Meek's Cutoff

Currently showing at the Belcourt, Meek's Cutoff is Kelly Reichardt's story of 3 families making their way to Oregon in 1845, among the first Americans settlers moving into the territory in large numbers. Their party is led by Stephen Meek, a mountain man type who dresses the part with buckskin jacket and long matted beard. You get the sense that even at this point in the West, he was self-conscious about image, marketing himself to these families by looking precisely what they would expect of a frontier guide. And he's gotten them lost taking a short cut to the Wilamette Valley from the main Oregon Trail. So they wander apparently aimlessly in the Eastern Oregon desert and before long have to turn their trek into a search for water.

Along the way they encounter and take captive a Native American man--unarmed, speaking a language none of them understand, which leaves them free to speculate about his motives--will he take them to water, lead them back to a larger band from his tribe, lead them on a suicide march. Or maybe he's as lost as they are. The encounter between settlers and the indigenous people starts with nearly complete incomprehension on both sides. Understanding derives from rudimentary gestures of interpersonal power--Michelle Williams' character helps their captive so he'll owe her something, and it forms the basis for a sliver of a connection between them that in the end dominates the group in which people otherwise fail to gain credibility with each other.

In the sermon in church last weekend my minister talked about moral and spiritual space. Space looms large in Meek's Cutoff. The spaces are open, dry, with the most minimal ground-hugging vegetation in a dormant state. The characters wander through it. The space itself threatens to overwhelm them and destroy them, putting too much distance between them and water, giving them no guideposts to lead their way. This space becomes a moral crucible, breaking them down but on the other side they don't build a new sense of direction in a moral universe, but just seem defeated. After a process of trying to sort out reality and truth from misperception and illusion, the characters resign themselves to not reaching truth or insight, just a political accommodation and a need to plow ahead in some direction. The movie ends without resolving what appears to be the main drama, whether they find water. In the end it doesn't matter, because of the moral space they've been through. The people who will or will not reach the Willamette Valley have been damaged by thsi time in the desert. They've shed so much, such as the expectation of comfort and connection as well as the fundamental idea that what matters is to arrive at a right decision.

I haven't seen Kelly Reichardt's earlier films, which were set in the more contemporary Northwest. I wish I had seen them, because it looks like she is making a more sustained argument about the moral character of the society that emerged from the frontier experience. Rather than ennoble the people who went through it and form the basis for an almost utopian society, the Frontier Experience damaged Americans, created trauma that had physical, epistemological, and moral dimensions. The frontier on some level defeated people, who today wander through a different kind of desolate landscape, where the economy threatens more than beckons and social connections break down.

Obscure abstract

One roughly breaks the universe of art into people you’ve heard of and those you haven’t. You trust that this sorting represents a measure of relative importance. The names of the major painters of each era are easily accessible. When you run across an unfamiliar name, my first reaction is not “how did I miss this” but some assurance that the figure occupies a more esoteric place in art history. I don’t think I was familiar with Georges Lacombe before I ran across a distinctly Gauguin-esque painting at the Norton Simon Museum, African-mask like figures gathering chestnuts in a strange forest dominated by bright reds. I’m sure Lacombe’s name rolls readily off the tongue of a connoisseur of the Nabis, but I’m complacent enough to assume my ignorance doesn’t represent a serious gap—in fact, these little gaps allow me the pleasure of discovery even at my advanced age.

This certainty breaks down as you move closer to the present in history.  For contemporary artists, the prominence of artists in my consciousness, if you did one of those word maps that weight the frequency of terms in a document or other source, is to some extent and within certain bounds, a random process. While it may be impossible to avoid John Currin, I track on Jiha Moon, who is quite interesting, but there are undoubtedly a hundred others of comparable importance of whom I’m utterly ignorant.

On one hand the sorting process of historical significance has not started. 40 years from now maybe people will discuss Bob Durham rather than Currin. I can imagine a case where a “provincial” painter (not residing in New York, LA, Europe, or China) like Bob gets rediscovered, like someone from a small Dutch town in the 17^th century.

We also will have to see if the end of a unifying art historical narrative means that artists from our day will always remain part of an undifferentiated blob of 1,000s of names.

I thought I had a reasonably good grasp on the post-war years, so I would know what to expect from Surface Truths: Abstract Painting in the Sixties. a show at the Norton Simon Museum. Instead, it made me feel quite stupid. The first room was dominated by names I did not recognize at all: Frank Lobdell, Harvey Quaytman, Takeshi Kawashima, Ray Parker, Thomas Downing, Ralph Humphrey, and Stephen Greene.  These guys  were all in the first of the two rooms. There were also names more familiar to me: Agnes Martin, Frankenthaler, Ellsworth Kelly, Stella, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin. But I only reached them after a series of unfamiliar names that made me wonder if this was completely an alternative history of art in the 60s.

My parents are great about recognizing names like these.  They know more about art than I do by leaps and bounds. But I’m sure I’ll occasionally be able to pull the same trick 40 years from now. “Oh yes, Tara Donovan, she piled up mounds of uniform, mass-produced common objects—plastic cups, pencils—to create not so miniature worlds.”

Thomas Downing was DC-based, so I’ve probably heard his name. A grid of large circles in various shades of reds. They look machine made, but they were hand painted free-hand. The variety and sequence of colors has a pleasing rhythm, with a distinct but not over-bearing pulse. The painting goes well with Ralph Humphrey’s painting, which also deals with gradations of tonality, in this case a surface covered with green, mostly olive, but loose variations in hue and paint thickness that give this painting a complex texture.

One of the points of this exhibit is that even after Abstract Expressionism, as Pop was taking center stage, some people kept on in abstraction. It’s not a very interesting idea. Yes, people kept painting. Rackstraw Downs’ little book of remembrances describes his experience of art in New York consisting of a very different set of painters. 

The paintings in this show are very fine. The Downing and Humphreys paintings are satisfying.  The work by Ray Parker consists of two large patches of dark green hovering in an abstract ground. Again, they are painted loosely, the shapes not precisely the same or neatly trimmed off. The color of the two differs subtly, and some sections have been built up and worked over more.  Frank Lobdell’s work is a sea of vivid orange-red with chains of marks crossing it on diagonals, like some sort of track or a distorted rendering of some sort of figure.  The primary chain has thick dark outlines filled with yellows and oranges. The crossing chain consists mostly of faint outlines that look overpainted, partially eradicated. The colors, between the background and the yellows and others in the chain remind me of a stone I had as part of small rock collection I had as a kid, which had the most vivid oranges and yellows occurring together. I don’t remember what the mineral was. I don’t think it was anything precious, just pretty.

As I would expect, California and Western artists are well-represented—Lobdell was in California most of his career, as were Robert Irwin and Larry Bell, and I associate Martin with New Mexico. Of course, it seems true more often than not that shows about this period make an effort to acknowledge the West Coast scene. Several of them have the same story—grew up in the Midwest, served in the war moved to California. The exhibit includes a black and white photo from the period of each artist. These are pictures from that time before the 60s counter-culture started, the men with clean white shirts and short hair, serious and optimistic.

Many of the paintings in this show do connect in my mind with minimalism. There is the most subtle Agnes Martin I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something. A grid of rectangles in an overlapping brick-wall pattern done in pencil. The lines are all light, but their thickness varies distinctly.  The piece by Robert Irwin is mostly a monochrome field of a subdued red.  The only features are two horizontal lines that run nearly but not quite border to border. One is in a contrasting slate blue color. The other echoes this line above, in the same color as the ground but distinguished by extra layers of paint, making it present through texture.

The paintings in this show are uniformly pretty large, which gives them the heft to stand alone and makes a show of about 20 or so objects sufficient. Each is sort of big gulp. The assessment might be unfair, but I left feeling these were as I said very fine paintings, paintings you can enjoy, but I don’t know if they are important.  The fact of these paintings and painters, and of Rackstraw Downes’ account of his New York, can lead you to question whether there really is a narrative for art history, or whether the confusion we experience today is all there really is.

Maybe that narrative isn’t really about art at all, but about cultural impact, and that’s something else.  What we end up writing about is not what’s good, but what makes and impression and has an impact, even a transitory impact. So what artists today have an impact? And on whom? Other artists? Or a broader society, though maybe limited to those engaged with elite culture. So who? Matthew Barney or Jeff Koons? Some subset of the Chinese. Ai Weiwei if things keep going the way they are.

Amendment 10-A

The Presbyterian Church in its inimitable way has found a way to wrap a passionate, critical and potentially divisive issue in the driest possible of coverings, a vote on a small change in wording to our Book of Order, a document organized in sections and subsections that lays out how to run the denomination and the churches within in. We are organized in a kind of federal structure, with local bodies (presbyteries) that are parts of regions (synods) that come together in the national General Assembly. When we change the rules, we have to get a majority of the presbyteries to agree.

Tonight the Twin Cities presbytery voted to change the standards for ordination, giving the amendment the majority vote it needed so it now reads


Standards for ordained service reflect the church’s desire to submit joyfully to the Lordship of Jesus Christ in all aspects of life (G-1.0000). The governing body responsible for ordination and/or installation (G.14.0240; G-14.0450) shall examine each candidate’s calling, gifts, preparation, and suitability for the responsibilities of office. The examination shall include, but not be limited to, a determination of the candidate’s ability and commitment to fulfill all requirements as expressed in the constitutional questions for ordination and installation (W-4.4003). Governing bodies shall be guided by Scripture and the confessions in applying standards to individual candidates
 
That seems pretty straight-forward. The thing is that it replaces language that stated that anyone ordained (ministers, elders and deacons) needed to live in "fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman or chastity in singleness." In other words you couldn't be gay. But now that's gone. By taking out those words, we have decided to let gay men and women become ministers!

The denomination has been arguing about this for years, decades really. As a mainline denomination, we are pretty liberal but have conservative members and churches as well. We've been trying to avoid the collision of these two points of view for many reasons, but a practical one is that we've been losing members and one assumes that some people and congregations will bolt with this decision. We've already had some of the more conservative churches spin off in separate denominations. But every year that went by with this unresolved was more untenable to people like me. When I without question believe that gay people should be full members of my church, my society, my friendships, everything, how could I continue on in a church that wouldn't acknowledge that? Now we have. Some people had gotten frustrated waiting and had joined the Congregationalists, who are theologically similar to us. Now I feel good about sticking around.

One thing that's particularly heartening is that my Presbytery, Middle Tennessee, was expected to vote no but voted yes. It was kind of close, but it was a yes. Overall, the amendment has passed relatively easily. We seem really ready for this. It doesn't feel like an ambivalent endorsement.

As far as I'm concerned, this decision allows the Presbyterian Church (USA) to be who it truly is, and to realize the best things it has to offer the world. To manifest and live God's Kingdom more.

bin Laden is dead

The TV's on with the coverage of bin Laden's death. Crowds have gathered outside the White House gates, at ground zero in New York and Times Square, maybe other places. After talk in church about peace, peace, peace, the celebrations seem unseemly. But inevitable. It's like the crowds on VE and VJ day. Spontaneous. The proportions seem off, crowds celebrating the death of one man (and in DC singing Na-Na Na Na, Hey Hey Good Bye like a playoff game), and it's not clear to what extent we are done. In WWII, there was the relief at knowing that the mass mobilizations of opposing sides had come to its cruel end. I do hope that this signals the end of something virulent in the world, and that rebellion becomes the new thing that pushes holy war off the stage. And that we now rapidly accelerate our disengagement as enforcers, and get out of Afghanistan.

Images of Lambert

As a younger man, but not quite young, I entered a new kind of life I never expected, part of the traditional, mainstream business world. A place where I could easily find myself eating lunch at a colleague's club listening while the others talk about golf. At that time, some time ago now, I became one of those men, mostly men, whose daily life involves familiarity with the airports across the country we pass through every day.

If you speak of the past, even past not so long past like when I stepped into this life, you speak of a time when there was more. In those spaces of the air transit system, more airlines, more flights, more seats. Antediluvian, before the World Trade Center attacks, the years of war, the mismanaged economy and the subsequent collapse.

I remember Lambert Airport in St. Louis when TWA existed and TWA had its central hub there. TWA used a strongly centralized hub and spoke system and every flight might have flown there, especially if you lived in the Central time zone. Arriving at Lambert you found chaos, everyone had connections and had to cover a lot of distance quickly because of the spread out layout.

The main terminal at Lambert was one of those temples of modernity airports like the TWA terminal at Kennedy and Dulles, all of them express a sense of air travel as exciting, all sweep and flow, not the bogged down tortuous experience we know today. Kennedy and Duller were designed by Saarinen. Lambert was designed by Minoru Yamasaki. Same guy who designed the World Trade Center.

Even the name Trans-World Airlines carried the strong scent of nostalgia for the recent past, like PanAm, If you picture an airplane in 1962, you probably picture the logo of one of those now defunct lines.

By the time I started my new life, before the Fall, terminals were becoming irrelevant to the flying experience, a place to run through quickly. I don't see why any airport authority would invest heavily in what travelers encounter before security.

In 2001 American swallowed TWA. This was good news for me, consolidated frequent flyer program into one I used all the time, more flight options in one place. Of course American didnt' need a hub in St. Louis since it had hubs in Dallas and Chicago, sandwiching St. Louis. Lambert withered. American cut back flights, shut down wings of the airport. Very little improvement occurred in those wings. It now feels rundown. Like lots of facilities, not just airports, in the mid-section of the country.

It was a nice surprise to see many scenes from Lambert in the film Up in the Air. There was George Clooney, in the Admiral's Club I know. People with mundane lives like mine feel a frisson when they see a glamorous star in our shoes. I can pretend he is me, I am him. Even if the film was off pitch about the details of the lives we lead, those men, mostly men, who pack the early morning weekday airport parking shuttles.

Lambert was an apt location for this movie about economic destruction, about the man who delivers the news of human obsolescence and feels left with nothing while he tries to remain the last one standing. Clooney's Ryan Bingham is completely without power and authority. As a man who sticks with the program he gets to have a level of comfort and security, but much else is stripped from him. The economy damages in more ways than one. Clooney's been here before with Michael Clayton.

Lambert today carries the physical scars of the economic processes that have broken down the promise of modernity. The great achievements, and the promise of happiness have been miniaturized, folded down into a small device screen.

I am convinced that in time we will see that the unraveling in more and more physical processes as we overuse, wear out and heat up the planet.

Last week Lambert appeared on screen, this time in the grainy, voyeuristic security camera that showed tornadoes hitting the facility and tearing up American's gates. Passengers and TSAs run through the councourse, then lights go out, the sealed spaces get punctured, and wind and air pressure effects suck signs and trashcans along the floor.

This summer promises to be one of steady destruction, brutal storms every week touching down here and there. You know we won't always be able to afford to rebuild. Eventially, we'll scrape the bottom of the barrel and will have to let some stuff go, like the houses on my block that are burned out and abandoned but no one--not the owners, not the city--have the money to tear them down.

What comes after modernity, with its slick, sweeping temples, is not post-modernism but ruins.

Nashville Visual Arts Events September 2010

It’s like 2005 revisited. Is it too soon for nostalgia? With Kristina Arnold, Amanda Dillingham, and Jason Driskill all showing in the Arcade, it’s a return to a happier time, long ago, when… OK, I’ll snap out of it. Kristina’s last show at Twist was really good, and I wish I’d had time to take my notes on that and turn them into a longer piece of writing. And representing the good new days, TSU and Watkins have faculty art shows. I have not kept track with comings and goings at TSU, but it looks like there are several names new to me—given what’s been coming out of that department, it will worth finding out more.

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.

September 1

Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery, Tyler Hicks. Photographs of the conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq take over the entire course of the Long War.

September 2

Zeitgeist, James Perrin. A distinctive younger painter, the latest paintings I’ve seen have overlaid new elements on the abstract grammar he’s been working with.

Cumberland, Margaret Ellis. One-night show of jewelry.

Vanderbilt Space 204, Vesna Pavlovic and Amelia Winger- Bearskin.

September 3

Midtown Care, Manuel Zeitlin and Todd McDaniel. A good pairing, Manuel and Todd share an architectural style—an off-growth of Manuel’s work as an architect, and of Todd’s ongoing creation of abstract forms. Opening reception from 4-6

Watkins, Faculty Exhibit. Listed on their website as Friday but the 4^th of September, my guess is the Friday part is right—that’s usually when they have their openings.

Sewanee University Art Gallery, Pradip Malde Two groups of platinum-palladium prints that play off each other—one of the artist’s wife and son, the other of Greek statues. Artist’s talk at 4:30.

September 4

Blend, Amanda Dillingham and Jason Driskill Jason and Amanda were part of a great small collective, which started as the Secret Show series when they were at Watkins and then was known by the space on Chestnut St. Jason has since moved to San Francisco but the members of the group have been staying in touch. Amanda and Jason are calling this show Splintered Self in reference to questions of identity and the body, which has been a shared interest for them for some time. Since this is Blend, there is a community/public aspect of the show—in this case they are inviting the public to “submit jpg images by email of their faces for a collaborative video piece to be featured” in the show. Those submissions should be directed to splinteredselfartshow@gmail.com

Twist, Kristina Arnold and Matthew Carver. Kristina has moved to Kentucky, and extended her long-standing interest in health and the body to environmental health, and has started to reflect on the social and material landscape of the semi-rural, semi-suburban places that fill in the space outside the major cities of our region. These experiences factored into her last installation at Twist and from her artist’s statement I expect another foray into that realm.

The Arts Company, John Welles Bartlett and Julianna Swaney Bartlett is a printmaker, Swaney is an illustrator, from opposite sides of the country. A curator, Brian Downey brought these two artists together and asked them to do a piece in the other’s style.

Rymer, Charles Clary. Clary builds wall-based sculptures out of overlapping loops of material that look like topographic maps in 3D. If I’m remembering previous works right, this round stretches the color palette more.

Estel, Beth Keitt Brubaker

Tinney, Todd Alexander Show continues

Downtown Presbyterian Church, Children’s Art Show. Every summer our church does an art project with the kids in and affiliated with DPC, and the children always surprise us with the unexpected and acute ideas that come through. This may mean more to those of us who know these children, but it seems pretty remarkable. This year it sounds like they’ve taken it to a new level, turning the smaller chapel into one big installation representing the human body and a kind of spiritual journey through it. That’s the short version—there’s more going on then I can quite fill in here. The show’s title will give you some idea: “Consuming Catastrophe: The Comedy of the Heart; A Play in Ate Parts.” At the opening there will be art activities for kids.

September 9

TSU Faculty Biennial. The participants this year include Herman Beasley, Samuel Dunson, Cynthia Gadsden, Xingkui Guo, Jodi Hays, Jennifer Leach, Micheal McBride, Jane Allen McKinney, Scott McRoberts, Kaleena Tucker, and Paul Zeppelin. The reception runs 2-5.

September 16

Open Lot, Session #5. The latest in Open Lot’s combination of music and art events, this one featuring the Black Swans.

September 17

Billups, Untitled Fall show

September 18

LeQuire, Figurative Art show. Figurative art is LeQuire’s raison d’être, which they celebrate every year in a show dedicated to the human figure. The artists featured this year are Joshua Bronaugh, Greg Decker, and Andrew Woolbright.

Nashville Visual Arts Events August 2010

Comings and goings in the Arcade this month: First, Twist Gallery celebrates its 4^th birthday. At the same time, Davis Art Advisory has closed up its physical exhibit space for now. So Twist, to celebrate its birthday, is expanding into the space Sera was leasing. Twist is inaugurating its new space with an exhibit by Todd Greene. Who was the first artist to show at Twist, and the first to show when Twist had its second space down the hall.

Got this out too late to get the openings on Thursday night. For one, Zeitgeist has the latest round of its Right to Assemble group show—this installment includes Phillip Carpenter, Vesna Pavlović, Brent Stewart, and John Whitten. And LeQuire opened a show in late July called the “Dark Palette” to complement their previous show on the “Influence of White.”

And getting this out late enough that I’m going to settle for several entries that are just the venue and artist. Sorry I wasn’t able to do more.

Next Thursday (the 12^th) Brady Sharp and I are playing in Birmingham as part of The Improvisor Festival, organized by LaDonna Smith. All sorts of great people are playing there all month.

Winter’s Bone is playing a few more times at the Belcourt this weekend. It’s quite amazing. And the last few Kurosawa films, new print of Breathless, and so on.

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.

August 7

Gallery F, The Fisherwoman: An Artistic Response to the Gulf Oil Crisis. Group show with work by Iris Kleinschmidt, Erin Plew, Matt Christy, Adriana Larios, Patricia Earnhardt, Robert Bruce Scott, Channing Bailey, Maya Moore and dance performances by Maya Moore, Megan Harrold, Lily Heine, and Adrienne Bailey with music/sound by Tony Youngblood and Charlie Rauh.

Blend, Ben Vitualla One of Blend’s founders, Ben has put together a project to address crime in East Nashville. He’s led community activities like video and art projects, questionnaires, and information areas, with life-size figures of children were painted at the events by attendees and then displayed outside of their homes as public art in private spaces in East Nashville neighborhoods In addition to the opening at Blend, there will be related events at the Tomato Festival in 5 Points on August 14 and an artist talk at Blend on Saturday the 21^st.

Twist, Mitch O’Connell and Todd Greene. In the original Twist gallery, their show by Chicago artist O’Connell continues. But this time there will be live tattooing by Kustom Thrills. As mentioned in the opening, Todd’s got an exhibit in the new space/Davis Art Advisory’s old space. And there will be music—by Todd’s group Bulb and Eastern Block.

The Arts Company, Annual Avant-Garage Sale and equestrian paintings by Marek Bohemus

Rymer,SCAD MFA graduates. Tony and Margy Rich, Christopher Priore, Nora Mulheren, Jonathan Yoerger and Masumi Nyui.

Estel,.R. Ellis Orrall

Tinney, Todd Alexander

August 10

Open Lot, Audrey Chen and Luca Marini. Audrey is a cellist and vocalist, trained classically at a high level, who in the last several years has burst into the experimental and improvised music world. She’s performed in all sorts contexts with a lot of different collaborators and a surprisingly large number of fairly regular groups. Here she is performing with the percussionist Marini as Kamama.

August 14

5 Points, Tomato Art Show

August 21

Gallery One, Thomas Monaghan

Gallery F, Ripple Effect. Collaborative project led by French artist Corinne Spielewoy involving 26 local artists who have created a set of related pieces, done in a sequential fashion. At the opening the Scarritt-Bennett resident artists will also have a studio open house.

August 22

Harpeth Hall, Lori Putnam At the Marnie Sheridan Gallery, opening from 3-5

August 28

Billups, Diorama-o-rama. As the name suggest, dioramas! Participating artists include Jeff Bertrand, Charles V. Bennett, Dustin Dirt, Brooke E., Dave Fritts, Brandt & Aurora Hardin, Mai Harris, Julian Herrera, Jessica Hill, Jonny Lashley, Kevin Presley, David Pound, Amanda Sekulow, Brittany Danielle Smith and Greg Veach.

Open Lot, Printervention.

September 1

Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery, Tyler Hicks. Photographs of the conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq take over the entire course of the Long War.

Nashville Visual Arts Events July 2010

I haven’t gotten much of anything for the last half of the month, but there’s probably something coming up and more than likely something I’ve gotten notices on but I’m missing. Several good things opening on Art Crawl night. Tinney’s show should be good—Longobardi and Prusa have both shown engaging work on previous occasions. Laura Chenicek (at Blend) is always thoughtful, and the work at MIR sounds like it should be good.

Local galleries are continuing their events in support of Rusty Wolfe and Kim Brooks’ Finer Things Gallery, devastated by the flood. The participating galleries will show work from Finer Things and pass on the proceeds to Rusty and Kim. This month it’s LeQuire, Local Color/Midtown, and Zeitgeist:

July 1 (5-8pm) LeQuire Gallery

July 8 (5-8pm) Local Color/Midtown Gallery

July 9 (5-8pm) Zeitgeist Gallery

See Facebook for more info.

Belcourt’s got really good films coming up. I Am Love, opening on July 9 and probably only up for a week, and Winter’s Bone opening July 16 are getting amazing reviews. And the Kurosawa series continues.

Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery opened two new exhibits in June that I didn’t get into the listings: American art from the collection, and a survey of drawings also from their collection.

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.

July 1

Cumberland, Bob Durham talk. Bob’s a great painter, and always a lot of fun to talk to. He’s got a reputation as a kind of satirist, and he enjoys cracking jokes in his paintings, but there are times when he stops you dead in your tracks with an effortless integration of classical images and forms into his work.

Zeitgeist, Kristi Hargrove, Todd McDaniel, Andrew Smaldone, Ruth Zelanski, and Derek Cote The second installment of Zeitgeist’s summer group show. Kristi’s work keeps evolving, starting from a foundation of high level draftsmanship but that keeps messing with what you can see and increasingly questions the surface she’s working on. I realized I haven’t seen Todd’s work in a while. It looks like he’s working with more schematic elements that the abstractions of his that first caught my attention.

Oosimaginary, Ovvio Arte. Oosimaginary is a 3-person performance group that does improvisation that incorporates music, dance, and theatre. They are also performing Friday night (July 2). Performance at 8:00.

Gallery One, Chad Awalt. A sculptor of figurative work in wood.

July 2

Center for the Arts (Murfreesboro), Ezzy Harrold and Charlie Rauh. Guitarist Rauh and dancer Harrold have done a series of experimental dance/composition collaborations in the last year or so at various venues in town. This is their latest and apparently their last local performance as they head off to New York. Nikki McFadden and 84001 are also performing. Center for the Arts, Murfreesboro, 110 West College Street, 7:30-9:00

Pandit Ajoy Chakraborty, Music City Sheraton Hotel. A concert of classical Hindustani vocal music presented as part of a Bengali cultural festival this weekend. According to the email I receive, this concert is free but I would double check and make sure that conference registration is not required (www.bangamela.org). The concert starts at 11:30 p.m., and it’s at the Sheraton Music City Hotel, not the temple.

July 3

Tinney, Pam Longobardi, Patricia Bellan-Gillen, Margery Amdur, Carol Prusa, and Peggy Cyphers Longobardi has shown previously at Tinney, with works like wall-mounted collections of monochrome objects that bring to mind the accretion of human debris in the ocean and the transformation of objects from function to form and converging in ways where individuality gets absorbed into the mass. I saw strong emotions in her work, as she responded to devastating chaos in the world with smaller acts of order-making. Her new works are paintings bursting with color. The other artists are billed as new to Tinney. Prusa was in a very nice exhibit at the Frist, Shades of Gray—this show will include finely detailed drawings on domed pieces of acrylic accented with points of light from fiber optics.

MIR, Bernard and Danesha Stallings. This couple have endured the hardships of Bernard’s multiple deployment to Iraq and put their conversations and experiences over those years into works on paper.

Blend, Laura Chenicek For her Blend project, Laura takes on the subject of sexual violence—marital rape, sexual abuse, and incest—in work designed in ways that force viewers to decide how much they want to see. She has done work with similar devices of exposure and multiple surface, but not, in what I’ve seen, dealing with such charged material.

Davis, Urban Project 2. For a second year, Davis is doing a show of graffiti artists and “urban” designers and jewelers. It’s a great change of pace for the Arcade and the Art Crawl.

Twist, Mitch O’Connell. A Chicago artist who whips up wild compositions with tattoo, circus signs, cartoons, and advertising iconography. Not just borrowing from tattoo imagery, O’Connell has done actual tattoo design.

The Arts Company, Chris Beck, Tony Breuer, Judy Nebhut, and Deborah Wait Typical variety from the Arts Company—paintings by Breuer, photos by Nebhut, sculpture by Beck, and Mosaics by Wait.

Rymer, Thomas Petillo, Christopher Rodrigues, Caleb Charland, and Matt Mikulla and Chris Ellis. Petillo, Rodriguez, Charland, and Mikulla are all photographers associated with the Society of Nashville Artistic Photographers (although Matt’s even better known as one of the pioneering gallery/studio owners in the Arcade who used to put out a new body of work every month). Ellis is a sculptor.

Estel, Dana Costello and Moco Sasamoto. Cartoon-like paintings of ambiguous scenes by Costello, biomorphic, vaguely sexual wood sculptures by Sasamoto.

Open Lot, Diet Blood. Another multi-media event at Open Lot, with paintings by Donny Smutz and performances by Dave Cloud, Deluxin’, Square People, Marj, and the Panty Raid burlesque group.

Downtown Presbyterian Church, works related to Magdalene House This exhibit includes Kaaren Engel, Paul Harmon, and others, including women who’ve been through the program, which serves women who have a history of prostitution and drug abuse. The group has had great success with the Thistle Farms line of bath and body products that they design, manufacture, and market.

Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan, Music City Sheraton Another concert at te Bengali cultural festival at the Music City Sheraton, this one featuring Ustad Shahid Parvez Khan on sitar. This one does have an admissions price--$50 or $25 according to the email I received, but again I’d check with the conference on it: www.bangamela.com. It’s scheduled to start at 3:00 in the afternoon.

Nashville Visual Arts Events June 2010

Rusty Wolfe and Kim Brooks’ Finer Things Gallery is one of the great hidden spaces in Nashville—pass through the gates on Nolensville Road and down a short driveway, and you’re in a realm that seems far away from the city, surrounded by a sculpture garden and cut off from the city by trees, with maybe the biggest commerical gallery space in town. All of it perched on the edge of a creek. Bucolic. Except when it rains over a foot in a day. Then it’s a mess. Apparently they had devastating damage from the flood—10 feet of water in the building, sculptures swept away, and in addition to the gallery, the facility includes Rusty’s studio and their living space. Several Nashville galleries are helping out by donating their sales on one day to help out Rusty and Kim. This round robin fundraiser starts on June 3 during the Art After Hours when Cumberland will pitch in with 100% of their sales for the evening. The entire list of dates and galleries is as follows:

June 3 (6-9 pm) Cumberland Gallery

June 11 (5-8pm) The Arts Company

June 24 (5-8pm) Gallery One

July 1 (5-8pm) LeQuire Gallery

July 8 (5-8pm) Local Color/Midtown Gallery

July 9 (5-8pm) Zeitgeist Gallery

See Facebook for more info

A couple of shows I’m particularly looking forward to this month: Sisavanh Phouthhavong and Jarrod Houghton at Tinney and David Hellams at Downtown Presbyterian Church. And in addition to the shows opening I’m listing here, Rymer and Davis have shows continuing from May.

William Pope L. is going to be back in town June 13-19 for more shooting on the “Versioning Nashville” video project that he is doing with TSU. Contact TSU if you want to be involved: gallery@tnstate.edu

And the Belcourt has the new Harmony Korine movie, Trash Humpers, for a few more days, then a documentary kind of about Banksy coming up (Exit Through the Gift Shop) and a big series of Kurosawa films that starts with Ran on June 11.

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.

June 3

NCAP Neuhoff Building, Kevin McGarry talk. NCAP is starting a new lecture series with a talk by New York-based critic Kevin McGarry. The event will be a conversation for RSVPs by June 1, but you might check with them and see if you can still send in an RSVP. McGarry’s in town to review Alicia Beach’s show at Seed Space on Chestnut Street. I haven’t seen anything about an opening, but it is listed at being up for all of June and July.

Cumberland, Dane Carder talk. A gallery talk by a young artist showing at Cumberland, whose paintings are drawn from old photographic images.

Zeitgeist, Nicole Baumann, Mark Bynon, Shannon Clark, Joe Saunders, and Patrick Schlafer Zeitgeist continues its tradition of summer group shows with at least longish term gallery artist (Bynon) and some newcomers (at least to me), like Baumann who has recently finished an MFA at the very highly regarded program at VCU and Schlafer who just got his bachelor’s degree from the surprising and challenging program at Lipscomb.

Vanderbilt Space 204, Jennifer Stoneking-Stewart. Exhibit by a printmaker who was teaching at Belmont but is moving to a school in South Carolina next year. Reception from 4-6. The gallery is open 10-4 on weekdays.

June 5

Tinney, Sisavanh Phouthavong and Jarrod Houghton. Independently Phouthavong and Houghton are two of Nashville’s best artists—she’s a painter and he’s a sculptor of life-like scenes. They are also married, and they’ve collaborated on the work in this show. I don’t know if I’ve seen the results of their collaborations—they had a great show together at Ruby Green, which presented separate bodies of work from them (and Erin Anfinson). Even there, some of Houghton’s work was intimately connected to their shared experience, and it is easy to imagine that the work they make together will be coherent and compelling.

Downtown Presbyterian Church, David Hellams. Hellams is known for his brilliant comic figurative drawings, executed in a meticulous hand, but he’s trying something different for the paintings in this show. He’s looking at rooms rather than people, and using very different methods that include layers of canvas. It sounds (and from one image, looks) much rougher than earlier work, but also more tactile and less tightly coded.

Estel, Anna Jaap, Steve Knudson, and Ian Kessler-Gowell. Paintings by Jaap and Knudson, glass by Kessler-Gowell. Jaap’s work has a very specific and uncommon tone, that entwines beauty, even prettiness, with wildness and darkness. It embraces decoration and familiar tropes like botanical forms, but much else lurks within it. It is romantic in the historical sense of the word, with a capital R.

Blend, Ali Bellos Ali’s project is called re:seed, and revolves around creating and disseminating seedballs around town. There are all sorts of seeds, but there’s an emphasis on “phytoremediating plants that can help to repair soils contaminated with heavy metals and organic pollutants, green cover crops that will help to restore nutrients to the soil, and native plants that heal, either through medicinal properties or aesthetic beauty.” In the exhibit and a website (www.alesandra.net), participants can see where the reseeding will occur and suggest other sites. In June there will be a bike tour of the sites and at the end of the growing season the plants will be sampled to analyze them for the presence of metals and the impact of the remediation. The project probably had its origins before the floods but takes on new significance in its aftermath.

MIR, Marc Pewitt. An exhibit of photograms, images made by placing objects directly on light-sensitive paper. It’s an old experimental technique, probably most famously used by Man Ray.

Twist, Margaret Pesek. A body of work that riffs on the imagery of Catholicism, its shrines and icons. Pesek sounds like she approaches this material with a particularly intense engagement with the mystery which these images and objects hold.

The Arts Company, Brother Mel Brother Mel’s annual exhibit at the Arts Company is accompanied this year by a monograph on him written by The Arts Company’s Anne Brown. Brother Mel will be doing a book-signing for that at Davis-Kidd Friday evening. The exhibit at The Arts Company covers the many media this wildly prolific artists works in.

Rymer, Erin Anfinson, Jonathan Ferrara, Michael Brown. Closing reception.

June 8

Zeitgeist, Jonathan Neufeld. Zeitgeist launches another series of cross-disciplinary gallery talks with Neufeld, a philosopher at Vanderbilt whose interests include performance and interpretation, and the philosophies of music, aesthetics, politics, and law.

June 11

Belmont Mansion, Beth Gilmore. Part II of Beth’s senior show opens at Belmont Mansion, where she has worked for many years and which has been a huge source of images for her work. The elements shown in May at Downtown Presbyterian Church included all sorts of twisted Victoriana, like gilt frames burgeoning with computer circuit boards and constructions under bell jars. Reception from 6-8:30 on the 11^th.

June 17

Tennessee State Museum, Bernard de Clavière and Romance of the Horse. Two related shows, one of which features a renowned painter of equestrian subjects who has lived in Nashville since 2002. The State Museum has assembled a selection of equestrian art and artifacts from its own and other local collections to go along with Clavière’s work.

June 18

Frist Center,The Golden Age of Couture and Tokihiro Sato. The couture show was organized by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and looks at fashion houses in London and Paris right after World War II (1947-57). The period covered starts with the establishment of Christian Dior’s house and ends with his death. The V&A is one of the world’s leading collections of design and decorative arts, and it sounds like they’ve got examples of some of the major works by the designers active during these years. In the CAP Gallery, Sato is a photographer who started out as a sculptor and uses the photo medium as a way of capturing light and space. He uses large-format cameras and long exposures to capture light that he moves across a scene. It’s a kind of painting, and also performance.

June 26

Cheekwood, Aaron Rotham. Rothman is a photographer who has put together a site-specific exhibition for Cheekwood’s Temporary Contemporary space.

Art Crawl 1, the Storm, and Art Crawl 2

I had a pleasant time at Art Crawl last night, but it really was just a half-sized version. The Arcade galleries, Estel, and DPC were open, but the 5th Avenue galleries got together and closed. And I guess one of them sent out an email that Crawl was off. Thanks to that and also to the unquestionably foul weather, the crowds were pretty small, at least as long as I was around. I can't remember which one of the galleries sent out the email message, but they said they would reschedule, and that's the point of this post--this is an appendix to my listing to say keep an eye out for word on a rescheduled Art Crawl. Sometime after you've put the Ark back into dry dock. From the conversations I had, the Arcade galleries will run receptions again whenever May Art Crawl 2 gets scheduled.

Nashville Visual Arts Events May 2010

Big month it looks to be. Dale Chihuly’s campaign of conquest finally overruns Nashville’s defenses, knocking off both the Frist and Cheekwood in one month. As of now, I really don’t know how many cultural institutions in the United States have withstood the force of Chihuly and refused to stage a big show of his work. I think there’s a train museum in Cozad, Nebraska, the boyhood home of the fourth governor of Mississippi, and a bottlecap collection in Bend. Oregon (which I hear is particularly irksome to the Chihuly camp due to its proximity to world HQ in Seattle). Snarkiness aside (OK, that doesn’t really fix anything), it’s great to see the Frist and Cheekwood coordinating exhibits. They should do this more often. I think it’s good for both places, and good for increasing the sense of event around big exhibits. The two venues have different strengths as exhibition spaces, which these shows will capitalize on—Cheekwood will display work outdoors, the Frist will take advantage of its larger gallery spaces.

One piece of old business. I keep forgetting to mention that the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery is now open in its new quarters in the renovated Cohen Building on the Peabody Quad. Vanderbilt is in final exams, so the gallery will be open only through May 13. At least that’s the date that the inaugural show closes. Yes, they have every right to have me strangled for waiting so long to mention this.

Also, I keep slipping up on mentioning the various activities that Adrienne Outlaw has going on related to N-CAP. I think I failed entirely to mention any one of a series of events related to the Art Makes Place project. Right now she is curating at Seed Space in the 427 Chestnut building, where there will be a recap of Amelia Winger-Bearskin’s Performance for an Audience of One on May 8. The webstie also mentions a show by Alicia Beach for May and June (I think she’ll be showing her MFA thesis work from UT).

Since I failed to send out this listing last month, I missed many things, some of which are still up—like a show of prints at Sarratt (including Lesley Patteron-Marx), a continuing show by Martica Griffin and Jeanie Gooden at Tinney.

Also this month, Erika Johnson’s back in town preparing for her exhibit at Blend which opens this Saturday.

And Beth Gilmore has her thesis show at Downtown Pres, also opening Saturday.

And new paintings from Erin Anfinson (Rymer) and Anna Jaap (Estel)

April 30

Open Lot, ART.EDU. A show of work by recent or soon to be graduates from area art programs.

Terrazzo, Watkins Design Students. Senior show by Watkins Graphic Design students—Lindsey Armstrong, Brian Dennis, Andy Gregg, Valerie Hammond, Luke Howard, Janna Laxton, and Christopher Martin.

May 1

Downtown Presbyterian Church, Beth Gilmore. Beth puts together the threads she’s been working on a while for her senior show. It will have 2 parts, the first opening at Downtown Pres this month, then a second park in the Belmont Mansion opening in June. It’s clear that Beth’s continuing her engagement with history in images and objects, and with the spaces of that history. In addition to the systems of screened and drawn vintage images, she’s gone back to things like bell jars that she has used in shows before.

Rymer, Erin Anfinson, Michael Brown, and Jonathan Ferrara. A new series of paintings by Anfinson jumping off from the phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder among bees. Ferrara owns a gallery in New Orleans that always seems to have really good shows but I have not gotten myself down there to take a look when I’m in the city. Great to have him show his stuff here.

Estel, Anna Jaap, Steve Knudson, and Ian Kessler-Gowell. Jaap is one of my favorite painters in the areas, profoundly entwining beauty and wildness. And Estel is sort of piggy-backing on the Chihuly madness with Kessler-Gowell, who makes works in glass.

Blend, Erika Johnson Erika is back from Pittsburgh for project/exhibit with her friends at Beldn. So far the project has involved getting people together to make paper.

MIR, Matthew Shelton. Lightboxes.

Twist, Minor Victory. Group show by a bunch of printmakers from here and Chicago: Brady Haston, Mark Hosford, Patrick DeGuira, Keith Herzik, Chris Kerr, Jennifer Leach, Lesley Patterson Marx, Hans Schmidt Matzen, Paul Nudd, Onsmith, DeeDee Scacci, Tom Stack, Manuel Zeitlin

Davis Art Advisory, Stanford Kay and Iveta Simacek Prints and paintings by Kay, scarves by Simacek

Zeitgeist, Dwayne Butcher, Gadsby Creson, Tad Lauritzen Wright, and Bobby Spillman. They’re calling this show The Memphis School, which sounds like it has a provocative intent. I mean, I don’t think any of these guys is an abstract painter.

The Arts Company, Jane Davis Doggett Exhibit by a big figure in design, known for innovations in things like signage and “way-finding systems”—critical elements of the built visual environment.

May 2

Open house with Marla Faith, Margaret Krakowiak, Sue Mulcahy, Daniel Arite, and Thandiwe Shiphrah. I really liked Sue Mulcahy’s show at the Main Library in late 2008. One day show and sale at 811 Park Terrace, 2-5 p.m

Belcourt, SNAP. Month-long show by the SNAP photo coop in the Belcourt lobby. Reception from 5-6:30.

May 6

Art After Hours First Anniversary. All over town.

May 7

Sri Ganesha Temple, Mandira Lahiri (vocal) and Subhajyoti Guha (tabla). These artists are performing Hindustani classical and light classical music. Nothing against the very fine instrumentalists who come through Sri Ganesha, but the vocal concerts are the best. 7 p.m.

May 8

Seed Space, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Performance for an Audience of One. In a performance that seeks to overthrow the structures of performance, Winger-Bearskinoffers to perform for a single person who picks from a list of topics/actions. Narrowing it down to 2 people must eliminate any sense of separation, and at that point the other person is as much a performer as Winger-Bearskin, performing the role of audience, which is required to make this a performance, and which in this context gets close to the sense of the word as in audience with the Pope—private, privileged, personal. There’s a limited number of spaces and you have to RSVP of course. Go to the Seed Space web for those details. Seed Space is at 427 Chestnut.

May 9

Frist Center, Dale Chihuly. Chihuly has put modern glass (and Seattle glassmaking) prominently on the cultural map. His stuff is effusive, often elaborate and built to large scale, moving in out of the worlds of decoration and display.

May 14

Gallery One, Jeff Faust. Surrealist painter from California.

May 15

Studio East Nashville, Myles Maillie.

May 21

Frist Center, Aaron Doenges. Performance by a composer who is one of the masterminds of the Nashville Sound Crawl. Aaron’s work is compelling, and he’s extremely sensitive to location and context.

Open Lot, This is Not Art

May 25

Cheekwood, Dale Chihuly. After the Frist, then Cheekwood opens their Chihuly exhibit. This of course is going to be one of those Chihuly in the garden shows, including some in the ponds like he’s done at other botanical gardens.