Since its inception over a decade ago, Artclectic has evolved into one of the city's major art events
by Eric Lehning
Inaccessibility can be the bane of so many modern art scenes. Through a street-side window, some gallery shows look like nothing more than your local snobs and stiffs passing silent judgment on each other in an antiseptic parlor of bazillion-dollar doohickeys. But once a year, University School of Nashville flings the golden gates wide open and beckons one and all to experience the art world in all its carnival wonder.
The 13th annual Artclectic is a four-day showcase of over 50 competing artists, all from the Southeast. Collectors from all economic spheres are welcome, with pieces ranging from $20 to $8,000. The bazaar includes over 4,000 works, including prints, paintings, sculptures, glass, jewelry and photographs. Last year's show was a teeming marketplace that channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars into the local art community, while helping raise money for the school.
What makes Artclectic special is that it encourages the viewer to become a collector, while also bringing artists together in the spirit of healthy competition. The unspoken creative dialogue in which all active artists engage has rarely been elevated by polite back-slapping over a plastic cup of wine. Competition is the most proven method for making good artists better and bad artists stop. That said, you're not likely to find many of the latter at Artclectic. Over the years, the event has evolved to attract a more diverse, creative and accomplished group of artists, while drawing in a broader circle of art patrons, city leaders and collectors.
The task of aesthetic judgment falls on this year's juror, Jerry Dale McFadden. A decade ago, in the midst of a significant musical career—he played keyboards with The Mavericks and Sixpence None the Richer— McFadden opened TAG Art Gallery, one of the pioneering venues in Nashville's then nascent cutting-edge art scene. He now lives in Chattanooga, where he serves as director of the 4 Bridges Arts Festival and heads Artists Services at the city's Association for the Visual Arts.
Artclectic 2009's featured artist is painter Pinkney Herbert, who is showing pieces from his lusciously kinetic abstract series Floating World. Herbert lives and works in both New York City and Memphis. The two worlds creep into his art as contrasting symbols, gestures of a vibrant duality. From New York he pulls the energy and motion of improvisational jazz. The lines of his work convey a rhythm that murmurs without breaking tempo. From Memphis he channels the blues into every tactile gesture, while the slowness of soul music can be felt in the colorful negative spaces that balance the compositions. His most recent works bear an unmistakable Asian influence. Herbert's inspiration for these pieces came from Japanese prints of the Edo period.
In Herbert's "Jig," the abstract form seems like a microbial water-creature that's been captured in a glass plate and viewed through a microscope while its "legs" dance in defiance. The body of the creature is a fire-engine-red blob against an off-white background reminiscent of the Japanese rising sun. When a mature artist as intrinsically American as Herbert allows such foreign influences to color his process, the results are vivid and more relevant than ever. He doesn't abandon one style for another, but uses his natural technique to inform new inspirations. In the pastel-on-paper piece "Delta Series D," for example, there is a calligraphic quality to the bold coil of the image, and in turn a reinforcing of the musical influences—the uppermost swath of the spiral appears as musical staff lines with green note-like dots dancing across its length.
Because of the variety within his own career, Herbert's work is a good fit for Artclectic. Earlier paintings such as "Firestorm" were roiling depictions of undulating flames, and now, with a piece like "Tracks"—a deft rendering of frantic lines contained in a uniquely active negative space—it seems those flames have been harnessed in an almost Zen act of precision. So many artists break their brains waiting for the next "new" inspiration to seize them by force. Pinkney Herbert's work is hard evidence that the best ideas are most attracted to wide eyes and skilled hands.
Joining Herbert at Artclectic 2009 are a number of notable Nashville artists, among them Roger Clayton, Camille Engel, Kathryn Dettwiller, Bryce McCloud, Lesley Patterson-Marx and Emily Holt. Clayton's delightfully cartoonish rabbit-themed paintings have become a hit with collectors, in part because their playful nature is tempered by a pleasingly odd, ambiguous tone. Meanwhile, the inclusion of more "outside" artists such as Patterson-Marx and Holt is indicative of the event's gradual evolution from its early days as a haven for safer, more traditional art to its current incarnation as a venue for more innovative and challenging work.
Artclectic 2009 begins on Thursday, Oct. 22, with the Patron's Party, but if the $125 tag is a bit pricey for you, the Community Party (6 to 10 p.m. Friday) is only $10 and includes wine, beer and refreshments courtesy of Whole Foods. Admission is free 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday. (On Saturday, Brushfire ceramics will offer lessons and artist Andrew Vastagh will be doing some live silk-screening.)
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