Calendar of Events

By Doug Stone. The time: 1968. The place: a Tupperware party. 5 women with concealed home lives drink a little too much alcohol and hilarity ensues. This play is both hysterical and tremendously touching. One critic wrote, "a knock-down, drag out, soul baring, bra-burning frenzy of self-discovery."

"A Raucous Comedy!" - Associated Press
"It makes its audiences loopy with giddiness." - theatremania.com

Showtimes: Thu/Fri/Sat @ 8:00 pm and Sun @ 3:00 pm

Theatre Knoxville Downtown, 319 North Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37917. Information & tickets: 865-544-1999, www.theatreknoxville.com

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

The Athens Area Council for the Arts announces Me and the Gazelle showing work by Angela Dittmar Posey, regional artist and adjunct professor of art at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Angela Dittmar Posey earned a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and a Master of Fine Art in Studio Art from the City University of New York, Hunter College. During her Masters studies, Posey studied at University College London, The Slade School of Fine Art, in London, England. Posey executes various types of work, from paintings to performances, which solicit moments of self-awareness. She teaches Painting, Drawing, and General Education courses at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

The exhibit reception is Friday, July 17, 2015 from 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. Posey will be on hand to informally discuss her art. The reception will include light refreshments and is free and open to the public. After the reception, AACA’s Youth Theatre Workshop will present Shaking Up Shakespeare at 7:30 pm in the Sue E. Trotter Theatre. This event is also free and open to the public.

Athens Area Council for the Arts: 320 North White Street, Athens, TN, 37303. Hours: M-F 10-5. Info: 423-745-8781, www.athensartscouncil.org

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

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.

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