Calendar of Events

Saturday, AUG 27 at 2:00 PM and Monday, AUG 29 at 6:30 PM

SEEKING: Cast of 3 adult male (play 70's,late 30's+), 2 adult female (play 60's +, late 30's +) and one youth male actor (play age 13)
Requirements: Cold reading from script. Recent headshot or photo.
Performances: October 7 - 23 , 2011

Oak Ridge Playhouse, 227 Broadway, Oak Ridge, TN 37830. Information and tickets: 865-482-9999, www.orplayhouse.com

Sponsored by Foothills Kiwanis

Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center, 3/4 mile east of traffic light at the Highway 321 and 73 intersection towards the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Townsend, TN. Hours: Monday-Saturday, 10AM-5PM. Information: 865-448-0044, www.gsmheritagecenter.org

Kids of all ages who love trucks and other rough and tough vehicles will want to visit! Fire trucks, police vehicles, ambulances, military vehicles, and heavy construction equipment will be on display throughout the day. Discover how they operate and meet the people who work with them.

Knoxville Zoo, 3500 Knoxville Zoo Drive, Knoxville, TN 37914. Open every day except Christmas. Information: 865-637-5331, www.knoxville-zoo.org

Looking for a new and interesting project for your garden? You will use large natural leaves and concrete to create a decorative ornament for any space. Cost is $30/KBGA Members, $40/Non-members.

Knoxville Botanical Garden and Arboretum, 2743 Wimpole Ave, Knoxville, TN 37914. Hours: Gardens open daily from dawn to dusk. Information: 865-862-8717, www.knoxgarden.org

(Great for all ages) Join guest naturalist Rikki Hall for a spider and insect hunt in the meadows at Forks of the River WMA. Meet at Ijams. Free to Ijams members, $5 for non-members.

Ijams Nature Center, 2915 Island Home Ave, Knoxville, TN 37920. Hours: Grounds and trails open during daylight hours. Visitor Center: Monday: by appointment only for tour groups and school trips; Tuesday-Saturday: 9AM-5PM; Sunday: 1-5PM (March 1 - November 30). Information: 865-577-4717, www.ijams.org

Dance demonstrations, Indian frybread, craft vendors, drumming, music, storytelling, blowgun competition, and more. In memory of Jo-Jo Rice. Admission $5, children under 12 FREE.

Chilhowee Park, Knoxville, TN. Information: indiancreekproductions@gmail.com, www.indiancreekproductions.com

Author Michael Knight will read at Union Avenue Books and sign his latest novel, The Typist, just released in paperback. The book was recently chosen as Oprah's "Book of the Week". Knight is also author of the novel, The Divining Rod; two collections of short fiction, Dogfight: And Other Stories and Goodnight, Nobody; and a collection of novellas, The Holiday Season. He teaches creative writing at the University of Tennessee .

Vintage Views of Gatlinburg & the Smoky Mountains will host an evening of vintage films, pictures and displays featuring Smoky Mountain writers, artists and family members at W.L. Mills Auditorium on Reagan Drive in Gatlinburg. Doors open at 5 pm with a wine and cheese reception. Authors to be featured include Bill Landry, Sam Venable, Greg Johnson, Butch McDade, Judge Dwight Stokes, Kenton Temple , Aileen Fowler, James Shuler and Dwight McCarter. G Webb will be the featured artist. Classic film clips gleaned from home movie collections of local families will be shown.

For reservations, call the Special Events Office at 865-436-0500. Tickets are $10 at the door and reservations are required. Contact info: (865) 436-0500. Proceeds from this event go to the Lucinda Ogle Historic Cabin Restoration Fund. Sponsors are the Gatlinburg Garden Club, Lorelei Productions, Ripley's Aquarium of the Smokies, Smoky Mountain Winery & Gatlinburg Special Events. Free parking available.

Featuring artists John Bissonette, Brian Jobe, and Greg Pond. Contemporary Focus is an annual KMA series that serves as a vital means of recognizing, supporting, and documenting the development of contemporary art in East Tennessee. Each year the series presents emerging artists who work in new and experimental ways. Contemporary Focus 2011 features three artists who work through different methods but share an aesthetic concern exploring concepts of space in innovative ways. John Bissonette uses traditional materials such as paint and canvas to produce colorful scenes of urban decay. His images reference banners or flags from abandoned storefronts and display windows once used to attract the attention of passersby, but now exist as mute abstract shapes. Brian Jobe transforms three-dimensional objects using brightly colored zip-ties. The thousands of ties extend otherwise ordinary objects into new, imposing forms. Greg Pond works with computer technology to program interactive, responsive sculptures, often using sound as a primary medium. His structures act as generative bases for tracking, manipulating, and projecting sounds made by audience members as they move through the exhibition space.

Opening reception is Thursday, August 25. KMA members are invited from 6-7pm, with the event opening to the public at 7pm. Artists will be on hand for questions and a cash bar will be provided.

Throughout the run of Contemporary Focus 2011, each artist will present a lecture or workshop about their artwork:
Saturday, September 17, 1-4pm Artist in Action with Greg Pond
Friday, September 23, 1-4pm Artist in Action with Brian Jobe
Wednesday, October 19, noon-1pm, Dine & Discover with John Bissonette
Saturday, October 22, 1-4pm, Artist in Action with John Bissonette

Knoxville Museum of Art, 1050 World's Fair Park Dr, Knoxville, TN 37916. Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10AM-5PM; Friday, 10AM-8PM; Sunday, 1-5PM. Information: 865-525-6101, www.knoxart.org

The exhibition consists of faxes submitted by nearly 100 artists sent to the initial showing of FAX at The Drawing Center, New York, along with seminal examples of early telecommunications art. The KMA will invite additional artists to submit works through a working fax line in the gallery throughout the duration of the exhibition. All the transmitted pages will be archived or displayed together with the active fax machine, which may produce new faxes from invited artists at any moment. The result—an ongoing cumulative project—is a show concerned with ideas of reproduction, obsolescence, distribution, and mediation. Here, reproducible yet erratic faxes displace traditional notions of the hand‚ still commonly associated with the medium of drawing, and foreground the role of drawing as a generative process.

FAX is a traveling exhibition co-organized by The Drawing Center, New York, and Independent Curators International (ICI), New York, and circulated by ICI. The guest curator is João Ribas. The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue were made possible, in part, by members of the Drawing Room, a patron circle founded to support innovative exhibitions in The Drawing Center’s project gallery; and by support to ICI from The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, and ICI Benefactor members Agnes Gund, Gerrit and Sydie Lansing, and Barbara and John Robinson.

Opening reception is Thursday, August 25. KMA members are invited from 6-7pm, with the event opening to the public at 7pm.

Knoxville Museum of Art, 1050 World's Fair Park Dr, Knoxville, TN 37916. Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10AM-5PM; Sunday, 1-5PM. For information: 865-525-6101, www.knoxart.org

The three Magrath sisters gather Mississippi to await news of their grandfather, who is living out his last hours in the local hospital. Lenny, the oldest, is unmarried at thirty with diminishing marital prospects; Meg, the middle sister, is back after a failed singing career on the West Coast; while Babe, the youngest, is out on bail after having shot her husband in the stomach. Overflowing with humor and infectious high spirits, this Pulitzer Prize winner is also, unmistakably, the tale of a very troubled family escaping their past to seize the future.

Oak Ridge Playhouse, 227 Broadway, Oak Ridge, TN 37830. Information and tickets: 865-482-9999, www.orplayhouse.com

It will be a jam-packed weekend of family-oriented fun that you won’t want to miss! During the two day celebration, stages at the World’s Fair Park will be utilized to showcase mainstream Christian artists and groups such as MercyMe, Third Day, Jars of Clay, Hawk Nelson, and many others. The Festival of Choirs will be showcasing a variety of musical talent from Knoxville and the surrounding area. In addition to live music, attendees will have access to exciting entertainment, exhibits, a Christian art walk, a special children’s pavilion, food vendors, and more.

During the event the community is invited to participate in Feed the Need 2011, an initiative designed to help alleviate hunger here and around the world. In order to accomplish “feeding the need both near and far,” Worship in the City has joined forces with both Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee and Kids Against Hunger. Festival-goers will be asked to donate one hour of time over the course of the weekend celebration to help prepare one million highly-nutritious, prepackaged meals for Kids Against Hunger. From the staging area in the Knoxville Convention Center, Kids Against Hunger will redistribute those meals to starving children and their families in over 60 countries. Ten percent, or about 100,000, of the meals packaged for distribution to those experiencing chronic hunger, will be given to East Tennesseans.

http://worshipinthecity.com/