Knoxville's art scene bursts with new energy
by Paige M. Travis
On the evening of Nov. 21, people of all ages and professions packed to capacity a large room overlooking Gay Street. Lawyers, bookstore clerks, media heads, musicians, waiters and toddlers entered an anonymous glass door to the left of the Downtown Grill and Brewery and rode like sardines in an elevator to the fifth floor of the Woodruff Building. As the cabled car approached its intended elevation, the clamor of music and voices revealed the event's energy even before the steel doors slid open. They were all compelled to gather for one reason: to be a part of Knoxville's burgeoning art scene.
The event was the third annual Art for the People Holiday Show open house, organized and hosted by Yee-Haw Industries. In addition to snacks and kegs of the Brewery's microbrew, the work of more than 40 artists hung on the walls, shelves and crannies of the usually empty expanse of wood floors and bare brick. The art was varied and intriguing: handmade books, pop culture Christmas tree ornaments, weathered barn planks painted with flowers, prints of neon-hued fire-breathing creatures, and vintage turntables refurbished with dental floss and buttons. The atmosphere inside the too-hot room was electric, taut with anticipation and a sense of pleasant surprise. This must have been how computer geeks in Silicon Valley felt on the verge of the technology boom of the early '90s. "Something big is happening here," they must have said, looking at each other in heavy rimmed glasses. "This is going to be big."
Although Knoxville's art scene isn't what anyone would call big, it is thriving more now than arguably at any time in recent history. No single person or entity seems to be responsible (or taking responsibility) for the tangible pro-art energy that pulses in our civic center. And it's hard to say that a groundswell of action or purpose has incited the activity. The growing awareness and appreciation of our city and our region's art culture is the result of a combination of forces, a synergy, that, with some luck and momentum, will build until Knoxville is recognized—from inside and out—as a place that's good for art.
People were very honest with Liza Zenni when she was hired as the executive director of the Arts and Cultural Alliance. In late 2001, the non-profit organization's board of directors took the results of a Wolf Keene study and decided to shift its mission from programming its own events, which some felt were competing with the arts organizations the Council was representing, to promoting the arts in other ways. To further represent its newness, the board changed the group's name and hired Zenni to fulfill its new mission.
"Because I was new on the block and had no baggage with anybody, a lot of people felt free to come up to me and say, 'You know, when it was the Arts Council, they pissed me off because....' And it was great. And there was no blame. I was like, 'Tell me, tell me!'"
Getting a grasp on the arts in Knoxville has been a learning process for Zenni, who grew up in Oak Ridge and has worked in Cincinnati and San Francisco. She was surprised by the number of visual artists—3,200 is a reasonable estimate—working in the area. After dealing with the Bay Area's preponderance of performing artists, Zenni knew she would have to shift gears to address the needs of painters, sculptors and the like. Her approach began with networking—getting together artists who work individually but have similar needs.
"The creation of art by an individual visual artist almost always is an isolated and isolating activity," she says. "But that doesn't mean that artists aren't social people."
Zenni found that Knox-area artists were a "mature bunch," already acquainted with the benefits of getting to know each other and sharing their personal struggles and achievements. They wanted to be acknowledged by those outside their ilk, particularly those who hold the proverbial purse strings of arts funding.
"Artists feel that they're not part of the power structure, that they're a little bit without power," Zenni says. "Whether you're an actor or [a painter], you're never the person making the decision to pay yourself. Somebody else is deciding whether or not your work is worthy of their money. And so this is something we do that not only helps them connect more with the community and the power structure in the community. It helps them develop a voice."
During the Alliance's meet-and-greet events, Zenni says that several artists have made personal contact with elected officials and other prominent and moneyed members of the community. Artists have a vested interest in making sure that people like Ben Atchley and mayor-elect Bill Haslam know who they are and what they want. Artists create alone, but they often depend on others to continue making their work.
"They want to be a part of positioning the arts and themselves as fully realized contributing members of society, this culture, this community.... You'd be amazed at how supportive they are of those things and how they come. Because it has given them a presence."
When local artists talk about who buys art and what markets are most receptive, they are more likely to mention Asheville or other cities outside East Tennessee than Knoxville. Local galleries and those in tourist hubs like Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg sell a lot of work to out-of-towners who perceive the work of our local artists as new and different and worthy of attention. It's hard to know whether these visitors value our indigenous work more than we do, or if they are merely more willing to pay for an attractive souvenir. Perhaps the perpetual underdog attitude that dampers Knoxville's self-image blinds us from the importance of our own regional arts.
"We as a community don't have a fundamental appreciation for the role of art and culture in our life, in our community, in our business development, tourism, in anything," Zenni says. She felt like she'd made progress when Crissy Haslam, wife of Mayor-elect Bill Haslam, approached her about displaying local art in the new mayor's office.
"It's a recognition by this city's leader...that he wants to have the work of his local citizens who are artists close to him and take advantage of his opportunity to showcase them. That's a huge step! We would fly to the moon to make that happen."
Zenni has spent two years on a project that suggests our city government is starting to recognize the benefits of making art more visible in the community. Despite continuing construction delays, two floors and the mezzanine of the 105-year-old Emporium Building at the corner of Gay Street and Jackson Avenue are set to become home of the Arts and Cultural Alliance, several of its member organizations, individual artists, and other non-profits organizations. Mayor Victor Ashe contributed $300,000 from the city to complete the interior space; another $390,000 came from the Thompson, Haslam and Cornerstone foundations. The city will lease the space to ACA for $1 per year for 10 years. ACA, in turn, will lease the space to Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, the City Ballet, Circle Modern Dance, African American Appalachian Arts, Foothills Craft Guild, Keep Knoxville Beautiful, A-1 Lab Arts and Knoxville Writers' Guild. Individual artists set to move in with studio and working space include Robert and Donna Conliffe, Bobbie Crews and Judi Gaston.
Next door to these artists and groups in the Emporium will be the University of Tennessee Downtown Gallery, a satellite of the Ewing Gallery housed in UT's Art and Architecture building.
While the Candy Factory at the World's Fair Park currently serves as a hub for several arts groups, the Emporium represents increased visibility and accessibility, strengthening the connection between the arts and downtown, where most cities' arts districts are located. The city has been interested in replacing some or all of the Candy Factory's current non-profit organizations and art galleries with retail businesses to help generate funds to support the nearby convention center. These plans, including the future of the nearby Victorian houses, which the city evacuated of its non-profits renters, are on hold until the Haslam administration gets settled into office.
Presenting art as culturally important is a step in the right direction, but a larger and more complex issue remains. Our collective attitude toward art is a hard nut to crack. Knoxvillians, East Tennesseans, and maybe Southerners in general, have a reputation for being simplistic in our appreciation of the fine arts. It is said that we prefer portraits and landscapes to contemporary abstracts, and we'd rather match an art print to our sofa fabric than buy an original work that challenges our notions of beauty. The words "provincial" and "redneck" have been used, less out of snobbery than frustration by local art purveyors who can't quite figure their audience.
"Selling art is very difficult in Knoxville," says Susan Key, who has operated her eponymous gallery in Knoxville for 14 years in the Old City, Bearden and, for the past six years, Market Square. She's confounded by mainstream tastes, particularly when she did business in the art district of Bearden. "I got the feeling that people would throw a lot of money at a piece that had no artistic value whatsoever," she says. Cynthia Markert, however, was an exception.
During her eight years in the Old City, Key represented Markert, one of Knoxville's most notable artists. Her paintings on plywood of women with piercing gazes, geometric bobs and '20s style clothes caught plenty of attention from their street-side windows. "I sold tens of thousands of dollars worth of Cyndi's work when I was in the Old City," says Key, who attributes that success to the combination of pedestrian traffic and drive-by viewers afforded by her former space on Central Avenue. She's concerned that as more tenants, including galleries, move into Market Square, they won't get enough business to make a go of it.
Markert, who has lived and painted in Knoxville for more than 20 years, feels that the pro-arts energy that has hatched recently is due to the newly refurbished Market Square. With construction almost complete, the Square, with its many empty storefronts, feels like a brand new house waiting for a family to move in and love it.
As a person, Markert clearly loves Knoxville and particularly downtown. But as an artist, she hasn't derived her success from locals alone. In addition to Hanson Gallery in Knoxville, she has exhibits at Kress Emporium in Asheville, Studio E in Jupiter, Fla., and Impeccable Art in Winston-Salem, N.C. She visits Charlottesville, Va., at least twice a year and commends their downtown area for its success as a car-free district of arts, bookstores, coffee shops and restaurants.
Markert advises that Knoxville can't be afraid of being sophisticated. "It's not a virus!" she exclaims. "I think Minnie Pearl and opera are both entertaining, but I wouldn't want all Minnie Pearl and no opera."
Allen Cox moved to Knoxville a year ago after spending most of his life in Oregon. After getting his bachelors degree in archaeology from the University of Oregon, Eugene, he returned to school for a BFA in 1988 and his masters in 1991. Now a professional artist, Cox has had 23 solo exhibitions in galleries mostly along the West Coast. His first show in town opens Dec. 4 at Bennett Galleries.
A person sensitive to Knoxville's baby steps towards artistic fulfillment might expect a pro like Cox to find our small East Tennessee city woefully lacking in sophistication. But he is refreshingly optimistic, perhaps even more than locals who have been jaded by a laundry list of half-hearted attempts and failures.
"There's a lot of energy in this town," Cox says. "It really just needs a little tweaking to focus it, and not much, I don't think. I'm all for it."
Cox and his wife, Dr. Ilsa Schwarz, who moved the family to Knoxville to become head of the Audiology and Speech Pathology department at the University of Tennessee, are active participants in the arts scene. On a recent night, the couple ate dinner, went to the Knoxville Museum of Art's subUrban Thursdays lounge for a martini and proceeded to the ZZ Top concert. Not bad for a weeknight.
Cox feels that he came to Knoxville along with a handful of newcomers who have pumped some energy into the arts climate. In less than two years, Todd Smith has become the new director of the KMA, and Paul Lee is the new head of UT's School of Art. This influx of new leadership—paired with the hope of an improved commitment from the mayor's office to supporting and promoting Knoxville's artistic culture—lends the local arts scene a sense of potential, the feeling that we're on the verge of something great. And it might be finding an early foothold with an event known as First Friday, a downtown-wide open house. Cox is familiar with the concept from his days in Eugene, Ore. The idea didn't start there, but it's a model that Knoxville can learn from.
Eugene (pop. 140,000) is located two hours south of Portland. It's the second largest city in Oregon, home of the University of Oregon and the cultural center of Lane County (pop. 324,000). Eugene has a well-established event held by the Lane Arts Council called the First Friday Art Walk, a guided tour of a handful of galleries.
Lane Arts Council Executive Director Douglas Beauchamp frequently leads the tour, toting a portable sound system. With microphone in hand, he guides the group from gallery to gallery, introducing the artists and leading interviews or Q&A sessions.
"People show up and expect fun, and they have fun," Beauchamp says. "Then they tie that feeling in with the visual arts."
Beauchamp acknowledges that works of art, hanging so enigmatically on gallery walls, revealing nothing of their meaning or intention, can be intimidating. The uninitiated or faint of heart need an easy entrance into—and an exit from—the dialogue. The Art Walk, which is publicized in the local paper and previewed on the noon news the day before, is an event that allows people to go at their own pace. Some folks stick with the guide; some linger longer in certain galleries; some hop on and off the tour at random. There is structure and freedom. Cox says the Art Walk succeeds as a gateway to the arts for people of all experiences and interest levels.
"It makes for a thing that people are interested in. Art is actually a lot of fun. It's not a mysterious, snooty kind of deal. A lot of different kinds of people make up the arts community, from painters of ducks to painters of big, abstract slashies."
Beauchamp, who leads the tour about six times a year, isn't afraid to put artists like Cox on the spot and ask some serious questions about their inspiration.
"I try to be Everyperson when looking at these things," he says. "You want to give the audience and the artist credit for thoughtful, intelligent response through the visual medium. But you want to make it accessible to everyone. Nobody has the answer. There's a fine line."
Having the artists there, standing with their creations, helps demystify the process and its result. And artists themselves sometimes need practice relating to their audience. One young woman, who was having her first show, was shy at first, but she ultimately thanked Beauchamp for drawing her out.
Cox has experienced the Art Walk as both a walker and as a representative of his own work.
"All of a sudden you'd be in a gallery looking at something, and 50 people would all troop in. And the guy with the Mr. Microphone would walk up and say, 'Now here's the artist! Tell us about your work!' .... It was a real event."
After 13 years, the First Friday Art Walk has established a solid reputation, even as galleries in the area come and go. "When an event is regular and sustained, it gains credibility and leads to the perception that it's a good thing," Beauchamp says. "We're saying, 'The arts are alive in downtown,' and it strengthens the reality."
The event has been maintained by commitments from gallery owners, who have to be fully on board to make the thing run like clockwork. Non-gallery businesses, like coffee shops and restaurants, have been inspired by the Art Walk to improve their own exhibit spaces, either with better lighting or higher quality work, Beauchamp adds.
Compared to Eugene's long-running Arts Walk, Knoxville's First Friday is still in its infancy. The event, which will happen for the third time Dec. 5, is a collection of receptions, open houses, sales and food specials held at downtown shops and galleries. As it is now, you can count the participants on two hands: Susan Key Gallery, Nomad, Bliss Home + Art, Back Room Gallery, Yee-Haw Industries and Village Marketplace. Reruns, the consignment shop on the corner of Union and the Square, has stayed open late and hosted live models in the window. Downtown's current crop of restaurants—Preservation Pub, the Tomato Head, Macleod's, Downtown Grill and Brewery, and the Bistro—offer dinner to the crowd.
First Friday isn't a new idea, even to Knoxville. A few years ago, the Knoxville Museum of Art and the Candy Factory hosted a similar evening open house on the first Friday of each month. And even when they haven't been promoted under an all-encompassing name, most galleries around town open new exhibitions with receptions for the artists on the first Friday evening of the month. UT's Gallery 1010 in the Candy Factory hosts student openings every Friday night.
Five years ago, artists and creative types started gathering on the first Friday of each month at Preston Farabow's Aespyre Metals Studio located downtown in a place called the Underbelly. Julie Belcher and Kevin Bradley, proprietors of Yee-Haw Industries, were participants then. They have been holding and promoting Friday openings for print media or graphic design students interning at the letterpress.
Working with Scott Schimmel and Lisa Sorenson of Bliss Home + Art and Emily Dewhirst of Nomad Gallery, the Market Square Merchants' Association expanded what Yee-Haw was doing by getting other Square merchants on board and promoting the open house as an event.
Responding to the growing desire to create an event to bring people downtown, they have helped organize the current incarnation of the event, with continuing support from Aespyre. They held an iron pour as part of the first First Friday in October and are contributing food to Yee-Haw's upcoming First Friday event.
Though art-centered Friday nights aren't new to Yee-Haw and its in-the-know gang, other downtown businesses are eager to capture this audience while building the event and its appeal. Sundown in the City concerts on successive Thursday nights introduced downtowners to the concept of the weekly event, the thing you do after work. You don't have to arrange or schedule it yourself; you just show up.
"I think people are very ritualistic," says Scott West, proprietor of Earth to Old City and owner of several Market Square properties currently in development for arts, commercial and residential uses. "Coffee's a ritual. People like rituals, so you give them something they can plan for. There's something reassuring about something that's new but the same. I think that First Fridays are like that. They're going to get better and better. And bigger."
Organizers have been motivated by the idea that events—not just open shops, galleries and restaurants—bring people downtown. And when more people populate the square, downtown feels increasingly alive and exciting.
"First Friday events give you the sense that you're really part of an urban arts center," says Cindy Spangler, collections manager of Ewing Gallery. "Originally there was a relatively small core group of folks who struggled to make it successful. It has in fact been a part of downtown and the Candy Factory for several years, but now the participation represents a much larger and diverse group."
Only time will tell whether bringing more people into the Square on First Fridays will make a financial difference to its businesses. Although she sells a few pieces during her gallery openings, Susan Key says she ultimately loses money after preparing for the event through mailings and reception supplies. For First Fridays to be successful and sustained, Key believes the event "will take an incredible amount of time, dedication and intelligence" from its organizers.
Both Allen Cox and Douglas Beauchamp agree that in order for a monthly event to go off well, galleries and other participants have to be on board and present a united front, a consistency that will sustain an audience and give it time to expand.
"You do it on your own scale and within the actual particulars of this place," says Cox, who imagines downtown's empty storefronts filled with galleries, restaurants, bistros and shops. "All the parts are here. Some of them are small. Some are just seeds still waiting to sprout. But it can be really good."
"We're not quite Asheville—the Santa Fe of the East," Spangler says. "I'm not an optimist by nature, but these new changes represent a significant move in the right direction."
As First Friday draws larger crowds, more people will get involved in the arts as spectators and participants. Artists and galleries will get more attention and make deeper connections to the community. Take those possibilities to their extreme, and the Arts and Cultural Alliance wouldn't exist. It would be unnecessary, Zenni says.
"If greater Knoxville's arts and culture community were to reach its highest level of performance... then we would close our doors and go out of business. Because [artists] would be working together, universally recognized as a key component to every facet of city life; they would be reaching the maximum number of audience members possible; they would be selling out their houses, selling all the artwork they could possibly create."
Combined with the holiday festivities planned for Dec. 5, including the WIVK Santa's Parade on Gay Street, the third First Friday may turn out to be the most well-attended. And, despite particularly nippy temperatures and the daylong absence of downtown employees for the Thanksgiving holiday, the city's Nov. 28 tree-lighting in the Square brought out many bundled-up revelers. Children decorated sugar cookies; vendors sold wreaths and garland; Mayfield's Dairy truck offered ice cream; and a brass band weathered the chill to play carols. As the dinner crowd packed the Tomato Head earlier than usual on a Friday, the scene contained something more than just holiday spirit. Looking out through the fogging glass of the restaurant's picture window, a man dubbed the square "the Rockefeller Center of Knoxville, Tennessee." In that moment, with the restaurant bustling and the twinkling lights glowing in the square, the comparison of Sunsphere City to the New York City didn't feel like much of a stretch.
How a city creates and perpetuates its cultural energy is a mystery that many Knoxvillians are still trying to get a handle on. The current situation, as it is being designed by a handful of dedicated, purposeful people, is full of possibility. And although it would be nice if Knoxville became, overnight, as vibrant and widely appreciated as Asheville, the journey toward success is half the fun. Knoxville's citizens seem to be learning to value what we have and envisioning—not just wishing for—what we can be.
December 4, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 49
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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