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spotlight
Elaine Thomas by Deborah Walden
The end of the month will offer a special treat for dance enthusiasts. The Dance Theatre of Tennessee honors the career of Elaine Thomas with a heartfelt tribute in celebration of her seventy-fifth birthday. The evening includes a performance of one of Thomas’s most iconic roles with a spectacular rendition of Act II from Swan Lake. At 75–A Tribute to Elaine Thomas will take place on Friday, September 30, and Saturday, October 1, at the Harpeth Hall Auditorium. Thomas shares her excitement about the upcoming event with her signature spunk and style. “It’s thrilling, actually. I have a feeling it may be a real Oprah Winfrey ugly cry evening.” Middle Tennessee is lucky to have a master of Thomas’s caliber in our midst. The British ballerina started her rise to fame at London’s Royal Academy of Dance. Her rigorous training at the academy and her natural grace made her a star of troupe performances. She received the Adeline Genée Medal, the highest honor awarded by the academy. Thomas joined the Royal Ballet Company after graduating from the Royal Academy. She rose to the status of senior soloist and captivated audiences with title roles in Giselle and Swan Lake, among others. Thomas fondly remembers dancing alongside ballet legend Margot Fonteyn and humbly recounts performing for Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret.
Thomas joined Dance Theatre of Tennessee founder Christopher Mohnani as the Principal Coach and Artistic Associate of the company. As one of Thomas’s former students, Mohnani understands the far-reaching influence of her long career. He claims, “Ballet is a hand-me-down art. Dancers will always seize any opportunity to learn from someone.” Mohnani feels that the performance will display the impact of Thomas’s role as a mentor and teacher for aspiring dancers. He holds that his career is one of many that have been sparked by Thomas’s enthusiasm and expertise. He relates, “Many of her former students own companies or lead different troupes.” At 75–A Tribute to Elaine Thomas puts the dancer’s legacy on center stage. Guest artists hailing from Ballet West, Pennsylvania Ballet, Texas Ballet Theatre, and Australian Ballet will make surprise appearances throughout the show. International choreographers will also pay homage to Thomas’s work with premiere Nashville performances of world-famous ballets. Mohnani has carefully guarded the list of guest performers so that the show doubles as a surprise party for its honoree. Thomas enthuses, “It’s wonderful. I feel loved.” She adds with a smile, “Initially, I was not pleased about this tribute because we are a new company. I wanted the money to go to pointe shoes. But then I thought, heck, it’s my birthday.” The evening promises non-stop surprises and memorable performances, but Thomas’s humility and unmistakable charm will likely steal the show. At 75–A Tribute to Elaine Thomas will take place on Friday, September 30, and Saturday, October 1, at the Harpeth Hall Auditorium. www.dancetheatretn.org NashvilleArts.com | September 2O11 | 13
spotlight
A Divine Light: Northern Renaissance Paintings from Bob Jones
University Museum & Gallery visits the Frist Center for the Visual Arts this month. To this day, the Bob Jones Collection remains one of the largest of its kind in the country, surpassing in size even the notable collections of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.
Featuring a selection of twenty-eight paintings from fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Spain, A Divine Light is conceived as an intimate encounter with the devotional art of the Renaissance and explores the way in which fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Northern European painters expressed the central mysteries of the Christian faith through setting, pose, gesture, and the objects of everyday life.
Abhaya Mudra, Susan Bryant
Fragment Boat #1, Raine Bedsole
Cumberland Gallery Presents New Works by Raine Bedsole and Susan Bryant Active in the New Orleans art scene since the early 1990s, artist Raine Bedsole creates her evocative and serene paintings and sculptures from her French Quarter studio. Her latest works feature imagery of boats, oars, and the human figure and are based in part on Homer’s epic The Odyssey, the story of a hero’s long voyage home after the Trojan War. Bedsole sees this classic text as a metaphor for New Orleanians’ journey back to normalcy in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. “I think it is a universal longing to return to wherever home is,” she remarks. Susan Bryant, professor of Art in Photography at Austin Peay University in Clarksville, Tennessee, has been exhibiting her fine art photographs for thirty years. Combining nineteenth-century antiquated processes of developing images with contemporary digital technology, Bryant’s series explores themes of presence and absence, while capturing human subjects and still-life objects in a direct and beautiful manner. Haunting and ghostly, her subjects in sepia articulate an intersection of stillness and anticipation but also evoke affection and the imagination.
“Very few people seem to be aware that Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery has this treasure trove of rare and beautiful Northern Renaissance paintings,” said Frist Center Associate Curator Trinita Kennedy, organizer of the exhibition. “Our goal is to make these works better known to a wider audience and invite appreciation and study in light of the recent research in the field. Visitors to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the National Gallery in London, and many of the world’s major museums will see similarities in the works we are presenting here in Nashville.” A Divine Light: Northern Renaissance Paintings from Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery opens September 9, 2011, and runs through February 5, 2012, at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.
Hurry over to Cumberland Gallery to engage your imagination in the worlds of these two alluring artists. Recent Works by Raine Bedsole and Susan Bryant is on view at Cumberland Gallery from September 17–October 22, 2011. An opening reception will be held Saturday, September 17, 6–8 p.m.
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artist profile
Jeff Faust’s
Open
photo: david english
Windows
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by Currie Alexander Powers
any artists take a conventional path in their education, attending art school, college, university,
or doing an apprenticeship with a master.
Jeff Faust joined the carnival. His obsession with painting began in grade school. His parents— whose love of art is evidenced by their giving their children the middle names Manet, Cezanne, and Matisse—made sure there were always art supplies around, and their home was filled with books, many books about painters. Faust lived and breathed those books, poring over the works of Magritte, Miro, and Dali as a child.
His parents’ encouragement was gentle, and though Faust’s talent was evident early on, his father feared he would be molded or stifled under the influence of someone else and discouraged him from going to art school. So Faust taught himself to paint, brushstroke by brushstroke, looking to the masters as his guide. In high school, Faust was struck with wanderlust. He saw an ad for a carnival while hitchhiking around the West Coast, took the job, and stayed with them for four years, traveling from town to town, having art supplies sent when he needed them. His style grew in that setting, but it was a world of his own making, influenced by the carnival but not a documentary of his travels.
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Arrival of Autumn Act I, Acrylic on canvas, 48” x 60”
Faust’s paintings today are still lifes in motion. They are windows into a world of Jeff Faust’s making. It is a beautiful world, filled with birds, boats, swirling leaves, and rolling, cloud-filled skies. But it is not a static world. Drama lives in the arrangements.
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His paintings are reminiscent of Magritte’s eerie surrealism and Dali’s odd juxtaposition of objects, soft light and colors, a story contained within that might have come out of a fever dream.
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Birds’ nests perch precariously on ropes, clouds float above vases, boats are made of leaves. “Birds are innocent witnesses of life,” Faust says. “Nests are fragile homes, and if you can survive a journey in a boat of leaves, you’ve come out ahead,” he says with soft laugh. Faust understands the world is a chaotic place, filled with too much loud noise. “Life is dynamic. It’s not smooth sailing every day.” We need escape. He provides it. Faust learned firsthand how in an instant everything can change. A close friend, while traveling in Italy with his small child and pregnant wife, was killed when a rock truck turned over on top of their car. The wife survived, but Faust’s friend, the Sweet Home, Acrylic on canvas, 60” x 36” NashvilleArts.com | September 2O11 | 31
The Coming Fog, Acrylic on canvas, 48” x 60”
Ten Minutes Before a Poem, Acrylic on canvas, 48” x 36”
small child, and unborn baby were killed instantly. “Humans can endure so much,” he says, but he was struck by how fragile life is. We see that knowledge of fragility in his paintings, delicate objects exposed to the elements, small birds dancing on a wire while leaves thrash in the wind and the sky rolls with pre-storm madness. Wind and sky are prominent themes in Faust’s work, and he gives them a drama and depth that bring them from the
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background to the forefront. “When painting clouds you really have to release yourself,” he says. He has clouds floating in bowls, in boats, above the head of a stately cow as if it were a bovine dream bubble. There is a passion for nature that Faust tries to capture when he approaches the canvas, and it is obvious that he understands the feral, untamable personality of the world outside his window. He doesn’t try to control the moment he is inspired to capture. Rather, he lets it come to him unleashed.
It is obvious that he understands the feral, untamable personality of the world outside his window.
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Three Sand Dollars, Acrylic on canvas, 60” x 48”
Quiet Arrangement, Acrylic on canvas, 36” x 48” 32 | September 2O11 | NashvilleArts.com
Gay Petach, Local Color Gallery
Michael Greenspan, Cumberland Gallery
NAAD at Terrazzo September 16-17
Art in the Penthouse! by Demetria Kalodimos
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hoever named the Terrazzo tower in the Gulch made a good call. Terrazzo is a lovely Italian word for an art form that creates a beautiful finished product from equally beautiful yet disparate bits. And the word will take on apropos symbolism over a weekend in September (16–17). They’re calling it Art After Hours. The Nashville Association of Art Dealers will show off more than one hundred works from a dozen galleries at the top of the fourteen-story Terrazzo in its penthouse residences. Charles Keiger, The Arts Company
Janina Tukarski Ellis, Richand Fine Art
This top-floor exhibit was the brainchild of one of Nashville’s top-shelf gallery owners, Janice Zeitlin. “When Terrazzo first opened, Zeitgeist [Gallery] went into the open units and used them as gallery spaces, and you got the idea, oh, this is what this piece could be like in my home.” Zeitlin says, “Anyone who loves art and collects art will have a great opportunity to see a large selection in a beautiful setting.” And let’s boast just a bit about that setting. Terrazzo will forever have bragging rights as the first LEED-certified highrise building in Nashville. Up top, there are seven twostory residences with ceilings up to twenty-eight feet high, fireplaces, multiple terraces, and the ultimate skyline view through top-to-bottom glass walls. Architecturally 34 | September 2O11 | NashvilleArts.com
Myles Bennett, Bennett Galleries
Ben Caldwell, LeQuire Gallery
Simin Soroush, Gallery Simin
Lain York, Zeitgeist
speaking, it’s an elegant anchor piece to the rejuvenated Gulch. An artistic statement to be sure. Galleries skimming the cream of their collections for the event include Bennett Galleries, Cumberland Gallery, LeQuire, Local Color, Midtown, the Arts Company, Two Moon, Gallery Simin, Richland Fine Art, Richter Gallery of Photography, and Gallery One Contemporary Fine Art. Brad Sells, Two Moon Gallery
It’s been an admittedly challenging time for local art purveyors. “The economy has had such an impact we’re looking at how to work together,” Zeitlin says. “And though we have a wealth of great art in educational institutions and our museums, I invited just the commercial galleries.” So mark your datebooks and clear off a wall or two at home. You just might leave the Terrazzo Art After Hours with a spectacular new view of Nashville and something terrific to view every day from the comfort of your own couch. This Art After Hours special event is presented by Nashville Association of Art Dealers (NAAD). It is free and open to the public, and all art will be for sale. Terrazzo is located at 700 12th Avenue, South, at the corner of 12th and Division in the Gulch. Complimentary parking is available in the Terrazzo garage. For more information, contact Janice Zeitlin 615-256-4805. janice@zeitgeist-art.com www.nashvilleartdealers.net | www.terrazzonashville.com
Nick Dantona, Richter Gallery of Photography
Brian Hibbard, Midtown Gallery
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This is an opportunity to see a large selection of great art in a beautiful setting.
Howard Hersh, Gallery One Fine Art NashvilleArts.com | September 2O11 | 35
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We are trying to take a slice of history and step away from the twenty-first century. It’s hard to explain what it is. It is not a sport, an avocation, a pastime, or recreation.
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Uninvited Visitors, Oil on panel, 23” x 48”
But the photo of five horsemen wearing clothing from the 1820s– 1830s is the most telling. While the men appear to be frozen in a long-gone era, the quality of the photograph belies the fact that it was shot just a few years ago in Colorado. The time warps suddenly make sense. It seems this quick, engaging, 69-year-old artist is a living-history participant. Wright and his cohorts spend weeks living off the land in the fashion of erstwhile mountain men, fur traders, trappers, and long hunters. During these rides, the men dress in clothing indigenous to the era, using muzzle-loading firearms and other tools apropos to the time to get by in the savage Rocky Mountain landscape. This is not some city-slicker-on-a-cattle-drive adventure. These men go it alone and live off the land. “We are trying to take a slice of history and step away from the twenty-first century,” he begins. “It’s hard to explain what it is. It is not a sport, an avocation, a pastime, or recreation.” What it is is serious research for Wright’s life’s work. He literally immerses himself in his subject matter. H. David Wright is one of the nation’s foremost artists. Each year he produces twelve to twenty impeccably researched paintings and drawings of the American frontier period through the Civil War. He has a five-year backlog for commissions. His insistence on historical accuracy—coupled with his skill as a painter—has earned him representation by the premier galleries of the genre in Santa Fe, Phoenix, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He is invited yearly to exhibit at the prestigious Quest for the West show at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian and Western Art in Indianapolis and History Meets the Arts at Lord Nelson’s Gallery in Gettysburg. It was at the Quest show where he had his biggest sale. A collector from Indianapolis purchased his work The Captive for $48,000. Today his work is found in numerous museums, including the Tennessee State Museum, the Booth in Cartersville, Georgia, and the Eiteljorg. 40 | September 2O11 | NashvilleArts.com
Ahnawake, Acrylic on panel, 28” x 20”
While Nashville does not have a gallery devoted to the genre, you may recognize Wright’s work from a History Channel documentary or from the cover of a book on your coffee table. If you have visited the Sam Davis Boyhood Home Museum in Smyrna, you might have seen his portrait of the young Confederate hero. Wright was born in Rosine, Kentucky, and raised in Goodlettsville. In addition to hunting and fishing with his sons, Wright’s father enjoyed music. As a youth in the mid 1910s and 1920s, Joe Wright and his pal Bill Monroe would play “hillbilly music” at dances in Rosine. “Bill went on to be a world-famous musician, and Dad went on to be a steam fitter,” Wright notes. The country-raised sons, meanwhile, went on to careers in music, writing, and painting. While Wright’s primary focus has been the frontier period from 1760 to 1840, he has produced meticulous field portraits of Civil War soldiers. During the ’60s, he had painted some “bloody guts and glory” battle scenes for a Nashville Banner series commemorating the Civil War’s centennial. Serving in Vietnam, however, caused him to lose all interest in battle scenes. It wasn’t until 1990—at the behest of Gray Stone—that he resumed his study of the Confederate soldier. Because of the quality of Wright’s research, he has been involved in major projects outside of the scope of canvas. Wright helped research, design, and construct Mansker’s Station, an authentic reconstruction of the 1779 frontier station in Goodlettsville. He also produced a poster of a frontiersman for the Knoxville World’s Fair in 1982.
The Stillness of a Woodland Pool, Oil on canvas, 30” x 40” NashvilleArts.com | September 2O11 | 41
Long Way from Home, Oil on panel, 12” x 9”
His relationship with film began when he served as an extra in Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans, starring Daniel Day Lewis. “My mad, passionate love scene with Madeline Stowe is on the cutting room floor,” he winks. But it wasn’t Lewis or Stowe whom Wright desired to meet. It was Wes Studi, the Cherokee actor who portrayed Magua. “I wanted Wes to model for me,” he confessed. It worked. After a day on the set, Studi would return to his trailer where Wright would photograph him in different poses. From those sessions, Wright has created a number of paintings. Today, Wright is listed in Who’s Who in American Art. Many of his limited editions—such as Golden Mountain Man, Wind River Man, and Sacajawea—are fetching premiums on the secondary market. His paintings grace numerous book and magazine covers, while his depictions of Native American women have been reproduced in various media, from china plates to dolls and figurines. David Wright is represented by Legacy Galleries, Scottsdale, Arizona, and Jackson, Wyoming, and Lord Nelson’s Gallery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. www.davidwrightart.com
The Mountaineer, Casein on board, 34” x 22”
Gateway to the West, Oil on canvas, 36” x 48” 42 | September 2O11 | NashvilleArts.com
in the gallery
Gary Monroe Elvis Is in the Building by MiChelle Jones
G
ary Monroe was never much of an Elvis fan, but you wouldn’t know that from his latest series of drawings
on view at Estel Gallery through September 24. Each of
Monroe’s new pieces features images of Elvis, some in the Vegasera jumpsuits, some with the visage from the singer’s younger years. This may seem far removed from Monroe’s previous work—large-scale drawings and paintings of enraptured snake handlers—but for Monroe the themes are similar. “These are still about Southern culture, Southern subject matter,” he says, adding that he felt the snake handler series had run its course. Also, for some people Elvis is religion. For Monroe, Elvis is religion too, or he is at least a subject ripe for combining with religious imagery drawn from Renaissance paintings. As with the snake handler pictures, Monroe’s Elvis palette is also Renaissance-inspired, filled with sanguine, aquamarine, and gold. Monroe’s use of color is especially glorious in Rex Reguis (45” x 30”) in which a buff, triple-faced Elvis—all of the drawings depict triple-faced figures—is placed against a brilliant blue background filled with big yellow stars. Monroe’s art historical references aren’t limited to religious ones. Que les tiens/Vôtres durent toujours, for example, is packed with references to Duchamp, specifically the French artist’s feminine alter ego Rrose Sélavy. No, you won’t find Elvis in drag. Rather, the black-and-white drawing depicts Elvis as Eros, the Greek equivalent of Cupid, and evokes classical sculpture. There are also roses, a bowl of rice (arroz), and a row of letters stretching across the bottom repeating the words “Rroz, arrows, eros, rose, arroz.” Meanwhile, Elvis’s famous sneer has been turned into the beginnings of a sneeze. The drawing’s title comes from the French expression “may yours last forever,” said when someone sneezes three times in a row. An exhibition of Monroe’s work, Elvis and Other Kings, is on view at Estel Gallery September 3–24, 2011, with an opening reception occurring Saturday, September 3, 6–9 p.m. The gallery is located at 115 Rosa L. Parks Boulevard.
www.estelgallery.com | www.garymonroe.org
top: Rex Reguis |
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bottom: Que les tiens
spotlight
Cheekwood Looking Forward by MiChelle Jones ational significance.” Cheekwood CEO Jane Offenbach uses the phrase again and again when discussing her vision for the 51-year-old institution comprising a historic house, an 8,000-piece art collection, and 55 acres of lawns and gardens. Her goals include getting the museum and gardens designated as a National Historic Landmark, having the gardens nationally recognized, and establishing Cheekwood’s combination of history, art, and architecture on the national cultural radar.
Offenbach’s office is tucked behind a small, arched doorway under the spiral staircase in the Cheekwood mansion. It’s not a large space, but it looks just as one might expect, with a few pieces from the museum’s collection adorning the walls, including Family Gathering, Pauline Palmer’s early-twentiethcentury oil painting of a family on a verandah. In addition to Offenbach’s desk, the room also holds a small, round table for conferences and a fireplace with an elaborate mantel. Windows on adjoining walls provide tranquil views of the approach to the house and grounds. When Offenbach first arrived at Cheekwood from the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, she was immediately met with a challenge—where to park all the cars during Chihuly mania? “That’s a great problem to have,” laughs Offenbach. Exhibitions like Chihuly at Cheekwood, which attracted 339,000 visitors, don’t
Jane Offenbach, Cheekwood CEO
photo: jerry atnip
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come every year, so Cheekwood needed to figure out how to capitalize on that momentum. “If we were at a watershed moment, we needed to understand what had changed and what the perception was that people had of Cheekwood,” Offenbach says. A three-month research study revealed the gardens to be what resonates most with visitors and largely what draws them to Cheekwood. Once there, they’d like to see something of how the Cheek family lived. As for art, the study participants—new and long-term members, Chihuly visitors, the general public, and philanthropists—said they wanted to see more art in the gardens. These three findings became the main tracks of a strategic plan, which will be developed into a master plan. After that, Offenbach hopes to launch a capital campaign to fund master plan projects and an endowment for Cheekwood. But first, the gardens. “What’s come out of this is that the garden is the overarching framework that encompasses all of our other distinctions, but the garden itself is our biggest asset and also where we need to focus.” This means spiffing up the gardens, possibly restoring the greenhouses, and offering more gardening programming. Next year, for example, Cheekwood will host two floral festivals: one featuring 20,000 pink tulips in the spring and a fall event with chrysanthemums and pumpkin topiaries.
Fetish by David Marquez is part of his Vessels exhibit currently on view in the Temporary Contemporary Gallery.
Work has already taken place on the Carrell Woodland Sculpture Trail, where new signage has been added, and fresh wood chips obtained from the Parke Company have been spread with assistance from Hands On Nashville. These are high-impact, low-cost improvements completed through community partnerships. Offenbach wants to establish more of these relationships and is hoping to get Girl Scouts and Boy
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Scouts involved. She wants Cheekwood to work with performing arts groups—Nashville Ballet, Nashville Opera, and the Nashville Symphony—to bring their specialties to the grounds in 2012. Next year will also see the opening of the newly restored Howe Garden and a literary garden dedicated to Sigourney Cheek. The literary theme will cross over into the tenth anniversary tree house exhibition and Unabridged Version, an art exhibition pulled from the museum’s permanent collection. As part of the strategic and master plan development process, scholars will be brought in to help define the collection. “We are going to be homing in on a very focused collecting plan,” Offenbach says. “We want to find out where our strengths are and where we feel like we can really have a niche, whether that be American painting, regional contemporary art, decorative arts, photography, or another area.” Sculpture and outdoor art will be a primary focus; other parts of the collection may be deaccessioned to help fund art acquisitions in line with the new collecting focus and plan. An orientation film, a book, and the restoration of a couple of rooms in the mansion are on the table and, long term, a new visitor’s center, restaurant, and gift shop as well. Offenbach stresses that the changes being considered for Cheekwood would take place over a period of years—and would also require significant funding. The organization is run on a tight budget sourced by a relatively small endowment of $3 million yielding around $120,000 annually—not enough, she says, to pay the electric bill. Thus, there’s a push to increase admissions through the kinds of programming and initiatives the research study found to be important to the public.
Sioux/Northern Plains, 1920-1930, War Bonnet
An exhibition opening next month will also help draw audiences beyond those lured by Cheekwood’s art and gardens. Visions of the American West: Masterworks from the Buffalo Bill Historical Center will include 182 objects ranging from fine art to firearms, Western wear to Buffalo Bill artifacts.
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My hope is to inspire people to want to support this vision. I’m looking at Cheekwood as a business and to run it very soundly with respect to stewardship and funds so that we can take Cheekwood to the next level, Offenbach says.
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Offenbach is expressive and passionate throughout the discussion, often drumming the table as she lays out her points. She intends to stick around to see the transformation through. “This is absolutely my dream job. I drive in every day and say thank you. I’m not here because I eventually want to be somewhere else; this is where I want to be and where I want to stay.” Cheekwood is located at 1200 Forrest Park Drive, Nashville, 37205. Visiting hours are Tuesday—Saturday 9:30 a.m.—4:30 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m.—4:30 p.m. www.cheekwood.org
W.H.D. Koerner, 1933, The Road to Oregon (Lone Travel, or Travel in Groups of a Few, as Andy Had Known it, Was Practically a Thing of the Past), Oil on canvas, 26.125” x 40.125” NashvilleArts.com | September 2O11 | 63
“When I first heard those progressions and phrases Earl Scruggs was doing in the theme song for The Beverly Hillbillies it was a huge thrill,” Fleck recalled during a recent extensive interview at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, the site of what will soon be another triumph in his exceptional career. “But the other thing I started thinking was how could I transfer that into other settings? I saw the banjo as this great instrument, something that could be just as flexible and versatile as any other. I’ve always thought the banjo can be played in any setting, any genre or idiom. It wasn’t so much a quest as it was my feeling that there were no limits on what you could play. I wanted to see if the banjo could fit into the things I was hearing from people like Ornette Coleman and the Beatles.” That drive to smash musical barriers has made Fleck the premier banjoist of his generation and an innovator ever since he began playing Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie tunes on banjo under the watchful eye of fellow virtuoso instructor Tony Trischka.
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Since the mid ’70s Fleck has performed in so many styles, he has established records for the most nominations by any single musician in multiple Grammy categories.
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His twenty-seven wins and ninety-eight nods range from bluegrass, country, and pop to jazz, folk, and spoken word, as well as awards for composition and arranging. He’s also made headlines as both an inventive contributor to landmark bands (most notably the New Grass Revival, but also Strength in Numbers, the Sparrow Quartet and collaborations with longtime influence Chick Corea) and as a bandleader—cofounder and head of Béla Fleck and the Flecktones since 1988. They are a beloved ensemble who also ignore categorization and idiomatic boundaries. Indeed, when it comes to pop recognition, it’s been his tenure with the Flecktones that’s garnered Fleck the most mainstream recognition, earning the band multiple Grammys in jazz and pop. But the area where Fleck will soon be making history yet again is classical music. Now on September 23, Fleck’s Concerto for Banjo will have its world premiere at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, an event Fleck numbers among all-time musical highlights. “I’ve always thought the banjo could have a place in classical music, but I have to say Edgar Meyer was a huge influence in terms of finally sitting down and writing it,” Fleck continued. “I saw him premiere a lot of bass pieces for classical and got a real good understanding from him in NashvilleArts.com | September 2O11 | 67
Appraise it with Linda Dyer
Diego Rivera and Mrs. Rivera, in their patio, Coyoacan, Mexico Alice Maude Lawton (American, b. 1885); circa 1930. Taken from John William Leonard, Woman’s Who’s Who of America, 1914-1915, New York:
Native American Wooden Spoon
Lawton, Alice Maude, 242 E. Fiftieth Street, NYC.
Pacific northwest coast, Tlingit, mid 19th century, hardwood, garnet, length 12 inches.
Journalist, magazine writer: b. Chelsea, Mass.; dau. William Henry and Alice Maude (Follansbee) Lawton; ed. Boston Univ., B.A. ‘02; studied at Lausanne, Switzerland; in Paris at the Sorbonne, Ecole des Beaux-Arts and Ecole de Louvre; mem. Alpha Phi. Mem. Staff of the Evening Sun. Has written many feature stories for Sunday papers, Chiefly for the Sun. Has written some book reviews for the New York Times Book Review. Favors woman suffrage; writes occasional newspaper articles about the work. Has written articles for Travel Magazine, the School Journal, Good Housekeeping Magazine, the Woman’s Magazine, the National Magazine, as well as newspapers. Christian Scientist Mem. N.Y., Chapter of Alpha Phi, Boston, Univ., Ass’n of New York, Woman’s Press Club of N.Y. City, Pen & Brush Club. Alice Maude Lawton also took this gelatin silver print photograph that she titled and signed in pencil on the mat “Diego Rivera and Mrs. Rivera, in their patio, Coyoacan, Mexico by Alice Lawton.” What little information that could be found about Alice Lawton’s professional activities all centers around writing about art openings and artist colonies. The subject matter of the photograph was well within the interest of Lawton. While this image is not dated, considering historical facts and dates, it is my opinion that Lawton’s Coyoacan photo opportunity was within three years of the marriage of Frida and Diego. On August 21, 1929, Frida Kahlo married Diego Rivera in the town hall of Coyoacan. It was a union described by her disapproving mother as a “marriage between an elephant and a dove.” Despite the fact she was an accomplished artist prior to her marriage, Frida continued agreeably to be referred to only as Mrs. Rivera until the mid to late 1930s.
This wooden spoon, chopped from a cylindrical section of a sapling, transcends utility with its elegant form. Spoons were the common eating implements for the Indians of the northwest coast of Canada and the United States. Numerous undecorated examples were owned and used for everyday purposes. This spoon, with its S-shaped profile, cylindrical tip, and the shape of the transitional shoulder, is indicative of the work of the Northern Alaskan coast-dwelling Tlingit. The single carved garnet set at the apex of the elongated bowl is an aesthetically pleasing embellishment but also may have possessed a deeper significance to the creator. Materials of spoons and ladles on the northwest coast consisted of hardwoods, usually alder, maple, or yew, as well as horns of the mountain sheep and goat. The use of minerals as ornamentation is not a common behavior of this region. So in my interest to understand I discovered the following information. Over much of coastal Alaska, the first contact aboriginal people had with Europeans was with Russians, rather than Americans, British, French, or Spanish. From 1800 to 1832, Kyrill Khlebnikov served as an agent of the Russian American Company. His writings provide insights as to the source of the garnet. “Large garnets can be found in schist . . . Because of the shortage of lead, the Kolosh (Tlingit) use them instead of shot to kill sea animals.” (From his journals, Colonial Russian America: Kyrill T. Khlebnikov’s Reports, 1817-1832, published in 1982 by the Oregon Historical Society Press.) Garnet musket balls have been found during excavations at a historic Tlingit-Russian site in Sitka, Alaska. It was ingenious for the Tlingit to have adapted traditional stone-working technologies to the new, introduced technologies. I would expect that this unassuming object of historical significance and simple beauty would sell for $1,800 to $2,000 in a gallery setting.
Ephemera Ephemera is a broad term used in the world of collecting to
This photograph, matted and annotated, was found at an estate auction in 1986. It was in a large box lot of ephemera that hammered down at $60. A treasure, even then, that went almost unnoticed.
describe items of paper that were created for use in a short
It is my opinion that this photograph by a basically anonymous photographer would carry an estimate of $1,800 to $2,000 at auction.
postcards, cigarette cards, magazines, and catalogs.
time span and were meant to be thrown away after one or two uses. Among some of the items that generally define this category are sheet music, valentines, stock certificates,
74 | September 2O11 | NashvilleArts.com
Wang Foundation For Sight reStoration
PreSentS the 7 th annual
EyeBall 2011 EyeBall 2011 chair:
Mayor Karl Dean
Piano performance: Graciella Kowalczyk, winner, All-Poland Chopin Piano Competition EyeBall is an annual black-tie ballroom dance show gala. All proceeds go to support the foundation’s patients.
Saturday, October 1st, 2011, 5:30pm Renaissance Hotel, Nashville, TN
Wang Foundation for Sight Restoration is a 501c(3) non-profit charity which has helped patients from over 40 states in the U.S. and 55 countries, with all sight restoration surgeries performed free-of-charge. The foundation doctors published 5 textbooks and a paper in the world renowned journal “Nature”, hold several U.S. patients, and performed the world’s first laser-assisted artificial cornea implantation.
Foundation founder: Ming Wang
Harvard & MIT (MD, magna cum laude); PhD (laser physics)
WaNg FOuNdaTiON FOR SigHT ReSTOraTiON 1801 West end ave, Ste 1150 Nashville, TN, 37203, 615-321-8881 drwang@wangvisioninstitute.com www.WangFoundation.com
76 | September 2O11 | NashvilleArts.com
What do you like most about living in Nashville?
anything goes
photo: jerry atnip
Nashville and Belfast are sister cities. Nashville has a lot of similarities with Belfast. Great symphony, fabulous parks. Mayor Karl Dean and Mayor Bill Purcell, who have both been to Ireland with me, have just been fantastic ambassadors representing what is good in Nashville. It’s a great place to live. What is your most treasured possession?
A box containing letters that Katherine and I wrote to each other and some pictures. What are you most proud of in your life?
I’m very proud of the fact that I have achieved every ambition I’ve set out to achieve. Everything I ever dreamed about came true in the end. Who has been a big influence in your life?
There were three professors at university that picked me up by the bootstraps, and they made sure that I succeeded in my academic career. They were a phenomenal influence on my life. Do you have any personal extravagances?
Not really. I actually live a very simple life at the moment. The best part of my week is meeting up with the gang at Dan McGuiness talking about sport. Any regrets along the way?
I formed some business partnerships that didn’t quite work out, but you just recover from it anyway. Having fulfilled most of your ambitions, what’s ahead?
Following the educational achievements of my grandchildren, and hopefully I’ll be around to see one of them get married. Why Nashville?
The company I was working for introduced me to HCA in Nashville. It’s been the perfect place to raise our family. What talent would you like to have?
I would have loved to be a musician and play piano or guitar. Get up and sing at parties. What’s your motto?
Family is everything. It is at the core my being. And to leave everything better than I found it.
Dr. Ian Brick, OBE Retired Businessman
Are you happy with where your life is heading?
It’s a slow, lazy, steady life with dear friends that I have a great time with. What would surprise people to know about you?
My dressing down capabilities. Some of my neighbors think I am the gardener. What was it like meeting the Queen?
What characteristic do you most value?
Honesty is the single most important attribute. Without that there is nothing. What do you like most about yourself?
My ability to make big decisions and follow through with them. Immigrating to the United States in 1984 with three young children was not easy, but we did it. If you could change one thing about yourself what would that be?
The men in my family are all over six feet. I’m not sure what happened with me. I’d like to be just a little bit taller. Is there a business or industry figure you most identify with?
Richard Branson of Virgin fame. He not only did it, but he did it well. Now that you’re retired, how do you fill your day?
Well I’m bored some of the time, but I’m always busy surrounded by my grandchildren in this beautiful home that Katherine, my late wife, built for them.
It was a lot of ceremony and a lot of pomp. My biggest surprise was that there was no air conditioning in the palace. It was really nice for me that she knew I was from Nashville. Was it a pivotal moment in your life?
No, not really. It was a sad moment because Katherine was not with me, and she would have loved it. Dr. Ian Brick, a longtime resident of Nashville, was recently awarded the Order of the British Empire medal by the Queen of England for his efforts in advancing Irish-American relations. Originally from Belfast Dr. Brick moved his family here in 1984. While pursuing new opportunities in the field of medicine, Brick quickly rose as a leader in the pharmaceutical industry on both sides of the Atlantic. While raising their family, he and his late wife, Katherine, also worked together as key players in Atlantic Bridges, an organization that promotes ties between Northern Ireland and America. Out of their work came the twinning of Belfast and Nashville.
NashvilleArts.com | September 2O11 | 81
my favorite painting
Leah Sohr Interior Designer
Photo: sophia forbes
For many years, I have had a love affair with France. I love the fresh food, the people, the language, and the slow, peaceful way of life. I enjoyed staying in quaint, centuries-old villages with no computers, no television, just the beautiful countryside and a great glass of wine. I look forward to traveling back there with my family in the not-too-distant future. In the meantime, this wonderful painting by Thomas Darnell of olive trees in Nimes, Southern France, transports me back to those villages with its simplicity and its earthy color palette. Being a visual person, I enjoy this painting every single day.
Nimes Olive Tree by Thomas Darnell
artist American Thomas Darnell lives with his family full time in the South of France, in the small town Best of Sainte-Valière. known for his oversized floral paintings, Darnell is a wonderfully skilled and versatile artist in a wide range of subject matter including landscapes and abstracts. For the artist, light and energy are the common denominators in his body of work. Darnell exhibits and is collected worldwide from Hong Kong to Barcelona, Spain, to Atlanta, Georgia. www.thomasdarnell.com
artist’s statement “My work is inspired by a need to find order and meaning in this beautiful disorder we call life. I choose imagery that makes me feel centered and calm, changing from very technique-oriented, representational work to more meditative abstract painting because the variety keeps both fresh. What remains consistent in all my work though is the light. It represents energy, spirit, and forces we do not see but feel are there all the same: emotions, sounds, thoughts, gravity, vibrations. “The illusion of spatial dimension and light is achieved through a technique involving multiple layers of transparent oil paint and alkyd resin. Starting with blurry images I refine detail and contrast with each pass and often ‘erase’ some of the image with a thin wash of paint and go back to refining the details until the right balance is achieved.” 82 | September 2O11 | NashvilleArts.com
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NashvilleArts.com | September 2O11 | 83
Mark Simmons The Sultan of Subtly Eclectic Style by karen parr-moody | photography by jerry atnip
We live in the era of the maximalist-eclectic interior designer, populated by stars such as Bunny Williams protégé Miles Redd and ceramicist-turnedinterior-designer Jonathan Adler. Going boldly where no color is too saturated, no Venetian mirror too ornate, these tastemakers keep alive the exuberant spirits of David Hicks, Billy Haines, and Dorothy Draper. Adler claims inspiration from burlesque bombshell Dita von Teese’s red lipstick and the decadent apartment featured in the 1958 classic Auntie Mame. Redd, with his lacquered walls, mirrored bathrooms, and zebra-upholstered doors, has a grab-’em-by-thelapels gutsiness that defies imitation. Then there’s Mark Simmons, who tempers the “no-rules” fabulousness of eclectic décor with a subtle, Southern hand. On a recent summer day, Simmons was working from his headquarters on Woodmont Boulevard, a rambling 1930s Tudor home that was rezoned so that Simmons could get what he wanted: A homey setting that didn’t scream out “business” to passersby. In fact, the only indicator of its commercial intent are the words Mark Simmons Interiors etched faintly into stone columns at the foot of the drive. Simmons is tall, thin, and deeply tanned. His dark eyes and salt-andpepper hair channel Cary Grant when he was squiring Grace Kelly around the French Riviera in To Catch a Thief.
4 | September 2O11 | The Art House | NashvilleArts.com
“
My look is definitely eclectic, where all the little details make the difference. But you also have to have restraint, because it can get way overdone, Simmons explains.
”
Originally from Glasgow, Kentucky, Simmons moved to the area to study at O’More College of Design in Franklin, Tennessee, during the eighties. He was in school only a year before he began working for the late Bill Hamilton, a renowned Nashville designer of the era; he stayed with him for ten years. “I learned a lot,” Simmons said. “I had to make myself go ahead and finish school.”
Simmons’s formative years were spent buying antiques during trips through London and the countryside of Bath and Brighton. “I learned a lot about the English style, and I mix fabrics and patterns and styles a lot, which is what the English decorators do,” Simmons says, noting that he continues to use British fabrics such as Colefax & Fowler and Zoffany. “I don’t study these two pieces of fabric and make sure the dye lots are identical in them. They can go together without exactly matching.” One of Simmons’s tenets is to give a room an organic feeling, as though the pieces within were acquired over time. “It looks like you’ve traveled and collected things,” he says of this style, noting that it works even in a house where the interiors are created entirely from scratch. “People can’t really tell if you just bought that or if you’ve had that for forty years. The idea is not to look like you’ve just decorated it, but that it has just evolved over time. This NashvilleArts.com | The Art House | September 2O11
| 5
Bill Powell
One Man’s Treasure by jay sheridan | photography by john guider
You can tell a lot about people by where they grew up, what they did for fun, and the kind of work their family members did. Bill Powell’s no different—his love for old things was just sort of bred into him. When most kids his age were playing baseball and riding bicycles, Powell was taking art lessons and traveling with his grandmother to antique auctions. She was a dealer in Huntsville, Alabama, who decorated many of the antebellum homes of the area from the 1920s through the ’50s, when Bill was coming of age. She was born in 1886, and she saw the introduction of the automobile and a man on the surface of the moon within her lifetime.
His mother was a schoolteacher who thought it important to take him to visit Civil War battlefields and historic house museums, and his grandfather was a contractor who built the hospital Bill was born in, the grammar school he attended, and the home where he was raised. Oftentimes, he used recycled materials—old timbers and bricks, windows and hardware— as much out of necessity as for style. But there was beauty in handcrafted elements that stood the test of time, and there was logic in the notion of the adaptive reuse. He remembers driving through downtown Franklin to Nashville before the interstate was in and that he always loved the place. A position with the Tennessee Arts Commission was the opportunity, and in 1975, Bill and his wife, Dale, purchased a home on 7th Avenue. When son Will was born in 1983, the vagabond lifestyle of a weekend antique picker was impractical. Bill wanted to work on old houses and make new ones that “fit.” Look around town, and his work is everywhere.
Today, William Powell Co. Home and Garden sits just two blocks from there, on West Main Street at Five Points, offering wonderful old signs, light fixtures, iron fencing, and more that represents just a sample of what he’s collected over the years. “I wanted to have a storefront, a visual representation for my construction business,” he says.
8 | September 2O11 | The Art House | NashvilleArts.com
Inside is a delightful hodgepodge of industrial pieces, old advertising art, period lighting—eclectic and fascinating “stuff.” There’s sculpture and animal art and porcelain stools from an old soda fountain. Moss-covered iron gates that once graced a proud mansion somewhere in the South, and the signs and implements of general stores and feed shops—even cases of old sparkplugs and bars of soap. A fabulous coffee grinder and a butcher block. Powell rotates the inventory regularly, as much for fun as for psychology. These are upscale decorative pieces that a designer might build a room around. “People say it’s fun,” he explains. “I had an old barn full of stuff, and it was a shame to leave it sitting there. I’ve reconnected with people I’ve worked with in the past and met a lot of prospective new customers.” Some of it is simply nostalgia. The country stores that were commonplace when he was a child are no longer around, and there’s a connection to that past. Different generations find an attraction to Cont’d... what they remember fondly. NashvilleArts.com | The Art House | September 2O11
| 9
David Knudtson
Ready for Prime Time article and photography by john guider
My wife, Mona, and I have a special way of easing into our week. We call it date night Monday, and we start it off with a simple dinner in front of the TV watching our favorite program, Antiques Roadshow. We joy in the sight of seeing the surprise on someone’s face when they are told the old rug in the attic is a priceless heirloom that will easily pay for their retirement condo in Boca. We get equal pleasure in seeing the excitement of the appraiser when they get to explore and articulate the intricate facets of a handcrafted antique.
As important as the quality of workmanship and craft that tradition dictates, there are a number of transcendent qualities to David’s pieces that bring his work into a whole other realm. First, his work is artful, on any level of thought. The dressers or chests of drawers can stand alone as works of sculptural art regardless of the fact they actually perform a necessary domestic
Leigh Keno gets particularly animated as he expatiates on the attributes of a hallmark piece of period furniture. He educates us by detailing the fine workmanship features such as the exacting construction of the joints, the superlative choice of fine woods, and the art of the design itself. I have the distinct feeling that Leigh Keno would express the same excitement if he were treated to a viewing of David Knudtson’s work as well. Although a few generations away from an evaluation on the Antiques Roadshow, David’s work exhibits that special meld of art and craft that will stand the test of time. 16 | September 2O11 | The Art House | NashvilleArts.com