“Follow Your Path,” Benjie Hue
The Elephant Gallery exhibition States of Clay brims with subtle colors and engaging forms, ideas about identity, and reflections on the beauty of the natural world. The exhibition of contemporary ceramic sculpture opened in August, and it naturally reflects on centuries-old art traditions that stretch across the globe and reach back into prehistory. The exhibition is curated by Nashville-based artist John Donovan, whose signature ceramic creations feature the warlike toy animal figures that have made him one of the Southeast’s most recognizable sculptors.
States of Clay manages to show mainly figurative art, while also demonstrating the breadth of contemporary ceramics. Benjie Heu’s frightful-and-funny sculptures fit right into the commonly quirky aesthetics we expect at Elephant shows: “Ghost” is a Cabernet-colored anime-ish twist on a poltergeist from Pac-Man. April Felipe’s “Above” is a stunning mixed-media piece that pairs thoughtful textile work and ceramics decorated with transferred images that look like delicate pencil drawings. “Above” reads like a religious icon, and Felipe’s work demonstrates the subtle expressions that can be formed from clay in fire.
“Untitled,” Tom Bartel
Donovan is a longtime arts educator, and the exhibition’s opening also kicked off a new community arts initiative founded by Donovan and Elephant Gallery owner and artist Alex Lockwood. Buchanan Arts occupies a newly built studio on the same Buchanan Street lot as the gallery, and both the exhibition and the initiative highlight the kind of pedagogical lineage that’s crucial for nurturing the arts and artists alike.
States of Clay spotlights regional artists across the Southeast, and most of the sculptors in the show are planning to return to Buchanan Arts next year to lead classes and workshops. Donovan’s decades-long career in the Southeast — and his experiences as a university gallery curator — make this a top-notch survey of contemporary ceramics. Donovan’s also woven in a real-life narrative about the still-living, now-ancient traditions that have always seen ceramic sculpture-making techniques and traditions deftly handed down from teachers to students since the beginning of the Bronze Age.
“This show’s got former students of mine and also peers,” says Donovan in a phone chat with the Scene. “So for me, when you walk into the show, it shows cross-pollination. There are artists in this show who mentored each other or taught each other. I mean, Rebecca Morgan — one of her first experiences working with clay was at a workshop she went to at Arrowmont that was taught by Tom Bartel, and both of them are in this show. It’s really neat seeing Tom’s work and Rebecca’s work kind of looking at each other right now.”
Bartel’s marionette-like ceramic dolls are exactly as spooky as what you think of when you think of marionette-like ceramic dolls. They’re also gorgeously crafted and packed with real pathos. Morgan’s “Dream Jug” is a vessel with the deranged face of a fairy-tale giant. It looks more than a little like a berserk Randy Quaid frozen in carbonite. Like teacher, like student.
Donovan taught art at the university level for 25 years before resigning from Middle Tennessee State University four years ago. He had a plan, but his plans had plans of their own.
“I was just ready to try something else,” says Donovan. “I feel like I’d experienced the full spectrum of experiences being in higher ed, and I got just a little divided. I felt like I was partially invested in both Murfreesboro and Nashville, which meant neither of them were getting my A-game. I was like, ‘I’ve got to figure out a way to be like entirely invested in one community.’ ”
Donovan’s fine art ceramics are represented by Zeitgeist Gallery in Nashville and LeMieux Galleries in New Orleans. He launched his Tenure Ceramics studio more than a decade ago, and his wheel-thrown custom clay creations can be seen at local foodie destinations like City House, Bastion and even Audrey, chef Sean Brock’s forthcoming East Nashville restaurant compound.
After leaving university life, Donovan planned to turn his Tenure Ceramics side-hustle into his main gig by partnering with Lockwood and building a new clay studio headquarters behind Elephant. After purchasing and shipping a prefabricated metal building from Colorado, red tape and contractor woes sent the entire project sliding sideways and caused Donovan and Lockwood to hit the pause button. Over almost a year-and-a-half, the pair ruminated on their plans, which changed, grew and evolved.
“I never wanted to quit teaching,” explains Donovan. “My peers in academia and I all love teaching, but you’re burning 60 percent of your gas not teaching when you’re at a university. The teaching was always the good stuff. Our original plan to expand Tenure didn’t work out, but that was for the better, actually. We ended up turning that building into the teaching space for Buchanan Arts.”
The new classroom studio — which includes the building’s covered front porch — measures approximately 2,500 square feet. Donovan will also have a classroom space in the original Elephant Gallery building. Buchanan Arts was granted 501c3 nonprofit status in May, and they’re already teaching adult classes. By the beginning of 2022, they hope to open to North Nashville’s middle and high school students to offer both ceramics and digital arts classes as a supplement to the public education offerings in the neighborhood.
“That’s baked into the batter of this cake,” explains Donovan. “It’s not icing on the cake, it is an ingredient in the batter of this cake — to make sure we’re nurturing and providing opportunity for the creative community that’s already here.”
Buchanan Arts is expanding community arts education at a time when North Nashville’s schools are demonstrably in crisis: At about the same time that Buchanan Arts won nonprofit status, the Metropolitan Nashville Board of Public Education controversially voted to close four schools in North Nashville in a cost-savings bid. The closures were passed after only one week of input from Nashvillians living and working in a neighborhood that’s built on the educational legacies of HBCU institutions like Meharry Medical College, Tennessee State University and Fisk University — the home of Nashville’s greatest art collection, the Alfred Stieglitz Collection.
“My former grad professor James Watkins is in the show,” Donovan says. “And he’s at a very kind of typical period in his career, where he’s doing major museum exhibitions, solo shows in Houston. And we’ve also got Gary White, who’s a Watkins [College of Art] BFA alum from North Nashville. He’s in the third year of his MFA at UT right now, and he’s got two pieces in this show. And in that same show is an artist like Watkins, who’s at that kind of pinnacle level.”
The wheel spins.
