Calendar of Events

Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in Vonore will observe Sequoyah Remembrance Day Sunday, Aug. 6, 2023 12:00-4 p.m. with free admission to the museum. Sequoyah dies in August of 1843, we do not know what day he died. So we’ve chosen the first Sunday in August to remember Sequoyah and his life.

“This is a day to remember the man who gave the Cherokee people their own written language,” said Charlie Rhodarmer, museum manager/director. “In 5,000 years of human civilization, Sequoyah is the only person, not literate in any language, who created a written language for his people.”

Sequoyah was born circa 1776 in the village of Tuskegee, near modern day Vonore. He spent most of his life in the Overhill Cherokee area, where he began creating a Cherokee writing system. After 12 years of work, Sequoyah finished the Syllabary in 1821 while living in Willstown, Ala. The Cherokee Nation adopted the Syllabary and within two years most of the Cherokee people had become literate in their own language. After living a brief time in Arkansas, Sequoyah moved to the Indian Territory, known today as Oklahoma. In 1842 Sequoyah volunteered to go with other Cherokees to find a group of Cherokees that had left the Overhill area during the American Revolution and had headed toward Texas or Mexico. Sequoyah died on this trip in August 1843. There are several stories about how Sequoyah died and it is not known where he is buried.

“We invite people to visit the museum on Sunday and learn more about Sequoyah’s fascinating life and experience modern Cherokee culture,” said Rhodarmer. The museum is located on Highway 360 in Vonore, about one mile from the Highway 411 intersection. For more information, call (423) 884-6246.

The Smoky Mountain Blues Society will once again present live music with its continuation of our monthly River Cruises of 2023. July's cruise performance will feature BEN PRESTAGE on the Tennessee Riverboat on Sunday, August 6th at 4 pm – 7 pm. Boarding begins at 3 pm.

Tickets are available through the Tennessee Riverboat Company’s website, (www.tnriverboat.com) and by calling (865) 525-7827. Tickets are just $20 for members in advance and $25 for non-members. July's cruise was a sellout, so book early with advance tickets purchase.

Each voyage will also have full bar and limited food menu available onboard to buy.
www.SmokyMountainBlues.org

Ben Prestage’s musical background began before he was born… even before his parents were born. Ben’s great-grandmother was a Vaudeville musician who toured with Al Jolson and also participated in medicine shows. Her daughter was a Boogie-Woogie pianist and painter who used to play for Ben when he was coming up. On the other side of the family tree, his grandfather, who was a Mississippi sharecropper turned Ben onto the sounds and culture of Mississippi and Blues in general.
WEBSITE & PROMO– http://www.benprestagemusic.com/

We are excited to announce local artist Summer Small as our featured artist for the month of August! Her work unfolds a complicated but passionate relationship with modern Appalachia and the people and places that call the valley home. Please join us at Rala in the Old City for the show opening from 6 to 8pm on August 4th, 2023. Summer's work will be on display August 4th through August 31st.

https://www.facebook.com/events/307835021665435/

Rala: Regional and Local Artisans, 112 W. Jackson Ave, Knoxville, TN 37902. Hours: Tu-Sa 11-6, Su 11-5. Information: 865-525-7888, https://shoprala.com or www.instagram.com/ShopRala

First Friday Reception: August 4th, 5:30 – 9:00 pm

AMG Gallery Potters, an eclectic group of clay artists, each with their own unique style are the featured 3D artists in August.
+ Lisa Kurtz has a Master’s Degree in Ceramics and has taught clay classes at colleges and community art centers. She is currently teaching at the Oak Ridge Art Center. To create her functional pottery and clay wall art she throws on the wheel and hand builds and often combines the two to create her wares.
+ Linda Sullivan, with a keen interest in glaze chemistry, uses multilayered glazes to depict landscape imagery. She applies her self-developed glazes by pouring and overlapping them on wheel-thrown and hand-built pieces using porcelain and stoneware clays.
+ Patricia Herzog produces functional, colorful and highly textured hand-built pottery with an emphasis on animal imagery and the natural world. Her sculptural pieces are inspired by the art of ancient cultures.
+ Larry Gabbard seeks out alternative kilns and firing techniques to finish his wheel thrown pottery. He finds the unexpected marks that result when clay, heat and smoke interact are often intriguing and beautiful.
+ Karen Kyte creates colorful, whimsical terra cotta sculptures that often tell a story.

Lynnda Tenpenny, an award-winning mixed media artist, is a native Knoxvillian and a graduate of UT. Her new work focuses on the word “Interstices”, such as “to stand between, an intervening space, interval, small opening, chink, crack, crevice.” She loves mystery in her work, small surprises and hidden images that present themselves or pop through from the background, a glimpse of something in a previous layer that has been exposed by sanding or scraping paint off. Her creativity inspires imagination on the part of the viewer.

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

Friday, August 4, from 6-8 Awaken Coffee will host an opening reception for artist Jordan Abba.

Jordan is an artist and visual art teacher for Knox County Schools. “As an art educator, I find joy in art as an experimental process. I embrace growth through exploration. The series, “Under DE-construction,” explores positive and negative space, line, and shape to create compositions that express the experiences and emotions of life. Art, to me, is about appreciating the things in life that we love the most. This body of work embodies the bittersweet nostalgia of memory while engaging the principles of abstract painting.”

Please join us for some fantastic art, light refreshments, and 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/

8/4 • Bird Nerd Speaker Series: Secrets of Backyard Birds
8/4 • Knoxville Shakespeare: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare *Abridged
8/5 • Ijams Hiking Club
8/5 • Bird Nerd Speaker Series: The Wonder of Hummingbirds with Stephen Lyn Bales
8/5 • Beetles, Bees, & Butterflies: Oh My!
8/5 • Knoxville Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew
8/6 • Anthotype Day Printing Workshop
8/6 • Self Care Sunday Yoga with Hope Irwin
8/6 • Knoxville Shakespeare: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare *Abridged Matinee
8/6 • Knoxville Shakespeare: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare *Abridged
8/9 • Forest Bathing Workshop
8/9 • Bird Nerd Speaker Series: The Birds and the...Seeds? with Nick Smith
8/10 • Bird Nerd Speaker Series: Owl-ology with Stephen Lyn Bales
8/10 • Knoxville Shakespeare: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare *Abridged

2915 Island Home Ave., Knoxville, TN 37920
865-577-4717 or https://www.ijams.org/

Fri. Jul 21st 2023, 7:30 pm
Sat. Jul 22nd 2023, 7:30 pm
Sun. Jul 23rd 2023, 3:00 pm
Thu. Jul 27th 2023, 7:30 pm
Fri. Jul 28th 2023, 7:30 pm
Sat. Jul 29th 2023, 7:30 pm
Sun. Jul 30th 2023, 3:00 pm
Thu. Aug 3rd 2023, 7:30 pm
Fri. Aug 4th 2023, 7:30 pm
Sat. Aug 5th 2023, 7:30 pm
Sun. Aug 6th 2023, 3:00 pm

Ten strangers are summoned to a remote island. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they’re unwilling to reveal and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder. As the weather turns and the group is cut off from the mainland, the bloodbath begins and one by one they are brutally murdered in accordance with the lines of a sinister nursery rhyme.

Theatre Knoxville Downtown, 800 S. Central Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. Information & tickets: 865-544-1999, www.theatreknoxville.com

The Tennessee Stage Company presents its 33rd Shakespeare Festival, now renamed Knoxville Shakespeare and performing at Ijams Nature Center where there is room for the audience to spread out and observe proper social distancing while being able to enjoy the outdoor performances which will feature a season of comedies, Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew and the outrageous comedy of The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare (Abridged).

The performances will be held in the open field in front of the Visitors Center of Ijams Nature Center, located at 2915 Island Home Ave, Knoxville, TN 37920, just a short drive from downtown. There is an indoor space at Ijams Nature Center where performances will move in case of rain and where the matinees will be performed. Reservations and in-person ticket cost will be $15 with a four pack for families offering a 15% discount. Tickets are on sale now at www.Ijams.org/shakespeare

TAMING OF THE SHREW
July 20 22, 28, 30, Aug. 3, 5, 11, 13
7:30 pm nightly outdoors at Ijams Nature Center
Sunday, July 30, 2:00 pm

Suitors are lined up to court the young and beautiful Bianca – daughter of Baptista Minola of Padua. However, Baptista is determined that her older sister, Katherina, known as “Kate the Cursed” for her wild temper must be married first. No man is Padua is willing to court the willful Katherine, until Petruchio, a gentleman of Verona in search of a suitable wife, arrives and sets out to woo her with a vengeance – and does. In this, the original comedic battle of the sexes, beauty and brawn vie for love in a true war of wills, wits and words: Come on and kiss me Kate!”

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (Abridged)
July 21, 23, 27. 29. August 4, 6, 10, 12
Sunday, August 6, 2:00pm

Three actors, Thirty Six Plays, 90 minutes. Don’t try this at home!

For further information please contact the Tennessee Stage Company at 865-546-4280.
https://tennesseestage.com/
https://www.facebook.com/TNStageCo

Featuring more than 20 works representing mid 1960’s to the present

Judy Kelley Jorden
Received a BFA from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, with further studies in Art Education Department, Fine Arts Department and workshops at Arrowmont. Art Educator for 31 years in all grade levels for the Knox County School System. After retirement worked for UTK Art Ed department as clinical faculty member supervising art interns working toward their Master’s degree and assisting in some graduate classes for 9 yrs. Current Member of TN Watercolor, Knoxville Watercolor, Art Group 21 and COMMA, Thursday Painting. (Art groups which share educational experiences, encouragement and exhibitions.)

Artist’s Statement and Current Exhibited Work
My artwork during my undergraduate years was influenced by my teachers Walter Stevens and Carl Sublett where I worked more abstractly in oils and acrylic. I have always loved to draw and found subjects like portraits, the human figure and objects from nature to be my main focus. During my time at Arrowmont and other workshops, I started working in pastels, gouache and watercolor. Studying with Marcia Goldenstein and Tom Riesing, I was encouraged to look at the landscape objects and the figure in my own unique ways. My development of paintings began to show my interest in plants and objects of metal; depicting closeup objects, with contrasting textures, emphasizing linear strokes to show movement, the use of diagonals to increase the drama in the composition, and contrasting complementary colors. In later observations, I arranged combinations of photographs that had similar shapes but were from different contrasting images, like the shape of the sunflower with the shape of a brake drum.

The subject matter of my artwork was also influenced by the various neighborhoods where I taught. I became acquainted with a local merchant, where I became fascinated with the patterning of the fabric she sold. Working from my photos taken at the celebration of the Kuumba Festival, held in our area, I depicted these events in my paintings.

From attending music and dance performances, I was influenced by an artist Norman Madigan and the way he used light to develop layers of shapes and colors to distinguish and overlap the foreground, middle ground and background on the Circle Modern dancers as they were performing. I tried to carry this over in my gestural sketches during performances and paintings of dancers, in city scapes and the landscape.

I then began searching out sites of discarded trucks, machinery parts, or other types of discarded metal. I used this in smaller paintings or in series of works including organic foliage to contrast with the rusted metal, focusing on texture and color tones. Another side interest has led me to simplifying the forms, taking away from the emphasis on the subject matter to flatten the gestural shapes in an abstract way.

In the past few years my latest work has come from flowers, plants and trees found in the UTK gardens, in my own yard and other sites. Some of these paintings emphasizing plants have also included metal sculpture found on the UTK gardens site. My work in this series has been about the arrangement of plants and the background. I continue to describe the textured details seen, the strong use of intense color, and the relationship of movement that is created by contrasting these forms to one another. I am intrigued by the overall use of breaking up the various areas of the composition with areas of realism to stylized, and then abstraction.

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

The Westminster Presbyterian Church Schilling Gallery will exhibit the photo works of Marianne Woodside from July 2-August 30. The gallery is located inside the church at 6500 Northshore Drive, Knoxville, 37919. Viewing hours are 9-4 weekdays and 9-noon on Sunday. For more info, please contact the artist -- marianne.woodside@gmail.com.

Marianne 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. During the last ten years, with the encouragement from family and friends, especially photographer Tom Owens, Marianne has expanded her interest in photography and her ideas of artistic expression. Opportunities for travel to such venues as Central America, South America, the United Kingdom, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Iceland have offered time to capture exotic photographs beyond her daily experiences. And, because of her husband Phil’s willingness to make time for photography (stopping the car at a moment’s notice), Marianne finds intriguing subjects close to home. Her subjects range from still life images within a natural context, landscapes, and flora and fauna.

An interest in photographing glass has provided Marianne an additional way of expressing the relationship between man-made objects, nature, light, and color. Marianne has been fortunate to find support from the Arts & Culture Alliance and has shown her work at the Emporium Center. Her art has been selected for McGhee Tyson Arts and the Airport exhibit, the Arts & Cultural Alliance National Juried Exhibit, the Knoxville Photo Exhibition, and the Oak Ridge Art Center. She has also shown her work at the Knoxville Golden Roast Coffee Shop, the Knoxville Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Gallery, the Westminster Presbyterian Schilling Gallery, the Awaken Coffee Shop, and Maryville’s Asbury Place.

Photography is an important part of Marianne’s life. She also spends time writing, playing the guitar, hiking, and traveling. Marianne is devoted to her husband Phil, their three children, Michael, Cathy, and Donna Lee and their respective spouses and their grandchildren. And then, there is, of course, their Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, Clyde, who resides with Marianne and Phil in Maryville, Tennessee.

Marianne believes in the magical qualities of photography. Technical knowledge and skills support the creation of lovely, interesting, and whimsical images. At times, the outcome is beyond the expectation of the artist. To create these exceptional photographic moments, Marianne looks for ways to combine colors, lights, shapes, and textures to evoke a viewer’s mood or emotion. It is in nature that she finds many of her favorite subjects. You can find representations of Marianne’s images on her website (www.mariannewoodsidephotography.com) and her new Instagram account (@mariannewoodside).

 ECO TONE
COURTNEY EGAN FEATURING COLLABORATIONS WITH NATORI GREEN

OPENING RECEPTION & MEET THE ARTIST
FRIDAY, JUNE 16 • 5:30-7:30PM • CASH BAR

Eco Tone is a show of Courtney Egan's botanically-themed, projected artworks from 2020 to present, including new pieces made in collaboration with artist Natori Green. Egan’s installations deliver an experience that is both pleasing and disconcerting. The ethereal projections–converging on walls, floors and sculptural elements, and occasionally interactive–are inspired by the growing frequency of human exposure to nature via computers or television. Egan creates stunning yet “subtly impossible, hybrid tableaus” that envelop the viewer in a conversation between memory of the natural world and a new experience with a plant or flower. Egan explains the fundamental irony of the experience, stating, “We get closer and farther away from the natural world simultaneously when we experience it through a technological lens.”

Courtney Egan is a New Orleans-based digital media artist, photographer, and naturalist who blends botanical art with sculpture and digital technologies. www.courtneyegan.net

FREE & Open to the Public!

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.

Free and open to the public

Reception Friday, June 16, 2023, 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. Artist talk at 6:30 p.m.

In The Power of Water, Clinard focuses on the intensity and energy of waterfalls, waves and rivers. Her richly hued work is created by using watercolor in a loose and flowing manner and often on Yupo paper, which keeps the pigments on the surface and creates an intense, vivid result.

Lil Clinard is a landscape artist and watercolorist who has won three “Best of Show” awards in the Tennessee Artists’ Association Annual Juried Shows. Clinard is a signature member of the Tennessee Watercolor Society and Knoxville Watercolor Society, as well as a member of the American, National and Transparent watercolor societies. Visit her website for more information: www.WatercolorsByLil.com

Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, 2931 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37919. Gallery hours: M-Th 10-3, Su 10-12:30. Information: 865-523-4176, www.tvuuc.org