Calendar of Events

History, Food, & Fun! Enhance your time in Historic Downtown with Knoxville’s Award Winning, Original Tour! Enjoy a complete Knoxville experience in just a few hours – enjoy tastings of specially selected dishes from some of Knoxville’s best new and iconic restaurants featuring local, regional, Southern & Appalachian cuisine; add pairings of beer from local and craft breweries, wine flights, craft cocktails, Tennessee whiskey, or even moonshine; hear the history of the city and notable buildings. A must for locals and visitors!

Reservations Required. Purchase Tickets at www.knoxvillefoodtours.com or call 865-201-7270.

Current University of Tennessee Department of English Writer-in-Residence William Wright will be reading from and discussing his work on February 22. The event is part of the university’s Writers in the Library readings series. The public is invited to this free reading and performance at 7 p.m. in the Lindsay Young Auditorium of UT’s John C. Hodges Library.

William Wright is author of five books of poetry, most recently Tree Heresies (Mercer University Press, 2015) and the collaborative collection Creeks of the Upper South, with Amy Wright (jointly published by Jacar Press and Unicorn Press). Wright is also author of five chapbooks and editor or co-editor of eleven editions, including all volumes of The Southern Poetry Anthology (Texas Review Press), Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry (University of South Carolina Press, 2016), and two books centered on the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins (Clemson University Press and Liverpool University Press, 2016). His most recent work appears in Kenyon Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Oxford American.

Visit library.utk.edu/writers for a complete schedule of Writers in the Library readings for the 2016 spring semester. Writers in the Library is sponsored by the UT Libraries and the Creative Writing Program in association with the John C. Hodges Better English Fund. For more information contact Christopher Hebert, Jack E. Reese Writer-in-Residence at the UT Libraries (chebert3@utk.edu).

Follow us at: www.facebook.com/Writers.in.the.Library or twitter.com/utklibwriters

Oak Ridge Playhouse is seeks a cast of 20-25 Singer/Actors who move well/dance and have strong comic skills.
Saturday, February 20 at 2:00 PM & Monday February 22 at 6:30 PM.

Bring sheet music for 16 bars of a prepared Broadway-style song. Please dress or bring change of clothes for movement. Cold reading from script. Please bring recent photo or headshot. Be prepared to provide schedule conflicts March 7 - May 8

Please enter at the Green Room door at the rear of the building off the parking lot on Tennessee Avenue.

Performances are April 22 - May 8 and rehearsals begin March 7 (There will be rehearsals during Spring Break.)

This funny show with the funny name is a hilarious side-splitting take on greed, love, revolution - and musicals! Set in a time when water is worth its weight in gold, a Gotham-like city is facing a 20-year drought that leads to a government-enforced ban on private toilets. As a result, the citizens must use public amenities, regulated by a single malevolent company that profits by charging admission for one of humanity's most basic needs. But those who fail to pay are sentenced to a dreaded penal colony. A hero decides he's had enough, and plans a revolution to lead them all to freedom! An irreverently humorous satire in which no one is safe from scrutiny.

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

An off-Broadway hit comedy-drama by Jack Heifner. The story follows three young girls as they journey from high school in the 1960s to college days and beyond in this sharply sad and funny play. Tickets: 423-586-9260.

Performed at Rose Center, 442 West Second North St., Morristown, TN, 37814. www.rosecenter.org

Athens Community Theatre presents Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! February 18 - 28, 2016 in the Sue E. Trotter Theater at The Arts Center in Athens, TN.

Rodgers & Hammerstein's first collaboration remains, in many ways, their most innovative having set the standards and established the rules of musical theatre still being followed today. Set in a Western Indian Territory just after the turn of the century, the high–spirited rivalry between the local farmers and cowboys provides the colorful background against which Curly, a handsome cowboy, and Laurey, a winsome farm girl, play out their love story. Although the road to true love never runs smooth, with these two headstrong romantics holding the reins, love's journey is as bumpy as a surrey ride down a country road. That they will succeed in making a new life together we have no doubt, and that this new life will begin in a brand–new state provides the ultimate climax to the triumphant Oklahoma!

Oklahoma! is directed by recent Steel Magnolias star and ACT veteran director, Melonie Carideo, with music direction by AACA Executive Director Emeritus, Ellen Kimball, and choreography by Pippin choreographer, Angie Hudson .The score is played by a live orchestra led by Ellen Kimball.

Performances are February 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, and 27 at 7:00pm and February 21 and 28 at 2:00pm. Tickets for all performances are $15 for adults, $8 for students. Tickets are available online at athensartscouncil.org, by phone at 423-745-8781, or in person at The Arts Center, 320 N. White St., Athens, Tennessee. For more information, contact The Arts Center at 423-745-8781.
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Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts is exhibiting an interactive installation Working Memory, by Chalet Comellas in the Geoffrey A. Wolpert Gallery. A closing reception will be held Friday, March 11th from 6-8pm. Admission is free and the community is encouraged to attend with their friends and family.

Working Memory is an interactive installation composed of a quilt-like structure made of fabric, ephemera, paintings and sound. The exhibit creates narratives from memories by reinventing materials such as clothing, textiles and found objects. The viewer can shift and change the work to construct new narratives.

Chalet Comellas is an interdisciplinary artist who works in painting, sculpture, fiber art, video and new-media installation. Chalet is an Assistant Art Professor at Florida State University where she received her Master of Fine Arts in 2012. She has performed and exhibited her work in museums, art fairs and galleries including In Light Richmond, hosted by 1708 Gallery in Richmond, VA (2014), Grace Exhibition Space in Brooklyn, New York (2013) and Fountain Art Fair in Miami (2012). Chalet has participated in several public art projects in Florida including an outdoor video installation commissioned by the Tampa Museum of Art during Art Basel Miami (2006). For more information, visit her website at www.chaletcomellas.com.

Gallery hours are Monday - Friday 9am - 5pm and Saturday 10am - 4pm. Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, 556 Parkway, Gatlinburg, TN 37738. Information: 865-436-5860, www.arrowmont.org

Edward S. Albers, Jr. has a unique way of capturing travel memories. Rather than the traditional camera, he travels with paints, a sketchbook, and a folding stool and often skips shopping for a scenic spot and an hour of sketching. Visitors to the Museum of East Tennessee History can vicariously travel the world with Bud Albers through a selection of his most interesting and beautiful paintings, such as Dublin Doorway, Saint Basil’s Cathedral, Russia, and Hong Kong Harbor from Victoria. Local pieces include a painting of Bud’s grandfather Andrew J. Albers, seated in his carriage and holding his small son, Edward S. Albers, Sr., who became Bud’s father. In the background is the family’s beautiful home that stood on the corner of Market and Locust, until torn down to make way for the present Medical Arts Building. The painting reproduces the scene from an old photograph. The exhibition, Bud Albers Recollections: Works from Life and Travels, is on view in the Bilo Nelson Auditorium of the East Tennessee History Center.

Albers is a retired businessman, philanthropist, and artist, whose family is deeply rooted in Knoxville and East Tennessee. He has a strong interest in history, and his vision was instrumental in the creation of the Museum of East Tennessee History.

East Tennessee Historical Society, 601 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. Museum hours: M-F 9-4, Sa 10-4, Su 1-5. Information: 865-215-8824, www.easttnhistory.org

Want to learn a new language in the New Year? Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in Vonore, TN is offering a beginning and an advance beginner Cherokee language class on the following Mondays, February 8, 15, 22, 29, 2016 from 6:30 – 9 p.m. The cost of the class is $40 for all four evenings. The class will be taught by Shirley Oswalt and Mary Brown who are members of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indian.

Anyone interested in taking this class should contact the museum to reserve your space. In case of inclement weather please be sure to call ahead first.

Sequoyah Birthplace Museum, 576 Hwy 360, Vonore, TN 37885. Hours: M-Sa 9-5, Su 12-5. Information: 423-884-6246, www.sequoyahmuseum.org

Artist: Jeffrey Morton
Reception: Monday, February 8 (3:00pm – 5:00pm)

Exhibition Statement:
If place, according to art critic Lucy Lippard, is the latitudinal and longitudinal map of a persons life, then my art has literally helped me find a home. As a transplant from the Northeast Untied Stages to Southeastern Tennessee, now fifteen years ago, my art has taught me about the significance of being grounded in a place, a specific location. Unique to the American South is the Kudzu plant that thrives in a climate different from its home. In Japan, Kudzu is a decorative plant with a pretty purple flower; however, in its new location, Kudzu is used to fight erosion. At first I thought that this foreign plant doesn’t belong here, and neither do I. But after crawling through the topography of Signal Mountain, TN and navigating the invasive vine, making drawings and paintings from it, I have learned to love the strange plant and the landscape of my adopted home. Simply put, my art argues that geography matters, and even an undesired geography, can shape and mold human life. – Jeffrey Morton

The exhibit is free. Hardin Valley Campus of Pellissippi State: 10915 Hardin Valley Road, Knoxville, TN 37932. Bagwell Center Gallery hours: M-F 10-6:30. Information: 865-694-6405, www.pstcc.edu/arts

Opening reception Feb. 12 from 6 to 7:30 p.m.; artists’ talks at 6:30 p.m.

Heather Hartman is interested in the constant flux of the visual world, and our temporary space within it. Through common distortions of light, shadow and atmosphere the familiar can become abstracted and unfamiliar. Thus -- for a fleeting moment -- the mundane is transformed into the sublime. Using a material-driven painting process, her work explores how these phenomena affect her sense of perception and physical location. She uses reductive abstraction to synthesize memories, found images and photographs of her surroundings into multilayered compositions. She has developed a process that involves painting on layers of paper and translucent polyester mesh, allowing her to explore illusionism both in paint and in actual space. The resulting images are a combination of blurry, atmospheric forms and distorted shadows that lie beneath washes of color, and intense passages of light. http://heatherhartmanart.com

Jessica Payne - This series of paintings developed after Payne took three years off from painting to focus on art journaling. After enrolling in a number of online technique courses, she found that she most enjoyed learning about and playing with layering. In her current work, Jessica uses bold color and extensive layering to create depth and mystery. She builds up many layers of paint by constantly painting over her work while leaving some of the previous layers exposed, creating windows or portals to other worlds. She uses glitter, mica flakes and iridescent paint to catch the light and allow the painting to dramatically change, depending upon the light source. Her approach to her art is very spontaneous and playful and draws inspiration from color and imagery found in the garden and forest surrounding her house. www.JessicaPayneArt.com

Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, 2931 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37919. Gallery hours: 10 AM – 5 PM, Monday through Thursday and 10 AM – 1 PM, Sunday. Information: 865-523-4176, www.tvuuc.org

“Faith, Family, and Friends” is the featured exhibit for February at Rose Center in Morristown. From Africa to Appalachia Foundation for Education and the Arts organized the exhibit and an opening reception and celebration that will be held at 2 PM on Sunday, February 7. The reception and program will be a Tribute to the Art and Life of Sammie Nicely (1947-2015). A moving musical program featuring choirs, instrumentalists, vocalists and more is being coordinated by Yolanda Treece. Special guests will share their thoughts on how important Faith, Family and Friends were to Sammie. Blues great Wallace Coleman will close the program.

The Rose Center, 442 West Second North St., Morristown, TN, 37814. Hours: M-F 9-5. Information: 423-581-4330, www.rosecenter.org

Blount County Public Library has been selected to be one of nine sites in the nation to host Discover Earth: Our Changing Planet, a national traveling exhibition exploring the fascinating world of earth science.
Discover Earth: Our Changing Planet explores Earth’s ever-changing physical and biological systems using stunning media and interactive experiences. Earth science topics in the exhibit include topics such as short and long-term time changes, the differences between weather and climate, and what it means to be a steward of our amazing planet.

The exhibition will be displayed at the library from February 3 through April 29. Blount County Public Library will also offer a related series of public events to bring STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programming to children, teens and adults.

The Grand Opening and kick-off event will be on Saturday, February 6, at 2 p.m. Mike Maslona, Great Smoky Mountains National Park Ranger, will give a presentation “National Park Service – 100 Years Old” describing the mission of the National Park Service, in its 100th anniversary year, to conserve over 400 diverse park units throughout the United States and their rich natural and cultural history while also providing for their enjoyment unimpaired for future generations.
Among other presentations during the exhibit will include “Reporting the Weather” by WATE-TV meteorologist, Matt Hinkin, at 2 p.m. on Saturday, February 20. “The Natural History of Southern Appalachia” will be presented by Dr. Paul Threadgill, Biology Professor at Maryville College, on Monday, February 29, at 7 p.m. Other programs will be announced soon and will be available on the library website at www.blountlibrary.org or on calendars or call 865-982-0981.

When visiting the exhibition, plan to spend at least one to two hours or plan several visits. Because there are many interactive exhibits, plan sufficient time to explore the numerous topics and sciences.

The exhibition is free and open to the public during library hours, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday through Thursday; 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday; and 1 to 5:30 p.m. on Sundays.
Discover Earth: Our Changing Planet was developed by Space Science Institute’s National Center for Interactive Learning (NCIL), the American Library Association’s Public Programs Office, the Lunar and Planetary Institute and the Afterschool Alliance. Blount County Public Library, located at 508 N. Cusick Street, Maryville, where services are an example of your tax dollars at work for you.
For further information about library programs or services, call the library at 982-0981 or visit the Web site at www.blountlibrary.org .