Calendar of Events

This month's amazing exhibit features the work of a new Knoxville-based artist, M. Ziggie Ziegler. Her work focuses on urban decay in a brilliant new light. "These works are my journey in seeing vivacity within the decay of the places we pass by every day." The show runs the throughout September.

More events at http://ijams.org/events/. Ijams Nature Center, 2915 Island Home Ave, Knoxville, TN 37920. Hours: Grounds and trails open during daylight hours. The Visitor Center, including exhibits, gift shop, offices and restrooms is open M-Sat 9-5 and Sun 11-5. Information: 865-577-4717, www.ijams.org

The Athens Area Council for the Arts announces Follow Innocence, showing work by regional artist Richard Whitehead, at The Arts Center. The exhibit is available for viewing August 29 – November 4, 2016 at The Arts Center, 320 North White Street, Athens, Tennessee.

Whitehead's work is derived from the premise that nothing is fixed or stable and this state of insecurity is positive, and allows us to follow innocence.

Richard is a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he won numerous prizes and scholarships. His work has won awards and has been exhibited throughout the United States; Antwerp, Belgium; and Murcia and Barcelona, Spain. In 1998, he settled in Knoxville, TN. He has exhibited in Clarksville, Oak Ridge, and Knoxville. A retrospective of his art was celebrated at the Fountain City Art Center in Knoxville in 2005. He juried two exhibits at the Fountain City Art Center and Rose Art Center in Morristown. In Knoxville, he has shown in with The Arts & Culture Alliance, A-1 Lab Art Space, Farragut Arts Council, The Art Market, Kaleidoscope, Liz-Beth Gallery, Nomad Gallery, and many more.

The exhibit opening reception is Friday, September 23, 2016 from 5:30 – 7:00 p.m. Whitehead will be on hand to informally discuss his work. The reception includes light refreshments and is free and open to the public. After the reception is opening night of ACT's fall play Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean at 7:30 pm in the Sue E. Trotter Theater. Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students.

For questions or more information about this or any AACA program contact The Arts Center by phone at 423-745-8781, visit our website at athensartscouncil.org, or in person at 320 North White Street in Athens.

This past January, the Knoxville Jewish Alliance (KJA) launched a campaign to update and improve its Arnstein Jewish Community Center (AJCC) facility, the organization’s operational and programming hub. The anchor of the first phase of these updates was the Schwarzbart Gallery, a permanent tribute to the works of Judaic artisan Arnold’s Schwarzbart, who passed away in March 2015. It was designed to include space for rotating exhibits as well.

On Monday, August 29, the Schwarzbart Gallery will welcome its first featured artist exhibit from outside the Knoxville area. David Barnett is a painter, illustrator, designer and muralist currently living and working in the Catskills – but with some very relevant Knoxville ties. Barnett is the nephew of local woodworking designer Ernie Gross and his wife Pam. He grew up in Knoxville and spent Tuesday evenings studying with Arnold Schwarzbart.

“David’s exhibit as the Schwarzbart Gallery’s first featured artist from outside this community is equally exciting and poignant for us,” said Deborah Oleshansky, Executive Director of the KJA. She continued, “We’re honored to welcome his work, and hope that many people will come to the Gallery to see it in the coming months.”

An Artist Reception will be held on Monday, August 29: 5:30 – 7:00 PM at the AJCC Schwarzbart Gallery
This is a free event, open to the community and members of all faiths.

Barnett’s work depicts moments in his own life, where the emotional atmosphere overwhelms the subject. He allows his paintings to emote rather than conceptualize. Using color and gesture, he situates his thoughts and memories firmly within an emotional context, separating them from progression and reason. He draws from varied influences, as far reaching as moviemakers like Charlie Kaufman and Denis Villeneuve, to those more closely related, like Peter Doig and Pierre Bonnard. David currently lives and works in the Catskills, where he enjoys basking in the sun by the Delaware River. Visit For more information to view his portfolio, visit www.blankwallproductions.com

David Barnett’s work will be on display through September. Individuals or groups may request a guided tour by contacting the Knoxville Jewish Alliance at the Arnstein Jewish Community Center, 6800 Deane Hill Dr, Knoxville, TN 37919. Phone: (865) 690-6343. Information: judith.rosenberg@gmail.com or (865) 414-3925.

The Farragut Museum invites the community to visit "Timeless Toys." This exhibit will be on display through early 2017 (closed Dec. 24 and 25). This special exhibit will feature items from the Museum's collection of artifacts as well as items belonging to Museum Committee members. The exhibit showcases a variety of antique toys, games and dolls dating from the late 1800s through the 1900s. A featured item is the Rice doll house, designed and built in 1929 by local architect Malcolm Rice and a National Architecture Award recipient in 1930. Originally with electricity, the doll house was enjoyed by three generations of the Rice family. Museum committee member Lou LaMarche has loaned several 1940s toys from his personal collection, including toy soldiers, a Rudolph radio and an electric football game. In addition, the exhibit features a 1940s toy steam engine donated by museum volunteer Malcolm Shell.

The Farragut Museum is committed to preserving the heritage of its East Tennessee community and features a remarkable collection of artifacts from the area, including an extensive collection of the personal belongings of Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, first Admiral of the U.S Navy and hero of the Civil War. Housed in the Farragut Town Hall located at 11408 Municipal Center Drive, the museum is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and offers free admission. For more information about the museum or the exhibit, please visit www.townoffarragut.org/museum, like the museum at www.facebook.com/farragutmuseum, or contact Museum Coordinator Julia Barham at jbarham@townoffarragut.org or 966-7057.

The Knoxville Museum of Art announces Romantic Spirits: Nineteenth Century Paintings of the South from the Johnson Collection, featuring more than thirty 19th-century masterworks from the renowned Spartanburg, South Carolina-based collection.

The paintings in Romantic Spirits present an evocative glimpse into nineteenth-century Southern life, and reveal the importance of oral tradition and “a sense of place” in the development of the Romantic Movement in the South. The exhibition seeks to present a balanced view of how Romanticism evolved in the North and the South, the genre’s ties to Europe, and how culture, customs, education, and travel influenced each artist. It also reveals connections between featured painters and their contemporaries, specifically authors and poets such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, among others. One of the highlights of the exhibition is a masterful still life of peaches by Knoxville artist Lloyd Branson.

The public is invited to an exhibition preview reception on Thursday, August 25 from 5:30-7:30pm.

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

When: Opening reception Aug. 19 from 6 to 7:30 p.m.; artists’ talks at 6:30 p.m.

Katharine Emlen: The Poetry of Nature, or Macro Stories from the Bracken around Us
Emlen says that if she were only one inch tall, this is the world she’d see. The flowers would tower above her head, water drops would become a place to sit, and every blade of grass would turn into a slide. She would dangle from her knees off tendrils of wheat and crawl inside blossoms to take a short sleep. She never intends to photograph what something actually is; instead, she hopes to capture a “story.” Her photography is not altered in any way. Emlen is a freelance creative specializing in writing and photography. She has a degree in anthropology from U.T. Knoxville and vocational training in media, productions and design. She wrote her first story, “Birthday Game Run,” at age 16 about growing up in Nakuru, Kenya, and followed it with “Bioluminescence,” later published in Denali Magazine. Her written work been featured in The Ithaca Times and Smart Gardening, read over the air and turned into video shorts. She is the author of the children’s book Believe and the creator of the Affirmation Chant Magnets used by Caesar Milan on “The Dog Whisperer.” Her love of photography began with a small pocket-sized camera, perfect for putting underneath mushrooms and inside flowers. Her early work was “macro-story” focusing on reflections in water drops, bends in tendrils, patterns in ice … tiny worlds accompanied by poems, which she exhibits under the title, The Poetry of Nature. Upon her return to Knoxville, her photographic work expanded to include architecture, landscapes and cityscapes, with a macro approach. Her work has been shown at Arts in the Airport, the National Juried Art Show, the Knoxville Photo Show, Arts Emporium Member’s show and the Clayton Center for the Arts. In her free time Emlen is a closet ethnomusicologist and spent seven years hosting the Sounds Global radio show on 91.9 KRVM. www.kemlenphotography.com

Lisa Discepoli Line: The Brown and the Green
What sorts of conversations are possible between timeless nature and objects common in our modern world? Nature returns again and again, like the green grass, but it also consists of the brown and dried, old-age or endurance. Sometimes it speaks of freshness; sometimes it speaks of decay. How do these two principles work together? How do they need one another? These paintings are an exploration of these questions about the natural world and our place as humans in it. Line is a resident of Sevier County, Tennessee. She received a B.A. from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, and continued to study painting at the University of Tennessee and at its affiliate, The Arrowmont School in Gatlinburg. Her work in oil painting uses scale, pattern, color and texture to investigate themes of time, motion and the cycles of nature. http://www.lisadline.com

Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, 2931 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37919. Gallery hours: M-Th 10-5, Su 10-1. Information: 865-523-4176, www.tvuuc.org

Get out and see some live music!
Open Chord Music, 8502 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37919. Information: (865) 281-5874 or http://www.openchordmusic.com/live-music-venue

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts is exhibiting works by ceramic artist and longtime Arrowmont staff visionary Bill Griffith. This exhibit is in conjunction with Arrowmont’s Utilitarian Clay VII: Celebrate the Object National Symposium (September 21-24, 2016), a gathering of leading practitioners in the field which Bill initiated in 1992.

The Bill Griffith Recollective showcases ceramic work produced during his 27-year tenure as the Assistant Director and Program Director of Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. Among his many contributions to the school, he established the Artists-in-Residence Program in 1991, which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. As an outgrowth of the Residency Program, he also established ArtReach – an annual program that has provided hands-on art instruction to more than 25,000 Sevier County students. Bill currently serves as Arrowmont’s Outreach and Partnership Liaison.

Bill received a BS in Art Education from Indiana State University and an MA in Art Education/Ceramics from Miami University, Ohio. He participated in the initial International Workshop for Ceramic Art in Tokoname, Japan and is a recipient of an Individual Artists Fellowship awarded by the Tennessee Arts Commission. Bill’s functional and sculptural works have been exhibited internationally and featured in numerous publications. He has work in private and public collections including Tennessee State Museum, Arkansas Arts Center, City of Orlando, Florida Permanent Collection, San Angelo Museum of Art, Texas, Tokoname Japan Cultural Museum and Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute, China. For more information, visit his website at www.billgriffithclay.com.

In the Geoffrey A. Wolpert Gallery. Admission is free and open to the public. 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

New Paintings by Michael Giles

O’Brien Art Gallery, Roane State Community College, O’Brien Building, 276 Patton Lane, Harriman, TN 37748. Information: www.roanestate.edu/art/gallery

Join us for a memorable tour of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park with Sam Venable. 2 Days Only, Saturday August 6 and Saturday October 15.

All tours depart from the GSM Heritage Center,Townsend, TN at 9:30 am.
Tour is 3 1/2 - 4 hours. Tours will run "rain or shine"

Join author, columnist, humorist and naturalist Sam Venable on a trip from the Heritage Center to Newfound Gap, via the Little River valley, Metcalf Bottoms,
a brief swing through Elkmont and then over to the Sugarlands and up the mountain
to the site of FDR's famous speech when the park was dedicated. Sam's tour will highlight points of interest along the way, especially as they relate to the forests, fish and wildlife of the park. In addition, he will discuss the life and career of
an old family friend who was born and raised in the Sugarlands.

A fifth-generation Southern Appalachian, Sam Venable is a retired columnist for the Knoxville News Sentinel. He majored in forestry and wildlife management at the University of Tennessee. He is the author of 12 books, including the acclaimed "Mountain Hands: A Portrait of Southern Appalachia" as well as the whimsical "How To Tawlk and Rite Good." Sam regularly entertains audiences as a standup comedian, often featuring mountain heritage themes.

$60 per person. Advance reservations required. Call 865-448-8838 for reservations
Mon - Fri 10 am - 5 pm
Limited to 17 Guests per Tour.

Tours depart from the Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center in Townsend, 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

Artist Lela E. Buis presents “Whimsical Creatures,” an exhibit of painting and photography, at Knoxville Arts & Fine Crafts Center, August 1, 2016 - October 31, 2016.
Meet and greet with the artist August 19 from 5:30 – 8:00 p.m.

The artist finds that animals have an unusual attraction. They capture her with their colors, their expressions, their activity. Ordinary animals like chickens and cows are a tradition in East Tennessee, especially for anyone who has grown up on a farm, or had grandparents with a farm. This exhibit brings together paintings and photographs from around the area, featuring some of these whimsical creatures and the beautiful countryside of the East Tennessee farm country.

Lela E. Buis was born in Middlesboro, Kentucky, grew up in Tazewell, Tennessee, and lived in Central Florida for a long time. She worked at Kennedy Space Center for about 15 years, and currently lives in Knoxville. She has been drawing and painting since she was a child, and has sold photos and illustrations to a number of books and magazines. In 2015 she had a photograph featured in the Florida State Poets Association Anthology.

The Arts & Fine Crafts Center is located in North Knoxville at 1127B Broadway Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37917. The organization is affiliated with the City of Knoxville Parks and Recreation. Please phone 865-523-1401 for more information on the gallery and arts classes.

The Knoxville Association of Bridge Clubs is offering an in depth, 17 week course on Duplicate Bridge, with a focus on learning the modern “2 Over 1” bridge system. Taught by certified instructors, these lessons are a fun and informative way to learn the basics of modern bridge. The cost is $5 per lesson (the first 2 lessons are free).

Two class sessions are offered: Sundays at 1:30 PM (beginning July 17) or Tuesdays at 6:00 PM (beginning July 19). You are welcome to attend either or both weekly sessions. Bring a partner or we can provide one for you.

Classes will be conducted at the Knoxville Bridge Center, located at 7400 Deane Hill Drive, Knoxville TN 37919. Contact Jo Anne Newby at (865} 539-4150 or email KnoxvilleBridge@gmail.com.