Calendar of Events

Every Thursday - enjoy story time in the Gardens. This free program includes garden stories, music, coloring, and sprinkler time. Get the weekly e-mails: dstowell@utk.edu

UT Gardens, 252 Ellington Plant Sciences Bldg, 2431 Joe Johnson Drive, Knoxville, TN 37996. Information: (865) 974-8265, http://utgardens.tennessee.edu/

The Town of Farragut Arts Council presents Carol Erikson as the featured artist for May and June. Located at the Farragut Town Hall, the exhibit highlights her photographic art, titled "Images that Inspire."

A New Jersey native, Erikson's exhibit features a mix of customer favorites and her newer work, including birds in South Texas, the Tybee Island lighthouse, and angel statuary from cemeteries in Savannah and Ohio. Her photography focuses on local nature images, especially waterfalls, wildflowers, old barns and landscapes. Mainly self-taught, Erikson has taken non-credit photography and editing courses at the University of Tennessee. A Rutgers University and University of North Carolina graduate, she works as an analytical project manager in Oak Ridge, supporting the ongoing decontamination and decommissioning work on the Oak Ridge reservation.

Each month, the work of an artist or group of artists is featured in specially designed cases on the second floor of the rotunda in the Farragut Town Hall. 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.

Showing work by Athens’ Mayfield Dairy entrepreneur, Goldie Mayfield. The exhibit is scheduled at The Arts Center, 320 North White Street, Athens, Tennessee. AACA invites community members with original work by Goldie Mayfield to loan pieces to this special exhibit. Goldie Mayfield, one of Athens’ most prolific local artists, is among the women fundamental in bringing the visual arts to our community by teaching and supporting other local artists and by starting our Community Artist’s League. Her work was often featured in Mayfield Dairy’s Christmas cards in the 1980s and early 1990s. She used various mediums and is known for her expert use of watercolor.

Goldie was known for graciously giving away her work to friends and family. Community members who loan work to the exhibit will be duly credited as donors.

The exhibit reception is Friday, May 22, 2015 from 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. Mayfield’s friends and family will be on hand to informally discuss her art. The reception will include light refreshments and is free and open to the public.

Athens Area Council for the Arts, 320 North White Street | Athens, TN 37303. Info: 423.745.8781 or www.athensartscouncil.org

Join us when our new shows open!
"A Life’s Work: Phyllis Wichner" will include collages, prints, and batiks in the Long Gallery and "Family Ties: Kniseley & Van Wyk" will be composed of paintings by Father & Daughter, Ralph Kniseley and Susan Van Wyk.

Opening reception Saturday, May 9 from 7 to 9 PM. A Gallery Talk will be held at 6:30 PM.

Oak Ridge Art Center, 201 Badger Avenue, Oak Ridge, TN 37830. Hours: Tu-F 9-5, Sa-M 1-4. Information: 865-482-1441, www.oakridgeartcenter.org

This exhibition is the first major U.S. one-person presentation of Evan Roth’s pioneering multi-faceted and interactive installations, custom software, prints, sculptures and websites. Roth, a self-professed “hacktivist” artist, is interested in uses of technology in popular culture and the urban environment. He inventively combines elements from the disparate worlds of computer programming and street culture. Evan Roth//Intellectual Property Donor offers a unique opportunity to understand the artist’s approach from analysis and archiving to experimentation through to the final—and in the artist’s mind— most important step, opening it up to the world for participation. Blurring the line between artist and hacker, the exhibition challenges gallery visitors to consider how everyday life intersects with virtual reality and how viral media can become fine art.

Evan Roth is an American artist based in Paris. His notable pieces include Graffiti Taxonomy, Multi Touch, EyeWriter, Internet Cache Portraits. He also collaborated with Jay-Z on the first open source rap video. Roth worked at the Eyebeam OpenLab, an open source creative technology lab for the public domain as a Research and Development Fellow from 2005 to 2006 and was a Senior Fellow there from 2006 to 2007. Evan Roth co-founded the Graffiti Research Lab in 2005 and the Free Art and Technology Lab (FAT Lab), an arts and free culture collective, in 2007. Born in 1978 in Okemos, Michigan, Roth currently lives in Paris with his wife and daughter where he maintains a studio and is represented by XPO 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

The City of Knoxville and the Central Business Improvement District launches the 2015 Concerts on the Square on downtown’s historic Market Square. All concerts are FREE. The series consists of Jazz Tuesdays (through August 25) and Variety Thursdays (through June 25). Concert events will take place from 7-9 p.m. (unless otherwise noted in the full schedule) on consecutive Thursdays and will cover a number of genres from classical music to Southern rock to swing and Americana.

Here is the schedule for Variety Thursdays:

May 7: Knoxville Symphony Chamber Orchestra (7:30 p.m.)
May 14: Homemade Wine
May 21: FourKast
May 28: Jazz Time Swing Ensemble
June 4: The Coveralls
June 11: Old City Buskers
June 18: Knoxville’s Finest Band
June 25: Kelsey’s Woods

All concerts are free.

Concert goers are invited to bring chairs or blankets to sit on the Square or enjoy the shows with food and drink from the patios of surrounding restaurants.

To stay updated on the bands and on any cancellations due to the weather please check out the Special Events Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/CityofKnoxvilleSpecialEvents?fref=ts

Inna Nasonova Knox was born in Kazan, Russia and came to the United States in the year 2000. Her paintings have a rich sense of color and reflect her Russian heritage as well as her Tennessee surroundings and recent travels.

Westminster Presbyterian Church, 6500 Northshore Drive, Knoxville. Information: 865-584-3957, www.wpcknox.org
Hours: Monday thru Friday, 9 AM to 4PM

The Knoxville Watercolor Society will have an all water media exhibit at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church Gallery. A reception will be held on Friday, May 8th from 6:00 pm. until 7:30 pm. Included in the reception will be artist talks beginning at 6:30 pm. This event is free and open to the public.

The Knoxville Watercolor Society began in 1963, when a group of Knoxville artists was invited by the late Kermit (Buck) Ewing, Head of the University of Tennessee Art Department, to participate in an exhibition of watercolor paintings at the University's McClung Museum. During the opening reception, Mr. Ewing noted that the Knoxville area did not have an organization for artists who share a common interest in painting in aqueous media. He suggested that those artists exhibiting in the McClung show could be the nucleus for such an association. From that suggestion, the Knoxville Watercolor Society began, with Laura Bagwell serving as the first president. The purpose of the organization is to educate the members as well as the community about watercolor as a significant art form. New artists are invited to apply for membership, determined by a jury process, and can find complete details on the Knoxville Watercolor Society website: www.knxvillewatercolorsociety.com

Knoxville Watercolor Society members also exhibit with the Tennessee Watercolor Society, other state watercolor organizations, the Southern Watercolor Society, Watercolor USA and the American Watercolor Society and consistently win regional, state and national awards. Annually, the KWS also provides a scholarship for a University of Tennessee student who is majoring in watercolor painting, donates to the UT Ewing Gallery and maintains membership in the Arts and Cultural Alliance of Greater Knoxville. The organization has also provided grants to the Arts Council of Greater Knoxville, the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Tennessee Resource Center and the Tennessee Art Association High School Scholarship program.

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

Two receptions: May 1, 5-9 PM at the UT Downtown Gallery and June 5, 5-9PM at the UT Downtown Gallery

Richard J. LeFevre’s Civil War Series presents the history of the War Between the States (1861 – 1865) through works on paper that depict 32 of the war’s most significant battles. By combining his love of history and his skill as an illustrator, LeFevre used inventive mixed-media techniques to create these powerful images inspired by his personal investigation into that terrible and definitive era. He sought to authenticate the audience experience by incorporating images from period publications such as Harper’s Weekly and Leslie’s Illustrated. Century-old woodcut engravings, made from sketches by Civil War artists who were present at the battles, were flash-framed onto paper with a copier. They were further manipulated with watercolor, pencil, and collage techniques. Some contain photographic tintype images of prominent battle figures. The Civil War Series, which took LeFevre four years to complete, portrays the Civil War without bias toward the Union or the Confederacy.

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC! 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

The Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House in April 1865 may have legally ended the Civil War, but it did not end East Tennessee’s bitter internal war. As Union and Confederate veterans returned home, fierce partisanship and settling of old scores often continued. Some Confederates, feeling unwelcome in their own homeland, left the region, many never to return. Yet, as the months and years passed, the vast majority on each side began to work together to mend their differences and to rebuild their war-ravaged lives and communities. The new exhibit Memories of the Blue and Gray: The Civil War in East Tennessee at 150 will explore early attempts at reconciliation and how we as East Tennesseans continue to remember the Civil War 150 years later.

The exhibition will feature more than 125 artifacts from the collections of ETHS, Gerald and Sandra Augustus, Drs. Anthony and Jill Hodges, and others, highlighting reconstruction, reunions, the Sultana disaster, cemeteries and monuments, commemorative art, educational institutions, collecting of artifacts and memorabilia, and state and local preservation efforts. Clothing varying from period gowns to a Ku Klux Klan uniform to a Confederate reunion frock coat will be on display, alongside a brush believed carried by a soldier who survived the explosion and sinking of the Sultana, a piece of furniture made by the former slave Lewis Buckner, and the diaries of Ellen Renshaw House. Featured Civil War Reunion memorabilia will range from 1881 to 2013 with the 150th anniversary of the battle of Fort Sanders. The “Looking Back” Civil War artifact documentation program of the Tennessee State Library and Archives will be represented with an odd-shaped shoe, fashioned by the Union for a Confederate soldier from Grainger County who lost half his foot in the Battle of Franklin. In addition to artifacts, the exhibition will include a video of Civil War collectors Gerald and Sandra Augustus and a slide show highlighting East Tennessee’s Civil War cemeteries and monuments.

The exhibition is presented in conjunction with the Blue & Gray Reunion and Freedom Jubilee to be held in Knoxville, April 30-May 3, 2015. Four days of special programming highlighting Knoxville and the region’s Civil War history begins with the state's Civil War Sesquicentennial Signature Event with lectures by nationally recognized speakers, a performance by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Civil War artifact documentation by the Tennessee State Library and Archives, student and teacher programs, a Blue & Gray Dinner, and more. Weekend activities include music, vintage baseball games, bus tours to historic homes, forts, and cemeteries, living history, heritage groups, exhibits, a service of remembrance, a Peace Jubilee, fireworks, and more. For more information on the programs of the Blue & Gray Reunion and Freedom Jubilee, please visit www.eastTNhistory.org/BlueGray.

The Museum of East Tennessee History is open 9:00 am to 4:00 pm, Monday through Friday; 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, Saturday; and 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm, Sunday. Museum Admission is $5.00 for adults, $4.00 for seniors, and FREE for children under 16. Each Sunday admission is FREE to all and ETHS members always receive FREE admission. The Museum is located in the East Tennessee History Center, 601 South Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37901. For more information about booking the exhibition, scheduling a school tour, or visiting the museum, call (865) 215-8824, email eths@eastTNhistory.org, or visit www.easttnhistory.org.

The New Harvest Park Farmers Market is open every Thursday during season - April to November - from 3 to 6 p.m. at New Harvest Park located at 2447 New Harvest Boulevard (just past the Target shopping center on Washington Pike). In addition to the weekly market, the park features a splash pad, playground and quarter mile walking trail.

The market features locally grown produce, meats, artisan food products, plants, herbs, flowers, crafts and much more! http://knoxcounty.org/farmersmarket/

Where: Downtown Knoxville and McGhee Tyson Airport
When: April 4, 2014-March 20, 2015
How Much: Free

Art comes in all shapes and sizes. We invite you to experience some of the larger variety with Art in Public Places, an annual event featuring large-scale outdoor sculptures in Knoxville’s downtown public spaces and also at McGhee Tyson Airport. These larger scale pieces are thought provoking and awe-inspiring.

By displaying these works outdoors, we celebrate not only the art of sculpture but Knoxville’s natural beauty during this year-round outdoor exhibition.

The exhibition presently on view, an interesting and inspirational collection of works by sculptors from across the nation, was selected and awarded by noted sculptor Kenneth M. Thompson. Kenneth holds a Master of Liberal Studies in Sculpture from the University of Toledo and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from Siena Heights College, in Adrian, MI. While many of his sculptures are in Ohio and Michigan, Thompson’s work can be seen in other states. He has done 41 pieces of public sculpture across the country. Ken has been making sculpture for over thirty years out of his car-dealership-turned-studio in Blissfield, Michigan. From this facility he operates Flatlanders Sculpture Supply and Art Galleries as well as Midwest Sculpture Initiative, which provides exhibitions that feature outdoor sculpture. Fourteen shows are planned for next year, he says. He also serves or has served on numerous arts-oriented boards.

The Art in Public Places Knoxville program, the 2015-2016 year being its 9th is a featured presentation of Dogwood Arts in partnership with the City of Knoxville Public Art Committee. The 2014-2015 Art in Public Places Knoxville Co-Chairs are Bart Watkins and Jason Brown.

To purchase a sculpture, please call [865] 637.4561.

Dogwood Arts: 865-637-4561 www.dogwoodarts.com