Calendar of Events

For artists who work in any medium. We invite artists to interpret this theme as they see it—heavenly, outer space or stellar formations, angels, mythic beings, otherworldly imagery or any others.

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 Knoxville Museum of Art, in conjunction with the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, showcases what two important Tennessee cultural organizations are doing to support and empower women artists. Women Artists: Highlights from the Hunter Museum of American Art is on view at the KMA April 22-July 24, 2022, and Currents: Women Artists from the KMA Collection is on view May 13-August 14, 2022. Both exhibitions pay tribute to contemporary women artists represented in each museum’s respective collections.

Since 2000, the Hunter Museum of American Art has prioritized the acquisition of works by women artists from around the United States, who have long lagged behind their male counterparts when it comes to museum-level recognition. Highlights of the Hunter exhibition include an installation by Lesley Dill featuring floor-to-ceiling banners and hand-embroidered text, a silhouette pop-up book by Kara Walker examining the history of American race relations, a textile by Vadis Turner questioning inherited gender roles, and a mixed media installation by Beverly Semmes inspired by composer John Cage’s minimalist music.

Like the Hunter, the Knoxville Museum of Art has actively sought to acquire outstanding works by women for its collection. The selection on view reflects women’s broad technical and aesthetic range found in contemporary art. A mixed media painting on wooden sections by Alison Moritsugu conveys a monumental landscape, expansive yet incomplete. Nancy Rubins elevates graphite drawing into a large sculptural construction apparently shaped by violent forces. British artist Marilène Oliver constructs provocative portraits of her family in the form of acrylic sheets imprinted with digital medical scans. Patty Chang uses water and mirrors to transform her own image taken in a Belgian church into a complex photographic work fragmented by harsh angles and provocative reflections. In her video Joan of Arc, Alex McQuilkin responds to Maria Falconetti’s memorable lead role in the legendary 1928 French silent film by Carl Dreyer and the film’s themes of adolescent desire, faith, and suffering. These and other selected works call overdue attention to women’s significant role in reshaping the contemporary art landscape.

Knoxville Museum of Art, 1050 World's Fair Park, Knoxville, TN 37916. Hours: Tu-Sa 10-5, Su 1-5. Information: 865-525-6101, www.knoxart.org. Admission and parking are free.

Reception May 13, 6:30-8 PM
Food, fine art & friends! Free and open to public.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/thefountaincityartguild

Fountain City Art Center, 213 Hotel Ave, Knoxville, TN 37918. Hours: Tu 9:30-3:30, W-R 9:30-4:30 or by appointment. Information: 865-357-2787, www.fountaincityartcenter.com

Visit the Ijams Hallway Gallery in May to view the work of Knoxville native Alex Rifwald! This collection, entitled "Revival," celebrates her return to photography after a 10-year hiatus. After running a commercial photography business, Alex had lost her joy for the medium and put her camera down, but she has rediscovered herself and her love for this art form. You'll be inspired!

https://www.instagram.com/alexbeephoto/

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

Opening May 8, 2-4 PM - meet the artist, refreshments
Exhibition hours M-F 9-4

Ted Richards lives in Loudon, TN. www.tedart.com

The Gallery at Rarity Bay Community Activity Center (second building on right as you enter Rarity Bay), 150 Rarity Bay Pkwy, Vonore, TN 37885.

Tri-Star Arts is pleased to announce the next exhibition in their main gallery at the historic Candoro Marble Building: a solo show, The Dangers We Swallow, by artist Vanessa Mayoraz of Johnson City.

Public receptions will be held on Friday, May 6, 2022 from 5:00- 8:00 pm (artist in attendance) and Friday, July 1, 2022 from 5:00- 8:00 pm. Mayoraz will give a public artist talk prior to the opening reception on Friday, May 6 at 3:30pm in the main gallery.

Since 2015, Vanessa Mayoraz has been a Professor of Extended Media at East Tennessee State University. She received a BFA from the Haute Ecole d'Art et Design in Geneva, Switzerland, and an MFA in Art and Public Spaces and New Artistic Strategies at the Bauhaus University Weimar in Germany. Mayoraz’s interest centers on observing the paradoxical relations built between humanity, social landscape and the natural world. One could say that her work is the result of an analytical and unromantic examination of nature with which she warns us on how economy (understood as a motivating power of extraction, production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services to meet our human needs) subjugates these relationships.

She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including Qui Vive! Young Artist Moscow Biennial, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Belgrade, Le Commun at the Building of Contemporary Art in Geneva, Switzerland, Gleisdreieck Parc, Berlin, Germany, Chashama Gallery in New York City, the DC Art Center in Washington DC, and ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, MI. In 2019 in conjunction with ArtBo Fin de Semana, she presented a solo exhibition at Sketchroom Gallery in Bogotà, Colombia. She has been performing workshops and lectures on subjects such as "artist as archivist" and "contemporary art practices." She received a Pro-Helvetia national Swiss grant three times for her work, as well as a Swiss Cultural Program in the Western Balkan grant. Mayoraz also serves on the executive board of the Johnson City Public Art Committee.

Tri-Star Arts at Candoro Marble Building, 4450 Candora Drive, Knoxville, TN 37920. Hours: Tu-Sa 11-5. Information: https://tristararts.org/visit

Tri-Star Arts is pleased to announce a new exhibition in their Golden Chain Gallery project space located at the historic Candoro Marble Building: même pas, pourtant proche | not even, yet close by Quynh Lâm of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

This show has been installed within the unique architectural space of a steep wooden stairwell. Public receptions will be held on Friday, May 6, 2022 from 5:00- 8:00 pm and Friday, July 1, 2022 from 5:00- 8:00 pm.

Quynh Lâm is an interdisciplinary artist and Fulbright scholar with a background in architecture, working on conceptual and archival projects, Quynh has created a diverse body of work in performance, video, painting, and installation, that highlights the tensions between personal and collective memory, particularly the experiences of herself as a Vietnamese woman both in Vietnam and abroad. She is a winner of The 2021 American Austrian Foundation Seebacher Prize for Fine Arts; a recipient of Special Jury Prize – 2019 Art Future Prize in Taiwan; a presenter at the international conference “ReVIEWING Black Mountain College 11”; and artist fellow at Ragdale Foundation (Illinois, USA), Hambidge Center for Creative Arts & Sciences (Georgia, USA); and Oak Spring Garden Foundation (Virginia, USA).

Quynh has exhibited work in Vietnam and abroad; some highlights include The Factory Contemporary Arts Center (Ho Chi Minh City), Art Formosa (Taipei), The Vincom Center for Contemporary (Hanoi), Richard Koh Fine Art Gallery (Singapore), Gallery ONKAF (New Delhi), Mana Contemporary (New Jersey, Chicago, Miami) – in partnership with CADAF (Contemporary & Digital Art Fair), Stamford Arts Center (Singapore), Museum of Contemporary Art Nashville (MOCAN), Palazzo Costanzi Museum (Trieste), Moggio Udinese (Udine), and A.I. Gallery (London). Her works have been featured in many publications: Imago Mundi–Vietnam: New Winds (Luciano Benetton Collection, 2015), Saigon Artbook (edition 6, 2016), Frame to Focus: Vietnamese American Women Artists (sponsored by The Catherine G. Murphy Gallery, 2020), Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center Journal (Volume 12: Expanding the Canon, 2021), Reconnexions, la Photographie en Transition (Textuel éditions, 2022), and have been accessioned to several libraries, e.g. the MoMA, Yamamoto Gendai, Bay Library, Salon Saigon, Dia Project, UCLA library, UTK John C. Hodges Library (Special Collections), and other art hubs.

Tri-Star Arts at Candoro Marble Building, 4450 Candora Drive, Knoxville, TN 37920. Hours: Tu-Sa 11-5. Information: https://tristararts.org/visit

Join us on Friday, May 6th from 5-8PM for the First Friday opening reception of the "2022 Epiphone Student Art Guitar Exhibition + Auction." The exhibition includes 20 guitars designed by youth artists from across East Tennessee. Professional artist Curtis Glover also designed and painted a guitar for the fundraiser this year!

The First Friday opening reception will include live music featuring Brooks Coker & Alex Carter.

The guitars were on display at the Songbirds Guitar Museum in Chattanooga during the month of April and are moving to the Dogwood Arts Gallery in Knoxville during the month of May. Each guitar is available for auction online with proceeds benefitting Dogwood Arts and the Songbirds Foundation’s youth art programs.

The exhibition will be on display at Dogwood Arts from May 6-31st. Several of the guitars will also be on display at the Southern Skies Music Festival on Saturday, May 14th in World's Fair Park.

Bid online through May 31st here: https://bit.ly/3OxpYbL

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

First Friday Reception: May 6, 5:30 – 9:00 pm

Lil Clinard, Painting
Known as a traditional watercolorist, Lil discovered the joy and excitement of painting with acrylics during the pandemic isolation. With a touch of the familiar, Lil’s new paintings emphasize color and form and exude a vibrancy that reflects the spectrum of color and movement in water and rhythm of flowers in a landscape. With a closer look, they almost appear abstract. She hopes the viewer is drawn to the bright and cheery colors and glints of light while creating a narrative of their own.

Cathie Fitzjohn, Glass
Cathie Fitzjohn began her journey with glass in 1980. Initially working with stained glass, she created custom windows for private residences. In 2002 Cathie took a weekend workshop in glass fusing or kiln-formed glass and fell in love with the process. Now she works exclusively in this medium, drawing inspiration from nature and wildlife.

Art Market Gallery, 422 S. Gay St, Knoxville, TN 37902. Hours: Tu-Sa 11-6, Su 1-6. Information: 865-525-5265, www.artmarketgallery.net, www.Facebook.com/ArtMarketGallery

Awaken Coffee will host an opening reception for artists Marianne Woodside Friday, May 6, from 6-8 pm.

Woodside is a professor emerita from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. In her career at UTK, she integrated responsibilities of teaching, administration, research, and writing in human services and counselor education. For the past ten years, Marianne has focused on her interest in photography. Her subjects range from still life images of glass within a natural context, to landscapes, and flora and fauna here in East Tennessee and beyond. During pandemic times, with her camera in hand, she concentrated on photographing images of subjects closer to her home in Maryville. https://www.mariannewoodsidephotography.com/

Please join us for some amazing art, light refreshments, and of course great coffee!

Awaken Coffee, 125 W Jackson Ave, Knoxville, TN 37902. Open daily. Information: 865-951-0427, www.instagram.com/awaken_coffee or www.facebook.com/awakencoffeeoldcity/

Join us on Friday May 6th as we start our First Friday events back up! This month we are happy to announce that local artist, Sarah Eileen, will be displaying her art in our taproom for the month of May. Join us on this First Friday for the release of her artwork, food trucks, craft beer, and good company. Cheers!

1532 Island Home Ave Knoxville, TN 37920

RED Gallery announces the opening of Untamed Beauty, a new exhibition of oil paintings and watercolors by Jackie Langford. The show will open at 5 pm on Friday, May 6, 2022 (First Friday) and run through May 27. Work on display will include portraits and landscapes.

When asked what inspires her, Langford says, “It begins with a smile—the smile of a woman whose portrait I am painting, or my own joy when I look at the rugged backcountry, fierce whitewater, and smoke-blue mountains of East Tennessee.” The portraits on display at RED Gallery took shape in the log home Langford shares with her husband, Tom, on a ridge off the Cherohala Skyway, a Scenic Byway that straddles the Tennessee–North Carolina border. Along that ridge, old friends and new—from Atlanta, Clarkesville, Knoxville, and Nashville—have raised cabins and formed close bonds. During the pandemic, Langford says she felt moved to paint the women, from all walks of life, who share her passion for the wilderness.

After years of working in oils and acrylics, Langford expanded into watercolor. As the pandemic continued, masking her friends’ expressions, she says, “I needed to see their smiles.” She sketched, then painted, using background washes to reflect the individual personalities and portray each person’s essence. “I thought of all the challenges they’ve lived through,” says Langford, “yet they still express such joy and effervescence.” Langford says a good portraitist sees into her subjects’ interior landscape. In these women, Langford perceives strength and love of life that support their families and friendships. She captures the women’s natural exuberance, which mirrors the untamed beauty of the surrounding wilderness. As for her landscapes, Langford also works from photographs she and her husband have taken in the southeast and on their travels, from the National Parks to Alaska and Southern Cypress Swamps.

A graduate of Austin Peay State University, Jackie took studio art classes with T. Max Hochstetler, who painted the murals at the Opryland Hotel. She also studied with award-winning portraitist Daniel E. Greene, and learned from the techniques of John Howard Sanden, first recipient of the John Singer Sargent Award for Lifetime Achievement. Her paintings are part of the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library Collection and the Permanent Army Military Art Collection, and are owned by prominent military, political and civic leaders. In 2018 she placed First with a watercolor in the Booth Western Art Museum member fall show in Cartersville, Georgia. Her paintings won First and Second place in the Clarksville, Tennessee 2017 Riverfest art show. Current work can be seen at the Downtown Artists’ Co-op in Clarksville. Jackie is a member of the Portrait Society of America, the Booth Western Art Museum, and the Downtown Artists Co-op of Clarksville.

Starting May 6, Untamed Beauty can be viewed at RED Gallery on Fridays 5-9pm, Saturdays 1-5pm and Sundays 1-5pm, and by appointment through the week, until May 27.

RED Gallery, at 130 E Jackson Ave, Knoxville, TN. Info: 865-524-0146 or email robin@robineaster.com