Calendar of Events

States of Becoming examines the dynamic forces of relocation, resettling, and assimilation that shape the artistic practices of a group of contemporary African diaspora artists in the United States. The exhibition is inspired by curator Fitsum Shebeshe’s 2016 move from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Baltimore, and subsequent firsthand experience with cultural assimilation. States of Becoming is a traveling exhibition curated by Fitsum Shebeshe and produced by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York.

States of Becoming Opening Reception
Friday, January 31, 2025, 6:00-9:00 pm
Members Only Hour, 6:00-7:00 pm
Gallery Talk with Curator Fitsum Shebeshe, 6:15 pm
Reception Opens to Non-Members, 7:00 pm
Musical Performance by Artist Miatta Kawinzi, 8:00 pm
Food by Tarik’s North African + Cash Bar + Specialty Beverage
https://knoxart.org/event/states-of-becoming-opening-reception/

For additional information and updates, follow the Knoxville Museum of Art on social media:
Facebook: Knoxville Museum of Art, Instagram: @knoxvillemuseumofart, X: @knoxart

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.

Step into the romantic streets of 19th-century Paris with Puccini's "La Bohème" on January 31 and February 2, 2025. Once again led by the creative vision of Dean Anthony and conducted by the distinguished Michelle Rofrano, this beloved opera will weave a tale of love, passion, and heartbreak amidst the bohemian lifestyle of struggling artists. With its soaring melodies and poignant storytelling, you won’t want to miss your chance to experience the enduring power of love and art.

Knoxville Opera: 865-524-0795, https://www.knoxvilleopera.org/

FRIDAY, JAN 31 | 7:30PM

Bijou Theatre, 803 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. Information/tickets: 865-522-0832, https://knoxbijou.org/

Waynestock 2025 at the Relix Variety Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee will feature performances by Trisha Gene Brady and The Lonetones. The annual three-day celebration of local music and community will return Jan. 30-Feb. 1 to Relix in Knoxville's Happy Holler, 1208 N Central St, Knoxville. This year’s beneficiary is RadioKCM, a subsidiary of Knoxville Community Media.

You can be a part of it all. It’s only $10 per night at the door, and that includes a raffle ticket.

Relix Venue, 1208 N Central St, Knoxville, TN 37917
Phone: (865) 224-6346

Details TBA
https://www.ferrellwhitecreative.com/

Bijou Theatre, 803 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. Information: 865-522-0832, https://knoxbijou.org/

MY MEMORY IS A MACHINE - AMBROSE RHAPSODY MURRAY
FIRST FRIDAYS | JANUARY 3, FEBRUARY 7, 5-9PM
Come meet the artist as part of the February 7th First Friday Art Walk.

Ambrose Rhapsody Murray (she/they) is a self-taught artist with roots in Florida and Asheville, NC. Through sewing, painting, material experimentation, film, and collaborative projects, they create stories to investigate our relationships to the colonial undercurrents of our lives, the charged symbology of black feminine bodies, and the ephemeral and layered qualities of memory and remembering. Ambrose received their Bachelor’s from Yale University, and was recently selected as Forbes 30 under 30 in the 2024 Art section. Their work lives in the permanent collection of The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Montclair Art Museum, and has exhibited across the US and abroad.

This exhibition and programming is co-sponsored by The Pride Center and generously supported by UT’s Office of Multicultural Student Life; Women, Gender, and Sexuality; The Department of Geography and Sustainability, and Africana Studies.

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

New members of 2024 will be featured during the month of January! A First Friday opening reception for the “New Members” exhibit is planned from 5:30-9pm, January 3rd, with complimentary refreshments and music.

New members:
Kimberly Collins - photography
Bonnie Colonna - fiber
Katharine Emlen - photography
Robin Ford - fiber
Paul Morris - wood
Katherine Schmoeller - fiber
Amber Purdy - drawing (2nd medium)
Claire Bodnaruk - glass
Christine Westbrook - painting
Deborah Etheredge - painting
Steven Varga - metal
Julie Boisseau-Craig - clay (3rd medium)
Alessandra Sutter Page - painting

The Art Market Gallery is a juried cooperative of over 50 East Tennessee artists dedicated to providing a vibrant marketplace for original art and fine crafts.

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

A Penny in Your Pocket: National Juried Exhibition, Part I
Opening reception: January 3, 5:00-9:00pm

Carrying a penny in your pocket into the new year is alleged to bring good fortune and prosperity. Kicking off the 2025 Arrowmont Gallery exhibition calendar, this exhibition explores interpretations of superstition. Held in two parts, Part I will be in January, opening to the public on First Friday, January 3rd, and Part II will be on view in February beginning First Friday, February 7th.

Juried by Rachel K. Garceau, Part I features work by the following artists: Celena Amburgey, Priscilla Bañuelos, Brittani Brown, Cindy Cheng, Jessika Edgar, Casey Engel, Noah Kiehne, M. Kobe, Lisa Kurtz, Ashlee Mays, Alena Mehic, Sung Eun Park, Kaleena Stasiak, Stacy Tabb, Scott Thorp, Sara Torgison, Hanna Washburn, Josh Winkler, Juanita Wyatt, Ashleigh York and Valerie Zimany.

For more information on this exhibition and others, please visit our site at: https://arrowmont.org/galleries/
110 S Gay St. Knoxville, Tennessee 37902
www.arrowmont.org

The Arts & Culture Alliance is pleased to present five new exhibitions at the Emporium Center in downtown Knoxville opening on Friday, January 3, from 5:00-9:00 PM. A free gathering with exhibiting artists will also feature live music with Evelyn Jack and Friends.

Anthony Donaldson lives in Knoxville and is a Knoxville Area Transit bus driver. He intensely studied art in high school and continued taking classes in college. Donaldson expresses himself through art as a writer would express oneself in a book. He asks himself whether art imitates life or life imitates art, and he feels the answer is both. Donaldson aims to tell a story with his art, and the recent work he will display features many subjects such as climate change, human trafficking, Harlem Renaissance culture, political and social issues, racism & classism, and more.

The exhibitions will be on display January 3-31, 2025 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 Monday, January 20, 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 knoxalliance.store. For more information, please see 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 opening on Friday, January 3, from 5:00-9:00 PM. A free gathering with exhibiting artists will also feature live music with Evelyn Jack and Friends.

Diana Ferguson, known to the art community as “DiFergi”, graduated with a degree in Fine Arts from Stetson University. She then taught art in the public school system for eight years before she went full time as a studio artist. Diana can now be found in her studio almost every day of the week. One of the many highlights of her art career was being invited to a month-long residency in Hungary where she worked with eleven other artists from around the globe. She has shown on multiple continents and has had her work featured in multiple publications. Currently, she is an active advocate for the arts in East Tennessee.

My work is full of color, forms and layering. There is a plethora of characters to be found inside a world that is basically happy yet sometimes concerned about social and moral issues. My goal is to create a space for the viewer to connect in a way that is entertaining but also creates questions. Sometimes things make perfect sense and sometimes they do not. There is a strong sense of narrative in my work. My imaginary characters develop as I paint and I love exploring their oddities and proclivities. I hope that you are perplexed and smiling as you view my work.

difergi.blogspot.com | Instagram @difergiart

The exhibitions will be on display January 3-31, 2025 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 Monday, January 20, 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 knoxalliance.store. For more information, please see 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 opening on Friday, January 3, from 5:00-9:00 PM. A free gathering with exhibiting artists will also feature live music with Evelyn Jack and Friends.

Stephen Phillips (b. 1988) was raised in the small town of Crawford, MS. He has always been intrigued by the arts whether music, dance, or visual arts, and his start in ceramics can be traced to his childhood enjoyment of mixing earth with water. He learned the fundamental skills of hand building and throwing at EMCC, receiving an Associate of Arts degree. He later attended Mississippi University for Women where he began to advance his throwing skills. He has trained under a national and international ceramics artist during his enrollment. While attending MUW, Stephen became the 1st place winner in the 2011 Mississippi Collegiate Show for the category of ceramics. He teaches classes and has given demonstrations and artist talks in various places. In 2015, he established Stephen’s Potter House Productions, a small studio space which can be seen in the countryside of his hometown in Crawford. His work has been displayed and sold in the MUW Eugenia Summer Gallery, the Rosenweig Arts Center, the R.E. Hunt’s Museum, and the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art. He currently has work displayed at EMCC in their permanent collection located in Scooba, MS. In 2021, he became a published artist and was featured in Sheen Magazine, Pottery Making Illustrated Magazine, and one book The Anatomy of a Good Pot.

In my recent work, I have explored the juxtaposition of textures and colors. I use underglazes as the base color and gloss glazes to give a differentiation between the textures and appearances provided by both. I use electrical tape to create patterns and geometrical shapes. When the tape is removed revealing the underglaze surface, these pieces are fired at cone 6 (around 2232 degrees F). Other pieces I create are raku fired for completion. The unglazed surface of the bisque pot will turn a matte black during the raku firing process allowing the differentiation between the unglazed surface and the glazed area. These pieces are finished using gold wax as an accent and cold sealed with a clear acrylic spray paint. Every piece created is considered as an individual that belongs to a large family or collection.

stephenspotterhouseproductions.com | Instagram @sphouseproductions

The exhibitions will be on display January 3-31, 2025 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 Monday, January 20, 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 knoxalliance.store. For more information, please see 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 opening on Friday, January 3, from 5:00-9:00 PM. A free gathering with exhibiting artists will also feature live music with Evelyn Jack and Friends.

“Hidden Worlds” is a new exhibition based on the paper presented at Bridges 2023 and the Knoxville American Marketing Association conference, “Surface-tiling Curves.” The subject is the application of a space-filling curve segment to the faces of regular polyhedra. The work represents real-world examples of time slices in the iterative process of these curves as sculpture and print. Each piece exists as snapshot along the way from one to two dimensions. Glimpsing into these hidden worlds is a way of looking deeper without looking closer.

David Denton, originally from Knoxville, spent 40 years practicing architecture in California. Before starting his own design practice in 2000, he was the Design Director of San Francisco architectural firm Whisler Patri, and Managing Principal for the renowned architecture firm Frank Gehry and Associates in Los Angeles. In 2001 he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Not knowing how quickly it would progress, he started planning for the future, seeking a way to continue to participate in the design world. Then he discovered the Virtual Reality platform Second Life. He knew immediately that the Virtual World was his future path. His early work in the Virtual World was featured in such publications as Architectural Record and The New York Times. His early designs were selected to be included in the archives of the Stanford University Library and the US Library of Congress. He has produced Virtual Reality designs in the areas of set design, trade show exhibits, experimental teaching tools, exhibition spaces, urban design, architectural design, videos, album covers, and business spaces. Much of his work on display is photographs of his 3D constructions in the Virtual World and then manipulated in Photoshop or initiated with a photograph he has taken and then also altered in Photoshop.

facebook.com/david.denton.583 | Read more

About Adam Rowe: Making a new artwork begins with a question I don’t immediately know the answer to. It ends with the artwork as proof that the answer I came up with is true. The middle part, figuring it out, is often more time consuming than shaping the actual piece, although it is the part I enjoy the most. After studying graphic design and working in this field for several years, my desire to take the principles of design and apply them to media other than paper or the screen has steadily increased. Most of my work is “math art,” although I am hesitant to claim I know much math.

adamrowe.com | Instagram @adamrowemusic

The exhibitions will be on display January 3-31, 2025 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 Monday, January 20, 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 knoxalliance.store. For more information, please see knoxalliance.com or call (865) 523-7543.