Nashville Visual Arts Events July 5-13

This Saturday will be sad—the last opening for TAG as a stand alone gallery. The community has also gotten word from Daniel Lai that he won’t be reopening Dangenart. So that space will go dark for now, and we lose two important sources of interesting shows. Maybe someone comparable will come in there.

One narrative we can apply is we’re sorry to see Jerry Dale and Daniel go, they’ve each done a great job in their own ways, as the vitality of the current gallery scene attests. We will miss both places, but isn’t it great that other galleries are opening all the time. OK.

But another narrative is that this, in combination with a few other things (some of them stretching back a few years), indicates an ongoing depletion of aesthetic vitality. The cause of that could be specific to Nashville’s art community, or maybe it’s a matter of larger economic forces. Selling art is hard and maybe it’s getting harder, and it’s not clear that Nashville’s downtown renaissance is everything we want or need it to be, and pressure from everything from oil prices to the floods in the Midwest ain’t helping.

I may have occasion to weigh in on this more later. I need to do some homework first.

As always, if you have an email list of your own, feel free to forward this.

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.

July 5

TAG: Rik Catlow, Matthew Feyld, Jason Dunda, Julianna Bright. Jerry Dale’s ending up with a good show. To start with, he’s got Kelly Williams, and I’ve really liked her work, which is a fragmented exposure of her immediate perceptions that gives a vivid sense of the phenomenology of perception (to borrow a phrase) at work. You can probably think of Rik Catlow and Jason Dunda as falling in the Juxtapose realm of artists with a visual connection to cartooning and illustration. The same goes for Julianna Bright, but I also see bits of some sort of indeterminate European folk drawing and Amy Cutler’s characters.

Rymer, Phurba Namgay Something different for Rymer—a Bhutanese painter, trained in traditional styles who combines the techniques and imagery of those traditions with modern elements. He lives part time in Nashville now.

Sera Davis Advisory, Pamela Johnson and Anne Karsten. This is the new group in Matt Mikulla’s old space on the second floor of the Arcade. They are running an art consulting business but also will present artists in a gallery setting. The two painters here have different takes on consumer society—Johnson makes oversized images of mass-produced foods, magnifying their attractions as objects of desire, and Karsten takes objects for sale on eBay and makes them the subject of “psychological portraits.”

DPC Art Luck For this month, the Art Luck supper is continuing the art from The Contributor, Nashville’s street newspaper But this month there’s also going to be a concert by Carry Nation, which is Sarah Masen, Jewly Hight (Jewly’s also a pretty fair scholar), and Sherry Cothran. I saw them a few months back and found them really engaging. They do some things with old hymns and songs they’ve written, and the three women are compelling performers in different ways. The group is going to perform at DPC around 6 or so and then move matter to Twist to play later set there. You might see them wandering up or down 5^th Avenue too.

A bunch of galleries have continuing shows:

Estel, Common Thread: Cathy Breslaw, Vanessa Oppenhoff, Teri Moore.

Arts Company: Brother Mel

Tinney + Cannon Contemporary: Linda Mitchell

Plowhaus at Tennessee Art League: Value Menu Show (everything $49.99 or less) I think this show is continuing.

Twist: Quinn Dukes. Plus that concert by Carry Nation.

LeQuire Gallery: Learning Green Sri Ganesha Temple, Odissi Dance Program In conjunction with the Temple’s celebration of Jagannath Ratha Yatra (Chariot Festival), there will be a performance by the dance company Rudrakshya from India. The company performs in the classical style of the eastern Indian state of Orissa. It is described as having many sculptural elements, recalling Indian temple relief sculptures. The program starts at 6:30, after the Temple’s chariot procession from 4-5:30.

July 6

CRAFT: A Creative Community A group of local artists/artisans, bringing Nashville into the world of DIY crafts, holds its monthly sale/fair in the parking lot of Lipstick Lounge from 11-5 on Sunday.

July 11

Centennial Art Center, CV-TACA Crafts Show. This is a pretty big show of area crafts artists. It includes a couple of very prominent fabrics artists—Paula Bowers-Hotvedt, who was part of the Judy Chicago project at Vandy, and Martha Christian whose large scale hangings have been shown in various places, but I go back to what I thought was a really effective placement in the airport lobby given the geological and topographical qualities of the work. Wood-turner Brenda Stein’s also in the show. 29 artists in total. Reception at 5:00.

July 13

Main Library, Beyond the Page: Carol Barton’s Art and Influence. Barton designs artists books with pop-up elements, and this exhibit features her work and books made by Nashville artists who have studied with her. No one can resist pop-up books. I don’t know if there’s an opening reception for this show, but the press says it opens on the 13^th.