Nashville Visual Arts Events for November

Again, I’m trying to get everything into one listing. I figure the last half of the month should be pretty slow with Thanksgiving week, and I’m going to be off doing things elsewhere much of the time. This weekend I’ll be getting a chance to hear Dr. Michael White, one of the very best practitioners of traditional New Orleans music. I hope I’ll also get a chance to see a lot of the Prospect .1 biennial on this trip. Later in the month I’ll be seeing The Black Watch. Should be a good month.

But the point is just I’m kind of excited about these things, not that there isn’t plenty going on in Nashville. There’s a bunch of stuff from students this month—the Mt. Olivet cemetery event on Halloween, Senior shows at Watkins, and TSU students at Gallery F. And right now I’m listening to clips by Vijayalakshmy Subramaniam, who will be singing at Sri Ganesha, and that sounds good. The Clive King drawings at Austin Peay look like they could be great.

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October 31

Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Watkins Student illustrators. Check this out—Watkins illustration students showing illustrations of “restless souls” in a crypt at Confederate Memorial Hall at the cemetery. The show commemorates cold winters in the 1870s when the ground was too hard to dig graves, so the dead were held in a temporary holding crypt at Mt. Olivet. The students will display their work just for a couple of hours on Halloween morning, from 9-11.

November 1

The Arts Company, Ansel Adams and Bob Kolbrener. Ansel Adams, who died in 1984, was a founder of American art photography in many ways. His images of the American West are some of the most famous photos, and they define how we see landscape in photography. He also made a huge contribution to photographic technique with his Zone system for composing, developing, and printing black and white photos. Finally, he was also a father of the modern photography market—his photographs were some of the first to gain the attention of serious collectors and some pioneering dealers built their business selling his work. Kolbrener worked with Adams as a student and then as an instructor at Adams’ workshops. He has continued in Adams’ footsteps, taking photos of Western landscapes and printing them with traditional darkroom techniques. The Arts Company is also opening an exhibit of paintings by April Street.

Society of Nashville Artistic Photographers, Pushpin/Clothespin Show. This year SNAP is doing this show at the Tennessee Art League space on Broadway. SNAP is a cooperative of photographers with different styles. Consider them Adams’ heirs.

Twist, Tara Murino-Brault and Ulana Zahajkewycz. These two women have ties to Minneapolis, and Twist is developing a nice pipeline from there to here, Both of the artists are working with nightmares, monsters, and fears in a playful way. The band Eastern Block is going to play at the opening.

Downtown Presbyterian Church, Connect 12. DPC is hosting an exhibit by the Connect 12 group, organized by Ben Vitualla. The artists in this show are Alesandra Bellos, Jimi Benedict, Rick Bradley, Samantha Callahan, Eric Denton, Tiffany Denton, Chris Hill, Stacey Irvin, Sean Jewett, Erika Johnson, Shana Kohnstamm, Daniel Lai, Andee Rudloff, and Ben. I’m kind of always going on about Erika’s work, but her piece in this show sure sounds interesting—titled “Saved,” it deals with the financial crisis, poverty, and related sensations, but it’s also an interesting name for a piece showing in a church.

Rymer, Color is Relative. This show features Rymer Gallery curator and Crayola master Herb Williams, as well as work by James Pearson, Gabriel Mark, L.A. Bachman, Barbara Coon, Jordan Eagles, and Emily Leonard. Pearson does really nice abstractions that were in a show at TAG a couple of years ago. Leonard does dark, brooding landscapes.

Gallery One, Lorraine Glessner and Jennifer Bain. These artists come together around their use of encaustic, which produces a nice fleshy surface. Bain is more of a straight painter, Glessner uses elements of collage, embedding objects like threads and fabrics in the encaustic. Both of them achieve effects of layering and depth. The reception will run from 6-8.

Estel, Harry Underwood. A closing show for 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.

Tennessee Arts League, Edie Maney. Abstract paintings inspired by the Frist Center’s Color as Field show. She’s using some of the techniques of the Color Field painters in the ways she moves acrylic paint around on canvas.

Cheekwood, Dia de los Muertos. Cheekwood’s annual celebration of the Mexican commemoration of the dead, with events running all day.

Tinney, Manuel and Cambridge Jones. This is an exhibit of photographs by Jones of country music stars wearing outfits created by Manuel.

November 2

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.

November 3

APSU, Clive King. King makes intricate, large scale drawings, some of which draw on his roots in a small Welsh village and others more recently have taken a turn into political issues like the war in Iraq. The exhibit at Austin Peay’s Trahern gallery opens with an artist’s talk at 7:00.

November 6

Frist Center, Morna O’Neil lecture. O’Neil’s a faculty member at Vanderbilt specializing in 19^th century art. Her lecture will focus on photography during the Victorian era, the medium’s earliest years. 6:30 p.m.

November 7

Sri Ganesha, Vijayalakshmy Subramaniam. Subramanian is a vocalist from Chennai—she will be accompanied by Avaneeswaram Vinu on violin and Shertalai Ananthakrishnan on mridangam. Regular readers of this listing know that I am an avid fan of the music program at Sri Ganesha. The concerts there are consistently of high quality, but every few months one jumps out as particularly promising, and this is one of those. Subramaniam looks and sounds to my untrained eyes and ears to be a substantial artist.

Watkins, Jennifer Knowles McQuistion, Stephanie Brooke West, and Jonathan Abarquez. The first round of Senior shows by Watkins students graduating this year. McQuistion and West are both in the photography program but will use multiple media including live performance in these shows. The performances start at 6:30. Abarquez is involved in the construction of life-size avatars, so he’s moving across media boundaries as well. This exhibit will only run through Nov. 14.

Watkins Yart Sale. Art by Watkins students for sale, 10-4 on the 7^th and 10-5 on the 8^th.

Centennial Art Center, Kathy Carter, R. Lafayette Mitchell, Eva Sochorova. Opening reception from 5-7.

November 8

Artrageous. The annual party and benefit for Nashville CARES. The participating galleries this year are Art & Invention, Bennett, Estel, Richter, Tennessee Art League, The Arts Company, Rymer, Studio B, and LeQuire.

Very Vine Craft Show. John Schramlin has organized a craft show to provide some alternatives during downtown Murfreesboro’s weekend holiday shopping event. It’ll be at the Vine, 118 W. Vine St., from 11-6.

November 11

Parthenon, David Petrain lecture. Petrain is a professor at Vanderbilt. His talk is titled “Homer, the Iliad tablets, and Visual Storytelling in the Early Roman Empire” 7:00. Call 862-8431 for reservations.

November 13

Sarratt, Gina Binkley. Assemblages made from found materials which look to combine qualities of Leonardo Drew, Joseph Cornell, and Louis Nevelson. It has an aged, hand-made feel.

November 15

Snow Gallery, Portals and Vessels. Another conversational show at Snow Gallery. This one takes work by Kinjo Jiro (1912-2004), a Japanese potter who was designated a Living National Treasure, and presents it with ceramics by Bill Dale and books made from hand-made paper by Claudia Lee. (If I may digress—I have always liked the idea of Living National Treasures. We should have this in Nashville, but only if I get to pick them. First one in—Dave Cloud.)

November 20

Frist Center, Susan Edwards lecture. The director of the Frist Center will deliver the second of a three-lecture series on photography. She is going to discuss McLuhan’s ideas about media, the physical processes of photography, and its influence on many aspects of society, not just art. 6:30 p.m.

November 21

Watkins, Krstine Larsen, Adam Nicholson, and Mai Lick. The second round of Senior Thesis exhibits for this semester.

Scarritt-Bennett Gallery F, Wish List. An exhibit of work by students and graduates of TSU’s art department. Everyone who saw the Frist Show of work from the local art programs will remember how well the work from TSU students came across, so here’s a chance to see work from them. Curator Sabine Schlunk says the participants are being encouraged to experiment for this show. The artists will present sound performances at the opening.