Peggy Snow Preserves a Vanishing Nashville in 'Passing Beauty'

As development razes more and more traces of Nashville’s past, artist Peggy Snow is the city’s designated mourner. She’s documented a vanishing city ever since the days she hung out at the ’80s rock club Cantrell’s with a camera, but over the years she’s switched media to painting — a much more time-consuming process, but one with a more poignant sense of preservation. It’s Snow you frequently see stationed at an easel wherever an old structure faces the wrecking ball: the Jacksonian apartment building on West End, the old Father Ryan High School on Elliston, and most recently the Colonial Baking Company on Franklin Pike.

In those cases and more, the 20 paintings in Snow’s current exhibit "Passing Beauty: Painting by Peggy Snow" are all that remain, and she’s currently working to capture buildings in Printers Alley. This show marks the unveiling of her painting “Colonial Baking Company” — featuring the stump where its massive magnolia tree once stood. There's a reception for the artist 5 to 7 p.m. today at the University School of Nashville's Tibbott Center Gallery, 2000 Edgehill Ave. The exhibit continues through Feb. 12.