Calendar of Events

Bliss Home will feature Todd Witcher for September’s First Friday. A reception will be held at Bliss Home, 29 Market Square, from 6 to 9 p.m. on Friday, September 2. Witcher is executive director for Discover Life in America. DLIA is a small non-profit organization based in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Its goal is to learn of all the species that call the Smokies their home and share the information with scientists and the public. With his nature-focused career, Witcher pulls from his surroundings to create his artwork. This month enjoy photographs of the Ferns of the Smokies. Each fern is a new scientific finding and the high-resolution photographs allow every detail to be seen. Witcher will be featured beginning September 2 and remain through the month.

For more information, contact Anne at anne@shopinbliss.com
Bliss; www.shopinbliss.com; 865-216-1237; 24 Market Square; Knoxville, TN 37902

The Arts & Culture Alliance is pleased to present a new exhibition of watercolor paintings by local artist Thomas H. Windham. This collection of works chronicles the history, challenges, and accomplishments of this artist, who has a neuromuscular disorder that makes this exhibition special.

An opening reception will take place as part of First Friday activities on September 2 from 5:00-9:00 PM with complimentary hors d’oeuvres and wine.

Art Market Gallery of Knoxville is pleased to present an exhibit of recent works by Gordon Fowler of Knoxville and Pat Delashmit of Maryville. Gordon Fowler is a wood artist who creates heirloom-quality bowls, platters and hollow forms using a woodturning lathe. Inspired by the symmetry and symbolism of circles, his primary focus is functional pieces, his favorite being the salad bowl: “Something that looks great on your countertop, feels wonderful when you pick it up and makes a dandy serving piece for your food; with a little care, it should last for generations.” Pat Delashmit is a fiber artist who creates woven tapestries, soft sculpture and mixed media pieces. Her primary focus is tapestry, and the inspiration for many these pieces is the East Tennessee landscape. She says, “The changing seasons, weather and light of each day are images that inspire me.” She works from photographs as well as scenes remembered or imagined.

A First Friday Reception for the exhibit is planned for September 2 from 5:30-9 pm with complimentary refreshments and live music. Art Market Gallery, 422 S. Gay St, Knoxville, TN 37902. Hours: Tuesday-Saturday 11AM-6PM; Sunday 1-5PM. For information: 865-525-5265, www.artmarketgallery.net

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

Now on display at Farragut Town Hall, Farragut Arts Council member Pam Ziegler is showcasing her collection of "Woodland Creature and Dogwood Blossom Pottery" by Douglas James Ferguson. Founder of Pigeon Forge Pottery (which closed in 2000), Ferguson created internationally known handmade pottery for more than 50 years. In addition, Farragut resident Carlyle Urello has loaned her collection, "Butterflies of the World," by McCulloch.

For more information about this exhibit or to access a Featured Artist of the Month application, please contact Lauren Cox at lauren.cox@townoffarragut.org or 966-7057 or visit www.townoffarragut.org.

Featuring nineteenth century Tennessee-made earthenware and stoneware
Tennessee Turned: Earthenware and Stoneware Made in East Tennessee 1800-1900 is a major exhibition of nineteenth-century pots made in East Tennessee. This once-in-a-lifetime grouping of more than 200 distinctive regional pieces will make for an unforgettable exploration of this chapter of Tennessee history.
“This pottery, of which we are justifiably proud, provides a unique link in the continuum of the American potting tradition as it spread across the United States.”

The exhibit will explore all aspects of nineteenth-century pottery production in East Tennessee, as well as featuring comparative examples from other parts of the state. Visitors will learn how to “read” a pot, how a pot was made in the nineteenth-century, the difference between earthenware and stoneware, and the importance of pottery for households.

On Friday, June 3, ETHS will host the Smoky Mountain Pottery Festival at the History Center for an opening reception, pottery demonstrations, and a viewing of the Tennessee Turned exhibit. Two special “Pottery Day” events to be held June 25 and September 17 will invite the public to bring in pottery objects they may have in their families for possible identification and to be documented photographically for historical purposes.

East Tennessee Historical Society, 601 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. Museum hours: Monday-Friday: 9AM-4PM; Saturday: 10AM-4PM; Sunday: 1-5PM. For information: 865-215-8824, www.easttnhistory.org

Now in its fifth year, this world-class exhibition of 25 large-scale sculptures can be viewd in downtown Knoxville and the McGhee Tyson Airport. The 2011 exhibition juror will be John Henry and will feature up to 35 large-scale, outdoor sculptures. The selected sculptures will be exhibited in downtown Knoxville. For more information: 865-637-4561, www.dogwoodarts.com

History/Sightseeing, relaxing and enjoyable river cruises. Learn about area Civil War history, see beautiful homes and gardens with narration by the spirit of Sam Clemmons. Learn about early river steamboats that visited Knoxville. 90 minute trips Friday through Sunday at 3:00 and 5:15 plus Friday evening at 7:30. $16 Adult and $14 for children 5-11 with advanced paid reservations to 765-3407.