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The Chestnut/Houston/4th-Avenue art triangle I like to call “NoHo” is the place to be this Friday. In my last blog post, I told you about Robbie Hunsinger’s reactive sound sculpture opening at Seed Space. That exhibit is open from 6pm to 8, but you should plan to arrive right at 6.
That will give you enough time to head over to Zeitgeist Gallery at 7pm to catch NYC avant jazz guitarist Mary Halvorson‘s new band Secret Keeper (with double-bassist Stephan Crump). I’ve been to nearly all of the Indeterminacies programs, and this one has me the most excited. Rodger Coleman writes on his blog NuVoid,
I was recently asked to curate the May 2013 “Indeterminacies” event at Zeitgeist Gallery. At first, I wasn’t sure what to do but after some thought, I decided to really go for it: Why not bring Mary Halvorson to Nashville? Well, as it turns out her new band, Secret Keeper, a duo with bassist, Stephan Crump, will be touring the states in support of their upcoming CD on Intakt, Super Eight. Fortuitously enough, we have them confirmed for Friday May 10! … The New Yorker has labeled Mary Halvorson “the current it girl of avant jazz guitar” while The New York Times just decreed Nashville “the nation’s ‘it’ city.” I suppose this is just a confluence of events. Whatever, it is going to be awesome!
Friday night at Zeitgeist also marks the opening of Greg Pond‘s new art exhibition. Greg is an installation artist, hacker, 3D printing pioneer, filmmaker, musician and Associate Professor of Art at University of the South in Sewanee. He most recently created, along with Benton Bainbridge, the interactive installations at the Ballet Mécanique show at Blair School of Music. I’ve certainly gushed about him in the past.
Greg writes,
I have a solo show of sculpture, images generated from software, and sound for the first exhibition at the new home of the Zeitgeist Gallery. It will be on view from May 10 to June 8. The reception for the exhibition will be June 1. On the evening of May 10 there will be an Indeterminacies performance in the gallery. I will be on hand during this event.
Greg also recently completed a multi-year documentary project about contemporary life in Kingston 12, Jamaica called Born in Trench Town. Greg will screen the documentary at some point during the exhibition’s run. I’ll let you know the screening date as soon as it’s announced. Based on the trailer below, it looks like a must-see!
Oh, by the way, all of these Friday events are FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!
Nashville musician and multi-media artist Robbie Lynn Hunsinger has a new exhibit opening up at Seed Space on Friday, May 10th from 6pm to 8pm. The reactive sound sculpture is a collaboration with Middle Tennessee Robotic Art Society members Patrick Becker and Steve Ghertner. Skitter Flutter sounds absolutely fascinating, and I can’t wait to check it out on Friday.
Skitter Flutter is also heavily influenced by Hunsinger’s years of pre-dawn bird rescue in the Chicago area as Founder of The Chicago Bird Collision Monitors program, a very successful conservation effort in which volunteers save injured and stunned migratory birds that have struck buildings.
She became fascinated with the idea of creating an invisible array of reactive sounds similar to small mammals, insects or birds but created entirely by motors. Sounds pull the viewer in but dissipate upon investigation, much as crickets grow quiet as we approach.
The mirror neuron creates a reaction in an observer which reflects the chemical changes in the person actually experiencing an event firsthand, which seems to manifest the neurological existence of empathy.
“You get hit, I flinch.” These interactive sound sculptures encourage this type of response. They are as much felt as seen or heard.
I’m very sad to hear former Vanderbilt Department of Fine Arts faculty member Don Evans passed away this morning from complications related to cancer. Don changed the lives of so many Nashville artists. We talked about Don’s influence on Nashville musician Tony Gerber in this article and on this podcast.
One of Don’s former students Joseph Whitt wrote a touching and informative article about the man on his blog Peripherus Max. Reading about Don’s creations really gives us a sense of how vital Don was to the Nashville experimental arts community.
What other Nashville events come close to the creative explosions Don put on?
In the early 70’s, Evans became increasingly recognized for his cooperative “happenings.” For Vanderbilt’s Rites of Spring festival in 1970, he enlisted the help of students to construct an inflatable polyethylene dome on Alumni Lawn. An improvised construction method was used that involved ironing together small geometric shapes to produce a large undulating abstraction, which soon became the talk of the campus and prompted coverage in several Nashville newspapers … Two years later, the audience was asked to enter a similar inflatable to experience One Full Rotation Of The Earth – a 55-minute slow-motion opus that added a troupe of dancers from Fisk University and four film projectors to Sensorium’s media arsenal. [Gil] Trythall produced a minimalist soundtrack characterized by one extended undulating note of “C,” in response to Evans’s initial desire to create an experience lasting twenty-four hours.
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It was also around this time that Little Marrowbone attracted a crowd nearly three-thousand strong onto the lawn of Nashville’s Parthenon to witness Luxikon 2, “the most beautiful piece that we ever did,” according to Evans. Prior to the event, local artist Buffy Holton photographed the sculptures on the building’s pediment so that they could be viewed head-on. She later hand-tinted the images and projected them onto the steps and pillars facing West End Avenue. For fifteen minutes, twenty-one volunteers stood very still in front of Holton’s projection, dressed in togas and sheets, posing in positions identical to the gods.“It was a true tableau vivant,” says Evans, smiling broadly. “Kathie Denobriga of independent regional theatre group ‘Alternate R.O.O.T.S.’ directed all of the participants. For the finale, my friends Wendell Davis and Jack Duncan put dozens of pinwheels over a wooden lattice, attached it to a vehicle called The Buffoonmobile and drove it past the tableau during the crescendo of Gilbert’s score. Smoke bombs were thrown in front of them, and the drive-by created whirlwind rainbows in the smoke and an unreal 3D effect with the projections. Large mortar fireworks also shot up from behind the building and filled the sky as Billy Preston, another friend of ours who played Zeus, broke his pose and raised his hands heavenward. The moon was full that night. Everything just seemed to say ‘YES!’”
Nashville’s art scene has been exploding the last few years, and with expansion comes growing pains. The new Fort Houston creative facility (formerly Brick Factory and Zombieshop) in the NoHo arts district needs your help! They’ve been making enormous strides since they began renovations in November. They now have a full-service woodshop with brand new equipment, a print shop, a mechanical shop, an art gallery, a moped-service shop, a classroom/meeting room, performance stage and 30-plus shared and dedicated work desks. As with all business remodels, the renovations and code clearances are taking longer than originally anticipated. Once they finalize these issues, Fort Houston will be able to hold more events with the confidence that they won’t get shut down on a code technicality. You can help.
The Nashville Arts Coalition recently sent out a list of things we can do to help our growing arts community, including a letter-writing campaign to the mayor, your council district representative, (and in Fort Houston’s case, district representative Sandra Moore). In these letters, specifically mentioning Fort Houston and the NoHo arts district (NOrth of Houston St) will be a MAJOR help.
[UPDATE 05/02/2013. There was some confusion about whether or not the letters should address the city codes. They should not. My original letter was vague, and I updated it below, excising the bit about the codes. If you haven’t sent yours out yet, don’t mention the codes. Just tell a story about an art organization in Nashville and tie it in to budgeting dollars for Nashville arts funding.]
As an example, I’m including the letter I wrote to Mayor Karl Dean at the end of this blog post.
1. Send a handwritten note to the mayor thanking him for his support for the arts.
His address:
Mayor Karl Dean
100 Metro Courthouse
Nashville, TN 37201
2. Send handwritten notes to the councilperson
in the district(s) where you do business and where you live plus all At-Large members and Budget and Finance Committee members thanking them for their support/reminding them of the role the arts play in Nashville’s cultural vitality.
[Fort Houston’s council member contact info:
District 17 Council Member Sandra Moore
916 Benton Avenue
Nashville, TN 37204
It is important that the voices of artists and arts organizations are included in all aspects of the city’s plan for the next 25 years.
Messages
Some of you requested help with messaging. Your authentic voice is always the most compelling, but here are a few ideas to get you started:
Thank them for their support of the arts and Metro Arts funding.
Tell a story at the heart of your mission that shows why Metro Arts funding matters (or include a press clipping highlighting your important work).
Discuss the role the arts are playing in Nashville’s status as one of America’s most creative cities.
Funding for Metro Arts is an investment in the vitality of our city.
Here are a few facts if you need them:
In Nashville last year, more than 3 million citizens accessed the arts through Metro Arts funded partners, direct events and projects.
Metro Arts grantee organizations provide jobs, vital education and a competitive edge we need to continue to be at the forefront of America’s creative communities.
Nearly 80% of the Metro Arts budget goes to grants that support art education and public access to art. Jen Cole and Metro Arts Commission are great stewards of limited dollars.
A new NEA study indicates that kids in the lowest socio-economic cluster who have regular, quality arts exposure are twice as likely to graduate from high school and go to college. Metro Arts helped more than 1 million young people participate in the arts last year alone.
Mayor Karl Dean
100 Metro Courthouse
Nashville, TN 37201
Dear Mayor Dean,
I’d like to thank you for your continued support of the arts in Nashville. During the past 7 years, I’ve seen the local art scene expand at an unbelievable rate. As a local musician, podcaster and blog writer, I can tell you our city is not the place it was in 2006. Nashville is rapidly developing a reputation as one of America’s most creative cities. We have amazing new performance venues such as Jack White’s Third Man Records, Marathon Music Works, The High Watt and The Stone Fox. We have a vibrant visual arts scene with an incredible downtown art crawl the first Saturday of every month. Nashville Arts Magazine and ArtsNash.com spotlight local artists. We have community workshops and creative spaces such as Fort Houston Nashville, Hacker Consortium and the Middle Tennessee Robotics Arts Society empowering people to make things for themselves. In September of this year, The Adventure Science Center and Make Nashville (of which I am a member) will host the city’s first ever Maker Faire. The Nashville Film Festival and the Belcourt Theatre help spotlight our growing film community. Nashville’s indie rock scene continually brings us national coverage, and for the first time in a long time, tourist and new residents are flocking here for more than just Country Music. It’s an exciting time to be an artist in Nashville.
I truly believe the national attention Nashville has been receiving is due to the cumulative effort of passionate individuals building things for themselves. The Fort Houston creative space in the burgeoning NoHo (NOrth of HOuston St.) arts community is one such example. Two years ago, a handful of dreamers recognized Nashville’s lack of community workshops and creative spaces. So they built one themselves. With very little money, they founded Brick Factory Nashville in the Cummins Station complex. Brick Factory quickly became a vital space for cutting-edge and experimental art and music performances. I worked with the Brick Factory founders to put on the 2012 Circuit Benders’ Ball, a daylong celebration of hardware hacking, art, music and the creative spirit. The event featured electronics workshops for all ages, interactive art installations and a dozen multimedia performances. We received positive press in local and national media, including a Nashville Scene article, which I am including with this letter.
In November of last year, those same dreamers relocated to a larger space on Houston Street behind the Chestnut Building. (Both Fort Houston and my own residence lie within Sandra Moore’s District 17.) Combining forces with the mechanical shop Zombie Shop Nashville, they rebranded themselves Fort Houston. In just five months, they turned a vacant and aging warehouse into a full-service creative facility with amenities including a woodshop with brand new equipment, a print-making shop, a mechanical shop, an art gallery, a moped-service shop, a classroom/meeting room, performance stage and 30-plus work desks. They host workshops ranging from aerial dance to 3D printing to homebrewing.
Mayor Dean, I firmly believe that with your support, the NoHo arts community can become to Nashville what SoHo is to New York City. The area currently houses Zeitgeist Art Gallery and Architecture Firm, the 100-plus-year-old Chestnut Building artist studio complex, Infinity Cat Records, the 60-plus-year-old United Records Pressing, Ovio Arte, Threesquared Art Gallery, Seedspace Art Gallery, Louis Cage Glass-Blowing Studio, The Adventure Science Center, Nashville Sounds Stadium, Fort Negley historical park and so much more. I know you are an enthusiastic supporter of Metro Arts funding, and I thank you for that. I was present at the Marathon Music Works Wanda Jackson show when you spoke to the crowd about the importance of Nashville’s arts community. Thank you for everything that you do.
For your convenience, I am also sending an electronic version of this letter to mayor@nashville.gov.
Sincerely,
Tony Youngblood
Editor, TheatreIntangible.com
Enclosures (1): Circuit Benders’ Ball at Brick Factory, 9/29/12, Nashville Scene
