Memphis-based artist Khara Woods’s solo exhibition Edgewise: Exploring Pattern and Rhythm with Line closed last month at the Crosstown Concourse.  A show abundant with work founded on geometry, it demonstrated Woods’s talent for making the complex appear seemingly simple.  Or, perhaps it is the other way around.  Nay, both.  Woods is a designer, muralist, and artist (of both two- and three-dimensional media) whose orderly and clean aesthetic presents forms that embody movement, vibration.  This may not seem like a difficult feat, lest the method by which Woods creates ..read more

Hot.  If only one word could be used to describe Modfellows’s exhibition Rise, this is it.  Showcasing work by artists Cara Lynch and Suzy Smith, Rise consists of paintings that are obviously bold, bright, and provocative.  Lynch is a multidisciplinary artist based in Nashville and NYC whose eye for abstraction makes me weak in the knees.  Her collection of work delivers forms that appear fractured, like floral illustrations kaleidoscopically gyrated, balanced yet disinterested in symmetry.  Smith resides in Albuquerque, and paints crazy gorgeous women who don’t seem t ..read more

Since opening the Red 225 gallery in February 2023, two of the questions that I’m most frequently asked are, “Are you an artist?” to which I reply, “No, not really,” which then elicits the follow-up question, “You mean, you do all of this just because you like art?”  For some reason, the premise of a curator can confuse people.  Why would one want to dedicate hours of their life in support of sharing another’s creative work?  In the following interview with curator Brooke Hailey, such puzzle is unpacked.  The sole proprietor of Femme Gallery located in Germantown’s 100 Tay ..read more

Artist Megan “Meg Jo” Jordan in her studio. When I first saw Megan “Meg Jo” Jordan’s paintings in a coffee house, I immediately wanted to learn more about this work. A self-taught artist who recently earned her PhD in Sociology from Vanderbilt University, Jordan creates imagery that confronts paradox.  Her art is sharp, illustrative, bold in its depiction of social justice topics via polychromatic palettes, color choices that appear joyful and perhaps atypical for notably serious subject matter.  Yet Jordan is able to synthesize such seemingly confused elements in a manner that appe ..read more

Montage can seem to self-contradict—familiar materials’ oft-repurposed to be unfamiliar albeit recognizable.  Changed but the same.  Akin but different.  So too is memory teased by an interplay of expectation and recontextualization; connection seemingly far reached now at once within grasp.  This highly-personal creative endeavor may yield conceptual results whose physicality can manifest only within a composition, the result of overlapping ideas best articulated palpably.  Jodi Hays’s montages are visual poetry. Nashville-based, Hays is an artist who grew up in the ..read more

Artist Emily Doty’s abstractions give shape to the intangible.  A marriage of organic forms, willful-yet-scant lines, and all-embracing color palettes, her work channels that which occurs within and physically surfaces only via creative practice.  While her art demonstrates a nod to both early twentieth-century Russian expressionism and New York action painting, Doty’s compositions reveal a vision that resounds tough and contemporary—at times manic and persistent—in a good, unapologetic way.  Her canvases appear brave, as though they demand your attention, yet are indifferent t ..read more

View fullsize View fullsize I first saw photographer Cari Griffith’s work while waiting in line at Dose coffee shop off of West End in Nashville. Her travel photos were a breath of fresh air, a change of much-needed scenery during a time of quarantine. Griffith is also an accomplished portrait photographer who tenderly captures the nuances of her subjects, bringing vitality to still images. In the following interview, Griffith discusses her process and motivations for both areas of her photographic practice. What is your earliest memory of your burgeoning interest in photography? My dad was ..read more

What is your earliest memory of your burgeoning interest in art? I recall at a very young age, maybe 6 years old, making a drawing which my Dad refused to concede that I had made. My guess is that he was kidding me a bit, but it was clear that he was impressed. So, I've felt talented or artistically observant for most of my life.  I didn't really feel like I 'got' art until college, however. That door in my mind was opened by the other student painters at SCAD. How have you witnessed this early interest reveal itself in your current work? Being hyper observant felt like a curse as a yo ..read more

I had the pleasure of having artist David Onri Anderson as a student when I taught History of Photography at Watkins College of Art and Design.  Anderson was a great student who sat in the front row, and would casually sketch during class which, to be fair, was a three-hour lecture course that started at 8:30 a.m. Mondays.  Rough.  (It was also my first year teaching—double rough.)  Fast forward a few years to find Anderson as one of the most celebrated young artists in Nashville.  His paintings present unexpected associations between one’s personal experience and na ..read more

Artist, writer, and curator Patrick DeGuira is an advocate for nature.  His latest exhibition titled Land Derived Sentiments is a group show that explores the political, emotional, and spiritual interconnectedness that occurs within nature’s subjectivity.  Motivated by and reacting to DeGuira’s written reflections about the environment, the artists featured in LDS have created a broad range of work that showcase multifaceted responses to his observations.  The result?  Proof that human’s relationship with the earth is further challenged by inherent individualism.  Th ..read more