Calendar of Events

JANUARY 30 – MARCH 3, 2023 | RECEPTION: FEBRUARY 17, 2023, 5:30 – 8:30 PM
Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts invites artists 18 and older living or working in Sevier County, TN to submit works for consideration for the 21st Sevier County Juried Biennial. The biennial is a juried, mixed-media art exhibition presented by Arrowmont to recognize and foster artists in the rich region of Sevier County, who are the bedrock of the economy and foundation of our community.

JUROR: KRENESHIA WHITESIDE MCGEE, AKA KREN THE CURATOR
Kreneshia Whiteside-McGee, a Tennessee native, began curating in 2015 as a university senior. She served as chief curator at the Association for Visual Arts and works with numerous artists, galleries, and museums advocating for the arts and fostering culture in communities. Her portfolio includes exhibition development, creative direction/consultation, and art handling throughout the U.S. and abroad.

https://www.arrowmont.org/visit/events/21st-sevier-county-biennial-juried-exhibition/

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

Opening reception will be Sunday, January 29th from 2—4 PM with a gallery talk at 1:30 PM.

Women’s Work series will celebrate sunlight, moonbeams, and light of all types as well as new ideas, truths, and perhaps epiphanies! Light takes many forms and we are asking women in our region to interpret the phrase, “ I see the light!” in a new or well loved piece.

At 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

Tri-Star Arts is pleased to announce the artist roster, curators, and highlight weekend dates for the inaugural Tennessee Triennial for Contemporary Art: RE-PAIR, opening January 27, 2023 and on view through May 7, 2023. The recent changes and movements in the world inform our vision and the galvanizing spirit that centers on the rich history of the arts in Tennessee as a means to engage excellence in contemporary art.

Visual art offers a tool towards a common language fostering dialogue across communities, around the state, the country and internationally. The Tennessee Triennial serves as an experience to help us process this moment and propel us forward. It is a geographically fluid conversation that engages people of all ages and backgrounds.

The Tennessee Triennial has chosen a statewide model that is set apart and unprecedented. Curators from institutions in Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga have been invited to respond to the theme of RE-PAIR, authored by Consulting Curator, Dr. María Magdalena Campos-Pons. This horizontal approach allows for each curator to be active in selecting participating artists. The Tennessee Triennial is a collective endeavor that emphasizes Tennessee’s contemporary art community while including national and international perspectives.

The participating venues along with their curators and artists may be found at https://www.tennesseetriennial.org/

KNOXVILLE
Big Ears Festival (Curator: Rachel Milford)
Lonnie Holley
Knoxville Museum of Art (Curators: Kelsie Conley and Stephen Wicks)
Willie Cole
Katie Hargrave & Meredith Laura Lynn
Bessie Harvey
Lonnie Holley
Kahlil Robert Irving
Suzanne Jackson
Mary Laube
Annabeth Marks
Rosemary Mayer
Althea Murphy-Price
Betye Saar
Faith Wilding
Tri-Star Arts (Curator: Brian R. Jobe)
Kenturah Davis
Rubens Ghenov
Hank Willis Thomas

The inaugural Tennessee Triennial is a unified multi-site, multi-city exhibition that promotes contemporary visual art as a tool to foster constructive dialogue across communities, the state, the country, and internationally. The 2023 theme and core concept of the inaugural Tennessee Triennial is “RE-PAIR,” set forth by Consulting Curator María Magdalena Campos-Pons as the guiding curatorial concept for all exhibiting venues participating in the Tennessee Triennial.

Responding to the Triennial RE-PAIR theme about art designed “To heal, suture, and recompose fractured bodies”, “re-pair, patch, rebuild spirits, bodies, cities, political institutions, economic relationships,” the Knoxville Museum of Art presents works emphasizing the transformative power of art to propose new solutions to recent global discord.

The KMA’s Triennial presentation features a thought-provoking selection of objects created by a diverse, intergenerational slate of 13 international artists from across the U.S.: Willie Cole, Bessie Harvey, Lonnie Holley, Katie Hargrave & Meredith Laura Lynn, Kahlil Robert Irving, Suzanne Jackson, Mary Laube, Annabeth Marks, Rosemary Mayer, Althea Murphy-Price, Betye Saar, and Faith Wilding.

The exhibited works address a broad range of conceptual concerns ranging from the intersection of the personal and the political, to environmental, cultural, and spiritual. They express artists’ deep interest in material as a means of interpreting and amplifying these concerns. They are touched and pressed, deconstructed, constructed and made anew. They embody histories that sensitively embrace contradiction and complication, and that challenge diverse audiences to look both forward and backwards towards “new sites of encounters with yet undefined edges, borders and territories” in search of RE-PAIR.

A major statewide contemporary art event organized by Tri-Star Arts. Consulting Curator: María Magdalena Campos-Pons.

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

Catron Gallery, R. Jack Fishman Library
Jason Brown is an associate professor of Art at the University of TN, Knoxville. His work explores the impact that extractive industries such as mining, oil and gas have on the ecosystems and watersheds of Appalachian landscapes. Coal mining and mountaintop removal are especially compelling subjects for his sculptures and installations, which challenge viewers to engage in a civic dialogue about individuality, community and place.

Walters State Community College, 500 S. Davy Crockett, Morristown
www.ws.edu

This exhibition prompts designers and artists to address the intersections between experience-based interiority and the city. Exhibited works include representations of atmospheres, politics, architectural forms, experiences, and psychologies that help us see outside places as if they were inside places. This idea of the public interior expands interiority beyond the simple enclosure and asserts an equal claim on urbanity and the commons. The exhibit explores human-scaled, adaptable, and phenomenologically-driven spaces.

This exhibition is part of the events for the Public Interiority Symposium, organized by Liz Teston and Hojung Kim in UT’s College of Architecture +Design.

The Ewing Gallery will resume normal operating hours on Monday, January 23. From January 17 – 23, the gallery will be open M-F from 10am – 5pm.

Ewing Gallery, 1715 Volunteer Blvd on the UT campus, Knoxville, TN 37996. Hours: M-T-F 10-5, W-R 10-7:30, Su 1-4. Information: 865-974-3200, www.ewing-gallery.utk.edu

The McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture is proud to announce the special exhibition, The Sculpture of William Edmondson: Tombstones, Garden Ornaments and Stonework, in partnership with Cheekwood Estate & Gardens. The exhibition is sponsored by the University of Tennessee Division of Diversity and Engagement and will run from January 13 to May 14, 2023.

The exhibition reexamines and recontextualizes the life and work of African American artist William Edmondson (1874–1951). Edmondson is the most significant sculptor to emerge from Tennessee during the 1930s and 40s and remains one of the leading American artists of the twentieth century.

This is the first large-scale museum exhibition of the artist’s career in over twenty years. During Edmondson’s life, he was well known for his yard art, including whimsical birdbaths, fanciful "critters," sculptures of everyday people, and grave markers he carved for African American families.
https://mcclungmuseum.utk.edu/2022/12/13/mcclung-museum-to-feature-one-of-the-most-significant-collections-of-tennessee-artist-william-edmondson-in-new-exhibition/

McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture, 1327 Circle Park Dr on the UT campus, Knoxville, TN 37996. Information: 865-974-2144. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday 9 a.m.–5 p.m. and Sunday 12–4 p.m.

Featuring Steve Olson's first solo photography show!
Reception on Sun Jan 22, 2-4 PM

The Center is the second building on the right when you turn into Rarity Bay. The Center is open Monday thru Friday 9 to 4. It is best to call ahead because the Center often has meetings or events going on: 423-884-3800

150 Rarity Bay Pkwy, Vonore, TN 37885

KAY DARTT + RONDA WRIGHT: CREATING ARTIFACTS OF HOME

Receptions: Friday, January 6, 5-9pm
Friday, February 3, 5-9pm

The UT Downtown Gallery is pleased to present a two-person exhibition of work by Kay Dartt and Ronda Wright.

Dartt’s work fluctuates between functional sculpture, speculative design, and embodied hyperobject. The goal of these objects is to challenge our western philosophies of living that have created an imbalance between the natural, artificial and virtual environments we occupy. By synthesizing biomorphic forms, consumer language and parametric design processes, an aesthetic emerges that invites a critical perspective of our environment. At times these objects can humorous, whimsical or enigmatic.

Kay Dartt is an artist whose practice combines sculpture, engineering, education and community outreach. As a Clinical Assistant Professor of Art at Shepherd University, she teaches sculpture courses, engineering courses and manages an interdisciplinary fabrication space called the FASTEnER Lab.

As an artist and activist, Ronda Wright has created the on-going sculptural installation, "Creating Artifacts of Home." Through a series of workshops, participants sculpt small artifacts of home. These workshops started in response to the overwhelming rate of LGBTQ+ homelessness and bullying, the premise of these workshops is that we all have a relation to home; and that iron is an element necessary to sustain life. While sharing experiences, participants sculpt a symbolic artifact that reminds them of home. After being cast in iron, the artifact becomes part of the larger collection of memories that reflect relations of Home. Participants’ artifacts link themselves not as “others” but to others. Wright is the Academic & Professional Development Advisor and Adjunct Assistant Professor for UT's College of Architecture + Design and an alum of UT's School of Art.

The UT Downtown Gallery is a Tennessee Triennial Community Venue. All events are free and open to the public.

UT Downtown Gallery, 106 S. Gay St, Knoxville, TN 37902. Hours: W-F 11-6, Sa 10-3. Information: 865-673-0802, https://downtown.utk.edu

RED Gallery is proud to announce the opening of Highway Flowers, an art exhibition by Summer Small.
The show will open on January 6, 2022, 5:00pm (First Friday) and run through February.

Highway Flowers
And other beautiful things you didn't ask for

Summer Small is a self-taught visual artist from East Tennessee. Her debut show Highway Flowers is her private love letter to modern Appalachia. Through bright color and intense pattern, Summer tells a raw, folksy story about grief, persistence, and ultimately appreciation for those things that are out of our control. Her aim for this show is that it recalls to you a familiar feeling, like a reminder of summertime in the dead of winter. Summer Small, summersmallstudio@gmail.com

RED Gallery, at 130 E Jackson Ave, Knoxville, TN, features local and regional artists. The gallery is located in the historic Jackson Atelier building in Knoxville’s Old City. Gallery owner Robin Easter is proud to provide a unique space for Knoxville to experience and enjoy a broad range of visual arts. To learn more about RED Gallery, email robin@robineaster.com.
865-524-0146 | www.robineaster.com

Join us at Dogwood Arts for the Opening Reception of "Life to the Fullest" from 5-8PM on Friday, January 6th. Friends for years, Houston and Derrick bonded over their mutual use of art as a vehicle for self-expression and communication. At a young age, Houston was diagnosed with Down syndrome and Derrick with Autism — both artists celebrate their unique talents and now use their art to live life to the fullest. Houston Vandergriff is a Knoxville-based travel photographer and founder of Downs & Towns. Derrick is a local abstract painter and advocate for individuals with autism, you can see more of his work at https://derrickfreemansart.com/.

• Gallery Hours: M-F 10AM-5PM

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

Hop on stage at Singer/Songwriter Open Mic Night on Wednesdays, 7-9 PM!

Doors open at 4:00PM and sign-ups start at 6:00PM. See the beertender to be added to the queue.

Admission is free!
Geezers Brewery, 225 E. 5th Ave., Knoxville
https://www.geezersbrewerytn.com/events