Calendar of Events

Ahoy, readers! Mayor Glenn Jacobs is inviting you to set sail on our 2022 reading challenge, Oceans of Possibilities, with a goal to read ONE MILLION HOURS! This year, we've broken our million-hour goal into three nautical challenges. You can participate in any one of the challenges, or all three.

Anchors aweigh! Set sail with us. By reading and logging your hours, you'll be part of Read City's quest to be the best-read community in America. It's more than a feel-good slogan. In an effort to support our schools, we are encouraging our children and their families to make reading a top priority. Currently, only 40% of Knox County students are reading on grade level at the end of third grade. Our community can help.

Got a Beanstack tracker app account? It's simple to join the next challenge--just click on Anchors Aweigh.

Don't have a Beanstack account yet? Also simple. With your library card, you can register for a free account and get started logging.

You can also drop by any library and pick up a navigation map with activities or try out our sailor hat craft.

It's 2022 and time for another reading adventure. I'm excited to set sail on our Anchors Aweigh challenge, and I hope you'll join us. When we read together, we're sending a strong message to our community that we value reading. If you can read with a child, that's even better, but all reading counts. It's easy to be a part of Read City. Just download the Beanstack tracker app or drop by any Knox County Public Library location to pick up a tracker map. Earn great prizes. Read and log 45 hours (that's about 20 minutes a day) to earn sea-worthy prizes! https://www.knoxlib.org/calendar-programs/read-city-oceans-possibilities

Exhibition on Display: January 10th - February 25th

"Close to Home" featuring work by Michelle Barillaro & Vickie Bradshaw. Stop by M-F from 10AM-5PM to see the show! 123 W Jackson Avenue, Knoxville, TN 37902. The First Friday reception will be Friday, February 4th from 5-8PM.

Regular Gallery Hours: M-F 10AM-5PM

About the Artists:
Vickie J Bradshaw is a Southern Appalachian based artist who has been making art for the last thirty years across a variety of mediums. As a teacher at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN, she is currently teaching metals classes as well as working with torched fired enamels. She is especially interested in mixed-media art and the functionality of found objects. She received her BFA from Memphis College of Arts.

Michelle Barillaro is an abstract painter based in Knoxville, TN. She works with a wide variety of mediums and enjoys discovering new ways to bring her work to life.

Dogwood Arts, 123 W. Jackson Ave, Knoxville, TN 37902. Information: 865-637-4561, www.dogwoodarts.com

The artists represented in this exhibit are:
o Paige Braddock (BFA ’85)
o Peter Cotroneo (MFA ’16)
o Brandon McBath (BFA ’16)
o Alex Cline (BFA ’13)
o Mary Climes (MFA ‘21)
o Joel Trussell (BFA ’98)
o Emmy Lingscheit (MFA ’12)
o Guen Montgomery (MFA ’12)
o Marshall Ramsey (HCB ’91)
o Ed Gamble 1971-72
o James Greene (MFA ‘06)
o Danny Wilson (BFA '84)

The Student Union Gallery is located on the first floor of UT's Student Union. Gallery hours are 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday. There is no admission charge.

Blackberry Farm Gallery 502 E. Lamar Alexander Parkway, Maryville, TN

Art by MC alumnus Minh Hoang ’16. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10am-5pm. A reception will be held in the gallery on Jan. 28 from 6-8 p.m.

Clayton Center for the Arts, Maryville College: 502 East Lamar Alexander Parkway, Maryville, TN 37804. Information: 865-981-8590, www.ClaytonArtsCenter.com

JANUARY 9 – MARCH 4, 2022 | GEOFFREY A. WOLPERT GALLERY
Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts is proud to feature works by this year’s Winter Pentaculum Studio Coordinators; Adam Atkinson, Suzi Banks Baum, Brandon Donahue, Jason Schneider, Max Seinfeld, and Rena Wood. Also included in this exhibition is slide show featuring the work of participating invited artists, and a collection of writers’ short stories, poems, and essays. This colorful exhibition represents the spectrum of work created in a variety of media supported in the studios at here at Arrowmont.

https://www.arrowmont.org/pentaculum-winter_2022/
Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, 556 Parkway, Gatlinburg, TN 37738. Information: 865-436-5860, https://www.arrowmont.org

133 S Gay St, Unit C, Knoxville, TN 37902
Hours: Mon-Thurs 9:00 to 5pm
Friday 9:00 to 6:pm
Sat-Sun 9:00 to 5pm

The display for the show at Jacks coffee shop will be a variety of work to include: landscapes, animals, and pet portraits.

I paint in water-based oils. The subject matter I choose to paint is a variety of subjects from animals to landscapes to people’s pets. I search copyright free materials for anything new and challenging. Knoxville will be home for my family for almost three years in the Spring. You can see my work at my website on the internet at www.ArtisticEscape.studio.

116 S Central St, Knoxville, TN 37902
Hours: M-TH 12:00 to 8pm, Fr-Sat 12:00 to 9pm, Sun 1pm to 7pm

The display for the show at Corks will center around different beverage glasses and their contents. Some paintings will have a dramatic background setting while other paintings will show off liquid splashing from within the glass.

Leesa is fairly recently a transplant for the West Coast. Her painting medium is water-based oils. You can see her work at www.ArtisticEscape.studio. Knoxville is quickly becoming home to herself, husband, and two rescue dogs. Leesa is also learning to paint in the Plein Air Style when time and weather permits.

Kathryn Clark is an avid photographer whose particular interest in the past few years has been mushrooms. She finds them camping, hiking, kayaking or just in her own backyard. See all the beautiful varieties she has captured in Ijams Hallway Gallery during the month of January.

Ijams Nature Center, 2915 Island Home Ave, Knoxville, TN 37920. Information: 865-577-4717, www.ijams.org

Half-price adult admission every Wed in Jan & Feb!

Museum of Appalachia, 2819 Andersonville Hwy., Clinton, TN 37716 (16 miles north of Knoxville at I-75, exit 122, then one mile east). Open every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas. Information: 865-494-7680, www.museumofappalachia.org

No BPS will occur Jan 25-29 - please come back Feb 1 for more great music!

The WDVX Blue Plate Special® is a live performance radio show held at noon, with your host Red Hickey, Monday through Thursday at the Knoxville Visitor Center. On Fridays WDVX takes the Blue Plate Special to Barley’s Taproom & Pizzeria for “The Big Plate”, then back to the Visitor Center on Saturday with your host Evie Andrus.

It’s always free to join in, so please don’t be shy. Make yourself at home as part of the WDVX family. From blues to bluegrass, country to Celtic, folk to funk, rockabilly to hillbilly, local to international, it all part of the live music experience on the WDVX Blue Plate Special. You’re welcome to bring your lunch.

Just like at your favorite meat n’ three, the WDVX Blue Plate Special® is served up piping hot. This fresh and free daily helping of live music during the lunchtime hour that features performers from all over the world and right here in Knoxville has put WDVX on the map as East Tennessee’s Own community supported radio.

Previous performing artists include Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, The Avett Brothers, Old Crowe Medicine Show, Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, Jim Lauderdale, Marty Stuart, Nickel Creek, Red Stick Ramblers, Rodney Crowell, String Cheese Incident, The Del McCoury Band, Tim O’Brien, Yonder Mountain String Band, David Grisman, Claire Lynch Band, Brett Dennen, Tommy Emmanuel, Uncle Earl, The Infamous Stringdusters, the Jerry Douglas Band, Joan Osborne, John Oats, Mary Gauthier, Darrell Scott, and many many more! There’s plenty of great music to go around! http://wdvx.com/program/blue-plate-special/

Free 2-hour visitor parking located next door to the Knoxville Visitor Center. One Vision Plaza, 301 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. Info: 865-544-1029, http://www.wdvx.com

JANUARY 04, 2022 - FEBRUARY 19, 2022
An Exhibition of International Collage Artists
Monuments are ubiquitous on the landscape. Common and omnipresent, they blend into the background and go unnoticed until someone points them out. In recent years, monuments have become flashpoints of cultural controversy. It wasn’t that these monuments weren’t being seen, it’s that some people in the community weren’t hearing what others in the community were saying about them.

In 1747, a sandstone column was erected in the center of Birr, County Offaly, Ireland and topped with a statue of the Duke of Cumberland who just the year before brutally defeated the Scots at Culloden. The column and its statue was an act of imperialism, a message to the Irish people that a similar fate awaited them should they, too, resist English rule. In 1915, Birr Town Council voted to remove the statue. The Council’s action came during a period when the people of Ireland were asserting their independence from England. The column has stood empty ever since.

In 2021, at the invitation of the citizens of Birr, curator Ric Kasini Kadour invited eighteen collage artists from eleven countries to use an image by Robert French (1841-1917), The Square, Parsonstown, from the Lawrence Photograph Collection to imagine a monument that speaks to a world where all people enjoy safety, security, well-being, and dignity on their own terms. The collage prints debuted during the 53rd Annual Birr Vintage Week & Arts Festival, where the project was recognized with a National Heritage Award.

The exhibition of these works in the American South changes the context of the project from one rooted in British imperialism to an opportunity to reflect upon the role monuments can play in historical revisionism, in particular as we work to undo the legacy of slavery and the use of Confederate monuments to distort history and intimidate the descendants of enslaved people. That important civic conversation has focused on whether monuments should stay or be removed. We hope this exhibition invites a different conversation: What role do we want monuments to play in our community? What shared ideas or collective memories do we want future generations to celebrate? And ultimately, how can we build communities where all people enjoy safety, security, well-being, and dignity on their own terms. https://knoxart.org/kma_events/empty-columns-are-a-place-to-dream/

Knoxville Museum of Art, 1050 World's Fair Park Dr, Knoxville, TN 37916. Tuesday-Saturday 10 am-5pm, Sunday 1-5 pm, closed Mondays. Information: 865-525-6101, https://knoxart.org/

Tue Jan 4, 10-12: “Heat Emboss and Dry Emboss Note/Greeting Card,” with Louise Goodman, $30
Thu Jan 13, 12-1:30: Home School Children’s Art Class
Fri Jan 14, 10-1: PinCushion Parfait, with Twyla Marti & Vera Bogle, $50
Tue Jan 18, 9:30: Monthly Members Meeting
Tue Jan 18, 12-2: Artist Peer Review and Discussion Group, with Jack Retterer, $20
Wed Jan 19, 1-4: Chain Maille Jewelry: “Valentine Necklace,” with George Gallant, $80
Thu Jan 20, 10-1: “How to Paint Trees in Watercolor”, with Sheryl Reeser, $40
Wed Jan 26, 12-2: Life Drawing, with Dena Whitener, $5
Located at 451 Lakeview Drive in Fairfield Glade (off Peavine Road). 931-707-7249 or www.artguildfairfieldglade.net