Calendar of Events

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

A reception will take place on Friday, June 1, from 5:00-9:00 PM as part of First Friday activities downtown to which the public is invited to meet the artists and view the artwork.

The Arts & Culture Alliance presents the sixth annual Knoxville Photo exhibition featuring selected works from 34 artists throughout the region. Knoxville Photo was developed to provide a forum for photographers to compete on a national scale and display their work. The exhibition encompasses photographs depicting all subjects and genres, including streetscapes, cityscapes, landscapes, environmental portraiture, portraits, abstracts, and more.

Leigh Mitchell served as juror for the exhibition and viewed images from 78 artists to select the exhibition. Mitchell is a fine art photographer and educator. She was a college instructor for over ten years, teaching Film Photography I and II, Digital Photography I and II, and Photography Appreciation. She obtained a bachelor’s degree in Human Studies from Warren Wilson College and a master’s degree in Studio Art from Western Carolina University. Her work has been in galleries locally and nationally, including The Center for Fine Art Photography (Fort Collins, CO), Rochester Contemporary Art Center (Rochester, NY), Five Spot (Atlanta, GA), The Asheville Art Museum, and The Asheville Area Arts Council.

The following artists’ works will be shown:
+ Dave Edens of Madison, AL
+ Leon Bell of Owens Cross Roads, AL
+ Adam Hutsell of Los Angeles, CA
+ Samuel Brown of Dacula, GA
+ Caroline Dockery of Asheville, NC
+ Sam Hill of Matthews, NC
+ Ken Van Dyne of Cincinnati, OH
+ Karen Partridge of Dandridge, TN
+ David Boruff, Jamar Coach, Bobbie Crews Thurston, Khoa Dinh, Katharine Emlen, Nevin Freeman, Richard Jansen, Hei Park, Lennie Robertson, Caitlin Ryan, and Karla Tucker of Knoxville, TN
+ Brooke Craig of Lookout Mountain, TN
+ Cat Griffith-Benson of Maryville, TN
+ Bobbie J. Hinton of Morristown, TN
+ Paula Campbell, Yvonne Dalschen, Lela Moore, Anna Rykaczewska and Jill Vandagriff of Oak Ridge, TN
+ Eric Buechel of Pleasant Hill, TN
+ Phil Savage and AngelaDawn of Powell, TN
+ Julie Oglesby of Seymour, TN
+ Spears McAllester of Signal Mountain, TN
+ Billie Wheeler of Meadowview, VA
+ James E. Meldrum of Beloit, WI

For more information, please visit http://www.knoxalliance.com/knoxville-photo/

On display at the Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, in downtown Knoxville. Exhibition hours are Monday-Friday, 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM. Information: (865) 523-7543 or www.knoxalliance.com.

A reception will take place on Friday, June 1, from 5:00-9:00 PM as part of First Friday activities downtown to which the public is invited to meet the artists and view the artwork.

Judi Gaston will display two series as part of the exhibition with her son, Robert Gaston, who will display metal art furniture pieces, small pottery/metal works, and photography.

Each year in the spring, Ijams Nature Center invites volunteers to help clean-up the Tennessee River. Judi Gaston enjoys being part of the environmentally-important event and is intrigued by the beauty of objects she finds during the clean-up. The objects form the basis for pieces in a series entitled “Recycle: The Tennessee River Rescue”, which are handwoven with recycled materials, used plastic bags, retired bed linens, packing materials, and more. Her second series, “Recycle: The Study”, results from her husband’s participation in a medical study. Each piece contains some of the used paraphernalia from the study, including cut-up hospital gowns handwoven into a lookalike hospital gown. With other works, plastic newspaper sleeves become the handwoven bodies. Judi Gaston is a fiber artist, designing and weaving wearables that reflect her passion for travel and witnessing various cultures. Her wearables often incorporate vintage or found pieces, linking past with present. She is a member of the Tennessee Crafts Association, The Southern Highlands Guild, and the Piedmont Crafts Guild. Gaston has received many awards, and her work appears in numerous collections. In 2011, she was inducted into the Tennessee State Museum Fashion and Textile Institute in Nashville.

Robert Gaston’s influences and interests include nature and insects, machines, Meso-American and ancient world ceramics, Japanese Sci-fi models, northern European renaissance painting, and African ceramics and architecture, to name a few. His work is simply a reflection of his interests. Robert Gaston grew up in Knoxville and graduated from the University of Tennessee (BFA) in 1989. Since graduation, he has spent most of his time living in Colorado where he runs a business restoring fossil skeletons (dinosaurs, extinct mammals, etc.). For more information, please visit www.gastondesign.com.

On display at the Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, in downtown Knoxville. Exhibition hours are Monday-Friday, 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM. Information: (865) 523-7543 or www.knoxalliance.com.

A reception will take place on Friday, June 1, from 5:00-9:00 PM as part of First Friday activities downtown to which the public is invited to meet the artists and view the artwork.

The alphabet series was inspired by Bruce Bunting’s desire to program an exhibition and create a larger body of coherent work. He typically works on a small scale, on individual pieces, and he selected the alphabet as the basis for his new series. He scoured the dictionary for inspiring words and antique shops and his attic for parts and pieces. Each of the works incorporate his handmade paper, newly-purchased parts and antiques, and some personal objects more than 20 years old. This exhibition represents the largest body of work Bunting has ever made.

Bruce Bunting is a retired automotive engineer and cancer survivor. He has dabbled in art most of his life in the form of jewelry and small sculptures. After retirement, he became more involved in developing his personal style, which combines his enjoyment of building things with his whimsical/macabre outlook. His art also provided an outlet for expression as he went through cancer treatment and recovery. For more information, please visit https://brucebuntingart.com/.

On display at the Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, in downtown Knoxville. Exhibition hours are Monday-Friday, 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM. Information: (865) 523-7543 or www.knoxalliance.com.

A reception will take place on Friday, June 1, from 5:00-9:00 PM as part of First Friday activities downtown to which the public is invited to meet the artists and view the artwork.

Since the early 20th century, women have been a strong presence in both the American art-pottery movement and the studio movement of artists working alone. This exhibition pays homage to the aesthetic ideals of that era and the women who made it possible. Amanda Bonar’s work focuses on combining intense surface decorations that are inspired by nature and combined with classic vessel forms. Sometimes whimsical, sometimes somber – all the pieces pay homage to the women gone before who painstakingly balanced life, work, and motherhood while creating something useful and beautiful to behold. Bonar’s pieces are rendered on the potter’s wheel or slab-built by hand with texture and alterations. All pieces are water tight, non-toxic and oven proof.

Amanda Bonar is a former art educator trained at the Pennsylvania State University. She learned ceramics from Dr. Kenneth Beittel, and after many years teaching at all levels of education in both public and private settings, she is now focusing on her own creative processes. She has a private studio in Loudon and is a member of the Foothills Craft Guild and Terra Madre consortium of women ceramicists. She has received several accolades including the 2017 Award for ceramic excellence at the Open Show at the Oak Ridge Art Center. Her work is in several collections in the area and the Northeast. For more information, please visit https://www.facebook.com/ArtifaxArtPottery/.

On display at the Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, in downtown Knoxville. Exhibition hours are Monday-Friday, 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM. Information: (865) 523-7543 or www.knoxalliance.com.

A reception will take place on Friday, June 1, from 5:00-9:00 PM as part of First Friday activities downtown to which the public is invited to meet the artists and view the artwork.

Barbara West Portrait Group in the Atrium
The original group formed in 2001 by Barbara West, and after her death, they continued meeting in her name. Members have come from a variety of places including the Knoxville area, other parts of the state, various parts of the US, and even other countries. Their list of occupations is diverse: photographers, teachers, architects, doctors, nurses, scientists, homemakers, and artists. The group’s members range from those who are just starting to explore art to professional artists; all use a variety of media. Although the common thread is art, the group tries to provide a strong sense of community - an important gift as they move through life.

The Barbara West Portrait Group has exhibited at the Farragut Town Hall, Peace Lutheran Church, Ball Camp Baptist, and Candoro Marble. They meet every Wednesday & Saturday from 2:00-4:00 PM in Knoxville-area churches. The open studio is $5 to attend with a live model; no instruction is provided. For more information, please contact Debbie Barnes at 865-661-1213 or visit https://www.facebook.com/TheBarbaraWestPortraitGroup.

On display at the Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, in downtown Knoxville. Exhibition hours are Monday-Friday, 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM. Information: (865) 523-7543 or www.knoxalliance.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

A reception will take place on Saturday, May 5, from 7:00-9:00 PM with a gallery talk at 6:30 PM.

In 1963, the Knoxville Watercolor Society began when the head of the University of Tennessee’s art department, Kermit (Buck) Ewing, invited watercolor artists exhibiting at the university’s McClung Museum to form the nucleus for the organization. The purpose of the organization is to educate the members as well as the community to the understanding of watercolor as a significant art form. Active membership is juried by the members and consists of Knoxville area artists who are currently active in the serious pursuit of aqueous painting and meet regularly to share knowledge and new techniques.

KWS donates a yearly scholarship to a University of Tennessee student majoring in watercolor, maintains membership in local art organizations, and contributes to watercolor awareness by funding awards for the Tennessee Watercolor Society's biennial exhibit and grants for other worthwhile art associations and programs. Additionally, grants have been made to the Arts Council of Greater Knoxville, the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Tennessee Resource Center, and the Tennessee Art Association High School Scholarship Program. Recent exhibitions have been held at the University of Tennessee Conference Center, the Oak Ridge Community Art Center, the Art Market at the Candy Factory and the Knoxville Museum of Art.

Members exhibit with the Tennessee Watercolor Society, other state watercolor organizations, the Southern Watercolor Society, Watercolor USA and the American Watercolor Society and consistently win regional, state and national awards. Local watercolor artists interested in joining KWS have the opportunity to apply for active membership each October and submit paintings to be juried by the membership at the November meeting. For more information, please visit www.knxvillewatercolorsociety.com.

On display at the Oak Ridge Art Center, 201 Badger Avenue, Oak Ridge, TN 37830. Hours: Tu-F 9-5, Sa-M 1-4. Information: 865-482-1441, www.oakridgeartcenter.org

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