Donna Ferrato followed a couple named Garth and Lisa into the bathroom as part of her photography series on their swinger lifestyle, but what she came out with was something much more salacious. Garth took a swing at Lisa, and Ferrato, her face visible in the mirrored corner across from them, snapped a photo as it happened. This was 1982 — two years before Nan Goldin's famous self-portrait taken one month after she had been battered, and more than 10 years before the Violence Against Women Act was enacted as a federal law.
This was new — and more importantly, urgent — territory, and Ferrato changed the course of her photojournalism career as a result. That photo, titled plainly "Garth and Lisa: In the Bathroom," will be on view at Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery as part of I Am Unbeatable — Documenting and Celebrating Stories of Empowerment: Photographs by Donna Ferrato, an exhibit of Ferrato's long history of work that exposes and explores domestic violence.
The exhibit features photos of her early work in the arena, including a particularly moving shot called "Diamond, the Boy Who Said No to His Father for Hitting His Mother." Alongside them, however, are images from a much more recent series that follows a woman named Sarah Augusta, who was 26 when Ferrato first began shooting her in 2012. Photos from this new series, titled simply Sarah's World, are featured heavily in the exhibit, as is a video about Sarah and how she overcame her abusive partner.
As part of the Friday, Sept. 12, opening, which includes a reception for the photographer from 5 to 8 p.m., Ferrato will give a 6 p.m. public talk on her work titled "Looking for Positive Change in a Climate of Fear." The exhibit, free and open to the public, runs through Dec. 4 at the Fine Arts Gallery, located in Cohen Memorial Hall at 1220 21st Ave. S.
DON'T MISS
Sept. 20: Zach Searcy
Knoxville-based artist Zach Searcy has big plans for his first show in Nashville at The Red Arrow Gallery: Not From Here is his "take on the human condition in a different world that transcends gender and race, sexual orientation, culture and class." Ornate artist statements aside, this looks like solid work that recalls Rauschenberg's mixed-media assemblages and Sanford Biggers' hip-hop mandala. The Red Arrow Gallery, 1311 McGavock Pike
Sept. 26-Jan. 4: Kandinsky: A Retrospective
One of the most influential artists to bridge expressionism and abstraction, Wassily Kandinsky can still draw a crowd, and this major retrospective of the artist's work features more than 80 paintings, watercolors, drawings and a reconstituted mural. Frist Center
Sept. 26-Jan. 4: Helen Pashgian: Light Invisible
On the heels of its hugely popular James Turrell retrospective, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art brought another pioneer of the Light and Space movement to its galleries. Now Helen Pashgian: Light Invisible is traveling across the U.S. to Nashville, where it's taking root at The Frist. The exhibition will feature a selection of Pashgian's paired columns — which press materials describe as "luminous seven-foot structures that refract light in surprising ways due to their internal copper rods" — and related works. Frist Center
Sept. 27: Courage Unmasked
In collaboration with the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Courage Unmasked is an art auction that raises money for head and neck cancer patients through a uniquely conceptual means: The radiation masks worn by people undergoing treatment for cancer — a full upper-body cast made from a mesh plastic — are given to artists to redesign in constructions that recall everything from Nick Cave soundsuits to elaborate theatrical headpieces. Pam Tillis is the honorary host and speaker, and American Pickers' Mike Wolfe will lead the auction with Nashville Arts publisher Paul Polycarpou. Reserve a seat now at courageunmaskedtn.org. OZ Nashville, 6172 Cockrill Bend Circle
Oct. 3-4: Handmade and Bound
What started as a mini-flea market of handmade wares four years ago has turned into one of the most anticipated art events of the season, complete with a gallery show, a film screening and a market filled with zines, handmade books and indie comics the likes of which you aren't likely to find elsewhere. Check handmadeboundnashville.com for details. Watkins College of Art, Design and Film
Oct. 4-25: First Person
Co-curated by Mike Calway-Fagan and Devin Balara, this exhibit of work by artists Traci Tullius, Jayson Musson, Nathan Boyer, Jennifer Sullivan, Jessica Frelund and William Lamson is composed of single-channel videos in which each artist treats the camera as confessional, performance documentarian or intimate onlooker. Fort Houston, 500 Houston St.
Oct. 4-25: Jack Ryan: Safe Deposit
Ryan imagines a meteorite recovered after having struck the gold geodesic dome atop the Charlotte Pike Regions Bank in this ornate, fiscally imaginative installation. Details on future exhibits at Zeitgeist, including a November show that pairs work by Nashville-based favorites Richard Feaster and Alex Blau with New York's Todd McDaniel, are to come. Zeitgeist, 516 Hagan St.
Oct. 4-25: Michelle Norris
Norris is an Atlanta-based photographer with an eye for '90s-style saturated pastels and slick advertisement compositions, like a chillwave Juergen Teller. Look for more innovative work at The Packing Plant throughout the season, including a live performance and installation from digital artist Morgan Higby-Flowers in November and work from Watkins photography undergrad Holden Head in December. The Packing Plant, 507 Hagan St.
Oct. 9: History of Art Alumni Lecture and Gallery Talk: Jeremy Fan Zhang
Smart Nashville residents have learned to supplement their art education with the stellar public lectures provided by local universities, and this year's History of Art Alumni Lecture should attract a crowd of curious visitors. Zhang, who received a master's degree at Vanderbilt and a Ph.D. at Brown, will deliver an interestingly specific talk on Chinese funerary art and its cultural and architectural context. Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery
Oct. 23-Dec. 6: Selvage
In textiles, the title refers to the self-finished edges of a piece of fabric; in print, it means discarded material like the border on a page of stamps. This exhibit curated by Jodi Hays and Scene arts editor Laura Hutson incorporates elements of both as it examines textile-based abstract work by local and national artists, featuring Hays, Alex Blau, Brandon Donahue, Jovencio de la Paz, Maggie Haas, Courtney Adair Johnson, Shannon Lucy, Aimee Miller, Gabriel Pionkowski and Louis Schmitt. Opening reception Oct. 23. Hiram Van Gordon Memorial Gallery, Elliott Hall, TSU, at 37th Ave. N. and John L. Driver Blvd. —JIM RIDLEY
Oct. 31-Jan. 25: Sanctity Pictured: The Art of the Dominican and Franciscan Orders in Renaissance Italy
Frist curator and Renaissance art historian Trinita Kennedy organized this exhibit of Italian art from 1250-1550, and it's the first major show that examines art from both Dominican and Franciscan orders together. The exhibition brings together more than 60 works of art that include the Vatican Museums' "Saint Francis With Four Post-Mortem Miracles," the J. Paul Getty Museum's Abbey Bible, and the painting "Saint Catherine of Siena Receiving the Stigmata" by Domenico Beccafumi. Frist Center
Oct. 11-Nov. 8: Mary Addison Hackett: Crazy Eyes
Hackett was one of the first Nashville-area artists David Lusk chose to represent when he opened a Nashville outpost of his successful Memphis gallery earlier this year, and a large-scale painting from the artist was the gallery's de facto centerpiece for its first group exhibit. Needless to say, expectations for her first solo show at Lusk are high, but Hackett's up to the challenge — perhaps no other painter in Nashville can so expertly wrangle the representational chops with the compositional inventiveness of Hackett's best work. David Lusk Gallery, 516 Hagan St.
November: Greg Pond: Art + Tech Lab
Pond was an integral member of the Fugitive group of artists who brought Nashville exposure in the contemporary art world in the 1990s, and he's continued to press buttons and push boundaries with art that ranges from sculpture (as in last year's solo show at Zeitgeist) to the award-winning documentary Born In Trench Town. See what he can do in the offbeat workplace setting of Seed Space. 1209 Fourth Ave. S.
November: Jana Harper: The Inward Structure of Your Mind
Harper is a new faculty member at Vanderbilt, and she's following Februrary's conceptual photography show You Call It a Cloud with this Coop Gallery exhibit of "cheap and easy" materials like cardboard, bamboo, paper and thrifted fabric deployed to represent the periphery of her mind. Coop Gallery, 75 Arcade
Nov. 14: Opening reception, Sherrick and Paul Inaugural Exhibition
It's not every day that a Nashville gallery exhibits work by contemporary heavyweights like Barry McGee, Vivian Maier and Katy Grannan, but curator Susan Sherrick is making it work, and we're just happy to be along for the ride. Expectations are high for the new space on Houston Street in the former Fugitive Projects building, but Sherrick and Paul, Sherrick's first permanent gallery, promises to deliver art usually seen by the public only in major galleries and museums in New York, Los Angeles and London. In addition to McGee, Maier and Grannan, the inaugural exhibit will feature work by William Eggleston, Wendy White, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Nick Goss and several others. Don't miss it. Sherrick and Paul, 438 Houston St.
