Calendar of Events

Art in Public Places Knoxville is a monumental installation of large-scale outdoor sculptures by regionally and nationally acclaimed artists. The sculptures enliven downtown Knoxville as well as McGhee Tyson Airport. Awards for the Art in Public Places exhibition will be presented by world-acclaimed sculptor, Allen Peterson. The ceremony will take place at 5:30 p.m. at Nouveau Classics on 128 South Gay Street on April 6.

Most of the Festival’s wide range of arts events, performances, and exhibitions are offered to the public free of charge. For more information, including a complete Festival Calendar of Events and ticket information, visit dogwoodarts.com

The Knoxville Museum of Art announces the spring series of Alive After Five, premiering with Christabel & The Jons on Friday, March 30, from 6:00 to 8:30 pm.

Alive After Five is a unique live music series presented on thirty or more Fridays per year in four seasonal series. The programs take place in the smoke-free, casually elegant setting of the Great Hall in the Knoxville Museum of Art. There is a live band on stage, seating at tables, two cash bars, food from area restaurants, free freshly popped popcorn, free parking, and a licensed therapeutic masseuse available. Audience members can enjoy listening to music, dancing, and browsing the museum’s art galleries.

Admission to the spring series premier of Alive After Five is $9 for general admission and $5 for museum members and college students with ID. Ages 17 and under are admitted free. For more information about the Alive After Five series, please contact Michael Gill at (865) 934-2039.

The 2012 Spring Series Schedule for “Alive After Five” (all shows 6:00-8:30 pm)

March 30 – Christabel & The Jons “Tennessee Swing”

April 13 – Jenna & The Accidentals Rhythm & Blues and funk

April 20 – Boling, Brown & Holloway - “Trio Life” CD Release Party Jazz

May 4 – Carib Sounds Steel Band Caribbean steel drum music

May 11 – Draper, Reynolds & Rodgers Americana and folk

May 18 – Milele Roots Reggae and ska

Open Monday - Saturday 8:30 am to 5:00 pm

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, 556 Parkway, Gatlinburg, TN 37738. Information: 865-436-5860, www.arrowmont.org

The Knoxville Museum of Art presents Several Silences March 16-May 20, 2012.
Several Silences presents installations, videos, sculptures, and drawings by a diverse selection of contemporary artists from around the world who approach the theme of silence in distinctly individual ways. This group exhibition explores various kinds of silence—meditative, ambient, memorial, etc.—and calls attention to the rarity of the absence of sound in our growing “culture of distraction.”

There will be an opening reception Thursday, March 15 from 5:30-7:30pm at the KMA. Free and open to the public. Cash bar.

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

A Creative Continuum - Arrowmont Artists-in-Residence Anniversary Exhibition
Reception: Thursday, May 17, 2012
Open Monday - Saturday 8:30 am to 5:00 pm

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, 556 Parkway, Gatlinburg, TN 37738. Information: 865-436-5860, www.arrowmont.org

Horizons is an installation by noted Icelandic artist Steinunn Thórarinsdóttir. The exhibition includes 12 androgynous, life-sized iron figures in the KMA’s South Garden. Each is unique in pose and expression, and has a polished glass band inserted in its torso. The artist explains this juxtaposition of glass and iron, “The color of the iron signifies their primal quality—as if they are emerging from the earth” while “Glass as a material has a lot of different connotations. It can be fragile, yet dangerous. It can be translucent, or solid . . . It's like water, but also like air.”

Thorarinsdottir has exhibited widely in Europe, Japan, and Australia over the last 30 years, as well as in the United States, where Horizons has been traveling for the past three years. The installation is featured in the documentary Horizons by independent filmmaker Frank Cantor, which won the CINE Special Jury Award in Washington as the best documentary of 2008. Thórarinsdóttir’s work is held by collectors worldwide, and she has been commissioned by both the Icelandic and English governments for major sculptural installations. She has received numerous awards including the Order of the Falcon by the President of Iceland in 2009.

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

Bobbie Crews has an exhibit of her work as the “2012 Dogwood Arts Resident Artist” in the Dogwood Arts offices at 602 S. Gay St. The show is on display from now through the 25th of May, Monday through Friday 8:30 – 5:00. Artist’s reception will be on Friday March 9th from 5 – 7 pm.

Curated by Professor and Distinguished Scientist Robert D. Hatcher, Jr. and Assistant Professor Micah Jessup, both from UT's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, the exhibition focuses on the formation of mountain ranges and the forces that continually alter them. Our own beautiful landscapes of East Tennessee and western North Carolina, part of the Appalachian Mountains, whose genesis was more than 250 million years ago, is one focus of the exhibit; the other is the striking and rugged Himalaya Mountains, the much younger and still rising result of tectonic movements, the global effects of which we learn about often in the news.

Introducing the subject in the gallery will be a fifteen minute video, created by award-winning producer Steve Dean (the Heartland Series) and featuring views of a number of sites in the Blue Ridge and Smokies sections of the Appalachians as well as original images of Himalayan locales and the Tibetan plateau. The dynamics of plate tectonics and processes of erosion are explained in animated segments.

Breathtaking as the surface topography may be, the exhibit will also delve into the structure of the respective ranges, as that is where the keys to the how and the why may be found. Three-dimensional maps, video animations, and of course, rocks will show visitors how we know what we know, and perhaps give viewers a new way to look at the world as well as the landscape around them. The past, the present, and the tectonic future await.

Frank H. McClung Museum, 1327 Circle Park Dr on the UT campus, Knoxville, TN 37996. Hours: Monday-Saturday, 9AM-5PM; Sunday, 1-5PM. Information: 865-974-2144, http://mcclungmuseum.utk.edu

Tennessee Mountain Writers January Jumpstart workshops - January 13-15, 2013
Tennessee Mountain Writers will present "January Jumpstart XIII" featuring a fiction workshop led by Darnell Arnoult, Writer-in-Residence at Lincoln Memorial University, and a poetry workshop led by Nashville poet Bill Brown. The event, to be held at the Magnuson Hotel in Sweetwater, will open with an informal social hour on Friday evening; workshop sessions will run from 9 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. on Saturday and from 8:30 - 11:30 a.m. Sunday. Participation is limited to 20 per workshop. The registration fee of $110 includes lunch on Saturday; there will be an optional catered dinner at the hotel Saturday night for an additional $16. For registration information, see www.tmwi.org, or email theorrs@usit.net.

In observance of the Civil War’s 150th anniversary, Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center is hosting an exhibition from the Tennessee State Museum, Common People in Uncommon Times: The Civil War in Tennessee. The exhibition focuses on how the war affected the lives of Tennesseans through personal stories of participants whose sagas illustrate a land divided.

The narrative of personal struggle and endurance during the Civil War is presented on 10 graphic panels taken from the State Museum’s collection of photographs and artifacts from the era, as well as from other collections across the state. Each panel portrays a different theme: Confederate leaders, Union leaders, African-Americans, civilian home front, common soldiers, war on the water, reconstruction and commemoration.

Admission to the special exhibition is included in the museum admission price, and free for Heritage Center members. For current hours and admission rates, visit www.gsmheritagecenter.org