Nashville Visual Arts Events March 2009

Cheekwood is opening several shows at once, and I’ll get to that in a minute, but I think the biggest news is that Nancy Saturn is closing American Artisan gallery on March 31. (BTW, this edition contains a lot of deep thoughts from me—I wouldn’t blame you for scrolling down to the listing of events.) The card in the mail says she’s been in business for 38 years. And I should say upfront that the American Artisan Festival in Centennial Park will continue. I don’t know the reasons for the closure—she’s been doing it for quite a while, but you’ve got to think this economy can’t be good for business. Its closure will leave a hole. The craft world and market place consists in part of a network of stores around the country like American Artisan that specialize in crafts at a high level. They vary in the degree of emphasis on wearability/usability and collectibility/investment—American Artisan was on the useable end. Other stores and galleries in town carry work by a few to a bunch of jewelers, and the Arts Company carries some fine art potters and wood turners, but a place like American Artisan brings in a wide range of artists and offers pieces that represent much more of the range of craft art, and it edges closer to fine art. As the economy change, and has been changing, the fabric through which a scene like the crafts stays alive starts to fray. Other models to connect artists and buyers emerge like the big fairs—especially the ones sponsored by the American Craft Council, but they won’t penetrate as far. There’s also a shift of energy from the traditional high crafts to the DIY and Etsy world. The idea of say jewelry as fine art may fade significantly, ornaments as art objects giving way to ornaments as fashion, which in a way is a return to origins. As (OK, if) the country gets poorer overall, art as object of collection, investment and speculation may give way to art for use, even if it for decoration or reflection. This may not be unhealthy, but it would be a shift in the nature of art as produced and experienced.

Nancy Saturn deserves thanks and respect for bringing this art to Nashville for so long. Maybe someone will step into the vacuum, but that will certainly have to wait until happy days are here again.

Cheekwood’s shows this month include one that’s important for sure, the William Christenberry exhibit in the main galleries. Christenberry is an important figure, one of the first photographers known for color work, along with William Eggleston. Like Eggleston, Christenberry’s a southerner, from Alabama, and his work dealt with the vernacular landscape of the South. Over the years he has expanded into sculpture, and has always had an interest in social critique, like pieces on the KKK. It’s important for artists and art audiences from or living in the South to know Christenberry’s work. This exhibit was one of the inaugural exhibits for the renovated galleries of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and was displayed next to the installation of that museum’s fine folk and outsider art collection—I think Christenberry chose the works for that exhibit as well. The show at Cheekwood is just Christenberry’s work, but it’s useful to keep in mind his affinity for vernacular and self-taught artists. Cheekwood’s exhibit of William Edmondson’s sculptures in the gallery next door is very appropriate.

At the same time, Cheekwood is opening a show of abstract paintings from Tennessee and Michael Baggarly’s work. Baggarly’s show will include the really fun metal sculptures he had at Zeitgeist and maybe more along the same lines.

APSU’s on-line Terminal project has launched a new piece, From Red Paint Hill by Phillip Andrew Lewis. This is the first piece they’ve commissioned you can find it here.

I should plug the Belcourt more, and am remembering to do so because of the film Silent Light coming up this weekend only. It’s by Mexican director Carlos Reygadas, about a German Mennonite community in Mexico. The descriptions remind me of another great film of spiritual stillness, Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left For The East? Another highlight for me, the dialogue is in Plattdeutsch, which was the dialect they spoke in my Grandfather’s community in Nebraska.

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March 6

Watkins, Jeff Daniel Silva. An exhibit of work by experimental filmmaker and video and installation artist from Boston.

Customs House Museum (Clarksville), David Farmerie. A photo series on the theme of the 7 Deadly Sins by a photographer who has worked for National Geographic among others. There will be a poetry reading by R. MonaLeeza during the opening (7:00).

March 7

Twist, Shana Kohnstamm and John Dowell. Shana will be in the main (main? original? most westward?) gallery, John Dowell in Twist 58. Shana’s got a bunch of new work, abstraction that morphs into surrealistic organisms. Dowell is a printmaker from Philly, and his exhibit here will be part of a project where he goes to cities and makes photographs and lithos of what he sees in the streetscape. If this works, the effect of someone coming into the city fresh should yield unexpected perspectives on familiar scenes.

Plowhaus at TAL, Mel Davenport, Ayjey, Dirk Mooth, Mar Augelli. Mel will be showing a pop art style painting and several sculptures.

Tennessee Art League, Brenda Stein. A new exhibit from wood-turner Brenda Stein.

The Arts Company, John Baeder. Nashvillian Baeder has created well-known photorealist paintings and watercolors of places like diners, hamburger stands, and Nashville neighborhood landmarks. Last month the Arts Company exhibited a show of the photographs he took and used as references for his paintings, and this month they have a new set of those photos, these ones focusing on street signs and Nashville in the early 80s.

Downtown Presbyterian Church, DIG Show: Embodiment. The church’s annual group show, part of our Lenten observance. Like usual it’s a mix of people, artists from around the community and people affiliated with the church (these are not mutually exclusive groups). The show went up last weekend and one of my favorite pieces so far is a drawing by David Hellams. I won’t say more and let it be a surprise. BTW, we are also starting our annual Tom Wills-curated Lenten film series at the Church this Thursday with a viewing of John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing. The series runs every Thursday into April. There’s a couple of silent films this year and some unusual older films.

Sera Davis, Group show curated by Ron Lambert. I got over at the last minute to see Ron’s February show at Sera Davis. I especially like a video piece that I hope I’ll get a chance to post about. This month Ron curated a group show of works on paper, several of the people with Watkins affiliations: Iwonka Waskowski, Brady Haston, Kristi Hargrove, John Whitten, Erin Plew, David Hellams, Terry Thacker, Jodi Hays, and Ron. One of Iwonka's pieces is the visual with this post.

Terrazzo, Zeitgeist artists. Zeitgeist is curating their second show at this new building at 12^th and Division, with work by Caroline Allison, Will Berry, Alicia Henry, Farrar Hood, Buddy Jackson, James Perrin, Greg Pond, Bjorn Sterri, and Lars Strandh.

March 11

Gallery One, Chamber Music and Lori-Gene In a nice bit of cross-programming and collaboration, Gallery One will present a chamber music recital in the gallery “accompanied” by Lori-Gene making drawings during the performance. The musicians will be Sean Neukom (violin), Alicia Storin (cello) and Evan Cobb (oboe), and they perform a Ravel cello sonata, a solo sonata for violin by Ysaye, and a trio by local composer Alyssa Weinberg. So far Nashville hasn’t gotten big into classical music programming in unconventional venues (it’s happening in New York, like at Le Poisson Rouge), but it’s really worth exploring. As for making art during music performance, we in the Transcendental Crayon Ensemble had painters working away during our shows for years, and I think the practice should be encouraged. This concert marks the opening of Lori-Gene’s exhibit in the gallery.

March 12

Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery, The Printed Page. An exhibit of Old Master and modern prints from the gallery’s Anna C. Hoyt Collection. Reception from 5-7.

Vanderbilt Sarratt Gallery, Edie Maney. Maney's paintings work their way through the process of their to arrive at non-objective figuration. Things that emerge from pure shape take on enough aspects of figures to suggest the human form. A reception at Sarratt from 5-6:30.

March 13

Untitled, Barely Legal, at the Icon. The quarterly show of this group probably promises more trouble with obscenity statutes than it delivers, but really it’s all about the group’s 18^th birthday. More significantly, it’s another effort to bring the visual arts world into the Gulch, and like the monthly series by Zeitgeist untitled is borrowing space in one of the new residential developments going up. There is a sense that the visual arts community belongs in the Gulch, given its status as a hot area. I think it’s great if people can find good spaces for what they are doing, but the visual arts usually lead, don’t follow, real estate development of this sort. Anyway, back to the untitled show, this time out they’re hooking up with the Nashville Film Festival, who will be showing shorts at the event.

March 14

Snow Gallery, Eggshibition. This is a group show of work by 8 women exploring, you guessed it, the symbolism of the egg. Like everything Catherine does, it promises to be a thoughtfully constructed exhibit. First of all the artists exhibiting—Lesley Patterson-Marx, Nicole Pietrantoni, Gina Binkley, Claudia Lee, Laura Chenicek, Julia Chenicek Korn (maybe Laura’s daughter?), Joan Curry, and Paula Heaphy. It looks like it will include work that Nicole has done since she headed off for her MFA program at Iowa. The piece on the gallery PR looks like a new direction, possessed of a completely different internal sense of motion. And I always fuss on Lesley’s work, so here I go, but the PR says she’ll have a new art book in this show, called the Egg Book, which sounds like one more step forward with the ideas she’s been going to deeply for several years now. And again, as is Catherine’s practice, she’s matching the contemporary work with vintage prints from her collection, in this case hand-colored 19^th century prints of eggs.

Cheekwood, 4 Exhibits. First, the big Christenberry. See the intro for more on that. Then there’s Michael Baggarly’s show in Temporary Contemporary. Again, check out the intro. The Tennessee Abstract painting show was picked well—Brady Haston, Carol Mode, Terry Thacker, Dwayne Butcher, Hans Schmitt-Matzen, John Tallman, Hamlett Dobbins, Richard Feaster, Ron Buffington, Melissa Dunn, Rocky and Mandy Rogers Horton, Jered Sprecher, and Lain York. This really does capture most of the best energy in abstract painting happening in the state right now. And there’s a new installation in the video galleries, Lens with a Conscience.

March 17

Parthenon symposium, Rabun Taylor, “Reassessing the Pantheon in Rome.” A talk by a professor from the University of Texas at Austin. The talk will be at 7:00; call 862-8431 to reserve a free ticket.

March 18

Estel, Deb Garlick and Tim Yankosky. This show opens on the 18^th but the reception will be on April 4 in conjunction with First Saturday. So I’ll have more on this in April missive.

March 21

Tinney Contemporary, Rachael McCampbell. Paintings of endangered species with a percentage of sales going to the Land Trust for Tennessee

Cumberland Gallery, Kit Reuther and Allison Stewart. Reuther’s painting have something of Cy Twombley’s nervous scratchiness. They are near abstractions in which parts of scenes have been broken apart and simplified, but rendered almost as if rather than painting objects, she has painted out objects.

March 26

TSU Hiram Van Gordon Gallery, Student Art Show. Art by TSU students selected by their faculty. Given the quality of recent outings by TSU students, a TSU student show deserves as much attention as Watkins student shows. Reception from 3-6

Off the Wall in Dickson

Just got a chance to see the Off the Wall group's show at the Renaissance Center.

A couple of things that seemed worth mentioning. Janet Heilbronn has really luscious paintings, one of those maybe it's abstract, maybe it's geologic sort of things. One of the paintings, untitled, has a sort of collar-formation, like some sort of sponge. The center is dominated by a brick-red color, but has flashes of blues in it. The structure is surrounded by a midnight blue background. Then the next painting over, What We Know, has really different color things go on. A diagonal line divides the painting--under the line are swirling forms I seem to remember from earlier work. On top of the line are clearly delineated pebbles with thin bright colors--it's the kind of colors that shouldn't work, but they do. This is a case where I just like what an artist is doing with color. I have a similar reaction say to James Lavadour's work when they show it at Cumberland.

I've been watching Iwonka Waskowski's work with interest since she showed some color drawings on clay board in a show at Kristi Hargrove's studio. They seemed like anatomical cut-aways, but not so much of discernable forms, and with shapes of things like teddy bears embedded. The shapes have a kind of analytical quality, like the working out of systems of shapes and relationships, but it's also very intuitive. I realize it's a way I think about the way Francis Bacon shapes images, and Iwonka's work in color has the raw meat quality that is ever present in Bacon. She's been working with these forms for I guess a couple of years now. The work at the Renaissance Center is graphite drawings, so no color. She continues working with those shapes, but in this media they have Hargravian qualities of fine detail, little hairlines and whatnot. "Tortured Madonna" takes the exterior shape of Mary with her head covered from religious paintings, and strips off the surface to show the shapes of strange organs or body structures, although the folds of cloth are still sort of present. She's also done a lot of paired images, and in this show there's two, "The Way I See It" and "The Way You See It" are very similar abstract shapes with slight variations. This is what I mean by an analytic piece, where you try out variations on the same forms and work shifts in combinations.

These are examples of stuff Iwonka's been working on for a while. The big shift is the introduction of figures with mask-like faces on a couple of these--much more literal, more explicitly figures, and a step into cartoon-inspired areas. Like with the work to date, it will be interesting to see where it goes.

I'm not going to talk about everyone's stuff because this is just a quick blog post. Quinn Dukes, Jenny Luckett, Mahlea Jones, and Jaime Raybin are also in the show. Jaime's taking images like her Milk Shelf series in a new direction with photographs inserted as vitrines in thick-walled boxes, but still working on recollections of childhood and teen-age years. Anyway, the show is up through March 14.

Maybe the best thing about this trip was seeing the new sculptures of the Jackson brothers, the 3 Dickson doctors who founded the local hospital, sold it to HCA, made a lot of money on their HCA stock and funded the Renaissance Center. The Ren Center took a wall in the rotunda area and installed three bronze busts of the brothers, looking very stern in their doctor's coats. With their uniforms it reminded me of a display honoring General Zhukov and other commanders of the Great Patriotic War.

Review of Paint Made Flesh

Here's my review of the Frist contemporary painting show that appeared in the Scene today. This really is a great show. I went back last weekend just to see the Lucien Freuds. And a lot of the others are really fine. I'm going to try to get back regularly while it's here.

Nashville Visual Arts Events February 2009

This month we’ve got a few promising things coming up. Another group show at Estel with Lesley Patteron-Marx and Desi Minchillo, another installation from Lauren Kusso at Twist.

TSU Gallery is not listed this month, but they organized the panel discussion at Vandy on the 19^th, which is related to TSU’s current showing of Diva Dutch, a documentary about Aishia Cousins and a “performance sculpture” project she did. I assume it involves jumping rope, which I’ve never thought about much but I can see how it is an important performance practice for African-American girls and women. I imagine there’s a lot to work with there.

For those of you who get out of town, Barbara Yontz is in a 3-woman show that opens tomorrow night at Phoenix Gallery in Chelsea. There will also be an artists’ talk for the show on Feb. 19.

There’s probably a zillion errors and omissions this month. Let me know what you catch, and I’ll try to fix it, at least on the web site.

February 5

Zeitgeist, Georgeanne Harmon poetry reading. This reading by Georgeanne Harmon is in conjunction with the current exhibit at Zeitgeist of paintings by her brother Paul. The exhibit incorporates selections from her works into the gallery exhibition. This event is the first in a planned series at Zeitgeist which will bring in prose writers and poets for readings and discussion in conjunction with each of the gallery shows this year.

February 5

Sarratt Gallery, Rob Lambert. Photography and sculpture that moves back and forth between the landscape and abstract forms. I left this one off earlier, so I may come back and fill in some more detail.

February 6

Centennial Art Center, Members of the Plate Tone Printshop. Six members of the group will be exhibiting—Mar Augelli, Kaaren Hirschowitz-Engel, Patricia Jordan, Reesha Leone, Jenny Luckett and Jaime Raybin.

Watkins Juried Student Art Show. This is one of the best ways to see what the students at Watkins are doing. These students remain one of the most important sources of energy for our art scene—there’s real talent there, and certainly an engagement with the larger art world.

Gallery F, Unusual Sympathy. Carlin Wing and Amelia Winger-Bearskin have produced a show about Andrew Jackson, but it focuses on Lyncoya, a Creek boy orphaned on the battlefield and adopted by Jackson. Wing is teaching photography at Watkins, and Winger-Bearskin is a lecturer in video, performance art, and drawing at Vandy. This sounds like another complex show at Gallery F, with drawings, video, text, and photography. Winger-Bearskin will give a vocal performance the night of the opening, and the two artists will deliver a talk at the gallery at 3 on Sunday the 8^th. This show will be the first of several parts to this collaboration.

Forest Bride at the 5 Spot. This is the group Ben and Amy Marcantel lead, mostly by setting some nice parameters for musicians to work around in. I play in it, and other folks like Ryan Norris, Jonathan Marx, Luke Schneider, Scott Martin, Joseph Hudson, and Derek Schartung, depending on what they’ve got going on.

February 7

Estel, Paper Rock Scissors. This show picks up the words in the old game, which in their various combinations determine the works involved—works made from stone, cut paper, or with any of the 3 things as subject matter. It makes perfect sense for the the artists chosen. The most complicated of Lesley Patterson-Marx’s prints usually involve cutting the paper, forming masks and cut-throughs. I haven’t seen much of Sabine Schlunk’s work yet, but one piece did involve stones collected, as I remember it, from Germany. Samantha Callahan had great cut paper pieces in a show at Downtown Presbyterian Church, as did Desi Minchillo at Estel. That’s just four out of 18 artists in that show. And one of the side galleries will show drawings by Marcello Halmenschlager—I thought his work in Estel’s group drawing show was very interesting and wonder how well it will hold up on second viewing. Also, Harry has new work up.

Twist, Lauren Kussro. This installation makes a companion to the Estel show—Kussro’s primary material is paper, printed, cut and turned into objects that she suspended throughout the gallery space. Her previous installation at Twist was dreamy, peaceful, and surreal, and it looks like this one, with the enticing title “The Luminous Bower,” will hit some of the same marks and more—this time she’s working lights into the paper forms, which should deliver a nice warm sense. MiChelle Jones did a nice preview of it in the Tennessean. Twist will complement that installation with Irene Wills’s garden and floral paintings. In their second space down the hall in the Arcade, they’ll show paintings by Duncan McDaniel.

Plowhaus at TALS, Contrast: A Celebration of African-American History. This show brings together a bunch of the Plowhaus artists with some of the Lost Boys of Sudan artists and students enrolled in the YMCA’s artEMBRACE program. The artists from these 3 groups are addressing how African-American history has influenced their lives. It’s a great way to frame a Black History Month theme, leaving room for everyone to address this history from whatever perspective they bring.

The Arts Company, John Baeder. Nashvillian Baeder has created well-known photorealist paintings and watercolors of places like diners, hamburger stands, and Nashville neighborhood landmarks. But this is a show of photographs, the prints he used as references for his paintings.

Tennessee State Museum, premiere of documentary on John Baeder. Directed by Curt Hahn, a filmmaker who among other things is documenting some of the pivotal figures in Nashville’s cultural life with his previous films on the Fisk Jubilee Singers and Sylvia Hyman. The showing will be at 3:00, and is in conjunction with a retrospective of Baeder’s work at the Tennessee State Museum.

Downtown Presbyterian Church, Elizabeth Streight and Sarah Hearld. Two photographers who literally have worked from opposite ends of the globe. Sarah’s pictures come from her travels in New Delhi, while Liz’s sensitive, caring work is drawn from the people right around her, right here. I would say Liz’s work is more domestic and intimate, but from the samples I’ve seen I’m not sure Sarah doesn’t share similar interests.

Tinney Contemporary, Lyle Carbajal, Sharon Lee Hart and Jason Lascu. Art brut paintings from Carbajal, photographs composed of composite images from Hart, and figurative sculptures in wax by Lascu.

Rymer, Doug Schatz, Dooby Tompkins, Thomas Petillo, Ted Whisenhunt. Sculpures by Schatz, pop-culture infused paintings by Tompkins, large format Polaroid images by Petillo, and sculptures from Whisenhunt.

Ruby Green, Open Studios. Ruby Green is converting its gallery space into studios for the next few months, through September. The artists with studios (right now the line up is Lori Anne Parker, Olga Alexeeva, John Newman, Susan Saruda, and Caroline Allison) are going to have open studios every month on first Saturday. This is a return to Ruby Green’s roots, which was studio space before the gallery was formed. Keeping the gallery program going was hard for Chris Campbell and the others involved, but it’s disappointing that they’ll be taking a break from putting up curated shows.

Cumberland Gallery, paintings by Xin Lu, and wall sculptures by Ahren Ahrenholtz, John Fraser, Ben Dallas, David French, Tom Pfannerstill. Xin Lu was the winner of the Hamblet Award at Vanderbilt. She uses all sorts of Chinese cultural imagery, a reflection of her exploration of her heritage. Just to pick one of the sculptors, Ahrenholtz had some really nice assemblages in Cumberland’s Small Packages show over the holidays. They had that quality of mysterious industrial formations, like fixtures in a Terry Gilliam movie. The pieces, made from common materials like rope, cloth, or nails, are slathered in white paint that gives everything a uniform surface texture and a sense of semi-firmness.

Terrazzo, Zeitgeist artists. 3 units in this new building at 12^th and Division will be used as galleries for work by Jim Ann Howard, Terry Rowlett, Greg Pond, Hans Schmitt-Matzen, Megan Lightell, Gene Wilken, and Richard Painter. The intersection of real estate and art, not always benign, takes a slightly different form here where the parties pursue a mutual interest in getting the public to see what they’ve created.

MIR, Michael McKelvey

February 12

Alias concert, Turner Recital Hall, Blair School, Vandy. The winter concert by Nashville’s main chamber music group includes one of the great Bartok string quartets (#4), one of Dvorak’s string quintets, and two pieces in Alias’ series this year of works by female composers: a piece for cello and piano by Gabriela Lena Frank, which includes some improvisation, and a duet for violin and piano by Lili Boulanger, younger sister of the great composition teacher Nadia. Starts at 8.

February 13

University Art Gallery, Sewanee, Lauren Kalman. Kalman taught for a year or so at Watkins—now she’s at Brown. Though I’ve seen sculptures by her that use metal, it didn’t register on me she has background as a goldsmith. This show brings out that part of her background. She makes gold objects (“adornments” she calls them) that she attaches to her body. The objects in one series take the form of disease symptoms—cysts, tumors—jewelry as a form of disfigurement rather than decoration.

Three Squared Gallery, Erin Plew, John Whitten, and Kelly Bonadies. A show by three of the sharper students near the end of their time at Watkins. The gallery is located at 427 Chestnut Street, studio 223.

Frist Center, Medieval Treasures from Cleveland and Mike Hoolboom. The first show appears to be self-explanatory from the title—sculptures, metalwork, carvings, etc. from the period before the Renaissance. Contemporary Artists Project gallery has video from Mike Hoolboom, who combines original footage and material taken from other films.

February 17

Parthenon symposium, Bronwen Wickkiser, “From Hippokrates to Asklepios: the Medical Marketplace in Ancient Greece.” The talk will be at 7:00; call 862-8431 to reserve a free ticket.

February 18

Vanderbilt Studio Arts Building, Space 204, Clay Carroll and Ruth Stanford. Carroll’s another Hamblet Award winner (see Cumberland), now studying architecture at Harvard. This show has large-scale photos white boxes he positioned in the landscape, which he has brought into the gallery. He’s clearly interested in non-rational spaces, as he showed in his contribution to the Judy Chicago project at Vanderbilt. Stanford is a sculptor who has titled the work in this show “Cryptoecology”—her imaginary environments are dioramas placed inside the mouths of fish heads.

February 19

Panel discussion, The Image of the Black Female in Art and Education. Participants include Aisha Cousins, whose work is on display at TSU, Amelia Winger-Bearskin from Vanderbilt who is currently showing at Gallery F, and Cynthia Gadsen and Jewell Win from TSU. Jodi Hays from TSU moderates. 6 p.m. in Room 126 at Wilson Hall on the Vanderbilt campus.

Nashville Public Library, Main Downtown Library, Alan LeQuire, “Cultural Heroes.” An exhibit of LeQuire’s monumental bronze busts of singers—Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Leadbelly, Paul Robeson, and Woody Guthrie, plus a new one to be unveiled at the reception on the 19th. These are labors of love for LeQuire. Observant Nashville frequent flyers will have seen them on display earlier on the concourse between the A/B and C terminals at the Nashville airport.

Waltz with Bashir

Maria and I saw Waltz with Bashir tonight at the Belcourt. This is the Israeli animated documentary (written and directed by Ari Folman) about the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, perpetrated by Lebanese Christian Phalangist militiamen with Israeli assistance. Everyone should go see this movie. Not only is it a devastating picture of this terrible war, absolutely heart-wrenching, even more compelling coming from an Israeli perspective, but it's also a thoughtful exploration of how memory works. Imagined memories, waking dreams, and hallucinations have as much status as more accurate recollections of events because these "false" memories serve different purposes. The animation results in beautiful images, and also allows the director to create an environment where past and present stand on a visually equivalent stage.

But the main thing this movie does is take an unflinching view of this war, and war in general, in its devastation and absurdity. And the timing of the film's release is spooky, coming upon the heels of the attack on Gaza.

One of the things that made this film compelling for me is seeing men about my age putting together and dealing with their memories of the war and the massacre. If I were Israeli, this might have been "my war," although I guess I would have already done my conscript service--my brother would have been more like the right age.

Put all this together, the terrible events of '82 and middle-aged ruefulness, and you get about the saddest movie I've seen in a long time.

Here's A.O. Scott's review of the film in the Times.

Review in the Scene of show at Rymer

Here's my review in this week's Scene of the current show at Rymer. Bunch of interesting stuff there recently, and I didn't even get a chance to write about Casey Pierce's paintings. Also, Rymer gallery director Herb Williams is in DC, having gotten a piece featuring Obama into the Manifest Hope show in DC, organized by SEIU, MoveOn.org and Obey Giant (that's the organization around Shepard Fairey, the guy who designed the Obama Hope poster). It's at 3333 M Street if you're going to be in town--not sure what that is, other than its in Georgetown.

Cruising around looking into the show, I ran across a notice that the Hope painting of Obama has been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery. That's good. It belongs there.

Nashville Visual Arts Events early January 2008

OK everyone, wake up from your New Year’s naps. Art continues its irresistible advance and Gallery Crawl will occur this Saturday, bigger than ever. At least Twist will be bigger than ever.

I’ve only got information on a few things happening later in the month. With the holidays over I’m sure announcements will start will start rolling in, so there will for sure be a mid-month update.

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, send me an email at dcmaddox@comcast.net. To get taken off the list, email to that effect at the same address.

January 3

Twist, Rocky and Mandy Horton, Brooke Grace, the Doling brothers, and Todd Greene’s Butcher Paper Collective Project Twist has taken on additional space in the Arcade which they’re using for a few purposes, including space for an office and a second exhibition space. In the main (Original? Room 78? We’ll see) gallery they are continuing with Rocky and Mandy Horton, but they’re bringing in new pieces. New and bigger pieces. The back room will feature photography by Brooke Grace and Shane and Tony Doling. Then down the hall at space 58, Todd Greene is going to show the results of a project he has done with students at Ravenswood High School, where he’s teaching. Todd would start a painting or drawing on a piece of butcher paper and then have students add to it, with Todd making more contributions to it as it progressed. This of course is a variant of the surrealist Exquisite Corpse practice. The show will include some pieces from this project plus something he and a few of the students will do on-site in 3 days (like starting today). Todd always seemed to have a great interest in incorporating structures for tapping intuition into his teaching. This should be more than a little interesting.

Rymer, Jordan Eagles and Amy Hamblin. Eagles has an attention-grabbing m.o. in the work he’s bringing into Twist—samples of blood (his own I think) sandwiched in resin and plexiglass. It takes the form of abstract splashes of red ink. This is something that may be a one-liner—“wow, it’s blood. Cool.” Hamblin is a sculptor, from Portland, Oregon. Rymer’s press material describes her work as mesh and wire exoskeletons and organs. In addition to these, the installation by Catherine Foster will remain up, the natural world transmuted through a sequence of photographic and fabrication steps, as will some of the wide-ranging paintings by Casey Pierce.

The Arts Company, Annual Artists Preview. The Arts Company uses its January show to give everyone a taste of what’s coming up for the year. They’ll also be inaugurating use of some of their second floor space as a gallery for photography

Tinney Contemporary, Winter Wall. Tinney’s doing a selection from their gallery artists, about 15 people.

Sera Davis, In a Nut$hell: Under a Grand. Sera Davis is continuing her December show..

Mir Gallery, Steven Knudson. Going just on the image on the gallery’s MySpace page, Knudson looks like he does semi-gothic cartoon-like drawings and paintings, in the post-Gorey/Tim Burton mode.

January 8

Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery, Photography by Harmony Korine. Korine, a Nashville native, is of course best known for work in film--writer for Larry Clark's Kids and director of several films (most recently Mr. Lonely) . Joseph Whitt organized this show that draws on Korine's photographs. The results look continuous with his work in film, cinematic, distinctly narrative (albeit it looks to be of an amorphous sort), edging into transgressive domains.

Vanderbilt Space 204 Gallery (Art Department), Gary Chapman and Watkins students. Two shows opening, one featuring Gary Chapman and another a bunch of current Watkins students (Kelly Bonadies, Adolfo Davila, Lisa Deal, Cayless Griffis, Erin Plew, Nick Stolle, Mandy Stoller and Stephanie West). I think it’s great that they are using the space to get some cross-communication going between the Watkins and Vandy students, although you can’t help thinking Vandy’s bringing in work from Watkins to give their students an idea of what is possible. But I haven’t talked to anyone at Vandy about this show, so I’m talking completely out of school as it were. One thing will be to see if Watkins does a show of work by Vandy students, making it a cultural exchange program. The reception is from 4-6.

January 23

Frist Center, Paint Made Flesh. A big show of contemporary painting organized by the Frist and curator Mark Scala. It promises to have a lot of very good paintings by the kinds of artists one wishes were in the holdings of local museums, like deKooning, Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, George Baselitz, John Currin, Wangechi Mutu. This looks like it picks up where Mark left off with the Fragile Species show of local artists, which also was organized around painters’ treatment of the body and human frailty and mortality. Like Vanderbilt’s Guayasamin show, this one is going to travel to other institutions, which is a big deal, and this one is going to the Phillips Collection in DC, which is a particularly prestigious place—usually the Frist is receiving stuff from the Phillips.There will be a symposium on Friday and Saturday featuring John Edlerfield, Emily Braun, Richard Shiff, and Eric Fischl as well as local luminaries.

Novels for other times or our times

Every couple of years I take a run at L'Education Sentimentale. My French is good enough that it doesn't make sense to read Flaubert in translation, but not so good that it's actually easy, so I usually run out of steam before I get too far. My dad lent me a new edition with the promise of better notes, so I'm at it again. This book has always had an allure. Things like a Woody Allen movie listing it among some essential things, or Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot. We'll see how far I get this time.

Even a handful of chapters is enough to bring some ideas to mind. One of them is the way this book and so many other 19th century novels turn on economics. More precisely, on the precariousness of people's personal financial security and way the lack of money gets in the way of characters realizing the life to which they aspire. L'Education Sentimentale (at least these early chapters) is filled with material on how much money the characters have, how much they spend, what they can count on or hope for, and the things they have to do if they are to make money. Of course, Flaubert's Frederic Moreau is a fool, committed to living as an artist, not to making art. L'Education Sentimentale, at least as much of it as I've gotten through, is heavily comedic.

Flaubert was not unique in this. Novels throughout the 19th century, as least up through Edith Wharton, turned on the drama of the precarious situation most people lived in--needing money to keep themselves out of a state of wretched deprivation, but usually finding it very hard to make any. The main form of security comes from inherited wealth, and if you don't have it you are often SOL.

The centrality of economic precariousness as a dramatic engine seems appropriate today. Every conversation is about the economy, about how bad it is and how bad it's going to get, the cuts that are coming. By and large I don't find people in a state of despair or panic, a gallows humor prevails. But there is also a serious undercurrent to the conversations, about how to hold on for months and years, and about what one can do if the economy collapses in a fundamental way. It is easy to fear that it will become as rare in our society for people to be able to provide themselves a comfortable living as it apparently was in the 19th century. Will ruin loom again as the most likey outcome for dreamy people?

My night with Tristan und Isolde

I splurged this week and went to the Tuesday night performance of Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera. Thanks to my father and the Saturday afternoon broadcasts, the Met was part of my childhood’s sonic background and I’m still attached to it. But outside of a bad touring company performance in DC, maybe at Wolf Trap, in the 70s, I’ve never heard it live. I happened to be in New York this week, and happened to be there on one of the weeknight performances of this production.

This is the first time Daniel Barenboim has conducted the Met, and it’s been reviewed extremely well . I don’t have too much to add, other than concurrence. And some fragmentary comments that follow.

As a neophyte Wagnerian, this proved to be an intense experience a bit different from anything I’ve encountered before. I was tired, so I had trouble staying awake in parts of the second act, but by the end I desperately didn’t want it to end. I was pleading inside for each note of the Liebestod to stretch to infinity, and then for the last few orchestral chords that end the opera exquisitely and almost understatedly. It reminded me of the immersion effects of an Indian music performance, where the urgency of the performance builds by accumulation over a couple of hours and the music, the very notes and sounds themselves have an effect on the cells of your brain and body. As you move towards the third hour of a concert at Sri Ganesha, you start to enter a realm of timelessness. Same with Wagner.

The Met orchestra sounds amazing. The string sound is maybe the best I’ve heard, buttery. They responded so well to Barenboim of course. Often his direction consisted of holding a closed hand out and then opening it suddenly, prompting the orchestra to release a burst of tension building in its lines. It wasn’t always a burst of sound, often much subtler than that, a pulse of energy. There was great evidence of his knowledge of the score—I feel like an idiot even mentioning this. One example was seeing him bring out a little inner line that was nothing more than some tremelo notes in the strings, not a melody at all, but that little bit of texture was essential.

The singers were uniformly great, although it was “one of those nights” and the Isolde, Katarina Dalayman, had a cold and had to step aside after the first two acts. This was disconcerting, and one man near me left before Act III started. She was replaced by Susan Foster, whom I don’t know much about, but I thought she did a fine job—a strong voice, although not as subtle as Dalayman. Still, you do get attached to singers as actors, and it was strange seeing her emerge onto the stage when Isolde enters well into Act III. Most of Act III belongs to Tristan and Kurvenal (Peter Seiffert and Gerd Grochowski). Isolde shows up half way through, sings just a bit with Tristan, he dies, King Mark (Kwangchul Youn—very impressive throughout) shows up, Kurvenal and Melot (Stephen Gaertner) are killed, and then Isolde sings some of her most important music, the Liebestod. But it’s not like Acts I and II where she is singing reams of music, and much of it as duets with Tristan, so it makes more sense to bring a substitute in for this last act, if you have to. (I've mentioned all the other primary cast members, so let me add Michelle DeYoung who sang Brangane to complete the main roles.)

Act I was about the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard. I teared up from the sound of it, the progress of the sound. It is exquisitely constructed as music and drama, and when the Tristan and Isolde drink the potion that frees them to become lovers to each other (as the opera opens they are nominally distanced from each other and even antagonists, their underlying attraction is apparent from the start—Isolde is fixated on the hero, and the hero cannot trust himself to meet her gaze) the music breaks off starkly and then is set loose through the reappearance of the famous “Tristan” chord from the opening into an arena of harmony unleashed from solid ground, ethereal and cosmic. The characters and the sound are in a state of pure transformation at that point. It’s overwhelming to experience directly.

I’ve been listening to Tristan und Isolde in an ongoing but disorganized way in the last year or so. I’ve got a Furtwangler recording with Flagstad on my iPod. What’s struck me about that recording is how the music seems intent on embodying passion and bliss (Lust is the German word used) in the most extended way possible. In this performance, I was aware of how discursive the piece is. Tristan and Isolde’s engagement with each other and passion for each other is expressed through and across passages of dialogue where they talk about the nature of passion and everyday life, playing word games about light and dark, day and night, and making a claim for the primacy of passion, lust/Lust. These ideas go back to the Troubadours’ alba (and the Minnesingers’ Tagelied), in which the lover curses the coming of the day which will require separation from the beloved. But this is a dialogue, not a poet’s monologue, and lengthy dialogue, not a short lyric in Provencal, and it leaves you with two people making love to each other by entwining their words, wrapping them around each other ever more tightly as the music follows suit.

Wagner glorifies Lust in a highly idealized way, no doubt utterly ridiculous. It’s hard for me to avoid thinking that only a man could quite go here, utterly disregard the practical sides of passion and seek something so ethereal and sublime.

Nashville Visual Arts Events mid-December update

I missed a couple of things coming up this weekend so I’m sending out a mid-month update. One thing I missed before was the lecture tonight at the Frist on Civil War photography. For the middle of the holiday season, there’s a fair amount going on this weekend.

In addition to these shows in galleries, my friend and band mate Peggy Snow is at work on a new painting of the Church of Christ at 46th and Charlotte. For those of you who don’t know, Peggy does paintings of endangered buildings, sometimes as the bulldozers are rolling in, sometimes when the forces of commerce are gathering around. It’s not just an act of nostalgia, but an imaginative form of painting activism. Peggy gives voice to what is wrong about so much development and real estate speculation, the damage it does to the character of the places we live, the history and cultural inheritance it blows away. The constant churn of development results in the destruction of an important shared form of wealth, the wealth of memory. Peggy’s pictures pinpoint where that has occurred, and Peggy’s act of painting itself, always en plein air, makes for a kind of protest and vigil. People see Peggy painting. They ask what she’s doing. Sometimes the media come along and broadcast something.

Peggy’s subject this time is a fairly large church at the corner of Charlotte when you drive to it from Murphy road or get off the interstate. There was a group of local artists and arts organizations looking at the space, but I haven’t heard much about that in a while, and otherwise it would be prime land for yet another CVS, Walmart or Eckerd. The oncoming global depression might give the property a reprieve, but a lot of times the developers just level a place and grade it so it’s “development-ready.” In the mean time, Peggy’s doing her thing to call attention to the building, and to what gets crushed when the wheels of commerce grind away.

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December 11

Frist Center, Brooks Johnson lecture on Civil War photography. Johnson is associated with the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk. The Civil War was incredibly important to the history of photography in America. The war came along at just the right time in the development of the medium to become a key testing ground for the new medium and its images established photographers like Matthew Brady and Timothy O’Sullivan. 6:30 P.M.

December 12

Renaissance Center (Dickson), Jennifer Stoneking-Stewart. An exhibit by a printmaker who has recently joined the faculty at Belmont.

untitled, Winter show (Abominable Art Show), Gallery East. This quarter’s show by the venerable, vibrant and open-minded group. Gallery East is at 1008-C Woodland Street, behind the Alley Cat in East Nashville. 6-10.

Crema, Benefit Art Sale. Crema is an awesome new coffee shop on Hermitage Ave. on the edge of downtown. They make lattes the right way and I’m increasingly looking for excuses to stop there. This month they’ve taken over some adjoining space and are offering art work on sale to benefit the Safe Haven Family shelter. The artists are Thomas Petillo, Janet K. Lee, Stacie Berry, Taunia Rice, Aaron Grayum. They’re holding a closing event on Friday from 6 to 10. 15 Hermitage Ave.

December 13

Ruby Green, The Best Private Collection in Nashville. From the artist listed, the title may not be hyperbole—Marina Abramovic, Raymond Pettibon, Picasso, Man Ray, Annie Liebowitz, and R. Crumb. This exhibit is drawn from pieces owned by an anonymous private collector in Nasvhille who agreed to lend the art to Ruby Green. In addition to big names nationally, the collection includes work by the best Nashville artists, like Chris Scarborough, Sam Dunson, and Bob Durham. This show only runs through Dec. 20.

magpie, etc., Mark Sloniker. A mixed media installation from an artist who creates elaborate scenes with cartoon-like characters.

Done Made, 226 3rd Ave. North (work by students in Kristi Hargrove’s drawing class). A one-night show by the students in Kristi Hargrove’s drawing class at Watkins. The last show I saw that Kristi organized of work from one of her classes had some really good work, some of it defining big steps for the artists involved. This show includes several people who already doing sophisticated work (Kelly Bonadies, Beth Gilmore, Erin Plew, and Nick Stolle for a few). The entire list of participants includes Adrienne Bailey, C.J. Fasshauer, Alexis Hicks, Camille Jackson, Robbie Johnson, Justin Patterson, Mandy Stoller, and Myrna Talbot.

December 16

Gallery F., Wish List artists’ talk. This is a show of work by students from TSU, some of it very good. Several of the artists have had a piece or two in shows I’ve seen like the show of student work at the Frist, but this exhibit gives you a better sense of what they are up to. Brandon Donahue, whose piece at the Frist caught my attention, holds up well here. Ash Lusk is someone with a mature voice, and the work here is at an additional level of complexity. In addition to these two, the artists in the show and scheduled to speak are Mandy Sauer, Marjorie Ward, Jared Freihoefer, Sara Estes, Holly Settle, and Vincent Black. 6-9

December 26

Plowhaus at TALS, Art and Artisans Holiday Show. This is the reception for the affordable art show that opened earlier in the month.

Nashville Visual Arts Events December

Your country needs you. The economy sucks. Phil Bredesen is going to cut every budget he can find. Gas is cheap again, but no one can afford to go nowhere. But buck up. We’ve got a brand new President, and unlike the current one, it looks he will not be a bummer from start to finish. In fact, he shows every indication of being good at his new job. But your country needs…hell, Barack needs you. He would never say that, because it sounds too much like Bush and it’s passive in a way that Obama isn’t (“what do you expect me to do, it’s up to you, I’m just the President”). But I’m not President and am not otherwise doing the country much good, so I can say it. It’s the holiday season. The economy and Barack need you to spend some money. And why not buy some art? There are friendly people all over town anxious to help you stimulate the economy. Just a thought to go with this month’s art listings, which includes several galleries doing “Art under ___” shows (in addition to the shows opening this month, Cumberland is continuing its Small Packages show which opened last month).

And this month, the second Saturday (the 13^th) might be as good as first, Ruby Green having got its hands on someone’s private collection, and magpie is turning its space over to Mark Sloniker.

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, send me an email at dcmaddox@comcast.net. To get taken off the list, email to that effect at the same address.

Dec. 4

Zeitgeist, Jeeyun Lee gallery talk. One of the 3 artists in Zeitgeist’s current show, Lee has contributed really nice ink drawings, long scrolls of paper unveiling delicately patterned forms. The other artists in the show are Christie Nuell (engravings with a kind of industrial feel) and Megan Lightell (calm, crespucular landscapes).

Dec. 5

Threesquared Gallery, Kaaren Engel and Dane Carter. The two artists are exploring imagery of road trips. This gallery is at 427 Chestnut, suite 223.

Sewanee University Art Gallery, Greely Myatt. Myatt is a sculptor in Memphis, one of the main people in the art scene there. His pieces are often visual jokes, rooted in Southern life through forms and materials. The gallery talk is at 4:30.

Dec. 6

Rymer, Inside Out. Pieces by Jon Coffett, Catherine Forster, Brett Osborn, and Casey Pierce. In addition to paintings, Rymer is showing a video piece by Osborn. He attached cameras to the front and back of a car, drove around Atlanta, and then projects the footage onto the windows of Jeep, which have been frosted. The Jeep will be parked out front ofr the gallery.

Twist, Rocky and Mandy Horton, Duncan McDaniel, and JJ Jones’s 12 Minutes of Christmas Rocky is one of the professors at Lipscomb and is leading those students into interesting places. His own work, at least what I’ve seen, is often subdued abstractions, sometimes using materials like photo paper. Mandy’s work (again what I’ve seen, primarily her exhibit last year at Twist) is also abstract, but it’s fleshier and more expressive. McDaniel’s drawings represent on a microscopic level yeast and taste buds, a visual essay on the phenomenon of tasting wine. But, there’s more—JJ Jones will present his 12 Minutes of Christmas performance, where he encloses himself in a big plastic globe and sings Christmas carols until the air inside runs out, about 12 minutes. He will repeat this performance at the top of the hour on Gallery Crawl night. It’s like David Blaine without the international media attention.

Estel, Branch Out: Artists Interpret the Holidays Cynthia Bullinger has had artists associated with the gallery put together pieces that interpret the symbols of the holidays. There are some of Sean O’Meallie’s clever and slick wood sculpture, and ornaments made from cut-up Metrocards by Desi Minchillo, who turned in one of the best shows at Estel last year. There are 9 other artists in the show, including Mr. Hooper.

The Arts Company, Wood, Canvas, and Clay. This group show features artists new to The Arts Company: furniture-maker and painter Randy Shull, mixed media artist Maria-Louise Coil, painter Sarah Emerson, and sculptor Krista Grecco.

Tinney Contemporary, Lost Boys of Sudan. Art work from the Sudanese refugees living in Nashville and making art under the guidance of photographer Jack Spencer.

Downtown Presbyterian Church, Art from the Congregation and Friends. This is the second or third time we’ve done this, ask members of the congregation and friends to bring in a couple of works of art from home to explain. I’ve finally contributed a couple of things this year.

Watkins, Senior exhibits by Jenn Campbell, Shauna Currier and Lisa Deal. All three are doing photography. I’ve seen Lisa’s work in other media, including installations, although this sounds like it will be “straight” photography.

Plowhaus at TALS, Art and Artisans Holiday Show. Affordable art from folks like Andee Rudloff, Ayjey, Carrie Mills, Denny Adcock, Franne Lee, Marlynda Augelli, Miranda Herrick, Tracy Ratliff, and many others. The reception is actually on December 26!

Sera Davis, In a Nut$hell: Under a Grand. The title is pretty self-explanatory. I don’t have information on the artists included.

Mir Gallery, August Hampton. The new gallery in the Arcade, this month with mixed media work on paper and canvas by Hampton.

Gallery One, Group Holiday Show.

Firefinch, Sarah Shearer and Laura Baisden. One-night only “trunk show” of Sarah’s paintings and prints by Baisden. This is at Firefinch’s downtown location on Church near Printer’s Alley. 6-9.

ASK Apparel open house, 5001 Indiana. ASK Apparel is an enterprise by Ali, Sarah and Kate Bellos, who are getting together with the Connect 12 artists group and Thistle Farms to offer art and crafts for sale to benefit four local community organizations (including the homeless meals programs at my church). 2-6 p.m.

December 7

The Rutledge, in.FORM.all fundraiser. A fundraiser for the Happy Tails Humane Society with work by Merry Beth Myrick, Shonna Sexton, Arlene Bates, Judy Klich, Hans Mooy, Jessica Helmey, Gina Emmanuel and Betsy Clapsaddle. 3-6 p.m.

December 10

Gordon Jewish Community Center, Mel Davenport. Black and white Deco-inspired paintings and Pop Art inspired work. Reception from 7-9.

December 12

Renaissance Center (Dickson), Jennifer Stoneking-Stewart. An exhibit by a printmaker who has recently joined the faculty at Belmont.

December 13

Ruby Green, The Best Private Collection in Nashville. From the artist listed, the title may not be hyperbole—Marina Abramovic, Raymond Pettibon, Picasso, Man Ray, Annie Liebowitz, and R. Crumb. This exhibit is drawn from pieces owned by an anonymous private collector in Nasvhille who agreed to lend the art to Ruby Green. In addition to big names nationally, the collection includes work by the best Nashville artists, like Chris Scarborough, Sam Dunson, and Bob Durham.

magpie, etc., Mark Sloniker. A mixed media installation from an artist who creates elaborate scenes with cartoon-like characters.

December 26

Plowhaus at TALS, Art and Artisans Holiday Show. This is the reception for the affordable art show that’s opening on December 6.

Couple of Watkins Senior Shows

I finally got over to Watkins to see a couple of the student shows.

Mai Lick has an utterly likable exhibit, Earthly Delights. It's a dizzy paean to things that are bad for you--sculptures of candy, cupcakes, pills, lollypops, and cigarettes (and real condoms) piled up, with paintings of the sweets, all of it done in a palette that needs a name--sugary pinks, reds, oranges, greens, it made me think of Amy Sillman's colors, but this pops up lots of other places. The parts also reminded me of Wayne Thiebaud's cakes and Red Grooms' stuff, and the accumulations of material made me think of Vadis Turner, who's on my mind since they included several pics of her work to go along with my article in the latest issue of Number (now discretely stacked in galleries all over Nashville). Mai makes a point that's kind of obvious, but worth making, that all this stuff that's bad for you is undeniably pleasurable. That's why we want to indulge in these things. Pleasure gets drowned out in the emphasis on fear.

Fear runs through all of Adam Nicholson's work here. It's an extended riff on government secrecy and conspiracies going out of control, taken through an interesting lens--Dwight Eisenhower's promotion of the interstate highway system and his warning against the military-industrial complex. Nicholson includes several cartoon-style narrative drawings, sculptures, and video. They cast the interstate highway system as a kind of invasive growth that wraps its tendrils around the folds of the human brain and that introduces "development" that really consists of knocking things down, all the while people work in underground labs on fantasy weapons. The capstone element is a sculptural bust of Eisenhower perched on a stand made of auto parts--seat belts, shock absorbers, wiring. The exhibit as a whole sure has a strong paranoid element, casting the interstate highway system not just as something wracked with unintended consequences, but part of the takeover of society and politics by shadow forces trading destruction and liberty for profits.

These exhibits will probably be up through the weekend if you are in town and can swing by Watkins.

Viewing Notes: de Balincourt

Finally got over to Vanderbilt to see the Jules de Balincourt show. The pieces Joseph Whitt put together make a lot of sense as a group. I want to just run through impressions in sort of the sequence they occurred to me, taking some license. And these will be rough notes tonight. I might polish them later.

The first thing that struck me was how vivid some of the color is. Several paintings are dominated by the bright, almost day-glo colors of spray paint and tagging. It's a quality that doesn't come across in jpegs. A reddish/pinkish color dominates the first painting (going through widdershins), a picture of a bulletin board covered with blank notices. I'm pretty sure I read someone else point out the connection to the postings after the WTC attack. So you start with this image of disaster, the apocalypse that happened in real life, not just our imaginings.

You have images of collapse throughout. The postcard image for the show is one where a group of masked characters have invaded a Hollywood hills house, hanging out and partying. In another, masked figures steal or carry animals away from a house in the hills, a helicopter overhead blaring down its searchlight. Another image of a desolate street, post riot, has a multi-colored beam of light shooting overhead. These Southern California images of desolation and disorder reminded me of Octavia Butler.

Against the images of desolation you've got images of a kind of self-indulgent cluelessness--naked people at picnic table on a tropical beach, some sort of Club Med, or people scatterred through a room, disco ball overhead, blissing out on a raindbow that winds through the room. They've got candles burning in little bunches, which is another connecting element--the interloping partiers on the terrace have candles lit, and one sculpture is a sort of mannequin corpse laden with bunches of candles. The candles bring to mind meditation practices, a leisure time activity for priveleged people, but also power outages, as civilization temporarily stumbles backwards.

The images reflect the cultural environment as much as the political or social environment. One almost incidental painting has Neil Young's name in a cursive script, highlighted with different colors. It's like a high school student's fan-boy or fan-girl doodling. It's all about the pleasure of pop culture. And a lot of the material in here connects to pop cultural reference points. The colors remind me of graffiti, and some of the paintings, like the one of the people grabbing the rainbows, are in part done in a spray paint technique. Even the images of catastrophe and collapse speak as much to the world of movies and TV shows where the apocalypse is a popular trope, going all the way back to Twilight Zone episodes where someone finds themselves alone in an abandonned city.

A few pictures step out into more concretely political territory--an open boat filled with dark-skinned passengers cruising into the lights of a big city, or stern men seated around a big table (this one reminded me of one of Oswaldo Guayasamin's paintings, it was a series of paintings called something like Meeting at the Pentagon).

Overall, I was impressed with how densely stuff piled up in these paintings--political and cultural overtones, a willingness to indulge in the pure pleasure of bright colors, overlapping elements that tie the paintings together into different packages. Some of this sensation is due to Joseph's choice of paintings and position in the gallery, and he's certainly brought out those qualities through his curatorial choices.

The density of the work means that a work like Remembering Our Great Dead Heroes--its those words underneath multicolored curlicues--could be a reference to war dead, but in context those words and traces of color could be heroes from any cultural realm--maybe the heroes are Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.

Visual Arts events update but really self-promotion

I’m sending out a late month update primarily in the interests of self-promotion, but will add a few other events to salve my conscience. The self-promotion part is that I’m playing a show this Saturday afternoon at noon at Twist. That’s right, noon. We’ve set up this show for a group from North Carolina, Savage Knights, who are on their way to gigs in Louisville and Chicago (playing at the Hungry Brain there). As an opener or closer (we’ll see), Joseph Hudson and I are playing. He plays piano and accordion with my saxes. We’re working with material that has a lot in common with one of my great heroes, Fred Anderson of Chicago, but that might not be entirely obvious since it’s overlaid with things like minimalist obsessive repetitive patterns.

So there’s a few other events and openings coming up this weekend. And then it’s Thanksgiving—I hope everyone has a great holiday.

As always, if you have an email list of your own, feel free to forward this.

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Nov. 20

Frist, Susan Edwards lecture on photography. The director of the Frist Center takes center stage to deliver a lecture “Is the Medium the Message?” as part of the center’s photography lecture series to accompany their exhibit of works from the Eastman House. Yes, it is a consideration of McLuhan’s ideas as they relate to photography from a phenomenological, sociological, and aesthetic point of view. The lecture is at 6:30.

Nov. 21

Gallery F, Wish List. The second show at Gallery F features work by students from the TSU art department. This department really seems to be blooming, as evidenced by the work on display at the Frist last year. This might have work by some of

those artists. Sabine Schlunk tells me the students are pushing into some experimental territory in their pieces for this show, and I think she’s been encouraging them in this direction. In that spirit, Ash Lusk and Jared Freihoefer will provide “spontaneous sound performances” at the opening.

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

Nabit Gallery, Sewanee, April Hannah. Hannah is a Brooklyn-based artist who integrates chance elements into 2- and 3-D work by start with forms generated by automatic drawing.

Nov. 22

Twist, Savage Knights and the Hudson-Maddox Complex. This is that show at Twist. Jack Silverman did a nice write-up in th

e Scene with this description of Savage Knights: “instrumental music that blends the noirish intensity of a Tarantino soundtrack with Ethiopiques-style harmonies, splashes of Moog, droning horns and dissonant explosions.”

Plowhaus at TALS, Something Green: A Children’s Art Show About the Environment. Plowhaus asked 50 children ages 5-10 to make art works showing what the environment means to them. This is

an inherently good idea and I do not doubt it when the Plowhaus’ PR says the children have made some amazing works of art. This show nicely continues Plowhaus’ tradition of community engagement. They will have the opening from 2-6 on the 22^nd (so come to our concert at Twist, then go to TALS) and is only going to be up through November 30.

Cumberland, Small Packages. Cumberland’s annual holiday show of small works mostly by gallery artists intended to be a bit more affordable, more in the gift range.

It happened!

I wish we all could be in Chicago tonight.

They asked John Lewis whom he thinks of at this time. I want to remember Harold Washington. Tonight reminds me of how happy I was when he was elected mayor of Chicago in 1983. Thank you Harold for giving us some hope then, you were taken from us too early. May Barack Obama fulfill that promise.

Now's the time