplay between words and art, with artists who are also writers,” explains Gerbman. “We were thrilled to add it to the program and honored to have Nashville artist Britt Stadig appearing with Dunlap and Francis. The panel will be a candid conversation among the three about their work as artists, writers, and publishers, the importance of aesthetics in publishing fine books, and whatever else they want to discuss.”
“Literature, in all of its forms, helps people connect and better understand their own nature,” explains Gerbman. “In today’s fast-paced society, where information is readily available and everyone is operating at full speed, books allow us to hit pause, disconnect, and get lost in someone else’s thoughts . . . The Southern Festival of Books seeks to bring together book lovers in a setting where we can slow down and enjoy books. In a world that is constantly changing through technology, innovation, and connectivity, the written word still thrives—that is something worth celebrating.” na The Southern Festival of Books will be held on October 13 from 12 to 5 p.m., on October 14 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and on October 15 from 12 to 5 p.m. at War Memorial Plaza, 301 6th Avenue North. For more information, please visit www.humanitiestennessee.org.
Francis will also be presenting his work at The Arts Company in an exhibition called Southern Narrative. “What attracted us to his work is the breadth and depth of his artistic and technical dexterity, incorporating all mediums—from painting on canvas, sculpture, woodblock prints, watercolor, and photography to writing, designing, and printing limited-edition artist books,” says Anne Brown, owner of The Arts Company. It is celebrations of the variety of arts at venues around the city, such as this combination of book and visual, that makes Nashville a special place, one that is sure to welcome similar events in the future. “The city’s creative energy and culture, coupled with location, make it the ideal
Photograph by Tennesseephotographs.com
in genre and approach. There are book signing sessions, a collection of exhibitors, and three stages for dramatic literary performances.
All told, through its panels, readings, and book sales, the festival is an all-toorare opportunity to focus on the power and joy that books bring us, especially today.
Photograph by Richard Sparkman
WORDS Erica Ciccarone
Nashville Walls Project creator Brian Greif
Love It or Loathe It Nashville Walls Project Is Here to Stay
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or the past year and a half, Brian Greif and Eva Boros have been making a mark on Nashville’s urban landscape as matchmakers. Through Nashville Walls Project, they marry business owners and artists (some international and some local) and coordinate largescale murals. The reception within the city has been largely positive. It’s hard to argue with legally painted walls when new condos and office buildings are, at best, the equivalent of a barely contained yawn. However, others question the relevance of the artwork and say it lacks substance, like the murals are a gift that no one asked for but that keeps giving nonetheless. Love them or loathe them, the murals are a part of Nashville’s visual aesthetic, and there’s more to come. Nashville Arts caught up with Greif to chat about the project.
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BG: We really haven’t. It’s one of those things where everybody has an opinion, and overwhelmingly, the response to the murals has been positive. Occasionally, someone will ask a question assuming we’re funded by the city. When we explain that there are no taxpayer dollars used in the murals and it’s all privately funded, then that goes away.
Curiot at the Cornerstone Building on Church Street
BG: I think most of that’s gone away. Before 2008, 70 percent of street art was illegal. Two things happened. The most famous U.S. street artist, Shepard Fairey, did the Obama Hope poster. It legitimized Fairey, and people wanted him to paint on their buildings. When Banksy painted on the division wall in Palestine in 2005, and the movie Exit Through the Gift Shop in 2010 highlighted all the street artists, the world went. Maybe we should have these guys do this stuff on our walls and pay them to do it and protect and preserve it.
Top international artists went from doing everything illegally to suddenly people calling them to paint on their buildings. A lot of the artists we work with are a little conflicted because they’re like, everything I do is legal now, and it’s lost some of the thrill. Some still do that just to connect with their roots and stay in touch with what made their art their art. When you go to London or Berlin or Amsterdam or Sydney, it’s become a part of the cultural landscape of those cities. It’s the idea of an outdoor gallery or outdoor museum. It takes the intimidation factor out of art. Most people are intimidated to walk into a gallery because they perceive that there’s an expectation to buy things, or they think they won’t understand the art. When these artists do something on a wall, there’s no intimidation.
NAM: There’s a worry among some locals that some murals in Nashville, including ones not commissioned through Nashville Walls Project, tend to make the city marketable at the expense of locals and
Niels ‘Shoe’ Meulman at Parking Garage on 5th Avenue North
Photograph by Colin M Day
NAM: In your interview with Global Street Art, you said that part of your mission is to protect and preserve street art. I’m really interested in this changing philosophy. In the past, I think people have viewed street art as being more counter-culture and transgressive than it is today. It wasn’t mainstream or considered sacred or untouchable. What do you make of that tension?
Photograph by Colin M Day
NAM: Nashvillians have been having a lot of conversations about murals lately, and I think it’s part of the city’s anxiety about its growth. Have you experienced any pushback with Nashville Walls Project?
Photograph by Colin M Day
Jasmin Siddiqui at the Cornerstone Building on Church Street longtime residents who wish they could pause the influx of people moving here and visiting. BG: We’ve done more local murals than international murals. We just completed a 4,000-square-foot mural in East Nashville, and that was seven local artists. We spent a lot of time talking to local artists before we started Nashville Walls Project. There was some concern that we’d take walls away from them. Our point was, if we bring international artists in here and do large-scale walls, the entire city will see the potential for murals, and you’ll have more opportunities than ever before.
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We get requests to do walls every day. One of the things important to understand is that Nashville Walls Project is two people, and we do this part-time as a passion project. We don’t make any money doing it. In fact, I’ve spent a tremendous amount of my own money personally just to do it. Someone will email us and say they have a wall, and if we don’t have the ability to do it, we pass it off to local artists. We’ve done that dozens of times. We also provide insurance to artists so they can do their own projects. When international artists come in, they buy 500 cans of spray paint and 20 gallons of paint from Home Depot and rollers and brushes. When we’re done with the project, we get in touch with local artists. We’ve given away thousands and thousands of dollars in paint, supplies, and equipment to local artists. We never ask local artists to work for free. We always make sure they get paid. Whenever international artists come to Nashville, we
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always hire local artists as assistants, and we pay the local artists for their time by the hour. They work hand in hand with international artists. It’s a tremendous benefit to them. They’re working with a known international artist helping them paint the mural. They learn new techniques and learn from the artist’s experience. We’ve had some of the international artists ask the local ones if they’re available to travel with them as assistants on other projects. NAM: Who have those been? BG: Jason Woodside worked with Nathan Brown, and Ian Ross worked with Chris Zydek. In both cases, they’ve become close friends. This benefits the local art scene in a lot of different ways. That said, there are a lot of local artists in Nashville. We have limited funding. We have limited walls, and not everyone gets to participate. It’s a numbers game. Some local artists aren’t thrilled with the idea, but when you look at the scope . . . When did the explosion of murals happen? It happened last spring, and it’s accelerated since then. I think a lot of that is tied to large-scale international murals opening the eyes of building owners. NAM: I’ve been following street artists from North Nashville for a few years now. They’re guys who grew up here and painted illegally since they were kids. In 2015, Norf Wall Collective took the initiative and applied for a micro-funding award from Metro Arts Commission, and they got permission to paint on walls. They set the theme of social issues.
BG: There’s more legal work than there was before. There’s been a graffiti scene in Nashville going back to the 70s. One of the most famous international graffiti artists, Revoke, lived in Nashville until he was 17 years old. Everything he did in Nashville is illegal. Now he’s one of the most successful artists in the world. There’s been a graffiti scene and street art scene for a long time. We recognize that. Our goal is not to take anything away from that. NAM: I like how Guido van Helten always references things that are culturally important to the neighborhoods where he paints. The Nations is a neighborhood that doesn’t have a lot of consistent access to the arts, unlike the Gulch and downtown. For me, that’s why his painting of Nations residents on the grain silo is the mural that moves me the most. Is that a direction you might pursue more? BG: It’s site specific. The silo is a landmark. People from the Nations have been familiar with it their entire lives. It was really important that we find an artist who was a perfect fit for that. In the Gulch you can do colorful things. Out there, it had to be something about the history of that neighborhood . . . It’s not possible to do that in every location nor should we try to do it in every location.
Guido van Helten at the Silo on 51st Avenue
Guido van Helten’s mural is 100 percent locally influenced. Others do what they do in their studios. The murals in the Gulch aren’t locally influenced. They do geometric, abstract, colorful work. I don’t think that diminishes the art at all. There’s a variety of different styles and approaches. Our goal is to bring as many different styles and as many different approaches as possible. Rather than just bringing in artists who do locally influenced art, we want to bring in the abstract geometric artists. We want to bring in the photorealistic artists like Rone and Guido and concept artists like Shoe, who did the Johnny Cash lyrics.
NAM: What’s your process in working with local business owners? BG: First of all, it doesn’t matter if it’s international or local. We don’t pick the artist. We make suggestions. We sit down with the building owner and get a sense of their aesthetic taste. Then we send them a portfolio. We ask them to pick three or four types of murals they like. Once they do that, we send them artist options that fit that theme and ask them to pick three that they want, and we’ll reach out to the artists and work the budget and schedule. I have to remind building owners constantly that I know they’d love it if the artist painted guitars or something music-themed so it’s Nashville, but they’ll get a much better reaction from the public if you’ll let the artist do their best work. Every single building owner has honored that. na For more information, please visit www.nashvillewallsproject.com.
Photograph by Those Drones
I wanted to acknowledge that this is something that’s been here. I think particularly in black communities, this is not new.
ARTable Brings Patrons and Artists Together The Clay Lady’s Campus–October 14 Purcell, a mixed-media artist, will be transferring ink onto beeswax, creating a mosaic-like effect for his piece. “Randy has taken the encaustic technique to a new level that is totally his own,” explains Fischer. “What he uses for the color in his paintings is amazing to watch and always creates a ‘wow’ moment when the image is finally revealed.” The Rogerses will demonstrate different firing techniques to create unique pottery.
On October 14, an annual evening that connects artists and patrons in a unique way will return when the sixth annual ARTable is held at The Clay Lady’s Campus. The interactive event brings a roster of dynamic, local artists together with art enthusiasts who have the opportunity to watch and ask questions about how they turn raw materials into unforgettable pieces. “This event gives the guests an opportunity to ask the artist questions about their creative process while the process is being demonstrated,” explains Matt Fischer, the founder of ARTable and owner of one of its sponsors, Picture This Creative Framing. “I am not aware of another local event that is as focused on the artist’s creative process as ARTable.” This year will bring attendees in touch with Phil Ponder, Randy Purcell, and Larry and Tracey Rogers. “All of the selected artists for ARTable were chosen in part because of their interesting processes that are a perfect fit for this type of event,” says Fischer. “An interesting process will create an informative dialogue between the guest and artist about the process of creating art in different mediums.” Ponder is best known for his prints of skylines and historic buildings. He will demonstrate his watercolor technique as he creates a new skyline portrayal of Nashville for attendees. “Phil’s attention to detail and the fact that he literally counts the bricks to accurately reproduce the buildings he paints is not only awe-inspiring, but a great start to a wonderful conversation about his unique creative process,” Fischer says.
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In addition to sessions with the chosen artists, the event will feature a menu from local restaurants, seasonal beer and wine, and dessert. All proceeds from ticket sales and the event’s live auction will go to Leadership Donelson-Hermitage, which provides participants with leadership training and skill development. ARTable will be held on October 14 with a preview party starting at 4:30 p.m. and the main event held from 5:30 to 9 p.m. at The Clay Lady’s Campus, 1416 Lebanon Pike. For more information, please visit www.leadershipdh.org/artable.
Phil Ponder, Tootsies Orchid Lounge, 2016, Pen and ink and watercolor, part of a larger piece called Broadway, 26” x 8”
Randy L Purcell, Bee Wing #5, 2017, Ink transfer on beeswax, 6” x 12”
“Larry and Tracey are showmen in demonstrating their creative firing processes,” says Fischer. “The transformation of each piece from beginning to end is unexpected and beautiful.”
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Welcome to the Orange West Tinney Contemporary
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October 7–November 11
O
n March 17, 2017, Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket (2016) was unveiled at the Whitney Biennial and was, simultaneously, the impetus for heated international discourse concerning the validity of visual censorship and historic authorship over subjective content—it garnered protests and incited urgent reflection on the sociopolitical role of contemporary art, and artists, in the current political climate. Can a white artist make artwork about the black experience? How does a white artist pragmatically interpret the past, or narratives, not their own? How does an artist speak truth without yelling?
Land Run / This Land Was Not Your Land, 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 30” x 53” 74
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Joel Daniel Phillips NASHVILLEARTS.COM
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New York Cafe Hookah Lounge, 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 44” x 39”
abandoned signage from along Route 66. Currently located in Tulsa as a Tulsa Artist Fellow, Phillips has been culling public archives and roadside relics from Oklahoma’s formational period as a method for parsing major events from the state’s history: the early oil boom, the purposeful extermination of American bison, and the land run.
Used Cars (The Working Man’s Friend), 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 92” x 60”
WORDS Audrey Molloy This month, Tinney Contemporary premieres Joel Daniel Phillips: Welcome to the Orange West, a prescient exhibition of hyperrealistic charcoal and graphite drawings which quietly sunder relics of collective nostalgia. Phillips, an artist best known for his evocative large-format portraits of people at society’s fringe, found himself necessarily responsive to those queries warranted by Schutz’s painting earlier this year. Welcome to the Orange West is a continuation of Phillips’s investigations into the documentation of elusive narratives—yet marks a conscious re-examination of artistic culpability, historic ownership, and the hollowness of Western romanticization. In these new works, Phillips forgoes portraiture entirely, pairing early reference materials from the early 1900s with drawings of
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“I’m really interested in nostalgia and how this nostalgia—our whitewashed or rose-tinted view of the past—affects the way we think about our future,” says Phillips. “We’re living in a very fascinating period right now where we have just elected a president based on the idea of returning to a notion of the past. In the midst of that conversation I think there is a lot of room to re-examine, for the first time, what that past is.” In Working Man’s Friend (2017), a crinkling arrow with limp fluorescent tubing denotes “used cars,” a phrase which partially obscures its earlier identity for “FREE PARKING” that has resurfaced after years of weathered erasure. Mounted below, a faded square sign near imperceptibly declares “the working man’s friend” on its torn surface. New York Cafe Hookah Lounge (2017) proceeds similarly; isolated amid white expanse, the roadside totem has been excavated and stripped by the sun. Only the full-scale cast horse chained to its base posits temporal resistance: With its front hooves splayed majestically immobile, the plastic beast infinitely whinnies into the sky. “I find these signs to be this amazing metaphor for our
collective cultural history— particularly this part of the country. They’ve had multiple owners and multiple identities built into them; histories which are on the surface and underneath,” says Phillips. “The signs are these apocalyptic posts from a past which is our truthful past. They aren’t the shiny version of what was Motors, 2017, Charcoal and graphite on paper, 44” x 28” initially created; they are the actual rust and decaying result. I find them really compelling.”
much about my history as a white man in the United States. How do I come to terms with my own culpability and also tell my story within these stories which are very much about other communities? I want to tell stories without speaking over someone’s voice—I want people’s own narratives to be told.”
Stylistically similar to Richard Avedon’s seminal portraits of Western type casts In the American West (1979), Phillips has employed a starkly blank background and referentially highnoon lighting situation which effectively thrusts his subjects forward. Like “islands,” an advertising term for images that appear in the middle of page spreads, these meticulously rendered roadside monuments hover with near-photographic realism at the center of the composition.
The most surprising work in the exhibition is Then Your Plain Will Be Speckled with Cattle (2017). Breaking from the established nomenclature of physically encoded signage, Phillips has animated a series of drawings of the American bison in the semblance of an Eadweard Muybridge photographic sequence. In it, a single buffalo runs perpetually on loop, its bounding steps regaling it infinitely backwards through whiteness. na
As in Phillips’s Sirloin Steakhouse (2017), the use of a high contrast, seamless background works well to psychologically displace his subject from temporal constraints and inferrable meaning by omitting its original context. Texture, detail, surface quality, and expression are illuminated. For Avedon, this sort of surface-centered depiction of people ultimately reduces the human form to a condition of surface; his is a glamorized conception of the American West whose subjects fulfill, or emulate, stereotypical roles of Western settlement and fantasy. Phillips has negotiated a documentation of westernization whose evocation and subjective stance are emotively similar to Avedon’s but which he has parsed conscious of his personal nostalgia.
Welcome to the Orange West is on view at Tinney Contemporary from October 7 through November 11. An opening reception is scheduled for October 7 from 6 until 9 p.m. For more information, please visit www.tinneycontemporary.com. See more of Joel Daniel Phillips’s work at www.joeldanielphillips.com.
Phillips’s use of the weathered road signs as visual equivalencies for polemical issues allows for an unburdened re-examination of these historical narratives. The topographic denigration of these weathered advertisements signals a looking back to original identities, layered histories, and the physical masking of a space’s original ownership. A particularly poignant documentation of the economic challenges faced by Tulsa, these monuments loom in Phillips’s work not as beaming tokens of small-town nostalgia, but as silent markers of what has come to be. “It’s funny, the way in which we hold these things up—this history of westward movement, the pioneer, and westward expansion in the United States—you know, cowboys and Indians—it’s all very much glamorized. If you ask most people who voted for Trump in the election what their idea of making America great again was, what period they would look at, it’s a Norman Rockwell painting. It’s neon lights and the ice cream parlor. That history was not the reality. It’s a homogenized ideal of our past that is completely invented.”
“I’ve reached this point of realization that the lines between disaster porn and narrative, or exploitation and art, are more and more difficult to walk.” Says Phillips, “How do I be an outsider but also talk about my own history? This work is as
Joel Daniel Phillips in his studio
WORDS Peter Chawaga
Dave Pomeroy
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t’s no secret that art inspires art. Ernest Hemingway said that he wanted to write the way that Cézanne painted. Jackson Pollock listened to jazz while he splattered his canvases. Dave Pomeroy, bassist, producer, and president of the Nashville Musicians Association, is another such artist inspired by other media. His latest album, Angel in the Ashes, features artwork inspired by a painting he picked up after a house fire in 2009, a brightly rendered angel playing the bass, depicted as a cartoonish stained glass by Bob McGill. “I was immediately struck by the imagery of an angel playing the bass,” recalls Pomeroy. “It hangs just above the entrance to my studio, and I love having it there. When it came time to do the album cover, it was a natural choice, especially with the title track being a song written about the fire and the redemptive experience of all the support I received from Nashville’s amazing creative community and from folks around the globe.” As for the album itself, Pomeroy began work on it ten years ago but kept putting it aside as life interrupted. It is his third all bass and voice solo album, created using 41 acoustic and
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Photograph by Jim McGuire
connecting sound and sight
electric basses. Pomeroy stood in for every piece of a normal band, using conventional and unusual playing techniques and effects. It includes five original songs, four instrumentals, and five rearrangements. “The album as a whole represents a journey through the wide variety of musical genres and influences that I have been fortunate to experience in my 40-plus years as a professional musician,” explains Pomeroy. “It touches on rock, jazz, blues, soul, folk, Americana, world music, and almost everything in between . . . I think the writing, singing, and musical performances are the best I have ever done, and I am really pleased with the result.” To fully incorporate the painting into a suite of album art, Pomeroy relied on his longtime design collaborator Jeff Morris. Morris used the painting as inspiration for a four-panel cover and an eight-page booklet to accompany the CDs. The artwork also features several studio photos of Pomeroy. “Jeff created textured background panels for the package that reflected McGill’s style of painting and also recreated his curved bracket-style borders throughout,” Pomeroy says.
“The color choices were drawn from the painting and McGuire’s backdrop as well.” But beyond the visual artwork, McGill’s painting is apparent as inspiration in the music, too. “I love the visual arts and the combination of Bob’s painting, the photos, and the way Jeff was able to connect them all is an apt metaphor for the way the music is intended to take the listener on a journey through a variety of moods, sounds, and styles,” Pomeroy explains. na For more information, please visit www.davepomeroy.com.
Fine Art & Gifts
BLU E FIG G A L L E RY Landscape Screen Prints By Printmaker Mike Martino
by Olga Alexeeva & Local Artists www.OGalleryArt.com 615-416-2537
Olga Alexeeva, artist and owner, is available for commissioned works for home and business Art classes by Olga are conducted weekly Olga Alexeeva, Dalmatian Rules, Acrylic, 48” x 36”
Blue Fig Gallery
#56 Arcade • Nashville, TN
Mike Martino Artist/Owner
Opening Reception Nashville Art Crawl Saturday, October 7 • 6:00-9:00pm
Blue Fig Gallery • Nashville, TN www.bluefigeditions.com • mike@bluefigeditions.com • 615-942-9844
Open 7 Days a Week Monday-Saturday 10-6 Sunday 11-5 1305 Clinton St. Ste. 120 Nashville, TN 37203
Jalan-Jalan Showroom 20th Anniversary Celebration Featuring “Artworks” by Aretha McKinney
Saturday, October 7, 10-5 pm A portion of all sales will be donated for Hurricane Relief to Overseas Medical Network International 501(c)3
2503 Winford Avenue, Nashville, TN 37211 • 615-780-2600 • jalanjalanantiques.com
Bennet LeMaster Location compliments of Rudy’s Jazz Room Photograph by Rob Lindsay
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She lets her imagination run wild with possibilities, dictated only by the powers of the piece itself.
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Artclectic University School of Nashville October 19–21
WORDS Cat Acree
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f you’d witnessed Bennet LeMaster making marks on a page only a few years ago, you could have known exactly what she was feeling just by her manner. Creating had so much emotion behind it that the act was visceral, even a little violent. But with her latest work, which will be on display in University School of Nashville’s Artclectic art show, that pure emotion has been harnessed.
Process, 2017, Acrylic, gesso, spices, graphite, and pen on board, 18” x 18”
“I don’t need to create it with that feeling now,” LeMaster says. “I think it comes now in my movement, in my brush, in my pencil. As I learn better how to interact with the paper or the canvas or whatever it is, I think I naturally allow that feeling to come across … without having to be angry while I make it.” Of course, it’s not all anger. LeMaster, a Nashville native, a singer-songwriter, and a 2013 winner of the Scholastic Art Competition, channels the kind of free-flowing emotion that someone might prefer to keep private—especially those complicated feelings that haven’t sorted themselves out (and maybe won’t). “It feels like a conversation with myself,” she says. “The funny thing is, I always wished I was one of those girls that had a diary. I write a lot, but I never like to write about myself. I don’t know, it feels cheesy, like I’m narrating a book.” While she might not practice the art of daily journaling, she has kept a sketchbook every year of her life since she was nine. And they are a lot like a diary, filled with ticket stubs and taped-in remnants from catalogs and magazines, interspersed with squiggles and doodles and splotches. Similarly, her finished works are mixedmedia streams of consciousness. And while paint may be the primary medium, there’s nothing LeMaster won’t use: newspaper clippings, block ink, nail polish, sprinkles and spices, even waterAscension, 2017, Acrylic, gesso, ink, spices, pencil, and pen, 17” x 11” NASHVILLEARTS.COM
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Shift, 2017, Acrylic, gesso, ink, pencil, pen, and spices, 30” x 30”
flavoring concentrate. Whatever she can get her hands on. “Art isn’t just paint and paper,” she says simply. “Art is in your kitchen. When I’ve run out of money for canvases, a pizza box cut a certain way is a canvas!”
resembling a cat. Even when a work includes some human representation, it is done in a single wobbly line, mimicking a younger LeMaster’s favorite way of killing time, when she would blindly draw someone’s face.
In fact, her only limitations are the physical parameters of the page and whatever previous mark was made— otherwise, it’s a creative free-for-all. “Part of what I enjoy about art is the feeling of making it,” she says. “As long as I enjoy the feeling of doing something to paper, I’m always going to have material to make. And if you play with something long enough, it kind of decides for you.”
All this being said, and for all her moments of abstract expressionism and that wandering element, much of LeMaster’s work has a strong conceptual undercurrent, especially when she’s reacting to a setting, someplace she’s traveled to and the art she witnessed there.
She emphasizes how important it is to keep from treating materials and canvas as if they’re “holy.” By keeping her process open, by allowing herself to “build, create, destroy, create,” she imbues her work with a “wandering element,” the sense of roiling, everchanging emotion. She lets her imagination run wild with possibilities, dictated only by the powers of the piece itself. She compares it to seeing figures in clouds, or a paint chipping
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Beginning, 2017, Acrylic, gesso, ink, spices, and pencil, 30” x 30”
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One example is a piece that features Elvis’s face, which was sparked by LeMaster’s family connection to Memphis. She was driven to address the “difficult social situation” of the city, in particular the racial divide, while also acknowledging the city’s “great music and also great barbecue and also some awesome people.” And so a happy, seemingly friendly Elvis contrasts sharply with some of the darker elements on the page, such as scattered matches, one of which is painted with a little golden flame to appear lit. “You do feel a tension
between the happy parts … and the really darker parts of the painting,” she says, “and that’s how I wanted you to feel. I think that’s how I feel about that city.” This is something the viewer often encounters in LeMaster’s work: how the way you feel about something might be more complicated than can be put into words; how big-picture concerns end up very personal; and how emotions sometimes don’t always match up with reality. “It all comes from the same place, essentially,” LeMaster says. “I really don’t make anything that I don’t feel is about my life, too.” She compares it to songwriting and the moment when she realized it’s not about writing songs that sound like what you hear—it’s about writing what sounds like you. “Even if it’s not about me, if it’s something that I value, it’ll come out.” na
Bennet LeMaster is exhibiting her work at Artclectic October 19–21 at University School of Nashville. For more information, visit Artclectic.org. See more of LeMaster’s work at www.bennetlemaster.com.
YORK & Friends fine art Nashville • Memphis
BITSY HUGHES
Vision & Perception, Mixed media on canvas, 30” x 30”
DAVID NICHOLS
Are We There Yet?, Oil on panel, 30” x 30”
107 Harding Place • Tues-Sat 10-5 615.352.3316 • yorkandfriends@att.net www.yorkandfriends.com Follow us on
at York & Friends Fine Art
ABOVE IT ALL
Aerial Innovations Bird’s Eye View of Nashville
Lexus of Nashville October 5 until February 28 WORDS Amanda Dobra Hope
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rt is all about perspective. One of its main purposes is to take its audience on a journey vastly different from their everyday reality. Imagine for a moment a fairly routine task such as buying or servicing your car in the city and state you live, work, and play in every day. Now imagine yourself waiting for your car alongside images of that city and state in a way you may never have seen them before, images that challenge your perspective of different areas of land and structure that you’re used to seeing only from the ground. From October 5 until February 28, Lexus of Nashville will be showcasing thirty photographic images of Middle Tennessee and the Smoky Mountains taken by members of Aerial Innovations of Tennessee, a Nashville-based aerial photography company founded by Wendy Whittemore. The photos are the result of the photographers feeding their creative sides between construction and real estate assignments for the company. “We aren’t going out trying to make art for our clients; the art is happening between shots,” Whittemore explains. When asked when the art portion of the flights first emerged, Whittemore offers, “The art probably started before we ever took a photo for a client. Looking at the earth from above provides a whole other network of patterns and juxtapositions. If you have a creative bone in your body, as soon as you get up in an airplane, you’re going to be creating art.” Whittemore goes on to explain that the stunning photographs are most definitely the result of successful collaborations
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between the pilots and photographers. “Being a pilot takes a large amount of knowledge and skill. We use flight schools and fly with the instructors. They have a lot of hours and realworld experience—flying low, flying at an angle. Great images are a team effort.” During the opening reception on October 5 from 5 to 7 p.m., Paul Polycarpou, publisher and CEO of this publication, will be moderating an artist talk with the photographers whose work is being showcased. The conversation will focus on how the images are captured, as well as the images themselves and the stories they tell. “We wanted to share these photos with Nashville and be able to have a conversation about them. Every image is about the developing world. Everything has the stamp of man on it,” Whittemore passionately adds. na Above It All opens with a reception on October 5 from 5 to 7 p.m. (artist talk at 6) at Lexus of Nashville, 2010 Rosa L. Parks Boulevard. The exhibit remains on view until February 28. For more information, visit www.flytenn.com.
Mixed Media, 20” x 29”
Judith Poirier
JUDITH POIRIER SETTING WEST: FROM PRINT TO FILM TO PRINT
Judith Poirier’s work focuses on experimental typography through film, book design, and printmaking. She uses letterpress to make her films, exploring connections between the printed page and the cinematic screen.
SHOWING OCTOBER 7 - NOVEMBER 14 OPENING RECEPTION: OCTOBER 7 • 6:00 - 9:00 pm
#PressPlayRecord • @HatchShowPrint HatchShowPrint.com • Downtown Nashville
Molly Tuttle
1938 Martin 00-42
GUITAR LOVE FIND IT AT
WORDS Kathleen Boyle
THE
SPIRIT OF MAN Tennessee State University Art Gallery October 9 to November 20 Art Eubanks, Tears of a Clown, 2006, Oil pastel on board, 30” x 27”
A
rt and spirituality share an ironclad bond. Although it is inconclusive whether either is a reaction to or a reflection of the other (perhaps an ongoing cause/effect exchange), a resonance between the concrete and intangible cannot be denied. This connection is difficult, if not impossible, to translate, as visual and written language offer great complement to, but fail to be substitutes for, each other. That which we see and that which we speak rely upon different senses, yet both offer an ability to arouse the cognitive and/or emotional faculties. It is when said faculties become highly alert and feelings of awakening and/or awe occur that one may suppose art has embarked upon spiritual territory. German Expressionist Wassily Kandinsky explored this notion in the 1914 publication Concerning the Spiritual in Art when he determined that “the artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning.” Such observation is at the core of The Spirit of Man, the
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latest exhibition at the Tennessee State University Department of Art’s gallery. A group show that highlights a selection of artwork from the institution’s permanent collection, The Spirit of Man visits the role of spirituality in art beyond a symbolic façade. The exhibition consists solely of artwork created by TSU faculty or alumni and includes work by Art Eubanks, Samuel Dunson, Michael McBride, and Greg Ridley. Each of these artists is of African American decent, and while their work explores notions of self and culture, it also delivers apparent aesthetic distinction, distinction so strong that formal common ground is not readily apparent. Thus, diversity is a highlight for the exhibition as it provides testimony to the limitlessness of creative and spiritual evocation. Curated by Paul Polycarpou, Publisher of Nashville Arts Magazine, the theme of this exhibition is one that developed in an organic manner. Having been invited by gallery director
Courtney Adair Johnson to explore the university’s collection, Polycarpou did not predetermine an idea prior to his visit. Rather, he allowed the artwork to define the exhibition’s concept. “The selection process was not academic,
Samuel Dunson, Die Die Die, 2004, Oil on canvas, 48” x 36”
Samuel Dunson, Fame and Musical Chairs, 2001, Oil on canvas, 52” x 36”
E. Hagati, Untitled, 1995, Oil on canvas, 20” x 16”
motivation for the exhibition.”
Greg Ridley, Hopi, 1991, Oil on canvas, 48” x 38”
but was based on my natural response to the spiritual qualities the artwork emitted,” he explained. “It became clear that the connection between art and the human spirit would be the
A large portion of this show features the multimedia work of Art Eubanks. A Nashvillian who earned his bachelor’s degree in art education from TSU, Eubanks has established himself internationally as an artist, educator, and mentor in the arts community. Having previously described his work as “the sum of life and direct result of divine artistry,” Eubanks visits imagery that harbors tribal African likeness and brings an American contemporary perspective to its form. Such meld is immediately hypnotic and renders both formal confidence and universal egoic confusion in its confrontation with identity in the modern world. It is as though Eubanks’s artwork begs this question of all his viewers: How do heritage and history factor into our current condition? For it is when we reflect upon humanity’s journey that progress can be best navigated.
Such journey, while greatly determined by politics, is also engrained in humankind’s connection to the belief that there is more to this world, and to ourselves, than its materiality—a spiritual motivation. This sense, though not explicit, is palpable in Eubanks’s art. This notion also penetrates the art of Dunson, McBride, and Ridley. While the majority of the artwork in The Spirit of Man is figurative, each artist upholds abstraction in their method. Abstraction is perhaps the most telling indication that the artists use their work as a means to explore ideas that exceed a superficial inquiry of human experience. “I learn from artists all of the time about spirit,” stated Johnson. “Their individual drive/passion moves us forward in a visual manner, and each person is important in this cog.” na
The Spirit of Man is on exhibit at the Tennessee State University art gallery from October 9 to November 20. A reception is slated for October 12, from 4 to 6 p.m. For more information, visit www.tnstate.edu/art.
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O’MORE NASHVILLE
a2017 LRK Inc.
Harmony of nature and design. The O’More Show House at Você, located on the late country music icon Eddy Arnold’s land on south Granny White Pike, is the perfect location to showcase the designs of four decades of O’More alums. All leaders in their field, they produce a dazzling design experience this year that is exceptionally welcoming from the exterior paint colors to the interior finishes, harmonized with progressive design and technology. The designers have incorporated the “Inspired by Nature” theme of the Você community in the design of this beautiful 4,000-square-foot, one-of-a-kind home by renowned architect, Carson Looney of Looney Ricks Kiss, and built by highly regarded custom builder Brady Fry of Fry Classic Construction.
OCTOBER 19 – NOVEMBER 12 1608 Windy Ridge Drive, Brentwood, TN (within the new Você development)
$20 Tickets available at door or on-line www.omoreshowhouse.com SHOWHOUSE HOURS:
WEDNESDAY THRU SATURDAY10AM-4PM SUNDAY 12-4PM CLOSED FOR PRIVATE EVENTS ON MONDAYS AND TUESDAYS MEDIA SPONSORS
PRESENTING SPONSORS
BENEFACTOR SPONSORS
THANK YOU TO OUR VENDOR SPONSORS: ADAC • Benjamin Moore Paints • Bevolo • Boral Products • California Closets • Circa/Visual Comfort Lighting Eagle Roofing Products • Goodman • Kohler • Marvin Windows • Mohawk Flooring • Smokey Mountain Tops • StoneSource • WilsonArt
ASISEEIT
Liz Clayton Scofield is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, thinker, all-around adventurer, and nomad. They hold an MFA from Indiana University, Bloomington. See their art at www.lizclaytonscofield.com.
BY LIZ CLAYTON SCOFIELD
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What do Nashville’s artists need to facilitate their ability to make their best work?
The last night: Resident artists gather in cabin for bonding
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n Truth & Beauty, Ann Patchett writes the intimate tale of her friendship with poet Lucy Grealy, often detailing the emotional labor performed in caring for each other. Patchett recounts when she sorted through thousands of unopened envelopes when Grealy’s depression prevented her from processing her mail. Patchett paid off small debts, answered fan mail, and forged Grealy’s signature. This labor facilitated the artistic labor Grealy was struggling to perform under the weight of heavy writing deadlines. I’m interested in acts of care and emotional labor that artists perform for each other in their communities and intimate bonds that make possible their artistic
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Photograph by Amy Conway
“I went to the ocean and fell in love with thirteen people.”
What does it mean to be an artist after all? It’s diving into our depths and digging at something to reveal some truth about what it is to be human in this world right now. A spiritual, raw, difficult process. Artists may be throwing themselves into a fire and hoping to come out of it still breathing, maybe reformed or at least renewed, learning through this arduous self-revealing practice. It is diving into oneself, opening up one’s chest, and fishing out a truth to present to the world. This is deep emotional labor. This is anxiety-inducing, panic-ridden labor. To a spectator, the work might look like putting a mark on a paper, but labor may more often be staring into nothing. It may look like doing nothing much at all, but it’s the circles one chases oneself in, toiling around the final moment where push comes to shove, and the artist either can sit stewing in the explosive energy pushing from the inside out or take the leap, sitting with a gut full of anxiety, and do. I’ve participated in conversations about the needs of Nashville’s art communities. Last month, I wrote about Nashville’s need for a vibrant artist residency program. Now I’m asking again: What do Nashville’s artists need to facilitate their ability to make their best work?
Resident artists share personal stories of food they have prepared
Photograph by Amy Conwayv
In August 2017, I spent ten days with thirteen strangers on the Cucalorus campus in Wilmington, North Carolina. We were fourteen artists gathering for a process-based residency focused on art and food. Part of the process of the residency was leading meals for the group, over which we shared personal stories of the food we prepared for one another. We gathered for discussion of food, politics, bodies, art, aesthetics, community: theoretical and conceptual frameworks for our practices. We worked independently. We gathered and shared our process, progress, frustrations. We checked
Liz and fellow resident artist Betsy Stout go fountain-swimming
Photograph by Amy Conway
labor. The care Patchett performs is an essential component of the creative process.
in with each other, sharing personal experiences, emotions, vulnerabilities. We took care of one another. We swam in fountains, sang karaoke together till the wee hours, danced until even weeer hours and fell into a halfnaked pile of bodies on the floor in a circle of smiles and love. We ate donuts, climbed trees, went to the ocean and fought waves. The last day we shared our work. In balance with our loving, caring, fun adventures, we’d been doing a lot of emotional artistic labor. That evening, though exhausted, we said, “Whatever! Stick and pokes in the cabin,” and stayed up eating ice cream and getting tattooed, laughing and crying and fighting the dawn where we knew we’d say goodbye, for now. We gathered in the cabin that night for only a little rest before we groggily gathered to head to the ocean one last time to see the sunrise. We built a community in less than ten days, saw where care was needed and gave, and opened ourselves to receiving care when we were in need. The community allowed us to create. Food bonded us. Art bonded us. In ten days, we planted seeds of a love that continues to grow through adventures/meals/art/support. I believe the experience of this residency is a collaborative and ongoing performance in its own right, one that teaches us how to create, how to be, how to live and support one another— the magic that we need from art in such politically trying times. These are the experiences that give us the strength to continue as artists, activists, optimists, lovers. Hugs, dancing, late nights howling at the moon. This is a community of giving and respect, healing, and love. It nurtures the strength to do our work as artists, dive into our depths in safety and openness, to see and be and grow and present our truth, a truth, some truth. We break bread. na Learn more about Cucalorus: www.cucalorus.org.
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Written by Jim Reyland, starring Barry Scott and Chip Arnold, has moved audiences to laughter and tears. Serving as a punch to the heart, a call to action, and the beginning of a difficult conversation about the realities of addiction and life on the streets.
Jim Reyland
Barry Scott
Chip Arnold
For tickets please visit www.westendumc.org/stand Or go to www.writersstage.com to find out how you can support the ongoing mission of Benefiting Room In The Inn
p U t
AArSHVILLE N
Art Up Nashville is a comprehensive fine art service provider dedicated to the professional installation of items such as art and antique objects, heavy mirrors, posters and photographs. No job is too big or small. Our staff consists of museum-trained art handlers who for years have regularly handled precious, irreplaceable items of all classifications for museums and galleries as well as commercial and residential clients. Additionally, our staff is made up of artists who possess a special appreciation for art and whose refined aesthetic sensibilities optimize the clients’ experience.
www.ArtUpNashville.com
duncan@artupnashville.com 615-975-7577
Photograph by Ron Manville
ANDSOITGOES
Photograph by Curtis Stewart
BY RACHAEL McCAMPBELL
Rachael McCampbell is an artist, teacher, curator, and writer who resides in the small hamlet of Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee. For more about her, please visit www.rachaelmccampbell.com.
Rachael McCampbell beside her installation
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ometimes as an artist I wonder, Why am I doing this? Does it mean anything to anyone other than me? In January, I submitted a proposal to the East Tennessee Children’s Hospital in Knoxville, (ETCH), for a public art project. The thought of creating art for parents and children who are dealing with frightening illnesses inspired me. If I could make my art ease someone’s worried mind, even for a few minutes, that would mean a great deal to me. I presented three proposals to the committee, and they chose the one I call Bunny World.
My idea began with a painting I sold of a bunny looking up at a cloud shaped like a bunny. It was whimsical, and it was that whimsy I wanted to capture. I designed a 4’ x 6’ panel, which acts as a “window” on the hospital wall. It looks out onto a field of bunnies who are observing a large bunnyshaped cloud in the sky and lake. To create context, I added the Smoky Mountains and the Knoxville skyline. And for more interest and depth, I sculpted bunnies who are climbing steps to peer at the bunny cloud, too. Bookending each side, overall-clad bunnies are busy painting the wall and Henry David Thoreau’s quote that reads, This world is but a canvas to our imaginations. I was given a 9’ x 12’ wall in the hematology/oncology waiting room. Designing art for a hospital environment presents interesting challenges. It took months to find a huge piece of canvas that would cover the entire wall so that if they want to move it, they can. I stretched it on the wall, then gessoed and painted it on-site. It took me over a week to paint the “painter bunnies,” and the 4’ x 6’ panel took several months to complete in my studio. When I wasn’t painting, I was sculpting six bunnies out of clay and had them cast in resin. There were many hiccups with that process. We cast one bunny in a pastel color to match the hospital scheme but saw that they needed to coordinate with
the painting. So I hand-painted each bunny using acrylics and metallic paints to create the illusion of bronze. While I was there painting and installing, I talked to some of the patients, their families, and the amazing staff of ETCH. Their growing enthusiasm about the project got me more and more excited to be a part of it. I’m so used to painting alone in my studio, so to hear their thoughts and feelings about my work, as I was creating it, was amazing. One sweet little girl, who looked to be about 8, sat quietly in front of the art for a few minutes in her wheelchair. She was pale, her head bald from chemotherapy, yet she had a beatific smile on her face. She noticed the bunny cloud and the city of Knoxville, and before she left, she looked sincerely at me and said, “Thank you.” I was deeply touched that a child going through a serious illness took the time to consider the art, let alone appreciate my efforts. I knew then that my wish to create art that mattered had come true with at least one person. And one is good enough for me. Since then, I’ve heard from ETCH that my art installation has created conversation and wonder by many who see it. I can only hope that Bunny World, as Thoreau says, is … a canvas to our imaginations and a salve to the heavy hearts that pass through. na
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SOUNDINGOFF BY JOSEPH E. MORGAN
Season Opener from the Nashville Symphony Courtesy of Nashville Symphony Orchestra
On September 14, the Nashville Symphony began its season with an eclectic concert of dance music and a concerto played by one of our generation’s greatest pianists, André Watts. The evening opened with an earnest performance of Claude Debussy’s chestnut Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faun. Here special mention goes to the warm tone of principal flutist Érik Gratton on the famous opening tritone-spanning melody as well as Maestro Guerrero’s detailed and delicate manipulation of Debussy’s beautiful orchestral shadings. The Debussy was followed by Watts playing Edward MacDowell’s Concerto no. 2 in D minor. He was just here last year performing Rachmaninoff’s magisterial Second Piano Concerto. Comparing the two performances, the Rachmaninoff stands above for me, not because of Watts’s performance in either—his electricity and power were apparent and tangible
NeLLie Jo
Over There Across the Dam, Nellie Jo Rainer, oil, 12 x 16
NellieJo@NellieJo.com www.nelliejo.com
in the MacDowell and his technique without peer—but because the virtuosity in the MacDowell is so breathless and unrelenting, the virtuosity in the score lacks an enriching lyrical foil. Charles “Kip” Winger’s Conversations with Nijinsky opened the second half. A four-movement work, “each of which represents a different mood or aspect of Nijinsky,” Winger’s Conversations revealed a bright yet refined talent for orchestration and an exciting rhythmic edge. His employment of the “exotic” octatonic scale, likely a reference to Nijinsky’s work with the great Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, created a subtle premonition of the next piece, Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite. In my opinion, the Symphony’s performance of the Stravinsky was the best piece of the evening. From the opening’s supernatural conjuring, to the heart-stopping “Infernal Dance of King Kastchei” and on to the wonderful rebirth in the finale, given by Nashville’s unequalled horn section, it was simply a very exciting performance. What a wonderful end to a concert that announced an exciting new season, a season which continues on October 5 with a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. For more information, visit www.nashvillesymphony.org.
Ah Young Hong, soprano October 4-6 Steve and Judy Turner Recital Hall Marvelous and versatile soprano Ah Young Hong returns for a weeklong residency at Blair, including two performances and a master class. All events take place in Steve and Judy Turner Recital Hall.
Wednesday, October 4 • 8 p.m. Hong and pianist Mark Wait present an evening of works for voice and piano.
Thursday, October 5 • 1 p.m. Hong conducts a master class with Blair’s voice majors. The public is welcome to observe.
Friday, October 6 • 8 p.m. Hong will be accompanied by an assortment of Blair musicians in an evening of works for voice and mixed instrumental accompaniment.
2400 Blakemore Ave. Nashville, TN 37212
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The focal point of each twenty-inch-square canvas is the black-and-white photograph of the face of each survivor.
J is for Judy, 2017, Digital collage, 20” x 20”
K is for Keltie, 2017, Digital collage, 20” x 20”
L is for Leslie (artist Leslie Haines), 2017, Digital collage, 20” x 20”
M is for MaDonna, 2017, Digital collage, 20” x 20”
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raphic and advertising designer Leslie Haines knew from the moment she learned of her breast cancer diagnosis she would integrate that arduous experience into her art, but she didn’t know exactly how it would manifest. Her new collection, The Real Wonder Women, is the culmination of her journey through and beyond the C word.
“I haven’t applied this technique on something so personal,” Haines says. Her self-portrait is done in her favorite oranges and features an image of superhero Wonder Woman. “My daughter gave me that nickname while I was undergoing treatment.” The wave of breast-cancer-pink ribbon forms a W and is going to be tattooed over her port scar.
Most who are familiar with Haines’s work think of the collages with big block letters and whimsical animals that give the impression of Victorian engravings. The Real Wonder Women is not only a departure from her previous work; it is the antithesis of the demure Victorian woman. On the contrary, these are portraits of feminine power and transformation.
The focal point of each twenty-inch-square canvas is the black-and-white photograph of the face of each survivor. Elements are scattered across the surface giving clues of passions, favorite colors, and most importantly, what words and images guided them through recovery. The message is clearly complex and as layered as the images that comprise the collage itself. In fact, these prints are narratives of the epic journey of a hero’s quest.
Her subjects are women from a support group. “I met these women at the After Breast Cancer program (ABC) through the Green Hills YMCA,” Haines says. “I was one year past treatment, and I liked the idea of rebuilding muscle mass and learning about proper nutrition.” She encountered something more significant than self-care tips. ABC offers “journey sessions” where “women talk about what you want your life to be like after cancer. Then we come up with a plan of action,” Haines explains. This collective consciousness was reminiscent of Haines’s unique approach to graphic art. Her collage method combines scanned images from books and newsprint, letterpress books with a Hatch Print feel, and multiple layers of Photoshop wizardry set against bold color.
WORDS Catherine Randall Berresheim
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Beyond the Word
One woman loves music and her grandfather’s violin is featured; another is an avid reader so text watermarks the background. Song lyrics, sheet music, and orchids all become totems. All tell their individual story. They also share a similar loss and alteration, which unites them. “In the wake of sixteen rounds of chemo, a full course of radiation, and a double mastectomy, I saw this stunning work of art and thought that I was beautiful. I’m still here. Vanity is the folly of young women who just haven’t learned the hard way yet. I am grateful to know better,” says survivor Keltie Peay. This is the best lesson art can offer. na
For additional information, please visit www.lesliehaines.com.
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ARTSMART
A monthly guide to art education
Photograph by Anthony Matula
TENNESSEE ROUNDUP
350! This is the number of Student Ticket Subsidy (STS) grants awarded to schools throughout Tennessee to date for the 2017–2018 school year. STS is a grant program that provides funds for artist fees, tickets, and transportation for students from Tennessee public schools to experience a broad variety of cultural opportunities, arts disciplines, and artists. STS funds are awarded to schools in all of the state’s 95 counties, which means principals, teachers, parents, and other community members recognize the value of arts learning opportunities—both in-depth and exposure-based—to engage, teach, and inspire our students. What’s more is the network of 140 arts and cultural organizations and teaching artists on the Tennessee Arts Commission’s Teaching Artist Roster that is essential in providing these experiences. A project funded by the STS grant varies depending on the needs and interests of the school. If we look at what is taking place in the month of October in Metro Nashville Public Schools, Cockrill Elementary and Tusculum Elementary are hosting the Nashville Ballet for in-school performances of Aesop’s Fables, which weaves popular fables such as The Tortoise and the Hare and The Wind and the Sun to teach children dance and literary arts. Global Education Center, which has its own roster of over 100 artists representing 40 different cultures, is working with Granbery Elementary to provide the Passport to Understanding Assembly, which uses the arts to develop empathy, understanding, and respect for the individual and humanity.
Photograph courtesy of State Photography
McGavock High School is bringing in Elizabeth Davidson, a
by Ann Talbott Brown Director of Arts Education Tennessee Arts Commission
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Photograph by Rusty Russell
Artists and Educators Enlivening Schools
professional actress of 40 years, to perform a one-woman play titled Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Literary Soldier based on the author’s life, letters, and famous novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. A group of secondary schools including Stratford, Nashville Big Picture, Pearl-Cohn Entertainment Magnet, Lead Academy, MLK Magnet, and Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet are partnering throughout the school year with Southern Word to build literacy and presentation skills during spoken-word residencies often aligned with relevant classroom topics or specific literary devices. Whether the project occurs for one day or over the course of a school year, artists are sparking the imaginations and interests of students to learn and grow within and through the arts. Educators from these schools are making this possible. STS funds are still available in many Tennessee counties. For more information, visit tnartseducation.org.
Photograph by Jerry Atnip
Photograph by Jerry Atnip
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Jairo Prado Mosaic: Roots & Routes One of the first questions from any Nashvillian is this: “Where are you from?”
contributions and stories of populations—particularly what happened with migrations.”
Camino y Raíces (Roots & Routes), the tile mosaic under construction by Jairo Art Studio with the assistance of Metro’s Opportunity Now students for the new park at Casa Azafrán, provides a visual reference to the idea that we all come from somewhere.
Students learned through this project that the story of the city is so relevant to the story of the mosaic, with color and contrast and movement, the way a city is built with a lot of planning and collaboration, and a lot of hard work. Everyone has a role to play.
“Roots shows respect for what makes community,” says Colombian-born artist Jairo Prado. “Routes acknowledges the journeys we take. We all take different journeys which overlap, collide, and intersect.”
“We collected coins from 77 countries, and we continue to collect as we move toward completion of the mosaic,” says Susan. The project started with a template, planned and numbered with the directions to go for each section, similar to making a quilt pattern.”
“In this piece, designed and constructed from 1,700 coins from around the world, you are moving back a curtain to reveal the roots and routes of many, how things are changing, and the breakthrough in which the invisible becomes visible,” explains Prado. “Art history has never told the whole story, omitting the
The process takes three tracings, with the design cut into sections to make patterns which are placed on the tiles for cutting. “It’s a very tedious process,” Jairo admits. The kids learned that making art has a high level of intensity, and they learned both the creative and business side of a career in art. But for each there was that moment: “Wow! That’s what goes into making art!” Such public arts projects can contribute to a sense of confidence and accomplishment for participants who can point with pride to their contribution. “This is powerful. Students may not understand, but later they see the power and the value. They look up and say, ‘That’s my section!’” The joy of such projects can be seen and heard in Prado’s own excitement— “Art is coming! Art is coming!”
by DeeGee Lester Director of Education The Parthenon
Photograph by Drew Cox
Prado and his wife, Susan, had been talking with Casa Azafrán about a park project following the installation of their massive mosaic Migration, a community project that adorns the entrance to the building. When the call went out from the Metro Arts Commission, Conexión Americas, and the mayor’s office for Opportunity Now, Prado submitted a proposal for a summer apprenticeship for students. Eight students from four Metro High Schools—Glencliff, Nashville School for the Arts, Overton, and Hume Fogg—participated in the construction of the mosaic, along with a college-level near-peer arts coach.
ARTSMART
by Sara Lee Burd
The Conceptualizer: Fighting the Sea of Sameness Coming from the theoretical world of graduate school and having years of experience as an award-winning graphic designer, Dale Addy was primed to assume the role of shaping future designers. However, he was confronted with a mindset challenge in the classroom that he would have to overcome: “I give a student an assignment and the first thing they do is start googling it. That’s not really art or design thinking; that’s rehashing what has been done.” Addy elaborated, “I don’t fault the students for this. They are so afraid of getting something wrong and getting bad grades that they are not willing to try. That’s a bad thing for art and for design. Art and design are about failing. Miserably. A lot of times.” Committed to the idea that drawing is thinking, Addy sketched a rough idea of a machine and experience he wanted to make to spark creativity. He worked with Andrew Caldwell from Nashville CNC to construct what became “The Conceptualizer.” The collaboration and freedom to invent something that neither of them had encountered was a challenge for both of them. Addy notes, “His expertise made it so much more than what I could have made on my own. This is a product of our creative thinking.” The resulting well-crafted machine calls out to passersby with its bright contrasting colors, eclectic font combinations, and overall active appearance. An art student explained her anticipation to engage with it, “It’s been up since school got back in. I saw this event through the art department newsletter and thought, cool, I can finally find out what this contraption is.” The Conceptualizer features three bays labeled “Ponder,” “Think,” and “Cogitate.” Each one has a wheel with 19 words. The idea was for participants to walk up, spin the wheels, and make a new creative expression with the three words. With pastels, crayons, markers, and pre-printed sheets supplied at nearby tables, Addy explains, “You can write a poem, draw, and if you don’t like that, you can come up with your own expression.”
While students at the event appeared happy and proud of what they came up with, some admitted it required digging deep into their creative selves. Two art history students explained that they appreciate art all day, but sitting down to make art was a challenge for them. One noted, “I had to look up a photo of an opossum. Like I don’t know how to draw an ugly dog with a weird tail.” The other chimed in, “It was a little stressful at first because I had to create it. As we kept going we definitely loosened up. We were laughing and having fun.” Belmont Director of Galleries Katie Boatman was thrilled with the outcome. “I was slightly concerned about participation because people can be so reluctant to put their ideas out there visually thinking.” Pointing to the walls covered with artwork and the students jammed into the entry of the Leu Gallery for the Arts taking turns to spin the wheel and pick up their chosen method of crafting their artwork, she concludes, “That was not a problem.” Next steps? Addy wants to tour The Conceptualizer to encourage a broad range of communities to experience their own creativity. Committed to the future of innovation, Addy urges, “Don’t let your abilities stifle your ideas. Get them out there. Trends are everywhere. There is a sea of sameness out there that, to me, is not a good thing.” For more information about Dale Addy and The Conceptualizer, visit www.dnacreative.com.
Photography by Sally Bebawy
The September debut at Belmont was a success in motivating
students’ creativity. A communications major effused, “When I got my ideas I was so surprised that it came together so fast. I had “pen,” “sleepily,” and “noisily.” I made a picture of a pen sleeping with a megaphone so you could see it was snoring noisily. This helped me generate ideas so fast. I immediately had millions of things in my head. It’s just so fun.” She continued, “When I sit down with projects I’m so confused about what I’m going to do. I could see how this could help generate ideas.”
Dale Addy explains The Conceptualizer to students
A student experiments with The Conceptualizer
Photograph by Sally Bebawy/ Nashville Symphony
by DeeGee Lester
Imagine yourself as a middle school student standing alone in a spotlight before a panel of professional musicians, your beloved instrument—now a familiar and faithful friend—in hand. You take a deep breath, whisper a silent prayer, and you play. One of the greatest benefits of music training in the life of a student is the confidence established through persistent practice and the experience brought through repeated auditions and performance. Nashville Symphony’s Accelerando, established in 2015 in partnership with MNPS (Music Makes Us), Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music, Conexión Américas, and Choral Arts Link, with support from Nissan and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, recently announced its second cohort of young students, eager to explore and develop their musical skills under the mentorship of some of Nashville’s best classical musicians. Entering an experience described by members of the first Accelerando class as “surreal,” “crazy,” and “intense” are Angelina Bautista (oboe: Grade 8, JFK Middle School, MNPS); Xayvion Davidson (bassoon: Grade 8, Rose Park Middle School, MNPS); Riya Mitra (violin: Grade 8, Sunset Middle School, Williamson County Schools); and McKane (Max) Robinson (trombone: Grade 7, Head Middle Magnet School, MNPS). “So many students choose the same instruments (the flute or
ARTSMART
Nashville Symphony: Accelerando clarinet),” says Angelina. “But the oboe lets you stand out and have more opportunities. I like the variation and range of sound more than any other instrument.” “Music is in my blood,” says Xayvion, who plays several instruments. “When I actually got to see the instrument, I liked it. I was somewhat nervous (at the audition), but when I got the news, I was like, Thank you, Lord!” Like the tranquil sound of her violin, Riya says her audition was “kind of calm for me. I chose pieces I was comfortable with, and I knew I had done my best.” The whole experience has been exciting for Max. The youngest of the Accelerando class, Max admits, “It’s a bit intimidating. The kids are a lot older than me, so it’s kind of nerve-wracking, but it’s worth it!” “Each of these students possesses the talent and drive to make an impact on the future of American orchestras,” says Kimberly Kraft McLemore, Accelerando program manager. “They represent the Nashville Symphony’s commitment to ensuring that young people from across Middle Tennessee have access to the highest quality music education.”
MNPS Message of Love and Support
“What if we back his [Dr. Joseph’s] passion and put a song to it?” Caldwell said and selected “Right Now (We Need One Another),” written by his sister-in-law and award-winning gospel singer CeCe Winans. Utilizing Pearl Cohn’s state-of the-art recording facilities, Caldwell reached out to other schools, bringing together a group of talented and diverse students. Hillsboro’s Tiyanna Gentry and Overton’s Trent McCrary and Jess Clements joined Pearl Cohn’s Elijah Simmons and Yaubryon Chambers to create a music video that touches the heart—YouTube: Special Message for MNPS (To Charlottesville).
something as simple as music can bring us together and help solve problems in our society,” says Chambers. The experience demonstrated to students how strangers working together can bring harmony to a chaotic world and find ways to work together toward solutions. “The power of this song is a feeling of acceptance and love. I think connecting the song to the world and to the Charlottesville incident made it more emotional and empathetic on my part. The words and the melodic rhythm and the people—us, these five kids—is the reason why this song is even more powerful than before,” says Tiyanna Gentry. See the music video at www.youtu.be/E5zEv9VqHLY.
“Getting to sing a song with such powerful lyrics showed me that
Elijah Simmons, Jess Clements, Tiyanna Gentry, Yaubryon Chambers, Trent McCrary
Compliments MNPS
The public reaction of sympathy and outrage was swift following the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12. MNPS Director Dr. Shawn Joseph’s passionate letter to staff throughout Metro schools initiated an immediate response from Cedric Caldwell, Pearl Cohn teacher and Grammy award-winning producer who heads up the Entertainment Magnet School’s Relentless Entertainment Group (the nation’s first student-run recording label affiliated with a major record label, Warner Music Nashville).
American Masters’ latest profile is eerily appropriate for October. Edgar Allan Poe: Buried Alive airs Monday, October 30, at 8 p.m., with Denis O’Hare portraying the Gothic horror author and father of detective fiction. Mark Twain, another towering figure of American literature, launched his writing career as a newspaperman, a job that took him on the international journey chronicled in Mark Twain’s Journey to Jerusalem: Dreamland, airing Tuesday, October 17, at 11 p.m.
Cinematographer Kirsten Johnson (right), in Cameraperson on POV
Speaking of film, join us Thursday, October 12, at Watkins College of Art for the John Coltrane bio Chasing Trane, our first Indie Lens Pop-Up screening of the season. See wnpt.org/events for more information.
PERFORMANCE PIECES Great Performances covers a lot of ground this month, starting with Nashville musician Raul Malo’s exploration of his Cuban heritage in Havana Time Machine. Premiering Friday, October 6, at 8 p.m., the show is part travelogue, part concert film, with appearances by The Mavericks, Sweet Lizzy Project, Ivette Cepeda, the Roberto Fonseca Band, and Eliades Ochoa’s band. Ochoa was a member of the original Buena Vista Social Club. Friday, October 13, at 8 p.m., Grammy Salute to Music Legends honors Shirley Caesar, Ahmad Jamal, Charley Pride, Jimmie Rodgers, Nina Simone, Sly Stone, and The
Jenna Thiam as Nina in The Collection on Masterpiece
Velvet Underground. Performers include Dionne Warwick, Andra Day, Dwight Yoakam, Vernon Reid, and the John Cale Band with Maureen “Mo” Tucker. Then, at 9:30 p.m., Night of the Proms features performances by Sting; Andrea Bocelli with John Miles; Alan Parsons; Cutting Crew; and Bonnie Tyler. Broadway takes center stage with She Loves Me on Great Performances on Friday, October 20, at 8 p.m. In the play, Tony-winner Laura Benanti and Tony-nominee David Horn star as shop clerks who, unbeknownst to themselves, have fallen in love with each other via correspondence. Friday, October 27, at 8 p.m., Live from Lincoln Center presents Falsettos, the Tony-nominated Broadway revival about family life during the emerging AIDS crisis. This production stars Christopher Borle, Andrew Rannells, and Stephanie J. Block.
Don’t be frightened: It’s easy to show your support for NPT by making a donation at wnpt.org. Enjoy encore presentations of many of our shows on NPT2, our secondary channel; and 24/7 children’s programming on NPT3 PBS Kids.
Raul Malo of the Mavericks with Eliades Ochoa in Havana Time Machine on Great Performances
Nohely Oliveros
STORYTELLERS
Modern-day storytelling takes many forms, including film, of course. Cameraperson, airing Monday, October 23, at 9 p.m. on POV, is Kirsten Johnson’s autobiographical documentary. Her goal is to show what it’s like to drop into new environments with her camera, while acknowledging the complex relationship between subject and filmmaker. Cameraperson includes scenes from Johnson’s many works, among them Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), Darfur Now (2007), and Citizenfour (2014).
Lynsey Addario/Janus Films
We’ve scared up some entertaining and informative programming for you this month, including the season premieres of Masterpiece dramas Poldark (8 p.m. Sunday, October 1) and The Durrells (7 p.m. Sunday, October 15). The Collection on Masterpiece premieres Sunday, October 8, at 9 p.m. Set in late-1940s Paris, the story begins with Paul Sabine (Richard Coyle) trying to reestablish his family’s fashion house using stunning designs by his tormented brother, Claude (Tom Riley). Soon Sabine hires a young American photographer who embarks on a citywide photoshoot with a seamstressturned-model in a sequence reminiscent of Funny Face, the 1957 Audrey Hepburn/ Fred Astaire film. This is the era of Christian Dior’s New Look, but The Collection is a dark tale where postwar weariness and optimism sometimes clash.
Courtesy of Nick Briggs/Lookout Point for Masterpiece
Arts Worth Watching
October 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 11:30 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
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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 The Great British Baking Show Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Television noon America’s Test Kitchen pm Cook’s Country Kitchen Sara’s Weeknight Meals American Graduate Day (Oct. 14, 1 – 5 pm) Lidia’s Kitchen Steven Raichlen’s Project Smoke Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting Best of Joy of Painting Woodwright’s Shop American Woodshop This Old House Ask This Old House A Craftsman’s Legacy PBS NewsHour Weekend Ray Stevens CabaRay Nashville
This Month on Nashville Public Television
Poldark Season 3 on Masterpiece
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 Destination Craft with Jim West Bare Feet with Mickela Mallozzi Family Travel with Colleen Kelly Globe Trekker California’s Gold Fringe Benefits America’s Heartland Rick Steves’ Europe Antiques Roadshow PBS NewsHour Weekend Charlie Rose: The Week
The sweeping drama and scenery of Poldark return. Sundays, Oct. 1 – Nov. 19, 8 pm
Weekday Schedule 5:00 5:30 6:00 6:30 7:00 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:00 9:30 10:00 10:30 11:00 11:30 12:00 12:30 1:00 1:30 2:00 2:30 3:00 3:30 4:00 4:30 5:00 6:00
am Classical Stretch 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 NPT Favorites PBS NewsHour
Finding Your Roots More cultural figures appear in the fourth season.
Nashville Public Television
Tuesdays, Oct. 3 – Dec. 26, 7 pm
The Durrells in Corfu on Masterpiece The family’s adventures continue on the island.
Sundays, Oct. 15 – Nov. 19, 7 pm
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7:00 Antiques Roadshow Baton Rouge, Hour 1. 8:00 Antiques Roadshow Baton Rouge, Hour 2. 9:00 POV Motherland. A Filipino maternity hospital is the world’s busiest. 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 BBC World News 11:30 Aging Matters: Aging in Place
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7:00 The Durrells in Corfu on Masterpiece The Season 2 opener. 8:00 Poldark on Masterpiece Season 3, Episode 3. A family addition for Ross and Demelza. 9:00 The Collection Episode 2. Nina takes control. 10:00 Start Up Knock to Come Inn. 10:30 A Craftsman’s Legacy The Brass Horn Makers. 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
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7:00 Finding Your Roots Puritans and Pioneers. Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, William H. Macy. 8:00 The Vietnam War Resolve (Jan. 1966 – June 1967). 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Mark Twain’s Journey to Jerusalem: Dreamland Cub reporter Twain’s 1867 trip to Jerusalem and the Holy Land via the Mediterranean and Europe.
. 7:00 Finding Your Roots Unfamiliar Kin. Fred Armisen, Christopher Walken, Carly Simon. 8:00 The Vietnam War The River Styx (Jan. 1964 – Dec. 1965). 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Real Rail Adventures: Swiss Winter Magic Trains, scenery and winter sports.
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7:00 Antiques Roadshow Detroit, Hour 2. 8:00 Antiques Roadshow Detroit, Hour 3. 9:00 POV The Islands and the Whales. A whalehunting culture faces environmental and activist threats. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Major League Cuban Baseball Baseball’s effect on Cuban culture and Cubans’ contribution to the sport.
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7:00 Finding Your Roots The Impression. The fourth season begins with Larry David and Bernie Sanders. 8:00 The Vietnam War Déjà Vu (1858 – 1961). 9:30 The Vietnam War Riding the Tiger (1961 – 1963). 11:00 BBC World News 11:30 Beyond La Bamba Mexico’s 300-year-old jarocho music tradition.
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Tuesday
7:00 Antiques Roadshow Boise, Hour 3. 8:00 Antiques Roadshow Detroit, Hour 1. 9:00 POV Swim Team. Autistic teens compete on a swim team. 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 BBC World News 11:30 Head of Joaquin Murrieta The story of a 19th-century Mexican revolutionary reflects Chicano-American experiences.
Monday
7:00 Cirque Dreams Holidaze A holiday extravaganza! 8:00 Poldark on Masterpiece Season 3, Episode 2. Ross searches for Dwight. 9:00 The Collection on Masterpiece Episode 1. Two brothers launch a couture line in postwar Paris. 10:30 A Craftsman’s Legacy The Sill Maker. 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
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7:00 Glen Campbell: Good Times Again This 2007 special features guests Ray Charles, Anne Murray, Johnny Cash, and Willie Nelson. 8:00 Poldark on Masterpiece The Season 3 opener. Things are going well for George. 10:00 Start Up Barn to Be Wild. 10:30 A Craftsman’s Legacy The Table Maker. 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
Sunday
Nashville Public Television’s Primetime Evening Schedule
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7:00 Nature Animal Reunions. 8:00 NOVA Secrets of the Forbidden City. Beijing’s ancient imperial palaces and temples. 9:00 Frontline Fight for Mosul. Inside the brutal battle to defeat ISIS in Iraq’s second largest city. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Austin City Limits The Pretenders.
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7:00 Nature Fox Tales. The surprisingly adaptable red fox. 8:00 NOVA Ghosts of Stonehenge. New discoveries about the ancient site. 9:00 Frontline War on the EPA. Years of environmental policy are now being overturned. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Austin City Limits Ed Sheeran.
7:00 Nature Naledi: One Little Elephant. An orphan elephant seeks a place in the herd. 8:00 NOVA Secrets of the Shining Knight. The metalworking secrets of medieval armor. 9:00 Frontline North Korea’s Deadly Dictator. Who killed Kim Jong-un’s halfbrother? 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Austin City Limits Paul Simon.
Wednesday
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7:00 Tennessee Crossroads 7:30 Volunteer Gardener 8:00 Pioneers of Television Doctors and Nurses. 9:00 Pioneers of Television Breaking Barriers. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Gene Doctors
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. 7:00 Tennessee Crossroads 7:30 Volunteer Gardener 8:00 Pioneers of Television Miniseries. 9:00 Pioneers of Television Standup to Sitcom. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 My Neighborhood: Pilsen Community engagement and activism in the Chicago area.
7:00 Tennessee Crossroads 7:30 Volunteer Gardener 8:00 Pioneers of Television Primetime Soaps. 9:00 Pioneers of Television Superheroes. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Craft in America Borders. Mexican and American artists share influences and aesthetics. .
Thursday
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7:00 Desperate Days: Last Hope of the Confederacy 7:30 Third Rail with OZY 8:00 Great Performances She Loves Me. The Broadway revival about shop clerks who adore and hate each. 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 BBC World News 11:30 Front and Center The Cadillac Three.
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7:00 Rivers and Rails: TN Civil War 150 7:30 Third Rail with OZY 8:00 Great Performances Grammy Salute to Music Legends. Shirley Caesar, Charley Pride, Jimmie Rodgers, Sly Stone, the Velvet Underground, etc. 9:30 Night of the Proms Sting, Andrea Bocelli, Alan Parsons, etc. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Front and Center Steve Vai.
7:00 Looking Over Jordan: TN Civil War 150 7:30 Third Rail with OZY 8:00 Great Performances Havana Time Machine. A performance-documentary about Cuba. 9:00 The Hispanic Heritage Awards The country’s highest tribute to Latinos by Latinos. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Front and Center Southside Johnny.
Friday
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7:00 Lawrence Welk Show County Fair. 8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 Sherlock on Masterpiece The Final Problem. 10:02 Bluegrass Underground Rhonda Vincent & The Rafe. 10:30 The Songwriters Dickey Lee. 11:00 Globe Trekker Tough Trains: Vietnam.
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7:00 Lawrence Welk Show Salute to the Senior Citizens. 8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 Sherlock on Masterpiece The Lying Detective. 10:02 Bluegrass Underground Parker Millsap. 10:30 The Songwriters Allen Reynolds and Jerry Chesnut. 11:00 Globe Trekker Tough Boats: The Amazon.
7:00 Lawrence Welk Show Salute to the U.S.A. 8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 Sherlock Season 4 on Masterpiece The Six Thatchers. 10:03 Bluegrass Underground Marty Stuart. 10:30 The Songwriters Jim Weatherly. 11:00 Globe Trekker Delhi & Agra.
Saturday
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Friday, October 20, 8 pm
Wednesday, October 11, 7 pm
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Great Performances: She Loves Me
November
for NPT, NPT2, and NPT3 PBS Kids.
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Monday, October 30, 8 pm
Edgar Allan Poe: American Masters
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7:00 Tennessee Crossroads 7:00 School Discipline: NPT 7:30 Volunteer Gardener Reports Town Hall 8:00 Pioneers of Television 8:00 Live from Lincoln Acting Funny. Center 9:00 Robin Williams Falsettos. The Remembered: A Tony-nominated Pioneers of Television Broadway musical Special about a modern 10:00 BBC World News family set amidst the 10:30 Last of Summer Wine emerging AIDS crisis. 11:00 Glen Campbell: Good 10:30 Last of Summer Wine Times Again 11:00 BBC World News 11:30 Front and Center Kaleo.
7:00 Nature 7:00 Tennessee Crossroads 7:00 A Place to Call Home H Is for Hawk: A New 7:30 Volunteer Gardener The Prodigal Daughter. Chapter. Training a 8:00 Tim Rushlow & His 8:00 Great Performances new goshawk. Big Band – Live Present Laughter. 8:00 NOVA 9:00 Johnny Cash’s Bitter Kevin Kline stars in the Killer Hurricanes. Tears Noël Coward play. 9:00 Frontline 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine Putin’s Revenge, 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 BBC World News Part 2. 11:00 Shelter Me 11:30 Front and Center 10:00 BBC World News Dawes. 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Austin City Limits Norah Jones; Angel Olsen.
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Nature: Fox Tales
7:00 Finding Your Roots Immigrant Nation. Scarlett Johansson, Paul Rudd, John Turturro. 8:00 The Vietnam War Things Fall Apart (Jan. 1968 – July 1968). 9:30 Voices from Vietnam: Reflecting at the Wall 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Things That Go Bump in the Night
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7:00 Antiques Roadshow Our 50 States, Hour 1. 8:00 American Masters Edgar Allan Poe: Buried Alive. Denis O’Hare portrays Poe. 9:30 The Fugitives A group of early-20thcentury poets in Nashville. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Ireland’s Great Famine & The Irish Diaspora
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7:00 Antiques Roadshow 7:00 Finding Your Roots 7:00 Nature Baton Rouge, Hour 3. The Vanguard. Charlie and the 8:00 Antiques Roadshow Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ava Curious Otters. Kansas City, Hour 1. DuVernay, Janet Mock. 8:00 NOVA 9:00 POV 8:00 The Vietnam War Killer Volcanoes. Cameraperson. This Is What We Do Investigating the Cinematographer (July 1967 – Dec. 1967). mega-eruption that Kirsten Johnson’s 9:30 The Last Ring Home caused a medieval autobiographical 10:00 BBC World News deep freeze. documentary. 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 9:00 Frontline 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Deeply Rooted: John Putin’s Revenge, 11:00 BBC World News Coykendall’s Journey Part 1. The inside story 11:30 Pedro E. Guerrero, to Save Our Seeds of Putin’s conflict with Portrait of an Image and Stories the U.S. Maker 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:30 Austin City Limits Zac Brown Band.
Visit wnpt.org for complete 24-hour schedules
7:00 The Durrells in Corfu Season 2, Episode 4. Aunt Hermione arrives. 8:00 Poldark on Masterpiece Season 3, Episode 6. Aunt Agatha vs. George. 9:00 The Collection Episode 5. Charlotte makes her move. 10:00 Start Up A Bearded Delight. 10:30 A Craftsman’s Legacy The Cowboy Hat Maker. 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
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7:00 The Durrells in Corfu Season 2, Episode 3. Louisa’s birthday party. 8:00 Poldark on Masterpiece Season 3, Episode 5. A deadly gift. 9:00 The Collection Episode 4. Paul concocts false evidence. 10:00 Start Up The Concrete that Broke the Camel’s Back. 10:30 A Craftsman’s Legacy The Arrow Maker. 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
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7:00 The Durrells in Corfu Season 2, Episode 2. Leslie starts a distillery. 8:00 Poldark on Masterpiece Season 3, Episode 4. George jockeys for a triumph in politics. 9:00 The Collection Episode 3. Paul’s make-or-break gown collection. 10:00 Start Up Virtual Toys. 10:30 A Craftsman’s Legacy The Rocking Horse Maker. 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
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7:00 Lawrence Welk Show We Can Make Music. 8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 Wuthering Heights Part 2. 10:00 Bluegrass Underground Don Bryant & The Bo Keys. 10:30 The Songwriters Gary Burr. 11:00 Globe Trekker Wild West: USA.
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7:00 Lawrence Welk Show Halloween. 8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 Wuthering Heights Part 1. Tom Hardy and Charlotte Riley star in this adaptation of the Emily Brontë novel. 10:00 Bluegrass Underground Conor Oberst. 10:30 The Songwriters Bob McDill and Larry Henley. 11:00 Globe Trekker Tough Trains: India’s Independence Railroads.
Daton Williams and Joshua Williams at Tinney Contemporary
Natlie, Bassam and Zahid at The Rymer Gallery
ARTSEE
ARTSEE
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ARTSEE
Carmen Bouldin at Outdoor Classic Structures
At Tinney Contemporary
Barbara Logan, Fielding Logan, Mike Upchurch and Molly Upchurch at Zeitgeist
Allison Zamorski and Jimmy Joyner at Dane Carder Studio
Michael White and Matt Reynolds at Julia Martin Gallery
Kelly Harwood, Chandra and Jim Adkins at Gallery 202
Photograph by Michael Pilkinton
Sara Lederach and KT Wolf at Zeitgeist
Mackenzie Maroney, Jessica Amerson and Alison Goedde at The Rymer Gallery
Herb Williams at The Rymer Gallery
Photograph by Michael Pilkinton
Photograph by Tammy Gentuso
Lizzie Williams, Devi Stanford, Joseph McDaniel, and Danielle McDaniel at The Clay Lady’s Birthday Bash
Elise Drake at East Side Project Space
Matt Smith, Dori Pechianu, Marielle Cumming, and Nobel Earl Cummings IV at Julia Martin Gallery
John, Ginny, and Mia Warren at Zeitgeist
ARTSEE
ARTSEE
David Onri Anderson, Antonia Oaks, and Joe Nolan at mild climate
Susan Tinney and Carla Ciuffo at Tinney Contemporary
Jerry Waters, Dird, Gary Bilal on 5th Avenue
Keaira Crutchfeild and Javeah Jordan at Outdoor Classic Structures
Arash Yekrangi and Travis Commons at The Arts Company
The Franklin Art Scene celebrates its 6th Anniversary
Photograph by Michael Pilkinton
PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL NOTT
ARTSEE
Kayla Butsko, Abby McGraw, Katie Sykes, Sophe Goddyn, and Audery Pope at The Arts Company
Linda Lou Marks and Dana Cooper at Julia Martin Gallery
Photograph by Michael Pilkinton
Tammy Gentuso revealed part of her Nashville Clayscape installation at The Clay Lady’s Birthday Bash
Photograph by Tammy Gentuso
At East Side Project Space
Bridget Stred and Jaha Sewell at abrasiveMedia
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Photography Competition
8th annual photography competition Local and international photographers Amateur and professional
+ First Place $500 cash
+ Second Place
$300 Chromatics gift card
+ Third Place
$200 Chromatics gift card
Top entries will be featured in the December issue of Nashville Arts Magazine and entrants may be given the opportunity to shoot an assignment for the magazine.
Submissions due: October 20, 2017
Winners announced: December 2017
You may enter as many photographs as you wish for $5 per photograph. See www.nashvillearts.com for details.
ANTHOLOGY
Cats vs. dogs ... Are you a cat person or a dog person? Perhaps you’re both. I grew up loving dogs because my family always had dogs. The two I remember most fondly were Impy, a black cocker spaniel, and Bendix, our Boston Terrier. As I grew older, however, I began to gravitate toward cats. For years I lived in a high-rise near Vanderbilt with a big yellow cat named Doc. Doc found me late one night after a gig. He was filthy and one ear was torn, but he had a soulful vibe about him that was irresistible. So I took him in.
COLLECTION www.interioranthology.com
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That very night, I decided Doc needed a bath. So I ran some warm water in my kitchen sink. You know how cats hate being submerged in water? Well, when I placed Doc in that warm water, he not only didn’t resist, he began to purr. And later, when I took him to the animal hospital—same thing. When the vet gave him a shot, he was purring as the needle went in. The vet said she’d never seen anything like it. Doc and I spent seven wonderful years together. But in late 1997, he developed some tumors around his lungs, so I had to put him down. My grief was so great, I swore I’d never have another pet. So I remained petless for the next twenty years.
ARRATT GALLERY AT VANDERBILT
Tranquility
October 2 - 26, 2017 Alice Stern
Solar Plate Prints
Mark Reed
Bonsai (trompe l’oeil)
Then last January, I read on my neighborhood message board about a ten-year-old cat named Zoe. Her owners were looking to find her a home, since they were moving into a building in New York that didn’t allow pets. I was shocked when I found myself agreeing to adopt her. Zoe could not be more different than Doc. Whereas Doc was sweet and cuddly, Zoe is more standoffish. Words fail me in Zoe the cat describing Zoe. Everything—I mean everything—is on her terms. Even affection. But she’s starting to grow on me.
LOCATED ON THE MAIN FLOOR OF SARRATT STUDENT CENTER AT 2301 VANDERBILT PLACE, NASHVILLE, TN 37235 Visit us 7 days a week from 9 a.m–9 p.m. during the academic year. Summer and holiday schedule hours are Monday–Friday 9 a.m.–4 p.m. www.vanderbilt.edu/sarrattgallery
I recently saw a film about cats at the Belcourt. It was called Kedi (Turkish word for cat). Evidently, hundreds of thousands of cats have roamed the streets of Istanbul for centuries, living in harmony with the people who live close to the street. At one point an old man says, “Dogs think people are God. Cats know better.” Marshall Chapman is a Nashville-based singer/songwriter, author, and actress. For more information, visit www.tallgirl.com.
BEYONDWORDS
Photograph by Anthony Scarlati
INTERIOR
BY MARSHALL CHAPMAN
MYFAVORITEPAINTING COURTNEY ADAIR JOHNSON, ARTIST AND GALLERY DIRECTOR, TSU ART DEPARTMENT
M
y favorite painting is Untitled (Almost There) by Joel Batey. I like a painting, a piece of artwork, to tell a story of the artist, a message, and hopefully to take the environment in consideration, and sometimes it’s just about being fun. The environment and reuse began to take on more importance in my personal art and life journey while I was at Plaza Art Materials in 2008, where I first meet Joel Batey. We worked together for about five years, while he lived and worked across from the store. He was the sweetest friend and a talented yet rowdy painter. He was always producing amazing new work, pushing himself forward and through new territory. Joel would work on any surface, the first person/artist I had ever met that marked with such confidence on everything. He truly inspired us around him. His free spirit, his mischief shined through in all his work. I feel like I truly began collecting work after meeting Joel. I am excited to share his work with you and more work of his, as I am working on a January retrospective of Joel’s work at Tennessee State University’s Hiram Van Gordon Gallery. I will be assembling Joel’s work from collectors and friends that have amassed his work over the years. Make friends with artists. Artists are awesome friends. Support artists. Support friends. Buy local. I personally try not to buy new. I support other artists that work from reused and sourced material. It makes me feel like I am not perpetuating destruction and capitalism. A small gesture. na
Joel Lamar Batey, Untitled (Almost There), 2006, Oil on panel, 36” x 24”
ARTIST BIO: Joel Lamar Batey
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Courtney Adair Johnson
Photograph by Sheri Oneal
Joel Lamar Batey was born in Nashville, Tennessee. He attended TSU, Nossi College of Art, and Watkins, and he credits Nashville artists James Threalkill and Michael McBride as mentors. Former Nashville galleries Ruby Green and Ovio hosted solo exhibitions of Batey’s work. He was last known to be residing in Florida.
new location. new look. 4009 Hillsboro Pike Suite 212 (Grace’s Plaza, 2nd floor) Nashville, TN 37215 (615) 385-1212 • www.ejsain.com
samir a One of a Kind Pieces by Samira