“Apocalypse”, Sebastien Lara
Wedgewood-Houston
Continue to dreamone of the most anticipated art exhibitions of the summer, opens at The spirit of the times Saturday. Levi Morales, Abraham Lara and Sebastien Lara are Watkins alumni who have created an art renaissance in South Antioch with their art, music and fashion pop-ups. If you wonder where Nashville artists go when they’re evicted from the real estate they’ve made valuable in the heart of the city, you probably don’t realize how weird things get in the suburbs. Continue to dream brings South Antioch to Wedgewood-Houston with an exhibition of recycled t-shirts, paintings, posters, animations and sculptures. Come for one of Morales’ gritty t-shirt designs, stay for the sensory overload of Abraham Lara’s multimedia paintings. Gallery hours are 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Every year, Cooperative sets aside a month to show off the work of its new members, and it feels like an annual marker – a holiday or the passing of a constellation. Coop took the opportunity – and the extra wall space – to move into a larger gallery at The Packing Plant to spotlight some of its newest members in February. But that was before the creative co-op added 25 members, literally tripling its ranks in July. Many hands do light work, and this growth in membership makes Coop’s recent expansion look more than sustainable. With all this news, the second exhibition of the year for new Coop members feels as much like a summer party as it does an art exhibition. The oblique title Other Shades: New Members Show will feature the work of seven of Coop’s newest members — Ashley York, Austin Review, Louis Holstein, rachel mckee, Sarah Spillers, Tree Lily Butcher and Emilie DotyDoty’s colorful abstracts are a highlight – her painterly panels and canvases read like gooey garden spaces dripping with textured tones, hues and light. The exhibition opens on Saturday, with extended gallery hours from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Bridget Bailey is an emerging Nashville-based artist who has already created a recognizable style with her colorful sculptural installations of clay, thumbtacks, and even ceramic. These chromatic and cacophonous works are all about space, texture and bold pops of color, spanning the walls and spilling from the ceiling to the floor. Bailey’s later works see her return to a more painterly practice, but incorporating many multimedia materials into her canvases. The moon can sometimes be a diva is an exhibition of sculptural paintings made from air-dried clay, wax, caulk, putty, paint, paper, collage, foam, found objects and images, felt, acrylic mediums and glues. Bailey also incorporates poem and song texts into these works, making it an excellent choice for Open gallery and creative space community The Packing Plant, which also includes the Free Nashville Poetry Library, the Risology Club print shop, and WXNA community radio. Open Saturday evening from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Andy Kingit is heirs of chance opens Saturday at modfellows outpost at the packing factory. King’s oil paintings combine symbolic imagery into narrative compositions that speak to universal themes. heirs is King’s first solo exhibition, and the ambitious installation doubles its storytelling themes with a sequential layout in which each piece speaks directly to the next. Opening from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Downtown
The downtown art scene has taken a big hit lately with the closure of the Rymer Gallery and the closure of The Arcade for renovations and an uncertain future as a visual art destination. With this in mind, the reopening of The Navigation Room Gallery at the downtown Presbyterian Church offers a welcome note of good news. The former library space on the ground floor expanded the church’s artist-in-residence program into a curatorial project. The Navigation Room exhibits captured attention in the Stage‘s Best of Nashville issues and was written in ArtForum, and Michael Dickins Wailing Wall The installation was the only local resistance project of the Trump era that transcended partisan propaganda to deliver a deeply moving work of art. The Browse Room closed shortly after the pandemic hit town in March 2020. The gallery teased a December return with AIRing It All Out — an exhibition of new works by artists in residence. And the Browsing Room came back online for real with its June/July screening of photographs by Gabriel McCurdy. For the month of August, the Navigation Room hosts an exhibition of collaborative works by the Downtown Presbyterian Artist-in-Residence Sarah Hart Landolt and the pastor of the church, Larissa Romero. The Heart of the Enneagram: An Artistic Exploration of Human Fears, Desires, and Pathways to Growth and Service is a headline for a show full of big questions. Landolt’s interpretive fluid ink painting practice produced colourful, amorphous takes on everything from emotional states to signs of the zodiac. Here, she and Romero create an immersive and interactive installation of paintings based on the nine personality types described by the Enneagram model of the human psyche. As an Enneagram 9 Personality, I can assure you that this show is worth the trip to town. The opening reception is Saturday evening from 6-8 p.m.
East of Nashville
The Red Arrow Gallery open Julian Rogers‘ wave upon wave exhibition last month. The spectacle of bright, candy-colored clouds will provide the perfect backdrop for an improvisational musical performance by Julian and some of his most melodious artist friends on Saturday afternoon from 3-6 p.m.