Calendar of Events

Encore Theatrical Company is asking, “What good is sitting alone in your room?” as it prepares to open Cabaret, the next production in its 2015 season. This award-winning musical will begin performances July 17 for three weekends at Walters State Community College in Morristown.

From the creators of the musicals Chicago and New York, New York, the show Cabaret takes audiences into the decadent nightlife of Weimer Germany on the eve of World War II. The story follows the ambitious singer Sally Bowles and the denizens of the notorious Kit Kat Club as they seek fame, fortune, and the rewards of a life on the stage. As the world outside the Kit Kat Klub becomes ever more dangerous, Sally and her fellow performers strive to keep the world inside the club beautiful.

“This show has special meaning for me,” said Micah-Shane Brewer, Encore’s artistic director who is also serving as stage director for this production. “Cabaret was one of the first musicals I directed, almost 14 years ago, and I’m revisiting the piece now with the advantage of time and age. Today, we are still dealing with many of the same issues that we did both in the time period when the play is set as well as the late 1960s when the show was first produced. It’s no wonder the show has endured and remains popular all over the world.”

Cabaret premiered in 1967 and was later turned into an Oscar winning film in 1972 starring Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey. It has seen hundreds of productions around the world and enjoyed numerous revivals on Broadway, most recently this past spring. The last time it was produced in Morristown was in 2001, when Brewer originally directed and starred in the show.

The show opens Friday, July 17 and plays for three weekends through August 2. Performances are Friday and Saturday nights at 8pm and Sunday afternoons at 2pm. There is one additional Saturday matinee on Saturday, August 1 at 2pm. It is recommended for mature audiences only. Tickets can be purchased on Encore’s website at etcplays.org or by calling 423-318-8331.

Tennessee Stage Company presents Shakespeare on the Square 2015: Performances of The Taming of the Shrew and Macbeth alternating Thursday to Sunday evenings at 7:00 PM from July 16 until August 16 on the Market Square Stage. Shakespeare on the Square annually features two of the magnificent plays of Williams Shakespeare, comedies, tragedies and histories, rotated nightly outdoors on Market Square in the heart of downtown Knoxville. A blanket or a lawn chair is all you need to view these performances. While we perform with no admission charge for general seating, we do appreciate your donations – we pass a basket nightly and we suggest a $10 donation per person. Special VIP seating is available on the Square for $15. Shakespeare on the Square productions are performed on a rough replica of the new Globe Theatre in London (a reconstruction of Shakespeare’s original theater. The plays are presented in the timeless style of Elizabethan theatrical presentations.

The Taming of the Shrew: Renowned as Shakespeare’s most boisterous comedy, The Taming of the Shrew is the tale of two young men, the hopeful Lucentio and the worldly Petruchio, and the two sisters they meet in Padua. Lucentio falls in love with Bianca, the apparently ideal younger daughter of the wealthy Baptista Minola. But before they can marry, Bianca’s formidable elder sister, Katherine, must be wed. Petruchio, interested only in the huge dowry, arranges to marry Katherine – against her will – and enters into a battle of the sexes that has endured as one of Shakespeare’s most enjoyable works.
July 16, 18, 24, 26, 30, Aug. 1, 7, 9, 13, 15 - 7:00 pm nightly outdoors on Market Square

Macbeth: One of the great Shakespearean tragedies, Macbeth is a dark and bloody drama of ambition, murder, guilt, and revenge. Prompted by the prophecies of three mysterious witches and goaded by his ambitious wife, the Scottish thane Macbeth murders Duncan, King of Scotland, in order to succeed him on the throne. This foul deed soon entangles the conscience-stricken nobleman in a web of treachery, deceit, and more murders, which ultimately spells his doom. Set amid the gloomy castles and lonely heaths of medieval Scotland, Macbeth paints a striking dramatic portrait of a man of honor and integrity destroyed by a fatal character flaw and the tortures of a guilty imagination.
July 17, 19, 23, 25, 31, Aug. 2, 6, 8, 14, 16 - 7:00 pm nightly outdoors on Market Square

Macbeth is directed by Greg Congleton with Taming of the Shrew directed by Jennifer Alldredge and Tom Parkhill. The Tennessee Stage Company encourages our audiences to spend an evening on the Square: do a little shopping, have a nice dinner, see the play and maybe stop by a pub afterward. All of this and more is available on Market Square nightly. So come early and see the Square!

Tennessee Stage Company P.O. Box 1186 Knoxville, TN 37901. Information: 865-546-4280, tennesseestage@comcast.net, or www.tennesseestage.com

This is a group show by local artists who are members of the Tennessee Artists Association featuring a variety of works in pastels, watercolors, oils, acrylics and mixed media.

Hours: Monday thru Friday, 9 AM to 4PM
Westminster Presbyterian Church's Schilling Gallery, 6500 S Northshore Dr, Knoxville, TN 37919. Info: (865) 584-3957

Tennessee Artists Association: www.tnartists.org

The Knoxville Watercolor Society will exhibit recent works from its members. Opening reception Saturday June 27, 2015 7:00 – 9:00 and features Gallery Talk at 6:30. For more information about the Knoxville Watercolor Society, membership requirements and to view members' art works go to www.knxvillewatercolorsociety.com.

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

The American Museum of Science & Energy will open Nikon Small World, a traveling exhibit showcasing 20 award winning photomicrographs from the 40th annual Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition. This year’s winner is Rogelio Moreno of Panama for capturing a rarely seen image of a rotifer’s open mouth interior and heart-shaped corona. A computer system programmer by occupation, Moreno is a self-taught microscopist whose photomicrograph serves to show just how close the beauty and wonder of the micro-world truly is - not just for scientists, but anyone willing to open their eyes and look for it. Moreno is recognized along with over 80 other winners from around the world for excellence in photomicrography. Winners from Italy, the United States, Austria, Spain and Australia also ranked in the top ten, for exceptional images selected based on both artistic quality and masterful scientific technique.

“Since the competition began 40 years ago, the caliber in quality and range of subject matter of the images, is matched only by the scientists and photographers who submit them,” said Eric Flem, Communications Manager, Nikon Instruments. “So much has changed in science and technology in the past forty years, opening the door for more and more scientists and artists alike to capture and share their stunning images with the world. A look at our gallery is like a time capsule of the advancements made in the last four decades and truly shows the legacy a Nikon Small World continues to build.”

Rogelio Moreno is a first-time first-place winner of the Small World competition, though he has placed each time he has entered the contest starting three years ago. That success is a testament to his incredible skill, as he only began taking photomicrographs in 2009.

Judges awarded Moreno’s shot of a rotifer caught open-mouthed and facing the camera – for its exemplary technique. Capturing the perfect moment when the rotifer opened its mouth for the camera required extreme patience from Moreno, who watched for hours waiting for his opportunity. With the rotifer in constant motion, he utilized the flash to freeze the movement as soon as the mouth opened – still leaving him with only a one- or two-second window to take the photo, and possibly only one shot to get it right. He also used differential interference contrast (DIC) to enhance the coloration in unstained, transparent samples, and to provide a more detailed image of the rotifer.

“When you see that movement, you fall in love. I thought - wow, that is amazing. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. This is something very, very beautiful,” said Moreno of his winning image. “I hope now it can inspire others as much as it has inspired me – to learn about science, to look closely and notice something truly amazing.”

As the 2014 winner, Moreno joins the ranks of 36 other photomicrographers, artists and scientists from all over the world who have taken the top prize. This year’s competition received over 1,200 entries from more than 79 countries around the world. Top images from the 2014 Nikon Small World Competition will be exhibited in a full-color calendar and through a national museum tour. For additional information, please visit www.nikonsmallworld.com, or follow the conversation on Facebook and Twitter @NikonSmallWorld.

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

A new exhibition featuring botanical photographs by retired University of Tennessee, Knoxville, botany professor Alan S. Heilman, opens at UT's McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture. "Through the Lens: Botanical Photography of Alan S. Heilman" explores the art and science of 60-plus years of Heilman’s award-winning botanical photography of leaves, buds, flowers, fruits, seeds, mosses, lichens, cones, and bark of plants native to or grown in the East Tennessee region. The 55 photographs on view include images of plants from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the UT Gardens on the Agriculture Campus, and highlight Heilman's fascination with color, texture and plant structure.

"Images in the exhibit are products of a lifelong scientist who became an artist painting through a lens," said exhibition curator Gary Crites, McClung Museum curator of paleoethnobotany. "The exhibit offers an exciting blend of plant structure, which has been at the core of Heilman's decades as a student, educator and advocate for habitat appreciation and protection, and the artist's eye for color, form and function in nature." Highlights of "Through the Lens" include the diversity of plant species, types and parts photographed. There are veterans of various photograph competitions, including regional and national award winners. A sunflower image in the exhibit was awarded first place in the Natural World Photographic Competition held at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in 1996.

Heilman began his career as a science photographer in the 1940s, when he used his Kodak Recomar 33 and a darkroom in his family's basement to experiment with making microscopic enlargements of dissected plants. He continued to take thousands of photographs of plants in the field and under the microscope over the next decades, amassing an archive of images, many of which are available today as digitized color-film photographs housed at the UT Libraries. They can be viewed at http://kiva.lib.utk.edu/heilman.

The exhibition includes prints produced from digital files held by UT Libraries, as well as prints gifted by Heilman to the UT Gardens.

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

For the fifth year, the East Tennessee Historical Society (ETHS) is pleased to announce its participation in Blue Star Museums to offer free museum admission to the nation’s active duty military personnel and their immediate families, as well as National Guard and Reserves, from Memorial Day through Labor Day 2015. Blue Star Museums is a collaboration between the National Endowment for the Arts, Blue Star Families, the Department of Defense, and 2,000 other museums across America. Leadership support has been provided by MetLife Foundation through Blue Star Families. The program provides families an opportunity to enjoy the nation's cultural heritage and learn more about their new communities after completing a military move. The complete list of participating museums is available at www.arts.gov/bluestarmuseums.

“As the Volunteer State, Tennesseans are always among the first to respond to our country’s call,” says Cherel Henderson, ETHS executive director. “The Blue Star Museums is a wonderful way for us to give back and to say thank you for your service and sacrifice.”

This year, more than 2,000 (and counting) museums in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and American Samoa are taking part in the initiative. Museums are welcome to join Blue Star Museums throughout the summer. This year’s Blue Star Museums represent not just fine arts museums, but also science, history, and children’s museums, and nature centers.

About Blue Star Museums
Blue Star Museums is a collaboration among the National Endowment for the Arts, Blue Star Families, the Department of Defense, and more than 2,000 museums across America. The program runs from Memorial Day, May 25, 2015 through Labor Day, September 7, 2015.

The free admission program is available to any bearer of a Geneva Convention common access card (CAC), a DD Form 1173 ID card, or a DD Form 1173-1 ID card, which includes active duty U.S. military - Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, as well as members of the National Guard and Reserve, U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, NOAA Commissioned Corps - and up to five family members. Please see the chart of the acceptable IDs (PDF). Some special or limited-time museum exhibits may not be included in this free admission program. For questions on particular exhibits or museums, please contact the museum directly. To find out which museums are participating, visit www.arts.gov/bluestarmuseums. The site includes a list of participating museums and a map to help with visit planning.

East Tennessee Historical Society, 601 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. Museum hours: Monday-Friday: 9AM-4PM, Saturday: 10AM-4PM, Sunday: 1-5PM. Library: Monday-Tuesday: 9AM-8:30PM, Wednesday-Friday: 9AM-5:30PM, Saturday: 9AM-5PM, Sunday 1-5PM. Information: 865-215-8824, www.easttnhistory.org

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts invites the public to the Opening Reception of the 2015 Instructor Exhibition, June 5, 2015, 7:00 to 9:00 pm in the Sandra J. Blain Gallery.

The Exhibition showcases the work of over 100 Arrowmont instructors who are teaching during the 2015 workshop season. Both the opening reception and the exhibition are free and open to the public. Community members are encouraged to attend with their family and friends.

“The Instructor Exhibition is an annual Arrowmont tradition and offers the work of nationally and internationally recognized artists who make up Arrowmont’s faculty. They come from across the globe to share skills and ideas, foster new thinking, artistic growth and creative camaraderie. We are pleased to provide the community with the opportunity to view these outstanding works of art,” Bill May, Arrowmont Executive Director said.

The exhibit features a wide range of diverse media including woodworking, glass, ceramics, painting, fiber and textile work, metals, jewelry, book arts, photography and printmaking. The show celebrates Arrowmont’s instructors and functions as an educational tool, demonstrating the skills and techniques that the instructors focus on in their workshops.

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts is a national arts education center. The School offers weekend, one- and two-week workshops for the beginner to advanced artist, taught by national and international practicing studio artists and university faculty. Students work and learn in professionally equipped studios on a 14-acre residential campus in Gatlinburg, TN. Students are encouraged to take advantage of the workshop immersion by registering for on campus housing and meals offered by Arrowmont.

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, 556 Parkway, Gatlinburg, TN 37738. Gallery hours: M-F 9AM-5PM, Sa-Su 10AM-4PM. Information: 865-436-5860, www.arrowmont.org

New in the Bearden Art District! Please join us for refreshments, live music, drawings to win art prints, and more! Meet Kay List, artist/owner and Larry S. Cole, artist, at the opening on May 15, 5-9 PM.

View 22 of Kay List's original oil paintings as well as numerous framed and unframed archival quality prints and note cards with images of her paintings. Kay works in a wide range of subject matter so the show is a sampling of a few of them. The show features abstracts, historical barns, nautical, whimsical, animals, flowers and landscapes.

Gallery hours: Tues-Thurs 10-5, Fri-Sat 10-6

Envision Art Gallery, 4050 Sutherland Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37919. Information: 865-438-4154, www.kaylistart.com

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

Saturdays, 9:00 AM - 2:00 PM and Wednesdays 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM

The Market Square Farmers’ Market is an open-air farmers’ market located on Market Square in the heart of downtown Knoxville and is celebrating its 12th season this year. The MSFM is a producer only market; everything is either made or grown by the vendor in our East Tennessee region. Products vary by the season and include ornamental plants, produce, dairy, eggs, honey, herbs, meat, baked goods, jams/jellies, coffee, & artisan crafts. With interactive fountains, delicious local food and entertainment, as well as tasty lunch options from some of Knoxville’s best food trucks, the MSFM is a perfect family destination.

In addition to locally-grown produce, local food products, handmade crafts, nursery plants, and mobile food trucks, shoppers at the 2015 Market Square Farmers’ Market will also find:

“VEGGIE VALET” SERVICE: Shoppers are invited to drop off their market purchases with a volunteer at the Wall Avenue info booth while they bring their vehicle around to pick up.

DOG-FREE ZONES: Due to health and safety concerns for shoppers, vendors, and pets, pets are prohibited in the aisle between vendors on Market Square and Market Street.

2015-2016 EAST TENNESSEE LOCAL FOOD GUIDE: Copies of the 2015-2016 edition of the East Tennessee Local Food Guide will be available at the Market Square Farmers’ Market information booth on the corner of Union and Market.

We look forward to seeing you at the 2015 Market Square Farmers’ Market!

Location: Market Square Knoxville, TN 37902. http://marketsquarefarmersmarket.org/

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.