Calendar of Events

February is FREE at the Great Smoky Mountain Heritage Center in Townsend. The Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center is a private non-profit museum located in Townsend, Tennessee,near the entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

The Great Smoky Mountain Heritage Center's mission is to preserve, protect and promote the unique history and rich culture of those that inhabited the Great Smoky Mountain region. In doing this, we wish to preserve and keep alive the history of the pioneers and Native Americans who lived in the East Tennessee mountain communities, reported Bob Patterson, Executive Director. Patterson commented that Free February is a different approach to sharing the resources of the museum with the region.

Join us at the Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center to celebrate the cultural heritage of East Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains region. Our gallery exhibits, educational programs, demonstrations and festivals guide you on an historic journey through time to visit the diverse cultures of Townsend and Tuckaleechee Cove.

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

Katie Johnson, horn
Faculty recital
Sunday, February 1, 2015 at 6:00 p.m.
Sandra G. Powell Recital Hall, Natalie L. Haslam Music Center

UT School of Music: Unless otherwise noted, concerts are FREE and open to the public. The Alumni Memorial Building located at 1408 Middle Drive on the UT campus. (The James R. Cox Auditorium is located in the Alumni Memorial Building.) The Natalie Haslam Music Center is located at 1741 Volunteer Blvd on the UT campus.
*For individual or small group performances, please check the web site or call the day of the event for updates or cancellations: 865-974-5678, www.music.utk.edu/events

Knox County Public Library is pleased to present Say It Loud: Knoxville During the Civil Rights Era at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, February 1 at Lawson McGhee Library, 500 W. Church Ave. as part of its Sunday Screenings series. The event is free and open to the public.

The documentary features rare, historic footage of African American life during Knoxville's civil rights era. Also included in the program will be just-discovered local footage of early protests and marches in downtown Knoxville and Cumberland Avenue during the early 1960s.

Originally shown to a standing room only crowd in August 2014 at the East Tennessee History Center as part of the City of Knoxville's celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Say It Loud: Knoxville During the Civil Rights Era was edited by Louisa Trott with film clips held in the Library's Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound. The Friends of the Knox County Public Library provided funding for the project.

Please join us as we present a different look at Knoxville’s African American history during the civil rights era, as seen through the lens of both the amateur filmmaker and WBIR cameramen of the period.

Say It Loud: Knoxville During the Civil Rights Era to be screened on February 1, 2:00PM, at Lawson McGhee Library, 500 West Church Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37902. Information: 865-215-8750, www.knoxlib.org

The WordPlayers, in collaboration with The Carpetbag Theatre, will tour Walk, Don’t Ride! in the East TN area throughout the month of February. The first performance is 5:00 p.m., Feb. 1 at 4th United Presbyterian, 1323 N. Broadway, Knoxville. All public performances are free and no reservations are required. For more information, please visit www.wordplayers.org or call 865.539.2490.

“Walk, Don't Ride – A Celebration of the Fight for Equality” by Peter Manos is a presentation of drama and song depicting events that helped shape American freedom. Events included are: The Montgomery Bus Boycott, The Nashville Lunch Counter Sit-ins, and The Greyhound/Trailways Freedom Rides. For some, those events are part of a powerful personal experience. For some, they are part of a seemingly distant history. And perhaps for others, they are unfamiliar. But without a doubt, a couple of generations ago, those events changed the course of America.

“Walk, Don't Ride” is an example of the best kind of “edu-tainment,” and has been booked in nine different counties and sixteen different venues, including middle schools, colleges, and churches. For a complete list of performances, please visit www.wordplayers.org.

The WordPlayers performances are held at Erin Presbyterian Church, 200 Lockett Road, Knoxville, TN 37919. Information: 865-539-2490, www.wordplayers.org

This is the fifth installment of an annual group show of 3-4 artists living and working in East Tennessee. LIFT: Contemporary Printmaking in the Third Dimension examines the work of international contemporary artists who use a variety of strategies to bring a sculptural dimension to printmaking. Featured artists include Enrique Chagoya, Lesley Dill, Olafur Eliasson, Robert Gober, Red Grooms, Jane Hammond, Hideki Kimura, Nicola Lopez, Leslie Mutchler, Oscar Munoz, Marilene Oliver, Dieter Roth, Graciela Sacco, and Jonathan Stanish. This exhibition is the culmination of a series of lectures, demonstrations, studio visits, and the creation of an online video archive documenting each artist’s studio practice. The series is intended to garner support for contemporary art in East Tennessee, and is accompanied by an illustrated publication. Organized by the KMA. Located in the Hall & Rogers Gallery.

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

Contemporary Focus is vital to the KMA’s mission to support and highlight art and artists of East Tennessee, bring them together with the museum’s audience in meaningful ways, and provide incentive for them to maintain their studio practice in the region. The public is invited to a free opening preview at the museum Thursday, January 29 5:30-7:30pm. Contemporary Focus 2015 artists will be on hand to answer questions about their work: Caroline Covington, Mira Gerard, and Karla Wozniak. The three artists selected have a common interest in creating works that examine the uncertain terrain between personal experience and external reality, abstraction and representation, and civilization and nature.

Contemporary Focus is an exhibition series launched by the KMA in 2009 that recognizes, supports, and documents the development of contemporary art in East Tennessee. It features the work of innovative emerging artists who are living and making art in this region, and who are exploring issues relevant to the larger world of contemporary art. The exhibition gives artists an opportunity to exhibit recent work, or consider creating a new body of work. In addition to giving feature artists the opportunity to showcase their latest work in a museum setting, it also allows them to engage with KMA audiences in gallery talks and lectures about their approach to making art, and about the challenges and benefits of basing their studio practice in East Tennessee. In several cases, inclusion in Contemporary Focus has created important new exhibition opportunities for the featured artists.

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

In Kaufman and Hart’s 1940s comedy, famed author and personality Sheridan Whiteside, invited to dinner during a speaking tour, slips on the doorstep, breaking his hip. A tumultuous six weeks of confinement follows as the irascible and disagreeable invalid takes over the host family’s home and destroys their domestic tranquility with the arrival of strange and exotic get-well gifts, a parade of celebrity friends, and a devious plot to undermine his secretary’s budding romance.

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

The work in this exhibition explores the non-objective and propositional quality that sculpture can have, and the ways in which we can understand something devoid of specificity and illustration. Presented on custom-built risers and linear structures, individual components are often physically or conceptually networked together with arrangements of objects ranging from the random and chaotic to the precise and articulate. Through careful positioning and intentional framing the works are suggestive of abstracted models and diagrammatic systems that allude to a sculptural logic that is both pragmatic and allusive at the same time.

Paul Sacaridiz will be lecturing at UT in room 109 of the Art and Architecture building on Thursday, January 22 at 7:30 PM. There will be an opening reception the following evening, Friday, January 23, with the artist at the UT Downtown Gallery from 5-9PM. We hope you can make it to these events.

UT Downtown Gallery, 106 S. Gay St, Knoxville, TN 37902. Hours: Wednesday-Friday: 11AM - 6PM, Saturday: 10AM - 3PM. Information: 865-673-0802, http://web.utk.edu/~downtown

Drawn from the McClung Museum is an innovative exhibition project involving 28 artists, each of whom will produce original prints in response to objects from the collection of the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture. The exhibition will pair the objects and the prints to address how we perceive and interpret art, science, and culture. Like the museum itself, the objects are varied, ranging from a mastodon mandible and an Egyptian ibis mummy, to a Victorian hair necklace and an Ojibwa men’s ceremonial dance apron.

The exhibition is being held in conjunction with the SGC International Printmaking Conference, which will bring 1,500 printmakers to Knoxville from the United States and abroad March 18–21, 2015.

McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture, 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 Stage Company Presents Its 6th Timeless Work – A Benefit Production of HARVEY

Where: The Historic Southern Railway Station, 300 West Depot Avenue
When: Jan. 22 – Feb. 1, 8:00 pm Thursday – Saturday; 2:00 pm Sunday matinees

Tickets on sale now: limited availability. Call (865) 546-4280 for reservations or go online to purchase tickets through Paypal at www.tennesseestage.com. General Admission: $ 15; Students/Seniors $ 12. Group discounts available.

The Tennessee Stage Company, known to Knoxville audiences for Shakespeare On The Square and the New Play Festival returns to our Timeless Works series this winter with the Mary Chase’s classic comedy, Harvey. This most gentle of comedies is the story of a most unconventional man who has dropped out of the rat race to live a simple life with his most unusual best friend, Harvey, who just happens to be a six foot tall invisible white rabbit! Harvey is a collaboration with the Historic Southern Railway Station newly renovated and now being operated as an event space by the Blueslip Winery. This beautiful structure is a perfect backdrop for the simplicity and whimsy of the story of Elwood P. Dowd and his rabbit. Timeless Works was conceived by the Stage Company as a benefit series to help raise funds for our other programs, Shakespeare On The Square, the New Play Festival and our Education and Outreach programs. All the artists donate their time and talents and all funds raised go directly back into the work of the Company.

Tennessee Stage Company: 865-546-4280, www.tennesseestage.com

Arrowmont invites exhibiting artists and their families, members of our community and the public to the 17th Sevier County Biennial Juried Exhibition celebrating the creative talent within Sevier County. The opening reception will be held Friday, January 16 from 6:00 – 8:00 PM in the Sandra J. Blain Galleries and the exhibit will be on display through March 13, 2015. The Gallery is open Monday – Friday 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM and Saturday 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM. Tours are available by reservation, and can be arranged by calling 865-436-5860. The opening reception, gallery and tours are free to the public.

Arrowmont is grateful to Sherry Masters, owner of Art Connections in Asheville, North Carolina, who served as juror this year. With over 140 entries and 103 works of art accepted into the exhibition, this show is a glowing testament to the artistic talent and dedication of Sevier County residents. Of the works accepted, 13 were chosen to receive awards. The artists will be presented their awards on the evening of the gallery reception.

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

Free and open to the public - Opening reception January 16 from 6 to 7:30 p.m.; artists’ talks at 6:30 p.m.

Claudia Dean - I Live in Knoxville Now
Through her watercolors, Dean tries to express Knoxville through images of its places. She begins with a photograph, which allows her to isolate and formalize the image before she draws. The photographs are "snapshots" of places that resonate for her and she wants to express the feeling of intimacy and significance in the image. She acknowledges her love of craft and repetition in the quilt pieces, which are intended to convey feeling or emotion in a more musical way than the representational images. She carries over discoveries and lessons learned in each type of work to the other. Dean was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and studied painting and printmaking at Kansas City Art Institute. She was a craft jeweler in Albuquerque for many years, selling work in craft galleries in the southwest and California. In 2003 Dean moved to Knoxville with her family and returned to two-dimensional artwork.

Mark Evans - En Plein Aire
Evans has always enjoyed taking pictures in national parks, and he likes to bring joy and beauty to the viewer. He entitled this show “En Plein Aire” because just as the invention of oil paints in tubes allowed people to work outdoors in the countryside and get the images they wanted, digital photography has allowed Evans to create the images he wants. He started taking photographs as a child with his father’s old camera. He shot black and white film and did his own darkroom work because he couldn’t afford color slide film. What he really liked was slide shows of people’s trips. Eventually he could afford slide film and he hasn’t been in a darkroom since. He’s been doing digital photography for five years. eBooks of Evans’ national park pictures can be found at marksparks.us.

Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, 2931 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37919. Gallery hours: Monday-Thursday 9AM-5PM, Friday 9AM-4:30PM, Sunday 9AM-1PM. Information: 865-523-4176, www.tvuuc.org