WRVU goes to WPLN

A couple of years ago when WPLN switched over to a mostly talk format, I went through perfunctory motions of complaining about the death of classical music. Truth was I listened to the talk shows then on the AM station and not the classical programming. The switch accommodated my listening patterns. Well, classical music is back with WPLN’s purchase of WRVU, which gives me something else to complain about.

WPLN and Vanderbilt followed the same playbook as KUHF and Rice in Houston. Rice had (or has depending on what you think about internet broadcasting) a superb station, better than Vanderbilt’s. They put it on the block, and the NPR station associated with the University of Houston bought it and created separate sister stations for talk and classical music. Public radio seems to work that way—one station works out something, others pick it up. Several years ago I read some articles about a consultant who worked with the public radio stations on programming that always seemed to end up with less music more talk. Over time, I think most people feel reasonably good about NPR and local public radio as primarily news outlets. The decline of newspapers and the transformation of TV news makes the radio stations very important.

College stations like KTRU at Rice at WRVU at their best became interesting venues with room for a wide range of sound and inspired, idiosyncratic programming. They were places where a fringe improviser could do a live spot on radio for a few minutes. Some DJs emerged with very distinctive ideas—the Sunday afternoon jazz shows on KTRU, or their weeknight world music and experimental/electronic shows, Brian and Elizabeth’s Brazilian and local show on WRVU, Pete’s R&B show, the jazz shows John Rogers did. Chris Davis had a show at various times that was often remarkable, informed and broad-minded, and subversive.

Whenever these stations came under threat, I always wanted the Universities to see these stations and the programming mix that evolved as cultural assets major contributions to the life of the community like a series of art exhibits or classical music concerts. But there’s no getting around the fact that the universities saw these stations as student activities, possibly a training ground. And as student activities radio stations had probably outlived their relevance. I haven’t done a poll, but I can believe that fewer students listen to their college radio station today than way back in my day. Too many options.

According to the press release WPLN bought the frequent for $3.3M and Vanderbilt is going to set aside the money as an endowment for student communications. That means they didn’t sell the frequency to cash in on it. They will save some money on operating costs, and it might free up space, although maybe not if they continue to operate as an internet station. The $3.3M will go into an investment that would generate $165K a year at a 5% payout, $132K at 4%. In other words, not enough that these funds will make a difference for Vanderbilt’s bottom line.

Of the options, what happened at Rice and Vanderbilt is not as bad as I feared. The frequencies could have gone to the religious outfits that dominate the left side of the dial in some times, or ended up broadcasting C-SPAN or whatever it is that took over the public bands in DC (radio has been terrible in DC for over 10 years). I can’t say I’ve been listening to WRVU in recent years. While I never got turned on by much of WPLN’s classical programming, some of their stuff is well done. I don’t listen to Live in Studio C as much as I should, but it seems like they plug in well to concert programming in town. As the Nashville Symphony gets more interesting, they’ll ride with them. There is every reason to think that they will come up with new things.

A few suggestions

Drop the convention of avoiding music with words. Most classical music radio sticks to instrumental music, I believe in recognition of how people use classical radio, often as background music. Words and the human voice draw attention to themselves.

Grab programming from other stations, even if it is not actively syndicated. WQXR in New York recorded and archived the performances from the festival of North American symphony orchestrasat Carnegie Hall.

Do locally-produced programs of electronic and contemporary music. Find someone who can say put together a program on French spectralists or recordings by Ursula Oppens. If you must, put it on the air at some God-awful time, but archive it.

Buy recordings, don’t just rely on what record labels are pushing.

 
One of the best shows on WRVU was a program of contemporary classical and renaissance music hosted by Angela Lin, a professor in the German department. She died at the early age of 40. WPLN, in the form of WFCL, could honor her memory by trying to match the insight and range of her show.

Lost World

Visiting the Zoo is a depressing experience. This still comes as a surprise to me. I took such delight in zoos when I was a kid. I knew my way around the National Zoo well, got to the point where I could identify nearly every bird there. 

I went back this weekend, to something irreversibly diminished and damaged. In part it comes from getting older. The Zoo seemed so big back then, endless in the new things to see. As an older, larger person, everything is easier to comprehend. I also think the zoo has reduced the number of exhibits. Back in my childhood days, zoos were just beginning to create naturalistic environments for animals, and the National Zoo still had many locked up in row after row of cages. You can fit in more animals that way. Now that they need to give the animals more room to stretch out, there's room for fewer of them. Also, in the intervening years there has been more awareness of the stress on cold climate animals living in such a warm places. A lot of places have gotten rid of their polar bears. I think the National Zoo did that.

Zoos are suspect now. If you’ve paid any attention you know that no zoo provides a great environment for most of the animals. All animals have their habitats and natural patterns of roaming and movement. No way you can catch that in an enclosure.

Habitat brings us to the worst part. Every exhibit, in the interests of education and honesty, describes what has happened to the natural range of the animal on display. And nearly every one is in danger of disappearing in the wild. Indian Elephants, tigers, Central American amphibians. There are so few wild places left, government preserves hold on tenuously and suffer incursions, mysterious diseases sweep from one end of a continent to another, and introduced species drive out the old ones. The exhibits at zoos always talked about conservation in my memory, but somehow back then, back in my childhood, it seemed to be a matter of identifying cases that need attention and getting people to work on those. And there were heroic people who would eventually prevail, in spite of any setbacks. Now seems like we've got a massive series of last ditch efforts across species, geography and ecosystems. I’m not sure anyone believes in restoring balance, only in arks like the seed vault on Spitsbergen in Norway.  Gather a breeding stock of each thing that exists and try to keep it safe, map its genome, hold on for who knows what, and hope and pray that events—climatic, political, social—don’t overtake the effort.  

A Zoo visit today tolls mourning, for what was lost and what seems impossible to avoid losing.

When I visited as a child, in the 60s and 70s, I saw the zoo as a storehouse of wonders and a gateway to a much larger world where these animals lived in many places I hoped to visit.

At the time I made those visits, the forces were in motion that robbed the world of these places. Modernization, economic integration, the creation of a universal capitalist market and its unrelenting demands to realize economic potential in everything that contained it. Technology and human population too great for anything delicate—like an ecosystem, or a social system—to resist.  And chaos generated by all of that.

That pleasure of discovery proved to be innocent and ignorant. And age dispels some ignorance. At the end of the day knowing is stronger. But maybe the breaking of illusions which inevitably accompanies age makes up the bigger part of the mournfulness.

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.