Nashville Visual Arts Events April 17-26

I’ve plugged the Faith Wilding lecture at least once before. Major figure. Go hear what she has to say. Maybe a bigger deal is the new Bob Durham show. His last show at Cumberland was really good, a lot of the images have stuck with me. He paints allusively, sometimes cracking jokes, always with at least a humorous undercurrent, and a lot of it has a subdued libidinous energy.

In addition to the shows listed below which have openings in the next couple of weeks, Estel is opening a show of paintings by Pamela Sukhum and some Sudanese refugee children she has worked with. The opening reception is coming on May 3, for First Saturday, so I’ll list it then also.

As always, if you have an email list of your own, feel free to forward this. And let me know if I missed anything or got dates mixed up.

If someone wants to get added directly to my list for the email version of this listing, send me an email at dcmaddox@comcast.net. To get taken off the list, email to that effect at the same address.

Apr. 17

Faith Wilding lecture, Watkins. Wilding has there for the birth of Feminist art, part of the West Coast scene in the early 70’s—a student in the Feminist Art Program at CalArts, one of the participants in Womanhouse. She’s now chair of the Performance department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and part of the subRosa feminist art collective. She also has connections to several Nashville and Watkins associated artists like Amanda Dillingham, Kristi Hargrove (I think), and Barbara Yontz. Her lecture will be at 6, with a reception to follow.

April 18

Dan Steinhilber, Yvonne Buchheim, and books by artists, Cheekwood. Cheekwood is opening three shows this weekend. I stumbled into Steinhilber’s work in DC a couple of weeks ago—his gallery happened to be showing his work, and he’s got a big piece on view at the Hirshhorn. He’s one of these people who make sculpture out of overlooked waste material. The piece at the Hirshhorn was a monumental column made by hooking together dry cleaners’ hangers, the metal ones with white paper in the space inside the hanger. The hangers were tipped up, so he could change orientation and create separate bands on the column. He does a lot of stuff with packing peanuts, and I think all the pieces at Cheekwood use this material. The best thing at the G Fine Art show in DC was a separate room, illuminated by nearly dark fluorescent bulbs, 6 hanging from the ceiling, and then a bunch arrayed on a wall. You were invited to grab the tubes, which made them brighten up a bit. The panel of bulbs flickered randomly, like scratchy black and white movie film. Like I said, I don’t think there’s a piece like that in this show, but the work with peanuts has a similar mystical quality—it’s all about voids, the space left behind and the space between. Seeing the unseen. That sort of thing. The video galleries are given over to an installation by Buchheim, a German artist who did video of Nashvillians singing old work songs passed down through their families. I hadn’t tracked on this project, but it sounds very cool, and a departure for the video program, which I don’t think has had work done for a show at Cheekwood. And in the Post-45 gallery there’s an exhibit of artists books by big names like John Baldessari, Kara Walker, Diebenkorn, Motherwell.

Althea Norene, Senior Thesis Show, three squared studio in the 427 Chestnut Building. Norene is a photographer, and her thesis work is about relationships with men, “past, present, and future,” with an eye to a day when gender roles are constructed more loosely. The opening starts at 5:30.

Bharatanatyam dance, Malini Srinivasan, Sri Ganesha Temple. Ms. Srinivasan is a practitioner of the dance form that Monica Cooley performs and teaches here in Nashville. This visiting artist is based in the New York area, but logged a lot of time studying and performing in Chennai. The concert starts at 7:30.

April 19

Jayalakshmi Santhanam, Srti Ganesha Temple. This Carnatic singer from Chennai brings with her 40 years of experience. In Indian music, experience seems to count for a lot—technical mastery is as much a matter of control as vocal strength, and the expressiveness deepens with time. This is an afternoon concert, starting at 3:00.

Drawings by Sculptors, LeQuire Gallery: Mike Andrews, Olen Bryant, Ted Jones, Alan LeQuire, Scott Wise, Murat Kaboulov And Victor Schmidt. I’ve enjoyed LeQuire’s drawings quite a bit. Some of them are light and fluid, like Cocteau. The other sculptors here include Bryant, a long-time local artist who works with simple shapes marked by small details—drawing makes sense as a part of that practice. The inclusion of Kaboulov is part of LeQuire Gallery’s ongoing relationship with contemporary Russian artists—if you haven’t tracked on this, they regularly feature Russian artists. Reception from 6-8.

April 22

Sewanee Senior Art Majors show. Under the guidance and incitement of people like Greg Pond, Pradip Malde, and Julie Puttgen, the students at Sewanee seem to be a lively bunch. You would see their work sometimes when the Secret Show was running the 310 Chestnut space, and they seemed to be cousins to the Watkins students in spirit. The opening for their senior show up in Sewanee is at 4:30 and it runs through May 10.

April 24

TSU Senior Thesis Show. The BFA students at TSU made strong contributions to the Frist Center’s show of local art students and recent graduates. It seems to be good things going on in this program. This would be an obvious way to find out. The reception is from 3-5.

April 25

Abby Whisenant, Patricia Earnhardt, Max Haught, Senior Thesis Show, Watkins. And Graphic Design show. Abby’s been on my radar screen for a while as much for her activism as her art. She’s been very involved in grassroots efforts in the most ravaged neighborhoods of New Orleans, and has shown her photography regularly. Her photography and her activism often converge—I remember a series she did from a protest in DC, I think it was for World Bank or IMF meetings. She trying now to get support for a project working with students at Stratford High School. Earnhardt and Haught are both from the Fine Arts department.

April 26

Bob Durham and Tom Judd, Cumberland Gallery. Bob’s a great painter, figurative and sly. Art historical allusions in his work pervade his compositional sense, not sticking out as quotes. I think it’s been 2 years since his last solo show, and he’s one of the people in town where I want to see what he’s done since the last show. He’s paired with Judd, a painter working on recycled fabric samples and wallpaper.

And taking place out of town…

Lesley Patterson-Marx has a show at Murray State University in Kentucky, if you’re looking for a day trip out of town. I should have mentioned it earlier—it closes the 21^st, which would be Monday. Here’s the gallery hours from the Murray State website

Gallery Hours Monday - Friday 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m
Saturday & Sunday 1:00 - 4:00 p.m. Closed university holidays

Chris Scarborough is having his first solo show in New York—drawings at Foley Gallery (547 W 27^th Street). The show opens tomorrow, runs until May 31. Congratulations Chris. I am going to be interested to see if the Times and others pick up on this. It seems like a definite possibility given his work, but I realize there is hierarchy in the Chelsea galleries that I understand only in a rough way.

Herb Williams is being featured in a group show in DC called the End of Nature at the Warehouse Gallery (it’s part of the Warehouse Theatre complex on 7^th, near Chinatown). It includes a big piece by him, a bunch of crayon wallflowers. He also designed a Hatch Show Print poster for the show—we see these all the time, but no such luck for the benighted souls in DC. Herb also was profiled in American Airlines’ in-flight magazine, and he’s in negotiations on some other stuff that I’ll hold off broadcasting until it becomes definite.