Calendar of Events
Wednesday, March 23, 2022
Emporium Center: Jessica Burleson: Don’t Touch
Category: Exhibitions, visual art and Free event
A free reception with the artists will take place on Friday, March 4, from 5:00-9:00 PM and features music by Partners in Rhyme (Cal and Richard). Most of the works will be for sale and may be purchased through the close of the exhibition by visiting in person or the online shop at www.knoxalliance.store.
Jessica Burleson is a Panamanian-American artist and recent Knoxville transplant. Her artistic career began in 2005 when she received an Honorable Mention Award in the Regional Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She was then invited to participate in the Scholastics National Student Show in New York, where she was awarded the 2005 American Vision Award. This achievement secured her calling in the arts, leading her to receive a BFA and study art abroad in Florence, Italy. Throughout her artistic career she received numerous awards, publications, and grants while also contributing to group shows and festivals. Her debut solo exhibition, Don’t Touch, speaks to her experience of femininity and nature through the materiality and objectivity of paint. This collection of acrylic paintings is created from acrylic skins and impasto cake decorating techniques to form a painterly collage of textures and control. Burleson manipulates the material to exist beyond its presumed physicality to acknowledge its presences and natural abilities – a voyeuristic gaze into femininity as deliciously unattainable and sacral.
The consumption of divine femininity, nature and art is my inspiration in creating. My works are both material and delicate with savory textures – a reflection of the embodiment of femininity and nature that is met by the world with an all-consuming hunger. I compose impossibly thick, icing-like, touch-worthy feminine floral elements, a visual delicacy one can only hope to resist the temptation to touch. I speak to the exploitation of femininity as a pound of flesh to be devoured. My work lives in a world where worth is not of the body but within one’s essence, where femininity is allowed to remain sacred and untouched by burden, blooming into its full potential – living beyond objectification and allowed to accept our full spectrum of self.
www.JessicaBurlesonArt.com
Instagram: @jess_burleson
Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, in downtown Knoxville. Hours: M-F 9-5, Sat 10-1. Info: 865-523-7543, www.knoxalliance.com
Emporium Center: Bruce Bunting: New Works in Paper
Category: Exhibitions, visual art, Fine Crafts and Free event
A free reception with the artists will take place on Friday, March 4, from 5:00-9:00 PM and features music by Partners in Rhyme (Cal and Richard). Most of the works will be for sale and may be purchased through the close of the exhibition by visiting in person or the online shop at www.knoxalliance.store.
Bruce Bunting is a retired engineer who spent his career working in the automotive industry. He has a PhD in Mechanical Engineering and worked at several machine shops. About ten years ago he became attracted to papermaking because it combined art, chemistry, materials, and equipment. One of his first motivators included working on a biofuels project with a paper mill and realizing he was more interested in the paper technology than in the fuels. He started making paper in a hotel room when on a one-year remote assignment, using a blender and a craft store papermaking kit. His first outputs were paper earrings and assemblies of small paper castings. When he retired, he built a papermaking studio at his Knoxville home and fabricated all the equipment needed. Since then, he has written articles for paper arts magazines, presented to a university paper arts class, and attended training classes at several studios. He continues on with paper exploration, including materials, equipment, and techniques and considers himself fortunate to have the time and independence to follow his heart.
For this exhibition, Bunting plans to showcase 36 new works in paper. I am calling these works “sculptural collages”: collages, because they are assembled from paper with glue, and sculptural, because the works have depth and the paper has thickness and texture. I made the paper for these pieces in my studio. I’m working more toward a sculptural approach, rather than flat work, as I want the paper itself to be the art and not just a backdrop for another media.
Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, in downtown Knoxville. Hours: M-F 9-5, Sat 10-1. Info: 865-523-7543, www.knoxalliance.com
Emporium Center: CAW: Coral and Amos Works
Category: Exhibitions, visual art and Free event
A free reception with the artists will take place on Friday, March 4, from 5:00-9:00 PM and features music by Partners in Rhyme (Cal and Richard). Most of the works will be for sale and may be purchased through the close of the exhibition by visiting in person or the online shop at www.knoxalliance.store.
CAW is an idea that Coral and Amos fabricated more than ten years ago and is finally coming to fruition. This exhibition will be their first step toward collaborating together.
Coral's work had utilized more illustrations in the past compared with the natural elements she currently uses in her hand screen printed fabric. These images all started as a photograph on her phone that she took while in nature, which she then separated by hand into several layers. Registration is used to create a repeat pattern, and there are random printed elements on each piece of linen yardage.
www.coralgraceturner.com/art.html
Instagram: @cgraceturn
Amos's work is a mix of images from life and abstract scenarios, intended as screen shots from inner space. He draws inspiration from the endless and teeming variety of life on planet Earth with a particular focus on humor, absurdity, and small pleasures.
Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, in downtown Knoxville. Hours: M-F 9-5, Sat 10-1. Info: 865-523-7543, www.knoxalliance.com
Emporium Center: Stephen Brayfield: Pawtraits and Mewsings
Category: Exhibitions, visual art and Free event
A free reception with the artists will take place on Friday, March 4, from 5:00-9:00 PM and features music by Partners in Rhyme (Cal and Richard). Most of the works will be for sale and may be purchased through the close of the exhibition by visiting in person or the online shop at www.knoxalliance.store.
In response to recent interest, I’ve put together a collection of realistic portraits - or whimsically, “Pawtraits” - that exhibit my ability to capture the essence or soul of our furry family members: a cat who’s claimed an antique chair as his own or a dachshund who sees herself as a much larger dog. I love painting animals in classical poses looking regal or making funny faces. For most of these works, rather than stretch my watercolor paper, I mount it onto cradled wooden panels normally used to paint on with oils. After the painting is completed I seal it with cold wax medium thereby eliminating the need for a frame and glass. It can then be displayed more like an oil without any interference between viewer and art. https://www.facebook.com/PetPortraitsbyStephenThomasBrayfield/
Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, in downtown Knoxville. Hours: M-F 9-5, Sat 10-1. Info: 865-523-7543, www.knoxalliance.com
Dogwood Arts: Synergy Exhibition
Category: Exhibitions, visual art, Free event and Kids, family
Synergy showcases gifted K-12 art students alongside their teachers and current art interns/student-teachers from East Tennessee. See the results of the artistic student-teacher synergy that happens every day in our schools! Awards and scholarships are presented to encourage further development of these art students’ artistic aptitude.
A Closing Reception and Awards Ceremony will be held at the Clayton Center for the Arts (502 East Lamar Alexander Parkway, Maryville, TN 37804) on Wednesday, March 23rd from 5:30-7:30 PM. All artists, families, and friends are encouraged to attend this wonderful celebration. Artwork will be available for pick-up at the end of the reception.
Information: 865-637-4561, www.dogwoodarts.com
Westminister Presbyterian Church: Works by Charlotte Rollman & Debbie Whelan
Category: Exhibitions, visual art, Fine Crafts and Free event
Charlotte Rollman Artist Statement
All of these paintings are plein-air (painted outside and on-site). You may notice all of the seasons are represented here, as I try to paint all year long. The two largest paintings are from my backyard and all of the work is from East Tennessee. I paint often, and particularly enjoy my weekly meet-up with the Tuesday Painters group. We are a lucky bunch. We mostly share our work, painting ideas, studio tips and discuss art events, and over lunch we share our lives outside of painting. We discuss abstract things like color, contrast, value, reflections and the weather. The wind joins us too and is not usually my friend, but it does chase away the bugs. I like to paint in the early morning light but I am not always the first person to our destination for the day. Sometimes I am distracted driving to our painting destination on Tuesday mornings and see other places I would like to stop and paint, but I don’t because I would miss the others if I did.
Debbie Whelan Artist Statement
I’m a dancer who makes pots. The human body and the clay body both have form and shape, both seek to fill the space with dynamic design, movement and meaning, and the color on the pot is like the music to the dance. The dancer informs the potter, and the potter informs the dancer, culminating in a lovely duet!
Westminister Presbyterian Church, 6500 S Northshore Dr, Knoxville, TN 37919. Hours: M-R 9-4 and Sundays. Info: (865) 584-3957 or www.wpcknox.org
Foothills Quilt Guild Exhibit
Category: Exhibitions, visual art and Fine Crafts
Quilting is an important part of our heritage. Our purpose is to promote and encourage the unique art of quilt making and to instill an appreciation and pride in preserving our heritage. We build individual skills through fellowship with other quilters.
https://www.smokymountains.org/events/foothills-quilt-guild-exhibit-12724/
UT School of Art: Light of the Truth Exhibition
Category: Exhibitions, visual art, Free event and History, heritage
UT School of Art students are joining with students from Tennessee State University and Fisk University for the 2022 juried student exhibition and exchange on the theme Light of Truth.
In an 1892 speech, Ida B. Wells told her audience, “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” She lived these words, determinedly and vocally confronting every social inequity she encountered.
Students have responded with artwork that sheds light on truths. As artists they illuminate their surroundings through leadership, activism, community building and sharing perspectives.
The Art Exhibition will take place in Nashville from January 18 to February 12, 2022 and at UT in the Student U from February 25 to March 26, 2022. Student Union, Gallery, 1502 Cumberland Ave. Knoxville, TN 37996
https://art.utk.edu/light-of-truth-2022-juried-student-exhibition-and-exchange/
Tri-Star Arts: From Wonder to Wonder and The Gallery of the Thieves: Recto / Verso
Category: Exhibitions, visual art, Free event and History, heritage
Tri-Star Arts invites you to the First Friday reception for "From Wonder To Wonder" feat. Carl E. Moore and David Jon Walker (images 1-2 above) and "The Gallery of the Thieves: Recto / Verso" by Andrew Scott Ross (image 3 above) at the historic Candoro Marble Building, Friday, April 1 from 5:00- 8:00pm. (photos: Bruce Cole)
The Tri-Star Arts gallery and studios are located in the historic Candoro Marble Building, 5 minutes from downtown Knoxville at the corner of Maryville Pike and Candora Avenue. Parking spaces are limited and visitors may park along Candora Avenue as needed.
This exhibition is open to the public regularly from Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 am until 5:00 pm, alongside iconic spaces within the Candoro Marble Building ~ located in the Vestal neighborhood of Knoxville. (photo: Bruce Cole)
Tri-Star Arts at Candoro Marble Building, 4450 Candora Drive, Knoxville, TN 37920. https://tristararts.org/the-gallery
bad water: Serendipity Trail
Category: Exhibitions, visual art and Free event
Justin Chance, Cameron Cameron, Tristan Higganbotham
Serendipity Trail
opens February 12, up through March 27
BAD WATER, 320 E. Churchwell Ave, Knoxville, TN. Open during receptions & by appointment. Info: writetobadwater@gmail.com, https://instagram.com/bad__water, or https://badwater.gallery/
TVUUC: UT Knoxville Printmaking Program exhibition
Category: Exhibitions, visual art and Free event
Reception Friday, February 11, 6:00 to 7:30 pm. Artists’ talks at 6:30 pm.
What: REFLECTED NARRATIVES
Works by graduate students, faculty and staff from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Printmaking Program. Free and open to the public!
This exhibition presents prints and related works by graduate students, staff and faculty from the University of Tennessee Printmaking Program. The Printmaking Program in the UT School of Art has been ranked among the top graduate programs by US News and World Report for more than 20 years. Courses included intaglio, lithography, relief, monotype, book arts, and screen print. The program encourages students to work with the entire printmaking toolbox, from traditional to digital processes. Emphasize is placed on the importance of making work with processes and materials that inform and develop conceptual ideas.
Our program is enriched by the diversity of backgrounds and educational experiences as reflected in the listing below:
Zoe Brester-Pennings, 2nd Year Graduate Student (BFA, Sonoma State University)
Danqi Cai, 2nd Year Graduate Student, (BFA, Maryland Institute College of Art)
Gino Castellanos, 1st Year Graduate Student (BFA, Florida Atlantic University)
Muriel Condon, 3rd Year Graduate Student (BFA, Montana State University)
Anthony Huang, 1st Year Graduate Student (MFA, Savannah College of Art and Design)
Noah Lagle, 2nd Year Graduate Student (BFA, University of Vermont)
Beauvais Lyons, Professor of Art (MFA, Arizona State University)
Elysia Mann, Printshop Technician (MFA, University of Tennessee)
Althea Murphy-Price, Professor of Art (MFA, Temple University)
Haley Takahashi, 2nd Year Graduate Student (BFA, University of Colorado, Boulder)
Chloe Wack, 1st Year Graduate Student, (BFA, Towson University)
Koichi Yamamoto, Professor of Art (MFA, University of Alberta)
More information about the artists in this exhibition may be found on the UT School of Art website (https://art.utk.edu).
Gallery hours: 10-4 Monday, 10-3 Tuesday and Wednesday. Ring doorbell to enter. Masks required.
Where: Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church Gallery
2931 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37919
UT School of Art: The Dream Deferred Exhibition
Category: Exhibitions, visual art and Free event
The Dream Deferred
A print portfolio inspired by a poem by Langston Hughes
Printmaking Showcase Gallery
Art and Architecture Building, 2nd Floor Gallery outside of Room 241
1715 Volunteer Boulevard, Knoxville, TN 37996
https://calendar.utk.edu/event/the_dream_deferred_exhibition#.YhO7XujMLct