Nashville Visual Arts Events all of October maybe

I'm posting this a little late, but it covers the whole month so I suppose it's good to have it here for reference.

Joseph Whitt is making his presence felt at the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery. First, there’s the current exhibit of the Warhol Polaroids the gallery was given by the Warhol Foundation, shown with two current artists working with Polaroids. Bringing in these artists makes a nice way to think about Warhol. That’s going to be up for a week or so. Later in the month they’ll open a show of work by Jules de Balincourt, also curated by Joseph. The other Joseph at Vanderbilt, Mella, also puts together very smart shows, so this isn’t a matter of “upping the ante” or any related cliché—it’s a matter of a different voice, and it’s encouraging to see that both Josephs will share curatorial air time.

I’m trying to do just one email this month due to some travel that will take me out of commission the middle of the month. As always, sorry to the venues I missed.

October 1-8

TSU Gallery, Plus 3 Ferris. This is a traveling video exhibition with 26 artists, organized by Western Michigan University. It’ll be at TSU for this one week.

October 2

Renaissance Center (Dickson), 10^th Annual Regional Art Exhibit and Graduate Exhibition. The Renaissance Center’s regional exhibit is always worth checking out, usually someone in there worth seeing whom I haven’t encountered before. And last year they started a program of selecting a recent art graduate from a regional college for a solo show. This year they’ve selected 2 artists, Heather Hartman and Charlesey Charlton. Hartman is a graduate of Auburn currently in the MFA program at UT, Charlton graduated from MTSU and is working on an MFA at ETSU. Hartman in particular has gotten some early recognition in Atlanta.

Sarratt, Francois Deschamps. The works in this show are photographs and images from the house of an eccentric character named Albert “Yellow Kid” Gerontian who lived in the Catskills.

October 3

Centennial Art Center, Nashville’s Internationals. This is the second year the Centennial Art Center has done a show with this theme, and it’s a great idea, reflecting profound changes in Nashville. Of the artists this year, I’m familiar with the work of Sabine Schlunk, the curator of the new Gallery F at Scarritt-Bennett, who had a couple of interesting pieces in a show at TSU last year, and Ben Vitualla, who has exhibited a lot in town. But there’s a whole bunch of artists here: Olga Alexeeva, Alfred Awonuga, Heide Browne, Ayla Dumont, Roberta Winnett Harrison, Geppe Hernandez, Bharati P. Kakkad, Johnson Chang, James Bol, Jacob Deng, Chol Garang, John Kur, James Makuac, James Nguen and Gabriel Wal (these last 8 are from the Sudan and involved with the Lost Boys Foundation), Voymir Mustapich, Camille Torchon, Lucia Timis, Joy Min Xu.

Snow Gallery, Tucker Neel. OK, this looks interesting. Where to start. Tucker Neel is the son of Roy Neel, one of Al Gore’s chief advisors. The younger Neel is an artist based in LA, and he’s done a lot of pieces in many media with political themes or source material. That will be the case here, where his work will be shown with related printed by Piranesi and Hogarth. This sounds like something you’d see in a serious museum show.

Watkins, Annual Juried Student Show. I always try to get by and see this, lets you know who’s at Watkins and what they are up to.

Rekha Surya, Sri Ganesha Temple. Rekha Surya is a vocalist from New Dehli who performs Hindustani light classical music. These are folk songs treated with Indian classical musical technique, so they are based on more worldly stories and themes than the abstract classical forms. Surya sings in Nashville the day after she performs at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The concert starts at 7, and is preceded by dinner at 6. Tickets cost $35.

October 4

The Arts Company, The Art of Politics. In honor of the Presidential debate at Belmont on the 7^th, this show features the work of Robert Grossman, an illustrator who contributes frequently to The Nation. The show is curated by Ronnie Steine—not sure if that means there will be political art from his collection or he was involved in selecting the work by Grossman. They also have signed copies of debate posters by Grossman and Nashvillian Jorge Arrieta commissioned by the Arts Company. And there’s Get Out the Vote paintings by Jonathon Kimbrell.

Twist: Drew Peterson. Drew is one of the artists from Minneapolis who had a show at Twist last year and did the mural on the Downtown Presbyterian Church side of the Viridian tower. He comes back to show a series of works that take patterns from old advertisements and mix them up into kaleidoscopic patterns.

Art and Invention, Duy Huynh Dreamy paintings by this Vietnamese-born artist.

Tinney Contemporary, Pam Longobardi. This show opened last weekend, but they are having a “special presentation” by the artist on Art Crawl. This show, “Drifters,” is based on the North Pacific Gyre, where huge amounts of drifting man-made debris collect in the middle of the ocean.

Plowhaus, The Art of Love. Again, the Plowhaus is showing in the Tennessee Art League galleries on Broadway. Cool to see the love theme showing up in October rather than February. The artists this month are: Kevin Brock, Nelson Curry, Terry Thornhill, Betty Turner, Sylvia Byrn, Oli Oldacker, Kathy Vago, Shelly Santana, Ayjey, Stacy Klinger, Curt Perkins, Willow Fort, Barry Noland, DJ Justice, Mel Davenport, Landry Butler, Sarah Fowler, Carrie Mills, Tracy Ratliff and Marlynda Augelli

Rymer, Kevin Kelly. Kelly worked with Tom Wesselmann and follows in the pop art tradition with work that looks more like Roy Lichtenstein.

October 5

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.

October 9

Vanderbilt Divinity School, Sam Dunson. The painting on the announcement card has the pieta image put into a context with the hyperactive cartoon imagery Sam used in his last show at TAG. This image – its just on a card mind you – works really well. The reception is from 4:30-6:30.

TSU Gallery, Sonor Et Visio. This is a one-night only presentation of a performance piece that includes sound, images, projection, and video by a duo called Black/Jones. They say the work is “based on the writing of Abbot Suger, a medieval monk whose theory of “Luz Externa” revolutionized the art of stained glass.” The performance starts at 9:00.

Estel, Harry Underwood. The latest group of paintings by Harry. He makes densely packed pieces, filled with words and images that reward sustained viewing. Harry’s also got a unique process, creating limited multiples of most of his works, and working with a stock of images he reuses. The paintings draw from a shared world of nostalgia and fantasy, but each piece feels like a carefully thought-through world of its own.

Alias, Turner Recital Hall, Vanderbilt. Alias is doing a year-long series of work by women composers through the ages. This program includes pieces by Margaret Brouwer and Vivian Fine. They’re also doing a trio by Andre Previn and the Franck violin sonata. Concert starts at 8:00.

October 10

Cheekwood. Michael Oliveri and Emerging Video Artists. Temporary Contemporayr will open an exhibit by Oliveri, chair of Digitial Media at the University of Georgia. The show, titled Innerspace, Permaculture and UFOs, consists of sculptures and photographs that make up Oliveri’s investigation of the inner spaces of physics and biology. In the video galleries, Greg Pond has selected work by several young artists, several from New York.

Frist Center, Photography and Film from the George Eastman House Collection, photos by Lalla Essaydi, and Snapshots and the Family Album. The Eastman House, in Rochester, was founded by the founder of Eastman Kodak and has one of the world’s leading collections of photography. This show includes landmark photos by Matthew Brady, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston and many more. Essaydi is a Moroccan photographer whose work will be on display in the CAP gallery. And finally, the Frist Center asked volunteers to submit amateur snaps and then put them together as an exhibit.

October 11

Plate Tone Print Shop open house. This printmaking coop moved relatively recently. The artists showing at this open house will be Marleen De Bock, Kaaren Hirshowitz Engel, Lee Ann Hawkins, Patricia Jordan, Reesha Leone, and Jaime Raybin Reception is from 2-6. 5124 Charlotte Pike

Cheekwood: Artists Collect, The Red Grooms and Lysiane Luong Private Collection. This should be very interesting, art from the collection of Red Grooms and his wife Lysiane Luong. 1. It’ll surely show us something more about what Grooms looks at and thinks about. 2. No doubt they own really fine stuff.

Zeitgeist, Megan Lightell, Christie Nuell, Jee Yun Lee. Landscape paintings by Lightell, prints by Nuell that combine botanical and architectural elements, and delicate watercolor and ink compositions by Lee.

Magpie, etc., Donnie Firkins. Bronze sculpture by an artist from Bowling Green.

October 15

TSU Gallery, Heroic. This exhibit presents works by Mark Belton, Nathaniel Creekmore, and Shaun Leonardo that are large in scale. On the evening of the opening, Creekmore and Leonardo along with Sam Dunson and Dr. Graham Matthews will participate in a panel discussion on the topic: “Getting Complex: Complicating the Definition of the Black Male in Art and Education.” The panel discussion starts at 6:00

October 18

Cumberland, David French and Marilyn Murphy. Two of the gallery’s artists are the focus this month. French’s abstract wood sculptures have a tribal feel in their patterns and colors. Murphy’s witty compositions speak with an unmistakable voice—I think of it as domestic surrealism, but her images range much farther than hearth and home.

Ruby Green, Southern Exposure. Southern as in Southern California. This show is organized by Mery Lynn McCorkle, who was in a group show at Ruby Green a couple of years ago and showed some of the most atypical “Katrina” art I’ve seen. She comes back for this show with drawings by 15 artists from the LA area. They’ve pretty much all got gallery representation in LA, so this should provide a nice taste of that scene. Every time I see work by LA artists it makes me want to get out there and spend some time looking around.

October 23

Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery, Jules de Balincourt. At the end of the month we have Vanderbilt opening another show curated by Joseph Whitt, this time focusing on a single contemporary artist. De Balincourt is known for deploying the tones of folk art with contemporary cultural and political themes. This show reviews his work since 2002, when he started exhibiting regularly in New York. And de Balincourt is delivering a lecture the day before, 7:00 on the 22^nd in Room 103 Wilson Hall.

October 23-26

ArtClectic, University School Nashville. This is the 12th year for this fundraiser for USN. Mostly local folks, some from farther afield.