Calendar of Events

Einstein Simplified is Knoxville, Tennnessee's longest running comedy improvisational troupe. We have been entertaining Knoxville since August of 1994. We specialize in short form improv and guarantee at least 3 hours of uproarious laughter in every hour and a half show. Seven members strong we can trace our roots back to the common ancestor of homo amusus; in laymans terms we are all funny bastards. We each come from a different walk of life yet we create an amalgam of entertainment and raillery. Our shows consist of about 15 different improvisational games, selected from a list of over 100, and are driven by audience suggestions and sometimes include audience members.

As Einstein said "What has perhaps been overlooked is the irrational, the inconsistent, the droll, even the insane, which nature, inexhaustively operative, implants in an individual, seemingly for her amusement." Einstein Simplified is simply, naturally, the most amusing thing that nature could implant into society for its amusement. Don't overlook us, we are here to stay.

The troupe is currently performing at 8:15 p.m. every Tuesday at Scruffy City Hall on Market Square.

https://www.facebook.com/EinsteinSimplified
Upcoming shows: http://www.einsteinsimplified.com/index.php

7:30 PM

Carolyn Craig is thrilled to return to Church Street United Methodist Church and is honored to perform on a series that was so formative for her. Carolyn sang in the Church Street Children’s Choir and Youth Choir. She was a Children’s Choir Assistant, played her first services at Church Street, and gave her high school senior recital at Church Street before going on to study organ at Indiana University (BM ’18) and Yale University (MM ’21, MMA ’22).

Her program will include works of J. S. Bach, Florence Price, Percy Whitlock, Errollyn Wallen, Louis Vierne, and a new piece written for Carolyn by composer Udi Perlman. Carolyn Craig serves as the Organ Scholar at Westminster Cathedral in London and is co-founder of Amplify Female Composers.

900 Henley at Main, Knoxville, TN 37902
Office: 865-524-3048
https://www.churchstreetumc.org/master-arts/

Dr. Matthew Cataldi has enjoyed a wildly versatile career as a piano soloist, collaborative artist, conductor, composer, and educator. He holds a BM from Florida State University, as well as MM and DM degrees in Piano Performance and Literature from Indiana University where he studied with Brazilian-born pianist Arnaldo Cohen.

Dr. Cataldi currently serves as Director of Piano Studies and Assistant Professor of Piano at Radford University in Radford, Virginia, where he was recently awarded the Dalton Eminent Scholar Rising Star award - a university-wide award for creative scholarship that recognizes faculty with distinguished international reputations in their discipline.

October 25 at 7:30 p.m.
Sandra G. Powell Recital Hall
Natalie L. Haslam Music Center

UT School of Music: Unless otherwise noted, concerts are FREE and open to the public. Venues: Sandra G. Powell Recital Hall in the Natalie L. Haslam Music Center, 1741 Volunteer Boulevard; James R. Cox Auditorium and Performance Hall 32, Alumni Memorial Building, 1408 Middle Drive. Information: 865-974-8935, https://music.utk.edu/events/

October 25, 2022
7:00P

UTK Hodges Library Auditorium
(Mekulalim, 2018)
Join us for this horror film screening in advance of our speaker Olga Gershenson who will be giving a lecture on November 4, 2022 on contemporary Israeli horror films. This film The Damned (Mekulalim, 2018) tells the story of three young soldiers on a training exercise in the desert who are cursed by a Bedouin woman and slowly descend into madness and turn on each other as the unforgiving landscape plays tricks with their minds.

For more information: https://calendar.utk.edu/event/film_screening_the_damnedmekulalim_2018

Join us for a book discussion sponsored by the KBA Diversity in the Profession Committee. Members of the bar and the community will discuss The Heat of a Red Summer: Race Mixing, Race Rioting in 1919 Knoxville, by Robert Booker. On August 30, 1919, a Black man is accused of killing a white woman and the city’s race relations climate turned bloody as Knoxville is forever branded a Red Summer city. In the book, Mr. Booker vividly documents the racially charged atmosphere of Knoxville in a true crime chronicle that remains chillingly relevant today. The program will feature Rev. Renee Kesler, President of the Beck Cultural Exchange Center, Rev. Charles Fels, lawyer and priest in the Episcopal church, and author Robert J. Booker.

The book is available at the Beck Cultural Exchange Center for $15. Beck Is open Tuesday - Thursday from 10 am until 3 pm.

** Please join the discussion regardless of whether you have read the book.

5:30-7 PM at Beck Cultural Exchange Center, 1927 Dandridge Avenue
https://www.knoxbar.org/?pg=events&evAction=showDetail&eid=257526&evSubAction=listAll

7 PM – 8:30 PM
At Ijams Nature Center
www.ijams.org/event-details/back-patio-social-a-night-of-scary-stories-with-smoky-mountain-storytellers

Join Ijams and the Smoky Mountain Storytellers Association for a night of haunted tales, scary stories, and fireside frights as part of the Ijams Back Patio Social on Oct. 25!

Storytellers Jennifer Alldredge, and Stephen and Susan Fulbright will be out with some of their best tales, folklore, urban legends, and more to get into the Halloween spirit.

Doors open at 6 pm, stories begin at 7. Tickets for this event are $10 for adults, $5 for kids (ages 5-12). The stories told may be too scary for some children, so parental discretion is advised. Stolen Streetlights will be the food truck for all of your dining needs, and the Ijams Beer Garden and concession area will be open all evening. This event is on the back patio of the Ijams Visitor Center; in the event of inclement weather, it will be held indoors. Sponsored by Boston Beer Co.

About the Smoky Mountain Storytellers Association:
The Smoky Mountain Storytellers Association comprises folks who love telling, listening to, and rejoicing in our rich heritage of stories. For more information, find them on Facebook or check out www.smokymountaintellers.org.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1129370257709594/

SELECTIONS FROM ARROWMONT SCHOOL OF ARTS AND CRAFTS’ PERMANENT COLLECTION
OCTOBER 24, 2022 – JANUARY 9, 2023 | SANDRA J. BLAIN GALLERIES

Beginning with its founding in 1912, Arrowmont has always provided fertile grounds for growth. As the Pi Beta Phi Settlement School, Gatlinburg’s community came together to teach one another different handicraft techniques and traditions. This practice of knowledge sharing laid the foundation for the craft school that exists today. Never static, Arrowmont continues to evolve to better facilitate artistic exchange. It first developed its signature summer workshop program in 1945, which opened Arrowmont’s doors to artists and makers who resided outside Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and later creating Arrowmont’s Artists-in-Residence Program in 1991. This Artist-in-Residence Program offered early career artists with studio space, facilities, and access to the constantly shifting environment of artists, craftspeople, makers, and enthusiasts that comprises the Arrowmont community. Initially conceptualized around bringing together artists working in distinct craft categories, the Artist-in-Residence Program has recently expanded to promote multi- and interdisciplinary craft regardless of medium, thereby widening the perspectives, experiences, and creative explorations brought to Arrowmont’s campus.

The works in this exhibition highlight Arrowmont’s two distinct but interconnected goals: the promotion of individual artistic exploration and the development of community through collective, creative expression. For over a century, artists have converged in this specific place to practice, to make, to experiment, to play. Relatedly, the works on display range from donated workshop demonstrations and projects to works from professional artists who have connections to Arrowmont—past instructors, students, and staff. Arrowmont’s campus has proven to be the epicenter of a specific development of artistic exchange. Arrowmont is site-specific, a historic and cultural landmark nestled in the wooded hillside; Arrowmont is also conceptual, shaped by individual experiences and the legacies of its storied past. Diverse communities have shaped Arrowmont as Arrowmont—as site, as concept—has, in turn, shaped communities. Together, across time and medium, Arrowmont has carved its own body of principles, rules, standards, and norms, crafting past negotiations that continue in the present and will last into the future.

Curated by Kelli Fisher, the 2022-23 Kenneth R. Trapp Craft Assistant/Curatorial Fellow.

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

OCTOBER 24 – DECEMBER 16, 2022 | GEOFFREY A. WOLPERT GALLERY

Whether gentle or destructive, wind has the power to create change. Windsocks, whirligigs, and weathervanes were once vital sources of information, measuring wind direction and speed. Now these formerly functional objects accumulate in antique malls and roadside souvenir shops, their utility relinquished for kitsch and nostalgic value. While these adornments are steeped in history and collective meaning, they are also outward expressions of an individual’s relationship to our past. Domestic scenes, normally relegated to interior spaces, are translated through weatherproof materials like steel and wood and projected outwards into public viewing spaces. The front yard becomes a gallery where the nuances of regional and personal identity are expressed through layers of symbols.

In Prevailing Winds, Kaleena Stasiak continues her exploration into the performative reproduction of formerly functional objects as a method for interpreting history and re-envisioning the future. In a moment of disillusionment with institutional knowledge, by hearkening back to human rituals of survival, these weather predictors point to the cyclical nature of time, and offer hope for the future. For Stasiak, making becomes an act of historical role playing as she invokes the generations of makers who came before her, and translates these objects for a contemporary art context.

Kaleena Stasiak is an interdisciplinary artist who uses an assortment of haptic media to explore collective mythmaking, and its relevance to the present day. Digging through a lexicon of symbols and imagery evoking American colonial times, folk art, and quilts, she reframes the dominant ideologies surrounding early history and domestic labor. Her graphic cyphers denote the power and breadth of traditional women’s work, functional handicraft, and the impulse to create. Decoration and ornamentation become expressions of desire, signifiers of identity, and autobiographical documentation of lives omitted from text-based historical narratives and artistic discourse. Originally from Ontario, Canada, Stasiak holds a BFA in Printmaking from the Ontario College of Art and Design and an MFA in Printmaking & Book Arts from the University of Georgia. Recent shows include Tournament of Lies at Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY, Ancient Art Objects at Whitespace in Atlanta, GA, and Identity Measures at the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans, LA. In 2017 Stasiak founded the South East Women Wrestlers, a performance troupe based in Athens, GA, that uses the spectacle of wrestling to reframe stereotypes and representations of femininity. She currently teaches Printmaking & Foundations at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia.

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

A solo exhibition of works in a variety of media by Mark Wade of Houston, TX

Opening reception and celebration of the renovated and renamed gallery: Mon Oct 24, 3-5 PM

The Michael Alvis Art Gallery (formerly known as the Omega Gallery) at Carson-Newman University, Warren Art Building, corner of Branner & Ken Sparks Way, Jefferson City, TN 37760. Gallery hours: M-F 8-4. Information: 865-471-4985, www.cn.edu

Sheri Fleck Rieth and Tom Lee: Swansong, an exhibition of prints and sculpture

Hardin Valley Campus of Pellissippi State: 10915 Hardin Valley Road, Knoxville, TN 37932. Bagwell Center Gallery hours: M-F 9-5. Information: 865-694-6405, www.pstcc.edu/arts

Hallo-Week Is Coming Oct. 24-29!

(All ages) Enjoy a week of fun-filled, family-friendly fall programs during Hallo-week at Ijams Oct. 24-29! Have a hoot at an owl prowl, go underground on a cave trip and more!

https://www.ijams.org/hallo-week-at-ijams

Ijams Nature Center, 2915 Island Home Ave, Knoxville, TN 37920

We are excited to announce our first Guest Artist Show featuring Knoxville based artist Suzanne Jack. We offered a guest artist show to two winners selected from the annual TN Artist Association Annual Show. In addition to our award, one of her pieces earned "Best in Show"! Her art is worth seeing (and owning)!

Please join us for the Show Opening Thursday, Oct. 20 from 5 - 7pm.

Pivot Point Gallery, 15 Emory Place, Knoxville, TN 37917. Information: 865-248-0050, www.pivotpointgallery.com