Metro Pulse

There’s no doubt that September’s First Friday event will be noteworthy for several reasons. The summer schedule has been light, to say the least, but with Host Clothing noticeably absent from the Old City and Three Flights Up moving from its Gay Street post, First Fridays will certainly have a different feel. And several galleries have already taken down their August shows in preparation for September’s event. But there are still a few shows around that illustrate summer’s darker side. Full story »

Earlier in this new millennium, an enclave of women from a tiny Alabama sharecropping town found themselves hoisted into unexpected fame for doing what they had been doing for years. The tight-knit collective of black women from Gee’s Bend had been making colorful quilts from scrap material for generations. But little did they know that the piecemeal approach and vibrant hues found in their quilts would suddenly land them in such venerable establishments as the Whitney Museum of American Art and force the world to rethink its notion of postmodernism in the visual arts. The New York Times lauded a 2003 exhibition simply titled The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, and these women were suddenly a well-deserved overnight success story. Full story »

Marissa Jahn and Erik Carver slipped into Knoxville last week in conjunction with the Public Collectors exhibit to reveal a game designed to provoke a deeper assessment of how we categorize and organize objects and information. Somewhere between a cognitive board game and a Surrealist swap meet, the game sets in motion the idea that we are constantly trying to make sense of the information thrown our way amid a daily deluge of physical objects, images, and words and concepts. Full story »

Thought our Hot Books selection wasn't quite enough? Peruse the bonus list to help fill out your pool-side reading list. Full story »

Bran Rogers is a young Knoxville storyteller working in several different mediums to create fictional but deeply personal accounts of semi-tragic characters and their circumstances. Tinged with a black, Tim Burton-esque humor, Rogers works under the guise of PoMoNoBo (Postmodern Nobody), a witty moniker that serves his aesthetic well. Full story »

It’s best not to pin the works of artist Carl Sublett into any particular category. Turn a corner at the Downtown Gallery’s new retrospective of this acclaimed and influential artist’s works, and you’ll stumble upon a delightfully anomalous series of watercolors and paintings. The show, entitled Image Tracks, is a posthumous collection from arguably Knoxville’s most successful and prolific artist of the 20th century, and also duly serves as a loose survey of the watercolor medium. Full story »

In an age of sprawling McMansions and boxy SUVs, is there really a need for smaller, intimate works of art? It would seem the answer is a definitive no, as most contemporary artists require an expansive scale to frame their nuanced obsessions.
A new exhibition at the Knoxville Museum of Art challenges this notion. Size Matters: XS collects 42 works by 24 contemporary international painters currently working in small-scale painting. Most of these works are merely the size of a small book, demanding close inspection. Full story »

If you’ve been to the latest Whitney Biennial in New York, or scanned its numerous reviews, you might have noticed the prevalence of video art in this year’s show. In a booming art market, video’s high-profile resurgence in American art’s most prestigious group show is a telling sign of a cultural shift away from the more collectible and highly-sought genres, such as painting. Full story »

So far, almost all of the University of Tennessee Art Department’s spring thesis shows have been heavy on concept and have incorporated installation into the mix. Is it something in the water or are UT grad students just tired of sticking to one medium? Three students’ recent exhibitions reveal some new dimensions. Full story »

Never much of a video game player, I nevertheless want to shoot up the flying rhinestones of Cindy Latham’s animation, “We Traveled So Far.” Self-possessed and endlessly multiplying, they travel the world in search, presumably, of consumers to take down. Much like the global trade in gems, among other goods, they crisscross the ocean with ease, finding their way into the suburban American home. Full story »

Despite some ominous clouds overhead, I headed south to Maryville last Friday to survey the town’s new vibrant monthly art crawl, appropriately named, ahem, “Last Friday.” With only a handful of proper galleries downtown, the Maryville arts community has enlisted local businesses of all types to help foster its emerging art scene, including a martial arts center and several fancy salons and restaurants. Fortunately for me, the organizers provided a handy map and guide to all of the shows, with a complete list of the artists and venues. And much like Knoxville’s own First Friday event, you’ll spot bourgeois-types chugging wine, plenty of bohemian college students making their rounds, and a diverse palette of artworks and styles. Full story »

I’ve always loved student art competitions. The juxtaposition of polished, sophisticated works by older students with naïve, yet often brazen, offerings from underclassmen is refreshing. The real fun lies in picking out the undiscovered talents with original ideas. And yes, I do take some guilty pleasure in student art that’s just painfully bad. Full story »

Galleries from Fourth and Gill to Market Square have become hotbeds of creative activity, fueling the momentum by challenging artists to produce new bodies of work for group and individual shows. Full story »

The austere new photography exhibit at the Knoxville Museum of Art, Michael Light: 100 Suns, compiles declassified United States military photos of the 216 above-ground nuclear tests performed after World War II, from 1945 to 1962. San Francisco-based photographer Michael Light procured the photos from the U.S. National Archives and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Full story »

Each semester, the University of Tennessee art department enlists a new artist-in-residence to provide a jolt of fresh insights for students and a contemporary edge to the school’s vernacular. They also combine for a stunning collective exhibit of contemporary art. Full story »