Ivy and Josh Elrod might have been the quintessential New Yorkers if they hadn’t moved to Nashville. She graduated from Columbia with a degree in playwriting, worked as a Rockette and starred in an indie film; he’s a painter who took random modeling jobs before performing as a Blue Man for 10 years. But when Ivy became pregnant with their second child, they packed up and moved south to Nashville, Josh’s hometown. Far from fading into the doldrums of parenthood, the Elrods are thriving, carving more notches in their belts than a lot of artists could imagine — they own and operate Wilder, a contemporary design boutique in Germantown, and will expand later this year with Wilder Etudes, a concept shop in Edgehill Village; they collaborated on an installation that’s currently on display at Zeitgeist Gallery; they’ve hosted pop-ups with sought-after creatives like Pamela Love and Elise Joseph; and there’s plenty more up their sleeves.
Ivy: I find it really funny, because I was almost a little insulted when Wilder was first opening, and I told people my husband is from here. They’d assume that I was just moving here because it’s my husband’s hometown. And I would almost get a little huffy, because there are a lot of cool reasons to be here, and this being Josh’s hometown was just icing on the cake. If you want to shake things up and take some risks, and at the same time support a family, if you’re not independently wealthy, it’s really not going to happen in New York the way it could have 20 years ago.
It seems like living in New York, and on the East Coast in general to a lesser extent, you can become almost myopic about it, and without even noticing.
Josh: It took me a couple of years of being out of New York and to look back at all these things and realize just how much the ethos and the mythology around New York [had become internalized]. It was the cultural capital of the U.S. in many ways, and of the world in a certain way. The last 50 or 60 years has just put out all of these images — so many movies, and painters, and all these things — and so it’s become mythologized. It’s like Rome, where people come in a tour bus cruising around, and instead of looking at the ruins of the Parthenon, they’re like, “And here is CBGB’s.”
Ivy: Right! Like, “Here’s where Sex and the City was filmed.” “Here is where something happened.”
Josh: But where’s it happening now? New York is where you go to present work, but not make it. I feel like, increasingly, the workshops and the machinations behind that have become decentralized. And I think that’s what’s exciting.
And you like raising your kids in Nashville? You think it’s a good place for kids?
Ivy: I think Nashville’s a fantastic place for kids. Increasingly so. Places like OZ, their edit, their presentation there, is totally as progressive as I could want. Even my kids are taking dance class. Those were my main concerns — for me specifically, it wasn’t just about living in New York because it was a place with a lot of energy. It was about New York being the place for dance, and the center of the theater world, specifically the mediums that I was there for. And you couldn’t compare it to being anywhere else. But what’s cool is that not only is it thriving here, but it’s like bubbling with this collaborative community that we’ve found ourselves in the midst of, it’s a real thing. It’s no joke.
