Twist Art Gallery

Julia Smith at Twist etc. December 2011 and January 2012

2011-12-06T18:17:00.001-08:00

Julia Smith grew up in Houston, Texas and attended the University of Saint Thomas where she studied

history. Her drawings are an effort to respond to the generalizing, obscuring, and grouping impulses of

history by perpetuating the relevance of individuals through the act of reproduction and transformation

into artistic expression.

Angela Burks and Mandy Rogers Horton at Twist Art Gallery December 2011 and January 2012

2011-11-18T09:53:00.001-08:00

Twist Art Gallery and Twist etc. December 2011 and January 2012

I Need, I Want

Angela Burks and Mandy Rogers Horton

Andrew Harding at Twist Art Gallery November 2011

2011-11-15T22:41:00.001-08:00

Symmetry for the Devil

http://artnownashville.com/visual-arts-in-nashville/symmetry-for-the-devil/

November 16, 2011

By Joe Nolan on November 15, 2011

Sculptor Andrew Harding’s new show at Twist Gallery is a singular delight. One of our favorite local artists before a recent relocation to Chicago, Harding is back in town and his Symmetry Breaking Being is a big reminder of the artist’s exceptional craftsmanship as well as his capacity for creating a compelling dialog between concepts, materials and – in this instance – the gallery space itself.

Symmetry is first and foremost a show that turns the sculpture-making process inside out, putting drawing – which most sculptors engage as a preparatory practice – at the center of the exhibit. This adds Harding’s voice to a recent local trend of similarly-themed displays of 3D forms, 2D sketches and – in the case of Symmetry– combinations of both.

Harding’s show is more or less divided between large wall installations and a series of eight, small collages. However, it’s not quite so cut-and-dry. Just as all of the pieces are a mixture of materials, objects and drawing, the various works themselves also reflect and borrow from one another, bringing an uncommon cohesiveness to Harding’s overall exploration of the dynamism of the natural world and the resulting fragility of fleeting organic shapes and forms. In the artist’s own words: “Change and transformation are the essence of nature. I am interested in the confluence of such forms…continuously breaking into and out of being.”

“Energy Knot” is the show’s most memorable image. A thick, twisted red line painted directly on the gallery wall curves back on itself. The form reminds me of both some kind of unfamiliar industrial design or, simultaneously, of a magnification of an unidentified microscopic flagellate. The form is adorned with a number of crystalline shapes drawn on and cut out of vellum. These too are adhered directly to the gallery wall. All of the large wall installations contain such elements and in every case they stand in for the rigidly ordered, underlying elemental combinations that give rise to dynamic living forms. Harding reiterates this theme by peppering a number of the large works with the small wood and metal sculptures he’s best known for. Harding’s own forms are certainly dynamic and the artist shows no respect for the normally formal confines of the gallery; his pieces sprawl across the walls and literally – in the case of the exhibit’s title installation – crawl up onto the ceiling.
Harding’s small collages also combine both organic and geometric shapes to explore the dynamic cycle of order and entropy that sees both the emergence of form and its dissolution in the multitudinous processes that make-up the natural world. Thin strips of metal and wood are cut into organic shapes and combined with colorful drawings to create compelling compositions that are simultaneously stately, graceful and ebullient. The pieces are eminently look-at-able as they call to mind organ systems, biological forms and even abstract human figures in their wriggling, tangled shapes.
Symmetry Breaking Being turns the sculptural process inside out, revealing the underlying practice that results in a finished form. But this ambitious exhibit also turns the shape-making processes of the natural world on its collective head, looking beyond structure to the principles of physical order that are the generators of organic form. It sounds complicated – and it is – but Harding makes it look easy. In fact, it seems to come naturally.
Symmetry Breaking Being is on view at Twist Gallery in downtown Nashville through Nov. 26.

Posted in Featured, Visual Arts |

goose and gander baby clothes and accessories come to Twist

2011-10-12T14:33:00.001-07:00

goose and gander baby clothes and accessories coming your way this gift giving season at Twist Art Gallery :)

Description	our cozy onesies are 12 dollars each and a perfect gift for the new baby in your life. more items coming soon.

Website	http://www.twistartgallery.com/

Twist Art Gallery artists in the Nashville scene's best of this year

2011-10-06T15:39:00.001-07:00

Twist Art Gallery artists in the Nashville scene's best of this year

BEST CONTEMPORARY PRINTMAKING GROUP SHOW: ANXIOUS DAYS AT TWIST GALLERY
Curated by painter, printmaker and Watkins College Assistant Professor Brady Haston, Anxious Daysexplored themes that addressed 21st century anxieties about terrorism, pending pandemics and our tempestuous natural environment. One of the first exhibits of 2011, Anxious Days got Twist's programming off to a great start, and the show's consistently affecting works left us feeling more exhilarated than edgy. JOE NOLAN

BEST ARTIST TO WATCH: RYAN HOGAN
Ryan Hogan had a busy year, presenting successive shows at Twist, Blackbird Tattoo and Gallery, and Seed Space. We're drawn to artists with multidisciplinary backgrounds, and it's no surprise that Hogan's education in philosophy plays a role in his ambitious sculpture installations. He presents his pieces as pure objects without discernible context or easily recognized representational equivalents. We're anxious to see what he does next. You should be too. JOE NOLAN

Twist Art Gallery November 2011

2011-10-05T06:34:00.000-07:00

Twist Art Gallery November 2011 space 73 Andy Harding

Title: Symmetry Breaking Being "

Attempts to fix nature into one particular arrangement or mechanism rarely last. Change and transformation are the essence of nature. The structures and symmetries generated by the changes are secondary and fleeting. I am interested in the confluence of such forms...continuously breaking into and out of being."

BIO: Andy Harding spent much of his childhood wandering the woods of the 100 acre farm where he grew up in west Tennessee. It wasn't until his senior year in college that he took a serious interest in art while enrolled in an elective 3D design course. Since that time, he has been thoroughly engaged in object making...from lamps and furniture to handmade artist books, collage, and wood and metal sculpture. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows at the Nashville Public Library, Zeitgeist Gallery, San Diego Art Institute, Kingston Gallery, Boston, MA, and as part of "Gnathonemus Petersii" at Gallery 400 of the University of Illinois at Chicago. Harding completed a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from Belmont University in 1997 and recently relocated to Nashville after living in Chicago for the past six years. ......................................................

Twist etc. November 2011 Kelly Kerrigan

http://www.etsy.com/shop/tramplamps
http://kellykerrigan.blogspot.com/

artist statement coming soon...

Oxford American : the southern magazine of good writing

2011-09-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

Southern GirlA show of beauty arranged by Carol Ann Fitzgerald, the managing editor of The Oxford American.I Want to Die A-ShoutingPublished September 7, 2011Johnathon Kelso didn't like shape-note singing at first (in fact, he says he hated it, because it sounded weird). Shape-note singing (also known as Sacred Harp singing) is sung loud and hearty and it's a participatory sort of experience: If you want to hear it, you sit with the singers and join in. (The sound is not supposed to be pretty, so even tone-deaf singers are welcome.) For Kelso, who's now hooked, it's as much about the friendships as the music. Usually held in Baptist churches (though it's nondenominational), a typical singing can last most of the day—it's a spiritual and social event. The music dates back to ye olde Colonial days—which may explain its calisthenic vigor—and sounds more like anthem than hymn. Fans include Bob Dylan and Robbie Robertson, among many other aficionados. I Want to Die A-Shouting, Kelso's warmly personal series of photographs documenting the culture, is on view at Twist Art Gallery in Nashville. His views are serene, even cleansing.

Beth Gilmore's art work in the Wilco video Born Alone

2011-09-13T16:08:00.000-07:00

Nashville falls into the autumn gallery season with September's First Saturday festivities Crawl Space

2011-09-01T14:10:00.001-07:00

Nashville SceneNashville falls into the autumn gallery season with September's First Saturday festivities Crawl Spaceby JOE NOLANSeptember 01, 2011 ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT » ARTWhile the heat has yet to beat a final retreat and we have several weeks left before the official beginning of fall, the kids are back in school, there's football on TV and Nashville's autumn exhibition season kicks off at Saturday night's Art Crawl. It's our favorite time of the year for gallery gawking, and this month's highlights include Warhol Superstars, gift-wrapped canvases and a visitation from The King of Rock 'n' Roll.At Twist Gallery this month, Johnathon Kelso displays his quirky photos of the quotidian South. While his work can feel uncomfortably poised between posed and candid, Kelso's best snaps show an eye for composition and everyday abstractions. His I Want to Die a-Shouting series documents contemporary Sacred Harp singing groups, and Twist will host related music events later in the month. At Twist Etc., J. Todd Greene's First Class Animal prowls its cage for another month. A show of 12 small sculptures, Animal was greeted with both delight and disgust in August. Stop in and see for yourself.For the September crawl, COOP Gallery opens Improve Upon Perfection, an exhibition of mixed-media sculpture from Seattle-based artist Dawn Cerny. Cerny's show takes its title from a haiku by poet Grant Cross: "Improve butterflies / Improve upon perfection / If you're so godlike." The messy and the mysterious come together in Cerny's black-comedic work, which is by turns trashy, flashy, energized and elegiac.On Fifth Avenue, Claire Cotts' Lost in the Night Garden continues at Tinney Contemporary, held over from the August crawl. The artist's biomorphic paintings evoke the submarine undulations of plants and creatures in the sway of an abiding tide, while her figurative canvases relate personal narratives that ask questions about faith, relationships, memory and hope. And in Tinney's Rear Gallery, don't miss Andy, The Factory and Me. Tinney's back space is one of the Art Crawl's best-kept secrets, and this show of Raeanne Rubenstein's photographs is the perfect complement to the Frist Center's Warholpalooza.Crawlers who saw the ZieherSmith pop-up gallery show in August will recognize the work of Vadis Turner at Rymer Gallery this month. Turner's ribbon paintings aren't the flat, woven affairs we'd expected. Thick layers of the colorful stuff undulate across her surfaces while gorgeous loops spill over the edges, only to curl back in voluptuous arcs of luxurious physicality. Turner's Ribbon Paintings and Flower Figures hangs alongside painter Gabriel Mark's Thoroughbred, which examines social ideals by exploring the relationship between horse and rider.At The Arts Company this month, Inside Out: New Paintings by Charles Keiger presents narrative canvases that read more like myths than linear stories. A confident dalmatian holds the reigns in "Dog and Pony Dream," and "Tidal Audit" recalls the movie poster for Being There. It's tempting to describe these works as surreal, but it's more to the point to equate them with magical realism, the literary genre in which the supernatural is super natural. After this exercise in make-believe, stroll up the block for a cool show of kids' art at Downtown Presbyterian Church.Up on Broadway, The Tennessee Art League opens four new September shows. Cindy Billingsley is a popular Franklin-based painter and sculptor. Her show in the Premiere Gallery explores Alzheimer's and aging as well as the plight of endangered species. The Poston3 Gallery will display work by homeless artists who've been participating in the art program at Room in The Inn. Shows by the Studio A Group and Tennessee Art League members round out TAL's September offerings.Knoxville's own Gary Monroe is best known for his large charcoal drawings of frenzied snake handlers in the midst of their fang-fueled ecstasies. For his show at Estel Gallery this month, he forgoes the fervor of such festivities for illumination of a different kind. Monroe's new series serves up worship-worthy images of Elvis Presley. Despite choosing such a hackneyed subject, Monroe avoids cliches through his sure-handed craftsmanship, his straight-faced appropriation of religious iconography stylistics, his art-historical allusions to various Baroque masters — and what appear to be a few hints of William Blake.Speaking of Blake, it was the great poet, painter and printmaker who wrote in "To Autumn" that this was the time of year to celebrate the harvest and to "Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers." As Nashville's best art season begins blazing into full color, we can't think of a better spirit in which to celebrate.Email arts@nashvillescene.com.

test waters of buying original art at First Saturday Art Crawl

2011-08-29T08:28:00.000-07:00

from the Tennessean
Written by

Stacy Downs | McClatchy Newspapers

11:45 AM, Aug. 26, 2011|

Original art, in addition to family
photographs and heirlooms, makes a home
personal and individual.

But making the leap into collecting art can
be intimidating, even to the bright and the
bold. Perhaps that fear factor forms early,
after you’ve visited art museums and
spotted security guards standing on alert.
Or maybe it comes from the notion that you
have to be an art insider to even step
inside a gallery. And, of course, there’s the
price tag issue.

“You don’t have to have a lot of money to
buy art,” says Cortney Novogratz, who
along with her decorator husband, Robert,
has an HGTV show, Home by Novogratz.
Original art is a major part of their design
projects, and they typically spotlight an
artist in each episode.

“Original art reflects who you are as a
person, as a family, much more than
buying something from a chain store,” she
says.
Before you buy

For those who haven’t purchased art
before, Novogratz advises going to art fairs
to get an overview of what’s out there.

“You discover what your tastes are,” she
says. “You quickly learn there’s more out
there than paintings, which is what people
think of as art. There’s photography,
ceramics, charcoal and pencil drawings,
glass and furniture. Some designer chairs
we purchased have really held their value.”

The next step is visiting galleries,
intimidating at first for the uninitiated art
seeker.

“They have the power, not the gallery
owner,” says John O’Brien, owner of
Dolphin, a gallery and custom framer in the
West Bottoms area of Kansas City, Mo. “I
always tell people to take their time. Get a
feel for what you like and don’t like.”

Galleries are Novogratz’s preferred method for buying art.

“Yes, online is the world we live in, but I
like to see where my money’s going and to
meet the artist,” she says. “It makes art a
richer experience.”

Ask an artist

Novogratz asks artists questions beyond
what inspired their work. She’ll ask how
many prints were made of a photograph.
She also discusses decorative elements
with the artist, such as framing: Lucite box
or chipped wooden molding?

Artist Lonnie Powell of Lee’s Summit, Mo.,
enjoys meeting patrons and discussing his
work, much of which is portraiture of
African-American men and women in oil,
acrylic, charcoal, pencil, pastel and
watercolors. Like most artists, he prefers
people purchase what he has created from
his own mind’s eye and hands.

Getting started
The Downtown Nashville First Saturday Art Crawl is a great way to jump into the local art scene. The next one is Sept. 3. Downtown art galleries host receptions and art openings and serve free wine and snacks from 6 to 9 p.m. the first Saturday of every month, along Fifth Avenue North and around downtown. There is a free shuttle to take you from gallery to gallery. For more information, call 743-3090 or visit nashvilledowntown.com . For more on free local art events, check out Thursday’s Ms. Cheap column.
At art galleries? Know the hours. Some are closed Sundays and Mondays.
• Let gallery employees know your budget. They can show you pieces accordingly.
• Ask to see the gallery’s flat files/backroom/storeroom. There’s more than what’s on the walls, and less expensive pieces are often found there.
• Don’t be shy about financing. Most galleries have layaway and other options.
• Talk money. Negotiating is not for first-time buyers.
• Mix it up. “There are payoffs to waiting, watching, researching before purchasing, and there are payoffs to getting out there and being spontaneous,” Blue Gallery owner Kelly Kuhn says. “I love a collection that incorporates both. An entire collection that is well-researched can be a little dull and lifeless, and an entire collection that is spontaneous might seem unfocused. A collection that embodies both strategies has both depth and a degree of surprise and a little danger.”
Other places to buy art? Student art departments. “You can find inexpensive great pieces,” says designer Cortney Novogratz of HGTV’s Home by Novogratz .
• Flea markets and antique malls. “This is a great way to get your family involved in collecting,” says Novogratz, who has seven children. “At flea markets, one of my children collected portraits of women and clustered them on a wall. Folk art and oil paintings can be inexpensive at flea markets.”
• Photography studios. Besides doing portraits, some do art pieces.

Twist Art Gallery September 2011

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Todd Greene

2011-08-20T14:58:00.001-07:00

First Class Animal

Todd Green

August 6 - 27, 2011

In Twist Etc.

Artist's Statement:

12 Stages of Aggravation

It is easy to forfeit the peace of mind that gets beyond all understading as Zen master Bankei Yotaky suggests. Lust, fear, worry, anger, jealousy and the like cloud our minds and cloak our vision. We become convinced that we are confused and live in an illusion world or unclear thought. Remain in grace or become:

A First-Class Animal
A Hungry Ghost
A Horned Tiger
Double-Minded
Mealy-Mouthed Swindler
A Transmigrator
A Blasphemer
A Lost Body
Two-Faced
A Jealous Demon
Spineless
An Accuser

Todd Greene

2011-08-20T14:57:00.000-07:00

Unheard Silences

Todd Green

August 6 - 27, 2011

Twist Art Gallery

Artist's Statement:

We will often silence culture, ideas and people we find threatening or do not understand. Not only do we quell the voices of others, but we limit our understanding of an ever expanding reality.

If those voices don't fit, such as the one's originally inhabiting the North American continent, "...each with its own poetry and treasure of histories of myths, its own way of living in harmony with the spontaneities of the natural environment. All but a very few of those tongues have been silenced, their cultures forever lost, to those of us who stand ignorantly in their place" (Finite & Infinite Games, James P. Carse).

These myths are like magic tress in the garden of culture. They do not grow on, but out of the silent earth of nature. The more we strip these trees of their fruit or prune them back to our favored design, the more imposing and fecund they become.

twist Art Gallery presents John Kelso

2011-08-20T14:56:00.001-07:00

southern living august issue 2011

2011-07-14T15:05:00.000-07:00

photo by robbie caponetto... this is one of the other shots from the southern living photo shoot

This month's Art Crawl lights the fuse on Fourth of July weekend

2011-07-04T03:54:00.001-07:00

Nashville Scene
June 30, 2011 ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT » ART

This month's Art Crawl lights the fuse on Fourth of July weekend
Crawl Space
by JOE NOLAN

First Saturday Art Crawl
6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, July 2, downtown

The art scene always slows in the summer, but the July Art Crawl offers a compelling lineup that has us hopeful about the coming months. Expect to see strong debuts, archaic techniques and a gallery full of fireworks to ignite your excitement for the Fourth.

Julie Lee is best known as a singer-songwriter and in-demand collaborator who's had a couple of songs recorded by Alison Krauss. But it's Lee's visual art that will be in the spotlight at both Twist Gallery and Twist Etc. this month. Her found-object assemblages are a fitting visual complement to her collage-like music, and the end result yields a similar blend of the personal and the traditional, the newly discovered and the nostalgic. This is the first installment of Twist's summer series, featuring big solo exhibits encompassing both spaces, 73 and 77 Arcade.

Coop Gallery has a reputation for shows that are full of surprises. Last month's installation by Justin Farris Braun was a completely different affair from what Coop's official propaganda had lead us to believe, and this month's artist seems like another wild card. Steven Frost's show is titled Every Man is a Winner, and it finds the artist recontextualizing heroic tropes within his own craft/design aesthetic. Some past Frost favorites made use of lucha libre (Mexican wrestling) imagery and costumes, but in Frost's hands these expressions of flamboyant machismo were reimagined through an examination of materials as well as the pop cultural language that surrounds contemporary notions of success.

Out on Fifth Avenue, The Arts Company opens Summer of Serendipity. A midyear catchall show, Serendipity showcases work from the gallery's archives, arranging art, decor, books and artifacts in tableaux of living and working spaces. The show offers something for any crawlers looking for some design inspiration.

At Tinney Contemporary, Silver: Points of Departure spotlights artwork created employing silverpoint, a centuries-old drawing medium — using a silver stylus to make marks on prepared surfaces. The technique was widespread before the ubiquitous adoption of graphite; the contemporary artists featured are reviving the practice and the ephemeral, shimmering images it creates. The exhibit brings together silverpoint practitioners from across the country, including Joe Biel, Anne Connell, Lori Field, Marietta Hoferer, Michael Kukla, Kate Kretz, Susan Schwalb, Fran Siegel and Carol Prusa, who guest-curated the show.

Down the block, Rymer Gallery opens Material Inversions. featuring works by James Worsham and gallery director Natalie Andrews. Worsham's mixed-media pieces explore the boundary where nature collides with extremes of civilized luxury. We've been peeking at Andrews' website since she joined Rymer and we're excited to see her work on display. Her sculptures feature repeating lines in harmonious forms and reveal a high level of craftsmanship. We suspect that Andrews' work may be the talk of the Crawl.

If you missed Estel Gallery's show at the June Crawl, you'll want to pop by this two-person exhibit. Using acrylics and charcoal, Dan Bynum has created black-and-white portraits of children that feature colorful symbolic images floating at the center of each piece, tallying a childhood inventory: lightning bugs in a jar, a playful squirrel, a school desk. Bynum's work exists somewhere between the universal and the banal, the resonant and the merely nostalgic. Jenny Keith's beeswax paintings burst with bold color and feature charming characters in fantastic narratives. Up on Broadway, the Tennessee Art League opens five new gallery exhibits, including a show of abstract mixed-media canvases by Judy Bobula.

Blend Studio hosts Combustion: A Group Show at 79 Arcade. Combustion is a collective of visual arts professionals that meets monthly for critical discussion and mutual, creative accountability. This show features drawing, sculpture, painting and mixed-media work by Mandy Brown, Charles Clary, Amanda Dillingham, Jason Driskill, Derek Gibson, Hannah Maxwell Rowell, Sarah Shearer and Blend's own Ben Vitualla.

While Heather Lose was known for hosting Honky Tonk Jukebox on the late, great WRVU, this Saturday she blasts off on the visual art tip with her pyromaniacal From Canvas to Canvas: Selected Images from the Tennessee Fireworks Project. Hosted at the Picture This space at 44 Arcade, the fireworks-centric photos are printed on canvas, and the titular allusion also nods to the familiar roadside canvas tents where fireworks are often sold.

Have a great Crawl and a fun Fourth of July — try not to blow up any crucial body parts!

Email arts@nashvillescene.com.

Julie Lee at Twist Art Gallery July 2011

2011-07-04T03:52:00.001-07:00

http://twistartgallery.squarespace.com/

2011-06-28T21:22:00.001-07:00

http://twistartgallery.squarespace.com/

Twist Art Gallery shares Lauren Krusso's pretty flowers

2011-05-15T13:01:00.001-07:00

Twist Art Gallery shares Lauren Krusso's pretty flowers
12:35 PM, May. 12, 2011

An installation view of Lauren Kussro's A Joyous Outpouring, on view at Twist Art Gallery through May 28. SUBMITTED

Written by
MiChelle Jones | For The Tennessean
FILED UNDER
Entertainment
Entertainment Arts & Culture
If You Go

What: A Joyous Outpouring, new sculptural and cut-paper works by Lauren Kussro
Where: Twist Art Gallery, Arcade #73
When: Through May 28
Hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday.
Admission: Free
Contact: 1-888-535-5286 or www.twistartgallery.com

Friday afternoon in the Arcade, less than 36 hours before the First Saturday Art Crawl, the upstairs gallery spaces were abuzz with activity. Walls were being painted, work was being hung, labels affixed. At Twist Art Gallery, Lauren Kussro was painting a wall in preparation for A Joyous Outpouring, on view through May 28, her third exhibition at the gallery.

Her previous shows were called The Luminous Bower and Handful of Tranquility, similarly expressive titles reflecting Kussro’s exploration of beauty and the aesthetics of her singular combination of printmaking and sculpture.

Kussro also likes to counter what she sees as a trend in contemporary art of downplaying the relevance of beauty. Quoting a Thomas Moore essay, she talks of the necessity of nurturing the human soul.

“My work has always been about beauty,” Kussro explains. “I think it’s necessary for beauty to exist. … I feel like it’s my responsibility as an artist to use my gifts to benefit others.”

Beauty in bloom

An overwhelming sense of beauty emanates from a floating garden of 10 handmade flower sculptures suspended in one corner of the gallery. In combinations of cream and deep red, purple and teal, orange and red, blue and white, each flower sits on its own bed of leaves.

These lotus-like flowers (they are of an indeterminate species, from Kussro’s imagination) follow a process similar to the one Kussro uses to create the four lit wall pieces placed around the gallery’s walls.

She starts with a cotton rag paper, a change from the handmade paper she used in her previous work. First, she prints both sides of the paper in a solid color (a different one per side), then prints swirls and loosely based organic shapes on top of the base color. Next, she coats the paper with wax before cutting it into shapes.

Rather than create each piece from bespoke parts, Kussro mixes and matches as she goes along, pulling petals and leaves from her cache of components.

The wall pieces are built around armatures made of oval wood frames covered in paper like pith helmets. Layers of petals and leaves are attached and a compact fluorescent bulb used to light the piece from the underside.

Negative beauty

Kussro also explores the negative side of beauty in A Joyous Outpouring in that she was inspired by the negative spaces and pieces left from where she cut shapes for her sculptural work.

“I was throwing away all these beautiful scraps, so I started saving them all,” she says. She began repurposing them in small, colorful resin-covered collages, or cut out even smaller leaf shapes in various green hues and applied them to gauzy fabric stretched over plywood frames.

Several of these hang in the windows of Twist, onto which Kussro screen-printed still more leaves. Three long paper panels cover the ceiling like banners, forming a lush canopy of green and brown vegetation, also screen-printed.

Three long panels hang in front of a sunny yellow wall in Twist’s inner gallery. Kussro hand-cut the intricate design of swirls and leaves spreading across the paper, working without sketches except to map out a rough suggestion of pattern when she moved from the initial center panel to the outer two.

Again, inspiration came from remnants of her other work.

When she last showed the piece in Indiana, where she lives, she put it in front a white wall to play up the shadows cast by the cutouts. Then, the white paper blended in with the white backdrop; for Twist’s presentation, she wanted to use the contrast of a different wall color.

“I really liked the negative shapes I was making … so I thought, why not just do a piece that was just cutting and that’s it?”

The elegantly simple result is far more complex than that.

kickstarted Julie LEE ..TILL AND MULE .. MAKE IT HAPPEN

2011-05-14T16:53:00.001-07:00

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/julielee/be-a-part-of-till-and-mule-by-julie-lee

wired for Light... June 2011 ...Joe Tsambiras ...Twist Art Gallery

2011-05-14T15:54:00.000-07:00

Lauren Kussro at Twist Art Gallery May 2011

2011-05-08T21:02:00.000-07:00

Jason Paradis at Twist etc. #77 May 2011

2011-05-08T21:00:00.000-07:00

May 2011

2011-05-07T10:33:00.001-07:00

May's First Saturday exhibits offer shelter from the storms

2011-05-05T20:56:00.000-07:00

May's First Saturday exhibits offer shelter from the storms
Crawl Space
by JOE NOLAN
Nashville Scene

Writing this to a chorus of tornado warning sirens, I'm struck by how the May Art Crawl contrasts the windy, wet weather we've seen during these turbulent birth pangs of summer. May's First Saturday events are concerned with calm and comfort, finding galleries filled with cozy craftings, soothing sounds, good causes and simple beauty.

At 79 Arcade, Blend Studio opens an installation by Tiffany Dyer. Fortress explores ideas of home and security with a gallery-spanning environment fashioned from abandoned afghans and other crocheted items. Dyer will have small soft-sculpture houses for sale with proceeds benefiting Safe Haven Family Shelter, but the star of the show will be the installation itself, which promises "an experience of childhood memories and adult fantasies."

Street Crossings is an exhibit of new multimedia works by Joshua Penrose that will be making a noise at COOP Gallery at 75 Arcade this month. Penrose has a background in piano, percussion, composition and electronic music, and his COOP installation can be thought of as a duet between the surging sounds of traffic at a changing streetlight and the playful, electronic tones and phrases that Penrose superimposes upon this too-familiar music of the city. By decorating everyday sounds, Penrose draws attention to the intricate textures and vibrant dynamics of the seemingly mundane.

Twist Gallery at 73 Arcade will be hosting a new exhibit by Lauren Kussro, whose show is simply about beauty and its capacity to move us to yearning and delight. A Joyous Outpouring finds the artist creating multimedia objects that incorporate printmaking, sewing, sculpture and paper crafts in her colorful, organic assemblages. Her strongest pieces are illuminated affairs that glow with an abiding presence. At 77 Arcade, Twist Etc. hosts New York-based Canadian artist Jason Paradis. Gallery-goers may recall Paradis' show at Seed Space in 2010: The artist's installations are preoccupied with time as well as space, and his work acknowledges that even our deepest existential understandings are wrapped in a vast mystery.

The Froelich Gallery at 83 Arcade will feature Berlin, a series of striking photographs by Hunter Armistead. Armistead spent a year living in the German capital, and this is the first time he's shown his work from that period.

On Fifth Avenue, Tinney Contemporary sticks with their April exhibit Stealing Stories: New Works by Patricia Bellan-Gillen. Stealing finds Bellan-Gillen bringing meticulous detailing to the zoological illustrations that populate her dreamscape panels. Rymer Gallery will also hold over What We Carry, a show of Luke Hillestad's figurative canvases featuring narratives of birth, kinship, ritual and healing.

Down the block at The Arts Company, The Intimate World of Leonard Piha is an expansive show that sprawls across much of the gallery's large upstairs space. It's easy to mistake Piha for an outsider artist when discovering his religious, personal work. He paints on wood and cardboard and also fashions sculptures from rough, ordinary materials. In fact, Piha took his M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art, and we are waiting for Saturday to see if Piha's work plays the fool or plays for keeps. In addition, Slow Road to China — Drew Doggett's documentary photos of the Land of the Dragon — remains from last month.

Be sure to wander your way up Broadway to the Tennessee Art League for the 46th Annual Central South Art Exhibition. The CSAE is one of the oldest and most prestigious art competitions in the country, and it's the TAL's founding event. This year 419 works by artists from 26 states competed for 60 cash prizes. Saturday's opening will include an early awards presentation at 5 p.m., culminating with the Best in Show prize for Bill Bailey's lovely, light-filled watercolor painting "Humphrey's Mill."

Back at 44 Arcade, Mir Gallery founder/curator Miranda Herrick will be putting her own work on display in an eco-conscious show that resonates with the new frugality informing these money-lean times. Reduced, Reused, Recycled: Visual Art from the Recycling Bin features quilt-like tapestries, crocheted rugs, and crafted aluminum mandalas fashioned from grocery bags, candy wrappers, cereal boxes and beer cans. This will be the last show for Mir Gallery, and the May exhibit anticipates Herrick's rededication to her own creative projects. Since Mir debuted in 2008, highlights at the space have included a number of memorable print and pop-art inspired exhibits, and we hope it will be replaced by another art venue with an equally thoughtful curator. We already know of one new venue that will likely join the First Saturday fray in June, but that will have to wait until next month.

Crawl on, crawlers!

http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/mays-first-saturday-exhibits-offer-shelter-from-the-storms/Content?oid=2420738

Artist statement: Lauren Kussro May 2011 space #73

2011-04-14T08:11:00.000-07:00

Artist statement: Lauren Kussro May 2011 space #73

A Joyous Outpouring

The pursuit of beauty, and bringing it into the sphere of the viewer
is one of my most imperative roles as an artist. I believe that the
contemporary art world has lost a sense of the importance of beauty
and it’s enriching and nurturing influence on the human soul. Thomas
Moore in Care of the Soul, states it very well here: "If we are going to
care for the soul, and if we know that the soul is nurtured by beauty,
then we will have to understand beauty more deeply and give it a more
prominent place in life. “ Regrettably, beauty has become a somewhat
taboo subject in the art world in recent years. Discord, dark emotions,
desecration, and violence have become more prevalent in contemporary
art, all in the name of artistic expression. Beauty is often seen as trite,
sentimental, and saccharine.

In this show, I want to create an environment that places the viewer
in an arena where beauty is relevant and acceptable and is used as
a vehicle for evoking essential emotions such as joy, hope, delight,
excitement, happiness, and yearning. I continue to explore the use of
paper, printmaking, drawing, sewing, sculpting, light, texture, pattern…
utilizing all of these materials and techniques to create objects that are a
joyous outpouring, a leap towards truth.

“Wherever beauty lies in wait for us, the desire to pre-empt its appeal
can intervene, ensuring that its still small voice will not be heard behind
the scenes of desecration. For beauty makes a claim on us: it is a call to
renounce our narcissism and look with reverence on the world.” Roger
Scruton, The Flight From Beauty

May we allow beauty to claim us, and may we never stifle the still small voice.

J. Todd Greene painting class

2011-04-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

For those interested...
"Tapping into the Genius," Painting class taught by Todd Greene, 6 weeks, in 12 south area, next to Burger Up. $200 includes supplies. April 28-June 2 / 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm.

Lauren Kussro at Twist Art Gallery May 2011 in space 73

2011-04-06T09:02:00.001-07:00

ARTIST STATEMENT
LAUREN KUSSRO My work references the inherent design and beauty found
within the natural world, even though the forms I create are rarely copies of an
actual physical object from nature. I find it more challenging and enjoyable to
design sculptural forms from my imagination, as if I am creating pieces that could
exist in a parallel universe. A successful juxtaposition of recognizable organic
forms such as flowers and leaves with more abstract forms is satisfying to create,
as well as being satisfying visually for the viewer. Through play and
experimentation, which are my favorite steps in the art-making process, I discover
which forms I like and wish to recreate in multiples.

When assembling a piece, I focus on craftsmanship and detail and am very
concerned with achieving a visual balance. I like the sensory richness that can
be achieved by combining various materials such as paper, wood, paint, ink,
thread, and wax. To give the work an added layer of texture and detail, I design
and draw ornate patterns and hand print them on paper using silkscreen, woodcut,
or linocut. Although building the sculptures takes a great deal of time, all the
processes of designing, drawing, printing, cutting, sewing, and building are
important, and the more work I put into the pieces, the more there is for the viewer
to explore.

As a printmaker – I enjoy using repetitive forms and designs to create continuity
and a layered visual history. As a sculptor – I enjoy designing and constructing
three-dimensional forms that can physically enter the space occupied by the
viewer. Both of these elements come together to form environments. The
idea that I can radically change a space by superimposing an environment of
my own creation is one that drives my work. I am fascinated by the fact that
merely altering the appearance of a space can change a person’s perceptions
or their mood, and I am interested in the ways that this can occur. I have been
experimenting with this in recent work by coming up with different ways of using
light. I am also interested in pursuing the use of sound or smell to change the
space, as well making work on a much larger scale.

Ultimately I seek to create echoes of nature in works of art that invite you to
slow down and enjoy the acts of observing and investigating. Anyone visiting the
artwork should encounter an environment where they can be met and beguiled by
beauty.

twistcooparcadia

2011-04-03T13:05:00.001-07:00

Amelia Winger-Bearskin

2011-04-03T13:03:00.001-07:00

we pity the fool who misses April's First Saturday art openings

2011-03-31T20:06:00.000-07:00

We pity the fool who misses April's First Saturday art openings
Crawl Space
by JOE NOLAN
Nashville Scene

First Saturday Art Crawl
6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, April 2, downtown

April showers bring May flowers, but spring has already blossomed in Nashville and the first big art season of the year is upon us. Saturday's Art Crawl promises moving images, Japanese treasures, a floating butterfly and a stinging bee — no fooling!

Dance Sequence, Amelia Winger-Bearskin's new show at Twist, features a projected video/song installation alongside 200 tiny paintings mounted in water. Winger-Bearskin, an assistant professor of studio art at Vanderbilt, also has a piece in the Material Apparatus show currently on display at Cheekwood's Video Installation Galleries. Titled "AmbienTTransformation," it shows the artist revealing her face beneath layers of black paint, gold leaf and honey. If "AmbienTTransformation" is about the subconscious mind, Dance Sequence is pure id. Winger-Bearskin promises surprises for early attendees at Twist this Saturday.

Twist Etc. is teaming up with COOP Gallery to present Neon Sigh, a collaborative exhibit by Adam Henry and Emily Mae Smith. Smith is currently visiting artist-in-residence at both Vanderbilt and Watkins. Incorporating painting, sculpture, drawing and collage, Neon Sigh attempts to reorder the perception of expectation and desire, dovetailing nicely with Matt Christy's work from last month's Twist Etc. show. The curtain that separates the two spaces has been removed to create "Twistcooparcadia," spilling from Arcade 75 into Arcade 77.

Blend Studio co-founder Ben Vitualla has taken on more of his gallery's programming duties, and now he finds himself with a fight on his hands. This month's collaboration between local artists Andee Rudloff and Lindsey Bailey and filmmaker Allie Sultan is a return to form for Blend, and these ladies are ready to rumble. Composed of a number of multimedia pieces and a video installation, Floats Like a Butterfly Stings Like a Bee: Who controls Art? fits in nicely with Blend's community-conscious ethos, engaging viewers in a dialogue about creative control. Saturday's audience can purchase specially printed wooden nickels to cast their vote. The nickels can be kept as souvenirs or donated to a number of creative causes.

Last month, we mentioned that we'd like to see galleries consider leaving exhibits up for more than a month. Estel Gallery has never fully embraced the 30-days-and-out scheduling, and this month's repeat of Just So... will give art-abouts a second chance to see this group show of work by four contemporary painters: Mark Bradley-Shoup, Claire Brassil, Kelly Williams and Chris Scarborough. If you missed this in March, take advantage on Saturday. Also, be sure to stop by Tennessee Art League for something completely different: A timely show given recent events, The Dolls of Japan – Shapes of Prayer, Embodiments of Love includes 72 examples from various Japanese doll-making traditions, allowing viewers to experience the regions, culture and customs of The Land of the Rising Sun through the decorative figures.

On Fifth Avenue proper, Tinney Contemporary is opening a show of mixed-media drawings, prints and paintings by Patricia Bellan-Gillen, Stealing Stories. Bellan-Gillen sets her meticulous zoological illustrations within surreal, pastel dreamscapes. Rymer Gallery opens What We Carry, a solo exhibit by Minneapolis-based figurative painter Luke Hillestad. Hillestad often explores still lifes, but his narrative portraits are the highlight of the show. The Arts Company's From Slow Road to China to Fashion and Beyond showcases work by fashion photographer Drew Doggett placing his commercial work alongside documentary photographs from his trek through China. The gallery will also be hosting the Fifth Annual Nashville Film Festival Official Preview in their Avant-Garage space. Pop in, knock the rust off your red carpet strut, hobnob with film fest big wigs and enjoy sneak previews of this year's NaFF offerings on the big screen.

And make sure to stop at the Arcade's BelArt Gallery, which is showing Marleen De Waele-De Bock's latest creations. Her newest paintings are inspired by Nashville's recent (and lovely) springtime weather, which looks like it's here to stay, y'all.

Happy crawling!

Email arts@nashvillescene.com.

installation will invite art crawl crowd inside

2011-03-27T13:39:00.001-07:00

Installation will invite art crawl crowd inside
4:40 PM, Mar. 25, 2011 |

Stills from Amelia Winger-Bearskin's video series Dance Sequence, which will be shown Saturday at Twist Art Gallery as part of the monthly art crawl.

Written by
MiChelle Jones
for The Tennessean
FILED UNDER
Entertainment
Entertainment Arts & Culture

What: Dance Sequence, new installation by Amelia Winger-Bearskin
Where: Twist Art Gallery, Arcade #73
When: Saturday through April 30; opening reception 6-9 p.m. Saturday during the First Saturday Art Crawl.
Hours: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursday-Friday; 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday.
Admission: Free
Contact: 1-888-535-5286 or www.twistartgallery.com
There's going to be one thing missing from performance artist Amelia Winger-Bearskin's upcoming installation at Twist Art Gallery, and that is live performance art.

Sort of.

Instead of staging a performance featuring herself, Winger-Bearskin's Dance Sequence will engage next week's First Saturday Art Crawl crowd in a display blurring the line between performer and audience.

"I want it to be a space that people feel like they are stepping inside of rather than it being a window that they're looking into," she says.

Dance Sequence is a series of one- to four-minute videos of scenes taken from film musicals, each accompanied by an original piece of music or sound created by Winger-Bearskin. The Twist show will include 10 of the 15 videos in the series.

The installation will continue in Twist's second room with 150 small paintings in gold frames. Ranging from palm-size to 5 inches square, these enamel on glass paintings were conceived as "slices" of the videos similar to single cells of an animated production. Winger-Bearskin also likens them to slide-mounted cells prepared for viewing under a microscope.

Playing with light

Winger-Bearskin originally planned a live performance component featuring either herself or dancers following her choreography and wearing costumes onto which the videos would be projected. She abandoned that approach after a trial run in a space similar to that of Twist proved to be a tight fit.

She decided instead to project the videos so that they will alternately be obscured and highlighted by audience members moving in the space.

"It'll be like a stretched video image that will encompass the room with the lenses, mirrors and crystals so it creates a scattering of the light," Winger-Bearskin explains. "I've created videos that I purposely did symmetrically so that no matter how they're stretched or reflected they always look the way I intended. Even if you were to flip it around backwards or turn it upside down it'll look the same."

In the case of Twist, they'll create a domed effect in the gallery's first room, resulting in a space filled with kaleidoscopic images of dance, from Bollywood-esque numbers to classical ballet.

Projecting art, experiences

Part of the idea for this installation of Dance Sequence is to re-create the feeling of light experienced at concerts or in dance clubs, along with the freedom of movement that comes with being in such spaces.

"Could we experience something like that not in a drunken hookup environment; could we experience something like that in an art experience where we're allowed to move our bodies in different ways but without it having the connotations of a club," she wondered.

On the other hand, she also wants to play off the club-like atmosphere that often develops during the art crawl.

"It feels like a Mardi Gras or something, and I'd like the performance to highlight that that is a performance," she says.

She's also hoping to re-create one of her earliest memories of art, that of the beading, silverwork and other art classes she took from the elders in her community of Native Americans.

"When you go to a powwow and people dance in a circle, you see this scattered prismatic light everywhere because all the light shines off their very sparkly costumes. I'm hoping to replicate that so it feels more like a powwow of images and sound than a discothèque," she says. "It's really beautiful to see those as light patterns rather than just on fabric."

dance Your 'Art Out Art Show & Dance Party at Mercy Lounge

2011-03-11T06:55:00.001-08:00

Dance Your 'Art Out Art Show & Dance Party at Mercy Lounge
When: Wed., March 16, 9 p.m.
Price: $5
Imagine if the most crowded gallery at the Art Crawl suddenly broke into dance. That’s the sort of hypothetical Dance Your ’Art Out is attempting to make a reality. It’s a party for the art crowd that features installations by Twist Gallery — who are bringing along work by artists Jaime Raybin and Ryan Hogan — at Mercy Lounge, while instrumental hip-hop from Get-Got and sets from DJs Orig and Potamus are bound to make even the most introverted art wallflower break a sweat. Think of it as a social experiment to discover what happens when art nerds rock out. It’s a great idea: There’s tons of overlap between the dance crowd and the art world, and those stragglers who’ve been waiting in the outer rings of the art/dance Venn Diagram have a great excuse to mingle. There’s a $5 cover, and all proceeds go to the Leukemia Lymphoma Society.
— Laura Hutson
Slideshow Mercy Lounge
BROADWAY/ THE GULCH/ MUSIC ROW/ WEST END 1 Cannery Row
615-251-3020
www.mercylounge.com

Twist Art Gallery April 2011

2011-03-07T07:46:00.001-08:00

Twist Art Gallery presents: April 2 -23 ,2011

Amelia Winger -Bearskin in space #73
Solo Show: Dance Sequence at Twist Gallery, Nashville, TN

to view Amelia's videos ahead of time go here:
http://www.studioamelia.com/dancesequence.html

Amelia will also have up installation work...

bio: Amelia Winger-Bearskin is currently an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at Vanderbilt University in the area of Video and Performance Art, in Nashville, Tn.

She was classically trained as an Opera Singer in Rochester NY at the Eastman conservatory of music, and then finished her Undergraduate degree at George Mason University in 2000. While at GMU she studied sculpture and time based art and received her BAIS in Performance Art. She went on to do her MFA in Transmedia (time based art) at University of Texas at Austin in 2008. She was in the group show Art in the Age of the Internet at the Chelsea Art Museum in 2007 and was a featured video and performance artist at Basel in Miami, Scope at the Lincoln Center and other art fairs consistently since 2007 as an artist at large for the perpetual art machine [PAM]. She has been focusing her performances primarily on Asian performance festivals this year as she finds that regionally Asia has created a unique method of support for Performance Art, she has performed at the 10th Annual OPEN ART Performance Art festival in Beijing, China, The Performance Art Network PANAsia '09 in Seoul, South Korea, the TAMA TUPADA 2010 Media and Performance festival in the Philippines and and she has been invited to perform as part of the GwangJu International Human Rights Performance Art Festival in Gwanju, South Korea in Fall 2010.

She is the Editor-in-Chief of Art Art Zine a new online publication of art and society for the South.

Twist etc...

Adam Henry and Emily Mae Smith present Neon Sigh: a new collaborative exhibition between the New York based artists on view for the first time in Nashville. Working through diverse media such as painting, sculpture, drawing, and collage, the artists manipulate found objects and imagery to reorder the perception of expectation and desire.

Smith is currently Lecturer in the Art Department at Vanderbilt University. She is a graduate of Columbia University’s Visual Arts MFA program and has exhibited nationally and abroad, most recently at Portugal Arte- the Biennial international exhibition held in Lisbon. Henry holds a MFA from the Yale School of Art and is Visiting Artist-in-Residence at both Vanderbilt University and Watkins College of Art and Design. His work was recently shown in New York’s Blackston Gallery and was also featured in Portugal Arte in Lisbon. Both artists have been prominently featured in publications such as the New York Times and The Village Voice.

The show runs from April 2- 23 at the combined spaces of COOP and Twist Etc Galleries, presented as Twistcooparcadia for the duration of the exhibition in Downtown Nashville’s Historic Arcade Building. # 75 & 77.

The Opening Reception will be held from 6-9 pm on Saturday April 2nd during the First Saturday Gallery Crawl.

Twist Art Gallery
73 Arcade
Nashville, TN 37219

phone: 888-535-5286

Jacqueline Kirby, Director: jacqueline@twistartgallery.com
Beth Gilmore, Curator: beth@twistartgallery.com

Gallery hours
Thursday and Friday 11 - 5
Saturday 11 - 3
Join us the first Saturday of every month
6 to 9 p.m. for the First Saturday Gallery Crawl

the March Art Crawl looks a whole lot like the February version — and that's a good thing

2011-03-04T11:00:00.001-08:00

Nashville Scene
March 03, 2011 ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT » ART

The March Art Crawl looks a whole lot like the February version — and that's a good thing
by JOE NOLAN

ARTWORK BY ELENA GRAJEK

First Saturday Art Crawl
6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, March 5, downtown

This month's First Saturday brings March to a crawl.

February offered an intriguing roster of exhibits, and many downtown galleries are sticking with last month's programming. This is not a bad thing. The March Art Crawl promises unexpected surprises along with space for reflection.

The show at Twist is a highlight. Who can't relate to Anxious Days' themes of weird weather, terror alerts, looming pandemics and economic instability? Curated by artist/educator Brady Haston, the group printmaking exhibit addresses contemporary dilemmas using techniques that originated in the ancient Far East. How does that Chinese curse go? Oh, yeah: May you live in interesting times. ...

At Twist Etc., Matt Christy's Trust Us God We Got This finds the artist painting breasts on brassiere advertisements, effectively undressing his models by covering their printed images. Christy's new work includes a number of pieces that make use of cardboard, silk, notebook paper, fabric and ribbon. The show expresses a playful cynicism, exposing the urge to death that lies at the heart of beauty. William Blake called this urge an "invisible worm." In Christy's work, the worms are on display.

With The Fulcrum Lost Its Feather, wife-and-husband artists Shu-Mei Chan and Daniel Evans create a site-specific installation at COOP Gallery, improvising an atmosphere with ceramics and other materials. Part love letter, part misunderstanding — we're not sure what to expect, but COOP's consistent commitment to contemporary art in a variety of media is the medicine that makes the Crawl a thought-provoking journey and not just another cheap date.

Mir Gallery's new show features "over 20 of the wildest pop surrealist, fantasy and lowbrow artists in this no-holds-barred, kick-in-your-teeth group art event." You had us at surrealist! Curated by Brandt Hardin and Miranda Herrick, Versus fills Mir with the comic and the cosmic, serving as a battlefield for unlikely adversaries. We're particularly looking forward to Billy Tackett's "Frankenstein vs. The Rubik's Cube." Hardin is also among the February Crawl artists held over at the Tennessee Art League. In addition, Studio A Group will feature new faces in TAL's Second Floor Gallery, including Annie Tagg, Arlene Bates, Peach McComb, Susan Walker and Wendy Latimer.

Estel Gallery opens a group show curated by Jerry Dale McFadden. Just So includes Mark Bradley-Shoup, Claire Brassil, Kelly Williams and Chris Scarborough, whose recent paintings may be the biggest surprise of Saturday's Crawl. While Scarborough still plays with pop and anime elements, the artist reduces his new figures to crystalline blasts of geometric abstraction. We expect the unexpected from Scarborough, but this show has us feeling excited about what's coming next.

The Arts Company is the only Fifth Avenue gallery opening a new show. While Norman Lerner's mid-20th century photographs remain, the gallery is also presenting a show that may struggle to live up to its helter-skelter title — The Floating World: A Tribute to The Beatles features tar paper paintings embedded with miniature sculptures. This Fab tribute is the work of Tres Taylor and Xander Booker. Each piece incorporates an iPod mini queued to a Beatles song. And you thought letting Ringo sing was zany.

Tinney Contemporary will continue its show of Brett De Palma's collages, and The Rymer Gallery will host an encore reception for Gordon Chandler's figurative metal sculptures. Some may find this repetition disappointing, but we find it refreshing, and this slow-down highlights an important point. While the Art Crawl has become an unqualified success, 30 days isn't necessarily enough time for a show to find its audience. Early converts may wish to see an exhibit several times, and many shows take their bows just as word-of-mouth really starts to build. The monthly novelty of the Art Crawl is one of its strengths — but when it comes to scheduling potentially exceptional shows, we ask curators to gaze into their crystal balls, take a deep breath, and step away from the calendar. Again, William Blake has some relevant words of advice: "Eternity is in love with the productions of time."

We'll be spending some of ours downtown on Saturday night.

Happy crawling!

Email arts@nashvillescene.com.

more art for your march

2011-03-03T11:01:00.001-08:00

Anxious days group show at Twist in March 2011

2011-02-16T18:16:00.000-08:00

...

Twist Gallery presents a group show curated by Brady Haston of prints
entitled “Anxious Days” at the Arcade for March’s Art Crawl.

“Anxious Days” showcases the work of Douglas Bosley, Luca Cruzat, Elena
Grajek, Rachel Jackson, Ben Moreau, Lauren Pakradooni, and Mark Rice. The
artist in this show, come from across the United States and are committed to
continuing the traditions of printmaking as we move forward into the twenty-
first century. The show reflects the anxiety present in a world where terror
alerts, possible pandemics, and full body scans are a growing part of our
daily experience. “Anxious Days”, captures this dread with subject matter that
illustrates an apocalyptic possibility through both representation and abstraction.
Ultimately, the viewer is included in this contemporary psychosis as they pause
to enjoy the printed images.

Twist will be showing a group show of prints: “Anxious Days”, that opens March
5 at 6:00 pm until 9:00 pm during the first Saturday art crawl. The show will be in
the Twist Gallery, space 73 Arcade.

Matt Christy at Twist etc. space #77 March 2011

2011-02-16T18:14:00.001-08:00

....

....

...

....

....

Matt Christy space #77

Trust Us God We Got This

Taking a series of brassiere advertisements torn from fashion magazines I poorly painted
breasts back over the bras. Throughout the show the image of a flying or falling man
reoccurs. There are a couple of stained raw canvas paintings one of a funeral procession
and the other with the ambiguous text "give up the sublime." It's pretty, sensual, and
materially playful (cardboard, silk, notebook paper, fabric, ribbon), but the content is one
of skepticism, uncertainty, and lets face it, down right death. Death in the midst of love
and wonder. Death in the midst of shiny consumerism.

nashville Arts and Business Council 2011 Bow Tie Awards Ceremony

2011-01-27T18:14:00.001-08:00

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

2011-01-16T20:28:00.001-08:00

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

jaime Raybin and Ryan Hogan at Twist Art Gallery February 2011

2011-01-13T09:57:00.001-08:00

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

2011-01-13T09:43:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2011-01-11T17:40:00.001-08:00

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

Nashville Scene January 06, 2011 ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT

2011-01-06T16:07:00.000-08:00

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.

Looking forward

2011-01-01T12:22:00.001-08:00

New show for a new year going up now at Twist etc

2010-12-30T10:06:00.001-08:00

Twist etc. Arcade #77 opening January 8th 2011

2010-12-29T12:51:00.000-08:00

Artist Statement:

The Process of Product | 12 x 12

The content of this exhibition is more about recording the creative process than focusing on the typical "product" we are used to seeing in a gallery exhibition. Although, each artwork stands on it’s own as a finished work. Every artist involved was asked to generate ideas and/or make studies at the size of 12 x 12 inches based on their own creative desires. The result is an interesting look at what themes are born out of their subconscious. All of the individual ideas shown together create a kind of collective creativity, some having visual and/or intellectual connections with one another. Each 12 x 12 work is a moment along the way of developing one’s ideas. Working at this small scale encouraged experimentation and personal investigation.

Also deviating from the typical art exhibition is the way the viewer encounters and examines the artwork. Unlike the standard gallery format where works are spaced out in plain view, the grid invites people closer to see each work individually.

Bio:

Approximately 90 young artists from WKU were asked to take part in this exhibition. The over all majority are Art majors from Studio Art, Graphic Design or Art Education. The artistic backgrounds of those involved are extremely diverse, raging from no former artistic training to an abundance of pervious art and design classes. Professors Brent Dedas and Yvonne Petkus created and coordinated the project.

december

2010-12-17T12:21:00.001-08:00

Sew:Repeat+ Merry Twistmas

..

..
Twist Art Gallery presents:

"Sew:Repeat" a series of quilts by Alexia Abegg in space #73

the show opens saturday december 4th and runs through January 29th.

we are closed the week of christmas and on new years day.

our gallery hours are thursdays and fridays
from 11-5 and saturdays from 11-3

The quilts in Sew:Repeat began as improvisational excercises. Each piece,
stemming from a singular and specific past memory or emotion, has evolved
forward to become a finished quilt. Every stitch marks not only the
originating idea but the passing of time taken to create the work. In this
sense, the pieces are tangible markers of a specific time and space, one
only the quilt and myself inhabited during the physical act of completing
each quilt. This space and the repetition of stitching connects me to the
generations of women before me, whom have left behind quilts that mark their
moment in time.
I invite you to stitch on the stretched quilt and participate in a centuries
old tradition, a quilting bee. The quilting frame used has been in my family
for over one hundred and twenty years. We will sit and stitch and bring that
history to the present.

Artists Statement and bio
Alexia Abegg, born in Folsom, California and raised in Nashville, Tennessee,
lives and works in Nashville. She has little formal training but grew up
learning to paint from her father, painter Jimmy Abegg, and to sew from her
mother, Michelle Abegg. She studied at O'More College of Design. Her first
love was watercolor and she continues to sketch and paint along with
quiltmaking. She teaches sewing classes in Nashville, bringing her love of
stitching to students. Her work has been shown with the Artist Collective
Nashville, D.I.G. and at Twist Gallery. This is her first solo show.
Alexia Abegg

Artist Statement
Through my work, I explore the tangible representation of passing time, the
act of quilting and the work left behind by generations of women before me.
As a woman, I am interested in gender roles and expectations in relation to
the medium of quilting; historically the work of women, work that is never
ending, with an intrinsic quality of necessity as the propulsion of
creation. I am reversing this tradition, with the creation of quilts not
with necessity at the core, but with self expression as the catalyst of
creation.
I began to work with fabric and stitches much like I had been doing with
watercolor and paper. Rather than following a pattern, like the quilters of
past generations in my family, I began to improvise and develop an
instinctual method. The lack of technical fluidity of the quilting medium
itself was a barrier. When painting, the brush was a physical extension of
my hand. I challenged myself to find the same fluidity with quilting and my
work has grown out of this improvisational method.
Each piece contains all of my energy and emotion expressed in the time used
to finish the work. Every stitch taken is a physical act, residing in a
specific space and time and is a concrete marking of that specific moment of
creation. These stitches in time will exist for as long as the work exists,
and because of it, they are an extension of my life and person. My work is
an extension of myself that has a history connecting me to thousands of
women that have taken needle to fabric. Their energy and moment in time is
marked by stitches in cloth, and surpasses their lifetime.
I am interested in the relationship between the existence of sewn goods and
both the person that made them and the consumer that uses them.
Not a person exists today that has no connection to sewing. Whether as the
consumer or creator, we are all participating in the existence of sewn
items. Most of these items are disposable, their life limited to the whim of
the consumer, their existence in space and time fleeting. Counter to this
process, I want to create pieces that carry the weight of time invested, and
because of that weight, are tied to the people around them in a way that is
lasting. I am creating visually identifiable markings within each quilt to
connect the viewer to the amount of time expended in the completion of the
work.
Through my quilts, I am attempting to create art that calls attention to
quilting as a medium not only as a decorative art, but as a form of fine
art.
I have included a photo of one of the quilts titled "tilt" 31"x 28" and my
photo.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Merry Twistmas in space 77
opening on December 4th and just for December....
Crafts for holiday shopping... you know you want them.. and we aim to please
artists include:
Laura Baisden
Elizabeth Streight
Mandy Stoller
Sarah Shearer

************

Twist Art Gallery
www.twistartgallery.com
73 Arcade
Nashville, TN 37219
(888) 535-5286
Gallery Hours
Thursday and Friday 11 - 5
Saturday 11 - 3
Join us the first Saturday of every month
6 to 9 p.m. for the First Saturday Gallery Crawl

Downtown Presbyterian church DIG SHOW 2011 call for works

2010-11-09T20:08:00.000-08:00

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 Piece Creation Period: November 15, 2010 to March 1, 2011.

· 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, “COMPASSION FATIGUE.”

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

november's First Saturday Gallery Crawl promises new exhibits galore

2010-11-04T07:42:00.001-07:00

ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT » ART November 04, 2010 Nashville Scene

November's First Saturday Gallery Crawl promises new exhibits galore
Crawl Space
by JOE NOLAN

Not only is there art at "The Crawl," there is an art to navigating it. This month, the downtown migration of art openings and exhibits features new faces, a local art celebrity and a whole handful of shows opening under one sometimes-overlooked roof. But armed with a game plan, you can negotiate the high points with the dangerous grace of an art-drunk drift racer.

You've come to the right place!

The big news at November's First Saturday Gallery Crawl is the debut of COOP, a new curatorial collective that will program half of the new Twist Etc. space at 75 Arcade in the coming year. The group's first effort is "Wraslin' With God," a performance piece by Reverend Ethan Acres of the Church of the Holy Fool. Acres' work evokes religious ecstasy from the absurd, borrowing tropes from that cuckoo corner of Christianity that includes drive-thru churches, JumboTron sermonizing and heavy metal for Jesus. Hey man, you had us at "ecstasy." Acres' performs promptly at 7:30 p.m.

COOP plans to present new and under-represented artists, and their non-commercial agenda is a nice fit with Twist's mostly art-for-art's-sake programming. Twist's new show of photographs by Shane Doling is a great example. Holiday Child is a series of narrative outdoor images that feature a hooded man dressed in a suit and tie. The hood casts Doling's subject as both a blinded captive of a kind and a masked killer of a sort. Doling has also worked with video, and the viewer can think of these images as stills from an unseen film about both the loss of innocence and the endurance of wonder. It's the kind of work that resonates with the interior landscape of an attuned viewer, even if it clashes with the couch.

On the other side of 5th Avenue, Tinney Contemporary opens a new show by New Orleans artist, Sidonie Villere. Villere's multimedia paintings are covered in unlikely textures, but it's her minimal, organic sculptures — often resembling stones or bones covered in gold leaf and steel spray paint — that we really want to get our hands on.

If you didn't see Whitney Wood Bailey's cave art-inspired, psychedelic paintings at Rymer Gallery in October, you have a second chance this month. Half of her show stays up while Rymer makes room for Sound Spectrum, the latest exhibit by Herb Williams. One of Nashville's most popular artists, Williams has had a busy year. His Plunderland exhibit in New York's Rare Gallery was a room-sized installation that signaled new heights for the artist's craft and concepts. Spectrum is a homecoming of sorts that finds Williams exploring the parallels between social networking and mixtape culture. This time around, his ubiquitous crayons are cast as compelling, colorful negative space.

The Arts Company opens with two new painting series that take their cues from a particular pop-cultural artifact. Denise Stewart-Sanabria paints hyperrealist canvases and, while we usually prefer more abstract work, the subject here makes her stuff look good enough to eat. Stewart-Sanabria's twin exhibits, Donuts Behaving Badly and Seven Deadly Sins, read like a food-porn double feature that aims to decide the Dunkin' Donuts vs. Krispy Kreme debate once and for all. The gallery will also feature Chris Beck's found-object work. The artist's Real Housewives of the 1950s is an exhibit of multimedia, metal wall-sculptures that nod to both folk art and mid-20th century Life Magazine photography.

Don't forget to stroll a few blocks up Broadway to the Tennessee Art League to check out their reception for no less than five new gallery shows. Our favorite is Kristina Lyle's exhibit of cut paper collage paintings opening in the TAL's Ethel Smith Gallery.

The fall will always be the best time of year for gallery crawling. The weather is perfect, the art is at its best and everyone tends to become a busier browser once Halloween has come and gone and we begin sliding down that slippery slope toward the hectic holiday season.

No pressure.

Happy crawling!

Email art@nashvillescene.com.

we love robots

2010-10-28T13:11:00.000-07:00

From David and Sarah Dark's awesome blog

http://davidsarahdark.blogspot.com/2010/10/robot-lifeguard-electrocuted-everyone.html

The Robot LifeGuard Electrocuted Everyone.

This is my first foray into composing science fiction. Wait, that's not entirely true. In high school, I took the legend of Frosty the Snowman down a distinctly sci-fi path which I might choose to share more broadly some day soon. In the glorious meantime, I give you my shortest story: The Robot lifeguard electrocuted everyone. Feel free to commit it to memory and share it with others. You can place it alongside Hemingway's attempt at shortness which I reprint here without permission: "For sale: baby shoes. Never worn." Mine, let the record show, is shorter (word-wise), and will also serve as the title of an upcoming work of fiction.
Friend, doppelgänger, and lead singer of Bulb, Todd Greene, was kind enough to give me the above illustration. Enjoy.
That is all.
UPDATE: The above illustration is available as a print (signed by the illustrator and the author), a t-shirt, AND (should the perceived need arise) a refrigerator magnet. For details, contact david dot dark at vanderbilt dot edu

today

2010-10-28T13:02:00.000-07:00

getting ready for Halloween and the next gallery crawl , see you all there :)

COOP

2010-10-19T17:30:00.001-07:00

COOP is an artist collective committed to expanding Nashville’s dialogue with contemporary art by presenting challenging artists/artworks which are new or under-represented in the community. COOP is committed to exhibiting art of diverse media and content, with a goal to provide an alternative venue for artists free from the constraints of the retail market. COOP strives to initiate a discourse between Nashville and art scenes across the country by inviting artists to show, develop projects and interact with the Nashville community.

november 2010 check it out....

2010-10-17T14:01:00.000-07:00

Twist Art Gallery presents:

Shane Doling "HOLIDAY CHILD" in space #73

and

Gieves Anderson " India - in the absence" in Space #77

opening November 6th from 6-9pm

as part of the first saturday art crawl

shows run through November 6-27th 2010

Twist Art Gallery welcomes The Coop collective to it space # 75 for one year.

The Coop collective will be presenting a performance by Reverend Ethan Acres titled “Wrastlin With God” November 6th during the first Saturday art crawl. The performance will take place at 7:30 pm, and will serve as the inaugural exhibition in their new gallery space at 75 Arcade.

The Coop collective is a group of artists running a new space for art within the twist etc. space #75 there will be approximately 12 shows over the next year put on and curated by the COOP collective in space 75.

COOP is an artist collective committed to expanding Nashville’s dialogue with contemporary art by presenting challenging artists/artworks which are new or under-represented in the community. COOP is committed to exhibiting art of diverse media and content, with a goal to provide an alternative venue for artists free from the constraints of the retail market. COOP strives to initiate a discourse between Nashville and art scenes across the country by inviting artists to show, develop projects and interact with the Nashville community.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=100765506652677&ref=ts

some of the artists involved are:
Ruth Zelanski
Mandy Rogers Horton
Brady Haston (Watkins)
Jennifer Leach
Kristi Hargrove
Ron Lambert (Watkins)
Rocky Horton (Lipscomb) (creator)

___________________________________________________________
Twist Art Gallery
www.twistartgallery.com
73 Arcade
Nashville, TN 37219
(888) 535-5286

Gallery Hours
Thursday and Friday 11 - 5
Saturday 11 - 3
Join us the first Saturday of every month
6 to 9 p.m. for the First Saturday Gallery Crawl

you know you want one

2010-10-16T12:03:00.001-07:00

Twist Art Gallery presents: Gieves Anderson November 2010 in space #77

2010-10-11T08:07:00.000-07:00

Twist Art Gallery presents:

Gieves Anderson

India - In the Absence

November 6-27th in space #77

opening November 6th from 6-9pm

as part of the first saturday art crawl

BEST GALLERY RESILIENCY: TWIST GALLERY

2010-10-07T11:20:00.000-07:00

ashville Scene
October 07, 2010 NEWS » COVER STORY

Arts & Entertainment 2010: Writer's Picks
Best of Nashville 2010

BEST GALLERY RESILIENCY: TWIST GALLERY

We spill a lot of ink on Twist Gallery, but it's hard not to. This Art Crawl pioneer consistently finds a way to keep its doors open while hosting performance pieces and installation exhibits that most commercial concerns would never consider. Now that gallery co-founder Caroline Carlisle has left for mom-hood and other projects, this would have been the perfect time for curator Beth Gilmore to take a bow as well. Instead, she decided to add two more galleries to the mothership. Twist just celebrated its fourth birthday — here's to many more. JOE NOLAN

Super Twist October 2nd 2010

2010-10-03T17:27:00.001-07:00

Twist Art Gallery presents: Shane Doling

2010-10-01T21:16:00.000-07:00

Twist Art Gallery presents:

Shane Doling

HOLIDAY CHILD

November 6-27th in space #73

opening November 6th from 6-9pm

as part of the first saturday art crawl

artist statement

As a child sitting in a driveway , looking in the sky in the distance above some city lights, there is a connection.
You have never visited this place, but you have felt it on occasion. It’s also that place that you feel more during Christmas, but you feel it less as you get older. The adult appears confused, but still recalls this place.
He sees a plane that doesn’t seem to move, but just sits there flashing and for a moment, he doesn’t feel alone. He remembers his home that was just a feeling before.
He is aimless to a place he was before he could remember.
Tea and sand.

nashville scene

2010-09-30T09:09:00.001-07:00

Nashville Scene
September 30, 2010 ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT » ART

A roundup of First Saturday Art Crawl highlights
Crawl Space
by JOE NOLAN
click to enlarge

Extraordinary Geometries at The Rymer Gallery
It's already time for October's First Saturday Gallery Crawl, which the dipping mercury will soon lead us to rename the First Saturday Brisk Walk, to be followed by the Downtown Art Sprint. As we head into the burnt-orange grip of autumn, the October Crawl seems poised to make a particularly strong showing.

Those old enough to remember the TV show Family Affair may recall an episode when Buffy, a stubborn elementary schooler, tried to give up her beloved doll, Mrs. Beasley, cold-turkey. It was a bit like Snoopy Come Home meets Panic in Needle Park.

In Goodbye, Mrs. Beasley, on display at Tinney Contemporary, Artist Carol Es relates Buffy's loss to her own difficult childhood. Es chronicles the traumas of her childhood — growing up in a dysfunctional family amid the sweatshops of Los Angeles — through a number of multimedia canvases, painted panels and works-on-paper. Es' work here is strongest when it replaces woe with whimsy and wonder.

We've always been zealots for the more-is-more philosophy, so it's heartening to see that Twist Gallery is once again operating two spaces. This month's lineup includes a guest curator, former TAG gallery owner Jerry Dale McFadden, who now lives in Chattanooga, where he's the director of the 4 Bridges Art Festival. For his turn at Twist, he's brought a couple of fellow 'Noogans with him.

Mark Bradley-Shoup and Ron Buffington are both instructors at UT-Chattanooga. Bradley-Shoup's spare, flat paintings are inspired by graphic design, and his strongest pieces capture a harsh light that suggests what Edward Hopper might have accomplished in the graphic-novel medium. Buffington wants to demystify painting, favoring "the tainted over the pure, the flawed over the perfect, the personal over the universal and the pathetic over the heroic." But while Buffington is busy killing the Buddha, his striking work seems more than a little enlightened. Printmaker Joseph Lupo will be showing in Twist's Arcade 73 space.

After an exciting exhibit of prints and drawings last month, The Arts Company will be opening a painting show on Saturday. Tony Breuer's canvases present figurative scenes obscured and abstracted by curtains of surreal hues. Many works feature wild mustangs galloping through technicolor waves of light, while fighter jets and at least one largemouth bass appear in others.

Extraordinary Geometries opens at Rymer Gallery. Whitney Wood Bailey's large, psychedelic abstract works on paper explore the point where the natural world and our own imaginations intersect. Bailey uses "tick" markings like those found in early cave paintings to create intricate textures from which colorful abstractions explode, resulting in a transcendent sensory experience.

Estel Gallery will be opening a new show by an old favorite. An Atmosphere for Living: New Narrative Paintings by Harry Underwood finds the titular artist displaying his latest canvases back on home turf, following recent exhibits in Paris (yes, the one in France) and London. Though he's been a formidable presence on the local scene for years, Underwood deserves a most-improved-painter award — his recent work demonstrates a restless progress that finds him paring down his pop-culture postcard paintings to poetic scenes that evoke pathos as much as pith.

We are writing this roundup of Saturday's events by the light of a harvest moon on the autumnal equinox. Welcome to fall!

Email arts@nashvillescene.com.

Kristina Arnold's drawings that can fit in your pocket

2010-09-30T08:17:00.000-07:00

soundcrawl 2.0

2010-09-29T08:37:00.001-07:00

Did the inaugural event last year leave you wanting more? Have you heard about it, and wondered it is? Check out the "ABOUT" page from the official SoundCrawl website.
I'm looking forward to being serenaded this Saturday evening with avant garde goodness brought about by talented friend and artist, Aaron Hoke Doenges. You won't want to miss this!

ABOUT: SoundCrawl
Picture a Saturday night in Nashville when all the galleries are open. Beautiful people, drinks in hand, drift from one gallery to another to experience the best the city has to offer in visual art.
Now imagine that at various points along the way something new has been added, an opportunity to experience a new kind of art, art that you HEAR....sound art.
So in between the experience of the visual arts, artists and guests alike gather to listen to....a rhythmic beat of water drops....or a dizzying immersion of the sound of coins moving through space...synthetic audio wrapping around, tickling the ear drums of the city.
After a successful inaugural event last year, SoundCrawl:Nashville is returning this fall for a second sonic immersion of Music City. During the downtown ArtCrawl on October 2nd, from 6-9pm, Nashville will once again dive into the world of experimental audio with new sound art compositions from around the world. Compositions that immerse. Compositions that resonate. Compositions that explore.
about the ArtCrawl: (from www.artatthearcade.com):Every first Saturday of the month, the historic Arcade in downtown Nashville comes to life with over one thousand visitors. Multiple galleries open their doors to avid art lovers as well as anyone else that is just curious to see what the Gallery Crawl is all about. Art at the Arcade is a collective organization that hosts an assortment of contemporary artists from throughout the world to Nashville.
what is SoundArt: Between 1930 and 1965, composer Edgard Varèse gave a series of lectures that have since been collected and titled “The Liberation of Sound.” In these lectures, Varese was trying to understand – and explain – his own approach to sonic expression. He, along with Pierre Schaeffer and others, began to explore the organization of sonic materials – sounds from the ambient world, evolving electronic technology, and the traditional instruments used for centuries– in any and every combination into cohesive works of audio art on phonograph (and then tape, and now computer).
The only definition that seemed to fit his music was simply: “organized sound.”
This definition has been given several labels through the years: musique concrète (in the French, Varèse and Schaeffer’s native tongue), electroacoustic music, sound collage, sound music, sound art, etc., etc. Some of these labels focus on very specific types of audio used. Some do not. Each one, however, is all encompassing of sound. Any sound. That has been organized in some way.
It’s a pretty broad definition.
The cultural and mechanical forces that influenced Varèse and Schaeffer have only become more powerful in the intervening years. With the advent of the computer and audio software, the production possibilities of sound organization – something that this town knows a bit about - seem endless. This power has brought with it technological ubiquity – computers are everywhere – and with ubiquity has come the commonplace, and with the commonplace comes the ability to focus not only on the medium (the technology used) but also on the expression (the art of the sounds used). And has changed the art of sound as we know it.
So what is sound art?
Sound \'saund\: the sensation perceived by the sense of hearing
Art \'ärt\: the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects
Sound Art \'saund ' ärt\: The conscious use of skill and creative imagination in producing aesthetic sensations perceived by the sense of hearing.
Sound. Collage. Expression. Audio. Organization. Consciousness. Creativity. Music. Art.

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2010-09-18T12:11:00.000-07:00

Mark Bradley-Shoup & Ron Buffington, Oct. 2 – 30, Twist etc.

2010-09-18T12:10:00.000-07:00

Mark Bradley-Shoup & Ron Buffington, Oct. 2 – 30, Twist Art Gallery

Arcade spaces #75 & 77

It’s been a little over two years since former TAG gallery owner and
independent curator Jerry Dale McFadden has had anything to do with
the Nashville art scene. Despite honorable attempts at bringing
national and international contemporary artists to a Nashville
audience, McFadden found himself unable to weather the economic
downturn and ended up closing his commercial gallery after 8 years.
He has spent the past two years working in the arts non-profit world
as one of several directors at the Association for Visual Arts, a
unique organization that has helped transition the small but mighty
town of Chattanooga into an arts destination.

Jerry Dale returns to the scene of the crime by guest curating a small
exhibit for October’s schedule at Twist Art Gallery in downtown
Nashville’s historic Arcade. With Fall primarily seen as the start of
the art season, it seemed a good time to introduce Nashville to some
of the art rumblings going on down south in his new hometown of
Chattanooga.

Opening October 2nd along with the monthly “Downtown Art Crawl” which
he helped to establish several years ago, McFadden brings together the
artwork of two young contemporary painters, Mark Bradley-Shoup and Ron
Buffington. Both artists are instructors at the University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga and have shown extensively around the
country.

McFadden has this to say of the work...

“Though both artists work in different styles of painting, I wanted to
see Mark and Ron’s work exhibited together in hopes that the viewer
might notice an unplanned dialogue between these two friends.
Bradley-Shoup’s semi-photorealistic paintings are reduced to flat and
muted colors that highlight the angular edges of everyday life, while
Buffington’s own angles and color shapes of abstraction hint at
similar sources. There’s a friendly painter camaraderie going on,
though neither artist work together, at least not in that capacity.
Fans of each other’s work, one can see how these two artists settle in
easily when the subject of theory and inspiration come up.

This will be a beautiful show and I look forward to seeing old friends
and familiar faces at the reception!”

Both Chattanooga artists will be in attendance for this small and
intimate showing at Twist. The show remains on exhibit the month of
October, through the 30th.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Twist Art Gallery
www.twistartgallery.com
73 Arcade
Nashville, TN 37219
(888) 535-5286

Gallery Hours
Thursday and Friday 11 - 5
Saturday 11 - 3
Join us the first Saturday of every month
6 to 9 p.m. for the First Saturday Gallery Crawl

Joseph Lupo at Twist Art Gallery #73 october 2010

2010-09-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

Twist Art Gallery presents: Joseph Lupo for October 2010 in space 73.

Joseph Lupo was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1977. From there he grew
up in Schaumburg, a Northwest Suburb of Chicago.

In 1999 Joseph received his BFA from Bradley University, a small
university located in Peoria, Illinois. His undergraduate training
was mainly in Intalgio and Relief. While at Bradley, Joseph was
taught by accomplished printmaker Oscar Gillespie. Bradley offered
professional printing experience through the Cradle Oak Press.
Through the press, Joseph was able to work on prints by artists
Warrington Colescott, Richard Hull, and Katsunori Haminishi.

After graduating from Bradley University, Joseph entered graduate
studies at The University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. At Georgia,
Joseph was taught by printmakers Carmon Colangelo, Melissa Harshman,
Joe Sanders, Rick Johnson, and Tom Hammond. UGA also gave Joseph the
opportunity to widen his range of techniques, and learned lithography,
silkscreen, and photo transfer techniques. He was also able to be an
assistant printer for artists Ralph Steadman and Sue Coe. During this
time, his work was shown not only in Athens but also at Saltworks
Gallery, Youngblood Gallery, and The Contemporary Art Center in
Atlanta.

Joseph earned his MFA in 2002, then moved to back to Chicago. While
in Chicago Joseph taught classes at Robert Morris College and Moraine
Valley Community College. He also showed work at Gallery 312, Anchor
Graphics, and The Contemporary Art Workshop in Chicago.

Joseph Lupo joined the faculty at West Virginia University in 2004.
His work in the classroom focuses on intaglio, lithography, relief,
silkscreen, and digital printmaking for both graduate and
undergraduate students. Since joining the faculty, he has been the
Printmaking Department Coordinator and the Visiting Artist
Coordinator. He has been working with graduate students and
Pittsburgh based press Artist Image Resource to offer internships to
WVU students.

Joseph’s work has been a part of over 50 different juried and curated
shows in Illinois, Texas, Connecticut, Maryland, Oregon, Washington,
Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee,
Michigan, Arkansas, Louisiana, New York, Colorado, Ohio, and Arizona.
With solo/two-person shows in Illinois, Indiana, West Virginia,
Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

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2010-09-15T07:59:00.001-07:00

Matthew Carver

2010-09-05T13:01:00.000-07:00

Kristina Arnold at the Twist Art Gallery September 4th 2010

2010-09-03T21:45:00.000-07:00

printmaking fun

2010-09-02T20:24:00.001-07:00

Links to Twist Art Gallery , especially while we are working on the website

2010-08-30T13:48:00.000-07:00

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nashville-TN/Twist-Art-Gallery/16990362830

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nashville-TN/Twist-Art-Gallery/16990362830?ref=ts

http://twitter.com/twistart

http://twistartgallery.blogspot.com/

http://www.myspace.com/twistartgallery

http://www.myspace.com/goose.girl

http://www.facebook.com/goose.girl9

http://talesfromthelittlepinkhouse.blogspot.com/

nashville scene review...Mitch O'Connell at Twist Art Gallery

2010-08-19T13:49:00.000-07:00

Nashville Scene
August 19, 2010 ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT » ART

Mitch O’Connell’s hilariously kitschy, tongue-in-cheek art sticks a pitchfork in the concepts of good, evil and everything in between

The Devil Made Him Do It
by LAURA HUTSON

Practice Makes Perfect
Through Aug. 28 at Twist Art Gallery

At Twist Art Gallery's First Saturday Art Crawl reception on Aug. 7, four tattoo artists, outfitted in Mexican luchador masks, tattooed a woman in the middle of the gallery space. Artist Mitch O'Connell, armed with a blue Sharpie, drew ships and anchors onto the forearms of several art-savvy Nashvillians. It's this alliance between fine art and lowbrow culture that makes O'Connell a fitting choice for Twist's fourth anniversary show.

Twist is known for being inclusive, working from within the Nashville art community to build a haven for creativity. Artists like working with Twist owner Beth Gilmore because she doesn't put limits on them, and she respects the sometimes unusual process it takes to create a good show. "We want to go down that rabbit hole," she says.

The First Saturday Art Crawl has raised awareness of the caliber and scope of contemporary art here in Nashville, and its success is due in large part to Gilmore's emphasis on accessibility. Four years after downtown gallery owners began hosting simultaneous openings on the first Saturday of every month, Twist is the only Arcade gallery from the original roster still in operation. O'Connell's lighthearted and sardonic exhibit Practice Makes Perfect, on view through Aug. 28, is perfectly suited for the gallery's playfully anticlimactic celebration.

O'Connell creates art that makes fun of itself, wavering somewhere between sentiment and cynicism. His four "light" paintings appropriate images that are at once over-the-top and banal. Semitransparent photographs of idyllic waterfalls and streams are backed by motorized light boxes that, with the flip of a switch, provide faux flowing water and chirping bird sounds. O'Connell took the kitsch appeal that already existed in these flea market finds and magnified it by painting pink poodles on fire, rotary telephones and excessively cute dolls throwing dice down the falls.

This amalgamation of contradictory images roots O'Connell's work firmly in the tradition of pop surrealism and lowbrow art. His slick 1950s aesthetic is a perfect backdrop for surrealist imagery, partly because it was during this time that psychoanalysis, with its emphasis on dreams and the subconscious, was coming into vogue, but also due to the deeply repressed nature of mainstream American culture during the Baby Boom. Everything O'Connell borrows from this time period, from little girls praying at their beds to prepackaged salami, looks sickly sweet in a way that just doesn't exist in contemporary culture. Today the public is much more savvy — our advertisements are always winking back at us, but '50s consumer culture was never in on the joke.

These paintings are all about being Cool with a capital C. They're more attitude than commentary, more style than depth. Far from being a shortcoming, this Cool is the direct descendant of Dadaist social commentary and Warholian detachment. O'Connell is fully aware of this connection, and in "The Melting Man" even pays homage to one of the first pop artists, Richard Hamilton, with a nod to his Tootsie Pop-holding body builder.

But just try to find the art-history reference/reverence in "Jesus Sez, Satan Sez," a pair of toilet seats that O'Connell has painted into a joke about the eternal struggle between good and evil. On one, Jesus, with a raised stigmata-marked hand, asks that the user "leave the seat down." On the other, Satan winks and impishly implores the user to "leave the seat up." This gag is exemplary of the benign immorality that permeates O'Connell's work — he uses sinister imagery sarcastically, not to spook, but to subvert. All the evil is in quotation marks: In "Comb It Pretty," the devil is a man with a clueless expression wearing makeup; in "The Real Me," he's a kid from a Sears and Roebuck catalog modeling a Halloween costume. With "Satan Sez," O'Connell pokes fun at the idea of evil — leaving the toilet seat up will more likely result in a pissed-off wife than hellfire and damnation. You can almost hear the evil cackle coming from underneath the seat.

Filled with skulls, demons and scary clowns, O'Connell's art is undeniably funny. But his own ironic distancing from his subject matter is the real punch line. His paintings spill over with naked women — from flirty pinups to R. Crumb-like hyper-sexualized beasts — yet he's a well-mannered gentleman and proud father, not a lecherous playboy. Although he is celebrated among tattoo artists and aficionados, he remains ink-free. Though he's the center of attention at a crowded art gallery made up like a tattoo parlor, and though dozens of people proudly display their hand-drawn Mitch O'Connell tattoos on trips to adjoining galleries, O'Connell remains an underdog, influential but untouched, and above all, Cool.

Email arts@nashvillescene.com.

vote for the Twist Art Gallery of Best gallery in the Nashville Scene

2010-08-12T12:53:00.001-07:00

http://ww2.nashvillescene.com/promotions/bestof/2 it's that time of year again... vote for Twist for Best Gallery.

DPC KIDS ART SHOW 2010 ...its just down the street from the Arcade

2010-08-10T21:39:00.000-07:00

Press Release:
Downtown Presbyterian Children’s Summer Arts Program

If popular caricature is at all correct and church is the place where young people are
taken to learn to hate and fear their own bodies, Downtown Presbyterian Church is going
against the grain. Led by children’s education director, Sarah Dark and with the help of
area artists J. Todd Greene, Richard Feaster, David Carlson, Mandy Rogers-Horton, and
DPC’s own Beth Gilmore, Jake Larson, and Aaron Doenges, the children of the church
are working to transform the downstairs chapel into an installation of the human body.
The show’s title? Consuming Catastrophe: The Comedy of the Heart; A Play in Ate
Parts.
Guided by the conviction that a child’s relationship with God is healthily
underway long before adults start arming them with readymade answers, Dark
customarily begins their Sunday morning classes together with a story, followed by
questions. Take Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed, for instance. “The smallest of all
seeds becomes a tree so great that many birds can make their home in it,” Dark explains.”
I asked the children, ‘How is the kingdom of heaven like a mustard seed?’” What did they
come up with?
It is growing.
It is a home for us.
It is something small that is becoming great.
“I wondered aloud how the seed knew what to grow into.”
It is very powerful.
It is what it was made for.
“I asked where the children find this kind of power.”
In the trees around us.
In the seasons changing.
In our bodies.
It was the phrase, “In our bodies” that connected Todd Greene’s vision of a
human body machine with this year’s Summer Art’s Program director Dave Carlson’s
hope for a kinetic installation. Dark explains: “After spending a few weeks on what
art might be for and how specific artists create art that is interactive and moving, it
was time to put all of our ideas together.” Reporting back to the children, she had an
announcement: “Kids, we’re going to turn the chapel into a human body that you can
walk through. Oh, and you are the mustard seeds.”
It’s Dark’s hope that the children’s creation will serve as a visual aid, for young
and old alike, in better discerning God’s redeeming work not as something that happens
in spite of our bodies but within and among them and for better imagining the breadth
and outlandish scope of God’s love. She envisions the installation as “an interactive
space that will take us deeper into the poetry of this weirdly elusive but ever-expanding
kingdom...Participants will cross the threshold of the mouth and enter a bioactive
landscape, journeying through the esophagus of darkness, beneath the soul of the
stomach, into the forest of intestines, accompanied by the music of the heart, exiting
into the quiet of a blossoming tree so inclusive that life lives forever in it.” Ideally, this
culminating event of DPC’s summer arts program will somehow, in Dark’s phrase, “put
skin and bones on the mystery of the kingdom of God.”
The show opens on September 4th in DPC’s chapel at 6:00. Food and drink will be
available as a part of the Artluck’s 1st Saturday Art Crawl.

more from Mitch O'Connell's second opening at Twist Art Gallery

2010-08-09T21:54:00.001-07:00

Twist etc. August opening and Bulb performs at Todd Greene's art show

2010-08-09T21:50:00.000-07:00

even more August opening pictures ...this time by Tony Doling and Tom Wills

2010-08-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

Twist Art Gallery August 2010

2010-08-09T13:34:00.001-07:00

future twists

2010-08-04T19:13:00.000-07:00

future twists
Twist Art Gallery space #73 so far ......

2010
September: Kristina Arnold
October: Joseph Lupo
November: Shane Doling
December/January: Alexia Abegg

2011
February: Jaime Raybin and Ryan Hogan
April: Amelia Winger-Bearskin
May: Lauren Kussro

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October at Twist etc. spaces #75 and #77 2010

http://www.markbradleyshoup.com/

http://ronbuffington.com/home.html

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First Saturday Art Crawl Nashville Tennessee
First Saturday Art Crawl
Sat, Aug 7. Various locations. 6 - 9 pm. Free. Art galleries throughout downtown host receptions and art openings every month. Most galleries serve free wine and other refreshments. Three free shuttles provide transportation among the galleries from 6 pm to 10 pm. See the shuttle map and gallery listing here. Listings below include additional information about some of the openings.

Art Crawl Dates in 2010:
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Saturday, January 8,

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Kristina Arnold at Twist Art Gallery
#73
September 2010

Kristina Arnold has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across the United States, has been the recipient of numerous fellowships and has held artist residencies in both the US and abroad. Currently on the art faculty at Western Kentucky University, she received her M.F.A. in 2003 from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and her BA in Public Health from Brown University. Before returning to art school at UT, Arnold worked for five years at Brown and Vanderbilt Universities conducting epidemiological research. She is interested in the relationships between illness, biomedicine and health, and the ways in which we manufacture, manipulate and control both our bodies and our environments.

Artist Statement

My story is familiar, my worries are shared. I look across the landscape of our south-eastern-mid-western border region and I see the shift that has been occurring. My husband is the first in five generations to leave the family farm. The farm remains but can no longer sustain a family, their income swallowed by the giant agribusiness industry. Next door, the high-dollar developments encroach upon his family’s land, so you, too, can buy a million dollar weekend cabin in the country.

I worry about the insustainability of the strange middle lands known as suburban America where we now live, where the strip mall and the lawn – that American invention and obsession – are king. We continue to corral, manipulate, pave over and remove our landscape. We fence it in or out.

We have an obsession with the perfect and the plastic. Our food, our environment and our bodies are chemically and genetically modified. The re-useable has been replaced by the throw-away. The handmade has been replaced by the mass-produced, and now that mass production is moving to China. We worry not as we don our pharmaceutical smiles.

How long might it be before the natural, the individual, the hand-made, the small, the imperfect, become a memory, a museum artifact? The new nature is attractive – but slick, difficult to digest and ultimately unsatisfying.

But I still hold out hope. I have always been a Pollyanna. There can be beauty in the ugly, and the sublime in the inconsequential.
POSTED BY LITTLEPINKHOUSE AT 6:53 PM

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Matthew Carver at Twist etc. September 2010
#75 and #77

Vikings

This series of works was born out of illuminations on 13th c. profane works from Iceland, and the style is a more-or-less intuitive one only accidentally resembling a mix of techniques from french “tôle” and Mexican “maraca” traditions. The figuration is flat, the colors bold, and the handling quick. I wanted to experiment with the strength of the symbol and its power to talk about ultimate things. By turns the bright, almost absurd (are you team red or team blue?) depictions of violence and reprobation amuse and repulse, and remind us of the most widely felt ultimate, how “in the midst of earthly life, snares of death surround us.” In the binary duel to which every facet of the world is so readily reduced, no one is spared either guilt or gutting. The detached / placid faces of the actors serve a twofold purpose, both implicating our own removal from the horror of this present mortality and directing us to the contemplation of escape from it. In the last moment, consoled and disconsolate alike look away.

this saturday!!!

2010-08-04T17:49:00.000-07:00

Twist Art Gallery celebrates four years

2010-08-02T14:59:00.001-07:00

— MICHELLE JONES, FOR THE TENNESSEAN

Twist Art Gallery celebrates four years and two new spaces
AUGUST 1, 2010

Twist Art Gallery is throwing itself an anniversary party during the First Saturday Art Crawl this week. To celebrate four years in existence, owners Beth Gilmore and Caroline Carlisle will offer cake and beverages — and, of course, art — to gallery visitors.

They will also show off two new spaces as they each expand their presence in the Arcade.

"I guess it's become a tradition that whenever we open a new space, we show Todd's work," Gilmore says. Accordingly, Can't Recall the Future Like I Used To an exhibition of paintings by J. Todd Greene, will inaugurate the new spaces.

Meanwhile, Mitch O'Connell's Practice Makes Perfect continues in Twist's flagship location.

Chicago-based O'Connell's mixed-media on wood pieces combine images from advertisements for familiar products, tattoo and comic art, men's magazines (with a retro 1950s & 1960s vibe) and a twisted reference to religious iconography. O'Connell's imagery and tone is reminiscent of R. Crumb, with a bit of commentary on consumer culture thrown in.

Twist Art Gallery's two shows remain on view through Aug. 28; Mitch O'Connell's tattoo-inspired art in Arcade #73 and J. Todd Greene's paintings in the new Arcade #75 and #77. The venues' hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday and 6 to 9 p.m. during the First Saturday Art Crawl. Admission is free. Information is available at 1-888-535-5286 or www.twistartgallery.com

Nfocus :TASTEMAKERS Making Nashville A Better Place To Live

2010-08-02T14:56:00.001-07:00

photo by Eric England
Nfocus

TASTEMAKERS
Making Nashville A Better Place To Live
Published On: July 27, 2010

The Gems

There's something about jewelry. Not only does it attract women, but also women in the jewelry business apparently must all be attractive. That was the first thought when three of Nashville's most well-known jewelry goddesses strolled into the studio for their Nfocus photo shoot and, much to our surprise, their first-ever encounter with one another.

That's right: Margaret Ellis, Judith Bright and Cindi Earl had never met one another. Each one looked classically unique and beautiful, much like the jewels they create and sell. The link between the three: they all wore smashing rocks. Seriously.

Each lady traveled different paths to their sparkly destinies. In 1976, Margaret took two jewelry-making classes and was hooked. "I started doing it professionally in 1983 when I quit my day job, made my first set of samples and went straight to New York to sell it," she says. "I still remember how terrified I was when I got on that plane—not of flying, but of stepping into the great unknown."

The world, including viewers of the movies Sex and the City and The Devil Wears Prada, has reaped the benefits from Margaret's big leap. Her jewelry reflects personal style rather than fashion, she says, which in part is what makes her work timeless. "The craft aspect of my work is very important to me, and I like for the metal to be an important element in every piece."

You can find Margaret at her inviting Cummins Station studio, which is "open by appointment," but in fact, Margaret says you can drop by anytime.

Cindi Earl opened shop selling fabulous gems to Nashville in 1991 when Jamie Stream, "graciously gave me the opportunity...as she has for many." Cindi's decision to jump into jewels came after a traumatic year. "My mother, father and brother all left this life within eight months of each other," she says. "It was one of those times life says, ‘Attention shoppers,'" she adds.

Cindi had worked at Sperry's for years but knew it was time for change. "One day I sat down to find the future and asked myself what do I have left that I love." Jewelry was the answer. She studied at the Gemological Institute and began forging relationships with jewelers around the world. Cindi and her "friends/vendors" design things together. "The Mazza Company, Alex Sepkus, Makur, Mattioli, Stephanie Albertson, to name a few, can be found all over the world, but you will find collections of their works that are very different here in Nashville," she says.

Today, Cindi's bustling shop on Harding Pike thrives on humor. Swing by for a giggle and some gems!

Judith Bright's classic, clean unique personal translates directly to the pieces she creates. After a love affair with jewelry, Judith started making her own six years ago in L.A. before moving to study the craft in Italy. She and her family packed their bags for Nashville, where she's been crafting her lovely pieces out of her home studio.

Next step: Judith is opening a flagship store at The Mall at Green Hills in November. And the world is watching. Judith's work can be seen in movies and videos including the latest Jennifer Lopez movie, The Back Up Plan.

We love these Nashville treasures. EN

The Culinarian

He's handsome and charming. He's got a smile that can light up a room. He's got killer style. And damn, can he cook! We're talking about the one and only Arnold Myint, Nashville's very own celebrity chef. There's a chance you may have seen him as a contestant on Top Chef DC recently, but we can guarantee that you've enjoyed a meal at one of his fabulous restaurants here in town.

Arnold's passion for global cuisine is apparent the second you step inside one of his three restaurants. ChaChah, PM and Suzy Wong's House of Yum are the products of Arnold's creative efforts, all of which are greatly inspired by his travels to exotic places. "I traveled a lot growing up and in my early twenties, always eager to see what the world had to offer. Every time I returned to Nashville, I searched for special places that reminded me of my experiences on the road; small boutique art-filled rooms with magical food and full of personality." His goal of re-creating these memories certainly has been achieved. Bold flavors add a kick to classic comfort food with an Asian twist. While each restaurant has its own distinctive vibe, Arnold has paid serious attention to detail. Expect polished décor, an ingenious cocktail menu and to-die-for cuisine at all three of his enterprises.

Besides running his hot-spot eateries, Arnold is involved with the Nashville Originals, an initiative to support independent and locally owned restaurants. Serving on the board of the organization, Arnold believes Music City restaurateurs must band together in order to succeed. "I find that having this kind of ‘fraternity' is essential in a developing food town. Being able to toss around ideas and support similar goals of other local culinary entrepreneurs is such a relief and very encouraging." Some of his favorite places to grab a bite to eat around town are Nero's Grill (the chicken salad melt, to be exact) and Capital Grille inside the Hermitage (lamb belly). Arnold is doing big things for the local food scene, not only by rallying around other Nashville chefs, but also spreading the message about our town. His recent spell on Top Chef DC allowed him to represent Nashville in a fresh, new way. "Part of my motivation for being on Top Chef was to share a progressive perception of Nashville. I think I at least achieved that." Nashville is constantly growing into a more sophisticated, modern city. Who better to represent this evolution than Arnold?

So what's on the horizon for him? What's next for this culinary artist? "I want to start a foundation that supports various nonprofit organizations focusing on children, food, education and the arts. A product line is in the works, but very slowly, as it will be tied to my foundation. It will be very stylish, chic and fashionable." Coming from a man who totes his chef knives in a Louis Vuitton bag, we have no doubt about that. MM

The Homemaker

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; ...The essential things in life are seen not with the eyes, but with the heart." Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince.

If you talk about home with Bobby McAlpine, your chat won't be limited to that physical place you call "home." Be prepared to embark on a journey of guided self-exploration to discover and more fully articulate your own place in this world.

"I came to Nashville about 15 years ago. Although I called Montgomery, Alabama ‘home' at that time, somehow Nashville called out to me, inviting me to be here. It seemed to make no sense at all, to me or to others. But I heard and responded to the invitation."

McAlpine can live anywhere he likes because his clients are everywhere. A strong sense of home is no doubt a useful anchor for a man who frequently awakens in cities other than his own. We caught up with him as he was leaving town for personal appearances in New York, The Hamptons and Washington, D.C. to talk about his newest book. It's called The House Within Us—Romantic Houses, Evocative Rooms. Published by Rizzoli, it was already in its third printing after a mere 90 days on store shelves.

Sharing ideas with this creative genius will lead you to discover that "home" should be a physical manifestation of your own unique spirit. His book says it best: "What we crave in this life is an outer beauty that reflects the gorgeous world within us. I am speaking about the house within us. What if the house inside you became the house you lived in? What if you envisioned that your life could be just the way your imagined it? Then you are en route to enlightened destiny, because each of us has huge control over our lives. We don't always realize this because, we are, to a degree, defined by so many outside forces. But at the same time, we do have the power to create our own environment and our environment, in turn, shapes us."

"It must be a Middle Tennessee thing," Bobby said, "for people to want to see others do well. It is a kind and common gift that has been extended to me over and over again by the people here. Nashville has always been a spiritual wellspring for talented and creative people. I think we're going to see a lot more of them choosing to move here."

McAlpine's delightful talent to embody the spiritual within the physical, wedding them in structures of beauty and respite is his transformative and generous gift, not only to his clients, but to Nashville and Middle Tennessee. These contributions have already ensured that our well won't run dry anytime soon. MLT

The Creators

It's no secret that Nashville is a fertile breeding ground for inventive and inspired minds. Of course, there are music makers galore, who are artists in their own right. But because Nashville boasts such a unique cultural landscape, visual artists are quickly giving musicians a run for their money. With a genuine desire to make this city a more colorful place, Herb Williams, Beth Gilmore and Trevor Mikula are three local artists you need to get to know.

Each possessing a larger-than-life personality (and a style all their own), these three folks are at the top of who's who list of the local art crowd. Herb, curator of The Rymer Gallery, creates outrageously imaginative sculptures out of your childhood art class staple: Crayola crayons. . .That familiar waxy scent of crayons permeates his space in a delightfully nostalgic way. "I was trained fairly traditionally and tried out every different medium that I could think of before, quite literally, a dream revealed the way that I could re-introduce the crayons. I keep using them because I continue to see new possibilities in them. I love the way that they immediately engage a viewer, young or old, rich or poor. They're a gateway drug." Herb brings some serious legitimacy to the scene, having had exhibits in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, though he consciously chooses to stay and create art right here in Nashville. "I think there's an openness to seeing art and supporting artists," Herb says. "There are so many incredibly talented artists here in town." The talented folks in this town must gravitate towards one another, as Herb counts both Beth and Trevor as two of his buddies.

Nashville native Beth Gilmore has witnessed the city evolve into a thriving hub for the arts. From a young age, her parents encouraged her to embrace all forms of art. "I had art lessons at Cheekwood and etiquette lessons from a lovely lady in a hoopskirt at Longview on Franklin Road and many other of the usual types of enrichment educational pursuits like dance." Nowadays, she's just as busy and involved as she was in her youth. Beth's current repertoire includes a stint as an artist in residence at the Downtown Presbyterian Church, tour guide at Belmont Mansion ("it has always been an inspiration to my work and my life") and curator of Twist Gallery. She finds inspiration in the rich history of our region, which lends her a distinctive and charming style. With a love for the past and the present, she's as Nashville as it gets. "Staying allows me to contribute to the culture that so many have worked to build right here. Nashville has become the city I always wanted to move to." We agree, Beth.

With a youthful energy that's so intense it can't be emulated, Trevor Mikula is force to be reckoned with. The self-taught artist is a born and raised Nashvillian who employs everyday surroundings as his muse. "Everyone here has a story. It's easy to be inspired here simply by observing people in my day-to-day life. Watch out…I might be watching you." Each of his paintings is more charming than the next. One of his pieces entitled "Time Out" features a pouty Boston Terrier pup who has obviously merited some punishment (probably inspired by his own dog, Monet). Another called "Bloody Slow Start" puts a much-needed Bloody Mary front and center, with a snail crawling in the foreground. Who can't identify with that? His artwork is relevant and accessible, yet still very fun. And fun to look at. Trevor most certainly has a vivid imagination. When asked what he'd be doing if he weren't an artist, he responded, "I would be on a beach in the Seychelles sipping a Mai Tai. Or I'd own a doughnut shop with my brother Toby." While those are both good options, we hope he'll never stop making art. MM

The Activists

Picture the Wildhorse Saloon on a chilly, grey weekday, filled with more than 40 tables of 10. Rounding out each table—mostly downtown businessmen in suits.

Onto the stage prowls a striking, powerful couple. Gone is the Country-Western vibe of the space. The room is silent. The couple speaks. It's rhythmic with potent words and messages. They work together, words flowing from man to woman, woman to man. It's political. It's current. Their voices ebb and flow, drawing in the audience who appear awestruck. This is something new.

Yep, it's slam poetry. And it was only this year at the Arts and Business Council of Greater Nashville's Bowtie Awards that many of Nashville's movers and shakers learned just how moving it can be.

Connie Valentine, the head of the Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville, explains how she came to book GRAVATY. "Last year, I co-chaired the Leadership Music "Artist Day" with Lisa Jenkins and Jeff Obafami Carr. Part of our goal was to expose the current Leadership Music class to cool music projects and styles in Nashville. We had nearly 50 music industry folks, most of whom who had never heard slam poetry. GRAVATY received a spontaneous standing ovation after one piece! They were so real and moving." Connie says.

Tia and Dante Miller—the partnership known as GRAVATY—hail from Ohio but didn't meet one another until they arrived at TSU. After Tia "coerced" Dante to join TSU's forensics team, the relationship blossomed. Today, they are GRAVATY, activist poets who want to set off "a spiritual alarm" that "awakens people to the vehicle that helps them carry out their purpose."

During the day, Tia manages the home and the couple's three children while Dante works as a service manager. But when they are home together, they collaborate. Their topics vary from flooding to religion to politics, and the couple says ideas come via "divine intervention." Tia describes their writing, saying, "There are times we get one word in our heads and that word won't go away until we write it down, or there will be a series of events that confirm the word. Once we begin to write that word, the piece forms. We generally write separately and when we share what we've written with each other, we find that we can easily combine our work."

The issues they tackle enable them to perform everywhere from nightclubs and churches to spoken word venues and theaters across the nation. The couple's goal with their art? "Our mission is to provide entertaining enlightenment to the masses that will serve as a catalyst for positive change against the commonalities of society. Such will inspire and motivate minds past the psychological impacts of slavery and colonization to a mental state of freedom through the spirit, which will resonate in every area of life."

To hear a sample of their work or learn where they will be performing, go to myspace.com/gravaty1. EN

The Dreamweaver

You know those people who just seem to have it all together? They're the picture of a calm in the storm—inviting and comfortable, able to accomplish everything seemingly effortlessly and they've got great style.

That's Janet Kurtz. As director of sales and marketing at The Hermitage Hotel, Janet oversees all of the rooms revenue for the hotel, as well as the marketing and public relations for The Hermitage Hotel and Capitol Grille. "Basically I spread the word about The Hermitage Hotel," she says. "A typical day might include traveling out of town, say to New York, Washington, DC or Chicago, to meet with national associations and corporations about booking their next meeting at the Hermitage or talking with reporters, local journalists and national travel writers, about our new farm-to-table concept in the Capitol Grille."

Janet is something of a chameleon. Wearing a variety of hats, she pulls off everything tastefully and serenely. Her cat-like emerald/ocean-hued eyes gaze evenly at you as she assures you that everything will be taken care of. What an excellent representative this young lady is to put on the road for Nashville. But don't take our word for it. Ask actor David Keith of An Officer and a Gentleman fame. A Knoxville native, he resides at The Hermitage when he's in Nashville so he can be close to government officials to lobby for his nonprofit, childprotect.org. He credits both Janet and The Hermitage for helping him take down predators of children. "I couldn't do this without them," he says matter-of-factly.

Janet made her way to Nashville from Ohio with a diversion in between to attend the University of Evansville. After college, she moved to the city at the behest of one of her friends who lived in Franklin. She fell in love with the town, applied for a job at Belle Meade Plantation, where she worked until moving to the Loews Hotel at Vanderbilt. When she arrived at The Hermitage, she quickly climbed the ranks and was fortunate to be part of the opening following the 11-month renovation. She recalls the weekend of the opening: "There were some really funny moments—such as carrying a box of pillows while in a black dress, high heels and pearls, and trying to gracefully fall down the stairs when I realized I missed a step— and some special ones—like watching every person who came through the door gasp as they walked up the stairs, different stairs than those I fell down, and had their first glimpse of the beautiful restored hotel."

Another recent favorite Hermitage memory was a press reception at Glen Leven Estate to announce the new garden that provides fresh heirloom vegetables to the Capitol Grille. "We had a wonderful turnout and enjoyed a fabulous lunch from our garden prepared by our talented chefs and toured the mansion at Glen Leven," she shares. "I decided I was meant to be the mistress of a grand home like Glen Leven and have impressed this upon my significant other. He's working on it."

In our minds, Janet is already fulfilling that dream—hosting people from around the world at the city's historic Hermitage. And she's doing it with style. Plus, word on the street is that she makes a mean chess pie. EN

The Wordsmith

Todd Bottorff is a fun guy. A fun guy with a serious job and a passion for philanthropy and the literature community, that is. As leader of Nashville's Turner Publishing, ranked on Publishers Weekly's fastest growing publishers list for the last two years, Todd oversees the company, its leadership, the books published and company strategies and goals.

After Phil Bredesen appointed Todd to the board of Humanities Tennessee, an organization that works to advance our history and culture through writing, Todd came up with the idea for Authors in the Round, which "matched opportunity with need," he explains. "The Southern Festival of Books brings more than 200 leading authors to Nashville in October each year, and the festival requires funding to be able to offer that to the public for free, so I thought how interesting it would be to have dinner with the authors that are already here," he says. "So, we created the event where guests can buy a table and we assign an author to each table. We have had amazing authors over the last two years including the author of The Help, Kathryn Stockett, and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, David Wrobelewski, both very nice people."

An author himself, he wrote 21 Things to Create a Better Life, which aims to "capture the simplest daily things that a person can do to improve their health, wealth and happiness." The small book is part of Turner Publishing's series Good Things to Know. Todd explains, "Monumental change begins with a single small action, repeated daily."

When it comes to literature, Todd says, "I believe it is a good move, both morally and strategically to cultivate Nashville as a city for writers. Being thoughtful is good for the soul. Examining our lives and telling stories both in written word and in song gives us identity. Living among creative people makes the community so much richer. And strategically, with the changes in technology, there is so much power to make your creative message heard."

Write on, Todd. EN

The Oenophile

Take one step into Village Wines and you'll know that the folks in the shop know wine. Behind the counter, cases of juice that well-heeled Nashvillians and wine lovers have special ordered line the wall behind the register. Back in the corner of the shop, owner Hoyt Hill sits in front of his computer, working on inventory, researching products and reviews, communicating with the world's greatest winemakers.

When a customer walks in and says, "I need something that would go well with…" Before the shopper finishes the sentence, Hoyt has strode purposefully across the room and pulled out the perfect bottle. Really. The man should insure his tastebuds and nose.

Hoyt's love of wine stems in part from his first job during his senior year at Vanderbilt at Julian's. After graduation, Hoyt was offered the position of maitre d' and accepted. "Working for John Haggard was an inspiring learning experience in terms of an unrelenting pursuit of excellence," he shares. From there, Hoyt moved on to F. Scott's, which quickly became one of Nashville's most popular and enduring restaurants, and the Wild Boar. His next step—Village Wines.

How could such a petite shop be filled with so many gems? In addition to Hoyt's knowledge, there's his clout with winemakers. He explains, "Our focus is to bring true value to our customers in terms of the price and quality of the wines we sell—that applies to our $500 wines as well as to the $15 ones. When we find a wine which we think is a special example of its type, we try to negotiate pricing."

Hoyt's passion for the grape has helped fulfill his interest in helping others (you'll see his name listed frequently as a benevolent donor a societal function) as well as his love of travel. He recalls one of his favorite wine journeys: "I was walking in the vineyards in Burgundy about 15 years ago with a well-known American wine exporter named Russell Hone. Russell asked me to walk about two meters across the hillside and tell him if I noticed any change. Well, I walked two meters and it actually seemed to get warmer. When I pointed this out to Russell, he informed me that I had just walked from Batard-Montrachet to Montrachet, and the extra warmth in Montrachet results in riper grapes That is why Batard-Montrachet sells for $150-$350 per bottle and Montrachet sells for up to $3,000!"

You know Hoyt loves his job when he explains the best part of his day: "When you open a bottle of wine with dinner, the TV gets turned off and music gets turned on. It's also more likely that you will prepare dinner rather than bringing something home...Dinner lasts one and a half hours rather than 30 minutes, and all kind of things are discussed that would not have been without the wine." EN

The Artisans

The word handmade conjures up images of a warm apple pie made from scratch or your great-grandmother's artfully sewn quilt. But handmade liquor? Just ask the folks behind Corsair Artisan Distillery, who are breaking the mold and bringing craft made spirits to Nashville. Childhood friends-cum-business partners Darek Bell and Andrew Webber are the masterminds behind this unique venture, which is on the fast track to becoming a world-renowned distillery, with products ranging from Vanilla Bean Vodka, Red Absinthe and their highly-recognized Gin-Head style Gin.

The idea hatched from Darek and Andrew's shared enthusiasm for, of all things, biodeisel. While whipping up a batch of the eco-friendly fuel one day, Andrew expressed his desire to make whiskey instead. Darek had experience making wine, beer and sake and Andrew's family was in the wine industry, so it seemed like a natural fit. Darek noticed there was a real need for bringing a high-caliber craft distillery to Tennessee. "I had been watching the artisan distilling movement in mostly the western states like California, Oregon and Washington. I was amazed that nothing was happening in the South. I didn't want Tennessee to be left behind, given the wealth of distilling knowledge and lore here."

Some say that timing is everything in life. Darek and Andrew would probably agree. As Andrew was finishing up his MBA at Vanderbilt, Darek and his wife (and former bar critic) Amy Lee were moving home to Tennessee from New York City. When Darek and Amy Lee first met in NYC, they spent a good bit of time trying cocktails and visiting different bars around the city for Amy Lee's job. Needless to say, they've always been spirit aficionados. After returning to Nashville, Darek pitched the idea of a micro-batch craft distillery to Andrew. Together, they wrote a business plan and the rest is history.

Nashville seems to have been the ideal location for a start-up venture. Darek says, "I still miss New York City, but I'm very happy to be back. Opening Corsair has been great, and Nashville is the perfect fit for it. It would have been very, very difficult to start out in New York." In addition to taking over the old Yazoo Brewery space in Marathon Village, they've got a second distillery in Bowling Green. With several major awards under their belt, Corsair is headed to big places. "We got a lucky break almost immediately after we launched, when our gin won a gold medal at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, the most prestigious spirits competition in North America. We have now won 11 medals at international spirits competitions."

Corsair products are now available in states across the country including Colorado, Oregon and California. Look out for a new whiskey from them called Triple Smoke, too. Darek says it's fantastic and complex, made from three different smoked malts. And best of all, they're constructing a gorgeous new tasting room in the Nashville distillery, where visitors are encouraged to sit back, relax and enjoy the handmade, homemade goodness. Sounds pretty damn good to us. MM

The Champion

A piece of fine jewelry or a luxury timepiece is valued not only for its intrinsic beauty, but for its symbolic depth. Either is a great choice as a commemorative gift for a wedding, birth, anniversary or well-deserved retirement.

So it comes as no surprise to learn that Nashville's newest jewelry purveyor has a deep commitment for his adopted "hometown." David King of King Jewelers says, "Most people wouldn't know it, but in addition to making strategic business sense, Nashville offered my family and me many appealing and compelling emotional reasons for our new store location." He adds, "My uncle's been in the jewelry business here for 40 years. Although our family has deep roots in South Florida, we've known and liked a lot of things about Nashville for a long time."

The Green Hills store opened in November 2008. Social circles were soon aware of King Jewelers due to the company's active participation in fundraisers. But the King family business soon focused their philanthropy on the health of children, a cause dear to David, a former aspiring physician.

Talking about the founding of the Champions for Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt, David's eyes light up like diamonds. With co-chairs Beth and Paul Frankenberg, he has partnered with the Children's Hospital to improve the health of children.

The Champions are making an annual gift to the hospital that supports two initiatives: the Pediatric Palliative Care Program at the Children's Hospital which provides intensive symptom management and support services to children with life-threatening illness; and, the Katherine Dodd Faculty Scholars Program which helps junior faculty members create a community of future leaders who will advance the education, practice and policy of children's health care.

This entrepreneur and philanthropist has emerged as a polished children's champion. He attended the University of Pennsylvania to go to medical school, but instead chose to attend the Wharton School.

David returned home to learn the family business. Now in our city, David says his business, family and philanthropic sensibilities mesh well with Nashville. "We are a family-owned business where service is the single most important aspect of what we do. My family has been in business for five generations and Nashvillians value that sense of tradition," David said.

"My experiences in pre-Med led me to realize that I could have a much greater impact on the health of children as a successful businessman more than as a doctor. With Champions, we are going to help shape a healthier future for children." MLT

Mitch O'Connell

2010-07-24T09:36:00.000-07:00

J.Todd Greene

2010-07-24T09:35:00.001-07:00

Twist Art Gallery presents: our 4th birthday....

2010-07-21T17:04:00.000-07:00

Twist Art Gallery presents: our 4th birthday....

in the new Twist etc. space #75 and #77 Arcade.....J Todd Greene in
"I can't recall the Future as well as I use to"
paintings and accompanied his band Bulb.

in the original Twist in 73. The Mitch O'Connell show is continuing
to August 28th with the Kustom Thrills Tattoo shop staging an art performance piece

And!!! the fabulous Eastern Block ( musical act will be playing downstairs)

Twist etc.. and J Todd Greene in " I can't recall the Future as well
as I use to" an art show will open on August 7th 2010 from 6-9 pm as
part of the art crawl.
show runs august 7th through August 28th

August 7th Twist Art Gallery ... serious party!!!

2010-07-11T12:54:00.000-07:00

august

2010-07-08T20:05:00.000-07:00

e flat dillingers visit Twist Art Gallery on the art crawl

2010-07-05T12:28:00.000-07:00

e flat dillingers visit Twist Art Gallery on the art crawl
http://eflatdillingers.wordpress.com/

July 3rd part 2

2010-07-05T08:18:00.000-07:00

July 3rd part 1

2010-07-04T20:33:00.000-07:00

Cap off First Saturday Art Crawl with downtown fireworks

2010-07-03T13:08:00.001-07:00

The Tennessean

July 2, 2010

Cap off First Saturday Art Crawl with downtown fireworks

Every month, the First Saturday Art Crawl gives us the chance to check in on downtown's art scene as it reloads with fresh shows.

This Saturday at http://www.twistartgallery.com/">Twist Art Gallery (73 Arcade), you can see art by Mitch O'Connell, a prolific illustrator whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Newsweek, The New Yorker and many more top-shelf publications. O'Connell will be there for the reception.

And at http://www.therymergallery.com/">Rymer Gallery (233 Fifth Ave. N.), there's a reception for SNAP, a show of photography by Thomas Petillo, Christopher Rodrigues, Caleb Charland and Matt Mikulla, plus sculpture by Chris Ellis.

For a list of participating galleries, visit http://www.nashvilledowntown.com/play/">www.nashvilledowntown.com/play and click on the First Saturday Art Crawl link. The event lasts from 6 to 9 p.m., which should put you in good position to catch the fireworks show downtown after the Julianne Hough concert. For more on that, visit http://www.musiccityjuly4th.com/">www.musiccityjuly4th.com.

— WILL AYERS, THE TENNESSEAN

Mitch O'Connell at Twist Art Gallery July 3rd 2010

2010-07-03T13:05:00.001-07:00

Nashville Scene Practice Makes Perfect at Twist Art Gallery

2010-06-26T08:57:00.000-07:00

Practice Makes Perfect at Twist Art Gallery ..July and August 2010

Current mood: adventurous

Category: Dreams and the Supernatural

Nashville Scene critic's pick!!!

Practice Makes Perfect at Twist Gallery

When: Thursdays-Saturdays. Continues through Aug. 28

Opening July 3 from 6-9 p.m.

A visit to Mitch O'Connell's website will have you thinking he's a first-class d-bag before his “World's Grooviest Artist” shtick goes right over-the-top and leaves you laughing. O'Connell is an illustrator whose work has appeared in The New York Times and Newsweek. O'Connell has penned everything from comic books to tattoo flash, but the work he'll display at Twist during the July Gallery Crawl will be a bit more “arty-farty” — his words, not ours. O'Connell's work owes a debt to both Coop and Robert Williams, but can you name an artist who depicts psychedelic bunnies, nude burlesque dancers and the floating, pipe-smoking head of J.R. “Bob” Dobbs who doesn't? Get to the gallery to check out what is sure to be a packed show, and then go home and enjoy your Hour of Slack. Praise “Bob”!
— Joe Nolan

Twist Art Gallery

DOWNTOWN 73 Arcade

Currently listening:
She & Him - Volume Two

Artist Grace Gilmore draws with light at the Twist Art Gallery

2010-06-19T08:26:00.000-07:00

Artist Grace Gilmore draws with light at the Twist Art Gallery today in an art performance piece she just thought of..

more april

2010-06-12T13:07:00.001-07:00

more may

2010-06-12T13:05:00.000-07:00

may and june

2010-06-12T12:59:00.000-07:00

coming soon...Mitch O'Connell to the Twist Art Gallery from the Packer Schopf Gallery

2010-06-12T12:58:00.001-07:00

Mitch O'Connell
5645 N. Drake Ave.
Chicago, IL 60659
773-588-8797

info@mitchoconnell.com
http://www.mitchoconnell.com
http://www.myspace.com/mitchoconnell

http://www.packergallery.com/
http://www.twistartgallery.com/

Twist Art Gallery presents: "Practice Makes Perfect" Mitch O'Connell
Art Show ! opening Saturday, July 3 from 6:00-9:00 pm.
show runs July 3rd through August 28th 2010...

yes, that is a two month show this time... happy summer!

there will be a second reception for this show on the first Saturday
in August. from 6-9pm as well.

perhaps with a surprise art performance or musical guest for the
August opening.

************
Twist Art Gallery
www.twistartgallery.com
73 Arcade
Nashville, TN 37219
(888) 535-5286

Gallery Hours
Thursday and Friday 11 - 5
Saturday 11 - 3
Join us the first Saturday of every month
6 to 9 p.m. for the First Saturday Gallery Crawl

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shows planned so far.....

2010
July/August: Packer/Schopf gallery - Mitch O'Connell
September: Kristina Arnold
October: Joseph Lupo
November: Shane Doling
December/January: Alexia Abegg

2011
February: Jaime Raybin and Ryan Hogan
April: Amelia Winger-Bearskin
May: Lauren Kussro

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Art Crawl Dates in 2010:
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Saturday, January 8, 2011

Intercessors/Icons at Twist Art Gallery

2010-05-29T22:15:00.001-07:00

Nashville Scene
Intercessors/Icons at Twist Gallery
When: Thursdays-Saturdays. Continues through June 26
Opening reception 6-9 p.m., June 5.

Lately, local multimedia artist Margaret Pesek's muses have been visiting in the forms of the Catholic-style saints she celebrates in her homemade, goofball reliquaries. With titles like “Patron of the Romantically Ambiguous”, “Protector of New Restaurants” and “Our Lady of Perpetual Medication”, Pesek brings a healthy dose of humor to her creations which are fashioned from disparate materials including: photographs, jewelry, wood, stones, dolls and artificial flowers. To hear Pesek's side of the story, purchasing one of her ironic icons might grant the buyer an inside track with the almighty. “There seems to be a saint assigned as a go-to for almost any problem,” she explains. “It's always left me feeling very much protected in a large and uncertain world.” Amen.
— Joe Nolan

Don't Forget tonight is the: We ART Nashville: Flood Relief Benefit

2010-05-21T11:48:00.001-07:00

Don't Forget tonight is the:
We ART Nashville: Flood Relief Benefit

Please join us tonight from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. for the "We ART Nashville" fundraiser benefiting the Community Foundation Disaster Relief Fund.

In addition to a great show, we will have a piece of the Chocolart Art series by Isle of Printing and Olive and Sinclair chocolate for sale. For $10 you get a limited edition print from Isle of Printing wrapped around a bar of local Olive and Sinclair chocolate. 50% of the proceeds from the sales of the 2.75 oz bars will go to Hands On Nashville. The BAIL OUT BAR was created to help raise funds and awareness for the flood victims

Artists showing at Twist include:

Patrick DeGuira, Brady Haston, Keith Herzik, Mark Hosford, Chris Kerr, Jennifer Leach, Lesley Patterson Marx, Hans Schmidt Matzen, Bryce McCloud, Paul Nudd, Onsmith, DeeDee Scacci, Tom Stack and Manuel Zeitlin

we art nashville

2010-05-19T13:38:00.000-07:00

Nashville Scene
We Art Nashville Flood Benefit
When: Fri., May 21, 6-9 p.m.
The last First Saturday Gallery Crawl was the wettest on record, due to the tragic flooding in Middle Tennessee. Another, lesser tragedy was the miscommunication that found Fifth Avenue galleries effectively “canceling” the Crawl while their neighbors in the Arcade, the Downtown Presbyterian Church and Estel Gallery crawled on. This event will give Nashville gallery gawkers a chance to see what they missed the first time around, while providing much needed support for flooded friends and neighbors. It will also give the downtown art venues a chance to reboot and reconnect regarding the monthly mass convergence that owes its success specifically to the participation of the wide variety of venues on Fifth Avenue and beyond. Venues for this event include the regular Fifth Avenue and Arcade galleries as well as the Frist Center. $10 suggested donation.
— Joe Nolan