Calendar of Events

The Arts & Culture Alliance is pleased to present five new exhibitions at the Emporium Center in downtown Knoxville from June 7-28, 2024. As part of a special First Friday Block Party, a free gathering with the artists will take place on Friday, June 7, from 5:00-9:00 PM. Additionally, the night will feature more than 20 artist vendors and live music with The Merlin’s Nest and Nief-Norf faculty outside along the 100 Block of Gay Street, which will be open to pedestrians only from 4-10 PM between Jackson and Vine avenues.

Michelle Carr: Transparent But Unseen in the Atrium
This collection of images offers multiple slow shutter speed captures of choreographed movement, depicting motion entangled with light and portraying the concept of the dance community transparency in Knoxville. The lack of support leaves the dance community feeling unseen at times. The romantic tutus and pointe shoes depicted amongst a variety of Knoxville backdrops show partial views of dancers that mimic the idea of being partially seen and unvalued in our Southern culture. Creating movement and an introspective look at women in dance through my lens has been a passion for me since the Pandemic when teaching and choreographing was not an option. I love creating images filled with grace, manipulation of light, and movement to bring awareness to dance in the Knoxville area.

Michelle Carr has been a Knoxville resident since 2008. She has 35 years of experience in ballet as both a professional dancer, instructor, and choreographer spanning Georgia, Colorado, and Tennessee. She has taught, danced and choreographed with Go! Contemporary Dance Works for the past fifteen years. She is currently a hand therapist at Ortho Tennessee, mom of three, and a grandmother of all girls. Carr embarked on her photography journey with the University of Tennessee's non-credit program in 2019. Enthralled by creating both on stage and behind the camera, she joined Buttermilk Sky Pie to aid in developing visual marketing material during the franchise's early stages. Recognizing the potential in merging her passions for dance and photography, she began experimenting with light and movement, leading to the creation of "What's The Pointe: Ballet in the Pandemic". Her photographic works have been displayed in various local galleries in Knoxville and have received accolades in dance-related and local photography contests. Michelle continues to pursue meaningful projects, such as "Four Seasons: The Vivaldi Project" symbolizing life's seasons, and "Discarded", offering an introspective look into society's perception of women, especially in the realm of dance.

Instagram @mcarrphoto | www.michellecarrphoto.com | www.michellecarrphoto.com/fine-art-prints

The exhibitions will be on display at the Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. The Emporium is open to the public Monday-Friday, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM. Please note, the Emporium will be closed on Wednesday, June 19 for the holiday. Most of the works on exhibition will be for sale and may be purchased by visiting in person or the online shop at https://www.knoxalliance.store. For more information, please see www.knoxalliance.com or call (865) 523-7543.

The Arts & Culture Alliance is pleased to present five new exhibitions at the Emporium Center in downtown Knoxville from June 7-28, 2024. As part of a special First Friday Block Party, a free gathering with the artists will take place on Friday, June 7, from 5:00-9:00 PM. Additionally, the night will feature more than 20 artist vendors and live music with The Merlin’s Nest and Nief-Norf faculty outside along the 100 Block of Gay Street, which will be open to pedestrians only from 4-10 PM between Jackson and Vine avenues.

Fountain City Art Guild: Spring Show in the lower gallery
The Fountain City Art Guild will feature original art by nearly 30 local artists including oils, watercolors, woodworking, and more.

The Fountain City Art Guild began in 1979 as a group of women who met in the “Art Cellar” – the basement of Chloe Harrington’s home. At that time, most of the Guild members were watercolor artists. For several decades, they were known as the Fountain City Watercolor Guild, and they met in various churches and homes in the community, holding exhibitions in local businesses. In 2000, the Guild voted to allow other 2-D media in their exhibitions, and in 2015 members voted to allow nonfunctional 3-D work as well. In 2004, the Guild was instrumental in helping open the Fountain City Art Center at 213 Hotel Avenue, the location of the old Fountain City Library.

FCAG is currently a group of around 50 local artists who work in a variety of media. Guild membership is a juried process occurring in late fall and early spring. In addition to monthly meetings, the Guild also hosts exhibitions at local venues. The purpose of FCAG is to encourage public interest in and enjoyment of art. They encourage higher artistic standards in quality and workmanship, the exchange of ideas and new techniques, and strive to provide an atmosphere that encourages and inspires creativity.

www.fountain-arts.com

The exhibitions will be on display at the Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. The Emporium is open to the public Monday-Friday, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM. Please note, the Emporium will be closed on Wednesday, June 19 for the holiday. Most of the works on exhibition will be for sale and may be purchased by visiting in person or the online shop at https://www.knoxalliance.store. For more information, please see www.knoxalliance.com or call (865) 523-7543.

The Arts & Culture Alliance is pleased to present five new exhibitions at the Emporium Center in downtown Knoxville from June 7-28, 2024. As part of a special First Friday Block Party, a free gathering with the artists will take place on Friday, June 7, from 5:00-9:00 PM. Additionally, the night will feature more than 20 artist vendors and live music with The Merlin’s Nest and Nief-Norf faculty outside along the 100 Block of Gay Street, which will be open to pedestrians only from 4-10 PM between Jackson and Vine avenues.

Alex Smith: Moved by Stillness
I’ve lived in the hustle and bustle of New York and in the East Tennessee countryside. Whatever my surroundings, I’ve been very aware of being in the present moment when I’m working. As an artist, I hope I bring viewers the ability to be still, to put down their phones and silence the noise of the world. My works are from scenes in my life where I’ve found inspiration; each painting has its own story that a viewer can only find by being still.

Alex Smith is a native Knoxvillian. He is a graduate of Carson-Newman University, studied at The School of the Art Institute in Chicago, and completed his MFA at The New York Academy of Art. Smith received an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant, an Artist’s Teaching Residency at the Altos de Chavon School of Art and Design, and a Bailey Opportunity Grant. He has been the featured artist at the Dogwood Arts Festival and ArtXtravaganza in Knoxville. His work has been exhibited at the Emporium in Knoxville and numerous galleries in New York, including Sotheby’s, Panepinto Galleries, Dacia Gallery, and the Wilkinson Gallery at the New York Academy of Art. www.alexsmithstudios.com | Instagram @alexsmith_artist

Jan Muir: Stop and Smell the Flowers!
The main influence in my life and art has always and will always be the natural beauty of the outdoors. As a wildlife photographer, I am able to focus on the eyes of the wild while having my spirit melt into the immensity of open landscapes. Each continent has its particular feel. Each continent holds multiple memories. My glass art is similar. I embrace beauty, place, and function. The current series reflects nature through the use of flowers. Some pieces arose from photographic images that I’ve taken, while others I designed to elicit joy.

Jan Muir grew up in Las Vegas and has lived in Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico; she now resides in Vonore, Tennessee. The beauty of place and the warmth of community make East Tennessee an ideal place to call home. Expressing herself through art became part of her journey while in college, and she graduated with a Ceramic Arts Degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She then worked in pottery for many years until a love of photographing wildlife and traveling absorbed her. As a photographer, she was a guest photo lecturer aboard National Geographic/Lindblad Expedition ships and became a contributing photographer to a leading Stock Photo Agency. In 2020 and 2022, her photography was featured on the covers of National Geographic Kids and Little Kids Magazines. In 2002, she began to work with blown glass at Pilchuck School of Glass. Muir has since studied and taught glass art fusing, casting, and blowing in the Czech Republic, Turkey, New Zealand and stateside at the Corning Institute of Glass. www.janmuir.com

The exhibitions will be on display at the Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. The Emporium is open to the public Monday-Friday, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM. Please note, the Emporium will be closed on Wednesday, June 19 for the holiday. Most of the works on exhibition will be for sale and may be purchased by visiting in person or the online shop at https://www.knoxalliance.store. For more information, please see www.knoxalliance.com or call (865) 523-7543.

"In a big family, it is often chaotic and I have found that photographing even the less than ideal moments is cathartic and it helps me to be present in the moments that matter and will not last forever. Documenting my life in this way records this passage of time in a beautiful and meaningful way."

The exhibit will be available starting June 7th from 5 PM – 9 PM and will remain at Casa HoLa Gallery for the rest of the month. We will also feature in our Tienda HoLa with merchandise, locally made and imported artisan crafts, accessories, jewelry, cards, ornaments, piñatas, alebrijes and more. As always, Hot Tamales will be available for purchase!

https://holahoralatina.org/current-exhibit/
Info: 865.335.3358 or enrique.cruz@holafestival.org
HoLa Hora Latina’s Casa HoLa Art Gallery and Artisan Gift Shop
Bottom floor of the Emporium for the Arts (corner of Gay and Jackson streets in downtown Knoxville), 100 South Gay Street, Suite 112, Knoxville, TN 37902

Kid A’ Riffic Fun in the Park is an event for children offering hands on crafts and activities provided by City departments and entities. Kid A’Riffic will be held on Wednesdays in June and July from 10am-1pm at a different park each week. Come enjoy making crafts, playing games and so much more while making fun memories over summer vacation. All activities are free!

June 5 - Baxter Ave Park & Fire Station #3, 204 E. Baxter Ave
June 12 - Chilhowee Park with Touch-A-Truck, 401 Lakeside St
June 26 - Fort Kid, 1049 World's Fair Park Drive
July 10 - Morningside Park, 1600 Dandridge Rd.
July 17 - Fountain City Park, 117 Hotel Rd.
July 24 - West Hills Park, 410 N. Winston Rd
July 31 - World's Fair Park, 910 World's Fair Park Dr.

*No events on June 19 and July 3

https://www.knoxvilletn.gov/government/city_departments_offices/special_events/kid_a__riffic_fun_in_the_park

Join us this summer for a museum experience that features weekly rotating themes – from “Backyard Exploration” to “Dig It! Dino Week” and more! Muse Pop celebrates the intersectionality of science and play through weekly programming and is included with your general admission ticket!

Backyard Exploration JUNE 3 – JUNE 7
Transportation Station JUNE 10 – June 14
Sky's the Limit JUNE 17 – JUNE 21
Storytime Summer JUNE 24 – JUNE 28
Totally Tech JULY 1 – JULY 5
Dig It! Dino Week JULY 8 – JULY 12

The Muse Knoxville, 516 N. Beaman Street, Knoxville, TN 37914. Information: 865-594-1494, www.themuseknoxville.org

June 1 - August 3, 2024
First Friday Receptions | June 7, July 5, August 2, 5-9pm
UT Downtown Gallery

In Southern Black communities, our stories aren't simply passed down from one generation to the next—they serve as maps with markers for our future. This truth is evident in The Bottom, a neighborhood in East Knoxville, Tennessee. Despite its demolition in the 1950s due to urban renewal and systemic racism, its legacy lives on.

Curated by Good Black Art and grounded in the research of Dr. Enkeshi El-Amin, a local sociologist specializing in race, place, and Black communities, The Bottom: Stories from the Neighborhood is an exhibition that delves into life in the neighborhood beyond its destruction. While it highlights the narrative of Knoxville, it resonates with Black, Brown, Indigenous, and underprivileged communities across different times and places. The exhibition presents both familiar and imaginative interpretations by two Southern artists through a dialogue of folklore and futurism, drawing from oral histories of former residents and archival sources from The Bottom.

AHMAD GEORGE is a painter and multimedia artist from Memphis, Tennessee. They’ve shown at NADA Miami as well as national and international group and solo exhibitions. Through their work, they explore the liminal space between reality, mythology, folklore, and self. Their worldbuilding thins the veil of this world by mixing imagery of the American South (mostly scenes from Tennessee and Mississippi) with local and sourced myths from different parts of the world. Oftentimes, they use people from their own life to be the protagonists of these narratives. Major themes they explore in their paintings currently include generational history, transformation, consequence, and spiritual alchemy.

ERIN LEANN MITCHELL is a textile artist from Birmingham, Alabama. Her work is an expansion of the southern quilting tradition, using a mixture of textiles and collage gathered in textile markets and fabric stores. These multidimensional assemblages render the realities of southern Blackness into radical new imaginings. Repositories of history, rampant with particulars, my quilt-based pieces are storytelling vehicles. They liberate imaginative territory, creating a home-place for full subjectivity and resistance. They indicate a way forward. Quilting is a dynamic, evolving artform linking Africans in the diaspora and those on the continent. She honors tradition as she reshapes it, paying homage while challenging convention. Her needlework moves Black women’s legacy off the clothesline and onto museum walls.

This exhibition is in partnership with Dr. Enkeshi El-Amin, The Bottom, and Good Black Art. Funding for the UT Downtown Gallery is generously provided by the Arts & Culture Alliance, Knox County, and the Department of the Treasury.

UT Downtown Gallery, 106 S. Gay Street. Hours: W-F: 11am - 6pm, Sat: 10am - 3p. For more information: ewing@utk.edu | https://downtown.utk.edu

Flights of Fancy: Artworks inspired by Hummingbirds by Cheri Jorgenson

Artist statement: My wildlife artwork began after our Covid isolation, when I finally became aware of these animals. I became an appreciator and observer of our local residents, particularly hummingbirds, and began to create artwork inspired by them. In 2022, our art group was invited to do an art show at Ijams Nature Center, home of the Annual Hummingbird Festival, and many of these were exhibited there.

Bio: Cheri Jorgenson has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Alabama and a Masters of Science in Art Education from the University of Tennessee. Originally a graphic designer, she was then an art teacher for Knox County Schools for 20 years, retiring from the L&N STEM Academy in 2020. She was the 2012 Tennessee Art Educator of the Year and the 2021 National Art Honor Society Sponsor of the Year. In 2004, she co-founded COMMA, an air group that meets weekly at UT Gardens. Ms. Jorgenson lives in South Knoxville with her husband in a very old farmhouse surrounded by natural habitat.

June & July 2024
South Knoxville Library Gallery, 4500 Chapman Highway, Knoxville, TN 37920
Hours: M/T/R: 10am – 8pm, Wed: 10am – 5:30pm, F/S: 10am – 5:30, Sun: Closed. (Closed Juneteenth and Independence Day)

The Frothy Monkey is currently exhibiting artworks from the Tennessee Artist’s Association’s show of “Take Care of One Another” from May through July at the Frothy Monkey, 419, S. Gay St. Knoxville, TN 37902.

The Frothy Monkey is the perfect stop for coffee, conversation and community. The restaurant serves breakfast through dinner, and loves it when a coffee chat turns into a lunch or dinner date. The Frothy Monkey seeks to provide a safe and welcoming environment that can nourish guests and build community relationships.

Tennessee Artists Association; A great place to learn and grow as an artist. Monthly programs of TAA include practical art demonstrations, discussions, and opportunities for individual artists to get involved in learning, community and shows. More on TAA can be found on the web at https://tnartists.org or on Instagram at @tn_artists, and on Facebook at TNArtistsAssociation.

Drawn from the remarkable collection of John Hechinger, a hardware store magnate, and art collector, the 68 featured works in the exhibition present images of the most familiar tools as extraordinary works of art. Encompassing photographs, paintings, works on paper, and sculptures, the exhibition celebrates the value of labor and honors the creativity of builders, artists, hobbyists, and self-reliant DIYers. Featured artists include Colleen Barry, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Maria Porges, James Surls, and Wayne Thiebaud.

The renowned art collection of the late hardware magnate John Hechinger exemplifies this practical and artistic universality. Over his long career, Hechinger devoted much of his energy, playfulness, and passion to this collection, seeking out works from numerous genres and artists of many backgrounds, all of them bound by a common theme: the democracy of the tool. In Work and Play, curator Sarah Tanguy explores interlocking principles: tools as icons of labor; labor as a component of creativity; creativity as a form of play; and the art of tools as the most incisive expression of their interrelatedness. This exhibition celebrates the virtues inherent in the art of the tool and highlights the astounding breadth of the Hechinger Collection by illuminating this unique, but ubiquitous, idiom.

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.

Join us for the opening of “Pottery From Somewhere Else Entirely” by Michael Arpino on May 3rd from 6-8 pm.

Arpino's unique pieces are each a statement of individuality!
https://www.instagram.com/arpinoceramics/

Rala: Regional and Local Artisans, 112 W. Jackson Ave, Knoxville, TN 37902. Hours: Mon-Thu & Sat 11-6, Fri 11-8, Sun 11-5. Information: 865-525-7888, https://shoprala.com or www.instagram.com/ShopRala

Every Wednesday, May 1 – November 20, 10 am – 1 pm
Market Square in downtown Knoxville

Every Saturday, May 4 – November 23, 9 am – 1 pm
Market Square, Union Avenue, and Market Street in downtown Knoxville

The Market Square Farmers’ Market is an open-air farmers’ market managed by Nourish Knoxville. Everything at the Market Square Farmers’ Market is grown, raised, and/or made by our vendors within a 150-mile radius of Knoxville, Tennessee. Products vary by season and include fresh fruits & vegetables, eggs, honey, pasture-raised meats, edible & ornamental plants, cut flowers, bread & baked goods, jams & jellies, coffee, artisan crafts, and more! We offer SNAP & SNAP Doubling services every Wednesday and Saturday, and Nourish Kids – a free kids activity on the 2nd Saturday of each month.

https://www.nourishknoxville.org/market-square-farmers-market/