Calendar of Events

Opening Friday June 1st 5:00-9:00

Broadway Studios and Gallery, 1127 Broadway St, Knoxville, TN 37917. Hours: Thurs-Sat, 10-6; Sun-Wed by appointment (or when the "open" sign is turned on). Information: 865-556-8676, www.BroadwayStudiosAndGallery.com

Sequins and feathers fly in outrageous new Flying Anvil Theatre show! What happens when a failing Elvis impersonator reluctantly agrees to become a drag performer and finds out he’s really good at it? Hilarity ensues, with a powerful message about being true to yourself.

“The Legend of Georgia McBride,” by Matthew Lopez, is a bold, brassy comedy with a heart as big as its wigs. The show’s lip-syncing divas provide plenty of laughs while sharing the difficulties, discrimination and danger of their profession. It’s a gift to the audience, all wrapped up in sequins and feathers. The play was a New York Times critic’s pick in 2015. Reviewer Charles Isherwood called it “full of sass and good spirits — along with a spritz or two of sentimentality.”

The show stars David Dwyer, My’Chyl Purr, Ethan Roeder, Aleah Vassell and Collin Andrews. Donald Thorne will be filling in for David Dwyer for some shows.

The Flying Anvil Theatre has been presenting adventurous, provocative theatre since 2012 under the direction of Artistic Director, Jayne Morgan. For The Legend of Georgia McBride, the theatre is partnering with Positively Living, a nonprofit organization which serves vulnerable groups struggling to survive the challenges created by HIV/AIDS, homelessness, mental illness, addiction and disabilities.

There are two pre-opening previews, Wednesday, May 30, which is a Pay What You Can Night and Thursday, May 31. The show officially opens on Friday June 1 and runs four weeks through June 24. Show times are 7:30 pm Wednesday through Saturday nights and 2:00 pm on Sundays. The theatre is announcing new lower ticket prices of $22 and $24 for adults and $16 for students with ID. *The show has some mature language and may not be suitable for children under 12.

Tickets can be reserved via telephone or purchased online at https://www.ticketpeak.com/res/FlyingAnvil. 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. A black comedy about white trash! A colorful family from a small Texas town must come to grips with the accidental death of the elderly family matriarch during a clandestine meeting in a seedy motel with her much younger married neighbor. The woman's family must deal with their own demons while preparing for what could be an embarrassing funeral.

"[This play by] the master of Texas Comedy...is maybe funnier than Daddy's Dyin'. His colorful eccentrics are dead on, teetering on a Bowie knife's edge between the hilarious improbable and the achingly real."
— The Los Angeles Times

"Run, don't walk to Del Shores new play!"
— DramaLogue

"Pick of the Week."
— L.A. Weekly

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

The project, inspired by a similar exhibit at Rotary Botanical Garden in Janesville, Wisconsin, is designed to promote community participation and artist collaboration at the UT Gardens, Knoxville, as well as to raise awareness and support for the Gardens. 27 local professional and amateur artists have created unique interpretations of a wooden hummingbird silhouette. The pieces will be displayed throughout the summer of 2018 for Gardens visitors to enjoy. The Hummingbirds will then be sold at a live auction on September 8, 2018 with all proceeds benefiting the UT Gardens, Knoxville.

UT Gardens, Chapman Drive, Knoxville, TN 37996. Information: 865-974-7151, https://ag.tennessee.edu/utg/Pages/default.aspx

Reception date TBA

In the Sandra J. Blain Gallery
Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, 556 Parkway, Gatlinburg, TN 37738. Information: 865-436-5860, www.arrowmont.org

Jim Joyce takes a lot of pictures. He captures images of landscapes, flowers, big cats, all sorts of images from the great outdoors, but one subject that doesn’t catch his eye is people. At least not anymore.

Our featured artist in our Market Square location, Joyce spent a lot of his adult life trying to capture perfect moments of people interacting for PR shots and the like. But the challenges of blinking eyes, crooked smiles, funny faces, and even hair mussing gusts, finally got to him: “I got over the people pictures and so the only ones I take now are of my 7-year-old granddaughter.”

Although he didn’t include his family shots, Joyce did manage to bring a wide variety that includes dogwoods, tigers, flowers and more. For this exhibit Joyce selected some of his favorites from a large collection that now takes up considerable space in his home. He’s learned how to maximize every square inch of space from closest shelves to the space beneath beds in order to house his growing collection.

Joyce takes his camera along wherever he goes because, he says, “one morning I was walking my dog and there was a bald eagle right in the tree right above me. I didn’t have my camera on me so I took a picture with my cell phone. Of course, it was a minute detail on my camera screen, and it was a minute detail on my camera screen when I got back home to edit. I blew it up so I could show people. It was bigger than a speck, but you still couldn’t tell what it was. And I don’t think anybody believed me. Since then I take my camera with me everywhere.”

Joyce’s eye for the unexpected often gives his photography a fresh kind of realism, but the exhibit has more than a few shots that will make you stop for a second glance to check just what you saw. The striking color of a bird’s nest or the tendrils of a fern have an extra, alluring dimension, and the photo of a dance studio seems somehow slightly surreal. The dance studio shot is actually a photo of mural that he caught in some particularly serendipitous light, but even so, it captures the spirit of Joyce’s work – an eye for on the spot composition and a little bit of luck.

Jim Joyce’s photography will be on view at the downtown Knoxville Tomato Head on Market Square from May 7th thru June 3rd, 2018. Mr. Joyce will then display his work at the West Knoxville Gallery Tomato Head from June 4th thru July 2nd, 2018.

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

Calling all teens! Join us 1st & 3rd Saturdays this summer at 2 P.M. for Super Saturday Cinemas! Enjoy popcorn, drinks, and a recently released action-packed blockbuster film. May and June will feature Marvel vs. DC superheroes, and July and August will be megahits of the sci-fi genre.

May 5: Spider-Man: Homecoming (PG-13, 2017, 133 min.)
May 19: Thor: Ragnarok (PG-13, 2017, 130 min.)
June 2: Wonder Woman (PG-13, 2017, 141 min.)
June 16: Justice League (PG-13, 2017, 120 min.)
July 7: Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi (PG-13, 2017, 152 min.)
July 21: Black Panther (PG-13, 2018, 134 min.)
August 4: Maze Runner: The Death Cure (PG-13, 2018, 141 min.)
August 18: Ready Player One (PG-13, 2018, 140 min.)

4614 Asheville Hwy, Knoxville, TN 37914
www.knoxlib.org or (865) 525-5431

The opening reception on Thursday, May 3 from 5:30-7:30pm is free and open to the public.

The Knoxville Museum of Art presents Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection, featuring more than 40 paintings from the extensive holdings of the Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Scenic Impressions examines the influence of the Impressionist movement on art created in and about the American South. Artists represented in the exhibition include Kate Freeman Clark, Elliott Daingerfield, Gilbert Gaul, Alfred Hutty, Rudolph Ingerle, Willie Betty Newman, Alice Huger Smith, William Posey Silva, and Catherine Wiley, many of whom exhibited their work in Knoxville in the early twentieth century. The exhibition enables KMA viewers to appreciate the accomplishments of East Tennessee Impressionists such as Catherine Wiley within the larger context of her peers from around the Southeast.

Scenic Impressions is organized by the Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina. The Johnson Collection is one of the premier collections of Southern painting in the country. Scenic Impressions underscores the Johnsons’ commitment to illuminating the rich cultural history of the American South and advancing scholarship in the field.

“The artists in Scenic Impressions were inspired by the beauty and variety of Southeastern landforms, especially along the extensive coastline and in the mountains of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina,” said KMA Executive Director David Butler. “The vision of these painters stimulated a new appreciation of the Appalachian landscape that eventually led to the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. They showed us how to value what’s in our own backyard. The Johnson Collection has done us all a tremendous service by gathering so many first-rate examples of this rich and creative period.”

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

Wednesdays from 11 am – 2 pm
Saturdays from 9 am – 2 pm

The Market Square Farmers’ Market is an open-air farmers’ market located on Market Square in the heart of downtown Knoxville. Everything at the MSFM is grown or made by the vendor in the East Tennessee region. Products vary by the seasons and include produce, eggs, honey, herbs, pasture-raised meat, bread, baked goods, salsas, coffee, artisan crafts, and more. With interactive fountains, delicious local food, and surrounded by shops and restaurants, the MSFM is a perfect family destination.

Free parking is available on Saturdays at several parking garages downtown including the Market Square, Locust Street, Walnut Street, and State Street Garages, as well as in commercial loading zones. Parking is $1 per hour on Wednesdays in all four garages. Short-term parking meters around Market Square are in effect Wednesday and Saturday, and are $1.50 per hour. See downtownknoxville.org for more information on downtown Knoxville parking options. https://www.nourishknoxville.org/market-square-farmers-market/

You are invited to view more than 20 examples of southern mountain rifles and pistols at an upcoming temporary exhibit at the Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center in Townsend, Tennessee, from May 1 to October 25, presented by the Kentucky Rifle Foundation. These 18th and 19th century tools were essential for the survival of pioneers in the frontiers of Eastern Tennessee and Western Carolina.

These southern mountain rifles fully evolved in the last quarter of the 18th and the first quarter of the 19th centuries, as pioneers and settlers moved into what is now Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina. In the original colonies during this time, the Kentucky rifle was becoming an art piece in its “Golden Age,” while on the frontier, the southern mountain rifle had become an unadorned, iron-mounted utilitarian piece.

Baxter Bean, whose work exemplified the typical southern mountain rifle, was a third-generation gunsmith who worked in the Jonesboro, Tennessee, area. One of Baxter’s rifles, which will be on exhibit, was brought into Cades Cove by Wilson “Wilse” Birchfield, who named the rifle “Old Bean.” Wilse chose to live high in the mountains just under Gregory’s Bald. When he moved out of the Cove into the mountains, the old timers told him the bears would eat him alive. Wilse’s response to this was, “Old Wilson may eat some, too.”

For more details and to learn about special programming, call 865-448-0044 or visit www.gsmheritagecenter.org. This exhibit is included in the cost of daily admission to the Heritage Center or FREE to GSMHC members.

Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center, 3/4 mile east of traffic light at the Highway 321 and 73 intersection towards the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Townsend, TN. Hours: M-Sa 10-5. Information: 865-448-0044, www.gsmheritagecenter.org

The Town's May/June 2018 Featured Artist is Quebec native Jill Crociata. Her colorful textile art is influenced by 1930s cottage and garden design, but with a contemporary twist.

Jill emphasizes texture through techniques of layered fabric and hand stitch. Using hand-dyed fabrics and threads, she creates engaging red-roofed cottages, forested landscapes and gardens that sparkle with beads and combinations of unusual threads. She is a member of the FreeStyle interest group of the Knoxville Chapter of the Embroiderers' Guild.

Each month, the work of an artist or group of artists is featured in specially-designed cases on the second floor of the rotunda in Farragut Town Hall. For more information about this exhibit or to access a Featured Artist application, visit townoffarragut.org/artsandculture or

contact Brittany Spencer at ParksandRecInfo@townoffarragut.org or 218-3378.
Farragut Town Hall, located at 11408 Municipal Center Drive directly across from the Farragut Branch Post Office, is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Reception June 28th 5-7pm

In the Geoffrey A. Wolpert Gallery
Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, 556 Parkway, Gatlinburg, TN 37738. Information: 865-436-5860, www.arrowmont.org