Calendar of Events

The first thing to know about Ocean Starr Cline is that that is her given name. The second important thing to know is that, despite the invariable interest that her name excites, she’s not much concerned with what others think. In fact, it’s an essential part of how she lives:

“My parents had me in San Francisco, named me, and immediately moved me to Clay County, Alabama where everybody was Jeremy, Jason, Sarah and Amanda. I fit in like a purple giraffe on the farm. I complained bitterly about my name for years and years and I was going to change it when I got old enough, but, by that point, I had gotten used to it – because there’s always somebody who’s going to stare or has a comment. It really fortified me to be able to put any kind of art on the wall. Some people are going to like it some people are not. And I just don’t care.”

But Cline’s life and art is very much about caring for other people though not in an intrusive or interfering way. Cline’s paintings evince a sense of that magic – although she often works in a similar palate, her paintings each carry a unique voice, you might even detect an aura. Her approach to art leaves her open to whatever magic or inspiration comes to her in the moment.

Starr Cline’s exhibit will be on view at the downtown Knoxville Tomato Head on Market Square from June 4th through July 1st. Her exhibit will move to the West Knoxville Tomato Head from July 3rd through August 6th. http://thetomatohead.com/ocean-starr-cline/

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

Recent works by ceramicist Amber Anne Palo and woodturner Janis Proffit will be on display through the month of June at the Art Market Gallery. An opening reception for the featured artists, with complimentary refreshments and live music performed by Jim Myers, will begin at 5:30 p.m. on June 1, during Downtown Knoxville’s monthly First Friday Art Walk.

The show represents a first-time-ever collaboration between two of the gallery’s 3-Dimensional artists. Janis and Amber Anne will combine their mediums of clay and wood, creating sculptural 3-D pieces, as well as 2-D hanging works.

Amber Anne Palo: Amber Anne hand-builds her ceramic figurative sculptures using layers of underglazes to create her surfaces. She blends many pieces with antique items that carry the scars from years of use or neglect to impart a sense of time-worn history. She creates her figures with the intent that each transmit meaning while allowing the viewer to establish their own personal connection.
Amber Anne is a self-taught artist who has been involved with clay for over 20 years, with more recent years focusing on a professional level. She has won several awards of distinction and participates in several national juried art shows each year. Her work is also carried in several galleries throughout the United States. Amber Anne seeks to open a dialogue between the viewer and the artwork to convey the common human experience. The language of the conversation is two-fold, with her part being expressed through the subtle nuances of facial expressions, body language, and layers of meaning through worn and weathered surfaces. She then strives to create the moment when a person moves past the artwork itself to their own personal experiences - the response to her artistic statement. This is a moment for her that is humbling and a reaffirmation that the work she creates is not just for her but those who experience, internalize, and digest her art.

Janis Proffit: Woodworking has been in Janis's family for several generations, dating back to the first settlers in Sevier County. She grew up helping her father in his woodshop and learned her woodworking skills from him. In the 1980's she taught herself pyrography, incorporating it into her woodturnings. Many of her pieces are created from both fallen logs and branches while others are formed from logs that have been sawn into slabs. Many times characteristics unique to an individual piece of wood,will influence the design. For over 25 years, she has been a full-time craft artist. Her work is a mixture of traditional Appalachia turning along with contemporary designs.
Janis has both studied and assisted at Arrowmont. She has been featured on "The Heartland Series," and is a member of the Foothills Craft Guild. Her work has won numerous awards from Tennessee Craft, Arrowmont Juried Biennial Shows, and Oak Ridge Art Center Open Shows. In 2009, Janis was invited to be a demonstrator in the Utah Woodturning Symposium. There were over 8 countries represented at the Symposium.

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

Check out June's colorful mixed media exhibit by Tina Brunetti of Brunetti Confetti Art!
She combines acrylics, oil, sand and glue for a beautiful, stained glass effect.

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. Call for Visitor Center hours. Information: 865-577-4717, www.ijams.org

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

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

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