Friday, March 02, 2007

This weekend's Arcade openings

This month’s round of openings at the Arcade galleries features the first collaboration by two of Nashville’s best proponents of performance art, Heather Spriggs-Thompson and Quinn Dukes. They both are interested in the conflicts and tensions of women’s experience, which can translate in their hands into a collision of traditional feminine qualities with downright messiness—you are never surprised to see either one end a performance covered in goo, ashes, or dirt. The title of their piece at Twist is “Eros and Thanatos: Between,” a consideration of the love and death principles that dance with each other and which Heather and Quinn will play out in a sort of pas de deux all along the Arcade balcony. They are scheduled to start the piece at 6:00 and are planning to let it play out over 3 hours, although they are never sure how long they will sustain a piece. There's an endurance quality to performance art.

Elsewhere in the Arcade, SQFT presents prints by Chicago-based artist Shawn Stucky--he's got strong connections with bands and has a kind of old-timey surrealist style that fits well the tone of a lot of smart bands. Dangenart opens its annual juried show, which reliably attracts intersting young artists from around the country whom we haven't seen before.

As usual, the gallery openings will run from 6-9 on Saturday. (March 3). Downtown Pres is having a pot luck before all of that, with a preview of the annual DIG Art Show in the Fellowship Hall. You enter on the 5th Avenue side of the building.

Also, I'm playing tonight for a film by Ben Marcantel tonight at Watkins. There's a reception at 7:30 and the film starts at 8:00. I got together with Ben yesterday to try out what he wants to do musically and it was a lot of fun.

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