Collection adds flavor to the convention center
by Heather Joyner
Many have argued that the new downtown convention center is a step forward for Knoxville in terms of drawing visitors. Fewer have noticed that the building is a step forward for Knoxville in another way. Almost a million dollars of the convention center's $94 million price tag is going to art—the largest investment ever made in art on a local government project here. And, though there has no doubt been some grumbling about the expenditure, reaction to the paintings, sculptures, and other pieces has generally been positive. "People who have been to the convention center have remarked that the art really adds to the building," says Mike Cohen, who served as art selection committee chairman largely because he was director of communications for the Public Building Authority when the convention center project began.
All in all, the collection representing 30 artists is a good one. Large-scale work includes a huge tile mosaic, a glass bird installation, and mixed-media triptych incorporating painting and huge photographic exhibits. Two free-standing sculptures complement display cases with carved and painted figures, basketry, wood and ceramic vessels, and traditional sculpture in marble and stoneware. Eight artists present paintings—often with multiple sections and unusual surfaces. Although textile art could be better, other three-dimensional and/or mixed media pieces comprise some of the most imaginative work in the center.
Knoxville's Public Building Authority formed the selection committee and hired Miami-based consulting firm Art Sources, Inc. to put the collection together. The committee was aware that its actions might be precedent setting. "We were trying to create a model for other public art collections that might take place in the city," says Lisa Austin of Art Sources. If there were a disappointment in the process, it came from the fact that 6,800 folders soliciting entries were sent out and only a few hundred returned. The committee decided democratically. "There were a few close vote counts, and it was winner take all," says Austin. "Kind of like the electoral process."
The committee started with the big pieces—such as Mike Mandel's 38 by 20 foot tile mosaic of a Smoky Mountain waterfall (inspired by a Jim Thompson photograph of Ramsey Cascade) that dominates the wall next to the convention center escalators. They then moved on to art on the meeting room walls and the pedestal pieces, which Austin said were among her favorite things in the collection. "The people from that [East Tennessee] region who do three-dimensional work are among the best in the nation," she says.
The vast majority of the pieces were created especially for the convention center, a structure that has some unusual features. The corner rotunda has a distinctive 92-foot "cut-out" metal frieze designed by Tommy Stokes that features many prominent Knoxville landmarks like Market Square, Ayres Hall, Knoxville College, and the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.
The architecture incorporating water and marble begs comparison to McGhee Tyson Airport's design—lending Knoxville a certain architectural coherence if one's just arrived here on a plane. Unfortunately, the witty and down-to-earth rocking chairs face the Sunsphere's clumsy base, whereas there are better things to look at.
Negative responses seem few, although some poeple (who would rather not be named) express confusion or disappointment at times. One artist tells me that he finds Richard Jolley's large, distorted bronze head of a fellow in a ball cap perplexing, saying, "The face looks like it might be drunk or drunk and yawning...what it's attempting to express is lost on me." Another person says she doesn't understand the combination of elements in Radcliffe Bailey's three-part piece or the apocalyptic emphasis of Virginia Derryberry's big canvas and nine framed "boxes." �
Ironically, the only quilt in the collection is by Manhattanite Michael Cummings. His "Dogwood Trees In Springtime" incorporates floral fabric with nary a petal resembling a dogwood, and it has little connection to an art form for which this neck of the woods is renowned. In fact, it seems the role of crafts in the center was not adequately considered. In other parts of the country that might be all right, but in this region, pieces like quilts are a significant part of our artistic legacy.
Selection committee member and UT professor Norman Magden says that "the consultants were very interested in crafts" but says placing display cases was a problem. Nonetheless, small sculptures that would fare better without cases have them. Also, of the few crafts included, the city has put basketry by two different artists (Rowena Bradley and Eva Wolfe) inside one case—a singular instance of shared space.
That it's shared by Native Americans from the Cherokees' Qualla Boundary Reservation is both ironic and insensitive. Adding insult to injury is the accompanying label: it lists two names without indicating which artist created which piece. Many works have no labels at all.
Partly compensating for these gaffes is the inclusion of naive art by the late Bessie Harvey and a fiddling figure made by Andrew Saftel. In addition to crafts, children's work and folk art might add to the mix and further reflect our community.
Works people seem to mention again and again are the two mixed-media pieces drawn from maps of downtown Knoxville by Joyce Crain; Chad Alice Hagen's felt panels with gourd fragments, bones, and pebbles; the dramatic wood "vases" by John Jordan; the Cherokee baskets by Bradley and Wolfe, and Emily Wilson's carved-wood-and-steel wall piece with leaves and birds.
Carl Gombert's six large canvases have also received a lot of attention. The paintings, featuring in-your-face faces, resemble images by Chuck Close rendered in Andy Warhol colors. Their expressions ranging from menace to wonder enliven the Park Concourse space.
Cohen, who says he knew almost nothing about art before he went through this process, says he was "amazed" by the variety of artists and media by people in this region. "The pedestal pieces are outstanding," he says. "How John Jordan does an urn with that kind of detail work from a single piece of wood just astounds me. [Mike Mandel's] tile waterfall mosaic enhances the space...I am crazy about Carl Gombert's brightly colored portraits, and I really really like the David Arms work with industrial materials."
One thing that struck this reporter about the collection is the fact that it doesn't contain straight photography or drawing, something of which Magden says that the committee was aware. "They'd probably not hold up in that type of venue," he says. "The space is very important."
Another thing was placement. It's a shame, for example, that Painter's burned wood piece is now partially obscured by a column. Says Cohen, "The placement is flexible. Heck, if it were me, I'd have a couple rearranged....[but] I don't claim to have any background or expertise in art. I've got some skills at getting everyone to work together...to hold hands and sing Kumbaya, as it were."
The most expensive part of the collection is the series of six birds, by Italian artist Lino Tagliapietra. Austin calls the birds "the crown jewel of the collection" and says it was important for the convention center to have someone of his caliber represented. However, the $125,000 price tag for the birds raises the obvious question about whether the art committee did the right thing by spending so much of its budget on out-of-area artists. UT-connected artists such as Marcia Goldenstein, Beauvais Lyons, Tom Riesing, and F. Clark Stewart are notably absent. And although regional artists account for more than one-half the collection, their fees total less than half of that earned by artists from outside the area.
Both Austin and Cohen, now the spokesman for County Executive Mike Ragsdale, defend the fact that so much of the budget was spent on out-of-area artists. Austin points out that the idea was to create a public art collection that Knoxville could build on in future years, not to "create a collection that everyone who lived here could necessarily take part in." Cohen, on the other hand, says that if the art committee had used the budget to do just local art, it wouldn't have done anything to help Knoxville's art community in the long run. "If we had done just local and regional artists we would have had a nice collection, but we would have cheapened the value of the collection for the local artists that are in it," he says. "Now they will be able to rightfully say their work is in a collection in which there was really a national search."
October 31, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 44
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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Art as a Civic Concern