Thanks Amanda

Amanda Dillingham was nice enough to do a Best of Nashville on this blog. With the dearth of posts for a while, it hardly seems to deserve it, but knowing this was in the works (the list goes around at some point to all the writers) chastened me, and I've been trying to make an effort to come up with stuff more often.

On the topic of Best of Nashville, I was too clever for my own good with a few of my titles and the editors provided titles that would be comprehensible to actual readers of the paper. But for my entertainment, here's the original titles for the ones that were changed:

Best Installation = Best Shower Curtain. Erika Johnson's installation at Parthenon. I was glad I got some chance to talk about it, and at least make the point in print that this was a really ambitious piece, with a real sweep. She captured big junks of history and cultural change, and made all of it personal and visceral.

Best Drawing Exhibit = Best Birds. For Erin Plew's drawing of a bunch of birds and bird parts. Technically this should have been "Best Drawing" and leave off Exhibit. I saw that she was exhibiting the drawing again at the Arcade last Art Crawl (I had to go by early so I only got to look in the window at the show).

Best Interactive Work = Best Interactive Housekeeping Exercise. Libby Rowe's show at Belmont. Again, one of the nice things about Best of Nashvilles is the chance to mention something when I missed the chance to write about it first time around.

In retrospect these titles are not as clever as I thought they were at the time, and the editors did keep Best Exploding Whale, which might actually have been a clever title. Let's face it, I ain't going to be writing for the Simpsons any time soon.

On the topic of things not written about (yet), don't forget that Amanda's in the show at Gallery F, The New Dress Code. She has a video about herself, her mother, and bodies and skin, installed in a fabric structure, kind of womb-like. It's gotten me to thinking about what I think about pieces that combine video and sculpture in this way, about the way the elements balance. Video demands your attention in a specific way, I don't know to what extent you take this in as an integrated visual experience--that can be part of the point, but it's one of the things I want to look for when I go back. There is all sorts of logic connecting the tangible and video elements in Amanda's piece. The show's up through November 16, which is helpful for me. And there's an artists' talk at the gallery at 7:00 next Tuesday, the 21st. I didn't get this talk into the events listing.

P.S. One more thing on Best of Nashville--as usual my wife hit it out of the park, packing her art BON dense with ideas and interpretation of Lauren Kalman's work.