Nashville Visual Arts Events November 7-17

There’s a lot coming up the next two weeks. I suppose its venues getting up shows that will run through December. This should be my final listing for November. And I’ll probably do a quick first weekend thing in December and then another one (maybe).

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.

Nov. 8

Sarratt Gallery, Vanderbilt, Susan Maakestad and Kevin Kennedy. Susan is one of my favorite painters. She’s in Memphis, teaches at Memphis College of Art. I’ve written about her several times. Here’s an essay I did for the gallery brochure of a show she had in Memphis a while back. She showed last Spring at the Temple Art Fair, and now she’s back, this time at Sarratt. She makes glowing paintings, they make me think about Mark Rothko and Richard Diebenkorn, two other artists I never tire of looking at. Susan (I guess Kevin Kennedy also) is doing a gallery talk at 5, then there’s a reception.

Nov. 9

Tennessee State University, Mary Perrin and Karen Edmunds, Storm Stories. The two artists will appear at TSU’s downtown campus to do a lecture/performance/slide show. The two artists are from Louisiana and dealt with Katrina and Rita (Perrin in Lafayette, Edmunds in New Orleans). They both kept journals during it all, and their performance tells stories from these journals and adds reflections—it sounds like the idea is a two-person Spaulding Gray performance, or something like that. The performance starts at 6:00, in the Avon Williams building at 330 10^th Avenue North. Plenty of details at Jodi Hays’ blog.

Watkins, Quinn Dukes, Senior Show. It’s surprising to realize that Quinn is just finishing at Watkins. She’s been active on the scene for several years, notable for performance pieces that build dance/theatre/motion work up with elaborate costume/sets. For her senior show, it looks like they’ve turned over the entire gallery to her—usually they show about 3 students at a time, but occasionally someone is working at a scale where they use the entire space (I’m thinking of Shaun Slifer’s show from a couple of years ago). There will be video, presumably sculpture also, maybe the artifacts from performance, and performance at the opening – that’s 6:00 on the 9^th.

Centennial, KISS. Katherine Dettwiller, Irene Ritter, and Sharon Charney. Paintings by Charney, encaustic paintings by Dettwiller (probably will be the most interesting work in this show), and stone sculpture by Irene Ritter (I didn’t realize she served as Deputy Mayor in the 1980s—seems like we should start bugging Curt Garrigan about the sculptures in his attic). Opening reception runs 5-7.

Project A, Hunter Armistead photos. Armistead is the leader of Mel and the Party Hats, a Nashville institution. He name (or the gallery) checks Avedon and Marcel Duchamp in the PR. OK. Doesn’t really match the work on-line.

Lance Dupre designs: Melissa Martin, Donny Smutz, Stephen Watkins. I’m listing the opening exhibit for this store, on Rosa Parks Blvd/8^th Avenue. It’s hard to say whether this will be some nasty decorator crap or art worth stopping to look at, but for now let’s assume the best.

Nov. 10

Artrageous. The 20^th anniversary for this fundraiser for AIDS education and services. The participating galleries are Arts Company, Bennett, Cumberland, Dangenart, Estel, Finer Things, Local Color, Midtown, Richter, and the TN Art League. Estel is showing work by a new artist, Laura Kaufman, and light sculptures by Kelly Butler. Dangenart has pulled a neat trick in one of their rooms, which has overtly erotic work by Daniel Lai, Smaantha Callahan, and Barry Noland sharing space with the military images of Ben Vitualla and John Schramlin. This adds to their work the erotic fetishization of the soldier’s body, something that’s not obvious in Ben’s work, but on some level is unavoidable. Wolfgang Tillmans had an installation on this in his exhibit at the Hirschhorn earlier this year.

Alfred Williams & Company, Justin Nolan Key. This is a Watkins senior show, on display at this venue at 716 Division Street, near Frugal MacDougal’s and Flyte. Key is a photographer—I don’t know his work, but the description says it is digitally manipulated images printed large scale, “commenting on genetics & the manipulation of the natural world” to cut corners and quote the press release. The opening is at 6:00 on the 10^th.

Nov. 11

CRAFT: A Creative Community A group of local artists/artisans holds a monthly sale/fair in the parking lot of Lipstick Lounge, the next one is 11-5 on Sunday, November 11. It sounds like the event is growing, because they’ve added a second location—the Lipstick Lounge parking lot is at 14^th and Woodland, and there will also be people at the corner of 11^th and Woodland. And as I read on in their press release, I see the CRAFT people will be at the Farmer’s Market on November 24 and December 1, 8, 15, and 22—that works out to every Saturday between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Dave Hickey would be proud.

Nov. 12

MTSU, Dave Hickey lecture. It’s probably a completely spurious comparison, but I can’t shake the idea that Hickey is the Hunter Thompson of art critics. He’s in Las Vegas, so there’s that connection, and he drops frequent drug references. His scheduled topic for the talk is the current insane art market, a floating feast of excess that manifests itself in the international art fairs. The craziness doesn’t worry Hickey, who figures no one gets hurt by overpaying for art, and in the end the emphasis on the marketplace will lead to commerce taking over from institutions the role of defining value, leading to a more democratic aesthetics. The lecture is at 7:00 in State Farm Lecture Hall in the Business Aerospace Building. There’s gotta be a message in the choice of room and building.

Nov 15-16

Nashville Ballet, Emergence. This program pairs composers from the Blair School faculty with choreographers in the creation of a new work of ballet and music. They do it every two years, and the result last time around was one of the more engaging performances I’ve seen in Nashville. Among other things it’s good to hear substantial pieces by the Vandy composition faculty – their work is not played out that often in town. The composers are pretty conservative, but it’s good to hear new work, and it’s usually not rehashed Americana like a lot of what occurs in town. This year one of the composers is Stan Link, who does electro-acoustic stuff that has sounded really good from my limited exposure to it. The performances are at 8:00 in the recital hall at the Blair School, Thursday and Friday night.

Nov. 16

Frist, Katy Siegel lecture. The parade of distinguished art lectures goes on with Siegel at the Frist. Actually, this might be the last in a run of good fortune. Seigel writes for ArtForum, teaches at Hunter College, and seems to have her finger into every aspect of contemporary art. Just to pick up one thing, she curated a show on painting in New York from the period 1967-75 which I saw in DC and which has been traveling through ICI. The period is significant because this was a time when everyone was declaring the death of painting (sculpture and installation were ascendant), but plenty was still happening, and it’s up to people like Siegel to remind us about it. Hard to say much about what she’s going to talk about from the title—“Contemporary Art in the Age of Extremes.” The lecture is at 6:00.

Future/Now: Mid-State Art Majors, Frist. This is pretty cool—an exhibit of art by current students at local colleges (Fisk, APSU, MTSU, TSU, Watkins, Vandy, Lipscomb, Belmont, and the Appalachian Center for Crafts—looks like they missed Sewanee). The works were chosen by faculty at the schools, so if nothing else it will show you who has ingratiated themselves with their faculty. Seriously, I think it’s great that the Frist is opening their doors to these artists. People who make it to one-night group shows, campus exhibits, and some of the Arcade galleries will see some of these students, but there’s a lot of people who get to those places. It’s also a good counterpoint to the Société Anonyme—most of these students undoubtedly want to be the Modernists of their day.

Nashville Opera, Elmer Gantry. The Nashville Opera is doing the premier of an opera by Robert Aldridge. This is a big deal. Aldridge is a well-known composer and this is the latest entry in the great American opera sweepstakes, which seems to have heated up lately. Elmer Gantry is the story of an evangelical preacher, so Aldridge uses lots of gospel music in his work—he’s a southerner, and he and librettist went to tent meetings in western North Carolina (his father was a preacher there). They are positioning the work as a crossover possibility—“if you liked ‘O Brother Where Art Thou,’ here’s an opera you’ll like.” That pitch doesn’t really grab me, but I should probably keep an open mind about this. Aldridge sounds like he’s genuinely engaged by roots music. It’s just it almost never works out that these vernaculars profit from getting transferred into classical settings, and I just don’t think classical music needs rescuing from its own vocabulary and sounds. But leaving aside my carping, it’s a big deal for the Nashville Opera to stage this premier, of an ambitious strategy that has the Opera trying something unusual every year, like the double bill of Davies The Lighthouse and Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine a couple of years ago. The people at the Opera (Carol Penterman, John Hoomes, etc.) seem determined to make something happen here. Cool.

Nov. 16-17

Watkins, Yart Sale Watkins students offer their work for sale every year about this time, when you’re supposed to be thinking about Christmas. Dave Hickey would be proud. And no one gets hurt by paying very little for a photo by a Watkins student.

Arthur Danto talk – not so good

Arthur Danto makes you want to write art criticism. His writing makes it obvious how looking at and thinking about art is a serious intellectual activity. Sure, he’s smarter than you (at least that’s the case for me), better read, but you think maybe you could write a review that does a little of what he does, that uses your experience of art as the basis for an interesting idea or two.

So I was looking forward to his Thursday talk at Vanderbilt a great deal. The topic was the restoration of the Sistine Chapel. It wasn’t obvious what he would do with that, but I was sure he wouldn’t linger long on the controversy, but would go from there to observations about the nature of art, of making art, of viewing art, of social and institutional meaning-making.

Well, to some extent he did exactly what I thought he wouldn’t do. The talk focused on making the case that the restoration was ill-conceived. He made a compelling case that the restorers screwed up, but you don’t have to read much to see how that is likely the case.

The talk itself was badly organized. It was emblematic when he threw up a Powerpoint slide that showed a tiny, indecipherable patch lost in the middle of the big screen. It utterly deflated the impact of offering visual evidence to support his point. The whole talk seemed organized or mis-organized that way.

Many of his arguments circled back time and again long after a point was made. For one, he kept returning to the point that Michelangelo was more of a draughtsman than a colorist, so restoration approaches that emphasized the vividness of color and diminished the emphasis in lines would run counter to the nature of the work. This is a point about Michelangelo that I believe is well accepted, and in the context of his talk, he made the point the first time it came up – he didn’t need to marshal additional evidence.

The main Danto-ism in the talk was the idea that the approach taken by the head of the restoration, Gianluigi Colalucci, was a form of positivism which loses sight of more essential arguments about how to approach the restoration. Colalucci’s approach relied on a micro-level analysis of the fresco as an object, examining each brushstroke and taking away anything they determined Michelangelo did not put there. The primary critics of the restoration argue that the restorers could not correctly identify what materials Michelangelo did put there. Did Michelangelo go back after the plaster dried and add paint or soot black highlights a secco?

Danto cuts through the very basis of this argument, and says you have to start by examining the work (not the object) and its meaning (not just its physical characteristics), and see what decisions that leads to. An utterly sensible reading of the Chapel ceiling is that an important theme is humanity’s struggle to emerge from darkness of sin into light. Once you accept that as a possibility, brightening up the colors becomes a dubious proposition, and any place where there's a question about whether to leave in elements that give the work shadows and darkness, the obvious choice is caution and preservation.

This is a good point, and the elevation of interpretation in deciding what to do with art has great implications. But Danto didn’t really get into that, and he wasted a lot of time backing up his points about the Sistine Chapel from every angle. I wish he had taken his ideas, left the Sistine Chapel, and talked about other implications of relying on interpretation more fully and fearlessly. It’s a good opportunity to go back to intent—should you look for intent in interpretation, or is interpretation based on the inherent qualities of the work? Does it matter whether Michelangelo was engaged with Neo-Platonism in Rome, or are the ideas of lightness and dark fully evident in the work without recourse to biographical reinforcement? But he didn’t do this.

In the interests of full disclosure, at the end I asked a completely confused and confusing question that was perfectly designed to thwart anyone’s attempts at responsiveness. I was trying to redirect him into applying his ideas in some sort of contemporary context—I should have stopped myself when I couldn’t remember Christoph Buchel’s name, the artist who is in court with Mass MOCA trying to stop them from exhibiting an installation that is either substantially but partially completed, or completely detached from the artist’s intentions and will, depending on your point of view. I made a pathetic plea for someone to bail me out with the name, but ended up sputtering about “this case at Mass MOCA, I’m sure you’ve heard of it...” Ychyfi.

Gypsy history

The Gypsies themselves have no heroes. There are no myths of a great liberation, of the founding of the “nation,” of a promised land. They have no Romulus and Remus, no wandering, battling Aeneas. They have no monuments or shrines, no anthem, no ruins. And no Book. Apart from just over a hundred words and phrases notes by three non-Gypsies in the sixteenth century, there are no samples of early spoken Romani. But they do have myths of ancestry and of migration. Or any rate such myths have been attributed to them.

Isabel Fonseca, Bury Me Standing

Maria’s been encouraging me to read this book for years and I finally got around to it, working through it in the typical start and stop way I do with any book these days.

Loved this passage. It’s one of the reasons the Gypsies occupy such an important place in the collective imagination. They are such a complete alternative to prevailing orders, in this case even of the orders of the imagination. The idea of a society and culture that is not structured around heroes and nations has a great appeal for anyone who has trouble with the question who is your hero, or who are your top 5 favorite cribbage players. On the hero question, push comes to shove and I’ll say Pete Seeger, but that seems like a really inadequate response. There’s all sorts of people I admire and who interest me, but I don’t want to saddle any of them with the burden of heroism.

We have trouble imagining history and culture without fixating on a few figures, or at least it's more easily packaged that way. The quantity of identities and facts is otherwise overwhelming. If you find every noise band interesting, where do you start and stop. It's a lot easier to say "you need to check out Nautical Almanac" and know you've got it covered.

Isabel Fonseca's passage rings of intense idealism. Strains of John Lennon—imagine there’s no countries, imagine there’s no heaven. Just the life we’re leading. Your Gypsy kin and companions, the ones you talk to all the time, not some long-gone characters who probably weren’t anything like the way they’re depicted.

Words of wisdom from Mario Pavone

Last night I got to hear my old childhood friend Ron Horton play live for the first time since high school. I was in New Haven, and he came to New Haven to play with the Will Holshouser Trio (and quartet much of the time thanks to the addition of Scott Robinson) at Firehouse 12. That’s worth a full blog post, will try to do it. But I wanted to talk about something else that came up.

Afterwards Ron introduced me to Mario Pavone, a great bass player and composer whom Ron has played with and who lives in New Haven. A few years ago I heard this lovely cut from an ensemble recording he did that I really need to track down. It was a stay close to the radio until the talk break moment.

So he was talking about what he’s up to, and it’s a lot. He had just gone into the studio with Paul Bley (!!) and Matt Wilson, and he talked about feeling like the music has really flowing. Then he said something like “Music is on fire right now. The culture is sick, but music is on fire, so much of it, all these young people getting into it even if the audiences aren’t there.” He was definitely talking about it as a kind of reaction to the war and the administration – we had just been talking about Ben Allison’s Cowboy Justice group (Ron’s a member), which just did a gig at the Jazz Standard. The Cowboy Justice songs are all references to current politics, with angry and sardonic edges. (Maria found a YouTube clip of the group at the Green Mill in Chicago.)

I tend to agree with Mario. There does seem to be great energy out there. For jazz music, especially if you’re on the East Coast. There are a lot of inspired projects out there, older guys like Paul Bley are doing wonderful work, older musicians are working with younger ones. The economics of it are shaky as hell, which tends to make it obvious that it is driven by a passion. It would not be the first time that illness in the dominant cultures resulted in a counter-reaction of artistic energy.

One thing I distrust in myself with this line of thought is that maybe I’m glad for incompetent government, a disastrous war, economic disorder, and imminent environment collapse because it makes for interesting music. “Hey, let’s light a fire under these people.” Mario talked about waiting to see what happens when this administration leaves the stage, and you’ve got to be in this with the idea that the energy building in opposition can flow into the creation of something positive in the world as conditions reconfigure to allow it. I remember the strong sense of something new and great being just around the corner in the late 60s and early 70s. I was for some time in my youth discouraged by what came instead. But there’s no reason to just say nothing ever comes of this sort of cultural energy. That’s reductionistic and simplistic. Mario seems hopeful when he talks about this.

Nashville Visual Arts Events Oct. 18-31

OK, the big deal coming up is Arthur Danto speaking next week at Vanderbilt. On top of that, Peter Plagens is speaking this week. How odd to have those two here within 8 days of each other.

Also, for the middle of the month, plenty of exhibits opening.

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.

October 18

Downtown Artists Coop, Monica Quattrochio, Time. Up in Clarksville, at the Downtown Artists Co-op, photographer Monica Quattrochio is showing new work, at least new to me. A couple of years ago she did a series of flowers in close-up and at a very large size, the scale effects extreme enough to give them an unusual fleshiness. This time the photos seems to show actual skin—people’s hands in a couple I’ve seen. I don’t know if she’s working at the same scale in these new pictures.

Emily Leonard, In Returning. Emily’s doing a one-night preview in her studio of some paintings that she’s going to be showing at a gallery in Seattle. These are quiet landscapes, many set at dusk or dawn, painted at a pretty large scale. Her studio is in the 427 Chestnut Street building, suite 230, the preview will run from 5-8.


Peter Plagens lecturing at the Frist Center. The title of his talk is “The Absolute Truth,” so we’d better check this out. Plagens is equally identified as a painter and critic, and as a critic writes for an unusual range of publications—he was the art critic at Newsweek (although I think he’s left there), as well as a contributor to more typical publications like Artforum and Art in America. The lecture starts at 7:00.

October 19

If you’re in New York Friday night, Jerry Dale McFadden is curating a one-night event at Lotus Space, 122 W. 26th Street. The event is sponsored by Keen Footwear and features art by people who use found or sustainable materials or address issues of conservation and sustainability. This gives Jerry Dale a chance to show work by several local artists whose approaches fit nicely within that description, like Adrienne Outlaw, Barbara Yontz, and Mary Sue Kern. He’s also pulled in some national figures like Chris Jordan, whose photographs give a monumental expression to the consumption of resources in our society.

And if you’re in New Haven, CT on Friday, go see my friend Ron Horton play with the Will Holshouser Trio at Firehouse 12 on Crown Street. That’s where I’m going to be.


October 20

Nashville Peace and Justice Center, Tickled Pink for Peace Benefit. This art auction benefits a program called Farms Not Arms that has been organized by people in the progressive farming and agriculture community. One of its co-directors is based at The Farm, the long-standing intentional community in Summerton, TN (the other director listed on the website is based in Northern California, although there’s people involved from all over, including places in the heart of mainstream farm country like Iowa). The program intends to hook up vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with jobs and training on farms and in small communities. Sounds like taking the “beating swords into ploughshares” business very seriously. The auction, co-sponsored by the Nashville Peace and Justice Center and several other Nashville peace groups, will benefit local activities of this group, although I didn’t quite get details on those programs. I imagine that will depend on making connections between individual vets and groups like The Farm, seeing what makes sense for each person. Some of the artists contributing to the auction caught my eye, like Erika Johnson, Ben Vitualla, and Robert Vore. The event will be held at the Peace and Justice Center’s new digs at 4732 Longdale, off Harding Place. The auction is Saturday from 6 to 10; there’s also a preview party on Friday the 19th, with an admission price of $30 for that.

ArtHouse, Whitney Ferre, Cindy Wunsch, and Linda Turner. In addition to making contributions as artists, the participants in this show have been involved in a notable amount of business entrepreneurship around here. Ferre co-owns the ArtHouse itself and Rumours wine bar next door, and Turner owns A Thousand Faces in Hillsboro Village.

October 24

Vanderbilt Ingram Studio Art Gallery, Parts of the Puzzle, Please and Leticia Bajuyo, Forces of Nature, Hurricanes and Slinkys. The first is a three person show (Suzanne Bocanegra, Kurt Dominick, and Erin Cunningham) curated by the new chair of the studio art program at Vandy, Mel Ziegler, plus an installation by Bajuyo. Several of artists seem to have Texas connections, where Ziegler was before coming to Vandy. Bocanegra has done some fascinating things by making tons of small drawings and collecting found images that she then piles up and slaps on the wall in such quantity as to become a kind of sculpture. The reception runs 5-7 on the 24th. The gallery is on the second floor of the Studio Art building.

October 25

Arthur Danto speaking at Vanderbilt. My favorite art writing comes from philosophers who use art as a foundation for thinking. More than other writers, they encourage you to run with your ideas and your responses to a work of art, and let them take you where you will. They show you a way to do that. As you follow Danto along some explanation of a concept from Hegel and how it applies to an image, his writing makes you feel smart, even if he’s the one who’s read Hegel, not you. His topic for the lecture at Vanderbilt is “Before and After: Two Decades after the Sistine Chapel Controversy.” I don’t know what his take is on this, but you know that he won’t be giving a simple account of the restoration process or of the controversy surrounding it. This is the kind of incident that should provide him with a jumping off point to talk about things like the nature of the art object ownership of the object or image, memory, who knows. This is an afternoon event, 4:10 in room 103 of Wilson Hall, so you’ll have to skip work.

October 26

Frist Center, The Societe Anonyme and Rosemary Laing, Flight. The Societe Anonyme was a group founded in 1920 by Katherine Dreier, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray that staged exhibits which introduced New York to leading Modernist artists, collected work by them, hosted lectures and readings, and sponsored publications. The collection ended up intact at Yale University, which has put together an exhibit that gives a comprehensive view of the group’s reach and interests. You can see this group as sowing the seeds for the kinds of American art experimentation that came after Abstract Expressionism, which really had more in common with the sardonic, prickly qualities of Dada figures like Duchamp or Schwitters.

October 27

Zeitgeist, Pinkney Herbert and John Geldersma. Pinkney Herbert is one of the people who make Memphis something of a bastion of abstract painting. He’s showing with John Geldersma, who makes masks and quasi-ritual objects inspired by Native American and other non-Western practices.

Plowhaus, Dia de los Muertos celebration. This is the 6th year that Plowhaus has done a Day of the Dead exhibit, featuring shrines by a number of their frequent contributors. This show has been a really good context for Franne Lee’s work in particular. Some of the other participants include Beth Seiters, Andee Rudloff, Carrie Mills, and John Holland. I started tuning into the Day of the Dead when I was living in Chicago 15 years ago, and had a number of powerful experiences as art galleries were turned over for acts of remembrance. In American society, we have all sorts of commemoration of the dead, but a lot of it is highly programmed. Someone “important” dies and we go into a media-fueled process of grief and commemoration. Maybe its flags at half-mast, or marathon shows on WSM or WKCR. Day of the Dead was a chance to be with whomever you felt like invoking on the day. You could indulge some sadness but you couldn’t avoid the fact that it was a chance for people to get together, have a few beers, and look at colorful stuff. The art world’s adoption of Dia de los Muertos doesn’t have a huge connection to Mexican culture and Mexican communities, but it serves its own purposes.


Samhain (October 31st )

Renaissance Center, Dickson – a bunch of stuff. Armon Means seems to be keeping busy out at the Renaissance Center, finding every nook and cranny out there to show art. They’ve got four exhibits opening on the 31st. Actually, the opening receptions are on Nov. 2, so I’ll save more on this for next email. Just a quick run-down: ceramics by Jason Briggs (also in the ceramics show at Ruby Green), paintings by Kate Badoe, a Cookeville resident originally from Ghana, photos by Jaime Tracy inspired by color field painters, and a group show of photos of the human figure.


Other stuff

For the November first Saturday downtown art extravaganza, Downtown Pres is inviting people to exhibit their art during the Art Luck meal before the openings. All you have to do is show up at noon on Saturday, November 3 with your art (they just ask that the work be appropriate, or not inappropriate, for the kids who will be there), and that you take it with you at the end of the evening. Get in touch with Beth Gilmore if you think you’re going to want to do this: beth.gilmore@gmail.com

Nashville Visual Arts Events October 1-15

There’s a lot going on, and I’m sure I won’t do justice to everything.

I have to say, the highlight for the next couple of weeks is seeing Erika Johnson get full art museum treatment at the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery. They’re featuring a piece of hers that she developed “in conversation with the 2007 fellows of the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt.” Just seeing that description made me realize one of the things I respond to in Erika’s installations is their strong discursive quality. A major part in most of her pieces are old photos, transferred onto transparencies and selected for their ability in isolation and in combination to suggest, but not spell out, lines of description and reasoning about gender, history, and memory. I’ve also realized that last quality, the creation of memory, transcends the particulars of her pieces. Erika has worked at Vanderbilt for some time, and was at the Warren Center for a while. It’s good to see her time there express itself in work. Oh yes, the show opens on Thursday, October 4. I can’t tell if there’s going to be an opening reception. They are going to have a reception on Oct. 25, when they are brining Arthur Danto (!!) in to talk. More on that when we’re closer to the date.

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.

First, there’s a few things I missed that opened early this week (in addition to the Emma Amos lecture at Vandy yesterday).

October 1

Austin Peay, Figure 8. A group of figurative drawings curated by Austin Peay professor Kell Black, who has work in the show along with Anne Beidler, Amy Fichter, Eileen Greene, Marcus Greene, Patrick Hammie, Marilyn Murphy, and Scotty Peek. Offhand I don’t know the work by most of the others (other than Marilyn Murphy and Black), but Black’s work is great and I trust him to select well. This show is only up through Oct. 21, so if you are going to go to Clarksville to check it out, get on up there.

TSU, Storm Stories: Artists Respond to Disaster. The first show in the TSU gallery under Jodi Hays, who started her tenure as director this summer. The show features Karen Edmunds from New Orleans and Mary Perrin from Lafayette, who I guess both rode through Katrina and Rita. In addition to work on the walls, the two artists do a performance which they will perform on November 9 at TSU’s downtown campus. There’s a little more information and things like directions on Jodi’s blog.

Sarratt Gallery, Carrol Harding Mctyre and Herbert J. Rieth, III. I got a card announcing this but don’t have it with me right now. I’m pretty sure Herb grew up in Nashville and I think he lives in Mississippi (if I’ve got it right, I met his mother, who is also an artist, in Memphis a while back).

October 4

Vanderbilt Fine Arts, More Than One: Contemporary Prints and Multiples—plus an installation piece by Erika Johnson. This show of prints from the Vanderbilt collection grew out of an academic symposium at the Warren Center. The works on display include pieces by Carrie Mae Weems, Martin Puryear, Sigmar Polke, Kiki Smith, Kara Walker, and Alexis Rockman, among others. I got a chance to see two of Weems major photographic and multi-media series at the Hunter Museum in Chattanooga last year, Walker is an important presence (last thing I saw was her exhibit After the Deluge at the Met in 2006 which interspersed her work and selections from odd corners of the Met’s collection), I seem to blog about Rockman every couple of years, etc., Puryear is always delightful (although I’m not sure I’ve seen his prints or photos)—while this selection probably won’t have the same impact as seeing a major exhibit by any one of these artists, it’s a top-notch list. As I said above, I don’t think there’s an event this week, it looks like they are holding off until Danto comes to town. I can’t believe they’re bringing Danto, but then again it’s the kind of thing major universities are supposed to do. In some ways the bigger surprise is that one is surprised.

Alias season opening concert. Yes, a non-visual art event. Alias is the leading chamber music group in Nashville—an admittedly small universe, but they put together very imaginative programs and play with gusto. This program includes Shostakovich’s 9^th String Quartet—the Shostakovich quartets are major works, like the cycles of quartets by Beethoven, Bartok, Haydn, and Carter. They’ve also programmed at Vaughan Williams piece for clarinet, horn, violin, cello, and piano that should be charming. One note: no baroque pieces on this bill, which is usually a highlight, especially Zeneba Bowers’ playing on them.

Brent Green films at The Basement Just got some information on this—Green is an animator who makes films from hand-painted images and wood carvings. Deanna Varagona (from Lambchop and other music projects) is going to improvise a soundtrack. Her email on it says she’ll most likely be playing cello (she mostly plays baritone sax in Lambchop, and she plays guitar and sings in other projects). The show starts at 7:00.

October 5

Cheekwood, Genius of Place, David Lefkowitz, and Open Call: Emerging Video Artists. Cheekwood opens 3 new shows. In the main house is a photographic series on gardens at grand American houses of a similar era to Cheekwood. They include Dumbarton Oaks in DC, which has always been one of my favorite places. But I’d think I’d rather go to the house than look at photos of it, but we’ll see. The video show was the result of an open call for submissions, with a jury choosing 7 finalists to include in the show. This almost certainly will have some interesting stuff.

Watkins Student Graphic Design Juried Exhibit. Annual student show by Watkins design students, with an opening from 6-8.

October 6

The first Saturday will be busy as usual.

Twist, Mark Sloniker, Beyond the Luminous Edge. An installation by an artist who makes his living making puppets for theme parks around the country.

TAG, Michael McConnell and Nick Butcher McConnell was at TAG last year (here's one of his pieces) in a joint show with Jonn Herschend where they played off each other in making work over a year and tied it all together with string. Now he’s back on his own. Butcher, in the back gallery, combines print and painting techniques. The works in this show are abstractions, although he's known more for figuration.

SQFT, The Painting Show. SQFT has done several shows of drawing, now they are doing one for painting. Like many of their other shows, the line up includes several young artists from New York and California: Jennifer Garrido, Eric Graham, Jieun Zaun Lee-Choi, Miyeon Lee, and Elizabeth Schuppe.

The Arts Company, The Frenzels, Meagan Kieffer, Brother Steve. Brother Steve and Meagan Kieffer are sculptors, Brother Steve worked in clay (he was a Marianist and is now a Benedictine monk, and I gather he isn’t making art now). The Frenzels are a husband and wife team who jointly make paintings about Nashville icons.

Dangenart and Rymer. I don’t have any information yet on their shows, but I assume they are opening new stuff Saturday night. Rymer is a new gallery on 6^th Avenue run by artist Herb Williams and some associates. Also, Estel will be open on gallery crawl night.

Downtown Presbyterian Church, Art Luck and children’s art show. To kick off the art crawl, Downtown Pres has a pot luck supper. The art this month is by the children of the church—we do a big kid’s art project every year in one form or the other. I think this is the second year we’ve done it as an art show. This year the kids did photographs under the watchful guidance of Liz Streight among others.

LeQuire Gallery, Tennessee Sculptors, the Legacy of Olen Bryant Bryant is well-recognized sculptor who always strikes me as having an strong Earth-centered, mystical streak. LeQuire is showing work by him and five of his students Mike Andrews, Frank Lyne, Reverend Howard Brown, Scott Wise and Tom Rice. They’ll have their opening the same night as the downtown gallery crawl.

Plowhaus benefit show at the Alley Cat. This is an all-day fundraiser at the Alley Cat Lounge, starting at 10 AM with an art show that will run through the whole day, and then music hosted by Chris Mitchell starting at 7:00.

Centennial Art Center, Nashville’s Internationals. A great idea for a show, Centennial is exhibiting work by sixteen artists who have immigrated to the US and Nashville. It includes 5 young men from Sudan, and artists from Germany, Belgium, Croatia, Nigeria, Haiti, the Philippines and some others. Immigrants have changed our city profoundly, for the better, and we are just starting to feel the impact of all this cultural new blood. It’s not the first time these artists have show (I assume the Sudanese are some of the artists whose work was on display at the Frist a year ago or so), but a show like just helps this new diversity become visible.

October 10

Films and installations by Patrick Beaulieu and Bill Daniel, Watkins. This is a one-night showing of film and installation art from two artists with a case of wanderlust. Daniels has outfitted a 1965 Chevy van with sails that serve as a projection screens and allow him to travel around and show videos (he appeared at Sewanee a little earlier this year). Beaulieu has created a mobile observatory for tracking the migration of Monarch butterflies between Canada and Mexico, and done a installation on the inside of the truck that sounds like it should be fascinating: “a series of moving monarch wings powered by the use of micro-ventilators.” This show is a joint production between Watkins and Fugitive Projects, the current incarnation of the Fugitive Art Center. The show starts at 6:30 in Watkins’ parking lot. Watkins film students are also going to project their films on the college’s outside walls.

October 13

Ruby Green, Contemporary Ceramics. This show is curated by Rob McClurg and Dona Berotti, who put together a really nice show of glass at Ruby Green two years ago that introduced me to several artists who have stuck with me. Now they’ve put together a show of ceramics. McClurg is a ceramicist, so I’m sure they know people doing really unusual stuff. The show includes local artist Jason Briggs, whose abstract, biomorphic ceramic pieces are instantly recognizable and I think have become a significant part of our local visual vocabulary. Other locals in the show are Delia Seigenthaler and Ken Rowe.

Cumberland Gallery, Tom Pfannerstill, Trash Talk, and Lay of the Land: New Landscape Paintings. Pfannerstill takes bits of trash like discarded cigarette boxes, detergent packages, or paint spattered t-shirts and meticulously recreates them in hand-painted carved wood. Cumberland is also showing landscapes from several of the painters it represents: James Lavadour, Kurt Meer, Ron Porter and Brad Durham. Lavadour’s paintings of dry Eastern Oregon country are a treat, always drawing you in with intense color and internal motion.

Estel, Rodney Wood, Illuminaria. Highly detailed and carefully crafted paintings in a surrealistic mode, with vivid mysticism.

Pandit Barun Kumar Pal, Hindustani music concert. The latest concert at the Temple presents Hindustani, or North Indian music, from a quartet of Indian musicians led by Pandit Barun Kumar Pal on Hamsaveena. The Hamsaveena is sometimes also called a slide guitar, although it looks more like a form of veena or sitar, with a teardrop-shaped body and a fairly long neck. Barun Kumar Pal is a longtime student of Ravi Shankar, who of course is the most famous practitioner of Hindustani music. Sri Ganesha Temple, Old Hickory Blvd. at 7:00.

October 14

CRAFT: A Creative Community A group of local artists/artisans holds a monthly sale/fair in the parking lot of Lipstick Lounge, the next one is 11-5 on Sunday, October 14.

Other events

Watkins has announced its latest round of community ed classes for October and November. If you’re in the market for classes, don’t forget to check out Cheekwood and LeQuire also.

Samantha Callahan and untitled have started a new blog called Art Leads to post opportunities for artists, things like calls for grant proposals, exhibition opportunities, classes, even practical stuff like health care coverage. This will be invaluable to have this material at one site, and anyone with relevant information should be sure to let Art Leads know about it.

Konk Pack

Brady Sharp made a return to organizing improvised music shows, maybe on a “just this time only” basis, with a show by Konk Pack at Twist Gallery. Konk Pack is like a free improv supergroup, a trio of percussionist Roger Turner, Tim Hodgkinson who mostly does things with a table top slide guitar, and Thomas Lehn on synthesizer.

A few thoughts. First, it’s good to hear a group like this a second time, and I’d guess at least half the people there saw the group on their last trip to Nashville. It was a few years ago, can’t remember exactly when.

Tonight, it really seemed to me that this group is rhythm-centered. The trio makes lots of tones, as you would expect with the synthesizer playing a big role, the table-top techniques Hodgkinson has at his disposal, and the bag of tricks you see with a drummer like Turner. But it’s so apparent that rhythm holds this together, and that they were relating most frequently on the basis of rhythm. For large parts you probably could have defined a consistent bpm, largely kept by Turner, but everyone was contributing to it. And the bpm was fast, maybe Jungle speed. Really abstract IDM.

Keeping with the focus on rhythm, this time around I found myself concentrating on Roger Turner’s playing. Some of it was because I was sitting close to him. He is such an expressive player, getting an incredible variety and subtlety of sound out of everything he handles and hits. To look at one aspect alone, for a lot of passages he used two thin metal rods as his sticks. He used them to drive the sound to its most intense phases, lots of noise through relentless cymbal strikes, but then he’d turn around and coax several distinct sounds out of just rubbing the two metal rods against each other, or striking them against the edge of a piece of plastic material. You wouldn’t think those metal rods could yield so much subtlety. Some of the things he does require incredible control, like that bit about striking the edge of this piece of plastic. He has to hit it hard enough to get some sound, and give it a little edge so it will project, but if he hits it too hard he'll just knock it around.

At times I was aware of Tim Hodgkinson’s roots in rock music. He used enough alternate techniques to deflect any strong sense of melodic riffs, which I think would have turned trite. However, there was a structure to his rhythmic formations that felt pretty rock-like, and combined with the rhythmic focus of the entire group gave the trio’s material a directness that I think could make their music more immediately successful that something more pointillist, minimalist, or textural. Hell, at one point Turner was doing this pronounced back beat and Hodgkinson was pushing on his guitar in a pattern that sounded like the underlying beats of a honky-tonk country song.

Finally, Beth Gilmore made a great observation about the music: “it seemed like the sounds the art work in the gallery would make if it could make noise.”

What to do Thursday: Donovan and Charalambides

If you’re in Murfreesboro, John Donovan is giving a talk at MTSU, 7 PM in the Todd Building. Donovan should be familiar to Nashville audiences—clay sculptures often using toy soldiers and tanks, covered in thick glazes that seem like dense metal, usually going for humorous menace.

If in Nashville, go to Springwater. Just go. Charalambides is playing. They (Tom and Christina Carter) make deceptively simple music, voices and guitars that seem to find magic harmonies. Every year, the reactions to Charalambides seem to get more rapturous. And rapture captures what their music is about. I’m missing this show, so everyone else in Nashville should go.

On Sunday, Chris Davis is bringing Plastic People of the University to Springwater. This is a classic psych band from Czechoslovakia. They formed after the Soviet crackdown in the Prague Spring of 1968 and played underground during a period of intense repression. It’s amazing that they are still around, and hard to believe they are playing Nashville. It’s as if Os Mutantes or the Velvet Underground were playing here.

BTW, Cortney Tidwell and the Cherry Blossoms are playing on the Charalambides show, Cherry Blossoms and Sapat from Louisville are playing Sunday.

Nashville Visual Arts Events September 14-22

So, what do think—if it’s about art, it couldn’t possibly be spam, right? I’ll be testing that contention at the rate I’m going with these supposed-to-be-twice-a-month missives that seem to come out every week. Additions this time around are Jeff Hand, the latest at Gallery One in Belle Meade, Off the Wall, Untitled, and photography at Belmont.

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.

September 13

Transfer of Light, Belmont Leu Gallery OK, I missed the opening for this (earlier tonight), but the show is going to be up through October 25. Photographs by Gina Binkley, Bob Delevante, and David McClister. Each claims a different aesthetic spot: still life for Binkley, some sort of narrative for Delevante, mid-America realism for McClister. If somehow cyberspace sends this email back in time a few hours to get to you, the reception is from 4 to 6 today.

September 14

Sri Ganesha Temple, T. N. Seshagopalan No, this is not visual arts. It is a first rate Carnatic vocalist from India performing at Sri Ganesha Temple in Bellevue. I’m not sure I’ve experience any other music with the level of technical rigor, sonic qualities, and the spirit ual intensity and engagement of the better Carnatic vocalist I’ve heard, thanks to the program at Sri Ganesha. I have not heard Mr. Seshagopalan, but based on the description it sounds like this will be one of the very good ones. He is an experienced, fully established musician. Jonathan Marx gave nice coverage to this concert and the arts program in the Tennessean: The concert starts at 7:00 on Friday the 14^th.

Untitled, “Sweet Tea,” Bar Twenty3 This quarter’s show is in one of the Gulch’s nightspots. I assume you know all about Untitled—open to any artist who wants to get involved, quarterly shows with work by lots of artists, and they have lots of friends, so it’s always a nice, big crowd. The show is 6-10 Friday night.

September 15

Jeff Hand, “Plush Panacea,” Tennessee Arts Commission Jeff’s material of choice is fake fur, garish and fuzzy, which he assembles into framed images or uses in sculptures and figures. He’s used the blatantly artificial quality of the stuff to memorialize pop culture icons, or to disarm potentially incendiary images. This time it looks like he’s got a series of oversized reproductions of pills like Zoloft and Paxil, all the stuff meant to take the edge off the world, contentment by chemistry. The induced state of mind is one more example of the kinds of broad, culture-scale manipulations of experience Jeff works with. It seems like the perfect subject mater for him. This show at the Tennessee Arts Commission has its opening from 5-7 on Saturday.

Gallery One, Brian Tull Tull is a painter whose work moves between pop art and photorealist styles. He has a nostalgia for post-war 20^th Century scenes, often featuring female figures and classic 50s/60s cars. From the PR material it looks like he favors odd angles and abrupt cropping of the images, like a glimpse of something caught quickly in passing. The most interesting thing to me is that it seems like some of the images could be pretty sexy, a hint of the erotic in them along with the furtive quality of the angles. Not really buttoned down realism. The opening is this Saturday from 6 to 8.

Plowhaus, SNAP, “Pushpin” The Society of Nashville’s Artistic Photographers is a diverse group of local photographers who have banded together to exhibit work together, and they also meet regularly for critiques of each other’s work and discussions of photography. Generally supporting each other in developing their work. Their show at Plowhaus gives each of 20 photographers a dedicated piece of wall space to display unmounted photographs. The opening reception is from 7-10 on Saturday the 15^th.

September 22

Off the Wall, “Underwater Chemistry,” The Art House This group of women, Jenny Baggs, Quinn Dukes, Janet Heilbronn, Mahlea Jones, Jaime Raybin, and Iwonka Waskowski, have been exhibiting work together for a while. Every one of them does stuff that’ll catch your eye. Iwonka’s made some great paintings and drawings over the last year, Janet Heilbronn also had strong drawings in a show at Kristi Hargrove’s studio last year, Quinn does fascinating performance pieces, and Jaime’s paintings about the Milk Shelf space out at the Renaissance Center are really nice – cool, very composed geometries, but also filled with an earnest idealism. And so on. The group exhibits in borrowed space, although I think this might be a return visit to the Art House. The opening is from 6-9 on Saturday, the 22^nd. By the way, Off the Wall has done a lot of one-night shows, but this is going to be up at the Art House for a month or so.

Neuhoff Center, Jorge Arrieta, “Standing on a Whale” This looks like an ambitious project, a film with animation and songs performed by local musicians like the Gypsy Hombres and KS Rhoads, and a series of paintings. I haven’t had much time to dig deeper on what to expect with this, but like I said, it looks like something that should be worth paying attention to so I’d figured I’d give the list a heads up. There are two scheduled screenings of the film: 8:00 on Saturday the 22^nd, and 8:00 on Saturday the 29^th.

Nashville Visual Arts Events, September 7-22

This is getting to be a pattern. There’s always something that comes up on the second weekend of the month that I didn’t know about in time for the email at the beginning of the month. This time it’s the new exhibit at Cumberland, with work by Carrie McGee and Whitney Nye, and the Watkins Faculty show.

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.


September 7

Watkins College, Faculty Show One of the way artists get spread around the country is through faculty jobs. Some of the best artists in a community like Nashville, which is not home to a major art market, will inevitably be the faculty members in the local college art departments. The revitalization of Watkins as an arts college has had a big impact simply by giving some good artists jobs here. The annual faculty show is a way to see what they are about and up to. The faculty listed for this show are Dan Brawner, Cheryl Gulley, Kristi Hargrove, Brady Haston, Lauren Kalman, Amanda McCadams, Rob McClurg, Siri Nadler, Robin Paris, Tori Purcell, Madeline Reed, Elizabeth Sanford and John Sullivan. The opening reception is Friday from 6-8.

Sewanee (University of the South, James Edward Carlos Gallery, Nabit Art Building), Bill Daniel, “Life Raft” A filmmaker and installation artist who documents and celebrates fringe, off-the-grid subcultures. This piece features a houseboat he made out of discarded materials, which has sails that he projects a video work onto. The video weaves together basically an argument about the collapse of civilization and posits an anarchistic self-reliance in response. The show also includes photo series of the “hippie house boat culture” in Sausalito and post-Katrina New Orleans. Water as hell, water as Eden. Sounds very much worth the drive to Sewanee. The opening reception is Friday from 5-7, artist’s talk at 4.

Renaissance Center, Dickson, Jaime Raybin, “Milk Shelf” The opening for this show by Nashvillian Jaime Raybin runs from 6-7:30 on Friday the 7th at the Renaissance Center, a straight shot out I40 in Dickson. Jaime has shown in a number of group shows, including with the Off the Wall group. Last week I said the paintings looks like they might be from Jaime’s senior show at Watkins, but it turns out I was completely wrong about that. It’s all new work. She says “the show is about a dilapidated hangout spot,” which will contrast with the nice tidy Ren Center space. This is the first in a series at the Renaissance Center that will feature recent graduates of area art programs. The Ren Center is also opening their annual regional art show, which usually includes several interesting artists you wouldn’t otherwise encounter.

September 8

Cumberland Gallery, Carrie McGee and Whitney Nye Carrie McGee’s work is a real treat, and her gallery is showing her new work this month. Her signature technically is to work with rust and pigment, often on translucent acrylic forms. Her work delivers pleasure in many ways, but if I can mention just one thing, it would be the colors she produces. They are both earthy and vivid, and you can enjoy the work simply for the quality of the colors. A quick look at the 2007 pieces on the Cumberland website leaves the impression that the new work might be slightly darker in tone, but wait until you see the exhibit to judge that. Cumberland is also showing work by a newer gallery artist having her first solo show there. She paints multi-layered abstractions with a compact kind of geometry to them. The reception is from 6-8 on Saturday.

Estel, Sean O’Meallie, “Object Circus” O’Meallie makes toy-like objects out of wood but finished with highly refined surfaces. There’s a lot of wit in the forms and titles. The show opens this week, but the gallery is having a reception for O’Meallie on the 8th.

Zeitgeist, John Folsom. Large scale photographs of landscapes like Reelfoot Lake in West Tennessee and Banff, Alberta. He starts with a group of small images, pulls them into a single image digitally, and then treats it with oil paint and wax to give the texture of painting.

September 9

CRAFT: A Creative Community A group of local artists/artisans holds a monthly sale/fair in the parking lot of Lipstick Lounge, the next one is 11-5 on Sunday, September 9.

September 14

Sri Ganesha Temple, T. N. Seshagopalan No, this is not visual arts. It is a first rate Carnatic vocalist from India performing at Sri Ganesha Temple in Bellevue. I’m not sure I’ve experience any other music with the level of technical rigor, sonic qualities, and the spiritual intensity and engagement of the better Carnatic vocalist I’ve heard, thanks to the program at Sri Ganesha. I have not heard Mr. Seshagopalan, but based on the description it sounds like this will be one of the very good ones. He is an experienced, fully established musician. The concert starts at 7:00 on Friday the 14th.

September 15

Plowhaus, SNAP, “Pushpin” The Society of Nashville’s Artistic Photographers is a diverse group of local photographers who have banded together to exhibit work together, and they also meet regularly for critiques of each other’s work and discussions of photography. Generally supporting each other in developing their work. Their show at Plowhaus gives each of 20 photographers a dedicated piece of wall space to display unmounted photographs. The opening reception is from 7-10 on Saturday the 15th.

September 22

Neuhoff Center, Jorge Arrieta, “Standing on a Whale” This looks like an ambitious project, a film with animation and songs performed by local musicians like the Gypsy Hombres and KS Rhoads, and a series of paintings. I may be able to put together more information on this by the time the event gets closer, but like I said, it looks like something that should be worth paying attention to so I’d figured I’d give the list a heads up. There are two scheduled screenings of the film: 8:00 on Saturday the 22nd, and 8:00 on Saturday the 29th.

Piaf clip

Maybe this will meet with more universal approval. I ran across this clip last summer around the time I saw the Piaf, bio-flic. More than anything on record, I thought this clip captured how great Piaf’s voice was. Listen to the way her voice rises up out of the male chorus and soars above it, and the intense vibrato she uses.

Also, you know Marion Cotillard saw this clip – she picked up that stiff-kneed arthritic walk, and her sly pleasure about being surrounded by all those young men.

Balkan Idol

This from Brady Sharp. He and I think it's great. My wife says it is excruciating.

Breaking News from the Cold War

Sheesh. It turns out we are still trying to get over the fact that Pete Seeger was once a bona fide Communist but when he left the Party he never felt the need to renounce everything he believed. Yahoo News now informs us that Pete has written a song critical of Joe Stalin. Is this the internet trying to relive 1971? Leaving aside the significance of an 88-year old writing a song critical of a ruler who’s been dead 54 years, it says something that this can still make news. American society has never forgiven Seeger for sticking to the principle that the world would be a better place if we organized ourselves to share resources and work together for the common good—not compete ruthlessly with each other to see who could gain the most at the expense of others. This is what Communism was supposed to be about. At the end of the day it wasn’t, and Stalin used the name to cover a brutal dictatorship. As I see it, people like Pete Seeger turned away from the Party, and for all practical purposes away from anything called Communism, but that doesn’t mean they went to the other side. It was and is a false dichotomy. Pete stuck to his guns, the real guns, not some name.

It might be obvious that Pete Seeger is a hero of mine. He’s my answer to the question “if you could have dinner with one person.” I’ve never heard him live, and now he really doesn’t sing concerts. One time, several years ago, he sang AT MY CHURCH. But I was out of town on business.

Nashville Visual Arts Events, September 1-10

Back to the typical busy Fall schedule. I’m sure I’m missing something significant, but here’s what I’ve got in my inbox and a little internet surfing.

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.


Featured Event, September 4 and 6

Sarratt Gallery, Jose Torres Tama. Nashville doesn’t see a lot of performance art, although maybe we wouldn’t know it if we saw it. Is Dave Cloud performance art? Probably. One thing that performance art would seem to do is occupy the middle ground between dance and the visual arts, and that makes it a very natural place for Vanderbilt’s Sarratt/Great Performances programming to go under Bridgette Kohnhort’s direction. The Sarratt program is opening the school year with a performance piece by artist Jose Torres Tama, who has lived in New Orleans for 20 years. His performance starts at 7:00 on Thursday, September 6 (with a reception beforehand), accompanied by an exhibit by 4 New Orleanian photographers. Torres Tama’s piece is called The Cone of Uncertainty: New Orleans After Katrina. The title is a reference to prediction reliability in projects, but it also seems like a reference to those hurricane projection maps where the further you get from the current time and location of the hurricane, you see a widening area of the possible route. The performance is described as combining film projections, ritual elements, and personal storytelling. Torres Tama is also giving a lecture on performance art in Vandy’s Ingram Studio Art building on Tuesday, September 4 at 6:00.

OK, back to the chronology.

September 1

Twist Gallery and Downtown Presbyterian Church, Whole Milk and Mural Project. OK, I’m going to plug something at DPC again (I’m a member there). Twist Gallery is presenting an exhibit by four young artists from Minneapolis (Isaac Arvold, John Grider, Eric Inkala and Drew Peterson), but not only are they showing their paintings and drawings at the gallery, but they are collaborating on a big mural that will take up a blank wall of the Viridian building that faces Downtown Pres. The design for that project mixes up images of a lamb or goat, some glyphic animals, abstract patterns, and an odd kind of angel. You can find Christian imagery there if you look for it, but even as you do that you realize you’re probably stretching it. If I don’t say so myself, it’s not what you would imagine a church arranging to have painted on a wall, and it will be the most interesting bit of outdoor painting downtown (tell me if I’m forgetting something). The mural will be “unveiled” at DPC Art Luck event before the downtown gallery crawl, although my understanding is that it will still be in progress this weekend.


Dangenart, Connect 12. Curated by Ben Vitualla, an active participant in the local art scene whose work continues to grow on me—I’m thinking of stuff like his mixed media paintings that incorporate toy soldiers into compositions with strong graphic structures like target forms. He’s invited 12 other local artists (Eric Denton, Jimi Benedict, Erika Johnson, Daniel Lai, Samantha Callahan, Sean Jewett, Rick Bradley, Alesandra Bellos, Tiffany Denton, Chris Hill, Andee Rudloff, and Shana Kohnstamm) to display work of their own next to his.

TAG McCay Otto and Monica Cook. So of course you’ve been wondering how Nashville galleries can better serve the interests of water sports fetishists. TAG gallery is determined to see what they can do for their cause with the exhibit “Pee Girls” by Monica Cook. The exhibit title pretty much describes several of the paintings, but they are done in a heightened realistic style that sounds lovely in its way. That’s in the back gallery, in the front TAG has an exhibit by McKay Otto. Otto does ethereal paintings (that's one of his at the beginning of the post) inspired by the mystic spirituality of Eckhard Tolle that will contrast with the intense corporeality of Cook’s work.

SQFT, Ladies (and Gentleman) An exhibit by 8 artists from all over, Portland, Oregon to Halifax and Germany. Several of them are illustrators, so there’s a lot of economic and expressive drawing here. Amy Ruppel’s work sounds particularly interesting—“beeswax layered under and over digital prints on paper derived from her photography, completed with drawings etched into the wax,” and the surface is smoothed out with a propane torch.

The Arts Company, Wes Sherman. Sherman bases his paintings on Old Master artworks, but not in the form of derivative visual quotations. He boils down the massings and colors of those works into graceful abstractions that echo the massings and colors of the older works. I find Sherman’s results stand on their own very well, but they serve as a gloss on these other paintings, pointing out ways to look at their essential structures. One of his paintings in this year’s show is based on O’Keefe’s Radiator Building, a tribute to this big piece of Nashville’s artistic legacy and a sad reminder of the possibility that the painting will leave town after the lawyers get done.

LeQuire Gallery. LeQuire has opened an auxiliary space in the Arcade so they are getting in on first Saturday art crawl. I’m not sure what work they expect to have on display, but it’s good to see them establish a presence at the Arcade and get their artists in front of this crowd.

September 7

Renaissance Center, Dickson, Jaime Raybin, “Milk Shelf” Another milk-themed show, this one by local artist Jaime Raybin. The opening reception runs from 6-7:30 on Friday the 7th at the Renaissance Center, a straight shot out I40 in Dickson. Jaime has shown in a number of group shows, including with the Off the Wall group. It sounds like this show will include a number of the paintings that were in her senior show. It is the first in a series at the Renaissance Center that will feature recent graduates of area art programs. The Ren Center is also opening their annual regional art show, which usually includes several interesting artists you wouldn’t otherwise encounter.

September 8

Estel, Sean O’Meallie, “Object Circus” O’Meallie makes toy-like objects out of wood but finished with highly refined surfaces. There’s a lot of wit in the forms and titles. The show opens this week, but the gallery is having a reception for O’Meallie on the 8th.

Zeitgeist, John Folsom. Large scale photographs of landscapes like Reelfoot Lake in West Tennessee and Banff, Alberta. He starts with a group of small images, pulls them into a single image digitally, and then treats it with oil paint and wax to give the texture of painting.

September 9

CRAFT: A Creative Community A group of local artists/artisans holds a monthly sale/fair in the parking lot of Lipstick Lounge, the next one is 11-5 on Sunday, September 9.


Other announcements

A couple of things from Watkins:

First, the school is holding auditions for people to appear in student films. The auditions will be from 6-9 on Thursday, September 6 and 6-9 on Friday the 7th, at the College in Metro Center. They encourage people to schedule an audition via email at casting@watkins.edu. You can walk in also. They ask folks to bring a headshot and resume, just like real actors and actresses. There’s more information at their website.

Watkins also has announced their community education classes for the Fall. You can find the schedule and class descriptions here.

New Website for Arts Listings In Nashville

The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee has started a comprehensive events listing called NowPlayingNashville.com, and it has a section for visual arts. So far it doesn't include a lot of the private galleries, but some are there, like Estel. I'd encourage everyone with a gallery or one-night event to submit. I'm not sure how useful this site will be--there are separate listings for each exhibit at some of the major venues (including a separate listing for the George Rickey sculpture at the Frist, and items for each artist showing at the airport), but there is a search function that I haven't checked out yet. Whatever. Everyone might as well take advantage of this.

Indian Kathak Classical Dance this Sunday

Sri Ganesha Temple is presenting two classical Kathak dance dramas performed by a group from New Dehli, The Dhwani Repertory led by Vaswati Misra. The performance starts at 3:30, on Sunday, August 26 in the temple’s auditorium. I’m not sure I can put this into words effectively, but I’ve found the Indian dance dramas absolutely riveting. The one time I attended one, I was very aware of them deploying the bodies and groupings in a sculptural way. Technique is important, but I don’t remember it being as flashy as some of the other forms, particularly solo. The dramas, working largely with the dancers as a company, leave a very strong visual impression, and are on important levels comprehensible in spite of the unfamiliar narrative content. They are dramas without words, so they cross some of the major language barriers.

The notice on the performance offers the following descriptions of the pieces programmed for the 26^th: Jeevan, based on Dr. Harivansh Rai Bachchan's poems, and. Kanupriya, a poetic work of Dr. Dharamvir Bharati. I know these poems probably have a strong narrative content, but I find the idea of basing a performance on poetry extremely appealing. The troupe itself, coming from New Dehli, is likely to be very good.

SooPlex's last show

SooPlex had its last show last night. Associates of Mike’s and Julian’s from various places. Now Mike Calway-Fagen heads to Athens, Georgia, where he already has plans to open a space. And Julian Rogers goes to Brooklyn to give that a try—y’know, New York, just like I pictured it, tall buildings, art critics, hedge fund managers with wads of cash…

Like the previous shows, one or a handful of pieces from each artist. Here’s what I responded to, in something like order of preference. 3 photos by Damien Crisp, of bits of crumpled newspaper set against a pitch black background, broken by a areas where points of light seem to glint off the black surface. The paper looks like it was soaked in wax—it’s moist and textured, taking on characteristics of skin, but also making it luscious in a way. Although it’s the most trivial material possible. The images were improbably sleek. The setting could have been the depths of the intergalactic sky, or dark water in a gutter. It also has purely formal qualities, or constitutes an updating of Cubist treatments of newspaper text.

Then there were a couple of pieces by Survival Design, Jason Brown and Elizabeth Scofield in Knoxville. The piece I liked best was a set of nylon pods, sewn together in sections. An oblong one hung from the ceiling, and maybe 7 little ones lay on the floor below. Inside each bag, a red LED element flickered. The room was well-lit, so the LEDs were dim. I took that on face value, and found myself looking at these units as engaged in withholding rather than delivering light—Mike pointed out that in a darker room, the effect would be different. I also had the sense that the LED was more visible from some angles that others, so even thought the piece was in the middle of the room, I found myself negotiating with the piece over the plane of approach. And the forms were pretty just on their surfaces.

Let’s see. Christopher Ho, with a different use for newspapers—a couple of prints that took print window ads, stacked them up vertically and took away elements. The sequence of panes suggested there was a narrative in there somewhere. In each print, there was a point where the word “free” stood alone inside one of the panes. An utterly out of place word really, since the point of the source material in every case was to sell something.

Elisha Kerlin. A folded sheet, blue stripes on white, lay on the floor and was painted over with a blue cross that extended past the edges of the sheet onto the gallery floor. It has obvious formalism—I was looking for a comparison, and came up with Ben Nicholson, although there’s probably something closer. Except it’s a sheet not canvas, on the floor, not the wall. And the work was created in situ by Mike, following instructions from the artist. Of course it reminded me also of Mariah Johnson’s use of bedsheets.

There was also a story posted on the wall written in response to the show’s theme and inspiration, a failed adventurer named Bas Jan Adler. It was one page and reminded me of an Italo Calvino fable, a similar tone of timelessness in a setting which you have no reason not to think is contemporary, and the same hyper-distilled content. I didn’t remember to remember the name of the author, so I’ll throw it out here and hope I get a comment posted filling in that important detail.

Good luck to Mike and Julian in their next things. Sorry to see them go. Now it’s someone else’s turn.

Nashville Visual Arts Events August 16-31

I think really we’re talking about what’s coming up this weekend – I’m aware of two things and they should both be very good. It seems like I’m missing something that’s crossed my inbox, but I can’t find it right now.

August 17

SooPlex, “Dedicated to the Search for the Miraculous” This is SooPlex’s last show before Mike and Julian head off to Brooklyn and Georgia. It’s a group show of Christopher Ho (NY), Survival Design- Jason Brown and Elizabeth Scofield (Knoxville), Alisha Kerlin (Brooklyn), Ciprian Contreras (Knoxville), Kristin Calabrese (LA), and Tom Zarilli (Atlanta) inspired by Bas Jan Adler, who tried to cross the Atlantic in a single person sailboat in 1975 and was lost at sea. The interest here seems to be in the failed grand experiment. One night only, 6-9, last chance to see what SooPlex has come up with. Their shows have been very thought-provoking, people should really try to stop by and take a look. Zarilli just finished a show at Ruby Green where he staged scenes out of stuff he found at yard sales that was fun and surprising. SooPlex is in the 310 Chestnut Street building.

August 18

Cumberland Gallery, “Pursuit of Happiness,” Bhutanese Thangka paintings by Phurba Namgay Carol Stein and her husband Richard have made numerous trips to Bhutan over the years, hosted students here, and so forth, so they must have developed a great attachment to this Himalayan country. I’m more familiar with Tibetan paintings, but I’m guessing it’s pretty similar. These are devotional images of Buddha and associated deities, done in incredibly vivid colors. The Himalayan strains of Buddhism (at least in Tibet) have absorbed local folk religions, resulting in a wildly varied pantheon. I think of it being like syncretic Haitian or Mexican practices of Christianity where saints absorb qualities of local gods, making for a lot more interesting mix. Again, assuming I can extrapolate from Tibet to its neighbor, devotional painting is a living art, with contemporary painters continuing the practices and styles developed over several hundred years. The Steins have gotten to know one of these painters, and will be showing his work for one night only, during gallery hours (10-5) on Saturday the 18^th plus a reception for the artist from 5-8.

Also, Estel is opening a show featuring toy-like sculptures by Sean O’Meallie on August 29^th, but they are doing their opening reception on September 8 so I’ll write about it more next time.

Maria's piece on zines

My wife published an article this week in the Scene on local folks making and paying attention to zines. I didn't realize you can check out zines from the big collection that Jerianne Thompson has at the main city library in Murfreesboro. Maria borrowed a bunch from there, and some from Angela Messina, so I got a chance to thumb through them. Some of the things that Jerianne counts as zines I'm not sure I'd agree -- Fifth Estate is a long-standing anarchist magazine that's now published in TN. But she's preserving this stuff, and that's very good.

The best stuff Maria had was Kate Csillagi's hand-made series. I think she calls it Romance. Angela had copies. I don't know if you can get them from Kate.

Finally, a review – Holt and Seigenthaler

This may the first in a series of reviews of shows that have closed by now. I think a saying that would cover this approach is “with miniscule readership comes miniscule responsibility.”

On Friday I went by Belmont’s gallery to see the show by Emily Holt and Delia Seigenthaler. It was announced as closing Thursday, but I didn’t believe it. Sometimes I am caught by surprise, by ambitious gallery staff, but no such problems Friday.

Very briefly, because I just want to talk about a couple of pieces: Emily does paintings and constructions of birds, bugs, monsters, dog gods, graveyards that have a creepy but funny air. You could compare it to Tim Burton and Edward Gorey, but that’s not right. A rough, hand-made quality is important in Emily’s stuff.

Seigenthaler makes ceramic dolls of babies and children often doing odd things, and paintings with these characters and others. She plays with and emphasizes dolls’ inherently creepy quality, wide-open fixed staring eyes. And she gives a lot of them anatomically correct genitalia, which you would think would get a reaction from the Christian Taliban, but apparently standards of pious rectitude have declined rapidly now that Belmont has cut its ties with the Tennessee Baptist Convention.

So the first piece on my mind is Diminishing Triage, a set of sculptures by Emily. (BTW, I know Emily, but not Delia Seigenthaler. My practice in the blog is to refer to people I know reasonably well however I refer to them in real life, and anyone else by their last name.) A dragon, cobbled together from plastic, cans or cardboard packaging, maybe a deer’s skull with a garden trowel in place of its lower jaw, swoops over the scene at eye level. On the floor a single file line of bugs variously wrapped in gauze and riding all sorts of wheeled conveyances march along a curved path that starts at a sort of tunnel entrance on the wall and ends in another one a few feet to the right. The first tunnel entrance, on the left, is big, the second one much smaller, and the bugs get progressively smaller as they move away from the big entrance to the little one.

It’s like a perspective effect, defined by the figures getting smaller in the distance. Except they don’t get smaller along a straight line away from the viewer, but do so along a curved on that puts foreground (bigger) and background (smaller) the same distance away. It’s the curved universe, post-Newton.

The piece also is a good introduction to a bunch of things in Emily’s work. The presence of threat, the interest in flying things (bugs, birds, bats), and a pervasive sense of fragility. Sometimes dirt and the ground figure in her pieces (and there’s dirt pile dup along the edge of the curved track in Diminishing Triage), but air seems to be the dominant element for Emily. All the bugs and graves bring out chthontic qualities, but this is the somehow the chthontic dimension of the air, not of the Earth. The overunderworld.

And maybe there’s political overtones—attacks from the air, resulting in various casualties. Maybe it’s there, maybe not.

Obviously Seigenthaler shares Holt’s childish creepiness. The piece I want to talk about is Landscape with Baby. A child lies on a background of patterned fabrics stuffed like upholstery. In the background are a few buildings. The pieces looks remarkably like an early Renaissance painting—the buildings seem Mediterranean, with tile roofs and bleached colors, and they are arrayed with the jumbled perspective that paintings had before artists started organizing them around a single receding point. The sirface details on the child including sections that have flaked away, like a fresco in an Italian church.

But the fabric underneath the baby, which as I recall was the largest element, has outright Moorish patterns and outlines. The total effect is similar to art works created at the interface of Christian and Islamic cultures. Again, maybe a contemporary reference. Subtle enough that you can take it or leave it.

On the way back to the car I stopped in the art department gallery which had a show by a student, Matt Chenoweth, who has found his way into clay. It’s definitely a student show, where he tries out different techniques (including some Jason Briggs-y objects with stuff attached), but he seems to have a really good feel for glaze and color combinations. He’s got a ways to go before his nice but conventional vessels challenge the boundary between art and craft, as he declares is his intention. But he has good fundamental skills to work in this medium, whatever he decides to do with it.