Jack Spencer
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Bobby Braddock
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Vesna Pavlovic´
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Olivia Hill
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Alan Shuptrine
EVOLVED
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PUBLISHED BY THE ST. CLAIRE MEDIA GROUP Charles N. Martin, Jr., | Chairman Paul Polycarpou | President Ed Cassady, Les Wilkinson | Directors
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www.nashvillearts.com EDITORIAL & ADVERTISING OFFICES 44 West Iris Drive | Nashville, TN 37204 615.383.0278 ADVERTISING Cindy Acuff | Keith Wright 615.383.0278 DISTRIBUTION Wouter Feldbusch | Peyton Lester SUBSCRIPTIONS & CUSTOMER SERVICE 615.383.0278 BUSINESS OFFICE Pam Ferrell | Adrienne Thompson 40 Burton Hills Boulevard | Nashville, TN 37215 EDITORIAL Paul Polycarpou Editor and CEO paul@nashvillearts.com Sara Lee Burd Executive Editor and Online Editor sara@nashvillearts.com Rebecca Pierce Education Editor and Staff Writer rebecca@nashvillearts.com Madge Franklin Copy Editor EDITORIAL INTERNS Jennifer Hartsell Harding University Maggie Knox Vanderbilt University Erin Lewis Belmont University Luke Levenson Belmont University DESIGN Wendi K. Powell Graphic Designer ADVERTISING Cindy Acuff cindy@nashvillearts.com Keith Wright keith@nashvillearts.com
COLUMNS Emme Nelson Baxter Paint the Town Marshall Chapman Beyond Words Jennifer Cole State of the Arts Linda Dyer Appraise It Rachael McCampbell And So It Goes Joe Nolan Critical i Anne Pope Tennessee Roundup Jim Reyland Theatre Correspondent Mark W. Scala As I See It Justin Stokes Film Review Tony Youngblood Art in Formation
Nashville Arts Magazine is a monthly publication by St. Claire Media Group, LLC. This publication is free, one per reader. Removal of more than one magazine from any distribution point constitutes theft, and violators are subject to prosecution. Back issues are available at our office for free, or by mail for $5.05 a copy. Email: All email addresses consist of the employee’s first name followed by @nashvillearts.com; to reach contributing writers, email info@ nashvillearts.com. Editorial Policy: Nashville Arts Magazine covers art, news, events, entertainment, and culture in Nashville and surrounding areas. The views and opinions expressed in the magazine do not necessarily represent those of the publisher. Subscriptions: Subscriptions are available at $45 per year for 12 issues. Please note: Due to the nature of third-class mail and postal regulations, issues could be delayed by as much as two or three weeks. There will be no refunds issued. Please allow four to six weeks for processing new subscriptions and address changes. Call 615.383.0278 to order by phone with your Visa or Mastercard number.
ON THE COVER
october 2015
Jack Spencer A Very Slight Chance of Rain 2015 | Mixed media | 52” x 49” Article on Page 34
34
42
features
columns
15 Spotlights
18
Crawl Guide
20
62
Symphony In Depth Composer Lab & Workshop
27 Vesna Pavlovic´ Lost Art, Found
78
Public Art Stix Takes Center Stage
30
Carla Ciuffo Customs House Museum
88
Critical i by Joe Nolan
34
Jack Spencer ...Let it speak
92
Poet's Corner by Sheliagh Simmons
42
Mandy Rogers Horton In A Room Full of Rooms
93
Art in Formation by Tony Youngblood
45
Nashville Ballet Dracula
98 Theatre by Jim Reyland
Bobby Braddock A Life on Nashville's Music Row
48 NashvilleNext
56
58
54
Doug Williams Expressionist Wonders
56
Dog Art For Old Friends Art Helping Dogs Age with Grace
100 The Bookmark Hot Books and Cool Reads 101 Film Review by Justin Stokes 108 And So It Goes by Rachael McCampbell
58 Alan Shuptrine The Serpentine Chain
109
64 Touched At Ground Floor Gallery
110 Paint The Town by Emme Nelson Baxter
65
112
When the Wolves Came In At OZ
67 Topography Mapping the Human Landscape
Art See
NPT
117 Beyond Words by Marshall Chapman 118
My Favorite Painting
71 Artober
94
76
Women Painting Women Celebrating Art of Women by Women
80
Michael Damico Here's Looking At You
83
Suffragist City Alan LeQuire
87
Randy Simmons Charcoal and iPhones
89
Olivia Hill Humans are disappearing...
94
Bob Jones The Narrative Unfolds
102
Photograph by Polly Chandler
Publisher's Note
Art Creates A City There's no denying the power of a great photograph. It is in my opinion the most powerful communicator. It can tell a story quicker than a book, a song, or a movie. It can change opinions, create new ones, even alter the course of history in the blink of a shutter. The recent image of the young Turkish boy washed ashore quickly focused the world's compassion towards the plight of Syrian refugees. And although we were all aware of the tragedy unfolding through countless news reports and newspaper articles, it took that one lone image to bring a collective tear to everyone who saw it and to shift the focus of the reporting from the political to the humanitarian. That is the power of photography. Fortunately for us there are many great photographers in this town. Professionals, amateurs, weekend view finders . . . you name it, someone has taken a photograph of it. Most of them have at one time or another been featured in this magazine as was Polly Chandler, who took the photograph above and whom we featured in the August issue. Our yearly photography competition always brings forth a tidal wave of impressive work from shooters world wide. You can see the winning entries in the November issue. There is, however, one photographer whose work always raises the proverbial neck hairs. Whether it's the composition, the use of space, the nod to the absurd, or the total lack of pretentiousness, Jack Spencer's photography reaches the senses with full sirens blaring and stays there long after others have disappeared into obscurity. And, if that's not enough—this legendary photographer is also a wonderful painter, sculptor, and furniture maker. That's his work on the cover. He has a show of his art at Track One starting October 3. I will be there, and I strongly recommend you be there too. Paul Polycarpou | Publisher
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Roger Dale Brown | Regatta | 2015 | Oil on linen | 30” x 40”
3X3
Leiper’s Fork October 10
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There is a calm aesthetic to the idyllic town of Leiper’s Fork that makes it a perfect host for the 3X3 art show. On October 10, David Arms Gallery, The Copper Fox, and Leiper’s Creek Gallery will come together for the sixth biannual celebration of this event. Leiper’s Creek Gallery will be presenting new paintings by renowned plein-air artist Roger Dale Brown, whose expressionist portrayals of the great outdoors draw inspiration from all over the world. His work is meant to evoke the same emotions he felt while experiencing the subject matter, and, according to gallery owner Lisa Fox, he is often successful.
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“It’s worth a call to Laura Baugh. I’m never too busy for you!”
The Copper Fox will be featuring Christine Kosiba, who specializes in clay-sculpting singular objects. Her most recent work emphasizes the animal form in an attempt to express the innate connection between humans and animals. Her series at 3X3 will be a testament to this connection with smaller animals. David Arms Gallery will be debuting, for the first time in over 20 years of David’s artistry, an exhibit of his photography. Over the last seven years, David has explored this new interest through his mission work in East Africa, where he tried to capture the spirit of the community with a camera instead of a paintbrush. “It’s like I stepped out of my comfort zone,” David says. “And then the art made me comfortable again.”
3X3 in Leiper’s Fork will take place on Saturday, October 10, from 6 to 9 p.m. For more, please visit www.leiperscreekgallery.com or www.thecopperfoxgallery.com.
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October Crawl Guide The Franklin Art Scene Friday, October 2, from 6 until 9 p.m. Gallery 202 is celebrating their 5th anniversary and exhibiting work by painter Julie Harvey. Jack Yacoubian Fine Jewelry and Art Gallery is presenting a solo exhibit by painter and photographer Lisa Ernst. Hope Church Franklin is showing paintings by Mark Neubauer. Towne Creek Realty is hosting artist Randy Carden. Williamson County Visitor Center is featuring photographs by Bill Hobbs. Shuff’s Music and Piano Room is showcasing paintings by Lizzy Ragsdale. Parks is presenting work from Dan Klatt’s series Died Too Young and National Parks. T. Nesbitt and Company is hosting artist Cory Basil. Bagby House is showing work by Ken Walls.
Chris Mortenson | COOP Gallery
is presenting Disruption, a new installation by artist-inresidence Cary Gibson. In the Chapel see the DPC Kids’ Art Show, Joyful Noise, featuring artwork and music. In the historic Arcade, Corvidae Collective is continuing the exhibit The Painterly Photo – the Art of Thomas Dodd, and is opening Lyricism, a group show of art inspired by quotes and lyrics. BelArt Gallery is showing new work by Marleen De Waele-De Bock. WAG is unveiling Missed Call, new work by Watkins Fine Art faculty members McLean Fahnestock and Robert Scobey. Open Gallery is presenting Prosaic Portals: A Memoir by multi-media artist Sharyn Bachleda. Hannah Lane Gallery is showing new work by Hannah Lane. COOP Gallery is hosting artist Chris Mortenson for the opening of And in the movement of the Sun, I felt something, which investigates the cultural and historical perceptions of reactions to heavily fabricated landscape.
Lisa Ernst | Jack Yacoubian Fine Jewelry and Art Gallery
First Saturday Art Crawl Downtown Saturday, October 3, from 6 until 9 p.m.
Hatch Show Print’s Haley Gallery is hosting a reception for the unveiling of a collaborative monoprint by Jon Langford and Jim Sherraden.
The Arts Company is presenting an Emerging Artists Showcase including new work by Mandy Rogers Horton (see page 42) and Jodi Hays. The show will extend into Moving In—A Mobile Gallery Experience, exhibiting work by four artists from the ceramics collective InFlux. Tinney Contemporary is opening Topography, featuring Alicia Henry, Wesley Clark, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, Alfred Conteh, and Jamaal B. Sheats (see page 67). The Rymer Gallery is unveiling ME NOT by Catherine Forster, which explores femininity beyond the biological, and the community outreach event BYOC (bring your own cactus), in collaboration with Vanderbilt University. The gallery is also presenting a group show by Rymer artists Alex Hall, Joyce Melander-Dayton, and Celeste Rapone. The Browsing Room Gallery at Downtown Presbyterian Church
Arts & Music @ Wedgewood/Houston Saturday, October 3, from 6 until 9 p.m. Photographer Vesna Pavlovic´ ’s Lost Art is on exhibit at Zeitgeist (see page 27). David Lusk presents Instructions Included by Tad Lauritzen Wright. CG2 Gallery is hosting a reception for New Works by Mary Bucci McCoy. Refinery Nashville is hosting Ava Puckett’s show Deadbeat, an exploration of the early stages of adulthood, told through childhood nightmares. Track One is unveiling a new show by Jack Spencer (see page 34). Julia Martin Gallery will 18
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overflow into 444 Humphreys Pop Up for the opening of Lonesome Mountain by Rachel Briggs. Sherrick & Paul is presenting Grays the Mountain Sends, photography by Bryan Schutmaat. Poverty & the Arts Studio & Gallery is exhibiting Exploring Autumn, a show by their PovA artists. Rachel Briggs | Julia Martin Gallery Atelier Upton is featuring work by Andrew Vastagh, aka BOSS CONSTRUCTION. Channel to Channel is showcasing artist Frances Berry, whose new work features gestured mixed-media figure drawings. Touched, a Soft Sculpture Exhibit is on view at Ground Floor Gallery (see page 64). See Equal Parts by Virginia Griswold at The Packing Plant.
Boro Art Crawl Friday, October 9, from 6 until 9 p.m. Middle Tennessee’s newest art crawl happens in downtown Murfreesboro and features an eclectic group of galleries and businesses, including The Nurture Nook, Cultivate Coworking, Mayday Brewery, The Write Impression, FunTiques, L & L Construction, and Walnut House.
East Side Art Stumble Saturday, October 10, from 6 until 9 p.m.
Betsy Stirratt | Red Arrow Gallery
Modern East Gallery is showing Lookup Club by Brandon Felts, West Coast East by Jennifer Stalvey, and Oneironaut by Kelsey Ann Swanson. Red Arrow Gallery is presenting Twilight Zone, a solo show with Betsy Stirratt. Gallery Luperca is exhibiting Above the Surface, a dual show with Meghan Borland and Chip Boles. Main Street Gallery and Nashville Community Darkroom are also participating.
Words by Bob Doerschuk
Location courtesy of Grand Victor Sound aka historic RCA Studio A
Photography by David McClister
bobbyBRADDOCK
I
f you think you’ve seen big changes in Nashville’s cityscape over the past couple of years, try looking through Bobby Braddock’s eyes. Five decades have passed since he moved here, to a town less cosmopolitan, rougher around the edges, and populated by characters much more fabulous—as in the stuff of fables—than today’s big-bucks boomtown. That world comes alive in Bobby Braddock: A Life on Nashville’s Music Row, scheduled for October release by Vanderbilt University Press. Picking up where he left off with his recollections of childhood in Down in Orburndale: A Songwriter’s Youth in Old Florida, the legendary songwriter’s new book evokes people, places, and states of mind long gone but fondly remembered by country music survivors.
“
The hit song writing guru of Music Row now shares his memoirs in A Life on Nashville’s Music Row. “To write a memoir, you probably have to have a little bit of an ego,” concedes the author of Billy Currington’s “People Are Crazy,” Tammy Wynette’s “D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” and dozens of other classics, including arguably the greatest song in the country canon, George Jones’s “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” “But I don’t think of a memoir as being a meme-me thing. I certainly don’t equate a memoir with an autobiography—those are for celebrities. I’m a songwriter. And this is a memoir.”
Bobby Braddock wrote 29 hits for legendary singer George Jones including the country music classic “He Stopped Loving Her Today”
It’s also a model of self-effacement. Whether remembering when he and a colleague raced naked down Music Row after a particularly wild night or recounting afternoons of sipping wine, smoking pot, and trading ideas with John D. Loudermilk, Mickey Newbury, Guy Clark, and other giants, Braddock is always the observer, the reader’s guide, never the hero—and never judgmental, though in conversation he does venture a few opinions about how Nashville was and what it has become.
Bobby Braddock’s latest book, Bobby Braddock: A Life on Nashville’s Music Row, will be available at all book retailers October 6. He will speak about his new memoir at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum on Saturday, October 3, at 1:30 p.m. For more information, visit www.bobbybraddock.com and www.countrymusichalloffame.org. Watch his impromptu performance of "He Stopped Loving Her Today" filmed by David McClister at Studio A during their photography session for this story at www.nashvillearts.com.
“I can appreciate the vibrancy of today,” he says. “The country music that’s out now, I like some of it. The kids who love the bro country stuff, that’s the music of their lives. That’s the music they’re falling in love to. When they’re 80 years old, that’s what they’ll look back on and smile. “But,” he adds, “I hate to see Music Row disappear. Other aspects are disappearing too, including the camaraderie of the songwriters. The music business is more corporate now. It’s a 9-to-5 thing. In those days, you’d go out, get a drink, and say hey, do you want to write a song? A lot of hit songs were born in bars and restaurants. I’ve started songs on napkins many times—and on unpaid bills.” Braddock laughs now, but in his book the bills, bankruptcies, breakups, and boozing feel as real as they must have to him when he was in the midst of harder times. Of course, these difficulties are also familiar to many who go through life more obscurely than the giants who once walked—or ran nude—down the Row. A car speeds down 16th Avenue, just outside the Sony Tree conference room where Braddock is reminiscing. “You know, the person driving that car has as much to say as I do,” he reflects. “He’s had sadness in his life—and joy too. Anybody’s life is interesting, in the hands of a good writer. And I hope I’m a good writer.” That’s like George Jones hoping he might know how to sing a tune or two. na 22
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Southern Festival of Books War Memorial Plaza | October 9 to 11
Photograph by Chapter16.org
Photograph by Chapter16.org
by Luke Levenson
Tracy Barrett and Jacqueline Woodson, authors of books for young people
Downtown Nashville is famous for hosting some of the most celebrated names in country music, but from October 9 to 11, another popular attraction will be offered. The War Memorial Plaza will entertain an estimated 25,000 fans of literature at the annual Southern Festival of Books. Now in its 27th year, this free event celebrates its rich history with American authors and book buffs alike. “Thousands of people come every year because of their enthusiasm for the written word,” says executive director Tim Henderson. “Their interests are far and wide, but what they share is their love of reading.” Authors come from all over the country to engage in personal interactions with their fans, either through open forum discussions or through solo reading performances. The festival starts at noon on Friday, October 9, and ends at 5 o’clock on Sunday, October 11, with a string of best-selling authors and Pulitzer Prize winners in between: Rick Bragg, Geraldine Brooks, Pat Conroy, David Maraniss, Paul Theroux, Rebecca Wells, and David Gregory are just a few of the big names on this year’s roster. The Southern Festival of Books is administered by Humanities Tennessee—a non-profit organization that raises money to support education and the arts through programs all around the state. Nashville is offering up some of its own scholastic treasures this year: Parnassus Books (an independent Nashville bookstore) will serve as the festival’s book vendor, and Dennis Bryon (former Bee Gees drummer and Nashvillian) will be debuting his memoirs about his days on tour with the band. There will not be a shortage of Tennessee pride this year at the Southern Festival of Books! For more information about the Southern Festival of Books and a schedule of events, visit www.humanitiestennessee.org.
ARTable Invites Audiences to Interact with Artists The Clay Lady’s Campus | October 10 by Rebecca Pierce ARTable brings together artists and art enthusiasts for an intimate evening of conversation about the process of creating and experiencing art. Guests will be divided into four groups, and four artists will demonstrate their creative process for each of the groups. The Clay Lady’s Campus provides the ideal setting for the evening with separate spaces for each artist to display their art and set up their own personalized work area and a common area for guests to enjoy food and beverages. Artists for ARTable 2015 are Tammy Gentuso, Judy Klich, Stephanie Pruitt, and Alice E. Shepherd. In the reception area, local printmaker Bryce McCloud will demonstrate the art of printmaking by printing ARTable 2015 posters throughout the evening. Self–taught photographer and sculptor Tammy Gentuso will present her Row House Series and show how she combines her two-dimensional and three-dimensional art practices to build whimsical architectural forms. Participants will be asked to graffiti the row house.
Stephanie Pruitt | A Wrinkle in the Matrix 2015 | Mixed media - foam, cotton and wool yarn, crepe paper, satin
Judy Klich will demonstrate the many different ways to create with encaustic using molten beeswax, dammar resin, and pigment. She says, “Encaustic tends to be more about the process because of its uniqueness and versatility, but I want the audience to see past the process and into the soul of creating.”
Judy Klich | Assertion | 2015 | Encaustic on wooden panel | 30” x 30” x 2”
Poet and artist Stephanie Pruitt will demonstrate how literature is not confined to the two-dimensional page by blending poetry and art in a sculptural bust. She will ask her audience to help make the crowning glory of the busts, the hair, by writing words and phrases on material that will become the sculpture’s hair. Alice E. Shepherd says she will be cooking with glass! “For many reasons creating a finished kiln-formed piece during the evening’s festivities isn’t practical. So the presentation will be structured like a cooking segment on a TV show. I will have the piece for the auction pre made, show them how the ‘ingredients’ are combined in an abbreviated version of the process, then produce the finished piece.”
Alice E. Shepherd | Autumn Glow #1 2015 | Kiln formed glass
At the end of the evening Nashville Arts Magazine publisher, Paul Polycarpou, will auction the four pieces of art made during the evening. A portion of all sales during ARTable will benefit Leadership Donelson-Hermitage. na
Tammy Gentuso | Pieces from The Row House Series: Washington D.C., and The Row House Series: San Fransisco 2015 | Soldate clay with underglaze
The 4th annual ARTable will be held on Saturday, October 10, from 5:30 until 9 p.m. at The Clay Lady’s Campus, 1416 Lebanon Pike. For information and tickets, visit www.leadershipdh.org. 26 nashvillearts.com
vesnaPAVLOVIC´
Photograph by John Guider
by Joe Nolan
Artist and Vanderbilt University professor Vesna Pavlovic´
Lost Art, FOUND Vesna Pavlovic´'s Latest Exhibition of Photographic Imagery Continues Her Exploration of Media and Memories
Zeitgeist through October 31
Fototeka (Projection Still II) | 2015 | Archival pigment print | 20" x 30"
Fototeka (Projection Still IV) | 2015 | Archival pigment print | 16" x 24"
F
or Nashville photographer Vesna Pavlovic´ the history of obsolescent media like photographic slides parallels the political and personal histories they’ve captured. Pavlovic´ was born in Yugoslavia, and while her work has always reflected the process of photography itself, it also reflects the history of her home country and her personal memories of how images—both still and moving— played a part in creating a sense of national identity in her homeland. Pavlovic´’s latest show at Zeitgeist finds the artist continuing her deconstruction of photography while also introducing an interactive performance element to her work for the first time. Lost Art is about the forgotten media from photography’s past, but it is also about her personal memories of a particular place.
Josip Broz Tito after World War II,” says Pavlovic´ . “The whole archive consisted of black-and-white prints—at that point, none of them have been digitized.” The archive documents Tito’s world travels and other notable events. Tito’s presidency stretched from 1945–1980. “I lived some of that history,” says Pavlovic´. “One of the things that I found was footage of this performance for the president. I participated in that performance in 1979 when I was just a child. I found the video of that event in another archive of newsreel footage.” Such films, along with the events themselves and the propaganda that supported them, make up what the photographer calls “socialist choreography”—rituals, statements, and images that define the individual place in relation to the greater state. Pavlovic´’s show includes stills from the video, including an image that she thinks pictures herself at the event nearly four decades ago. Pictures like these demonstrate that place where political psychology and personal memory overlap in a single captured image.
“This exhibition is my attempt to connect bodies of work that have the theme of obsolescence,” says Pavlovic´.“I want to look at technological obsolescence, but also historical obsolescence and how they speak to one another.” Pavlovic´ ’s ongoing project Fabrics of Socialism features images found in a black-and-white archive at the Museum of Yugoslav History.
The show also includes a collection of slide projectors, screens, and stands which might look like alien objects to younger viewers who won’t recognize the function of the
“The archive was created for former Yugoslav president 28
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Fototeka (Projection Still VI) | 2015 | Archival pigment print | 16" x 24"
Fototeka (Projection Still III) | 2015 | Archival pigment print | 16" x 24"
Photograph by Nikola Mladenovic´
machines or understand the word “slide” outside of a playground or a baseball game. “This is an obsolescent medium, but in some ways its physicality makes the images feel more present,” says Pavlovic´. Her observations will be familiar to any music lover who differentiates between passive digital listening and the intimate ritual of spinning vinyl. “We will have an event on Saturday, October 10, where we’ll use this equipment to screen slides. I’m curating some of the content by inviting other artists to participate, but it’s open for anybody to come and bring their forgotten slides to view and share. It’s a way of bringing performance to a show of photography.” Media like slides were once the building blocks of any artist’s portfolio, and most gallery goers older than thirty will remember being in a darkened classroom seeing images from art history via a slide show. “Slides themselves are these obsolete, historical objects, but they also used to be the medium that conveyed the history of art,” says Pavlovic´. For this artist, the future of captured-light imagery can be found by looking back. It’s an appropriate strategy for examining a medium like photography, in which even the most immediate images are always pictures of the past. na
Vesna Pavlovic´’s Lost Art will be on exhibit at Zeitgeist through October 31. She will host an interactive slide show event at Zeitgeist on October 10. Bring your own slides and they will be projected to experience with the community. For more information, please visit www.zeitgeist-art.com and www.vesnapavlovic.com. 29
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Girl With A Scar Carla Ciuffo explores the devastating beauty of flaws Customs House Museum | October 1 through November 1 by Stephanie Stewart-Howard New York native Carla Ciuffo began her artistic life in illustration, rising to manage a book company’s interior design division while doing freelance illustration work. She began to explore photography just a decade ago, in Sedona, Arizona. Her mother, a hobbyist photographer, passed away, and Carla picked up a camera to help honor her mother. Discovering she adored the new medium, she found herself deeply enmeshed in it. Carla is now a Nashvillian, with a gorgeous and inspiring series, Girl With A Scar, to be featured at the Customs House Museum in Clarksville, sponsored by Nashville Arts Magazine. Girl With A Scar, a deeply powerful series of images rich in folkloric elements, helps tell a very personal story. Not long ago, Danielle, the talented daughter of Nashville musician Tim Langford and his wife, artist Nancy Davis—Ciuffo’s neighbors across the street—collapsed with a dangerous blood clot in her leg. She nearly died. Vascular surgeons kept her leg open as she spent two weeks in the ICU. It was doubted she’d survive, but Danielle came back and thrived. She learned to walk again, and regained motion, but was left with a visual reminder of her near-death experience. One of the worst parts was the fact that strangers were particularly nasty to her regarding her vivid scar. “For me, I looked at the scar, and I saw the trauma, but I also saw it for what it was, a statement of survival,” says Ciuffo. Knowing she could do something to help make Danielle feel empowered, Carla invited her over to shoot images celebrating her return to life and help spur her to feel like a young, beautiful human being once again. The striking images feature Danielle in black and white, starkly shaded with natural light, wearing a slim, dark shift dress and, more often than not, wings.
Break Through | Endura metallic paper | 24” x 36”
“
I feel like it’s a beautiful statement on the body, the wonder of being alive
The feathery costume piece plays with notions of faeries, angels, and birds— worldly and otherworldly visions with layered textures. Ciuffo goes beyond the specific trauma Danielle experienced by creating images of universal suffering through her depictions of wounded angels and winged creatures that permit viewers to consider their own perceived imperfections. “I feel like it’s a beautiful statement on the body, the wonder of being alive,” says Ciuffo. “I hope you come with an open heart and leave uplifted,” she says of the show. na Girl With a Scar runs through November 1 at Planter’s Bank Peg Harvill Gallery at the Customs House Museum in Clarksville. For more, visit www.customshouse.org or www.carlaciuffophotography.com. 30 nashvillearts.com
In Clouds | 2014 | Endura metallic paper | 20” x 20”
Isme | 2015 | Mixed media | 53” x 49”
Photograph by Joshua Black Wilkins
by F. Douglass Schatz
“
The trap of wondering what one’s audience will think is devastating to any work of art. The work can easily become contrived or dishonest. It knows where it wants to go...
Artist Jack Spencer
jackSPENCER
...let it speak Track One through October 31
N
ationally known artist and Nashville resident Jack Spencer is having his first Nashville art exhibition since his show at the Frist in 2013. Organized by Liza Canale, this pop-up show opens at the Track One exhibition space on October 3 through 31. Though primarily known for his photography, Mr. Spencer will be showing paintings, sculpture, furniture, and photographs in this unique exhibition. This new body of work will be a wide-angle look into the machinations of Mr. Spencer’s creative process. The show will highlight the dynamic interplay between objects and promises to be more of an art installation rather than a traditional gallery show. With the freedom to design the exhibition from the ground up, Jack Spencer will demonstrate his artistic intuition and sensibilities in a variety of materials and concepts. 35 nashvillearts.com
The Red Storm | 2015 | Mixed Media | 53” x 48”
the exhibition?
DS: You are known for your photographs, so what was the impetus for the addition of different media?
JS: When Liza Canale approached me about having an exhibition in a pop-up show, I was lukewarm about it. I thought more about it and came to the realization that it may be a good thing to do, so long as it was not the typical white-walled, over-lit, sterile gallery environment. Also, it would allow me to exhibit a range of work in a format that complemented each of the media types in that they could be mixed together in groupings. A sculpture on a table with a painting behind and with various other elements complementing the scene such as pottery or flowers and so forth.
JS: I started out as a painter and a sculptor, all the way back to my early teens. I was a working musician for many years and dabbled in photography but did not really make a stern commitment until I was in my mid thirties. I am 63 now, so I have been at all of these things for many years. I don’t see any difference in artistic expression. It is all intuitive. I refuse to be locked into being simply one dimensional. One of my favorite artists is Gerhard Richter. He is an inspiration as he just does what he feels like doing with no regard to what his audience expects. His style is not as strictly defined as most artists’ are. E.L. Doctorow once said, "The minute a writer knows what his style is, he’s finished.” One should make what one feels a need to express and let the audience make of it what they will.
It is a unique way of exhibiting works that I feel is long overdue. I have done over one hundred gallery exhibitions, and they pretty much all looked the same. Same white walls, same lighting, same sterile and clinical view spaces with little warmth, texture, or imagination.
DS: Given the different materials and forms, is there an overarching theme to this show?
DS: The sculptures are elegantly geometrical, and some formally resemble your photographs, almost like landscapes themselves. Is this intentional, or is this sensibility simply inherent in your work?
JS: There is no theme. I am not a big proponent of “theme” shows; they seem more like “schtick” shows to me. DS: Pop-up shows are not new but are much more mainstream now. How do you feel about the format of
JS: I always try to not overthink a work. Whether 36
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photography, painting, sculpture, music, or furniture, it comes of its own volition in the best of cases. I try to erase all filters to allow the work to speak its own personal language. Erasing filters is the hardest thing in the creative process. The trap of wondering what one’s audience will think is devastating to any work of art. The work can easily become contrived or dishonest. It knows where it wants to go . . . just let it speak. DS: Both the flat work and the sculptures have a sense of the solitary. How do you feel about the relationship between your figures and their environments? JS: Again, I can’t say I give it much thought. DS: How does nature play into the work given your subject matter and materials? JS: I suppose it seeps into the work, though not consciously. DS: Your photographs have a dynamic conversation between reality and abstraction that is pushed even further in your paintings and sculptures. Are you making a move towards more abstract work in general? How does abstraction resolve itself in your work? JS: I don’t put a lot of stock in the literal. My paintings and sculpture do not strive for a purely representational effect. I count on randomness a lot. I don’t care for photorealism. It seems like showing off to me. Besides, I have a camera for that. Yet even with the camera, I don’t like to just allow the machine to make my expression. The film or file that comes from it is just a jumping-off place to then express what I want to say. I work them over, sometimes extensively. With painting or sculpture, I want to create something that does not exist except in that piece, new worlds if you will. My photographic series Mythologies, which comes out as a book at year’s end with 21st Editions, does that as well. They are purely mythological figures that do not exist on this plane. I have another book coming out with University Press of Texas in February called American Portraits. It is a book of landscapes mostly, that took me twelve years and over 70,000 miles of driving through forty-six states to complete. Toward the end of that project, my work was mostly minimalist in nature. Lots of air and space. That is reflected in a lot of the work I do now in all genres. The realization I am reaching more and more is that space is just as important, if not more important, than element.
Warrior | 2015 | Carved bass wood | 66”
DS: There is a richness and depth of color in these pieces, even in the more monochromatic pieces. Could you talk about the use of color in your work? JS: Ah well . . . color. I was just reading about how color does not really exist in the universe. How objects
Abandoned School Bus, Pecos, Texas | 2014 | Archival pigment print
vibrate and reflect photons that are then sent to the eye and into 8,000 tiny cones. They are then sent to the brain for translation into red, blue, green, and various combinations of the three into the world of color we see. Everything is a vibration in our universe. So, I just connect with vibrations that are pleasing to my own subjective palate. Sounds "cosmic" I know but true none the less. DS: Where do you see your art going in the near future? JS: Well, I don’t know, but that is the joy of being an artist. Every day is a new discovery, new possibilities, and so forth. I could live to be a thousand years old and would never exhaust the constant stream of ideas that keep popping into my noodle. I think that is the addiction that artists have. The absolute need to make a new thing . . . to be self-inspired. na Jack Spencer’s art will be on exhibit through October 31 at Track One, 1211 4th Avenue South. The show opens during Arts & Music @ Wedgewood/Houston, Saturday, October 3, 6-9 p.m. For more information, please visit www.jackspencer.com.
The Visitor | 2015 | Mixed media | 48” x 36”
Wild Horses in Fog, Cumberland Island, Georgia | 2008 | Archival pigment print
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39 nashvillearts.com
Nashville Opera’s Turandot An Opening Not to Be Missed!
Tennessee Performing Arts Center | October 8 and 10
Words by Joseph E. Morgan | Photograph by Reed Hummell Maestro Joseph Mechavich is leading the Nashville Opera Orchestra for this production. Puccini’s score holds some of his most sophisticated and modernist musical conceptions in which the lush orchestration and alternative harmonic languages (including bitonal, modal, and pentatonic expressions) function hand in hand to create a sophisticated network of leitmotiv reference. A successful premiere will set a very high bar for the rest of the season.
On October 8 the Nashville Opera opens its 2015–16 season with a production of what is arguably Giacomo Puccini’s greatest opera, Turandot. Composed late in Puccini’s life, Turandot employs an aesthetic that straddles two centuries and features a stage production that requires an army of players. It contains some of the most spectacularly exotic scenes in opera as well as one of the most famous staples of the operatic tenor repertoire, “Nessun Dorma.” As such this production promises to be a delight for the eyes and ears of the Nashville audience.
For the title role, a legendary part made famous by Birgit Nilsson and Maria Callas, Nashville Opera has brought in the Canadian American soprano Othalie Graham, whom we last saw in Nashville for the 2012 production of Puccini’s The Girl of the Golden West. For the equally celebrated tenor role, famously sung by Plácido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti, they’ve brought in up-and-coming tenor Jonathan Burton. Pay attention to the final two sung notes of his Act Three aria, “Nessun Dorma.” If sung well, these notes are two of the brightest fireworks in the Italian operatic sky. na
Based on the fable by Carlo Gozzi and set in a mythical ancient China, Turandot tells the story of the beautiful but bloodthirsty Princess and the Prince that just might win her hand. The libretto was assembled by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni, with the purpose of “modernizing and bringing human warmth to the old cardboard figures” of Gozzi’s tale. However, at Puccini’s direction, the librettists retained the mannerist masks of the Chinese fairytale as a foil to this Italian Romanticism. In order to transform Andrew Jackson Hall into this mythical setting, the production promises elaborate sets and costumes towards which Nashville Opera’s General and Artistic Director, John Hoomes, has assembled a cast and crew that features “ . . . more than 200 [including] principal singers, adult and children’s chorus members, supernumeraries, orchestra, designers, and stage crew.”
The Nashville Opera presents Turandot October 8 and 10 in Andrew Jackson Hall at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center and will feature a free preview talk by Director Hoomes one hour before each performance. For more information, visit www.nashvilleopera.org. 40
nashvillearts.com
NEW! Tablescape Series
A Waffle Breakfast, 40x40�
mandyROGERS HORTON
by Karen Parr-Moody
“
I am exploring the extraordinary quality of the ordinary, the transcendence that ordinary objects have
”
Photograph by Eric Brown
The Arts Company through October 29
A
rtist Mandy Rogers Horton found a revelation in the aspirational images of Restoration Hardware catalogues and shelter magazines. And through this glossy detritus of our lives, she has spun a new art style of conceptual collage art. “I just opened up a magazine and painted on top of a picture, like another form of sketching,” she says. “Then there were a few that I started to think were kind of interesting looking.”
In A Room Full of Rooms
Horton initially demurred at the process; it seemed pedestrian compared to the oil paintings she had long produced. So she tried to elevate the concept by painting in oil realistically, then topping those works with expressionistic paintings. “They never felt more interesting than these small paintings on magazine paper,” she says. “So I decided to stick with it, even if it seemed a bit silly or nontraditional at first.” Ultimately, super-sized mixed-media works emerged featuring scads of chairs, windows, chandeliers, picture frames, and more. Horton’s process has now come to involve layering and pasting the cutout images onto wood panels and sanding portions off, as well as adding paint. Through this method, she loses the predictability of what images will adhere and appear distinct and which images will appear ghostly.
What We Love | 2015 | Mixed media on panel | 4’ x 5’ 42 nashvillearts.com
In using catalogues and magazines, Horton creates a juxtaposition: machine-made photography topped by handmade painting. The printed medium—meant to be slick and crisp—becomes visceral and textural in her hands. Horton joins a century-long line of collage artists that were among the various experimental players in the American and European interwar art scene of the 1920s. Artists Joseph Cornell, Joan Miró, and Kurt Schwitters invented their own collage styles in the wake of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, who introduced collage as a modern art form in the early twentieth century. Yet unlike oil paint or marble— time-tested mediums that occupy the thinnest air of the art stratosphere—collage retains a folksy brand identity. Horton readily acknowledges that perception when discussing the catalogues and magazines she uses. “They’re lowbrow, very ubiquitous,” she says. “There’s something nice about taking this junk mail that’s been sent to you to convince you what to buy, or what your house should look like, and then subverting it to your own will.” Horton points out that these print vehicles use terms that make furniture sound bespoke, such as “hand varnished,” when in fact they’re selling hundreds of thousands of mass-produced objects.
Meant To Be Seen | 2015 | Mixed media on panel | 4’ x 3’
“Catalogues and magazines are always trying to convince us of the uniqueness of their products—especially furniture magazines,” she says. “If we’re one of 7 billion people and we’re using products that are mass produced and we’re inheriting world views that may be thousands of years old, what makes us individuals? I don’t have an answer for that, but I think the way we put those together makes us individuals. The way that you combine those objects becomes unique, even if the objects themselves aren’t entirely new.” But what makes idea and object fit together in a way that is beautiful rather than monstrous? That is a question Horton posed with her most recent show, Patchwork and Frankenstein, which was hosted by The Arts Company. Her works from that exhibit answer that question symbolically: From a distance, they seem to feature well-appointed, harmonious rooms. But upon closer examination, the items of décor aren’t in perspective, or the scale is off, or patterns that seemed to blend are, in fact, harsh. “I think the work is about that balance of when these sources come together beautifully or when they resist each other,” Horton says. “We all feel cozy with a patchwork quilt, but Frankenstein? Nobody feels cozy about this monster.” na
Irresistible Retreat | 2015 | Mixed media on panel | 24” x 24”
Mandy Rogers Horton will exhibit her latest art at The Arts Company October 3 through 29. For more information visit www.theartscompany.com or www.mandyrogershorton.com. 43 nashvillearts.com
Words by Brittany Greenquist Photography by David Bailey
The Nashville Ballet Presents
DRACULA
The curtain lifts, smoke appears, and ghoulish whispers arise. Suddenly, Dracula appears twisting and turning in gothic torment. The opening of the Nashville Ballet’s Dracula sounds monumental. It begins with the title character’s desperate inner conflict and escalates into a stage overflowing with the undead.
Sexy, Steamy, and Scary— something for everyone
Though the company has performed this ballet before, it hasn’t taken the stage in eight years. Originally created in 1999 by Artistic Director and CEO Paul Vasterling, the show has evolved over time, transforming the production into something even more whimsical. The score was arranged by Paul from the sounds of Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu. “What I liked about Dracula is how gothic it is in its essence; it’s slightly overdone. There’s a feeling of heightened emotion. Dracula is sort of this tortured soul; he wants to find true, eternal love,” Paul explains. The traditional story of the embittered vampire lends itself to interpretation, and Paul admits the ballet is a loose one. It’s not quite as melodramatic as some film adaptations, though he says the emotions are all there. In Paul’s words, “It’s pretty sexy.”
Julia Mitchell as Lucy
This described sensuality is artfully conveyed by the dancers, including Jon Upleger, who plays Dracula. Jon describes his role saying, “The story has a lot of angles. Dracula can make himself desirable. You’re not just playing the monster . . . which is fun because the character has a lot more depth that way.” Upleger also expresses that while the story is more adult-themed than more classical pieces, it’s a welcome change for the dancers. “It’s nice to do something like this where you can break out of those boxes. It doesn’t have to be sweet all of the time.” This marks the ballet’s 30th anniversary, and while countless shows have been performed on stage, Jon counts this as one of the best. “It really is one that’s going to pull you in. And just the intensity of it from the very beginning . . . it’s powerful.” Paul adds, “This sense of Dracula—a tortured soul torn between good and bad, higher love and earthly love—those are all things I’ve thought about in the past. And I think the audience will be swept away and intrigued by the whole thing.” Dracula is the feature of a three-part presentation, which also includes Afternoon of a Faun and Satto, both choreographed by Salvatore Aiello. na See the Nashville Ballet perform Dracula October 22 through 24. For more information about tickets and schedule, visit www.nashvilleballet.com.
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Jon Upleger as Dracula, Julia Mitchell as Lucy, Daniella Zlatarev as Mina
Intersection Announces Second Season
After a successful first season in early 2015, contemporary music ensemble Intersection returns with an equally ambitious and engaging second season featuring Pulitzer Prize-winner Julia Wolfe, the rare Ondes Martenot electronic instrument, local Mariachi performers, and more.
Photograph by Alex Ferrari
Beginning October 29
Opening the season on October 29, Sea of Tonality is based on Toru Takemitsu’s Rain Coming for Chamber Orchestra, which showcases his perception of tonality as a fluid element, constantly shifting and taking new forms. The performance also includes works by Tina Tallon, Joby Talbot, and Elliott Carter. The evening’s highlight is a presentation of Julia Wolfe’s True Love. Wolfe, the recent recipient of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Music, will lead a discussion as part of the show. Intersection’s family performance of the season is Mariachi, a celebration of music and culture. The afternoon of activities and music includes Intersection musicians, Gabriela Fuentes and Mariachi students from Metro Schools, and Manuel Delgado of Delgado Guitars. Explore the vibrancy of Mariachi folk traditions and the contemporary classical works of Mexican composers Silvestre Revueltas and Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez. The final show of the season, Key of Intensity, is designed around the Ondes Martenot, a French instrument created in the 1920s that blends a traditional piano keyboard with timbral controls and amplification through gongs and lyres. Due to the limited number of musicians who have mastered this incredibly expressive electronic instrument, it is very rare to hear one played. Intersection has crafted a seven-piece bill devoted entirely to this instrument featuring Estelle Lemire and Marie Bernard, two of the finest Ondes Martenot performers in the world. For more information and tickets, visit www.intersectionmusic.org.
Kelly Corcoran conducts Intersection
Artclectic 2015 University School of Nashville October 22–24 by Maggie Knox This year’s theme for Artclectic is “Inspire. Be Inspired.” The 19th annual juried show is chaired by Cameron Simmons, Kobie Pretorius, and Ginger Sands, who chose the theme. “We believe art can help take the everydayness out of people’s lives,” explained co-chair Cameron Simmons. “We hope visitors will join us for the art, the community, and the food and take a piece of inspiration away with them.” Many of the artists have included statements on what inspires them in their paintings, sculpture, ceramics, jewelry, furniture, and more. Almost half of the 56 artists taking part in this year’s show are Nashville locals, including digital artist Leslie Haines and painter James Makuac. The sale will be held October 22 through 24 at University School of
Nashville (USN). Prices range from $20 to over $5,000, and proceeds from the event support USN’s Artclectic Fund for Innovative Teaching. Entrance to Artclectic is free on Saturday, October 22. Highlights include the POPclectic market, which features local handmade items below $75, and Scrap Exchange, a hands-on art-making space. Reservations are required for the Patrons Party on Thursday night. The Community Party on Friday night is open to the public, allowing attendees to check out the artwork while enjoying light fare and a cash bar. Tickets to the Community Party are $10.
James Makuac | Fixing Our Way Through the Constellations 2014 | Acrylic on canvas | 24” x 24” x 2”
Artclectic 2015 is slated for October 22 through 24 at USN. For more information and a complete schedule, please visit www.artclectic.org.
Leslie Haines | L Is for Lion | 2014 Digital collage | 26” x 22” x 1”
YORK & Friends fine art Nashville • Memphis
BETTY WENTWORTH
Location, Location, Location, Oil on panel, 9” x 12”
MARILYN FARNSWORTH WENDLING
Blue Dinghy, Oil on linen, 12” x 24”
107 Harding Place • Tues-Sat 10-5 • 615.352.3316 • yorkandfriends@att.net www.yorkandfriends.com • Follow us on at York & Friends Fine Art
Photograph by Rory White
nashvilleNEXT
Jennifer Cole, Executive Director, Metro Nashville Arts Commission 48 nashvillearts.com
Tony Youngblood, Writer, Inventor, Creative Thinker
by Tony Youngblood
Hatch Show Print production shop
W
ith the release of the 25-year plan for Nashville’s development, we wonder what’s in store for the arts. Tony Youngblood asks the questions, Metro Nashville Arts Commission Executive Director Jennifer Cole illuminates the way . . .
TY: Can you tell us about NashvilleNext and the Arts and Culture section?
JC: NashvilleNext is what’s called a general plan, and municipal areas are required to do one every few decades to chart growth and city systems, transportation, land use, zoning, economic development, and education.
When the city planners began to work on NashvilleNext, they had a meeting with Metro Arts about Arts and Culture and its intersection with all of the city systems. I looked at the old plan, and Arts and Culture had been approximately half a page in a one hundredand-some-odd-page document. That struck me as a real missing link because the arts are so embedded in how we see ourselves as a city.
We advocated to have Arts and Culture play a larger role, which is now one of the eight pillars in the document. It was facilitated through a resource team of about 25 individuals who were artists, academics, makers, urban designers, and representatives from cultural institutions and art businesses. Through the two years of the process, key policy issues like transportation, education, and economic development were vetted through the group so we could wrestle with how the arts and cultural ecosystem could contribute to the city’s future.
TY: How will the Arts and Culture plan branch out into the real world?
JC:
I think the single biggest goal was to make sure that this document didn’t just strand Arts and Culture and Creative Economy on half of a page, but that our arts ecosystem was really interwoven with city systems. Our goal was to position arts not as something nice, but something necessary to Nashville’s long-range success. There were major goals that we identified related to Arts, Culture, and Creativity that have policy actions related to them. These include Arts Access for All, Healthy Thriving Creative Workforce, Vibrant Cultural Neighborhoods, and Lifelong Arts Education. These are stakes in the ground that we can navigate with policy, funding, and programming over the next two decades.
TY: What is the difference between the NashvilleNext 25-year plan and Metro Arts’ 5-Year Plan for Nashville?
JC: NashvilleNext is a 25-year plan for the city that includes all city systems like economic development, land use, infrastructure, and arts/culture. Our plan takes the important 49 nashvillearts.com
level of equitable engagement, there is a community push for the next mayor to at least use it as a guide. I mean, if you read it, it doesn’t say do this, do this, do this. It’s these general direction ideas that will get fleshed out by the people in decision-making roles. A road map, not a directive.
findings of NashvilleNext and integrates them into a specific action plan for our department. For example, my department doesn’t have oversight over economic development for the city—that is mayor and Chamber of Commerce—but Metro Arts can serve as an expert on creative economy and inform the overall city strategy.
TY: Why is it important to plan 25 years ahead of time?
JC: Take Austin, Texas. The last time that city did a plan, they identified the need to grow tech jobs, especially in gaming and app development. That intentionality allowed them to look at building an educational infrastructure, getting the degree programs necessary to find local qualified workers, and shifting the entire business recruitment strategy to the city. That was a 10- to 15-year play. That isn’t something you do in eighteen months.
I think you have to look at market conditions and what’s going to be driving the city. In NashvilleNext,
the population change is a major driver of almost everything. For Metro Arts’ plan, we basically map out four overarching drivers that we know are going to direct our work over the next five years, and then annually we update. What’s not going to change over those five years are the four drivers: equity, increasing resources for the sector, being a national leader, and building up the creative infrastructure in neighborhoods. And then everything derivative of that is going to change based on the scenarios that we see and the community climate. All that could change based on who the mayor is and what the conditions are or what the national landscape looks like.
TY: Is there any guarantee that new administrations will stick to the 25-year plan, or could they just throw it out the window or ignore it?
JC: Anytime you do a plan, there is that chance. I think
because NashvilleNext was done very well with a high
Act Like a Grrrl
TY: The plan’s generality is one thing I struggled with. Is this everything or are there additional nuts-and-bolts, step-by-step documents for city officials?
JC: NashvilleNext, theoretically, should be driving other
departmental strategies. Metro Arts specifically timed our strategic plan development to coincide with NashvilleNext. Other departments will update their internal ideas and policies and procedures relative to it. What you’ll begin to see is some people picking up the big ideas and making them tactical in how their department works.
TY: How can the public get involved?
JC: I encourage people to read NashvilleNext and decide
which pieces they really care about and want to see happen and begin to push by speaking with their elected officials and neighborhood leaders.
We are not adequately funding our Arts and Culture sector. We’re not funding artist innovation or cultural organizations at the level of our peer cities. There’s no revolving loan fund for startup businesses. We have burgeoning fashion, film, and maker sectors, yet the educational degree pipeline doesn’t match the need. We have a major issue with usable production/ performance/exhibit space that is anchored both in affordability and access. Our job is to identify the areas where focused action will equate to deepest transformation for creators and the city in general. We can’t do that by ourselves. It’s going to take citizens and artists and cultural organizations creating a conversation about why, when there are a lot of other priorities, should we double-down on our sector.
ARTventure Art programHealing at RoomatinRoom the Inn in the Inn
TY: And that’s an important take-home. The plan is a
way to crystallize a central vision, to say, hey, we have all these people moving here, all this potential. What are we good at? How do we become the model city for that?”
JC: You could have a lot of natural assets and lack the
in neighborhoods. We are lucky that the Council increased funding for THRIVE as this helps us reach more communities and creators than our grants program.
TY: And that not only helps the artist leading the project, but it helps the whole community.
structure to scale them.
TY: One example is the arts education. We don’t have an MFA program, is that right?
JC: We don’t have an MFA in visual art or design. We have several MFAs in music and music business. But if you think about the building boom that’s happening in the city…18 universities and no architecture school or design school? Think about the importance of industrial design, how that’s interfaced with every job that’s going to come. That’s a gap.
The other thing that I’m very passionate about is urban manufacturing. Nashville lost a ton of its garment manufacturing jobs in the 50s and 60s. It was a big place, then they all left.
TY: How do grants play a role?
JC: We’re kind of in this process now reviewing our
grant requirements, our protocols, our forms, everything against our own strategic plan and NashvilleNext.
Then there is THRIVE, which is our micro-funding program and is technically not a grant, although everybody calls it that. Grants per our legal department can go only to nonprofit cultural institutions. We have $100,000 that the council gave us this year for THRIVE, which went up from $40,000 last year. That’s up to $4,000 per artistgenerated neighborhood project. Last year, we were able to support two hundred artists in a lot of neighborhoods that have very little formal cultural infrastructure. And that was a direct result of not necessarily NashvilleNext, but our own internal review of what we were funding—some wonderful institutions that we should continue to fund and honestly should fund more. But we were also significantly underserving key neighborhoods, mostly because they lack formal “cultural” providers—areas like Smith Springs or Bordeaux. We also realize that, particularly with our immigrant and refugee community, a lot of people who are arts producers don’t have a nonprofit status, and we felt like that was kind of unfair. Our tools need to adapt to how arts and culture are organically created and shared
Poetry in Motion
JC: Absolutely, because we won’t fund a project that
doesn’t have community investment and community participation. We want more artists to feel like they’re active drivers of their neighborhoods.
TY: What advice do you have for artists who wish to apply for THRIVE funds?
JC: We’re reviewing applications every month. There’s
a THRIVE section at www.artsnashville.org, which contains the application and helpful tutorials. There is a photo archive and description for every project that we’ve funded, and our staff talk through projects with artists in depth to make sure they fit with our guidelines and will be successful in the community. I would really encourage people to look through those projects because they’re all very different. We’ve had neighborhood music and storytelling festivals to murals to art therapy for people in recovery.
TY: Is there anything else you would like to add?
JC: My biggest thing would be to get engaged as an
arts advocate. Join the Nashville Arts Coalition, a great group that is focused on action and policy related to our arts ecosystem. na
For more information about NashvilleNext, visit www.nashville.gov/government/nashvillenext.aspx
Courage Unmasked Tennessee Sarratt Gallery October 12 to November 20 Courage, strength, healing, and inner beauty are some of the themes emanating from the radiation masks on view in the exhibition Courage Unmasked. Artists Diane Sesler, Cindy and Aliyah Young, Sara Bickell, Teresa Gray, and Jennifer Wilkins have transformed these cancer therapy objects, that can be seen as symbols of suffering and fear, into lifeaffirming works of art. For treatment of certain head and neck cancers, a porous mesh mask is formed to cover a patient’s head and neck during radiation. The mask is bolted to the treatment table to keep the patient’s head immobile, thereby allowing doctors to pinpoint beams of radiation to canceraffected areas. When six or more weeks of therapy are complete, the masks are discarded, and, for a second year, area artists have turned these masks into art.
Sara Bickell | Blessing
In conjunction with the exhibit there will be a fundraiser, An Evening of Cindy & Aliyah Young, the Magic Bird Series Masks and Music, on Friday, October 16, to benefit cancer patients at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. The event, featuring a silent auction and music by Carol Ponder, is also meant to promote awareness that head and neck cancer is preventable. David Heustess, the assistant director for visual arts for the office of Dean of Students at Vanderbilt University, is organizing the Courage Unmasked exhibit and the fundraiser gala. He says, “Art changes lives, and this event proves it in every way. Last year when the patients came and saw how their masks had been transformed, they were so appreciative. It had a powerful impact.”
Courage Unmasked Tennessee will be on view October 12 through November 20 at Sarratt Gallery at Vanderbilt. An Evening of Masks and Music benefiting cancer patients at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center will be held on Friday, October 16. For tickets and more information, visit www.courageunmaskedtn.org.
Courage Unmasked October 12—November 20 Artists: Cindy and Aliyah Young, Teresa Gray, Diane Sesler, Sara Bickell, Jennifer Wilkins
An Evening of Masks and Music Friday, October 16 6:00 pm—9:00 pm Admission $35.00 per person Tickets are available online at www.vuconnect.com/masksandmusic2015 or may be purchased at the door
Special music performance by Carol Ponder and Robert Kiefer Silent auction by various artists Proceeds benefit patients in treatment for head and neck cancer at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center
dougWILLIAMS
Words by Stephanie Stewart-Howard Photography by Jerry Atnip
Expressionistic Wonders Nina Kuzina Gallery | Beginning October 2
Center Ring | Mixed media | 38” x 30”
Gallery Owner Nina Kuzina Circus Wheel | Mixed media | 38” x 30” 54 nashvillearts.com
I
f Van Gogh and Chagall had a love child that was raised and educated by William Blake and Frida Kahlo, it might produce art with the same kind of expressionistic wonder as Doug Williams’s remarkable work. Williams passed away in 2001, but Nina Kuzina Gallery in Belle Meade will be showing and selling selected works from the collections of his family, including his sister, the late Frances Preston, and his nephew, Donald Preston, beginning October 2. It was Frances Preston, the legendary BMI president, who first encouraged Williams to explore painting, in the 1990s, when he discovered he’d become ill. She brought him the canvases and equipment that formed this part of his life’s artistic journey, according to Donald Preston, and he began working assiduously, producing over 5,000 works.
Vase of Flowers | Oil on board | 24” x 24”
Williams’s work as an interior designer already stretched from Nashville to New York, Los Angeles, even London. He was a classical pianist and marimba player, enjoying an international reputation that took him from Mexico City to the black sand beaches of Hawaii. In Nashville, his frame shop and art galleries supplemented his interior design work. He was teacher, patron, and art lover. He was not, when he began, a trained artist. (He was a master of faux finish techniques, however.)
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I paint as a musician would; I paint as a poet; I paint wide open.
But his painting is a wild thing unto itself. Full of heavy brush strokes and intense color, with subject matter that would have been very familiar to the above-mentioned artists, it grabs the eye and forces the mind to explore the depths of the human spirit—and the heights. His themes include heaven and hell, the circus, angels, flowers, and intense landscapes. “He viewed it as channeling when he painted,” says Preston. “He felt he had no control over what was coming out of him, so he would allow himself to be taken and used . . . I think he felt the work came from a higher power.” Nina Kuzina, whose eye for the extraordinary in her gallery has long worked to the benefit of Nashville’s collectors, was referred to Preston by a renowned international art connoisseur who had worked with Nina previously, when Preston was looking for a proper venue for a sale. “I walked in with the book on Doug’s art, and I felt the warm energy here, and I knew my uncle’s work was a good fit,” he says. na Doug Williams’s work is on display from October 2 for ongoing sale at the Nina Kuzina Gallery, 4231 Harding Pike. The book, The Art of Doug Williams: Salvation & Beauty, may be purchased there for $25, with proceeds going to the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. For more information, visit www.ninakuzina.com.
Many Flowers | Oil on board | 30” x 40”
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by Dee Gross
DOG ART FOR OLD FRIENDS Omni Hotel | October 16
The love of man’s best friend has brought together a community of artists. From local Nashvillians to celebrity contributors, many have shared their talents to support the 2nd Annual Dog Art for Old Friends event and auction. This event will benefit Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary (OFSDS), an organization that cares for and finds forever foster homes for elderly dogs and offers these old souls a chance to live out their retirement years as a loved family member, while OFSDS covers all the veterinary costs. Just as important, this worthy cause has inspired some amazing art. Participating artists are offered a fiberglass dog of their choice from a selection of different breeds. According to event organizers, “Over sixty artists from across the country as well as the United Kingdom, Canada, and Brazil will submit original works of art to support the cause. Among the local and international artists participating are Mel Ziegler, John Cannon, Susan Truex, James A. Willis, and Elizabeth Brandon.
Hilltop Dog | Amanda Foster
Art Helping Dogs Age with Grace The Dog Art for Old Friends event offers the Nashville community the chance to support a wonderful cause. To get first dibs on the art, check out the online auction at www.32auctions.com/dogartforoldfriends2015.Online bidding is already live and will continue through October 10. For a sneak preview, visit the statues already on display at the Farm at Natchez Trace, Blue Pearl at Cool Springs, Veterinary Ophthalmology Services, Animalia Wellness, and Lexus of Cool Springs. This is a must-attend event for dog-lovers and art-lovers alike. na The 2nd Annual Dog Art for Old Friends benefit auction is scheduled for Friday, October 16 at the Omni Nashville Hotel. For more information about the event and the participating artists, visit www.dogartforoldfriends.org.
In addition to artists, celebrities have offered their artistic talents to the cause. Sheryl Crow, a nine-time Grammy winner and bestselling singer/songwriter, is a dedicated dog-lover. She made a sculpture entitled Super Dog. Another local celebrity, Mike Wolfe from the TV show American Pickers, collaborated with his family to create the American Pickers Dog II, a follow-up to his contribution from last year. The Nashville Predators contributed a hockey-themed pooch.
Scrappy | Tracy Wisehart-Plaisance Hope | Haley Harris
Pharaoh’s Best Friend | Mark Evans 56
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NINA KUZINA GALLERY presents
THE ART OF DOUG WILLIAMS
‘Flowers In Black,’ collection of Frances Williams Preston, mixed media, 14” x 11” 4231 HARDING PIKE • NASHVILLE, TN 37205 • STANFORD SQUARE, ACROSS FROM ST. THOMAS HOSPITAL 615-321-0500 • NINAKUZINA@COMCAST.NET • WWW.NINAKUZINA.COM OPEN SEVEN DAYS A WEEK 10 AM - 5 PM • ANYTIME BY APPOINTMENT
alanSHUPTRINE
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ennessee artist Alan Shuptrine has had one of those wake you from sleep, make a life U-turn, and follow your gut ideas. Alan is the son of the late Hubert Shuptrine, artist and famed illustrator of Jericho: The South Beheld. Forty years ago his father released Jericho in collaboration with author James Dickey as a coffee-table book illustrating the dying South. Now Alan is following in his footsteps, by literally taking steps along the length of the Appalachian Trail, a stretch he is calling the Serpentine Chain. He is recording his experience in a series of sixty paintings, sketches, and a book, just like his father. The Serpentine Chain is projected to become a traveling exhibition, making its debut June 8, 2017, at the Tennessee State Museum. The route that Alan will follow is marked by the mineral serpentine. It is found all over the world in various colors, ranging from brown to orange, to green, and purple. The specific makeup of serpentine that Alan will follow is found in two places—Great Britain and the Appalachian Trail. Sometimes it’s just beneath the surface, and sometimes it’s half a mile deep, but where the trail ends so does the serpentine. Millions of years ago when the continents were one, Great Britain was connected to what is now Appalachia. Over time, continental drift divided the land and, consequently, the serpentine.
Eternal | Watercolor | 24” x 17”
“When the eighteenth-century settlers moved over here, they didn’t feel comfortable on the coast, so they kept moving westward,” Alan explains. “When they finally got to the Appalachians, it felt familiar, like home, and so they settled there. Unbeknownst to them, they were settling in the same mountains they left an ocean away.” This theme of returning to one’s roots is the foundation of Alan’s project. He lives by his father’s words, “You can go home again, and maybe you should.” Hubert Shuptrine uprooted his family often, chasing light and things to paint. Though they moved to over twenty cities while Alan was growing up, they never strayed too far from the Appalachian Mountains. Maybe Hubert, like the Celtic settlers, believed in the magical powers of the Serpentine Chain. Alan plans to complete sixty watercolors, with subjects that illustrate the connection between the Appalachian people and their Celtic brethren. He aims to find his subjects along the way and paint whatever moves him to paint. The finished series will be laid out as a documentary with a cast of characters that embody the Appalachian traditions—quilt makers, fiddle pluckers, whiskey coopers, and star-crossed lovers.
A Promise Kept | Watercolor | 22” x 29”
Alan’s work will be paired with the writings of Southern native 58 nashvillearts.com
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You can go home again,
by Annie Stopplebein
and maybe you should.
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Fletcher | Watercolor | 16” x 20”
The route that Alan will follow is marked by the mineral serpentine. It is found all over the world in various colors, ranging from brown to orange, to green, and purple.
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Sharyn McCrumb. After considering several writers, he chose McCrumb because she “lives, breathes, and bleeds Appalachia.” He asked her to write free-form, stream-ofconsciousness style, in hopes that their collaboration will produce an organic breadth of imagery. He wants the combination of art and words to incite all of the viewers’ senses. He wants to take viewers where he has been, so they may smell the damp rhododendron and hear the sweet song of the katydids. Though his experience is unpredictable, he does have a system— arriving in a new town he finds the public library and starts asking questions. In Blairsville, Georgia, this led him to a man who has harvested his own sorghum for decades. Alan was pleased the man had a good face to paint. He says, “I have to be brave enough to see what’s around the corner. I have to get out on foot and get dirty.” For parts of his journey, Alan will be hiking through deep snow, but his determination leaves him unintimidated by the elements.
Mist and Lace | Watercolor | 16” x 20”
Photograph by Jake Shuptrine
He leaves his home in Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, a few days at a time on what he calls “inspirational trips.” During this time he paints loose studies en plein air with an easel he designed himself. He sketches and takes photos. When he returns home he uses these materials to begin the major paintings. He works on as many as eight at a time, each watercolor having its own palette. Although it is a demanding medium, Alan is confident using the watercolor techniques he learned from his father as well as what he gleaned from studying the likes of Andrew Wyeth and John Singer Sargent. In addition to his artistry, Alan is also a master gilder and is sought after for his handcrafted, gold-leaf frames. To add more intrigue to The Serpentine Chain, he will frame each of the sixty watercolors in a one-of-a-kind, carved, and rustic wooden surround embedded with serpentine stones. Alan is dedicated to this journey. He has relinquished his other responsibilities and decided that this will occupy the rest of his time. He plans to pre-sell the paintings as he works in order to fund his travels. Again quoting his father Alan says, “A great artist needs two things, a good drawing hand and a little luck to make their big break.” Alan is certain that this is his time of recognition—initiated by a moment of clarity, inspired by a mystical mineral. na For more information about Alan Shuptrine’s The Serpentine Chain, visit www.alanshuptrine.com.
Artist Alan Shuptrine
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SYMPHONYINDEPTH OCTOBER 2015
For decades, musicians of every stripe have flocked to Nashville to immerse themselves in the city’s unique culture, chase their dreams, and further their careers. Come early October, five promising young composers from across the nation will follow in that storied tradition when they arrive for the Nashville Symphony’s inaugural Composer Lab and Workshop.
Giancarlo Guerrero, Conductor Nashville Symphony Orchestra
aron Jay Kernis, Co-director A Composer Lab and Workshop
Modeled around similar programs at other orchestras but with a few key enhancements, the Workshop was developed by Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero, composer Aaron Jay Kernis, and members of the Nashville Symphony staff. Part of the orchestra’s ongoing commitment to American music, the initiative was launched with a simple goal in mind: to discover and develop the next generation of classical composers in the United States. “Classical music, like any other genre or art form, needs to reinvent itself from time to time to remain relevant and fresh, and new voices must be discovered to expand the repertoire,” says Guerrero. “That’s precisely what we’re doing with this program, which is fitting given our mission of championing American composers, not to mention Nashville’s long history as a hub for the creation of new music.” The Composer Lab project launched in March, when the Symphony issued a nationwide call for submissions from composers between the ages of 18 and 33, with help from lead sponsor BMI. The response was incredible— nearly 100 scores flooded into the Schermerhorn offices over the next few months, from which Guerrero and Kernis selected five participants. During the week of October 5, those five composers will be immersed in an intensive program that will give them the opportunity to showcase 62 nashvillearts.com
their music and learn firsthand what it is like to work with a major American orchestra. In addition to reading sessions and rehearsals with the full Nashville Symphony and individual sessions with Guerrero, each participant will meet with some of the orchestra’s principal players to hone their instrumental writing. They’ll also meet with Symphony sound engineers to learn more about recording techniques, and they’ll be briefed on “Business Essentials for Composers,” which will cover copyrights, licenses, contracts and negotiations, commissions, publishing, and more. By combining artistic elements with an education on the music business, Guerrero says the Workshop will “give the participants knowledge that can help them succeed as modern-day composers.” The program concludes with an opportunity every budding composer dreams of: all five participants will hear their works performed by the Symphony during a special concert on the evening of October 6. It will be the first time they see their creations brought fully to life in Laura Turner Concert Hall, but it may not be the last. Guerrero is leaving open the possibility of including one or more Composer Lab submissions in the Symphony’s 2016/17 classical series, giving Workshop participants an extra incentive and potentially adding some new names to the list of American composers who have been showcased at the Schermerhorn. “We could have the next Mozart or Bernstein emerge from this program,” he notes. “If so, it will be pretty cool to be able to say the Nashville Symphony helped them get their start.” na For more information about the Composer Lab and Workshop, please visit www.NashvilleSymphony.org.
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Fiber Artists Show Their Stuff in Soft Sculpture Exhibition Ground Floor Gallery October 1 through 29 by Erica Ciccarone
This October brings treats that are both beautiful and strange at Ground Floor Gallery, when Nashville native and fiber artist Shana Kohnstamm unveils Touched, an exhibition of soft sculpture. Kohnstamm has assembled an international roster of fiber artists, most of whom she met through social media, to showcase a range of haptic sensibilities, aesthetics, and forms unique to the medium. Kohnstamm worked as a painter before sinking her fingers into tufts of wool. For the past five years, she has experimented with wool felting techniques, creating a menagerie of figurative sculptures that are in turns mythological, subterranean, sexual, and aquatic. Touched will show work by Kohnstamm and twelve others from as near as Atlanta and as far as the Netherlands. The artists use traditional craft processes like beading, embroidery, weaving, wrapping, and crochet to wrestle with metaphysical concerns. “I am fascinated by what it’s like to be a person; who we think we are, how we got here, and what we can’t know about each other,” writes Seattle’s Moxie Liberman in her exhibition statement. Despite the form’s traditional roots, several artists work from satellite or microscopic images or include LED lights in their work. Leisa Rich, hailing from Atlanta, will show Disco Metastasis, a squishy, brain-like metallic-pink behemoth that sprouts hard, white tendrils from trunk-like appendages. It’s as if an infected human organ has taken on a life of its own; bulbous and lumbering, it retains the glitter and shine of its youth. Rich’s sculpture exemplifies the sheer pleasure of soft sculpture: its materiality allows for a tactile tease (it’s art, so you can’t touch it!) while it couches grim tidings in a sparkly, fibrous finish.
Jennifer Moss | Emergent Geographies IV | Wool, cotton and wire on wood panel | 72” x 36” x 8”
Zoë Williams, from New Orleans, contributes needle-felted creatures that are mounted on frames like taxidermied bucks. Working entirely in white felt, Williams crafts animals that you almost recognize: Mara is a rabbit-like albino with the short ears of a fox and hand-painted confetti eyes. Mounted on the wall, she majestically watches over us from a place that seems straight out of midnight imaginings. Touched will also include pieces from Morwenna Catt, Andrea Graham, Sonya Yong James, Kit Lane, Kirsten Lund, Kyoko Matsuyama, Stephanie Metz, Jennifer Moss, and Astrid Polman. Kohnstamm and Breanna Rockstad-Kincaid will lead felting workshops in October to accompany the exhibition. na Touched, a Soft Sculpture Exhibit is on view at Ground Floor Gallery October 1 through 29. Find out more at www.groundflrgallery.com and www.TouchedArt.com.
Shana Kohnstamm | Aculeus | Wool, wire, carnelian, garnet, glass beads, acrylic polymer | 11” x 11” x 6” 64
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When theWOLVES CAME IN at OZ Arts | October 8 & 9 Now Suite. The textured, drum-driven record, which is at times direct and at others more metaphoric, with some of the sections sung without words, as if language simply falls short sometimes, was inspired by and a part of the Civil Rights Movement.
This month OZ Arts continues to expand Nashville’s art experience as it hosts When the Wolves Came In, a 75-minute dance performance by New York choreographer Kyle Abraham that not only speaks to the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the 20th anniversary of the abolishment of apartheid in South Africa, and the continued violence and discrimination since, but talks back to these events by questioning how far we’ve come. “Abraham goes beyond reflection,” OZ Artistic Director Lauren Snelling says. “Instead, he challenges us to reexamine defining moments for international civil rights through a trio of dance works spectacularly performed by his company, Abraham.In.Motion.”
Abraham, whose work strikes a similar balance between direct and abstract, doesn’t remember exactly when he first listened to Roach, but has always loved jazz and used Roach’s “The Drum Also Waltzes” and other songs from Drums Unlimited to begin work on his project before collaborating with Glasper to produce an interpretation of Roach’s Freedom Now Suite that features a certain amount of hip hop-inspired improvisation that plays well to the choreography.
It’s an important distinction, according to Abraham, the difference between speaking (which implies an audience but not necessarily a conversation) and talking back, which requires a conversation. “I think we have a long way to go, but I think people feel safer to speak, which I think is a large part of it,” Abraham says and adds that one blessing of everyone having camera phones is “now people are able to show injustice in a somewhat safer way than in the past.”
At times dancers don oversized beehive wigs, which Abraham says he’s often asked about but is more interested in leaving open ended. Even if just for the aesthetic, the cartoonish wigs juxtapose nicely with, as The New York Times puts it, the “lush movements” and smoky, sometimes ominous-looking scenery.
For his latest show, Abraham, a self-deemed “old soul” and MacArthur Fellow, combines jazz and hip hop in an incredible and dynamic performance set to music composed by award-winning jazz pianist Robert Glasper and backed by the stunning and evocative scenery of visual artist Glenn Ligon.
Abraham’s favorite piece and “the quietest dance of the three,” he says, is “Hallowed.” “I think they get it,” he says of Southern audiences in particular. “It’s inspired by lynchings and a lot of the heinous stuff that’s happened around the world. It’s about those emotions that are stirring on the inside that you’re too scared to verbalize.” na
The conceit musically and thematically for When the Wolves Came In was derived from drummer and composer Max Roach’s 1960 album We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom
See Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion’s When the Wolves Came In at OZ Arts Nashville Thursday, October 8, and Friday, October 9, at 8 p.m. For more information, visit www.ozartsnashville.org.
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Matthew Baker and Jeremy Jae Neal
Photography by Tim Barden
New York choreographer Kyle Abraham brings a stellar troupe to OZ
Connie Shiau, Rena Butler and Tamisha Guy
Photography by Carrie Schneider
by Luke Wiget
Jazzmania The Factory at Franklin | October 24 Offering outstanding art, live jazz, great food and spirits, Jazzmania promises once again to be the ultimate jazz party and an exceptional art auction. Beegie Adair, one of the most revered figures in Nashville’s jazz scene for over 40 years, is this year’s Honorary Event Chairperson. Celebrating its 15th year, Jazzmania is the major fundraiser for the Nashville Jazz Workshop (NJW) supporting its operation, including classes, performances, and outreach activities for youth, seniors, and the community.
Photograph by Duncan May
The silent auction features over 80 works of art, including paintings, drawings, encaustic, photography, crafts, and jewelry, by some of the city’s best artists, such as Todd Williamson, Jerry Atnip, James Makuac, Andrew Saftel, Tom Turnbull, and Jay Krenson.
Live music will be provided by an all-star NJW ensemble under the direction of Denis Solee with arrangements by Jeff Steinberg and solos by Christina Watson and Rod McGaha. This year’s menu, created by Sargent’s Fine Catering, boasts an island theme, with dishes including paella, island shrimp, and grilled flank steak with fire and spice. One of the annual highlights is the presentation of the NJW Heritage Award, which is given to individuals who have promoted excellence in jazz and have contributed to the rich legacy of jazz in Nashville. Past recipients include Greg Lee, Connye Florance, Jeff Steinberg, George Tidwell, John Birdsong, and Denis Solee. Jazzmania 2015 takes place Saturday, October 24, from 6 until 10 p.m. at Liberty Hall, The Factory at Franklin. For tickets and additional information, visit www.nashvillejazz.org.
Andrew Saftel | We Breathe 2004 | Mixed medium | 14” x 14”
James Makuac | Africa Cheetah 2015 | Oil | 8” x 8”
by Daniel Tidwell
Topography Mapping the Human Landscape Tinney Contemporary October 3 through November 28
Wesley Clark | My Big Black America | 2014 | Reclaimed wood pallets, wood, nails, and black stain | 120” x 192”
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According to Sheats, the concept of the exhibition was inspired by Walter Muir Whitehill’s Boston: A Topographical History. “The book is not really about Boston’s landmass,” says Sheats. “It's about how people moved through a community over time—highlighting the ever-changing racial makeup and the effects of economics and politics in the community.” For Sheats the artists in this show are all involved in some way with visually articulating issues that build the complex, layered networks making up our contemporary society—issues including history, memory, equality, inequality, and how artists “visually articulate those concepts.”
n Topography at Tinney Contemporary, curator and artist Jamaal Sheats has brought together five African American artists, including himself, who are exploring notions of contemporary life and how memory, individuality, and community shape and define how we see the world and view each other. Although the artists are all employing different mediums, a strong physicality and reliance on materiality tie much of the work in this show together. 67
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Alfred Conteh | Untitled: Conduit | 2015 | Wood, epoxy dough, EPS foam, steel wire, thermo adhesive, fabric, atomized steel and bronze dust, urethane plastic, and acrylic | 97” x 97” x 9” 68 nashvillearts.com
Photograph by Jerry Atnip
“Curating for me is about creating a composition, framing the conversation around a theme,” says Sheats. “The same way a conductor orchestrates different musical groups to compose a song or an editor compiles a book of essays or short stories. The pieces in the show complement each other both conceptually and aesthetically. They are big, powerful, and intrusive, with the majority being very sculptural and highly textured. Interestingly, while each artist uses a variety of materials, they complement one another and work in tandem within the space at Tinney Contemporary.”
Artist and Guest Curator Jamaal Sheats Sheats’s own work, which he has included in the exhibition, engages directly with these core exhibition themes of mapping and memory. Through hammered metal and carved wood images, Sheats fashions representations of the cultural indicators which permeate modern life from metaphorical aggregated landscapes.
One of the most stunning pieces in the exhibition is Wesley Clark’s My Big Black America, a hulking United States map fashioned from layers of reclaimed wood. For Clark, the salvaged wood and pieced-together structure is meant to evoke the social constructs that affect African Americans today. “Old wood is the base of the construction and acts as a metaphor for those from which America’s foundation was built—black slaves and low-paid industrial workers. Newer segments of wood are the younger generation creating what is the surface of the USA today.”
The works in the show “operate like the pieces of a puzzle—with each layered together to create a conceptual topographical map,” according to Sheats. “There are many points upon which the viewer can enter, providing many paths to creatively navigate and scrutinize the ideas that these artists are creatively addressing.” An annual guest-curated exhibition has become something of a tradition for the gallery, according to owner Susan Tinney. “We are fairly hands-off about the selection of artists other than to have an initial concept in mind when inviting the curator,” says Tinney. “We are excited about showcasing the works of these remarkable artists and look forward to the dialogue it engenders.” na
Alfred Conteh’s Untitled: Conduit is visually arresting in a similar manner. This circular work, fashioned from a multitude of materials including steel and bronze dust, directly references African sculpture with the carved figure at the center of the visual field punctuated by organic forms that resemble vines, arteries, and electrical circuits. The work is part of a larger series called Tetanus, which Conteh intends to function as “a collection of visual toxins . . . to inject into and destroy the collective consciousness and shared ideologies of white supremacy, African dependency, and those who unknowingly propagate and support these systems.”
Topography opens with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. October 3 at Tinney Contemporary and will be on exhibit through November 28. For more information about the exhibit, visit www.tinneycontemporary.com.
Alicia Henry takes a more nuanced and less literal approach to these issues in Untitled: Analogous, a sensuous work of folded and shaped leather that is reminiscent of Robert Morris’s draped felt sculptures from the 1970s. Although Henry often uses the human form in her work to explore issues of familial relationships and ideas of the body and identity, here she uses abstract forms to “explore relationships and social interactions based on the idea of a Family Tree.” Jamea Richmond Edwards explores the identity and representation of African American women in society though her paintings and photographs. Cost of Making Her Rise is a portrait in profile of a defiant-looking young woman against a black field punctuated by a ray of light from behind. Edwards’s work is strongly autobiographical, inspired by the lives of the women in her family. According to the artist, the body of work of which this painting is a part is related to the death of her mother and aunt, both of whom were addicted to drugs.
Alicia Henry | Untitled: Analogous | 2015 | Leather, thread, acrylic, yarn, and dye | Dimensions vary 69
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209 10th Avenue South, Suite 309 615.255.3255 | MARGARETELLISJEWELRY.COM
ARTOBERNashville 2015 All images courtesy of MNAC
by Cat Acree
N
othing highlights the richness of Nashville’s growing arts and cultural scenes quite like Artober Nashville. Now in its fifth year, Artober Nashville has become one of the South’s largest cultural celebrations, with events every single night throughout the city. In 2011, Artober Nashville began as an idea among city leaders as a new way to elevate how locals experience the arts, resulting in more than 600 events Cheekwood, Jaume Plensa in visual and performing arts, music, craft, film, and more, presented by 163 organizations and businesses. The Other beloved Artober traditions include the Celebrate 2014 celebration boasted more than 1,000 events by 245 Nashville Cultural Festival (October 3 at Centennial Park) partners, reaching an estimated 400,000 people. and the Nashville Print Crawl (now in its third year, held on October 17). Artober is also a partner with the Southern “We’re always looking at ways to expand our audience Festival of Books and will sponsor a performance stage on and cultivate an increased appreciation for the city’s arts Legislative Plaza October 9 through 11. scene,” says Rebecca Barrios, Director of Community Engagement for the Metro Nashville Arts Commission. “Our goal has always been that every Nashvillian should be able to have an arts experience in October. With an array of performances and exhibitions happening throughout all parts of the county, there’s truly something for everyone to enjoy.”
Of course, this is only a small preview of what Artober Nashville has in store. New events are being added daily to the calendar at ArtoberNashville.com, and Nashvillians are encouraged to join the Artober Nashville dialogue on social media, using the #ArtoberNashville hashtag.
Highlights in this year’s celebration include a new program called Bonnaroo Artworks, which will feature commissioned works by seven artists, composers, poets, sound artists, and musicians inspired by Nashville’s public art collection, debuting at community events such as the Nashville Symphony’s Free Day of Music.
Throughout October, smart-phone users can access the new mobile website www.ExploreNashvilleArt.com, a free, on-the-go resource that provides information about the Metro Arts public art collection, as well as discounts to performances and arts venues, including free admission to the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.
TEDxNashvilleSalon: CREO is now in its second year, with leading innovators discussing social justice and equity on October 24 at Belmont’s McAfee Concert Hall. The Metro Arts’ neighborhood-focused THRIVE program will celebrate North Nashville neighborhoods with the North Wall Fest, spotlighting new murals at three locations on October 16 and 17.
“Artober has sparked meaningful dialogue, innovation, and neighborhood transformation,” says Barrios. “We look forward to another impactful month of celebrating our vibrant community through the arts this year.” na
Frist Center, Shinique Smith
For more information about this year’s Artober plans, visit www.artobernashville.com.
The Clay Lady’s Campus, ARTable
Nashville Children’s Theatre, Charlotte’s Web
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Cory Willms
Principal Broker
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women painting WOMEN
by Gracie Pratt
“Celebrating Art of Women by Women” Haynes Galleries October 9 through November 7
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ho better to depict the accents and contours of the female form than the women who embody it? To begin the fall exhibition season, Haynes Galleries offers a provocative collection of paintings, drawings, and sculptures of women, created and contextualized by contemporary female artists. Drawing inspiration from the online art group and website Women Painting Women, the works carefully chosen for this exhibition tell stories of desire, innocence, private moments, and culture. Incorporating classic allusions while embracing contemporary influences, these works represent a modern look at the female form.
Suchitra Bhosle | Backlit in Jade | Oil on panel | 16" x 12"
Many featured artists make meaningful use of drapery and fabric in their work, an unmistakable nod to Old World techniques and medieval notions of beauty. The tapestries woven into these contemporary pieces take on an identity of their own, interacting with and complementing the figures. Gary Haynes, owner of Haynes Galleries, is quick to admit the significance of this accent and the multi-faceted ways it is used in different pieces featured in this exhibition. “It is remarkable the variety of themes these artists can tackle using this device. Each is treating it differently. Sometimes it is as important as the figure; in other pieces, it is a supporting component. These women are telling important contemporary stories with this age-old tool.” Artist Stephanie Rew uses drapery in the form of kimonos, a unique take on a classic motif shown especially in pieces
Stephanie Rew | Blue Velvet Recliner | Oil on linen | 32” x 32”
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a highly detailed, contextualized landscape. Pour Toi Un Lac shows a woman in deep thought, an intimate look at a guarded moment. Ripples of water glow from the canvas and create an illusion of movement, the wind moving beyond the water and touching the wisps of hair that gather on the woman’s brow.
like Studying Raphael. The bright texture of the kimono catches the eye first, a juxtaposition to the intensely private moment the figure is experiencing. Her face is docile and calm, but her robes suggest a fierce boldness. Victoria Novak, a Russian artist inspired by Italian Renaissance art, uses fabric as a focal point in her piece Scelta. Ribbons of color weave around the two nude figures, the brightest components of the piece. Telling a story of a fatal choice, to which one figure leans eagerly and the other shrinks back and hides her face, the story plays out in the bright drapery surrounding, comforting, or perhaps even ensnaring the two women. The works of artist Alexandra Tyng similarly come to life through a telling context, though this time the story is not told through drapes and tapestries but through a foreboding landscape. In paintings like The Source, the landscape becomes as much a part of the story as the figure herself, representing a decision between awareness and innocence, danger and safety.
Stories are explored through both the classic tradition and contemporary contexts in this series, providing a unique and moving look at women in their ordinary and profound moments of life. The result is not merely representation of the feminine, but a robust dialogue of allusions, influences, and ideals. Haynes Galleries does not disappoint with this stunning fall exhibition. na
Celebrating Art of Women by Women will begin with an opening reception on October 9 from 5-7:30 p.m., and works will be on display until November 7. Haynes Galleries is located at 1600 Division St., on the Music Row Roundabout. For more information, visit www.haynesgalleries.com.
Canadian artist Danielle Richard also paints her figures in
Danielle Richards | Pour Toi Un Lac | Oil on canvas | 30� x 36�
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PUBLICART
BY CAROLINE VINCENT | DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC ART | METRO NASHVILLE ARTS COMMISSION
Artist Christian Moeller has begun installation of Metro Arts’ newest public art commission Stix. Planned for the roundabout of Korean Veterans Boulevard adjacent to the Music City Center, the artwork should be completed during October. The artwork will be 73.5 feet tall and made of 27 wooden poles. They will be spaced in an irregular pattern throughout the surface area of the roundabout. The verticality of the poles will vary between 0º–15º from its center axis. The poles will be made of red cedar and will be painted in stripes of various heights in five different colors: red, orange, light blue, dark blue, and light green. Fifteen up-lights will be embedded into the landscaping to light up the sculpture at night and will result in a vibrant display of color, light, and shadow. Moeller says of the work, “When I first saw the project site during my visit to Nashville, my immediate reaction was to do something very tall, with good visibility from afar. It was suggested that the proposed artwork should be highly iconic, keeping in mind that not every piece of public art in the ‘Music City’ of Nashville needs to directly refer to its omnipresent musical past and present.” Stix occupies almost the entirety of the available space and creates an overall volume of urban dimensions. Moeller further explains,“Instead of developing an artwork for the roundabout, my goal became to turn the entire roundabout into an artwork. The result is a large structural piece characterized by color with unlimited 360º viewing angles,
Stix Takes Center Stage
Christian Moeller | Stix | 2015 | Painted native hardwood poles 27 poles 70' each installed within 150'
making the journey around this roundabout an exciting visual experience.” Artist Christian Moeller is a professor in the Department of Design/Media Arts at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) and has a studio in Silver Lake, California. na For more information on this and other public art projects, please visit on your mobile device ExploreNashvilleArt.com or from your desktop publicart.nashville.gov. To see more renderings of what the final installation will look like, visit www.nashvillearts.com.
by Jane R. Snyder
michaelDAMICO Here’s Looking at You Gordon Jewish Community Center October 3 to 31
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Bunn Gray Portrait | 2015 | Oil on canvas | 28” x 30”
Photograph by Johnny (Vegas) Aguirre
H
ow does an artist fascinated by the dramatic oil paintings of seventeenth-century Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens and the fastidious work of American illustrator Norman Rockwell wind up creating bold portraits of Grammy-winning rock stars? According to Michael Damico, it’s all about values. Not ethical ones—although the painter surely has those—but artistic ones that he applies to stretched canvases in his sunny, music-filled studio in Franklin, Tennessee. When asked about his passion for faces, the artist closed his eyes for a few moments, then answered thoughtfully. “I honestly don’t know what brought me to portraits—it’s a really complex puzzle. During college, I just got obsessed with cracking the code. Every portrait you do is a new puzzle. I got obsessed with how to describe form and shape on a two-dimensional surface.” Michael goes out of his way to find reference materials that reflect “more unusual poses” of his subjects. But because “people instantly recognize popular icons” these photographs are only a starting point for him before he moves forward to build each face one brushstroke, one drizzle, or one splash at a time. In our instantaneous, social-media-ruled world where images of popular icons prevail, does painting to the public’s bar of knowledge of popular culture make the artist’s job more difficult? “I think that prevalence has an opposite effect. The more frequently people are exposed to images the more the brain can identify what it is. A few dots with a line below, the mind can immediately identify, oh, that’s a face. We are always finding faces in everything. What happens is you end up with a lot of bad representations of people, but the public can identify them because they are so familiar with that face. If the components are even close to the spot, proportion, or orientation, oh yeah, that’s Jim Morrison!” Whether a painting of his own subjects or a commissioned piece, Michael’s canvases jump over the public’s bar of recognition like an Olympic hurdler. To identify his subjects is easy, and, if you look very carefully, some portraits even include song lyrics or poetry written by the celebrities he renders. This text may be just a subtle part of “the underpainting,” but that doesn’t lessen their impact as compelling facets of the talented icons on his canvases. The sizes of his paintings vary but their bold presentation does not, as is evidenced in his portraits of Jimi Hendrix, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, and many more.
Joe Carnes | 2014 | Acrylic on canvas | 32” x 32”
Artist Michael Damico
“I’ve been painting a lot of the pop figures from generations behind me,” he explained. More recently, Michael has moved on to portraits of notables beloved by his own generation—people like Pink and Bradley Nowell, the late vocalist for the ska punk band Sublime. na Michael’s forthcoming show (October 3–31) at the Janet Levine March Gallery in the Gordon Jewish Community Center (www.nashvillejcc.org) will feature selected works in black and white as well as color. On Wednesday evening, October 7, an opening reception from 7 to 9 p.m. will provide a perfect chance to see if your favorite icon is among them. You can see Michael’s work at www.facebook.com/damicogallery.
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Photograph by Dean Dixon Photograph by Dean Dixon
SUFFRAGIST ★ ★ ★ C IT Y ★ ★ ★ Alan LeQuire Helps Commemorate Women’s Right to Vote and Tennessee’s Perfect 36
Tennessee Woman Suffrage Monument clay maquette
by Stephanie Stewart-Howard
I
which in 1920, before the addition of Alaska and Hawaii, meant 36. (Most of the conservative South, including Georgia, the Carolinas, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana, held out for years. Mississippi ratified it in 1984.)
n the workshop of the LeQuire Gallery, sculptor Alan LeQuire is working diligently on three female figures, showing me a photo of one, Frankie Pierce, and discussing the details of 1919 women’s fashion with me—lace collars and skirt shapes, waists, and supportive undergarments. He is determined to get the look right, because the five women who will grace the monument he’s working on— Pierce, along with Carrie Chapman Catt, Anne Dallas Dudley, Abby Crawford Milton, and Sue Shelton White— were very real, flesh-and-blood fighters for women’s suffrage when, still less than a century ago, women in this country didn’t have the right to vote.
We, Tennessee, were that “Perfect 36” on August 18, 1920, something to be proud of. By the time LeQuire was commissioned to begin this piece, he’d already completed what might be called preliminary companion pieces—one in a public park in Knoxville— commissioned by Wanda Sobieski, who raised the money for it—and another in the state capitol, a bas relief which, Casey points out, is visible only when the capitol is open. The goal for this statue is that it be accessible at all times, to all people. Casey says she hopes to see LeQuire create similar works in the future in Memphis, where she lives, and in Chattanooga as well.
LeQuire, in concert with Paula Casey and Tennessee Suffrage Monument, Inc., hopes to unveil the final statue, which will honor these women in heroic size, with a relief of three relevant modern ones at the base—Lois DeBerry, Beth Harwell, and Jane Eskind.
While this is indeed public art, it is paid for by private efforts, led by Paula Casey and the Perfect 36 Society. If you’d like to make a donation to both this project and eventual statues for other Tennessee cities, please visit www.tnsuffragemonument.org. Stay tuned for the location
LeQuire began the piece officially in February, when the money had been raised to commence the project. It is not his first piece celebrating Tennessee’s role in the passing of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. For those who aren’t familiar with our role in the process, an amendment to the Constitution may be ratified only with the approval of a three-quarter majority of the states,
and unveiling of this historic monument. na For more information about Alan LeQuire, visit www.alanlequire.com and www.lequiregallery.com. 83
nashvillearts.com
Elizabeth LaPenna
Dream Maker, 72” x 48”
www.lapennafineart.com lapennastudio@comcast.net • 615-832-9290
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randySIMMONS Charcoal and iPhones
“For instance, I once photographed my mom while we were at a restaurant, and it was a very casual thing. She was sitting across from me, and I took a photo without really thinking about it. And so recently I was looking through my images and came across that one and thought it would be perfect for a drawing. She didn't realize I was taking a photo. I love candid photos, and it was just a quiet moment that translates really well to my work. The resulting piece, which is titled Mom, has a lot of textural detail, and I just got lost in it. When I'm really into a drawing I'll work on it ten or twelve hours a day, maybe, and love every moment of it. I go through those patches where it's like, shit, this is work, but you just have to get through it. But this whole drawing, every square inch of it, was exciting."
Mariah in the Rain | 2015 | Charcoal and conte on paper | 45” x 45”
by Jesse Mathison For his current series, artist Randy Simmons has worked almost exclusively with charcoal and iPhones to create large-scale drawings that are rich in texture and sensuality. "I stay within realism," said the artist, "though some people would say photorealism, but I don't really see it that way since I like marks and lines to be evident."
Libra | 2011 | Charcoal and conte on paper | 38”x 38”
On a calm afternoon we sat at the International Market on Belmont, discussing technique, relationships, and the artist's solo show at Belmont's Leu Center for Visual Art in September. "For this show specifically I debuted four new drawings, all of which are perfectly square, and I showed thirteen total. The square format works really well because I take a lot of pictures with my cell phone, and I love using Hipstamatic, so I have a lot of very good candid photos to work with in these dimensions. 87 nashvillearts.com
As we discussed the intricacies of more of these recent pieces, it became clear that the candid approach of the artist was certainly organic. We talked further about several pieces in particular, and the one that stood out most was Mariah in the Rain. "I photographed this girl in Italy during a rainstorm," began the artist. "She was wearing a hoodie, trying to get warm, and I quickly snapped an image of her. She's got a million freckles, which was a challenge and turned into this tedious layering process. I started out with toned paper and erased the skin tone around the freckles. Then I drew them in and they were too dark, and so I wiped them off but wiped too much away, so I had to come in and redraw them back in. And that was a long back-and-forth process." The closer you get to these large works, the more apparent become the passion and struggle behind them. Each piece is unique, imbued with emotion and sensuality, and the painstaking efforts put into each piece make for an impressive body of work. na For more information about Randy Simmons visit www.randysimmonsdrawings.com.
ALIAS Opens 2015–16 Season
BY JOE NOLAN
Andy Harding’s Ghost Structures Get Spooky at Leu Art Gallery
All the sculptures in the show are made of reclaimed pine that Harding ripped into sticks that are roughly 2”x 2” before assembling abstract forms that look like tangles of triangles. Some are mounted on the walls, but most are scattered across the gallery floor. The numbered works vary in shape and size, but they’re all variations of randomseeming, organic constructions that effectively evoke the uncertain probabilities of electron clouds. Bridging the gap between general relativity and quantum field theory would unite our understanding of the most vast with our knowledge of the most minute, resulting in the so-called Theory of Everything. Andy Harding’s structures can actually be seen as cosmic or atomic or even metaphysical—à la the exhibition’s title—as disembodied souls returned to pure energy. Harding earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Belmont, and his creative examinations of scientific themes claim a unique space in the city’s art scene. Harding showed work at Tinney Contemporary a year ago. That small show of wall sculptures and drawings was very strong, but this sprawling new exhibition allows the artist to realize the kind of visual sweep and conceptual reach that those displays could only point at. This exhibition marks a major accomplishment for Harding as well as for the 2015 art calendar where Ghost Structures is one of the year’s best. Andy Harding’s Ghost Structures at Belmont University’s Leu Art Gallery in the Lila D. Bunch library will remain on exhibit through November 30. For information, visit www.belmont.edu.
The ensemble’s third CD, works by Pulitzer-winning composer Paul Moravec, will be released in January 2016. ALIAS’s Winter Concert will showcase selections from this disc, as well as from Kenji Bunch and Gabriela Lena Frank, the composers of ALIAS’s two previous recordings. “This seemed like an appropriate way to celebrate the release of our third CD and to highlight ALIAS’s recording history,” explains Artistic Director and violinist Zeneba Bowers. “We love all three of these composers, and we’re really proud of our recordings of their music.” ALIAS continues its tradition of partnering with Nashville’s nonprofit community. For each of its three concerts, the ensemble will work with a different nonprofit service organization and donate 100% of concert proceeds. Safe Haven Family Shelter, Tennessee Coalition to End Domestic & Sexual Violence, and the Nashville Freedom School Partnership are the season’s nonprofit partners. ALIAS will also increase the scope of its Education Community Programs, in which musicians present programs, in community settings, to school children and adults that don’t normally have the chance to hear live classical music. ALIAS’s Fall Concert takes place on October 13 at 8 p.m. at Blair School of Music, Vanderbilt University. The nonprofit partner for this performance is Safe Haven Family Shelter. For more information, visit www.aliasmusic.org. Photograph by John Partipilo
In his criticism of quantum mechanics, Albert Einstein coined the phrase “spooky action at a distance” to deride the mathematical paradox of quantum entanglement, which finds subatomic particles connected by something that might look like super telepathy to an outside observer. Things get spooky when things get small, and the empty spaces contained by Andy Harding’s Ghost Structures haunt Belmont University’s Leu Art Gallery this fall.
The Grammy-nominated ALIAS Chamber Ensemble unveils its 2015–16 season, which includes a concert retrospective of their three recordings. The season opens this month with a concert featuring Eric Ewazen’s Ballade, Pastorale, and Dance for flute, French horn, and piano; Andy Akiho’s Ligneous 1 for marimba and string quartet; Benjamin Britten’s Phantasy for oboe and strings; and Karim Al-Zand’s The Art of Conversation for string quartet.
Photograph by John Partipilo
Blair School of Music | October 13 Photograph by Katie Boatman
CRITICALi
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oliviaHILL
by Cat Acree
Terrestrial Constellation | 2014 | Oil on paper | 22” x 16”| 2005 | Watercolor on paper | Haynes Galleries
Humans are disappearing from Olivia Hill’s paintings RCA Studio A | October 17
Cloud Seeder | 2014 | Oil on paper collage | 36” x 24”
This Was a Tidal Wave | 2014 | Oil on linen | 34” x 23”
T
human footprint is all that remains, and nature continues to respond to it.
he humans are disappearing from Olivia Hill’s oil paintings. Originally from Los Angeles, Hill moved to New Orleans in 2007 and eventually came to Nashville, where she has remained for three years. She has just returned from three months in the Yucca Valley, where she and her fiancé, Evan, have been renovating a house in the desert. Because of this recent trip, most of her work is in storage and there are only a few paintings to talk about in person—but that’s enough. The first is L.A. Rainbow, painted in 2012, depicting a throng of people reacting to a rainbow arc that seems suspended on a giant gray screen. Some people flee; some touch it; some take photos; some don’t care. Here, nature is a spectacle, and we are her audience.
The second is a brooding, unnamed work she painted while in the desert—a cloudy white storm or explosion trapped under a net, a ring of rocks holding its edges in place. Now the humans are gone, but far from forgotten. The net and carefully positioned rocks are the equivalent of I Was Here scrawled in a bathroom stall. In Hill’s recent paintings, the
“I want it to look almost as if”—Hill pauses, hesitant— “Earthlings in the future found evidence of human civilization, and they could somehow tap into our memories, and through some sort of advanced technology, create this visual stream of what human existence was like.” She laughs at how sci-fi that sounds, but then compares it to discoveries of cave paintings: What if we could access the murky memories of ancient peoples? What would we see? “All my life, ever since I was a little girl, [I have] felt this incredible responsibility for nature,” Hill says. A less philosophical artist would take a conservationist slant here, but not Hill, who has placed herself in the role of passive observer or archivist. Consider satellite images of Earth, particularly at night when lights encrust the surface of the planet. “I heard a scientist describe it as looking like barnacles on the planet, like a parasite,” Hill says. But she’s resistant to acknowledging the tragedy of this imagery. She’s more anthropological than that. For Hill, the things we leave on Earth—our trash—are
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“
What if we could access the murky memories of ancient peoples? What would we see?
The King Fell Into His Plastic Sea | 2015 | Oil on linen | 36” x 28”
Photograph by Evan Hurst
“immortal remnants.” In the tremendous The King Fell Into His Plastic Sea, stars and bright lights erupt like a firework over a churning ocean, which upon closer inspection is a plastic sheet. As with many of her recent works, neon elements provide some sense of sterility and technicality, but softness is never far behind, adding a necessary emotional component that verges on nostalgia. With Hill occupying the passive role as observer, it’s wonderfully fitting that she would use oil paint. Hill originally despised the medium—she resisted it when she had a “controlling nature”—but in 2007 she began to paint every day, eventually learning “to let the paint do what it was supposed to do.” Science is Hill’s greatest inspiration, and she draws an easy parallel between science and art: Both pursue answers that often have little practical application. She mentions the discovery of the Higgs boson particle, the missing building block to all life and all matter. “It’s just such a mind-boggling, amazing discovery that it just makes our life complete,” Hill says, then points out that it has no monetary value. We seek the answers anyway. As nature’s greatest audience, it’s our purpose to discover her secrets. “We’re the only beings with consciousness,” Hill says. “And having this consciousness, being able to make discoveries, being able to understand what life is—this seems to be what we’re here for.” na Olivia Hill’s art will be on exhibit along with work by ceramicist Nick Listo at RCA Studio A, 30 Music Square W. Suite 201. The one-night-only show opens October 17 with a reception from 6-8 p.m. For more information on Olivia Hill visit www.oliviahillart.com.
Artist Olivia Hill
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POET’SCORNER
Sheliagh Simmons graduated from Nashville School of the Arts this spring and is now attending Nashville State Community College. She is also a superb visual artist. Learn more at www.southernword.org.
BY SHELIAGH SIMMONS
I hate being picked up.
And receive candy from
When I was younger,
Clowns who didn’t scare us.
We would drive for
Afterwards, Daddy would
Eight hours to Savannah,
Put me around his shoulders
The Spanish moss air
And I was flying, reaching
Hanging above our heads.
for the sun with tiny hands.
I couldn’t care less.
But I’m not a little girl anymore,
I just wanted the food.
And Daddy isn’t here.
My Grandmother would
I want to be among
setup two picnic tables,
chrysanthemums and clay.
Seasoned crab splayed across them
That’s as close to him as I can be.
Like paint on a Jackson Pollock.
So please,
At the homecoming parade,
Don’t pick me up.
Children would stand
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Photograph by Anthony Scarlati
In front of parents
Lindsay Goranson
and art incubator. The group hosts a monthly lab where works in progress are read aloud by professional actors. In a segment called Smorgasbord, six artists are given ten minutes each to perform in any medium.
The $2 beer brought her to Nashville. The community keeps her here. “Anything feels possible in this town,” she says. “If there’s a group you really admire, you can talk to someone who can get you involved. If you want to make performance art that consists of an actor having a conversation with a cello or dancing a painting (and I do), you can find the people who want to see that happen... and a brewery that will donate the beer to support it. That’s exceptional. That does not exist everywhere.” na
Stirrings from the Nashville Underground Lindsay Goranson felt it was time to leave New York City. For ten years, she made her living as a theatre, film, and voice-over actor, but in 2014, everything became unbearable: the skyrocketing rent, the neighbor who yelled every time she played her ukulele, and the parttime gig on the fifth floor of an illegal walk-up with no air-conditioning and a heater that smelled like burnt hair. Neighborhood businesses shuttered left and right, and her favorite East Village dive bar got bulldozed for a swanky condo. The city was hollowing out. “So many of the artists I respect and admire were picking up sticks and heading for somewhere, anywhere else they could find space to create and live and not have to work three jobs to do that,” Goranson says. “At some point I had the realization that none of it was worth it anymore for me.” But where to go? She and her husband looked closely at Baltimore, New Orleans, and Philadelphia, but it was a $2 beer that decided their fate. “We were sitting at Robert’s Western World on a 36-hour blow through Nashville,” Goranson recalls. “I bought a $2 Miller High Life after a decade of $8 Bud Lite pints and thought, yeah, this is the place.” Six months later, they packed their bags and moved to Nashville. As soon as she hit the tarmac, Goranson set out to find cross-discipline artist discussion groups similar to the New York Salon, the one she founded in NYC. But her search was unsuccessful. “I depressionbaked pies for a couple of weeks and then arranged a MeetUp for people interested in developing new work. The response was immediate and enthusiastic.” N&XT, which stands for New and Experimental Theatre, has evolved into an acting workshop, support network,
For more information about the N&XT Lab on October 15 and to purchase tickets for the upcoming presentation of Manuscript, November 5to 14, visit www.nandxt.com. Tony Youngblood is the founder of the Circuit Benders’ Ball, a biennial celebration of free culture, art, music, and the creative spirit. He created the open-source, multi-artist, scalable “art tunnel” concept called M.A.P.s (ModularArtPods.com) and runs the experimental improv music blog and podcast www.TheatreIntangible.com.
ARTINFORMATION
Photograph by Jason Böckli
BY TONY YOUNGBLOOD
by Logan Halsey
94 Medicine Crow Apsaroke Tribe | 2014 | Pen and ink drawing | 16” x 12” nashvillearts.com
bobJONES
P
eople bear the lives they lead in their faces; the curves and crevices tell tales that could not be spoken. Bob Jones has dedicated his art entirely to rendering narratives in folds. Through mastery and simplicity, Jones makes art that reveals the worlds which lie within, using only white paper, black ink, and hundreds of thousands of tiny strokes made with his pen.
“
To me, there’s a look
that’s dignified and proud
but also very sad.
“Their faces tell their life story,” he says as he quickly demonstrates his technique, infinitesimal pen strokes slowly building into teeming, impenetrable darkness and overflowing into elegant contours, reaching outward to finally give way to the pure white light upon the surface. “It’s like a road map to their whole lives.” Every line contributes to the honesty, the intensity, and the character of his subjects. Jones draws from a wide range of characters for his art, including blues artists, cowboys, golden-era actors, and homeless people.
The Narrative Unfolds His portraits of Native Americans, however, are his most featured works, evoking their troubled history through the deep and solemn lines of their faces. “To me, there’s a look that’s dignified and proud but also very sad,” he reflects, going on to lament that “they’re so often overlooked as a part of our history.” The artist himself could hardly be accused of overlooking that history, however, immersing himself in the cultures of countless tribes, such as the Chokonen, Lakota, and Nambe, in order to capture the lives and spirits of their solemn tribesmen. “I get my reference materials from universities out west, the Library of Congress, Pinterest . . . I buy old post cards of Native Americans at Civil War shows and at junk shops if I can find them,” he explains, yet their history is brought to life in his portraits in detail that photographs and textbooks could not capture. Over the weeks and months of meticulous, meditative pen strokes, every furrow is lived in. Although the harsh realities of impoverished reservations and the Trail of Tears now weigh upon his mind as he draws from the wells of their spirits with his pen, Jones’s interest in Native Americans began in fantasy. His first forays into the arts as a youth in his hometown of Old Hickory were drawing from memory Wild
Ridge Walker Scout of Cheyenne | 2014 | Pen and ink drawing | 19” x 12”
West scenes from fifteen-cent double-feature matinees featuring Lash LaRue and copying panels out of Red Ryder comic books. Outlaw characters have always appealed to Jones, whether they appeared on the celluloid or right before him when he designed album covers for Sun Records, meeting with and photographing Opry stars such as Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Jerry Lee Lewis, whom he fondly remembers for having an office door with “knives hanging out, bullet holes . . . and there was an axe in there,” like a true desperado. The excitement and larger-than-life character of the Wild West is close to his heart.
Fool Bull | 2014 | Pen and ink drawing | 16” x 12”
Recognizing the intense dedication to realizing in living detail the character of his subjects, one might wonder what effect Jones wants his work to have on its viewers. “I want them to point and say, that’s Bob Jones!” he proclaims, a character in his own right. na
Photograph by Anthony Scarlati
Bob Jones will participate in a group exhibiiton at the Tennessee Art League, November 6 to 29. For more information about the artist and the exhibit, please visit www.goldenratiofineart.com and www.tennesseeart.org.
Artist Bob Jones
Raven Blanket | 2014 | Pen and ink drawing | 16” x 12” 96 nashvillearts.com
Rosewalker Arts Skilled Restoration of Antiques and Decorative Art
Richard & Carolyn Sullivan rosewalkerarts.com • 615.876.8500
THEATRE BY JIM REYLAND
“
The Playhouse shares a great sense of community,” says Producing Director Jim Crabtree. “We are so very grateful to the people and leaders of Crossville and Cumberland County for 50 years of involvement and
”
support.
Cumberland County Playhouse Celebrates 50 Years of Award-Winning Theatre in Crossville, Tennessee Fifty years is a long time to do anything in the arts. The ability to provide a steady stream of award-winning theatre seasons across fifty years, well, that’s cause for all of us to rise to a standing ovation. The Cumberland County Playhouse was founded in 1965 by community leaders led by Broadway veterans Paul and Mary Crabtree. At first glance you wonder about the viability of a theatre arts organization so far from a major city. The Cumberland County Playhouse is the only rural Major Cultural Institution as designated by the Tennessee Arts Commission and the only non-profit professional, performing arts resource in rural Tennessee. With the heavy investment of fifty years, the Cumberland County Playhouse has worked hard to find its artistic center with a steadfast commitment to the arts as an indigenous, homegrown part of rural America. It has done this by involving the surrounding community and at the same time transforming Crossville into a thriving cultural hub. In a region vastly under-served by other arts opportunities, the Playhouse provides over 350 performances and 1,200 classes in theatre, dance, and music annually. The CCP draws not only from the Cumberland Plateau, but also counts Nashville and Knoxville as major contributors. Recognized as a top attraction by the state tourism office, the CCP has welcomed over 100,000 visitors each year on average since 1965 and is home to two indoor and two outdoor stages. Family roots in the Playhouse still hold strong. Current board members, supporters, and volunteers represent many founding families, and the organization has been managed by two generations of Crabtrees, all serving over 5 million visitors since the 1965 opening.
“On behalf of everyone in the Tennessee Theatre Community, we congratulate the Playhouse on fifty great years.” Paul Crabtree Directs Pinocchio in 1963 If you haven’t gathered the family and made the trip to Cumberland County, it’s high time you found out what great theatre on the plateau is all about. na The Cumberland County Playhouse is located at 221 Tennessee Avenue in Crossville. For tickets, schedules, and additional information, please visit www.ccplayhouse.com. 98 nashvillearts.com
All photography courtesy of CCP
Jim Reyland’s STAND, starring Barry Scott and Chip Arnold, voted Best New Play by the Scene, continues its National Tour sponsored by HCA through October 2015. Writersstage.com has information on all the dates and cities.
Upcoming Highlights from CCP’s 2015-2016 Golden Anniversary Season: The Perils of Pinocchio - Through October 31, lets you be a part of the magic that lit the fire in 1963! This new production of Paul Crabtree’s classic musical fantasy will feature kids, teens, and members of the professional Playhouse acting company, along with amazing new special effects and a live orchestra.
Little Shop of Horrors
Smoke on the Mountain - May 22 through October 10 (Rated G), returns for its 22nd season! In 1938 North Carolina, young, enthusiastic Pastor Oglethorpe has asked the Sanders Family to the church’s first-ever “Saturday Night Sing.” A true audience favorite.
The Fox on the Fairway - August 6 through October 16 (Rated PG-13), is a madcap adventure about love, life, and man’s eternal love affair with . . . golf. With its mistaken identities, slamming doors, and romantic shenanigans, Fox recalls 2013’s smash hit Suite Surrender.
The Foreigner - September 4 through November 5 (Rated G), returns for its 50th Anniversary Season! Once again starring Jason Ross, Carol Irvin, and Daniel Black, this wickedly clever farce is outrageously funny. Hairspray
In-Laws, Outlaws, and Other People (Who Should Be Shot) - October 22 through December 12 (Rated G), is a wacky new Christmas comedy that’s filled with surprises, laughs, and Christmas spirit!
Scrooge - November 13 through December 19 (Rated G), is the classic musical tale of Ebenezer Scrooge—and the spirits who guide his reluctant journey to teach him the true spirit of Christmas. Great fun for the whole family.
A Sanders Family Christmas - November 20 through December 22 (Rated G), is the heartwarming sequel to Connie Ray and Alan Bailey’s wildly successful bluegrass gospel musical Smoke on the Mountain. Join Pastor Mervin Oglethorpe and the Sanders Family for hilarious and touching stories and twenty-five Southern Gospel Christmas favorites. Cats 99 nashvillearts.com
THEBOOKMARK
A MONTHLY LOOK AT HOT BOOKS AND COOL READS
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life
Elizabeth Gilbert
Ruth Reichl
Elizabeth Gilbert gets an A+ in social media, which has helped her maintain an ongoing relationship with her readers between books. Big Magic feels like a love letter to those fans who look to her for creative guidance. Better than a stack of motivational posters, this is one to pass out at work, in the classroom, and to anyone struggling to get a big project off the ground. Gilbert will appear in conversation with Ann Patchett on October 21 at Hume-Fogg High School as part of the Salon@615 author series, presented as a partnership among Parnassus Books, the Nashville Public Library and Library Foundation, and Humanities Tennessee.
My Kitchen Year makes you wish every cookbook came with stories attached to the recipes. Alongside beautiful photographs, more than 100 recipes tell the tale of how Reichl found herself out of work after Gourmet magazine was suddenly shut down. She retreated to her country house with her husband to recover from the shock, and in the year that followed, she focused on making comfort food: the best steak sandwich, perfect potatoes, strawberry shortcake made with biscuits containing an “unconscionable amount of butter,” and more. Meet Reichl on October 1, when she appears in Nashville as part of the Salon@615 series.
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The Heart Goes Last: A Novel
John Baeder’s Road Well Taken
Margaret Atwood
John Baeder and Jay Williams
The Heart Goes Last is Atwood’s first standalone novel in fifteen years. As Ann Patchett says, “Margaret Atwood has a genius for reimagining the world.” Here, readers find themselves in a not-toodistant future where society is falling apart. Stan and Charmaine are a couple whose marriage is strained by their existence; they are barely getting by, living out of their car. Then they sign up for the mysterious Positron Project—a “social experiment” that gives them jobs and a home in exchange for a stint in a prison cell every other month, while another couple occupies their house. It’s impossible to look away from what happens next. Meet Atwood at her Salon@615 event on October 19.
Many people know John Baeder’s art. He is famous for his realistic paintings of old diners, gas stations, and other symbols of Americana. Not as many people know Baeder’s life story, how he walked away from a career on Madison Avenue in the 1970s to devote his life to his art. In this book, Jay Williams takes an inside look at Baeder’s career and takes us along on the artist’s journey down back roads and through small towns of the United States. On November 4, Baeder will present this gorgeously illustrated new book for art lovers at Parnassus Books.
October An Exceptional Month for Film If the summer is the season of big motion pictures with mass appeal, what caliber of film should one expect by October? Scary films? Quiet indies crafted out of passion? Or is the answer more complex? Offering more than enough dates for readers to mark on their calendars, the influence of three separate showcases makes October one of the best months this year for the silver screen. At the top of the month, the 2015 International Black Film Festival honors the achievements of African-American perspectives of film by putting viewers and industry personnel together for screenings and events that bring those audiences beyond niche interest. From October 1 to 4, the Meharry Medical College will house a three-and-ahalf-day festival to bring out such guests as Straight Outta Compton writer and executive producer Alan Wenkus and D. Channsin Barry, director of the Dark Girls documentary that scrutinizes the common problem of sexuality within black churches. Information for the 2015 International Black Film Festival is available at www.ibffevents.com.
Prophet’s Prey showing during Doctober at the Belcourt Theatre
Of the Doctober films, Bobcat Goldthwait's Call Me Lucky should be marked on viewers' calendars for its current date of October 16 and 18. The story—which captures the 80s club frequenter and spoken-word antihero Barry Crimmins—solidifies Goldthwait as a mentor and advocate for responsible technology use. For information on the Doctober lineup, including show times and ticket information, be sure to visit www.belcourt.org. Fans of the historic theatre are also encouraged to learn more about the art house's campaign for renovations that include plans for a third screen. na
Justin Stokes is the founder of the MTSU Film Guild, a student organization which functions as a production company for student filmmakers. He is a filmmaker, screenwriter, and social media manager.
Focusing more on films than the production aspect, the 2015 Nashville Jewish Film Festival will celebrate its fifteenth year. With running dates from October 13 through November 7, the cinematic extension of activities of the Gordon Jewish Community Center (GJCC) includes a student film competition, an opening night cocktail supper/screening for the film Dough at the Nashville Children's Theatre, and a total of fifteen films screened all over Nashville. Information for the festival can be found on their website: www.nashvillejff.net. The third series of films will allow both the most freedom for viewing and sundry programming. The Belcourt's annual Doctober will spend the entire month celebrating the art of factual-film making by showing some of the most exacting and awaited stories of the year.
In Store Event Oct. 28 & 29 A L L Chagall-Malevich showing at the Nashville Jewish Film Festival
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5 1 0 1 H a r d i n g R o a d t N a s h v i l l e , Te n n e s s e e 3 7 2 0 5 t 6 1 5 . 3 5 3 . 1 8 2 3
FILMREVIEW
Courtesy of Sam Brower
BY JUSTIN STOKES
artTennessee SMART Roundup
by Anne Pope, Executive Director, Tennessee Arts Commission
Cheekwood’s Arts Education Programs Reach Thousands of Youth Every Year Statistics are continuously showing the benefits that Arts Education has in the lives and growth of children. A recent study from the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA) shows Tennessee as a leading state integrating arts into educational experiences. The Tennessee Arts Commission offers numerous arts education grants, but arts education programming is often offered by many of the state’s major cultural institutions from the Commission’s annual grants. One of Tennessee’s cultural treasures, Cheekwood Botanical Gardens and Museum of Art, is significantly contributing to the Arts Education movement through various programs. In 2015, they reported serving an estimated 100,000 youth annually through yearround tours, competitions, festivals, and workshops. This includes school tours given free of charge to more than 10,000 students each year from Tennessee, Southern Kentucky, and Northern Alabama, with a discounted price to out-of-region schools. Photography Courtesy of Cheekwood
Courtesy TN State Photography
A monthly guide to art education
ARTSprouts
Inspired by the natural beauty of the gardens, Cheekwood’s educational and public programming experiences are offered year round—not restricted to the typical academic year.
Fall Harvest gardens host six weeks of concerts, programs, and performances. Music and storytelling teach about horticulture and botany, and friendly scarecrows feature work created by students and community groups. Winter welcomes Holiday at Cheekwood with festive seasonal activities, and the garden design and artwork create “a winter wonderland of light.” Moving into warmer weather, spring features Cheekwood in Bloom with live concerts and performances, as well as numerous arts activities. Summertime at Cheekwood burns brightly as “outdoor adventure meets art in nature.” In addition to popular summer camps, outdoor exhibitions and concerts geared specifically towards children give them the opportunity to learn through hands-on arts experiences. Cheekwood strives to reach as many youth as possible by catering beyond the traditional classroom. Home School Day is offered twice a year, where garden and art tours, as well as art workshops and garden activities, are free for home-school
Children enjoy Family Night Out
students. Outreach and community programs are also offered and continue to be created. Craft Outreach allows professional artists to demonstrate their craft in schools, bringing students close to the creative process in a familiar setting. Cheekwood Explorations invites thirdgrade students to explore the Museum of Art and Botanical Gardens and then participate in an art project. This intimate arts experience corresponds to art, science, and social studies curriculum standards. Priority for these programs is given to Title I and at-risk rural schools. Newly launched in 2014, ARTSprouts brings Cheekwood into the community through summer programs for at-risk youth, providing an overview of its exhibitions and an art activity. In 2014, 4,804 youth took part in these programs. Opportunities start young at Cheekwood in Tuesdays for Tots. Through activities designed for children around ages 2 to 6, these little ones are able to participate creatively with the current art and garden exhibits with seasonal highlights. Overall, Cheekwood provides an impressive number of intimate arts encounters for the youth of Tennessee and surrounding states. Beyond tapping into the creative intellect and experiencing the arts culture, benefits of an arts education include: increasing learning and achievement, developing critical thinking skills for a 21st-century workforce, and preparing students to lead meaningful lives. For more information on Cheekwood’s educational programming, visit www.cheekwood.org.
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Words by DeeGee Lester
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Photography by Tim Broekema
Nashville Ballet for Everyone
Just walking in the door of Nashville Ballet, you feel the energy—people of all ages scurrying about, dance bags and toe-shoes in hand, talking excitedly, stretching and twirling in leotards and tights. It’s the world of dance, and you know when you enter the building that you are in a special place. To Dallas Wilt, board member and mother of two young dancers, the scene is especially thrilling. She was a member of Jane Fabian’s first group of young students, the Young Dancers’ Concert Group, who gave their first performance at TPAC in 1981 and evolved into Nashville Ballet five years later. “Looking back at the program over the years, at the ups and downs, when we could barely get 100 people in the audience and asked, Oh, gosh! Will we survive?” Wilt reminisces. “And now, to see how far it’s come!” With love and support and the dedication of teachers and dancers and community, Nashville Ballet has evolved into a world-class company that thrills audiences and made its international debut in Basel, Switzerland, in 1999. The School of Ballet has served thousands of kids exploring the beauty and discipline of one of the world’s most beautiful art forms. And it has expanded again and again, from a bare upper room across from NES, where dancers banged into poles, to the sleek, modern Martin Center on Redmon. And now, with continued growth and demand for more classes, it has expanded once more into a space with 52,000 square feet and seven studios. The expansion of the building is matched by the expansion of programming. Dancers can start as young as age 2 with Mommy and Me in the Children’s Division and advance to the Academy Division (ages 8–18) for those who aspire to a professional career. But now, with the additional studio space, the Ballet can also offer the Studio Division, giving kids such as Wilt’s 11-year-old daughter, Marshall, an opportunity to continue dance while exploring other interests ranging from golf and robotics to piano. Studio provides an à la carte menu of dance classes ranging from ballet and jazz to hip hop and musical theatre, and provides the flexibility to work within the busy schedules of students and their parents. In addition, the Community Division provides the same menu of classes to the age-18+ dance enthusiasts.
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We offer dance for the entire community
Academy Division ballet classes
Boys Class Jr., ages 6+, Children’s Division
“We offer dance for the entire community,” says Nashville Ballet’s Sharyn Mahoney, Director of Artistic Operations. Stretching, balance, alignment, breathing, more efficient use of the body— it’s all here, in one energetic, magical place.
For more information on the School of Ballet, visit www.nashvilleballet.com. 103 nashvillearts.com
Boys Club, ages 3-5.5, Children’s Division
Photograph by Juan Pont Lezica
Dead Famous Artists - They Were Just Like Us Words and Photography by Cassie Stephens Art Teacher, Johnson Elementary
To kick off the school year, I decided to introduce my students to that famous dead French artist Henri Rousseau. We have been looking at several of his masterpieces, including his painting Tiger in a Tropical Storm or Surprised!. I am focusing on that painting because (A) it’s a great work of art featuring both animals and action, a winning kid combo, and (B) our school mascot is a tiger! In order to introduce Henri Rousseau to the kids in a fun way, I transformed a part of my art room into a little something called The Jungle Lounge. It’s complete with two faux palm trees created by my artistic friend Carol Goff, a couple of Tahiti mats, and a giant reproduction of Rousseau’s Surprise! painting on my window. I’ve dimmed the lights, put “retro lounge” music on Pandora, and invited the kids into the lounge to learn all about the artist who was obsessed with painting jungles. After settling in and fielding many a question about this new funky area of the art room, I began reading a book about Rousseau and his life. This book features both a cartoon Rousseau and black-and-white photos of him. While I was reading, there was a wee disturbance as a couple of first graders were having a disagreement. “What are you dudes fussing about?” says I. With an angry thumb aimed at his neighbor, “HE says that Henri is a cartoon!” Pointing a little finger at the thumb-y kid, “And HE says that Henri is that man with the funny moustache that is gray. PEOPLE ARE NOT GRAY!” “Well! People are not CARTOONS either!” Francis Merryman works on her tiger painting
Henri Rousseau | Tiger in a Tropical Storm or Surprised! | 1891 | Oil on canvas | 51” x 64”
Oh boy. At this point, I closed the book and decided we’d come back to it another day. I said to the kids, “Henri Rousseau was an artist. What is an artist?” We deduced that an artist was a person who loved to create just like us and therefore not a cartoon or someone that is gray (guess who needs to introduce her students to black-and-white photography). It was then that I decided we’d best hurry up and get to that art-making before there was a first grade coup. I’ve since been introducing more about Rousseau and his work with a much heavier emphasis on how artists are creative people with a desire to express themselves, just like us! My art room has gradually transformed into a jungle full of tiger paintings, collages, and sculptures—all created by the noncartoon-y, very colorful artists I have the pleasure to be with every day. Tiger painting by Jonah Hill
The Jungle Lounge
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Words by DeeGee Lester
Photography by Tiffani Bing
John Early Museum Magnet Middle Prep: Museum Ignites Passions
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I believe we need to ignite curiosity in young people not only to gain knowledge, but to be accountable for their own growth.”
Australian Educator Gemma McCormick, TED Talk. 2012
While students at other schools can be inspired by the occasional field trip to a museum, students at John Early Museum Magnet Middle Prep are immersed, quite literally, in the excitement and discovery of museums. For the past few years, students routinely interacted with artifacts in display cases along their hallways and with professionals from museums throughout Nashville. Students captured National History Day state honors as well as Tennessee Association of Museums Awards of Excellence by museum professionals from across the state. Now, John Early Museum Magnet is preparing to ignite and inspire student learning on a whole new level, with the addition to the school of an on-site, first-class museum. Scheduled to open October 22, the museum addition features over 1,800 square feet of exhibit space, over 1,600 square feet of artifact storage space, and over 400 square feet of multipurpose space for handson instruction and staff development, enhanced by interactive technology. “Students have an opportunity to interact on a regular basis with over 3,000 cultural artifacts from around the world, including dolls and toys, instruments, clothing and textiles, baskets, and other objects—all donated in 2013 by the Scarritt Bennett Center,” says Instructional Designer Becky Verner. Housed in cases custom built by Owens Design Group and fabricated by The Exhibit Shop in nearby Germantown, the central cases, wall-mountings, and sculpture-stand displays can be explored and utilized by students as they analyze and interpret artifacts or incorporate artifacts into project-based learning units.
Junior Curators
Connecting classroom curriculum with real-world relevancy and experience, students have opportunities to tap into the teaching power of museums: integrating math and literacy in organizing and plotting measurements for museum store floor space and presenting their proposals to museum professionals; exploring the responsibilities for various museum careers; interacting with museum professionals, and learning from faculty members from universities including MTSU and Tennessee Tech; working with MTSU Public History intern Lane Tillner on accessioning and exhibiting artifacts; or serving as Junior Curators for tours of their school museum. Their minds and hands can explore the importance and relevance of objects, culture, and history in ways they never imagined. Student participation is valued—whether putting together the opening exhibits or voting for inclusion of an antique BMW Isetta from Lane Motor Museum on opening day. More important, their curiosity is awakened, their passions ignited. For more about opening day festivities, visit johnearlyms.mnps.org. 105 nashvillearts.com
Photograph by Ron Manville
AND SO IT GOES BY RACHAEL McCAMPBELL
Rachael McCampbell is an artist, teacher, curator, and writer who resides in the small hamlet of Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee. For more about her, please visit www.rachaelmccampbell.com.
Art Heals It’s the process, not the outcome Have you ever walked into an office or home environment where the walls were bare? How did this make you feel? Cold? Lifeless? Now contrast that with an art-rich environment, a place that’s a feast for the eyes, intellect, and emotions. I literally feel my blood pressure drop when I’m around quality art. Now add music to this scene. How about poetry? I’m in sensory heaven! My problems are forgotten. As it turns out, I’m not the only one to feel this way. The healthcare industry discovered art’s effect on patients’ and their families’ well being decades ago. Studies’ data point to the same conclusion—art heals. In one study they found that surgical or critical care patients left the hospital sooner and used fewer narcotic pain medications when they had a painting of a landscape in their room.
Henry Isaacs | Chama River | Oil on linen | 48” x 36”
Henry Isaacs | Cannon Rock #1 Oil on Canvas | 30” x 40”
Rachael McCampbell The Wedding Dress 2015 Mixed media on wood panel 60” x 36”
Patients respond most favorably to recognizable images like nature scenes and figurative works. And interestingly, the softer or blurrier the imagery, the more it taps into the viewer’s emotions. Patrik Vuilleumier, at the University of Geneva, discovered that the part of the brain most connected with our emotions, the amygdala, responded more to blurry pictures of faces than sharp, detailed ones. The subconscious interest in unclear imagery helps explain the huge visceral response and popularity of the impressionists’ paintings and other modern art that our eyes first take in on an emotional level. Not only have scientists studied the effects of viewing art but the positive effects of making art as well. The American Association for the Advancement of Science published a fascinating article entitled “How Engaging with Art Affects the Human Brain.” Dr. Lora Likova took 108 nashvillearts.com
congenitally blind subjects with no activity in their visual cortexes and taught them to draw by touching raised-line tactile images. After they learned to draw through memory, they were tested again during an fMRI scan and found that there was now activity in their visual cortexes. So even a visualization of making art increases the neural plasticity of the brain! Besides improving brain function, there is a long list of the benefits of the arts on our health. Donna Glassford, a Nashvillian and renowned leader in placing art in health care facilities, says, “We have always known that the arts can enrich our lives. Now we are learning that the arts can support us in healing. Specifically, the visual arts can heal passively as well as through creative action. In a hospital waiting area, patients can have their attention diverted from their own issues and anxiety by the art around them. In therapeutic art sessions, patients can release emotions that might otherwise go unexpressed.” In the art classes I teach, I see the results firsthand. Once students get beyond feeling intimidated or fearful about the outcome, they begin to relax. As they enjoy the feel of charcoal being smeared into the fibers of paper or the serene feeling of moving color across a canvas, they calm down, leave their worlds behind, and simply feel happier. How can art heal you? Surround yourself with art at home and work and really look at it—take it in. Find time to make art for yourself too. Write a poem, play an instrument, dance, paint, sing. Do these things for YOU, which in turn is for your health. Remember it’s the act of making art, any sort of art, that is key here: it’s the process, not the outcome. na
Photograph by Tiffani Bing
Misa Acox, Eli Culley, Olivia Poindexter, Ava Poindexter at Channel to Channel
At Zeitgeist
Jess Harrington and Sarah Webbat Lipman Sotheby's visiting artist event
Susan Edwards, Vicki Scala, Mark Scala, Jana Harper at Seed Space
Photograph by Tiffani Bing
Alan Fry & Sophie Brazzell at Lipman Sotheby's visiting artist event
ARTSEE
ARTSEE
Photograph by Madge Franklin
PRINCIPLE PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN JACKSON
ARTSEE
Katie Shaw at Red Arrow Gallery
Mollye Brown, Gene and Marnie Cotton at The Arts Company
Ellen Murphy at DADU Pop Up
Zdravka Tzankova at David Lusk Gallery
Amanda Micheletto-Blouin, Marshall Hall, Adams Crowe at Gallery Luperca
Hunter Armistead, Julia Martin, and friend at Julia Martin Gallery
Cheryl Moore at David Lusk Gallery
Andri Alexandrou, Erica Ciccarone, Laura Hutson Hunter, Sara Lee Burd, Shana Kohnstamm at Saw Tooth Print Shop
Rebecca Nelson, Jon Buko at Gallery Luperca
PAINTTHETOWN BY EMME NELSON BAXTER | PHOTOGRAPHY BY TIFFANI BING
TPAC Gala
TPAC Gala
Beth Fabel
Edie Johnson, Eddie George, and Emme Nelson Baxter
What do you get when you throw together the glam squad of Susan Short Jones, Brenda Corbin, and Courtney Corbin-Simon as event chairs, add creative whizzes Bob Deal and Phillipe Chadwick on décor, and, for good measure, have groovy Milton White head up the silent auction? And give the whole shebang a Motown theme? Ladies and gents, you get one heckuva bash. These people know how to put a party together, and they did just that at the TPAC Gala August 29. The sold-out $450-per-person event attracted some 400 corporate and social folks alike, all dressed in black tie or “Motown glam.”
Brenda Wenk, Allison and Andrew Fowler
This party is notoriously fun. They had a conga line to get folks from the lobby to Jackson Hall where the stage was set for dinner. Guests enjoyed a meal by Sargent’s Fine Catering. After presentations and such, the Infinity Show Band took the stage and the dinner tables immediately cleared. Didn’t matter who had a bum knee or whose foot was in an orthotic boot—everyone sprang to life to the 18-piece Motown sound band. Fun aside, TPAC is big business. Are you aware that the organization has an annual estimated economic impact of $50 million in Nashville? The number includes TPAC’s own presentations plus productions of its three professional resident companies: Nashville Ballet, Nashville Opera, and Nashville Repertory Theatre.
Susan Short Jones and Roland Jones
Julian and Dahna Wright
TPAC CEO Kathleen O’Brien took a moment at the gala to recognize corporate partner Vanderbilt University. Vanderbilt and Emmy- and Tony Award-winning actress Cherry Jones received TPAC’s Applause Awards. Jones is a native of Paris, Tennessee.
Jim and Janet Ayers
Earlier in the month, benefactors Janet and Jim Ayers hosted TPAC patrons at FirstBank’s corporate office downtown. Guests ogled the outstanding collection of work produced by some 200 Tennessee artists. Think John Baeder, Red Grooms, Sylvia Hyman, and the like. Johnny Haffner manned the kitchen while The City Lights Band provided a pumped-up beat. If you couldn’t participate in the Gala, mark your calendar for the high-energy Motown the Musical, set for February 16–21, 2016, as part of the HCA/TriStar Health Broadway at TPAC series.
Sara and Larry Stessel
Courtney Corbin-Simon and Brenda Corbin
Photograph by Tiffani Bing
Emme is a seventh-generation Nashvillian and president of Nelson Baxter Communications LLC.
Dueling Cocktails Some 250 happy guests crowded into one lovely home for the benefit of another mansion. Belmont Mansion was the beneficiary of the Dueling Cocktails event held at Kanya Raja’s Belle Meade home on August 22. Co-chairing the $125-perperson evening were Meredith Weigel, Laurin Howell, and Judy Price. In addition to libations and food by Corner Market Catering, guests opened the wallets for tantalizing items on the silent and live auctions. Monies raised support the historically correct residence/museum on the lovely Belmont campus.
Mari Kate Hopper and Sandy Knox
Jacqueline Fisher, Viviana Lavin Fernandez, and Jessica Boyd
Artclectic Kickoff
Photograph by Peyton Hoge
Always groovy, always popular Artclectic held its committee kickoff at David Lusk Gallery late this summer. As they sampled vittles by Tinwings, some the 70 folks on hand learned that the theme for the 2015 annual University School of Nashville benefit is “Inspire. Be Inspired.” Slated for October 22–24, this year’s iteration will showcase the work of 56 emerging and established artists, chosen by a panel of expert jurors. Co-chair Judy Price, Chair Meredith Weigel, and Co-chair Laurin Howell
Bob Deal, Jason Bradshaw, and Susan and Damon Byrd
Art Deco Affair The Frist Center hosted its annual Art Deco Affair to raise funds for the iconic building that houses the center. About 250 gathered for the black-and-whitethemed party, a nod to Truman Capote’s famed 1966 ball. Chic guests enjoyed cocktails, dinner, and music in the Grand Lobby, plus the opportunity to marvel at the smartly curated Italian Style: Fashion since 1945 exhibition and the Jaume Plensa installations. Crystal Churchwell and Caroline Berberich co-chaired the event that featured jazz by Hiptet and vittles by Suzette Catering.
Artclectic Chairs Kobie Pretorius, Cameron Simmons, Ginger Sands
Erica Gilmore, Susan Edwards, Mel Ziegler, Lisa Germany, and Garrett Strickland
Aleah Armstrong, Marcya Carter Sheats, and La Donna Boyd
Damon Byrd, Doug Regen, Bruce Shelton
Gloria Houghland
Oscar Wolfe, Lauren Peach, Clare Stanton, Kalen Stanton
Jean Dudley Smith and Jeff Garner
Judy and Kersh Walters and Susan Woodland
Courtesy of Adam Sorenson
Arts Worth Watching Ruthie Henshall and Elliott Hanna in Billy Elliot the Musical Live on GREAT PERFORMANCES.
If you’ve been enjoying our Pioneers of TV series (which continues Thursdays at 9 p.m.), you’ll want to catch Mary Tyler Moore: A Celebration, airing Tuesday, October 13, at 7 p.m. The show includes clips from Moore’s long career and interviews with co-stars Dick Van Dyke, Ed Asner, Betty White, and Valerie Harper.
ARTISTS AT WORK Ai Weiwei is known almost as much for his run-ins with the Chinese authorities as he is for covering gallery floors with ceramic sunflower seeds or incorporating ancient urns into his work. Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case, airing Friday, October 2, at 9 p.m. on the POV series, begins with Ai returning home after a lengthy detainment. The Fake Case—the title reflects Ai’s cleverness with double meanings—is not only a chronicle of Ai’s house arrest; it’s also commentary on modern surveillance culture as Ai documents himself being documented by the police, the media, and his own team. Viewers also get a glimpse of Ai’s six-part installation depicting scenes of his imprisonment, now on view at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. Watch Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry, an earlier documentary about the artist, Tuesday, October 6, at 11 p.m. on Independent Lens.
MUSIC LEGENDS Our music programming this month includes specials showcasing two icons. Unity: The Latin Tribute to Michael Jackson features Latin American artists performing their interpretations of the late star’s hits. Inspired by the best-selling Unity album, the show is hosted by percussionist Sheila E. and is part of NPT’s Hispanic Heritage Month programming. Watch Friday, October 9, at 8 p.m. Guitar legend Eric Clapton celebrated his 70th birthday this past spring with a concert at one of his favorite venues. Eric Clapton: Slowhand at 70 – Live at the Royal Albert Hall airs Saturday, October 17, at 9 p.m.
In this production Liam Mower, who originated the stage role of Billy, returns as Older Billy, and 25 current and former Billys perform a mash-up finale. We close out October with a Halloween treat: Danny Elfman’s Music from the Films of Tim Burton. Clips accompany Elfman, an orchestra and choir as they perform music from Batman, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. This Live from Lincoln Center airs Friday, October 30, at 8 p.m. and incorporates Burton’s original sketches and storyboards. na If you enjoy arts programming on NPT, please show your support by going to our website, www.wnpt.org, and clicking the donate button. To watch encore presentations of many of our programs, tune in to NPT2, our secondary channel.
Closer to home, a new season of Music City Roots launches with a new format and a new venue. Season three was recorded live from the Factory at Franklin; watch it Fridays at 7 p.m. beginning October 23.
STAGE AND SCREEN
Courtesy of Andreas Johnsen
Ai Weiwei in The Fake Case
See how Seattle glass artist Dale Chihuly’s school has grown from a couple of furnaces and a collection of tents to become a renowned art school in Pilchuck: A Dance with Fire, airing Thursday, October 15, at 8 p.m. Chihuly was the subject of exhibitions at Cheekwood and the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in 2010 and is one of many glass artists featured in the documentary.
Courtesy of Chris Lee
October’s PBS Fall Arts Festival, hosted by Gloria Estefan, brings even more visual arts, theatre, and music programs to NPT.
Show Boat explores racial issues through the lives of three generations of show people performing on Mississippi riverboats and in cities. On Friday, October 16, at 8 p.m., Live from Lincoln Center presents a concert version of Kern and Hammerstein’s Show Boat featuring a cast led by Vanessa Williams with Norm Lewis, Jane Alexander, Julian Ovenden (Downton Abbey) and Lauren Worsham performing with the New York Philharmonic. The following Friday, October 23, at 8 p.m., Great Performances is off to London’s West End for Billy Elliot: The Musical Live. Based on the 2000 movie and written by Elton John and Lee Hall, it’s the story of a young boy from a coal mining town who discovers a passion for dance.
Vanessa Williams in Show Boat
Weekend Schedule 5:00 5:30 6:00 6:30 7:00 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:00 9:30 10:00 10:30 11:00 11:30 12:00 12:30 1:00 1:30 2:00 2:30 3:00 3:30 4:00 4:30 5:00 5:30 6:00 6:30 5:00 5:30 6:00 6:30 7:00 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:00 9:30 10:00 10:30 11:30 12:00 12:30 1:00 1:30 2:00 3:00 3:30 4:00 4:30 5:00 6:00 6:30
Saturday
am Martha Speaks Angelina Ballerina Curious George Curious George Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Sesame Street Dinosaur Train Sewing with Nancy Sew It All Garden Smart Steven Raichlen’s Project Smoke Hubert Keller: Secrets of a Chef Cook’s Country noon America’s Test Kitchen pm Sara’s Weeknight Meals Movable Feast with Fine Cooking Martha Stewart’s Cooking School Chef’s Life Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting Best of Joy of Painting American Woodshop Woodwright’s Shop This Old House Ask This Old House Hometime PBS NewsHour Weekend pm Tennessee’s Wild Side
THIS MONTH
October 2015
Nashville Public Television
Sunday
am Sid the Science Kid Peg + Cat Curious George Curious George Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Sesame Street Dinosaur Train Tennessee’s Wild Side Volunteer Gardener Tennessee Crossroads Nature Washington Week with Gwen Ifill noon To the Contrary pm The McLaughlin Group Joseph Rosendo’s Travelscope Road Trip Nation Globe Trekker California’s Gold In the Americas with David Yetman America’s Heartland Rick Steves’ Europe Antiques Roadshow PBS NewsHour Weekend pm Charlie Rose: The Week
Mary Tyler Moore A Celebration
Clips and interviews with co-stars showcase Mary Tyler Moore’s breakthrough TV and movie roles. Tuesday, October 13 7:00 pm
Daytime Schedule 5:00 5:30 6:00 6:30 7:00 7:30 8:00 8:30 9:00 10:00 10:30 11:00 11:30 12:00 12:30 1:00 1:30 2:00 2:30 3:00 3:30 4:00 4:30 5:00 5:30 6:00
am Classical Stretch Body Electric Odd Squad Wild Kratts Curious George Curious George Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Sesame Street Dinosaur Train Super Why! Peg + Cat Sid the Science Kid noon Caillou pm Thomas & Friends Sesame Street Shorts The Cat in the Hat Clifford the Big Red Dog Curious George Arthur Arthur Wild Kratts Odd Squad Martha Speaks WordGirl pm PBS NewsHour
Nashville Public Television
Home Fires On Masterpiece Francesca Annis (Reckless) and Samantha Bond (Downton Abbey) star in this six-part series about wartime Britain. Begins Sunday, October 4 7:00 pm
Nature Pets: Wild at Heart A two-part look at how domesticated animals explore their natural instincts. Begins Wednesday, October 21 7:00 pm
wnpt.org
7:00 Home Fires On Masterpiece Episode 2. The RAF arrives. 8:00 Indian Summers On Masterpiece Part 3. The annual fair. 9:00 The Widower Part 2. Webster returns to Scotland. 10:00 Bluegrass Underground Greensky Bluegrass. 10:30 Life on the Line. Hidden Pain. 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
7:00 Antiques Roadshow Seattle, Hour Two. 8:00 Antiques Roadshow Albuquerque, Hour 3. 9:00 I’ll Have What Phil’s Having Paris. Hot chocolate, croissants and bombes. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine Adopted By a Stray. 11:00 NPT Reports: Living In Fear An NPT original production about domestic violence.
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Monday
7:00 Antiques Roadshow Seattle, Hour One. 8:00 Antiques Roadshow Albuquerque, Hour Two. 9:00 I’ll Have What Phil’s Having Italy. Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal in Umbria. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Restoration Neon Neon signs from their first usage in 1920s Las Vegas to present-day conservation efforts.
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7:00 Home Fires On Masterpiece Episode 1. Women of an English village in WWII. 8:00 Indian Summers On Masterpiece Part 2. 9:00 The Widower Part 1. Malcom Webster goes through wives and money. 10:00 Bluegrass Underground Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn. 10:30 Life on the Line 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
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The Widower Begins Sunday, October 4 9:00 pm
Sunday
Primetime Evening Schedule
October 2015
nashvillearts.com
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7:00 Mary Tyler Moore: A Celebration Classic clips and Betty White, Ed Asner, Valerie Harper, John Amos, Carl Reiner and Dick Van Dyke. 8:00 Secrets of the Dead The Real Trojan Horse. 9:00 Frontline My Brother’s Bomber, Part 3. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 The 25,000 Mile Love Story An endurance athlete circles the globe.
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7:00 Gorongosa Park: Rebirth of Paradise Battle Lines/Roaring Back. A new lion arrives; questions about the park’s elephants. 9:00 Frontline My Brother’s Bomber, Part 2. A filmmaker looks for the bombers of Pan Am 103. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Independent Lens Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry. The Chinese artist who is known for activism as well as for art.
Gorongosa Park Rebirth of Paradise Tuesday, October 6 7:00 pm
Tuesday
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14 7:00 Nature Soul of the Elephant. 8:00 NOVA Cyberwar Threat. Cyber weapons can inflict physical damage on our infrastructure. 9:00 The Brain with David Eagleman What Is Reality? How the brain navigates thousands of conscious and unconscious decisions. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Austin City Limits Cassandra Wilson.
7:00 Nature Big Birds Can’t Fly. 8:00 NOVA Secrets of Noah’s Ark. Modern boat builders use ancient techniques. 9:00 NOVA Petra – Lost City of Stone. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Austin City Limits 2015 Hall of Fame Special. Inductees: Loretta Lynn, Asleep at the Wheel, Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt and Flaco Jimenez.
Wednesday
1
15 7:00 Tennessee Crossroads 7:30 Volunteer Gardener 8:00 Pilchuck: A Dance with Fire How Dale Chihuly’s Pilchuck became a worldclass art school. 9:00 Pioneers of Television Miniseries. 1970s powerhouses Roots, The Thorn Birds and Rich Man, Poor Man. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Second Opinion CPR in America.
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7:00 Tennessee Crossroads 7:30 Volunteer Gardener 8:00 American Masters Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel. The life of the Gone with the Wind author. 9:00 Pioneers of Television Superheroes. Stars and shows from the 1950s to the 1980s. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 The Green Blues A couple tries to build a sustainable, hand-crafted house.
7:00 Tennessee Crossroads 7:30 Volunteer Gardener 8:00 Doctor Blake Mysteries Someone’s Son, Someone’s Daughter. A hospital’s only female doctor is found hanged. 9:00 Pioneers of Television Primetime Soaps. Favorites Dallas and Dynasty and Peyton Place. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 On Home Ground: Life After Service Veterans return home.
Thursday
2
16 7:00 American Graduate: Translating the Dream 7:30 American Graduate: Graduation by the Numbers 8:00 Live from Lincoln Center Kern & Hammerstein’s Show Boat. Vanessa Williams and others perform with the New York Philharmonic. 10:30 Last of Summer Wine Most Powerful Eyes in West Yorkshire. 11:00 BBC World News 11:30 Infinity Hall Live Robben Ford.
9 7:00 Shelter Me Partners for Life. Country music icon Emmylou Harris works with homeless pets and disadvantaged youth. 8:00 Unity: The Latin Tribute to Michael Jackson Latin-infused arrangements of iconic songs hosted by Sheila E. 9:00 The Hispanic Heritage Awards Rita Moreno hosts. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Infinity Hall Live Guitar heroes.
7:00 Henry Ford: American Experience A revealing portrait of a complex, pivotal and ultimately flawed figure. 9:00 POV Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case. The Chinese artist has become a voice for free speech and human rights. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine Stop that Bath. 11:00 Infinity Hall Live Toad the Wet Sprocket.
Friday
3
17
7:00 The Bloody Irish! Songs of 1916 Rising Musical theater commemorating the Dublin Easter Rising. 9:00 Eric Clapton: Slowhand at 70 – Live at the Royal Albert Hall Clapton’s 70th birthday. 10:30 In the Americas with David Yetman Argentina’s Route 40: From the Steppes to the Lake. 11:00 Globe Trekker Delhi & Rajasthan, India.
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7:00 Lawrence Welk Show The French Show. 8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 Great British Baking Show Biscuits and Traybakes. 9:30 The Forsyte Saga Episode 5. Irene leaves Soames. 10:30 In the Americas with David Yetman Panama’s Wild West. 11:00 Globe Trekker Globe Trekker Special: Art Trails of the French Riviera.
7:00 Lawrence Welk Show Fashions and Hits Through the Years. 8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 Great British Baking Show Pies and Tarts. 9:30 The Forsyte Saga Episode 4. Soames attacks Irene; Old Jolyon reunites his family. 10:30 In the Americas with David Yetman Yakima: The Quest for Hops. Craft beer. 11:00 Globe Trekker West Texas.
Saturday
Nashville Public Television
wnpt.org
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1
7:00 Home Fires On Masterpiece Episode 5. An evacuee arrives. 8:00 Indian Summers On Masterpiece Part 6. A mountaineer causes trouble; growing attractions. 9:00 The Guilty Episode 2. 10:00 Bluegrass Underground Billy Joe Shaver. 10:30 Start Up Maple Alley. 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
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NOVEMBER
7:00 Home Fires On Masterpiece Episode 4. A secret threatens the farm. 8:00 Indian Summers On Masterpiece Part 5. Ralph’s engagement bash. 9:00 The Guilty Episode 1. A couple’s son goes missing. 10:00 Bluegrass Underground Hot Rize. 10:30 Start Up Coupon Cutter. 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
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7:00 Home Fires On Masterpiece Episode 3. 8:00 Indian Summers On Masterpiece Part 4. The viceroy gets a royal welcome. 9:00 The Widower Part 3. Malcolm evades capture. 10:00 Bluegrass Underground Robert Earl Keen. 10:30 Life on the Line Footsteps of the Unknown. 11:00 Tavis Smiley 11:30 Scully/The World Show
nashvillearts.com
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3
7:00 Secrets of the Dead Ultimate Tut. A 21st-century look at Tutankhamen. 9:00 Frontline Terror in Little Saigon. Searching for the assassins behind a reign of terror that targeted Vietnamese-American journalists. 11:00 American Graduate: School Choice An NPT original documentary about what school choice means to Nashville’s students, parents and community.
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7:00 Earth’s Natural Wonders Extreme Wonders. 8:00 NOVA Making North America: Origins. The geologic and biological forces that shaped our continent. 9:00 The Brain with David Eagleman How Do I Decide? 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Austin City Limits Gary Clark Jr./Courtney Barnett.
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7:00 Nature Pets: Wild at Heart: Secretive Creature. Pets experience the world through their astonishing senses. 8:00 NOVA Animal Mummies. 9:00 The Brain with David Eagleman Who Is in Control? Unconscious neural activity controls our decisions and behavior. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Austin City Limits Don Henley.
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7:00 Nature Pets: Wild at Heart: Playful Creatures. 8:00 NOVA Sinkholes – Buried Alive. 9:00 The Brain with David Eagleman What Makes Me? How our personality, emotions and memories are encoded as neural activity. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Austin City Limits Sturgill Simpson/Asleep at the Wheel.
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7:00 Tennessee Crossroads 7:30 Volunteer Gardener 8:00 American Graduate: School Choice An NPT original documentary about what school choice means to Nashville’s students, parents and community. 9:00 Pioneers of Television Standup to Sitcom. Jerry Seinfeld, Roseanne Barr, Tim Allen, Ray Romano and Bob Newhart. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine
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7:00 Tennessee Crossroads 7:30 Volunteer Gardener 8:00 Joe Bonamassa: Muddy Wolf Live at Red Rocks The guitarist performs a tribute to bluesmen Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. 9:30 Pioneers of Television Carol Burnett & the Funny Ladies. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 1955 World Series: 7 Days of Fall The Dodgers/Yankees World Series.
Eric Clapton Slowhand Saturday, October 17 9:00 pm
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7:00 Music City Roots Live From the Factory 8:00 Live from Lincoln Center Elfman & Tim Burton: 30 Years. Danny Elfman’s macabre, yet merry music for Tim Burton’s films. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine 11:00 Music Gone Public Delhi-2-Dublin. A wild brew of Irish fiddle, Punjabi-folk and Electronic Dance Music.
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7:00 Music City Roots Live From the Factory 8:00 Great Performances Billy Elliot: The Musical Live. Elton John’s Tony Award-winning musical based on the popular 2000 film. 11:00 BBC World News 11:30 Infinity Hall Live Jackie Greene.
Visit wnpt.org for complete 24-hour schedules for NPT and NPT2
2
7:00 Antiques Roadshow Tulsa, Hour Two. 8:00 Antiques Roadshow Chicago, Hour Three. 9:00 I’ll Have What Phil’s Having Los Angeles. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine Beware of the Elbow.
7:00 War of the Worlds: American Experience Orson Welles’ 1939 Halloween radio broadcast. 8:00 Secrets of the Dead Vampire Legend. New discoveries lead to a reexamination of vampire lore. 9:00 Frontline Inside Assad’s Syria. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine The First Human Being to Ride a Hill. 11:00 Finding Traction A runner takes on America’s oldest hiking trail.
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7:00 Antiques Roadshow Tulsa, Hour One. 8:00 Antiques Roadshow Chicago, Hour Two. 9:00 I’ll Have What Phil’s Having Barcelona. Breakfast, vermouth and all things jamón. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine The Glamour of the Uniform. 11:00 Reinventing Cuba A journalist travels to Cuba to profile extraordinary people.
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7:00 The Forgotten Plague: American Experience Tuberculosis and its impact. 8:00 Frontline Immigration Battle. The hard-fought battles and secret negotiations over immigration reform. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine The Sweet Smell of Excess. 11:00 Raising Shrimp The global shrimp industry.
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7:00 Antiques Roadshow Seattle, Hour Three. 8:00 Antiques Roadshow Chicago, Hour One. 9:00 I’ll Have What Phil’s Having Hong Kong. 10:00 BBC World News 10:30 Last of Summer Wine Dewhirsts of Ogleby Hall. 11:00 Global Health Frontiers: Trachoma – Defeating a Blinding Curse An epic battle in Ethiopia against a blinding disease.
Nashville Public Television
Thursday, October 29 8:00 pm
#NPTAmGrad
SCHOOL CHOICE An NPT Reports original documentary.
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7:00 Lawrence Welk Show Musical Tour of Europe. 8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 Great British Baking Show Pastry. 9:30 The Forsyte Saga Episode 7. Irene flees to Paris. 10:30 In the Americas with David Yetman From Vaquejada to Jangada: Into Rural Ceara, Brazil. 11:00 Globe Trekker Papua New Guinea Islands.
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7:00 Lawrence Welk Show Musical Memories. 8:00 Keeping Appearances 8:30 Great British Baking Show Sweet Dough. 9:30 The Forsyte Saga Episode 6. Old Jolyon dies; Soames marries Annette. 10:30 In the Americas with David Yetman Heart of the Wilderness: Wyoming’s Wind River Rang. 11:00 Globe Trekker Barcelona City Guide.
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A cautionary tale . . .
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I was having one of those days. Technology had turned against me. It all started when lightning struck my house and blew out the modem to my computer. So I purchased a new one, then called my Internet Service Provider (ISP). After responding to a myriad of mechanically-voiced questions and instructions, I was put on hold for what seemed like a very long time. Finally, I was talking to an actual person. We were making progress, when, all of a sudden, she couldn't hear me. I glanced down helplessly at my iPhone. No! ... No! Please!! DO. NOT. HANG. UP! I beseech you! I MUST NOT lose this connection after being on hold for so long! Then suddenly, she could hear me again, and we managed to get the situation resolved. Then later, while talking with a friend, the problem returned; I could hear them, but they couldn't hear me. This time, the problem was not intermittent. It was time to head for the Apple Store. Once there, I was informed there was a two-hour wait. Since I happened to have my Notice of Vehicle Registration Renewal form with me, I'm thinking, No Problem! What better place to kill a couple of hours than in the waiting line at the emissions-testing station? So off to the Craighead Street station I went. Once there, I eased into the farthest of the three lanes to begin inching my way along, one car-length at a time, every fifteen minutes or so. This was my first time at an emissions station in my new Prius, and I was grateful not to be discharging noxious fumes into the air while I waited. This car was so much better than the gas-guzzling Land Rover I had sold in December. Wait a minute! Gas-guzzling Land Rover? Suddenly I got this sinking feeling. For a minute my heart stopped beating. I glanced at the Notice of Vehicle Registration Renewal form. There it was in black and white. This form was for my old Land Rover! By then I had been in line for over an hour, and chances were good it'd be another hour before I'd reach the testing station (in the wrong car!). I was about to call the Apple Store to let them know I might be late, when I realized they wouldn't be able to hear me because my iPhone was broken. (Duh!) I looked around at all the cars surrounding me. I was trapped! Or was I? Next thing I know, I'm getting out of my car and walking over to the car in the next lane. Suppressing a laugh, I motioned for the driver to roll down his window. After explaining my situation, I asked if he wouldn't mind holding off moving when the car in front of him moved up a length. That way, I could cut over to the inside lane. He agreed. Then I walked over to the car in that lane and gave the same spiel. At this point, I'm laughing, they're laughing, and some of the other drivers seemed amused at my predicament. Finally, the lanes in front of my co-conspirators began to move. They both held back, then watched as I carefully cut in front of them, crossing the two lanes (and a patch of lawn) to freedom. na www.tallgirl.com
BEYONDWORDS
Photograph by Anthony Scarlati
BY MARSHALL CHAPMAN
MYFAVORITEPAINTING
Scott Mele Filmmaker, Art maker, Entrepreneur Choosing your favorite painting is akin to being asked to pick your favorite child. Not easy. However, it is easy to notice when a piece of art strikes people in one way or another either visually or emotionally. That is why I’ve chosen this piece by Jason Baalman. It has a bold, modern feel to it that leaps off the wall when you walk into the room. The colors are what first grab you. Then everyone that views it does the same thing: they get really close to it to study the very abstract background and black dots that eventually become a very defined woman’s portrait the farther you back away from the canvas. This particular piece feels like pop art to me with a nod to pointillism. I stumbled upon the artist via the Internet through his wildly successful YouTube videos. These videos are always sped up to show a piece of art being made from start to finish from a wide variety of mediums in an array of techniques. The non-traditional approach to art is one of the things that intrigues me about this artist. Many of his pieces have a fleeting but timeless feel to them, much like Banksy or Shepard Fairey, but with much more technical prowess, in my humble opinion. Ultimately they are all phenomenal whether they are done in oil, pastels, ketchup, or Cheetos. Seriously. Google him. You will be amazed. Yes, there is an inherent kitsch factor because of the medium and sometimes the subject matter, but I am a huge fan of the guy’s raw talent. When the opportunity arose to own an original oil on canvas, I jumped on it. na
ARTIST BIO: Jason Baalman Self-trained artist Jason Baalman does not restrict himself to the traditional trajectory of visual artists. Eschewing gallery representation, Baalman prefers to sell his art online. He brands his art under the name Eclectic Asylum and values disseminating it across the world and building his client list through Internet connections. At times he takes on portrait commissions, which he renders in charcoal. However, his major creative practice goes toward Eclectic Asylum where he explores visual-perception painting. In 2007, he began a series of art-making instructional videos, which he promotes through YouTube. Now he lives and works full time as an artist in Colorado Springs, Colorado. 118 nashvillearts.com
Photograph by Nina Covington
Jason Baalman | Untitled | Acrylic on canvas | 30” x 24”