Nashville Visual Arts Events September 4-16

Well everyone has been very busy and has something to offer for the beginning of the month. The start of “the season,” if we’ve got one of those.

The best thing this month is Scarritt-Bennett getting into the mix as an art venue. The space is starting up with a show by 7 women with Nashville ties all of whom got MFAs from Vermont College of Art—this includes Barbara Yontz, Kristi Hargrove, Amanda Dillingham, and Jodi Hays. The curator is Sabine Schlunk, an artist who is new to town and showed some nice pieces at TSU last Spring.

TAG Gallery is showing two of its artists at Estel—Lori Field and Anna Jaap. I’ve been getting very interested in Anna’s work lately.

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September 4

Carlos Picon lecture at the Parthenon. Picon is the curator of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan art at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. As in the guy in charge of one of the world’s great collections of classical art. This collection has gained new prominence with a renovation of the galleries that has been extremely well perceived. When you go to the Met, go see it. Go to the left off the entrance hall. I think Picon is going to discuss the renovation of the galleries, which may or may not be interesting, but I hope he will talk about the art in those galleries. The lecture is free but you need to call ahead for a ticket (862-8431).

September 5

Scarritt-Bennett Gallery F, The New Dress Code. For the gallery’s inaugural exhibit, Sabine Schlunk organized a show around the work of seven women with Nashville ties who have gone through Vermont College of Art’s low-residence MFA program. No college in Middle Tennessee has an MFA program in the visual arts, so people who want this degree usually have to move, but low-residency programs have been a good solution for folks who want to keep their ties here. One of the best low-res MFAs is offered by Vermont College, and their growing group of local alumnae includes really good people—Barbara Yontz, Kristi Hargrove, Amanda Dillingham, Jodi Hays, Erika Nichols, Michelle Sciumbato, and Mandy Sauer. The reception is from 5 to 9, and includes music from Lola, Carry A. Nation (that’s Sarah Dark, Sherry Cothran and Jewly Hight’s group—old hymns updated, electric guitars, marching drums, and clogging), and Xiaolun Qi.

September 6

TAG at Estel, Lori Field and Anna Jaap. It sounds like Lori Field is getting some decent interest lately. Among other things, she gives her surfaces a distinctive tangibility through layers of encaustic and beeswax. Like Fields, Anna Jaap makes images that are pretty—delicate floral and botanic elements and pastel colors, but also darker threads. In earlier work she also combined carefully rendered shapes with their opposite, gestures and shapes marked on the surface blindly. Control/out of control is one of the tensions she uses to give the paintings their energy.

Twist: Irene Wills. Irene Wills and her family are great supporters of the arts and culture in Nashville, and she herself paints. This show puts her paintings, largely florals and garden scenes, into the spotlight..

Twist at 214 3^rd Avenue, Process. A one-night show including Kelly Bonadies, Kristi Hargrove, Erin Plew, Nick Stolle, Terry Thacker, Iwonka Waskowski, and John Whitten Oh yeah, and I’m going to be playing. Me, Amy Marcantel, and Joseph Hudson, doing some sort of derivative of Forest Bride filtered through the ears of people who have been listening to Fred Anderson and Ornette Coleman.

Plowhaus, Sprawl: Art in the Urban World In their new home at the Tennessee Art League on Broadway, another group show by members of the coop.

DPC Art Luck and Fundraising Concert featuring Les Kerr, Sarah Dark, Julie Lee, and Dave Perkins This is a closing reception for the show of pieces our kids did on icons. They came up with some amazing things. Get Sarah Dark or one of the others to walk you through the show—it’s worth it.

Studio B, Steven Miller and Victor Schmidt. Miler paints from enlarged photos of viruses like HIV, the make something beautiful out of something frightening idea. Schmidt is a sculptor grounded in traditional metalworking techniques.

Sri Ganesha Temple, concert by Binay Pathak, Madhusudhan Barman, Gopal Barman. Pathak plays Harmonium as a solo instrument—it’s a keyboard with bellows, sort of a stationary accordion used more often to accompany vocalists. The concert starts at 6:30.

LeQuire Gallery, New Approaches to Figurative Painting. With a strong sense of their mission and aesthetics, LeQuire present a group show that includes gallery artists and others: Juliette Aristedes, Cindy Billingsley, Josh Bronaugh, Ron Cheek, Brendan Getz, Murat Kaboulov, William Kooinga, Alan LeQuire, Jonathan Matthews, Jonathan Stone, Brody Vincnet, and Jammie Williams.

The Arts Company, Three Generations of Nashville Photographers. That would be Ed Clark, Bob Schatz, and Greg Miller. This will include photos from Schatz’ series on Southern writers’ homes, which are darned interesting. My wife the perfume freak was very interested to see a bottle of something sitting in one of the women’s bathrooms, maybe Eudora Welty. Clark, who passed away in 2000, documented the city for the Tennessean and Life. And Greg Miller’s new to the gallery.

September 7

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.

September 11

Sarratt, Retablos: Miracles on the Border. Retablos are traditional Mexican religious paintings. The collection on display at Sarratt features retablos that incorporate contemporary experiences of migration. Jorge Durand of the University of Guadalajara will give a lecture on them at 4:00 in Buttrick 102. Sarratt’s expanding our range with this show.

September 12

Frist Center, Rodin. This is a show drawn from one of the major collections of Rodin’s sculpture, assembled by Iris and Gerald Cantor. It’s a big show, 60 sculptures, and includes The Kiss and The Thinker. My favorite Rodin sculpture is the portrait of Balzac, but I don’t know if one of those is here. The point for me is that the brute strength in Rodin’s masses lines makes this timelessly modern art that doesn’t let itself get relegated to sentiment and tradition.

University School of Nashville, Jaime Raybin. A closing reception for Jaime’s exhibit of her Milk Shelf series at USN. 6-7:30.

September 12-13

NAA Studio Tour and Juried Show. Nashville Area Arts, which runs a web site consolidating a lot of information on Nashville visual arts, has organized a tour of 30 artists’ studios in Nashville. The tour is on Saturday—not guided, you get a map listing everyone participating, and their studios are open from 10-6 on Saturday. Friday evening they are having a reception at Belmont’s Leu Gallery for a juried show that I assume is taken from participating artists.

September 13

Ruby Green, Chris Campbell: Necessary Collector After a summer hiatus, Ruby Green is back with an exhibit of pieces from director Chris Campbell’s personal collection. The artists include many who have exhibited at Ruby Green over the year, and plenty of others: Sue Coe, Mark Mulroney, Sandra Bermudez, Mary Shaffer, Terry Glispin, Leslie Kneisel, Sam Dunson, Cheryl Pfeiffer, Angela Willcoks, Jill Larson, Mery Lynn McKorkle, Don Evans, Erin Anfinson, Donte K Hayes, Cecelia Kane, Richard Mitchell, Michael Durham, Donna Stack, Tom Zarilli, Joseph Whitt, Hunter Brice.

Cumberland, Raine Bedsole and David Kroll Kroll is one of the gallery’s figurative painters, more or less surrealist, relishing the fine details of birds, fish, and objects. Bedsole is sort of the opposite, a painter of almost abstract compositions where surface texture is everything, and who tends towards forms that are simple in their basic outlines and complex in detail.

Group show at The Vine, Murfreesboro. A one-night show organized by John Schramlin in a new venue in downtown Murfreesboro (118 W. Vine), with work by Joey Tigert, Tarri Driver, Jeff Bertrand, James Clark, Charles Bennett, Charles Clary, and Schramlin. 6 to 10.

September 16

Eugene Borza lecture at the Parthenon. The second lecture in a month on classical art and architecture at the Parthenon, this time by a professor from Penn State. Borza will discuss the history of the Parthenon (the one in Greece) and current research and restoration efforts. Like the event on Sept 4, it’s free but you need a ticket, which you get by calling 862-8431