Calendar of Events

Santa Claus is coming to Zoo Knoxville and will be in residence at Santa’s Village this Thursday, Dec. 14 through Sunday, Dec. 17, from 10:00 a.m. until 2:00 p.m. daily. Santa Claus will be listening to Christmas wishes and available for photos in the festively decorated Santa’s Village, located in the zoo’s Kids Cove area. Guests will have the option to purchase portraits taken by a professional photographer and can take their own photos.

Complimentary event activities included with general admission are a visit with Santa Claus, reindeer games, holiday crafts and a story time each day at 12:30 p.m. Kids can also write a letter to Santa and they will receive a personal reply from Santa himself in the mail after their visit. For an additional ticket, rides will be available on the “Polar Express” train and kids can opt for a face-painting session for some holiday flair. All activities take place in the enclosed and heated Kids Cove tent for guests’ comfort. Now through February 28, 2018, zoo admission tickets are $5 off during Kroger Discount Days.

Currently, the zoo is open from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. daily. Admission and ticket sales stop one-hour before the zoo closes. Zoo Knoxville, 3500 Knoxville Zoo Drive, Knoxville, TN 37914. Open every day except Christmas. Information: 865-637-5331, https://www.zooknoxville.org

Thursday, December 14th @ 8pm
Friday, December 15th @ 7pm & 9pm
Saturday, December 16th @ 7pm & 9pm

Tickets available at www.circlemoderndance.com; $10/$15 at the door; $5 discount for Friday 9 p.m. performance when buying in advance

At the Laurel Theater, 1538 Laurel Ave, Knoxville, TN. Bring a pillow as seating is limited.

Circle Modern Dance is proud to present its 26th annual production of Modern Dance Primitive Light, an anticipated solstice celebration of movement and creativity in Knoxville. This unique performance brings together local choreographers, dancers, and musicians for an unforgettable community arts experience. Audiences will enjoy exciting new contemporary dance works accompanied by live music set amidst the warm ambiance of the Historic Laurel Theater. This year’s production features work from Circle company members as well as some of Knoxville’s best guest choreographers.

Live music is always a highlight of the performance. Musical director Nate Barrett creates acoustic arrangements of the music selected by each of the choreographers. Always eclectic, this year’s set ranges from Janis Joplin to Vivaldi. The music is performed by an incredible house band made up of some of Knoxville’s finest musicians.

Circle is pleased to include choreographer Deborah Whelan in its long list of community collaborators. After teaching dance to children at Beaumont Magnet Academy for over 20 years, Debbie has retired and returned to teaching and choreographing with adults. Her piece explores ​our​ ​current political climate and its ​impact on ​ interactions between people. Whelan describes her piece as being about hope; “Hope that matter who we are, or where we come from, we can learn to live together in harmony”

Guest choreographer Harper Addison has performed and created work all around the country with companies in Georgia, Florida, California, and New York. Her piece is inspired by a series of poems by Daniel Ladinsky and explores the theme of loving, appreciating, and communicating with others.

Long-time Circle collaborator and MDPL regular Angela Hill will present a solo to be performed by Circle Core Member Darby O’Connor. Amends is set to a mash-up of Janis Joplin’s “Mercedes Benz” and the traditional spiritual “Ain’t that Good News.” The piece explores limits, privilege, and virtuosity in performance.

Winter Circle, choreographed by Jennifer Jones, celebrates the creative and healing potential of women working together. The piece is a collaboration between the choreographer and dancers, drawing upon each dancer’s individual background and experience.

Many Circle Modern Dance Core Members will present work, including a piece by Amelia Loehe, performed by identical twins, about a relationship over a lifespan. The dancers weave in and out of unison and individual movement reflecting how two lives connect and re-connect over time. Circle core members Nate Barrett, Callie Minnich, and Darby O’Connor will perform an improvised piece exploring movement and text. Darby O’Connor will also be presenting a piece based on introductions and how people define themselves in their first encounters with one another.

Finally, Circle is excited to present the work of two local companies. Momentum Dance Lab will perform Alive choreographed by Ashley Corey. The Katharine Slowburn Experience, will present work from their November 2017 production The Garden. Modern Dance Primitive Light is a family-friendly show and participates in the Penny 4 Arts program.

For additional Information, please contact Circle Modern Dance at (865) 309-5309 or CircleModernDance@gmail.com.

The ’Sad Clown with the Golden Voice’ is back with a suitcase full of all new emotional anthems and plenty of Kleenex!
As with any Pity Party performance, it’s not all sadness and longing. Puddles’ set is peppered with a brilliant sense of the absurd, mixing lots of humor with the awkward, tender moments.

With more than 180k fans on Facebook and over 40 million views on Youtube, including his acclaimed version of Lorde’s Royals, Sia’s Chandelier and other pop favorites, Puddles Pity Party has toured extensively in the US including multiple sold out shows at Joe’s Pub in NYC, the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco and the legendary Troubadour in Los Angeles. He has also performed many times in the UK at Soho Theatre London, sold out runs in 2015 and 2016 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and he was a feature performer in La Soiree’s Southbank show that won the Olivier Award in 2015. Other worldwide festival appearances include the Adelaide Fringe Festival, Perth Fringe World, Melbourne International Comedy Fest, Just for Laughs Montreal, Belgium’s Gent Festival, Festival Supreme (LA), Bumbershoot Festival (Seattle), Moontower Comedy Festival (Austin), First City Fest (Monterey) and MusikFest (Bethlehem).

“It seems like a parody. But when Puddles opens his mouth to sing, it’s beautiful. Operatic.”
- The Boston Globe

“His special effect is a textured voice laced with melancholy - what makes him transcend the trope is his vulnerability.”
- The New York Times

At Bijou Theatre, 803 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. Information/tickets: 865-522-0832, www.knoxbijou.com, www.ticketmaster.com

Hosted by Knox County Schools Visual Arts Department

At Central High School (Knoxville, Tennessee), 5321 Jacksboro Pike, Knoxville, Tennessee 37918

The Festival involves all art, band, and choral students. The Art show will begin at 5, along with a potluck dinner for staff, students, and families. We will clean up our dinner around 6:30 and then move into the auditorium for a joint band/chorus concert that starts at 7:00.

We would love for you to join us for this collaborative event of our Fine Arts Department.
https://www.facebook.com/events/1050124315144657

Opening reception January 26 from 6 to 7:30 p.m.; artists’ talks at 6:30 p.m.

Coral Grace Turner: New Work
This series utilizes remnants of fabric that Turner designed and printed over ten years ago. She was introduced to a process of hand quilting called English paper piecing earlier this year and found it to be a great way to reimagine her fabric pieces. The fabrics were designed using a grid for registration, layered with random patterning and variations in color to create movement. Similarly, quilting starts with a standard shape that is repeated in a grid-like structure, while the pattern on each shape is random. She created movement within each piece by matching lines and colors at the seams where one piece of fabric is joined with another.

Turner grew up in a family that had a great appreciation for the arts. Her mother taught art classes, one grandmother was a textile designer by trade and the other was a knitter and sewer. At the Rhode Island School of Design, Turner made three- dimensional work using sewing and knitting, which led to installations and finally site-specific sound installations when she graduated with a BFA in Sculpture in 1996. She took a screen printing on fabric class at Arrowmont in 2001 with Clare Verstegen, and the following year continued working with Verstegen in the MFA program in Fibers at Arizona State University, when most of the fabrics used in this work were printed.

Marilyn Avery Turner: A Tale of Two Series
The images and the limited palette came first, and in the process of making the work the idea of blood types and bloodlines emerged. In all of humanity there are only four basic blood types; we are incredibly similar at our core. In our divisive world, where people and cultures choose to concentrate on our differences, which in turn are used to justify any number of prejudices and crimes against humanity, it would be helpful to take this fundamental fact into account.

The other series has a monochromatic palette. In the work that has figurative elements the subject led to that choice, whereas in the non-figurative work there was a conscious decision to use only variations of a particular color. In both series, the figurative elements are based on Pre-Columbian designs and images that she has worked with for the past fifteen years.

Originally from New York City, Turner received her BFA from The Rhode Island School of Design in 1966. She has been concentrating on printmaking, specifically monoprinting and screenprinting, for the last 25 years, combining painting and collage, her main former mediums. She has taken classes since 1994 in the University of Tennessee Printmaking Department. She has been a member of The Art Market Gallery since its inception in 1982, exhibits her work in solo and group shows, and participates in juried exhibitions throughout the United States. www.marilynaveryturner.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

Thursday, December 7 through Sunday, December 24.
The Unusual Tale of Mary & Joseph's Baby dares to take the classic story at its word. There really is a pregnant virgin. There are shepherds, angels, foreign dignitaries (a.k.a. wise men), a ratty extra room/stable at an inn, and a maniacal, bloodthirsty dictator whose menacing shadow hangs over everything.

And obviously, it's a comedy. Seriously it is.
The Unusual Tale of Mary & Joseph's Baby surprises both virgin-believing and non-virgin-believing audiences alike by telling the most over-told story in a sincerely human way that bursts with imagination and wonder.

The Green Room at the Jackson Avenue Terminal in the Old City
211 Jackson Ave.
Knoxville, TN 37902

River & Rail Theatre Company, 100 S. Gay Street, Suite 106, Knoxville, TN 37902. Information: 865-407-0727, www.riverandrailtheatre.com

“What does it mean?” I haven’t taken a poll, but it might be interesting to ask how often an artist working in the Abstract hears that particular question. It might be more enlightening to ask if that question becomes challenging to hear over time – not because it’s necessarily a bad question, but because most people ask the wrong person. It’s not a question for the artist: It’s a question for you.

Gretchen Adreon’s exhibit at our Market Square restaurant is an opportunity for you to pose that question to yourself over and over again. And that’s just how Adreon likes it. When a work is complete, she says, her hope is to “leave an open space and the viewer will be able to add their own feelings and connect with the piece to complete the process.” And of course, that means that there are many answers to the question of what’s all about. “From the very beginning I have had people telling me their feelings and impressions of my work. I LOVE that – that’s when the whole process comes full circle to me. When someone is engaged in the work, I feel I have succeeded. Sometimes one viewer sees what another cannot see at all but sees or, even better, feels something totally different. “

Adreon’s art begins as an emotional expression that, through any number of implements and materials -from trowels to sandpaper, and more- remains an open and emotional experience to share with the people who see it. Although this may leave the definition of her imagery in the eyes of others, Adreon is more than comfortable with that process: “My emotions went to abstractions rather than concrete imagery. I have never regretted taking that direction, however many, many people see images, figures and, yes, landscapes as well.”

Gretchen Adreon will be on view at the Market Square Tomato Head from December 4th through January 7th, 2018. She will then exhibit with the West Knoxville Gallery Tomato Head from January 9th through February 5th, 2018.

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 will present an exhibit of multi-media art by six local artists, opening on Sunday, December 3, at 12:30 p.m. with a reception and gallery talk led by the artists. It is free and open to the public. The exhibit will continue through February 2.

The six artists whose work will be featured are Pat Fain, Mary Ann Damos, Jan Hill, Pat Fitchpatrick, Ina Sue Marlin, and Betsy Spooner. These six artists have studied side-by-side for the past five years under Chico Osten at the Oak Ridge Art Center. They all work with different paint media and in different painting styles.

ORUUC is located at 809 Oak Ridge Turnpike. Free and open to the public, Gallery hours are Monday – Thursday, 9 am to 3 pm. and Sunday 9:30 am to 1 pm. For more information call (865) 483-6761.

Zoo Knoxville is offering $5 off admission tickets during Kroger Discount Days, December 1 through February 28, 2018. During Kroger Discount Days, guests can discover why winter is an enjoyable time to visit the zoo. Many animals, including red pandas, river otters, elephants, gorillas, red wolves, lions and tigers, enjoy the cooler temperatures. On days when the temperature drops below 40 degrees, some animals will be moved indoors, but visitors can still see many in their indoor viewing areas. The Pilot Flying J Wee Play Adventure is a popular indoor area that’s an entertaining stop for creative play during visits as well.

A December trip to the zoo may even include a visit to Santa’s Village, a special holiday encounter and photo opportunity with Santa Claus. Santa’s Village will be open for holiday photos and Christmas wishes December 14 through 17, from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. each day in the heated Kids Cove tent. Discounted tickets can be purchased at the zoo ticket window during regular zoo hours and online at zooknoxville.org. Discounted admission tickets must be used by Feb. 28, 2018, and cannot be combined with any other promotion, discount, or coupon.

Currently, the zoo is open from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. daily. Admission and ticket sales stop one-hour before the zoo closes. Zoo Knoxville, 3500 Knoxville Zoo Drive, Knoxville, TN 37914. Open every day except Christmas. Information: 865-637-5331, https://www.zooknoxville.org

An exhibition of four faculty members from the UT School of Art. Opening December 1, 5-9 PM with a second reception on January 5, 2018, 5-9 PM

Emily Ward Bivens is an Associate Professor of 4D arts and Time-Based Art at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She received her MFA from The University of Colorado, Boulder in 2004. Bivens uses found and made objects to forge narratives, provoke or encourage interaction, and reveal fictional and non-fictional mysteries. These objects shift from prop to subject to evidence when used in performance, video, and installation. Characters or identities are created to act as subjects, authors, inventors, and curators of the work.

John C. Kelley is an Assistant Professor of 4D and Time-Based Arts at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. His video work has screened domestically at venues such as The Mid-America Arts Alliance (Kansas City, MO), the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR) the Arizona International Film Festival (Tucson, AZ), The Front (New Orleans, LA), the Index Art Center (Newark, NJ), Living Arts (Tulsa, OK), internationally in cities such as London, Moscow, Berlin, Sao Paolo, Mexico City, Edinburgh, Vienna, Prague, Amsterdam and others. Kelley has written original music for award winning feature length narrative and documentary films through Gray Picture in St. Louis, MO, released music as a solo artist through King Electric Records in Austin, TX, and has appeared on more than 25 recordings and albums.

Mary Laube was born in Seoul, South Korea. She received her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. Recent exhibitions include Piecing It Togetherat the Hawn Gallery in Dallas, Signaling to the Cipher towards a Segway at Field Projects in New York City, and Paper Planes at Whitdel Arts in Detroit. Her work has been supported by several artist residencies including the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Stiwdeo Maelor in Wales. She received the Illinois National Women in the Arts Award in 2009 and a Project Grant from the Iowa Arts Council in 2014. Laube is co-founder of the Warp Whistle Project, a collaborative duo with composer Paul Schuette. Their work was presented at the 2016 International Symposium on Electronic Art in Hong Kong. Recent exhibitions include shows at the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art in Gimpo, South Korea and Phyllis Weston in Cincinnati. Laube has served as a visiting artist at various institutions including the Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar, Kent State University, and Knox College. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.

John Douglas Powers studied art history at Vanderbilt University and earned his MFA in sculpture, with distinction, at The University of Georgia. His work has been featured in The New York Times, World Sculpture News, Sculpture Magazine, Art Forum, The Huffington Post, Art in America, The Boston Globe and on CBS News Sunday Morning. He is the recipient of the 2013 Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award, a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant as well as a Southeastern College Art Conference Individual Artist Fellowship, an Alabama State Council on the Arts Fellowship, and the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award. Powers currently lives and works in Knoxville, Tennessee and is Assistant Professor of Sculpture at The University of Tennessee.

Free admission! UT Downtown Gallery, 106 S. Gay St, Knoxville, TN 37902. Hours: W-F 11-6, Sat 10-3. Information: 865-673-0802, http://web.utk.edu/~downtown

Join the McClung Museum for holiday specials, and unique gifts, stocking stuffers, jewelry, handmade artisan items, and more throughout the month of December.

Members and UT students always receive 10% off, and faculty/staff receive a special 10% discount from December 1–25. All proceeds benefit the museum’s free K-12 educational programming.

McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture, 1327 Circle Park Dr on the UT campus, Knoxville, TN 37996. Hours: M-Sa 9-5, Su 1-5. Information: 865-974-2144, http://mcclungmuseum.utk.edu

Recent works by Gordon Fowler and Eric Gebhardt will be on display with an opening reception will be held Friday, December 1st at the gallery.

Gordon Fowler says about his work: "I make bowls, platters, and hollow forms from wood using a woodturning lathe. I find the wood on roadsides or friends tell me about a tree they cut down. I get a kick out of “recycling” these logs that would otherwise go to a landfill or a fireplace. Most of my work is twice-turned. That means I cut the logs with a chainsaw, rough turn it, let it dry for at least six months, then turn it again to its final thickness. Making round things is inherent to the lathe, and I’m inspired by the symbolism and symmetry."

Art Market Gallery, 422 S. Gay St, Knoxville, TN 37902. Hours: Tu-Th & Sa 11-6, Fri 11-9, Su 1-5. Information: 865-525-5265, www.artmarketgallery.net