Calendar of Events

Bliss Home is pleased to present Knoxville artist, Christi Shields, for September's First Friday. Bliss Home, located at 29 Market Square, will host an opening reception on Friday, September 6th from 6pm to 9pm. Complimentary Steamboat Sandwiches will be provided and Christi's art will be featured for the month of September.

Christi's September exhibit is a collection of paintings which express emotions from the past through continued experimentation in innovative, edgy and modern acrylic techniques. Christi uses a very action oriented process along with layer techniques and color to create depth. By using bold colors, texture and movement, Christi aims to evoke an emotional response from the viewer.

Bliss Home 29 Market Square Knoxville, TN 37902
Friday, September 6th, 2013 through the end of the month Opening Reception: Friday September 6th, 2013 6pm to 9pm
Admission: Free
Facebook: Bliss Home

The gallery at the Plateau Creative Arts Center (PCAC) will feature art in the theme of Beyond Repair. The public is invited to the PCAC gallery to view original artwork in the form of oil, watercolor, acrylic, pastels, colored pencil, photography, mixed media, pottery, sculpture, and jewelry, created by Art Guild members.

Plateau Creative Arts Center, 451 Lakeview Drive, Fairfield Glade, TN 38558. Hours: M-F 9AM-4PM; Saturday-Sunday 1-4PM. Information: 931-707-7249; www.artguildfairfieldglade.net

Gallery Opening 6:30pm, September 6th
Gallery Hours: M-F 11am – 3pm or by appt

In September of 1942, 4 bombs were dropped in the Siskiyou National Forest just east of Brookings on the Southern Oregon Coast, as part of a Japanese WWII mission to start forest fires. Nobou Fujita’s plane was catapulted from a submarine, waiting in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Oregon. This is not a well-­‐known story. In 1962, the Brookings, Oregon, Jaycees invited Mr. Fujita and his family to the annual Brookings Azalea Festival, and this visit began a 30 year friendship between the city of Brookings and Mr. Fujita.

This story serves as a backdrop for The Untitled Bombsite Project, a collaboration between artist Jill Baker and filmmaker/artist Jonathan Rattner on an experimental documentary project that investigates this public history through a series of local retellings and explorations in landscape. The Untitled Bombsite Project is as much about the act of storytelling, the desire for community, and the fragility and fragmentation of memory and image as it is about these generally forgotten bombings that unintentionally began a 30-­‐year friendship between the city of Brookings and the Fujita family.

One central theme of this project is that memory re-­‐constructs events in fragments of images, sounds, and moments in time. The story of Nobou Fujita, his flight over ocean and forest, the redwood tree at the bombsite, his samurai sword, and his place in the local history of a small, coastal town in Oregon is recounted, recollected, and speculated in experimental documentary form. Here, human history and natural history are woven together, and landscape, oceanscape, and skyscape interrupt narrative to give privilege to memory over history, to themes rather than chronology, and to the idea of representing place over representing the past.

The Artists: Jonathan Rattner is a lens-based artist that primarily produces experimental nonfiction films and videos. He holds an M.F.A in Film and Video Production from the University of Iowa, an M.F.A. in Intermedia Art from the University of Iowa, and a B.F.A. in Film and Television from Tisch School for the Arts, N.Y.U. He has screened work at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The World Social Forum in Brazil, the University of Iowa Museum of Art, and galleries, festivals and colleges in Europe and the United States. Currently, he is an active member of Wildland Urban Interface Artist Collective and is an Assistant Professor/Assistant Director of Film Studies and Assistant Professor of Art at Vanderbilt University.

Jill Baker is an interdisciplinary artist living on the Southern Oregon Coast making work about, and in collaboration with, the small community and landscape around her. When she is not on the Oregon Coast, she is an Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Art at The University of Oregon. Birdhouse Gallery, 800 N 4th Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37917.
jlrattner@gmail.com

The Arts & Culture Alliance is pleased to present the Annual All Media Show, a new exhibition featuring watercolor, acrylic, oil, pastel, pencil, ink painting, drawing, and more from the current membership of the Knoxville Watercolor Society in celebration of its 50th Anniversary. The exhibition will be displayed in the Emporium Center from September 6-27, 2013. A public reception will take place on Friday, September 6, from 5:00-9:00 PM with music provided by Pistol Creek Catch of the Day and chocolate fondue from the Melting Pot. The First Friday reception also features a Jazz Jam Session hosted by Vance Thompson (director of the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra) and Friends in the Black Box Theatre from 7:00-9:00 PM.

The reception on Friday, September 6, is free and open to the public. The Annual All Media Show is on display September 6-27, 2013 at the Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, downtown Knoxville. Exhibition hours are Monday-Friday, 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM with additional hours on Saturday, September 7, 11:00 AM - 3:00 PM. For more information, please contact the Arts & Culture Alliance at (865) 523-7543, or visit our Web site at www.knoxalliance.com.

The Arts & Culture Alliance is pleased to present “Dream Big”, a new exhibition featuring nearly 40 abstract oil paintings by Knoxville artist Brandan Cox. While Cox has painted for many years, she has always remained private about her artwork. “I chose the title ‘Dream Big’ because it has been a personal dream of mine to have my work displayed and to open up this part of myself to others,” says Brandan Cox. “Dream Big” celebrates the first time Cox’s work has been on public display. The exhibition will be displayed in the Balcony of the Emporium Center from September 6-27, 2013. A public reception will take place on Friday, September 6, from 5:00-9:00 PM with music provided by Pistol Creek Catch of the Day and chocolate fondue from the Melting Pot. The First Friday reception also features a Jazz Jam Session hosted by Vance Thompson (director of the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra) and Friends in the Black Box Theatre from 7:00-9:00 PM.

The reception on Friday, September 6, is free and open to the public. “Dream Big” is on display September 6-27, 2013 at the Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, downtown Knoxville. Exhibition hours are Monday-Friday, 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM with additional hours on Saturday, September 7, 11:00 AM - 3:00 PM. For more information, please contact the Arts & Culture Alliance at (865) 523-7543, or visit our Web site at www.knoxalliance.com.

An art teacher at one of the Cumberland County Schools was trying to instruct one of her students when he boldly asked "Are you really an artist?" The art teacher replied, "Yes, I am." The student said "Well, I have never seen any of YOUR work." That was the inspiration for inviting the Cumberland County public school Visual Art Teachers to have their own exhibit at the Shanks Center for the Arts, Crossville Tennessee, which is entitled "Artists in their own right." The months of September and October 2013 were scheduled because during those months, every 4th grader in Cumberland County (over 600 students!) makes a school field trip to Downtown Crossville. One of the places they visit is inside the Shanks Center for the Arts.

The public is invited to a First Thursday Reception, Thursday September 5, 5:00 - 7:00 pm. Musical entertainment will be provided from 5:00 - 6:00 by North Cumberland Elementary School music teacher, Becky Bull. Ms Bull is the director of COCCO Children of Crossville Chamber Orchestra. The three front galleries will have been changed to an entirely new set of original works by local and regional artists. The Gift Shop also has new items. The First Thursday receptions are a time to mingle with artists, authors, musicians, and guests.

Shanks Center for the Arts, 140 North Main Street, Crossville, TN 38555. Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 10AM-4PM. Information: 931-787-1936, www.shankscenter.org

The Athens Area Council for the Arts is pleased to present “Climbing the Great Spiral, Poems and Prayers of Hope and Healing”, by Ellen Zahorec, to be on exhibit from September 4 – October 25, 2013, at The Arts Center, 320 North White Street, Athens, Tennessee.

Ellen Zahorec is a mixed media artist, currently residing in Chattanooga, TN. For much of the past decade, her work has focused on religious symbolism, working in acrylic, marker, colored pencil, and crayon to create the brilliantly colored detailing inherent in her art.

The public is invited to meet the artist at an opening reception at The Arts Center, Friday, September 13, 2013 from 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. Light refreshments will be served.

The Arts Center is open Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. till 5:00 p.m. Admission is free. For more information or directions, call The Arts Center at 423-745-8781, or visit our website at www.athensartscouncil.org.

Reception: Closing Reception, Friday September 27th, 6-9 pm

The Blackberry Farm Gallery is pleased to present Presence, a show of new work by Kelly Hider. The exhibit includes sixteen manipulated photographs of children playing with rhinestone-covered toys, as well as displays of the altered objects created for the project. The surfaces are embellished with gold paint and glued rhinestones, evoking narratives of childhood innocence, and suggesting the possibility of supernatural and spiritual forces. She has already received local recognition for some of the Presence work, including Best of Show at the Arts & Culture Alliance National Juried Exhibition in January 2013, and Third Place at the 2013 Dogwood Fine Arts Exhibition.

Hider, a local Knoxville artist and a graduate of UT’s MFA program, is known for using alternative materials to create her mixed-media installations and two-dimensional work, blurring the division between “high” and “low” art. She has made artwork out of wallpaper, cereal, macaroni noodles, and most recently, rhinestones, while maintaining a high level of craft. She has had solo exhibitions at the University of Rochester and at SUNY Brockport in Rochester, NY, The Ewing Gallery and Gallery 1010 in Knoxville, TN, and has participated in group exhibitions at Castell Gallery in Asheville, NC, Cazenovia College in Syracuse, NY, and at Lyon College in Arkansas. She currently teaches at Walters State Community College and Pellissippi State Community College, and is a founding member of the Vacuum Shop Studios in North Knoxville where here studio is currently located. For more information, please contact Kelly Hider at (865) 230-0600 or kellymhider@gmail.com / www.kellyhider.com / http://vacuumshopstudios.wordpress.com.

Clayton Center for the Arts: 502 East Lamar Alexander Parkway, Maryville, TN 37804. Tickets are available at the Clayton Center Box Office M-F 10AM-6PM or by phone or online: 865-981-8590, www.ClaytonArtsCenter.com
Website: http://www.claytonartscenter.com/events/view/439

Works of art by seven Oak Ridge artists depict historical structures, lifestyle and nature through framed prints and oil on canvas featured in the "Oak Ridge in Art" exhibition. One of the iconic images of bygone days captured by these artists is the 1920's arched Solway Bridge over the Clinch River on Hwy. 62 to join Oak Ridge to Knoxville. Built by Knox County and dedicated in 1930, the Solway Bridge was described as a 772 foot long concrete arch bridge with 20 foot roadway with 3 foot sidewalk on right. The beauty of the three arches of the Solway bridge could not compensate for a two-lane roadway only 20 feet in width, which was replaced in the 1970's by a four lane concrete bridge. To commemorate the beauty of the 1920's Solway Bridge, examine Nick Fielder's oil on canvas, Pat McWilliams Hopkins' print, Fred Heddleson's print and his series of prints recording the "Destruction of the Solway Bridge" in various stages dated from April 14, 1970 through April 15, 1979. Several 1940's buildings and activities are interpreted by the Oak Ridge artists in the museum exhibition. The Chapel on the Hill is shown in a print by Helen Guymon and an oil on artist board by Helen Bayless, which was donated to AMSE by Norman R. Miller. Of special interest is the oil on canvas works of Nick Fielder as he interprets "Gallaher Ferry, Oak Ridge, Clinch River 1943" and "Nuclear Day: Oppenheimer at Trinity, April 16, 1945". Irvin Grossman created an Alexander Inn print with its pink azalea landscape and porch spanning the outside of the first floor. Nancy Smith prepared a print of the American Museum of Science and Energy exterior. Helen Guymon developed the Oak Ridge 50th Commemorative Print "Oak Ridge Memories" with multiple images of Oak Ridge's townsite buildings, natural beauty in flora and fauna. AMSE acknowledges the exhibition loan of works by Oak Ridge artists from the collections of Bobbie Martin, Nick Fielder and Fred Heddleson. Available in the museum's Discovery Shop are Heddleson's Solway Bridge print and the Destruction of Solway Bridge print. The Discovery Shop is open Monday through Saturday from 10:30 am - 4:45 pm and Sunday 1:00 - 4:45 pm.

American Museum of Science & Energy, 300 S. Tulane Avenue, Oak Ridge, TN 37830. Hours: Monday-Saturday 9AM-5PM; Sunday 1-5PM. Information: 865-576-3200, www.amse.org

The Town of Farragut Arts Council presents local artist Mary Ann Aken as the featured artist for September and October. A sampling of her textiles and tapestries is featured in specially designed cases on the second floor of the rotunda in the Farragut Town Hall. A Farragut resident, Aken holds a master of fine arts degree with a career spanning work as a studio commission artist, potter, weaver, textile designer, fashion illustrator, color consultant, art history researcher, watercolorist, iconographer and art educator. Her works can be found in seven countries and 30 states, including three paintings in the University of Tennessee Collection. Aken is a member of the Knoxville Watercolor Society, Tennessee Watercolor Society, East Tennessee Iconographer Guild, Art Market Gallery and Art Group 21. She was the recipient of the first Knoxville Art in Public Places Award. Aken's Town Hall display highlights her original designs in textiles and tapestries. Included are concept fabric designs intended for commercial productions. Three of the tapestries displayed are from the "Cedar Trees of Tennessee" series, portraying the beauty of the state's cedar trees at different lights and times of the year. The weaving on display was done on different types of hand weaving looms and is a reflection of the mid-20th century crafts movement that encouraged artists to revive old forms of many fine crafts.

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/artsandculture. The Farragut Town Hall is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is located at 11408 Municipal Center Drive directly across from the Farragut Branch Post Office.

An opening reception will be held on Friday, August 30 from 5:30-9 p.m.

The District Gallery is pleased to present a retrospective show for Lisa Kurtz, exhibiting a selection of her work from 1977-2013. The show is presented in honor of the artist’s mother, Mary Angela Guarneschelli Kurtz and will benefit Alzheimer’s Tennessee. Lisa Kurtz has been a functional potter for 36 years. She received a Masters Degree in clay from The University of Louisville and has been an exhibiting member of many professional juried art guilds, boards, galleries and artist associations. Her clay work has been exhibited and collected across the U.S. and internationally. Lisa throws and hand builds her pieces and often combines the two to produce functional pottery. Her textural work emphasizes the malleable qualities of clay, and most of her pieces are altered while still wet to highlight the intrinsic beauty of the clay itself. Lisa mixes her own glazes as opposed to using commercial glazes, which adds a unique depth and quality to the work. According to Lisa, “I am happy to put on this show in honor of my mom, Mary Angela Guarneschelli Kurtz, who has had Alzheimer’s for about seven years now. She was the first person to teach me about self promotion of my art and always my constant supporter in the arts.”

The District Gallery, 5113 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37919. Hours: Mon-Fri 10-5:30, Sat 10-4. Information: 865-200-4452, www.TheDistrictGallery.com

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