Stone Jack Jones
This month I’ll be highlighting don’t-miss exhibitions on display during January’s First Saturday art events, but I’m also going to help us get our bearings. 2016 was one of the most chaotic years Nashville’s visual art scene has endured in the past two decades: New crawls were established, galleries opened, galleries moved, galleries closed, and the whole gravitational field of Nashville’s visual art scene shifted with surprising swiftness.
Downtown
The downtown storefront art scene is the same as it ever was, with the established commercial gallery trifecta of The Arts Company, Tinney Contemporary and Rymer holding down Fifth Avenue of the Arts. For most art crawlers and shoppers these spaces are the face of Nashville’s gallery culture, and the downtown Art Crawl will continue to be a thing as long as these galleries continue to manage the delicate balance between commercial sales and provocative programming.
For January, The Arts Company will feature its annual Of Things to Come exhibition, offering a sneak peek at the shows they’ll present in the coming year. Expect work in a variety of media from Alex Beard, Hollie Chastain, Mandy Rogers, Michael Nott, Brad Sells and more.
Tinney Contemporary’s Women of Abstraction features work by a handful of nonfigurative painters, including Martica Griffin, Mary Long, Jeanie Gooden, Anna Jaap and Mildred Jarrett. Expect lots of colorful shapes, forms and lines here on Saturday night, but look for Jaap’s text-based works to stand out from the pack.
The Browsing Room at Downtown Presbyterian Church celebrated its second birthday in July, and the space’s consistently challenging programming earned it a nod in our Best of Nashville issue last year. On Saturday night, the Browsing Room will continue its display of architecture photography by faculty and students from Watkins College of Art, Design and Film, including Alexis Hunter, Kara Kramer, Jasmine Franklin, ST Davis and Angelique Rabus. Bricks and Faith finds the photographers documenting the historic church using analog film photography with large-format cameras — technology that dates back to the 19th century. This marriage of subject and techniques conjures new perspectives on the venerable icon.
Joan of Arc’s birthday is traditionally celebrated on Jan. 6, but local singer-songwriter Stone Jack Jones will take advantage of the First Saturday festivities on Jan. 7 with a belated birthday salute at Brikolaj. Jones’ music is sometimes broadly categorized as Americana, but it’s so admirably dark and imbued with mystery that it belongs in its own category, beyond the reach of alt/retro poseurs. The pairing of Jones’ live ensemble with projected video by Brikolaj maestro Jared Brennan should make this a happening fit for a saint.
Wedgewood-Houston
In 2016, the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood became the new center of gravity in Nashville’s visual art scene. When Coop announced last summer that it would be leaving the Arcade for We-Ho, the sense of change was palpable. Coop is arguably the best gallery in the city, and its defection from Fifth Avenue is a big loss for the downtown art scene. Rumors that other important Arcade galleries may follow in Coop’s footsteps mean that Wedgewood-Houston’s gravitas may become even greater in 2017.
When Leonard Cohen released Various Positions in the U.S. in 1985, he reinvented his sound, used synthesizers for the first time and came into his own as a recording artist. At Coop, this month’s Various Positions exhibition by the collective’s new members demonstrates how the space and the people behind it continue to grow and evolve. This show includes etchings by Michael Dickins, paintings by KJ Schumacher and a video along with a display of painted name tags from Mary Addison Hackett. All the work in the show is connected by a sense of texture — even the video installation is palpably sculptural. How did Leonard say it? “Touch me with your naked hand, or touch me with your glove.”
An exhibition by Brooklyn-based artist Ron Ewert will continue at Mild Climate in January. At first glance, I Need a New Hot Water Heater looks like a collection of seemingly unfinished monochrome paintings. But closer inspection reveals lovingly layered textures on works that hang together in a repetitive series that points to a mysterious narrative about the limits of the medium itself.
Awakening at East Side Project Space is a group exhibition that employs a “#STAYWOKE” message in its press release, and seems inspired by the election of Donald Trump. The show includes work by a number of artists, including writer Rachel Martin, whose projections and music will be presented in a sanctuary space where visitors can meditate on their deepest fears and their greatest hopes for the new year.
Nashville artist Richard Feaster makes the short list in any ranking of Tennessee’s best abstract painters, and his latest exhibition at Zeitgeist Gallery features chromatic works full of dancing gestures and named for psychedelic pop songs. Psyche Pastorale highlights Feaster’s penchant for evoking introspective mystery, but the artist is at his best when he’s embracing random marks and accidental designs, using spills, drips and pools to capture moments in time. Feaster’s show opens alongside Alex Lockwood’s Awful Things — the sculptor’s playful and sadistic study of the history of human torture. Happy New Year!
At Julia Martin Gallery, Shubuta and Other Stories features Noah Saterstrom and Samuel Dunson in a painterly dialogue about the legacy of Southern slavery. Saterstrom is new to Nashville, but Dunson’s reputation as one of the best painters in the city should guarantee a packed house at this timely display.
Email arts@nashvillescene.com
