Calendar of Events

UT’s McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture’s Museum Store will host a sale featuring work by regional artists from July 27 to August 3. The sale will include jewelry, ceramics, turned wood, and photography with a 10 percent discount on these items during the week-long promotion.

Regional artists in the sale include ceramicist Hugh Bailey; jewelry-makers Aleta Chandler, Kathryn Jenkins, and Tami Moore; wood-workers Gordon Coker and Richard Dwyer; and photographer Brian McDaniel. More information on the artists can be found on the museum’s website.

The store is a member of the Museum Store Association and only purchases from vendors who guarantee items are ethical and meet high quality standards. As always, museum members and UT students receive an additional 10 percent discount in the store. All purchases include tax, and all proceeds from store purchases help fund the museum's free educational programs, which serve over 10,000 Knoxville-area students each year.

Free two-hour museum parking passes are available from the parking kiosk at the entrance to Circle Park Drive during the week. Free parking is available on the weekends. Free public transportation to the museum is available via the Knoxville Trolley Vol Line. 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

A celebration of film and music, Film Score and the Scruffy City Film & Music Festival features:

– Narrative Features and Shorts
– Feature and Short Documentaries
– Music Videos
– Animated Shorts
– Six days of live music on three stages
– Panels, Workshops, and Q&As
– Daily happy hour mixers
– Closing Night Awards Ceremony

FILM SCORE celebrates the musical heart and soul of film, and the composers and artists that make films sing. All films submitted to the festival in all categories must have a standout soundtrack, score, sounds design, or musical narrative to be considered. The Feature Film with the Best Score or Soundtrack will headline the festival. Also, awards will be given for Best Composer, and Best Soundtrack.

Info: (865) 245-0242 or https://www.facebook.com/pg/ScruffyCityFilmandMusicFestival
info@scruffycityfilmfest.com
http://www.scruffycityfilmfest.com

Hosted by South Knoxville Alliance and Knoxville SOUP

Soup, Salad and a VOTE! Join us for Knoxville's unique crowdsourcing gathering.

How it works: You pay a suggested $5 at the door, enjoy up to 4 brief community project presentations, eat your soup, and then cast your vote for one of them. Winner gets the door money!

Last dinner's winning project, Marble Springs Educational School Tour Project, brought in over $800 in support. This is truly a unique opportunity to connect with community members and learn about projects that are underway to help make Knoxville a more culturally rich place to live.

Doors @ 6pm
Presentations @ 6:30pm
Dinner and voting to follow, then winner announced!
At South Knoxville Community Center, 522 Maryville Pike, Knoxville, Tennessee 37920. More info at www.Knoxvillesoup.org

Who's ready for Back to School? We are! Find great deals on stylish clothes for the students in your family at Goodwill!

Now, looking great is even more affordable than ever! Take 25% off all kids' clothes July 25-30 at all 28 regional Goodwill stores. Not a kid anymore? Show your college ID August 11-27 for a 25% student discount! Don't wait for tax-free weekend! Clothes at Goodwill are tax-free year-round!

Goodwill Industries-Knoxville: 865-588-8567, www.gwiktn.org

The Blount Mansion Association is proud to offer a fun, kid friendly, week of activities here at the museum. Children that are upcoming 3rd Grade - 5th Grade are cordially invited to come to the museum and learn about what life was like in TN when it was a brand new state. We will be playing games of the 1700's, touring museums and historic sites, making crafts and having a lot of fun! Tickets are available for the full week or for individual days. Each day's activities will start at 8 am and end at noon. All attendees must RSVP by calling 865-525-2375, emailing us at info@blountmansion.org, or by using the link below. Please include all important info in your RSVP by email or through Square. Ticket prices are $40.00 - $200.00.

https://squareup.com/store/blount-mansion/item/play-days-at-the-mansion

Blount Mansion, 200 W. Hill Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37902. Information: 865-525-2375, www.blountmansion.org

In this "post-truth" era, how and what should we believe? Join us for an exploration of how information is disseminated and consumed. Between partisan news, filter bubbles, and pundits-for-hire, media literacy and critical thinking are more important than ever.

We are pleased to partner with New York TImes best selling author and Tarbell.org founder Wendell Potter, UT's CCI, School of Information Sciences and School of Journalism and Electronic Media for a deep dive into the rise of fake news, the truth of search engines, the impact of nonstop breaking news, the decline of critical thinking and what we can do about it.

Limited seating available. Please register for all events you'd like to attend.

Knox County Public Library: 500 West Church Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37902. Information: 865-215-8750, www.knoxlib.org/truth

Flying Anvil Theatre kicks off its first season in its new space in Rocky Hill with THE GREAT AMERICAN TRAILER PARK MUSICAL, music and lyrics by David Nehls and book by Betsy Kelso. Critics have called the 2005 Off-Broadway smash “South Park meets Desperate Housewives.” A country-rock and blues musical about agoraphobia, adultery, '80s nostalgia, spray cheese, road kill, hysterical pregnancy, a broken electric chair, kleptomania, strippers, flan, and disco, the story centers around regular guy Norbert and his agoraphobic wife, Jeannie, whose marriage is threatened by Armadillo Acres' newcomer, the hot young stripper, Pippi. The trailer park also plays home to a Greek-chorus trio of women – Linoleum, Betty, and Pickles, each dysfunctional in her own right. When Pippi’s angry ex-boyfriend shows up, it looks like bad news for everyone, until a surprising secret leads to a happy ending, when the entire cast sings the rousing anthem, ”I Gotta Make Like a Nail (and Press On).”

Director Jayne Morgan says the show is a real audience pleaser. “We’ve heard from a number of people who have seen the show in other cities and can’t wait to see it again. The show is outrageous and funny and over the top – the perfect summer musical if you’re just looking for a something fun.” Terry Silver Alford will be musical directing and Dana Wham will choreograph. The cast of seasoned performers includes John Cherry, Tiffany Fenech, Mandi Lawson, Emily Helton, Chevy Anz, Curtis Bower and Wham.

Performances are Wed-Sat at 7:30 PM and Sun at 2 PM.

Flying Anvil Theatre, 1300 Rocky Hill Road, Knoxville. Information: 865-357-1309, www.flyinganviltheatre.com

Part of the 2017-18 "Best of Theatre Knoxville Downtown" Season!

By Howard, Williams, and Sears. Greater Tuna is the hilarious comedy about Texas' third smallest town, where the Lion's Club is too liberal and Patsy Cline never dies. The eclectic band of citizens that make up this town are portrayed by only two performers, making this satire on life in rural America even more delightful as they depict all of the inhabitants of Tuna—men, women, children and animals.

"Howlingly funny."
– Variety

"The audience all but exploded the theatre with laughter."
– The New York Post

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

Five friends secretly convene in the middle of the night to act out the tragic tale of Julius Caesar. They soon become swept away as their own prejudices and personal vendettas begin to parallel the lives of the characters in distant Rome. Alliances and rivalries are turned upside down when the fun of play-acting takes a serious turn as Shakespeare’s poignant drama begins to hit home. Five actors with no set, no costume changes, and only candlelight bring the essence of this classic play vividly alive with the sheer theatricality of this all too timely story.

This is a site-specific production. Performances take place on UT campus, but exact locations are secret and change nightly. You will be given more in depth instructions including arrival time and audience meeting location via email 48 hours prior to your selected performance.

Performances are 90 minutes with no intermission and are staged in the round. If you need to leave during the performance, you will not be able to return to your seat. You will be assisted in finding alternate seating locations in order to ensure the enjoyment and safety of all patrons with minimal disruption to the performance.

Please arrive at the audience meeting location 15 minutes before the scheduled start time. There will be no late seating for this production. We will leave the audience meeting location at the scheduled start time and move to the secret performance site; if you arrive late, you will be left.

Info: https://nowisthetimeofnight.com/
Tickets: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/julius-caesar-tickets-35546116391

Peppered Paper by Lesley Eaton - Painted paper collage, dinosaurs, crustaceans, flowers, and more. https://www.etsy.com/shop/PepperedPaper
Distinctive Gourds by Marty McConnaughey - https://www.distinctivegourds.com/

Westminister Presbyterian Church, 6500 S Northshore Dr, Knoxville, TN 37919. Hours: M-F 9-4. Info: (865) 584-3957 or www.wpcknox.org

Once again Tomato Head walls shimmer with the many-hued and luminous paintings of Jessica Payne. One of our favorite local artists, Jessica’s work fills the space with vivid color and imagery that excites the eyes and provokes conversation. One of her favorite memories is when, “I was eating at the downtown Tomato Head during one of my exhibits a few years ago, and I saw a family in the middle of the room looking around and discussing my paintings. At one point a little girl, maybe 8 or 9 years old, went up to look closer and immediately turned around and with a frown said, ‘Mommy it’s already sold.’”

Jessica grew up in Knoxville as the youngest of six in a long line of artists, and drawing and painting were hobbies that she came by naturally – both her father and grandmother spent their free time putting color on canvas. But while she took art classes and thought at times that her career might veer toward the arts, it was only after she took a degree in Social Work and Women’s studies and started a path to law school that she felt a tug to a more creative vocation. It was in the week of her 25th birthday while she sat outdoors when she committed to a different way of life: “I spent my birthday weekend sitting and observing so many beautiful things that had been around me for a long time. I felt an intuitive pull to change my life in a drastic way.” Promptly thereafter, Jessica joined Americorps where her urge to create found expression in the earth as she worked to help establish Beardsley Farm; later the same urge would lead her to study cooking, until finally through a variety of online courses and her own drive, she found both an approach and technique for painting that helped unlock her artistic life.

She says: “A huge thing I learned from artist Flora Bowley, after taking her online course Brave Intuitive Painting, is to keep painting until something works.” This approach helps keep Jesssica’s creative energy in flow, and it works in conjunction with her technique of layering. Jessica’s technique results in vibrant and multi-faceted imagery that contains the genuine chaos of natural creativity that, she says, eventually evolves into order. One of the most fun aspects of Jessica’s art is that her paintings often shine. The color, the variety of imagery, not to mention the playful use of glitter and mica, give our featured artist’s work a liveliness that almost leaps from the walls in a joyful celebration of the beauty that surrounds us and lives inside us, too. Don’t let it pass you by.

On view at the downtown Knoxville Tomato Head on Market Square through August 3rd.

Tomato Head, 12 Market Square (865-637-4067) and 7240 Kingston Pike, Suite 172 (865-584-1075), in Knoxville. http://thetomatohead.com

The Art Gallery at Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church (ORUUC) will present an exhibit of the work of Kathy Holland from July through September 8. A gallery opening talk and artist reception will be hosted at the church on Sunday July 16, at 12:30 p.m. The public is invited.

ORUUC is located at 809 Oak Ridge Turnpike in Oak Ridge. Admission to the gallery is free and open to the public Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. For artists interested in a showing contact Nancy Starr at starroakridge@gmail.com or call 865-483-8684.