Art

Jerry Atnip has a 36-year career as a commercial and fine art photographer.  He began as Partner and Creative Director of an ad agency in Nashville as well as Director of its photography department.  His images have been published in 40 countries, and since 2003, he's held over 75 exhibitions and been presented with over 90 awards.  He is also a teacher, workshop director, curator, juror and frequent lecturer.  He is on the boards of several arts and photography organizations.

His work has been collected by museums, corporate and private collectors, and he is an Exhibiting Member of The National Arts Club in New York.  Those who have curated his work include Carol McCusker, Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, CA, Hossein Farmani, Founder of the Lucie Awards, Cig Harvey, Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University, Mac Holbert, co-founder of Nash Editions, Eli Reed, Magnum photographer, Julian Cox, Curator of deYoung Museum in San Francisco, Peter MacGill, President of Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York, Joyce Tenneson, photographer and Jane Jackson, Curator of the Sir Elton John Photography Collection.‚ÄÇ

Corporate Collectors include Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Vanderbilt University, Hungarian Multicultural Center, Shepherd Center-Atlanta, Georgia, Avenue Bank, Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC, Vanderbilt Hospital, Tennessee Bank & Trust, DIGIfoto-Czech Republic and ABC's Nashville television series.

Selected exhibitions include Art of Photography Show, San Diego, California, National Exhibition at Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, Novato, California, Emirates Photography Exhibition, Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture & Heritage, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Px3, Prix de la Photographie Paris, Paris, France, Basundhara Arts Festival, Basundhara, Kathmandu, Miniatures, Albuquerque Museum of Art, Spectra Triennial at Silvermine Guild Arts Center, New Canaan, Connecticut,  DIGIfoto Exhibition, Brno and Prague, Czech Republic, International Exhibition at Hungarian Multicultural Center, Budapest, Hungary, The Fourth Annuale Exhibition at Light Factory Museum of Contemporary Photography, Charlotte, North Carolina and 2012 Juried Exhibition at Center for Photographic Art, Carmel, California.

His first book, Gone South was published in 2011.  The Guitar: An American Love Story was published in 2012 in collaboration with the Tennessee State Museum.

His work has been featured in articles by Elizabeth Avedon, John Bennette, CNN Photo blog, La Journal de la Photographie, The Photo Review, pdn magazine, Silvershotz magazine, Photographers Forum magazine, PhotoLife magazine, South by Southeast magazine, Folly magazine, Lenscratch magazine, Nashville Arts Magazine, Photo-Eye, ArtNowNashville and John Wall's Southern Photography.

Caroline Allison was born and raised in Atlanta, GA.  She received her BA from the University of the South in Sewanee, TN and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Her photographs have been exhibited both nationally and internationally including exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of Art, Chicago Cultural Center, and Momentum Art in Berlin.  Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Howard Greenberg Gallery, Apex Art, Lehmann Maupin, and Jack the Pelican in New York.  She was the recipient of a Bronx Museum AIM fellowship and was artist in residence for the Amt fur Wissenschaft und Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany.  In 2009 she represented Tennessee in The 50 States Project, an online exhibition organized by British curator Stuart Pilkington, and was a 2010 nominee for the Baum Foundation Award.  She currently lives in Nashville with her husband and child.

I paint intuitively, and afterwards - based on style, color and FEEL - the title emerges.

Artemis looks strong, feminine, regal and complex.  As the chaste goddess of the hunt, equipped with her quiver of golden arrows, she holds the central position in this triptych.  Her twin brother Apollo is the oracular god of intellect and in time began to supplant Helios as the god of light.  The geometry and brilliance of this painting looks almost like a literal, if abstract, representation of Apollo.  Zeus, their father, is the king of the Greek gods.  It just happened that this canvas - with the dark wash - looked like the older source material for this progeny.

I love that the Music City Center chose these paintings, as Nashville is known as the Athens of the South.  It is my honor and pleasure to make a small contribution to that legacy.

Born in 1946 in Richmond, Indiana, Jane Braddock currently lives in Nashville.  Reflecting her interests in Eastern spirituality and metaphysics, Braddock's abstract paintings present both the visual expressions of physical experience and the artist's attempt to capture an inner reality beneath sensorial appearances. Bio from Facing South- Portraits of Southern Artists, by Jerry Siegel

Charles Brindley lives and maintains a studio in Adairville, a small community 35 miles north of Nashville, Tennessee.  He has been represented by galleries in numerous cities, including Nashville, Memphis, Taos, Washington, DC and New York City.  His work appears in public and corporate collections throughout the United States and in private collections internationally.  Five touring exhibitions of Brindley's works have travelled to museums and art centers in the Southeast and Midwest.

There have been two major retrospectives of the artist's career.  In 1998 the Tennessee State Museum presented Landscape Vision: Works of Charles Brindley 1980-1997, and in 2007 the Evansville Museum organized an exhibit of his work spanning a twenty year period.  Far Hills, Images of the Tennessee Residence, an exhibit of commissioned drawings and paintings of the historic mansion of Tennessee's Governors completed a schedule of eight venues throughout the state in 2006.

Charles Brindley's drawings and paintings depict a variety of symbol-laden subjects, including giant deciduous trees, panoramic landscapes, prehistoric ruins, rock formations, architecture and still lifes.  His images are highly representational but contain multi-layered abstract elements.

Barry Buxkamper was born in Peoria, IL in 1946, grew up in Texas, began exhibiting at Dave Hickey's "Clean Well Lighted Place" gallery, Austin, TX, in the late 1960's and has lived and worked in Nashville, TN since 1972.  He has taught at George Peabody College (now of Vanderbilt University), worked as a graphic designer, and had his own illustration business for 12 years, doing a great deal of work for the music industry, primarily album covers.  He is now Professor Emeritus of Middle Tennessee State University, having taught 23 years in the Department of Art.  Buxkamper has been featured in the Whitney Biennial of Contemporary American Art, Whitney Museum, NY; the 1990 Mint Museum Biennial, Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte NC; and "20th Century Painting in Tennessee," Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, TN.  His works are included in the collections of the McDonald's Corporation, Chicago IL, Tennessee State Museum, Nashville, TN, The Bridgestone Collection, Nashville, TN, and Nations Bank, Charlotte NC, to name but a few. He is represented by Cumberland Gallery, Nashville, TN.

Charles Clary was born in 1980 in Morristown, Tennessee.  He received his BFA in painting with honors from Middle Tennessee State University and his MFA in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design.  He recently had a solo exhibition at Galerie EVOLUTION-Pierre Cardin in Paris, France, completed a three week residency in Lacoste France, completed a painting assistantship with Joe Amrhein of Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn NYC, and had work acquired by fashion designer Pierre Cardin and gallery owner James Cohan.  As of 2011, Charles had been featured in numerous print and Internet interviews including, WIRED magazine (US and UK), Hifructose.com, Beautifuldecay.com and Bluecanavs Magazine.  He has also been featured in publications including Papercraft 2 published by Gestalten and PUSH Paper published by Lark Books.  Charles has exhibited regionally, nationally, and internationally in numerous solo and group shows, is represented by The Rymer Galery in Nashville, TN, the Diana Lowenstein Gallery in Miami, FL, and currently lives and works in Murfreesboro, TN.

Greg Decker describes himself as an "adventurous Symbolist painter."  He has been painting professionally for thirty years, twelve of which were spent in New York City, where he taught with the Metrolopolitan Museum and MoMA as a gallery lecturer. Raised overseas, Decker acknowledges the influences of other cultures on his work, and has always been interested in the mythical dimensions of narrative painting.  He paints large and small paintings in oil, often figurative in nature, and alive with patterns and color. Decker has had a long and special relationship with Nashville, though he currently resides most of the time in southern New Mexico.

Born: Dayton, OH 1970

Education: 2000 MFA, Savannah College of Art and Design (Graduated Outstanding Painting Student, 2000), 1992, BS in Studio Art, Tennessee State University.

The Arts have played a major role in Samuel Dunson's life since his youth.  He was fortunate enough to be born into a household where exposure to the Arts was as important as academic study.  His parents, although not raised in the arts themselves, saw fit to give their children the experience of theater, dance, music and the visual arts by making annual trips to major metropolitan cities to view the arts as well as visiting galleries and museums in the Dayton, Ohio area.  Samuel was also a member of the Muse Machine which allowed its members to take field trips away from school in order to take part in artistic events. 
Samuel continued his formal education by enrolling in Tennessee State University.  He first majored in Architectural Engineering, but soon changed his major to Studio Art.  Early on in his academic and artistic pursuit he chose to work 3-dimensionally, but in the end, painting and drawing would peak his interest.  He began to exhibit his works soon after college.  From his exhibition record and portfolio, he gained admission into the Savannah College of Art and Design under a Presidential Fellowship award.  After a successful two years, he received his MFA in painting. 

Samuel now exhibits his paintings in group and solo shows on a regular basis.  His works have been reported and critiqued in art journals and newspapers alike.  Samuel teaches painting, drawing and 2D design, as well as Art Appreciation at Tennessee State University.  He has been employed by the University since 2000.

Beth Edwards was born in Decatur, Alabama in 1960.  She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tyler School of Art and her Master of Fine Arts from Indiana University.  She has exhibited at the Gallery NAGA in Boston, the Clark Gallery in Lincoln, Massachusetts, the Leonard Tachmes Gallery in Miami, the Plus One Plus Two Gallery in London and is represented by the David Lusk Gallery in Memphis and the Tory Folliard Gallery in Milwaukee.  Her work is in numerous public and private collections including the Howard and Judith Tullman Collection in Chicago, the Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis and the Tennessee Arts Commission in Nashville.  Her work appeared in New American Paintings in 2001, 2004 and 2011 and was featured on the cover twice.  She has been a fellow at the MacDowell and Yaddo artist colonies.  She has taught at the University of Memphis since 2000.

John Folsom (b. 1967) is a mixed media artist born and raised in Paducah, Kentucky.  He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Cinema and Photography from Southern Illinois University.  His work demonstrates the narrative potential of landscape imagery and the profound longing for representational space.  Folsom's work has been exhibited extensively throughout North America and can be found in many public and private collections.  His work was most recently acquired for the private collection of Jon Stewart.  

Kristi has been teaching at the collegiate level for over 18 years.  With an interest in philosophy and literature, Kristi's work considers the physical and psychological places of seepage: between language, bodies, and relationships.  Kristi's studio practice is primarily drawing but includes investigations into other media (photography, sculpture, and installation) as the nature of the investigation dictates.  She is a member of the artist collective Coop, a curatorial group made up of artists, curators, thinkers and professors who are committed to expanding Nashville's dialogue with contemporary art by presenting challenging new or under-represented artists/artworks in the community.  Her work has been shown in numerous juried shows and invitational exhibitions across the country.  Kristi has studied with Laurie Palmer (of HaHa), Jeanne Dunning and Faith Wilding in Chicago, Mira Schor in New York, and Steve Kurtz of Critical Art Assemble. 

Kristi received her BA from Vanderbilt University and her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Art.  She is currently the Chair of the Fine Art Department, as well as an Associate Professor of Fine Arts, at Watkins College of Art, Design and Film.

Jodi Hays received her MFA from Vermont College and her BFA from The University of Tennessee.  Her exhibitions are included in collections of the J. Crew Company (NY), Gordon College (MA), among others.  Residencies include The Cooper Union School of Art, The National Parks of America and fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center.  Her work is included in several curated artists' registries:  The Drawing Center (NY) and Nurture Art (NY).  She was the recipient of the Individual Artist Fellowship from the Tennessee Arts Commission 2011-12.

I grew up in Nashville, TN in the 70's and 80's - a typical middle-class kid who watched way too much TV.  My first artistic endeavors were drawing on the walls of my closet with purple crayon, copying characters from the funny pages and rendering all four members of Kiss.  In high school, some kid brough an R. Crumb comic book to school.  Crumb's art had a huge impact on me and inspired me to become a cartoonist.  I spent my twenties creating comics and trying to get them published (with little success).  As I look back, drawing countless comic strips and teaching myself to draw, was the best training I could have had.  Self-training enabled me to develop a unique style filled with peculiar relationships between scale and proportion, mixed with an odd sense of perspective.  By the time I finally got around to going to college, I had a pretty clear vision of what I wanted my art to be.  Fortunately for me, I found a printmaking professor who liked what I was doing (or didn't mind as much as the other professors) and allowed me to make the art that was floating around in my head.

After college, a myriad of low-paying, dead-end jobs, and limited prospects in the cartooning business, I picked up a paint brush and began to paint in 1998. 

My paintings are an extension of what I was doing as a cartoonist, though not quite the same linear narrative as comic strips.  Again, through self-training, and trial and error, my paintings have evolved into distinctive artwork.

Bill Killebrew is a native of Nashville but spent his early years as a child of a military serviceman with the result that he spent the first fourteen years of his life during the fifties and sixties moving around a lot, first to Munich for three years, then to Savannah, GA.  The family really hoped to stay there but that was not to be.  After the Cuban crisis subsided they were stationed in upstate New York for four years and later near Macon, GA.  After his father's retirement from active duty they settled in Nashville in 1968.

It was always Bill's plan to have a career in the sciences but after a brief foray in that world culminating in a disastrous year in chemistry he turned to the arts, specifically painting.  He was helped in this decision by a relationship with Arnold Nye, a painter, sailor and architect who married his grandmother in the fifties and who influenced him deeply.  He was also supported by Edna Scales at Hillsboro High School and later by his painting professor, David Ledoux, in the Art Department at MTSU.

About halfway through his undergraduate program Bill broke with prevailing trends in the department to start on the path he has been on ever since.  Mr. Ledoux was supportive of Bill in this decision by allowing him to briefly separate himself from the department studio/critique format and work independently for awhile, enabling him to begin to form an aesthetic and a painting stance that has stayed with him for forty years.

During his university years Bill met and married Rebecca Hollaway.  They have been married 37 years and have raised two sons, one currently residing in New York City and one in Takoma Park, Maryland.  They have three grandchildren.

After graduation Bill supported himself and his family working in his father's distribution business.  After a few years he formed a small company specializing in wood flooring and has remained in that business, working on projects large and small including the Governor's office and residence and Schermerhorn Symphony Center.  After painting in various spaces including garages, rented attics, spare bedrooms and basements he saw his chance and built a large painting studio on the back of his current residence about ten years ago and has worked there ever since.  He also has a lithography studio in Cummins Station.

Bill has always considered himself a full-time painter and works every day.  He considers his decision to be bi-vocational as realistic in light of his desire to support his family and remain in the South, rooted where his family has been for several generations.  He has never wished to teach and considers himself to be richly blessed with family, friends, church and work.

Born in rural Coshocton County, Ohio, Megan Lightell grew up among quiet fields and farms, imagery that rests at the core of her work today.  After earning a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2000, she returned to the subject of land and the connection that humans have with the environment that sustains them.  Her paintings have been exhibited in numerous one-woman and group shows throughout the United States, and reside in various private and corporate collections including the Cal Turner Family, Martha Ingram, Kix and Barbara Brooks, Fearing's at the Ritz-Carlton Dallas, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center.  Her work has been featured in several publications, including Architectural Digest and ABC's Extreme Makeover Home Edition and is published worldwide as fine art print editions by Canadian Art Prints.  She attempts to capture in her paintings a sense of stillness found when we allow ourselves to be alone with land.

Atlanta-based Pam Longobardi has had exhibitions in galleries and museums in the US, China, Italy, Spain, Finland, Slovakia, Poland, Germany, Japan, Greece and Monaco.  Her artworks are in numerous collections, both public and private.  A recipient of many awards, Longobardi is Professor of Art at GSU and created the Drifters Project in 2006, a conceptual artistic research project focusing on the global ocean marker of contemporary archeology, the drifting plastic object.   She exhibited this work in Beijing at NY ARTS/Beijing (2008 Olympics) and at ARTLIFEfortheworld in (2009 Venice Biennale ARTE VISIVI collateral exhibitions).  Edizione Charta (Milan, NY) published a book on the project titled Drifters:  Plastics, Pollution and Personhood in 2010.  Recent past exhibitions include Voyages on an Uncanny Sea at Gallery Diet in Miami, a commission of new work for Oceanomania at the Nouveau Mus√©e National de Monaco, and at Savvy Contemporary in Berlin.  She is engaged in a long-term project in Greece in collaboration with the Ionion Center for Art and Culture, and in June 2013, will participate in the GYRE expedition, an art-science research project along Alaska's remote coasts that will culminate in a exhibition opening in Feb 2014 at the Anchorage Museum and will travel for four years by the Smithsonian.  She has recently been named a finalist for the Hudgens Prize, and has summer 2013 shows as part of the Venice Biennale and works in Seescape at George Adams Gallery in New York.  

James Makuac's artwork tells his unique story of change and hope from Sudan to the United States.

"‚ĶWhen I fled in 1987, I passed through the following routes; Ajakgeer, Baairet, Piom, Kuum, Macabol, Gumuruo, Ukelo, Pibor, Pochalla, Ajuara, Gilo River, final destination Panyidou Camp, Etiopia.  When you don't face any dangers in your life nothing to worry about to be remembered.  I do remember all these routes, because these where I passed through and is where I met difficulties and is where some friends remained, in the desert, under the trees and the resulted of the remainders there, was death.  We usually walked at night and hide in the tall grass of Ajakgeer savanna during the day, and we were walked on bare feet were constantly infected from thorns and snakebites.  Conditions which attracted by lions, leopards, and hyenas, wolves.  Many who weren't killed by wild animals succumbed to dehydration, starvation and exhaustion.  You know when you fled away in dangers, no time to take any food with you, because you wanna save life first.  We got nothing to eat, in such situations what you gonna do, is better to think a lot, so by the same time, we cooked our minds not to die from hunger, we survived on leaves and berries.  And drank water with mud from nearly dry pools.  The older boys promised food and water in a few days to keep us going‚Ķ"
- Excerpt from James Makuac's website
 

Born 1954, Cincinnati, Ohio

Immaculate Heart College, Los Angeles, California

BA, 1976

Carrie McGee's mixed media constructions explore process and variation within repeated forms. Utilizing transparent acrylic as a ground, she experiments with natural and chemical processes, such as rust and oxidation, to create luminous works that emanate a meditative pulse.

McGee's investigations developed on the periphery of her work as an abstract painter. In the midst of a studio move she discovered a sheet of vinyl containing a multi-layered pattern of rust spheres, the result of a slow ceiling leak. The illuminated metal impressions were unexpectedly beautiful, and possessed a combination of organic and industrial qualities McGee sought in her paintings. Initially experienced as playful experimentation, this work became the central focus of McGee's efforts, and soon evolved from ephemeral to lasting and architectural in scope.

McGee has lived in many parts of the United States, having migrated from Cincinnati to Los Angeles, New York, and finally Nashville. 

Born in Oxford, England, Christie Nuell has lived in the United Kingdom, Italy, the Isle of Man, and the United States.  She received her undergraduate degree from SUNY College at Geneseo, and her MFA from the University of Georgia.  Nuell is Professor Emeritus of Middle Tennessee State University's Department of Art, where she taught from 1981 until 2012.

Nuell brings her deep knowledge of printmaking processes and technology together in her artwork, mixing media in unusual ways to create work that incorporates a range of techniques including laser engraving from digital files onto surfaces including paper, wood, and masonite.  Frequently the surfaces are treated with paint, stains, or ink, and then are re-engraved with additional imagery.  The effect is a rich patina of lines, color, and deliberate pentimenti.  Informational graphics and binary code appear in fragments, suggesting the demise of the industrial revolution and the rise of the age of information, emphasizing the visual systems on which both were built.  

Bob is a commercial photographer based for over 30 years in Nashville, Tennessee. He specializes in photographing people, lifestyles, products, and architecture for corporate, advertising, and editorial uses in brochures, annual reports, magazines, books, and on the internet. Bob's stock photography files have over 200,000 images with emphasis in people, lifestyles, business, and americana. Other strong files include travel (southeast, national & international), architecture, and industrial. Bob's photographs have appeared in several publications including Elle, Forbes, Fortune, National Geographic Traveler, The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, and PC Week. His book, Tennessee Simply Beautiful, offers a tour of the Volunteer State and captures the rich variety of scenery that Tennessee has to offer. Bob has won numerous awards over the years for his fine art prints, which have been exhibited around the country.

EDUCATION
1981 MFA, Yale University School of Art, New Haven CT
1977 BFA, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston MA

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2002
Cumberland Gallery, Nashville TN
Duke University, Center for Documentary Studies, Chapel Hill NC
"New Acquisitions/New Work", Los Angeles County Museum of Art
"Obsessions", Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco CA

2001
"About Face", Rena Branston Gallery, San Francisco CA
"Recent Acquisitions", Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland OH
"Picturing Modernity", San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
San Francisco CA
"The Alchemy of Light", Cumberland Gallery, Nashville TN

2000
"You're Not From Around Here", Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco CA
Carol Ehlers Gallery, Chicago IL
"What's New", Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Jackson Fine Art Gallery, Atlanta GA

1999
Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York, NY
"Some Southern Stories", Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago IL

FELLOWSHIPS
2001 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
1994 Tennessee Arts Commission Artist Fellowship

SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Library of Congress, Washington DC
San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco CA
Houston Museum of Art, Houston TX
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles CA
Tennessee State Museum, Nashville TN

PUBLICATIONS
Wall Street Journal
Sunday New York Times Magazine, cover story
You're Not From Around Here, Photographs of East Tennessee, Mike Smith, Columbia College, Chicago IL 

Terry Thacker has been an artist and educator for over twenty-five years, receiving the title of Distinguished Professor in 1985.  He is currently Professor of Fine Art at Watkins College of Art and Design where he was department chair from 2006 to 2011.  Prior academic positions have been, Professor of Art at Savannah College of Art and Design and Associate Professor of Art at Middle Tennessee State University.  Also active as a lecturer and reviewer he has written for Art Papers, lectured at the Southeastern College Art Association, and spoken at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.

Mr. Thacker received his BFA from Austin Peay State University and his MFA from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.  He later studied at Long Island University.  His most recent educational experience was as an associate at the Atlantic Center for the Arts with resident artist Alice Aycock.

Mr. Thacker has shown in numerous national and regional exhibitions including exhibitions at the Brooks Museum, Hunter Museum, Dulin Gallery, and Cheekwood as well as solo installations at Vanderbilt University, Western Kentucky University, Murray State University, Alexandria Museum, and the Memphis Center for Contemporary Art.

Georgia native, Whitney Wood Bailey, received her MFA degree in painting in 2008 from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, GA, where she was awarded the Artistic Honors Fellowship for Graduate Study.  She received a BFA degree in painting from Auburn University and studied with the University of Georgia's Lamar Dodd School of Art in Italy as well as postgraduate study with Rhode Island School of Design in France.  She also studied under painter, Larry Poons, at the Art Students League in New York City.

Whitney has exhibited internationally including Paris, Shanghai and Hong Kong, as well as NYC and around the U.S. 

She completed residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Hambidge Center, and was recently a featured artist in New American Paintings, edition #94.
She currently lives and works in New York City.

Stephan holds a BFA, in sculpture, from SUNY Purchase College and an MFA from Maine College of Art. Recent projects include Percent for Art Projects in Biddeford, ME and on the campus of the University of Southern Maine. He lives and works in Portland.

For more information about Aaron T. Stephan:

Phillip K Smith III received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. He continues to push the boundaries and confront the ideas of modernist design. Drawing inspiration from the cold rigidity of the Bauhaus movement, the reductive geometries of minimalism, and the optic sensation of California's Light and Space movement, Smith III attempts to resolve the complex challenge of finding a natural state of life and spirit within these ideological aesthetic constrictions, the results are deceptively simple and compelling objects that seem to breath and move as you observe and interact with them.

Beth Galston is a sculptor who creates immersive environments for interior and exterior spaces. Her site-specific installations use innovative materials, interacting with shadow and light, to explore processes of nature and transformation. Galston was born in Los Angeles and lives in Carlisle, MA. Trained at MIT, she has exhibited her installations nationally. Major public works include: "Color Walk," a sculpture of colored glass for an eightyfoot-

long pedestrian walkway at the Mesa Arts Center, AZ; "Thunderbird Bridge," a

vehicular bridge for an eight lane freeway in Phoenix, AZ; and "Tree/House," an

outdoor architectural sculpture at Socrates Sculpture Park, NYC.

For more information about Beth Galston:

Sheats holds a BFA from Fisk University and an MFA from School of the Museum of Fine Art Boston-Tufts University. He has had exhibits in New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and in Nashville, among other places. Although a Brentwood, TN native, he currently lives in both Nashville, TN and Boston, MA. Sheats works in repousse, in which metal is shaped by hammering on the reverse side to create a design in relief.

Caroline Allison was born and raised in Atlanta, GA.  She received her BA from the University of the South in Sewanee, TN and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Her photographs have been exhibited both nationally and internationally including exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of Art, Chicago Cultural Center, and Momentum Art in Berlin.  Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Howard Greenberg Gallery, Apex Art, Lehmann Maupin, and Jack the Pelican in New York.  She was the recipient of a Bronx Museum AIM fellowship and was artist in residence for the Amt fur Wissenschaft und Kunst in Frankfurt, Germany.  In 2009 she represented Tennessee in The 50 States Project, an online exhibition organized by British curator Stuart Pilkington, and was a 2010 nominee for the Baum Foundation Award.  She currently lives in Nashville with her husband and child.

Born 1951, Brooklyn, New York 
 

Education
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 
Bachelor of Science, 1972; studied with Minor White
Yale University School of Art, Master of Fine Arts, 1975;
studied with Walker Evans

Grants and Awards
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 1990
Commission to photograph for America's Forgotten Places, a bicentennial commemoration 
of the U.S. Constitution, 1987
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, 1984
National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 1984

Teaching
Professor of Art, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, 1982 to present
Provost's Excellence in Teaching Award, University of Tennessee, 2001
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Visiting Professor, 1991-1992
University of Tennessee National Alumni Outstanding Teaching Award, 1988
Inaugurated Photography Program at University of Tennessee, 1982
Head of Photography Department, full-time Assistant Professor of Photography,
Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, Massachusetts, 1979 to 1982
Assistant Professor of Photography, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1975 to 1979

Permanent Collections
Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York
University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, Michigan
University of Kentucky Art Museum, Lexington, Kentucky
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut
National Trust for Historic Preservation
Museum of the City of New York, New York, New York

He resides in Tennessee where he is a professor of art at the University of Tennessee.

From 1986 to 2001, my work largely reflected my passion for the human form, employed with an abstractionist's simplicity of vision.  Wood was my preferred medium.

In my modular wall sculptures, I take inspiration from the outward appearance of landscapes and also contemporary architecture.  Recognizing the internal geometry of nature in my work gives the viewer a sense of the familiar.  Everyone relates to form, simplicity and order on some primal level.  The incorporation of negative space as part of the sculpture only adds to this interplay between the art and the viewer.  Some of these works elicit a kinetic effect in the mind of the viewer, thus they engage with the sculpture, and in this way, I communicate with the viewer.

I want to continue this conversation in my newest works, the "Antikythera Series."  Here, the movement is choreographed through the use of robotics, and computers.  This then, is the evolution of my work, and the realization of an idea that I've had for nearly a decade to bring actual movement into my sculptures.

Bruce Peebles lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and two sons.

James is a native of Nashville, Tennessee and has been painting for more than 40 years.  He won an Emmy Award for Set Design in 1994 for a mural project coordinated with inner-city youth for the Viacom Network.  He traveled to Soweto, South Africa in 1995 to create a mural to pay tribute to South African freedom organizers.  He visited with President Nelson Mandela during that journey.  In the spring of 2011, he spent a month working in an artists' residency program in Colombia, South America to motivate and empower the Afro Colombian community.  James is currently serving as the National Diversity Director for Skanska USA.

Natalie Dunham was born in Riverside, California in 1985.  Dunham received her BFA in painting from Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, AL and her MFA in sculpture from the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD.

TBD

“I appreciate the relationship between man and tree. There is a co-evolution present. I am interested in how man uses the forest and how the relationship grows and thrives in worldly cultures. My curiosity has taken me as far as South Africa, the Amazon, and the Hawaiian Islands where indigenous people believe the forest is a spiritual place where ancestors dwell.”—Brad Sells

Sells’ sculptural woodwork evolves from a conviction that all living things have a soul. As he shapes and reveals the visage of each piece, he views his role as capturing then releasing the voice of each tree. From this vantage point, he carves exotic and domestic woods into the sensual, tactile, and delicate forms showcased in this portfolio.

Sells works in his own Bark Studio in his hometown of Cookeville, Tennessee. Though located in a relatively rural area, Sells’ artistic reputation, strong work ethic, and recognition of his unique skills have led to invitations to travel and carve rare woods on distant continents. His work has been exhibited in museums and private collections throughout the world, including the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Bruce Cain lives in Mount Juliet, Tennessee and owns Elevated Lens Photography. Elevated Lens provides photography services for architects, engineers, contractors, developers and real estate professionals in the Middle Tennessee area. Cain specializes in ground-based, low altitude aerial photography, using a custom made vehicle mounted pneumatic mast that lets him put the camera up to 65 feet in the air, while he controls it from his truck. The system enables him to give his clients a unique aerial perspective that cannot be accomplished using conventional aerial photography methods. Also, since the system is ground-based, he can shoot both aerial views and a ground level views in one visit.

Bruce Cain lives in Mount Juliet, Tennessee and owns Elevated Lens Photography. Elevated Lens provides photography services for architects, engineers, contractors, developers and real estate professionals in the Middle Tennessee area. Cain specializes in ground-based, low altitude aerial photography, using a custom made vehicle mounted pneumatic mast that lets him put the camera up to 65 feet in the air, while he controls it from his truck. The system enables him to give his clients a unique aerial perspective that cannot be accomplished using conventional aerial photography methods. Also, since the system is ground-based, he can shoot both aerial views and a ground level views in one visit.

Bruce Cain lives in Mount Juliet, Tennessee and owns Elevated Lens Photography. Elevated Lens provides photography services for architects, engineers, contractors, developers and real estate professionals in the Middle Tennessee area. Cain specializes in ground-based, low altitude aerial photography, using a custom made vehicle mounted pneumatic mast that lets him put the camera up to 65 feet in the air, while he controls it from his truck. The system enables him to give his clients a unique aerial perspective that cannot be accomplished using conventional aerial photography methods. Also, since the system is ground-based, he can shoot both aerial views and a ground level views in one visit.

Mark Bradley-Shoup earned his BFA from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in Painting and Drawing and his MFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Studio Art. Bradley-Shoup produces meticulously crafted paintings and works on paper based in part on his own manipulated photographs of both urban and rural environments. He employs extensive use of masking tape, rules and x-acto blades to generate precise areas of paint that emphasize the surface texture of his compositions in a way that undermines any elements of photorealist illusion. Prevalent themes in his work include "consumption and growth," "expansion and recession," and "the elegance of brutality." He has worked with various non-profit agencies and educational institutions including the Hunter Museum of American Art, the Association for Visual Arts, Allied Arts of Greater Chattanooga, the Creative Discovery Museum, Chattanooga Parks, Recreation, Arts and Culture, and the Chattanooga School for Arts and Sciences. Currently, Bradley-Shoup is based in Chattanooga and is a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga.

Bruce Cain lives in Mount Juliet, Tennessee and owns Elevated Lens Photography. Elevated Lens provides photography services for architects, engineers, contractors, developers and real estate professionals in the Middle Tennessee area. Cain specializes in ground-based, low altitude aerial photography, using a custom made vehicle mounted pneumatic mast that lets him put the camera up to 65 feet in the air, while he controls it from his truck. The system enables him to give his clients a unique aerial perspective that cannot be accomplished using conventional aerial photography methods. Also, since the system is ground-based, he can shoot both aerial views and a ground level views in one visit.