Sunday, January 16, 2011

2011 D.I.G. THROUGH ART SHOW – THEME: "COMPASSION FATIGUE"

CALL FOR ART / $1,000 PURCHASE PRIZE / ART DUE THURSDAY. MARCH 3RD

2011 D.I.G. THROUGH ART SHOW – THEME: "COMPASSION FATIGUE"

THE DOWNTOWN PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH – 154 5th AVE. SOUTH





“D.I.G.” means Dialogue: an Interaction for Growth.





Dear Artist,



The Downtown Presbyterian Church (DPC) of Nashville, Tennessee is pleased to announce this year’s winter/early spring art show, The D.I.G. Through Art Show. This year’s theme is Compassion Fatigue. DPC’s annual D.I.G. show, now in its 12th year, is meant to provide our community with a chance to come together and “D.I.G. through art.”



Artists are welcome to submit work in any medium. Entry requires a $15.00 per piece fee (two pieces maximum). Paintings and other 2-D work cannot exceed 6 x 10 feet. 2-D works must be dry, framed, and ready to hang with wire. Sculpture must be easily moveable. Installations must be approved for space reasons. Work must be delivered to the church on Thursday, March 3 at 3.00 p.m. Artists will be accepted into the show on a first-to-respond basis--please see attached entry information below (which can be also be emailed in). Works will be judged and a winner selected by a local jury comprised of seasoned art instructors, gallery curators, and/or clergy. DPC will be pleased to present the winning artist with a purchase prize check of $1,000.



There are no restrictions on the artwork except that the content be suitable to all ages, since it will be on display to the entire church body and the downtown community – young and old. DPC reserves the right to not show any work.



The grand opening reception and presentation of the purchase award will be on Saturday, March 5th beginning at 6:00 p.m. This event coincides with the regular first Saturday downtown community Art Crawl and the church’s monthly art show and live music activities.



The D.I.G. show began at DPC in 1998 as an extension of the church’s artists-in-residency program. Today, the church hosts nine artists who each have their own dedicated space in the building. These shows have explored different themes each year. Previous themes have included last year’s “Anti-depressant," as well as "Embodiment,” “Icons and Idols,”“Incarnation and Risk,” and “Human Sacrifice.”



Lent is the church season of 40 days (not including feast days) before Easter. This year, Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, March 9th and continues through Holy Week, ending just before Easter Sunday, April 24th. The season is symbolic of both the 40 years of Israel’s wandering in the desert and the 40 days of Christ’s fasting and temptation in the wild. DPC feels this is an appropriate season to invite artists to join the church in wrestling with challenges and complexities of faith.



Alongside the themed art show, the church will again host a film series in DPC’s downstairs chapel on Thursday nights during the weeks of Lent. A light meal (held at 6.00 p.m.) will be provided weekly in DPC’s Fellowship Hall before each film (starting at 7.00 p.m.). After each film, guests are encouraged to stay for a short discussion, sharing impressions and ideas from the motion picture.



Important Facts:

· Limit: 2 pieces maximum per artist

· Entry Fee: $15.00 per piece per artist (checks payable, please, to: Downtown Presbyterian Church)

· This is a first come first serve show. Your entry fee reserves your space in the show. Please send the check in right away to reserve your space using the form below. Space in the show cannot be guaranteed without an artist supplying their entry fee (see following page).



Important Dates:

· Art Drop Off Date: Thursday, March 3 (3 PM to 5 PM)

· Grand Opening Reception: Saturday, March 5th from 6 PM to 9 PM with winner announced at 7.00 p.m.

· End of Show Date: Easter Sunday, April 24th (after worship activities)

· Retrieval of works: Monday, April 25th (between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.)







Yes! I would like to participate in the 2011 D.I.G. Through Art Show, “Anti-depressant.”





Name

Phone #

Email

Address





Please print this page, complete information, and enclose a check for $15.00 made out to “The Downtown Presbyterian Church.” Please then send to:





The Downtown Presbyterian Church

(memo line, please: “2011 D.I.G. SHOW”)

154 5th Ave. North

Nashville, TN 37219





Should you need further information or assistance, contact Beth Gilmore via email at beth.gilmore@gmail.com

Thursday, January 13, 2011

jaime Raybin and Ryan Hogan at Twist Art Gallery February 2011






Jaime Raybin and Ryan Hogan at Twist Art Gallery space 73 February 2011
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ryan Hogan's artist statement

“I remember I wanted to get to non art, non connotive, non anthropomorphic, non geometric,
non nothing, everything, but of another kind, vision, sort. From a total other reference point. Is
it possible?” – Eva Hesse
_______________________________________________

The sentiments expressed by Eva Hesse are similar to my own, but not entirely. To some
degree, I would say that my work is anthropomorphic. Perhaps it is non-connotive, but, if it is,
would I be able to write this statement without being contradictory? Perhaps, then, it is
connotive but not in a concrete way. The part of Hesse’s statement that I feel merits the most
emphasis is that which reads, “everything, but of another kind, vision, sort. From a total other
reference point.” My work attempts to create that new reference point; to develop landscapes
that have not necessarily been seen before. An individual recently viewed a piece of mine in the
school’s gallery and expressed her affinity for realism in art. After responding to her it occurred
to me that, essentially, I am a realist. My work consists of real things, real objects, and real
materials. My objective is paradoxical: I create real yet altogether unfamiliar images. It is
important (if not imperative) when creating my art to create these new reference points. Peter
Eisenmann deems it necessary for art and architecture to be devoid of representation, simulation,
and its reference to history. When one invents an artwork’s sight, its history, and its
representation the work begins to dissimulate. The work is a text and, to echo the notions of
Eisenmann, I want my work to function in this way; I want my work to invent its own origins, to
have its own history. I want it to create new reference points and new landscapes.
In order to create its own history, the pieces must be devoid of representation. If
representation were involved, the work would naturally be making references to things outside of
itself. Thus, the resin is layered upon itself, each layer adding to its history. As the layers
develop, the work becomes very muted. Merely gazing at the surface gives the illusion that there
is little going on below. For that reason I invoke the use of light. The light reveals the work’s
history; it engenders and sustains life, it elucidates. When the pieces are illuminated they take on
a new life. They are imbued with vitality. This life, this imbued vitality gives the work its quasi-
anthropomorphic quality. I immerse my work in light and it, in turn, the flat surface reveals
depth; the light reveals nuances. Light completely transforms the appearance of the piece.
Though light elucidates the work, it doesn’t control it. The work still has the power to
obfuscate. Depths revealed by the light still exist behind an opaque wall and, consequently,
keeping secret the exact nature of what lies beneath the surface. Kurt Anderson states, “In art
and design and culture I think we actually crave a certain amount of complexity; some interesting
murkiness. Translucency.” The light reveals nuances but it does not completely expose the
depths. This uncertainty intrigues the viewer. The work functions properly when “its essence
remains half-hidden, slightly murky, which is central to its beauty and its appeal.”
The fact that the outcome of the work is not known until it is illuminated adds to its
history. To reference Hesse once more, her works became interesting when they went beyond
her expectations. Similarly, my works do not mirror my expectations exactly despite that fact
that it is what I seek. My work becomes interesting when illuminated and makes known whether
or not it matched my expectations.

Ryan Hogan is an artist-in-residence at Gallery F at the Scarritt-Bennett center

(Nashville, TN). He is a graduate of Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson,

TN. His work has been featured at the Renaissance Center (Dickson, TN),

Western Kentucky University (Bowling Green, KY), and Gallery F. His work

has been reviewed in the Nashville Scene and the underground art publication

The Rabbit (Nashville, TN).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jaime Raybin
Artist’s Statement

My art is driven by material. I choose what physical substance best represents
the concept I am working with, and undergo a process of experimentation until
I push past the literal form. In this series I worked with bodily imagery in an
abstracted, removed way, manipulating scrapings under a microscope.

Different aspects of myself appear in the finished work: the researcher and
the subject. In my workings with the microscope, I developed an exaggerated
alternate persona where I am a “scientist” rather than an artist, doing field
research on my samples. I included this pseudo-objective voice directly within
the work as a sort of narrator.

In a series of PSA-style posters, I juxtapose visceral bodily imagery against
captions connected to bodily processes. One image shows a hairy jelly-like
mass alongside a caption reading “Permitted hunger: a resting place from
continual digestion”. The language of the text falls somewhere between diary
and textbook: a researcher inadvertently revealing too much about herself. The
posters are simultaneously confrontational and abstract, the viewer accidentally
overhearing both sides of a passing conversation between body and mind. The
body is treated as a quasi-mechanical organism, a habitat composed of working
processes and systems.



Jaime Raybin
Bio

Jaime Raybin earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Watkins College of Art and Design in 2006.
Her exhibition history includes the Frist Center for the Visual Arts (Nashville, TN), Swanson-
Reed Contemporary (Louisville, KY), the Renaissance Center (Dickson, TN), Athens Institute
for Contemporary Art (Athens, GA), and the University of the South (Sewanee, TN). She lives in
Nashville, TN.

Raybin is part of Off the Wall Art Group, a five-member art collective committed to making
conceptually driven work with personal resonance. Off the Wall began in 2004 as a group
of students creating their own exhibition opportunities. It has since become a fixture of the
local independent art movement, with invitations to show in galleries and speak in front of the
community.

From 2007 to 2009 Raybin served as President of Plate Tone Printshop, a membership-based
fine art printmaking facility offering studio access, classes, and exhibition opportunities. 


Raybin was on the Board of Directors of the Secret Show Series, a curatorial group dedicated to
displaying contemporary, often experimental art in nontraditional spaces. The Secret Show Series
operated an alternative art space, 310 Chestnut, in 2005.

Raybin's art is material driven, utilizing substances such as Pepto-Bismol, bubble gum, and
school glue to conjure personal associations. 
She publishes “The Scientific Method”, a lifestyle
fanzine for social climbing scientists.

Victor Huckabee at Twist etc. February 2011



BIO
Currently residing in Nashville, Tennessee, Victor Samuel Huckabee spent his formative years studying design in Switzerland where he began Pope Saint Victor design. He currently works full time as the Brand Design Architect for a non-profit organization called Blood:Water Mission that seeks to empower communities to work together against the HIV/AIDS and water crises in Africa.

ARTIST SATEMENT

I think I've always been absorbed with the visual arts whether I knew it or not. I remember being a kid and looking at photos, magazines, cartoons, logos, Muppets and things of that sort and they would always intrigue me. I've always doodled and covered anything I could get my hands on in cartoons. When I was probably fifteen or so, my parents brought home a very early copy of Photoshop for our home PC. Once I realized what I could do with it, I was hooked. I would stay up all night long designing and editing photos just for the fun of it and I feel like I never stopped.

My Illustrated Thoughts are an extension of my creative process. I start creating them with or without an idea -- they are a way to clear my head and make something meaningful and funny completely out of nothing with no ulterior motives or rules, just pure artistic enjoyment. I always start with a blank canvas and I let my pen and imagination do the work. What comes to life in the end is always a surprise. I love to create worlds and creatures all of my own and try to use them to tell a quick, witty story that produces a positive response.

Be awesome. Doodle More.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

greater than the sum of its parts.... art art zine


from: Art Art zine

http://www.artartzine.com/carlinwing.html



This past summer, I spent several months drafting a proposal for a graduate program in art. The proposed MFA program is a cooperative effort of the art departments of Tennessee State University, Vanderbilt University, and Watkins College of Art, Design and Film. If successfully slingshot into reality, the program will focus on critical, collaborative and community-engaged art practices and will form the heart of a new site for creation, exhibition and conversation around contemporary art in downtown Nashville. I was hired to research diverse models of art education, to solicit feedback from people in the community and in the field, and to produce a document that articulated and synthesized the visions of the three different departments. The document I submitted in August was formatted as a working draft, ready to be collaboratively reshaped and refined by department members before being presented to their respective administrations for approval.


After working to channel multiple people’s many creative ideas into a single institutional proposal, I find it somewhat daunting to speak casually as just one participant in a collaborative project that is still very much in process. But I will try to share a few personal reflections. It recently struck me that my position this summer, as someone jointly hired by the three department chairs to operate in an official but highly independent mode, could be viewed as a baby step in the direction of the ambitious institutional collaboration that this project will require. So, I thought that I would take advantage of this forum to try to draw out one or two particularly productive tensions I see in the project, which perhaps stood out to me in part because of the position that I briefly occupied at a nexus of the three institutions.
Entering the project at such an early point in the planning process gave me the advantage of participating in an extended moment of imagining. The three department chairs, Carlyle Johnson (TSU), Mel Ziegler (Vanderbilt) and Terry Thacker (Watkins), have overlapping visions of what this program could and should be, as do their respective faculties. They collectively want a program that is rigorous, experimental, critical, creative, discursive, community-oriented, flexible, collaborative, and groundbreaking. Taking their overlapping visions as my framework, I tried to develop a broader and deeper sense of what this program might look like, in two ways. On one hand, I worked to situate a collective vision for the program within the historical trajectory and current conditions of contemporary art education. On the other hand, I tried to locate this vision within and shape it in relation to the specific strengths, needs and capabilities of the three participating institutions and the Nashville community.


The three departments have converging missions and goals for their students that reflect larger conversations about pedagogical strategies that are taking place in contemporary art world. These conversations involve considering how to deschool society and have been actualized in unofficial institutions for art education such as the Public School and the Mountain School – low budget, no accreditation, no formal degree, intentionally located outside of the academy. TSU, Vanderbilt and Watkins want to create an actual institution, located within academia, that emphasizes and facilitates informal exchange and action in the interstices of academic, cultural and community organizations. This raises the question of how an institution’s structure can be made flexible, such that it facilitates, values and encourages non-hierarchical forms of knowledge acquisition. It also raises the question of the role of skill acquisition. What gets taught and how? How might a flexibly structured program accommodate a students need to learn software programming in combination with textile weaving as part of their creative practice? How might the program facilitate a student smoothly accessing resources within the three primary institutions, say a computer science class at either Vanderbilt or TSU, and also facilitate that student’s need to reach outside to say the fiber department at the Craft Center? Whatever the answer to these questions, it seems important to take advantage of this extended moment of imagining to ask them.
Although my job was to help facilitate the overlaps between the departments and articulate a collective vision, I am personally more interested in the points of difference and particularity. It is the differences that make bringing these three institutions together a provocative act unto itself— an act that is not necessarily comfortable but is unquestionably exciting. It is an act that opens up a potential site for politics in part by forcing tough pragmatic questions to the fore. When you bring together institutions where the difference between the lowest and highest yearly tuition cost for a full course load is $32,000, how do you create a funding structure for a graduate program in art that maintains that economic diversity in your student population? How might you maintain the intimacy of a school that has a total enrollment of 387 students while leveraging the resources and research power of two large universities? How might a collaboration between two majority Caucasian schools and, a historically black university with a majority African-American student population, actively encourage greater racial diversity in a field of graduate education that is to date comparatively homogenous? Building a new institution from scratch that is tethered to, but in many ways independent from, its parent institutions, creates an opportunity to embed the broader vision of the program directly into the administrative structure.


Sometime in July, I spoke on the phone with David Hassler, Program Director for the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State Ohio, to learn a little bit about the Northeast Ohio MFA in Creative Writing, a consortium of four universities in the region. When I described the proposed MFA program for Nashville, the most immediate advantage he saw was that the schools were all in the same city. This he thought would enable a deep level of collaboration and interaction between the students and faculties from the three schools. He went on to say that from his perspective the MFA program being imagined for Nashville “puts into action the means by which communities can come together and appreciate each other in their diversity. In the face of widening gaps in our society between the haves and the have nots, this program proposes to come together in shared resources to promote a larger vision for how democracy and our society can work.” Yes. Let's build this thing.







Carlin Wing is an artist and a doctoral student in Media, Culture and Communication at NYU.S
She has taught at Vanderbilt University, Watkins College of Art, Design and Film, and Harvard University.
carlinwing.net

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Nashville Scene January 06, 2011 ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

Nashville Scene
January 06, 2011 ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT » ART

Lighten up on your calendrical exactitude, peeps — this month's First Saturday Art Crawl is on the second Saturday
Crawl Space
by JOE NOLAN

First Saturday Art Crawl
6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 8

Now that the holidays have passed, and all that's left is a greasy ham stain on your uncle's reindeer necktie, Nashville's art scene is ready for the very first First Saturday Art Crawl of 2011. Since the titular first Saturday of January was New Year's Day, the art crawl was postponed one week, to Jan. 8. This Saturday's event features new faces, urgent messages and a host of ghosts to boot.

Twist Gallery will kick off the new year with a second opening for Alexia Abegg's fantastic contemporary quilt show. Many of her pieces read more like paintings than warmer-uppers, and even if you caught this show in December, pop in to see a number of new pieces added for this encore. Twist Etc. will be playing host to The Process of Product | 12 x 12. A group project by 90 students from Western Kentucky University, The Process includes grids of 1-square-foot artworks that each represent an individual creative idea or impulse. The result highlights the uniqueness of distinct inspirations while simultaneously creating communal connections, reminding viewers that no artist works in a vacuum.

The Rymer Gallery will continue their exhibit of Seth Conley's paintings, White as Snow, from December. Conley's frosty narratives are a good match for the moody winter season. If you missed Jamey Grimes' compelling ceiling installations last month, you'll get a second chance at this Crawl. Rymer will also feature Robert Hendrick's fine-art furniture, fashioned from bulky railroad materials. From the images we've seen, it's hard to tell if Hendrick is really able to transmute his awkward media into graceful, functional appointments, but we call dibs on the "Ballast Deck Desk"!

Tinney Contemporary is determined to bring a little color to this month's Crawl with a new show of multimedia encaustic paintings by Memphis artist Mary Long-Postal. Long-Postal's geometric abstracts match bold colors in stately compositions suspended behind waxy surfaces. Spending some quality time at Tinney this Saturday may prove to be an effective treatment for seasonal affective disorder.

Not exactly repeating their December programming, COOP Gallery will be showing new videos from last month's artist, Dave Hebb. Hebb's two-channel video work explores the long-term consequences of industrialization by documenting landscapes over long periods of time. Hebb's best work brings an immediacy to our impact on the world around us, and this exhibit will resonate with viewers who were mesmerized by the live footage of BP's disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Estel Gallery will show a new series of paintings by Mr. Hooper. Brave Ghosts finds Winston Churchill, Muddy Waters and Andy Kaufman all inhabiting Hooper's canvases with equal parts nostalgia and irony. A few blocks up on Broadway, the Tennessee Art League will open a slew of new shows, including a multimedia shutterbug exhibit by the Nashville Chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers, a show of work by incarcerated artists, and an exhibition of Brandt Hardin's surreal pop-art paintings. The Downtown Presbyterian Church will be hosting The Disposables, a benefit for street newspaper The Contributor featuring photography by the paper's homeless and formerly homeless vendors (see Critics' Picks on p. 15).

The new year marks The Arts Company's 15th year in business, and we can't imagine Nashville's art scene without it. To celebrate, the gallery is kicking off the milestone year with Of Things to Come, an exhibit that will offer glimpses of work from upcoming gallery shows as well as a new series of paintings by Nashville's own Robin Venable. Venable's large, circular canvases are filled with fantastic narratives painted over decorative designs.

The Arts Company isn't the only venue with a reason to party this Saturday. Celebrating its second year, Olga Alexeeva's "O" Gallery at 42 Arcade will open before the Crawl at 4:30 p.m. to host a fete of its own. The Frist Center will also be offering free architecture tours of its historic building at the same time, so get downtown early and get crawling!

Email arts@nashvillescene.com.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Looking forward