Calendar of Events

Shane Pickett: Djinong Djina Boodja (Look at the Land That I Have Travelled)
January 14 - May 7, 2022

During his lifetime, Shane Pickett (1957–2010) was acclaimed as one of Western Australia’s most significant contemporary Aboriginal artists.

Featuring 29 works from the most radical and significant phase of his career, Djinong Djina Boodja (Look at the Land that I Have Traveled) is the first major exhibition of Pickett’s work in the US. Pickett’s paintings capture the transformations of the country near Perth in the south-west of Australia in ever-changing and innovative ways. Over the course of his three-decade career, Pickett developed a new visual language to represent the cornerstones of the culture of his Nyoongar people: the pathways of ancestors, traditional healing practices and places, and especially the six seasons used by the Nyoongar to divide the year.

Djinong Djina Boodja (Look at the Land that I Have Traveled) shows the developments in the last decade of Pickett’s career, as his work transformed from figurative landscape painting into a ground breaking and expressive form of gestural abstraction. It was during this period that Pickett achieved his greatest acclaim, with his works being exhibited across Australia and acquired by major institutions such as the National Gallery of Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria. The 29 works in the exhibition present a snapshot of these experiments, as Pickett explores the complex connections between the earth, creation, and spirituality that are united in the Aboriginal concept of “Dreaming.”

Pickett described his paintings as ‘windows into the Dreaming’, and the strength of his culture is delivered through his work with breathtaking lyrical intensity. His paintings show the persistence and adaptability of Aboriginal ways of seeing the country in the face of colonisation. Shane Pickett’s Nyoongar name, Meeyakba, or ‘soft light of the moon,’ captures the spirit of an artist who set a beacon for those who follow him. One of the great innovators of Australian landscape painting, he is remembered as one of the pre-eminent Aboriginal Australian artists of his time.

McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture, 1327 Circle Park Dr on the UT campus, Knoxville, TN 37996. Information: 865-974-2144

Available through Facebook, via a link from our website under “Events”, or by calling the Art Center with your bids.

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

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.

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

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/

Artwork by:

Kim Kimmons, Watercolors of Western Art
Ralph Parson, Wood Turning
Audrey Yates, Pottery

Westminster Presbyterian Church’s Schilling Gallery
6500 Northshore Drive, Knoxville, TN
865-584-3957
Hours: Monday thru Thursday, 9 AM to 4 PM and Friday, 9 AM - noon

Tri-Star Arts announces a special exhibition in their gallery at the historic Candoro Marble Building. A solo show, Graft, featuring work by artist Edra Soto of Chicago, Illinois opens on Tuesday, December 7, 2021 and will run through Saturday, February 12, 2022. Public receptions will be held on Friday, December 10, 2021 from 4:00- 8:00 pm and Friday, February 4, 2022 from 5:00- 8:00 pm (artist in attendance on February 4).

This exhibition will coincide with the unveiling of a permanent, outdoor sculpture by Edra Soto, Graft Knoxville, in early February 2022 at the UT GATOP Arboretum & Education Center in Knoxville, Tennessee. This site-specific sculpture initiative has been organized and curated by Tri-Star Arts in partnership with the UT Department of Plant Sciences, UT School of Art/ Sculpture Department, UT College of Architecture + Design/ FabLab, Sanders Pace Architecture, Johnson & Galyon Construction, Mallia Engineering Company, and Tennessee Marble Company. Graft Knoxville is in its final stages of production with more information and related public events forthcoming.

The Graft exhibition at the Candoro Marble Building features sculpture and prints by Edra Soto alongside a visual exploration of her design process, including scale models, a real-scale block module, and project renderings by Knoxville-based firm Sanders Pace Architecture.

Candoro Marble Building, 4450 Candora Drive, Knoxville, TN 37920. Hours: Tue-Sat 11-5. Information: https://tristararts.org/visit
The use of masks and social distancing is encouraged.

Follow Tri-Star Arts on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
#TRISTARARTS

http://www.klockmillerart.com
I am a chromesthete which means I see a vast array of real colors in my mind when I listen to music. I like to think of it as my own personal light show. My goal for each portrait is to let you glimpse music and musicians the way I do. There is a kinship between color and music – both can say what words can not.

I paint in shadowed hues using the grisaille technique. After sketching out my musician in a grayscale underpainting, I add opaque and translucent acrylic colors according to what I see when I listen to their music. They come together like puzzle pieces on my canvas. I DO NOT use editing software or trace my portraits. They are hand drawn according to their highlights and shadows.

I began painting for others in 2017 as an outlet to share all the mesmerizing colors I see. While I can remember the lyrics to almost any song I’ve ever heard, I am most fascinated by the people who pen them.

My 10+ years as a journalist and graphic artist left me with a great understanding of design principles as they relate to color.

I think Wassily Kandinsky said it best: “Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting and … stop thinking. Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to walk about into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?”

John C. Hodges Library, 1015 Volunteer Blvd, Knoxville, TN 37996