“Night Shepherd,” Alan LeQuire
There are a few different trends shaping Nashville’s contemporary art scene as we approach the coming winter art season and a new creative calendar in 2025. Commercial real estate remains prohibitively expensive for creative startups. And while I’m listening closely to some rumors about new galleries that will be debuting in the coming months, I’m mostly on the lookout for independent curators, curatorial collaborations and pop-up displays to continue to define the edges of Nashville’s contemporary art scene in the coming year. Don’t be surprised if those edges continue to trace an ever-widening circle throughout Davidson County.
West Nashville
A great example of our city’s expansive creative geography is this month’s West Nashville Art Crawl. The events include stops in the Sylvan Park and Richland/West End neighborhoods; the crawl connects galleries like Random Sample to a number of domestic artist studios; and the happening includes participants ranging from O.G. Nashville art pioneers like Alan LeQuire and Roger Clayton to emerging artists like painters Jess Peoples and Kymberlee Stanley. Offerings range from abstract painting and contemporary woodworking to Twyla Lambert Clark’s wearable fiber art and Audry Deal-McEver’s signature ceramic designs. Cozy creative laboratories like Random Sample and domestic art displays are both long-standing art traditions in Nashville. It’s heartening to see the city’s creatives continue to find new ways to adapt and thrive using these tried-and-true strategies and venue models. There have been a few recent West Nashville Art Crawls, and there was a Madison Art Crawl in November. Again, this diffusion of the creative culture is partly fueled by economic displacement. But the suburban-izing of Nashville’s art community is also just a symptom of its ongoing, fast-paced growth. It’s been a minute since you could fit Nashville’s contemporary artists into a single gallery space, and energized enclaves like West Nashville and Madison are bringing more strength, resilience and opportunity to our contemporary art infrastructure as a whole. Find out all the details and plan your crawl at westnashvilleartcrawl.com. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7, in West Nashville and vicinity
East Nashville
Speaking of O.G. Nashville artists, a new exhibition in East Nashville features a pair of local photographers who’ve spent their careers depicting our storied local music scene. Double Takepairs pictures by Jim Herrington and Larry Niehues in a pop-up display curated by M. Allen Parker and Cloutman Creative Studio at Michael Weintrob Photography. Herrington has snapped everyone from The Rolling Stones to Cormac McCarthy to Dolly Parton, and his debut volume of pioneering mountaineer portraits, The Climbers, is considered a classic of the mountaineering history genre. Larry Niehues was actually born in France, but he gained a cult following with his star-spangled photographs of all things Americana: neon motel signs, cowboy roundups, biker rallies. Niehues’ images feature Egglestonian pops of color and a Robert Frank-esque knack for social realism. His work caught the eye of Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach, and the singer-songwriter became one of Niehues’ early champions before asking the artist to be the band’s tour photographer. Art historian and museum curator Brenda Colladay will moderate a gallery talk with Herrington during the show’s closing reception on Saturday night. Closing reception 5-7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7, at Michael Weintrob Photography, 919 Gallatin Ave.
Wedgewood-Houston
If an artist who just arrived in Nashville asked me how to break into the city’s visual art scene, I’d tell them to join Coop. In a contemporary art community that’s defined by artist-run projects, Coop is the longest-running collective in the city, programming the biggest space at creative hub The Packing Plant in Wedgewood-Houston. Its focus on emerging artists and curators means there’s always an evolving vibe happening on the gallery walls and in its busy creative events schedule. With all that in mind, I always look forward to Coop’s annual New Members Exhibition. These shows can offer a great introduction to the next generation of the city’s emerging artists, and they can also serve up glimpses of what to expect from the gallery/curatorial collective in the coming years. The 2024 exhibition lineup includes photography, ceramics, paintings and mixed-media works from Kelly Ann Graff, Cara Anne Greene, Jan Hatleberg, Jarrett Kinsland, Delanyo Mensah, Natalie Thedford, Pallas Lane Umbra, Taylor Walton and Danielle Wilson. Opening reception 1-9 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 7, at Coop, 507 Hagan St.
If you’re like me, you’re still super-anxious to forget that the traumatic doldrums of the pandemic era ever happened. But it’s important to remember that lots of folks in our creative community are still recovering their livelihoods and creative practices from the massive social and commercial disruptions created by the global spread of a certain virus. Following the one-two combination of empty theaters and the Writers Guild strike, the film industry is still on the ropes as a new post-AI era unfolds for American moviemakers. Nashville artist Will Morgan Holland worked in Nashville’s film industry before the lockdowns and social distancing that began in 2020 eventually sent him away from film sets and into gig work as an Uber Eats driver to supplement his growing family’s income. “It was a hellscape of fast food and hours alone on the road, but it paid for groceries for my kids,” the artist explains in his press release. Holland was determined to remain creatively productive during those lonely waits in drive-thru lanes, and his new Ubereaten exhibition at Julia Martin Gallery features works he created using only his smartphone in his car. The resulting digital photo collages constitute a “Gothic surrealist exploration of contemporary America.” The show’s title speaks to Holland’s delivery experiences, but also to carnivorous capitalism and the toothsome retail advertising that’s constantly gnawing at our wallets. Opening reception 6-9 p.m. at Julia Martin Gallery, 444 Humphreys St.
