Tune In This Sunday: A Note From Anne Brown

Anne Brown and John Seigenthaler on the set of "A Word on Words"

Brother Mel: A Lifetime of Making Art will be featured on John Seigenthaler's Word on Words on NPT (Channel 8) Sunday, April 11, 10:30 am, when John talks with me about who Brother Mel is and why I wrote a book about him and his artwork.

Typically, John focuses on books about politics, history, and literature, but not necessarily things artistic. However, something about Brother Mel's extraordinary life and his accomplishments as an artist elicited an enthusiastic response from him in this case.

John Seigenthaler's lifelong passion for books and words is obvious in this interview as in all the others he has hosted on NPT over the last 39 years. He greeted me full of enthusiasm for Brother Mel's story and his art. His questions, observations, and responses all indicated that he was thoroughly versed in the book and was ready to explore its subject matter in depth. Rather than being the wise sage that we all know he is, he continues to come across one on one as being a young man anxious to know more about where the writer and the book were coming from. That's part of the magic of his wisdom. It's no wonder that he has had so many viewers for this weekly program.

For me, it was a double honor - first, to be representing Brother Mel's life as an artist and a monk, and then to be seated across from one of the premier book interviewers in the country. It doesn't get any better. Tune in if you can.

Anne Brown and John Seigenthaler following the "A Word on Words" interview

Coming Soon to the Arts Company

This coming Saturday, April 3, 6-9 pm, we will be setting up a Trailer Park Drive-In Theatre in our Avant-Garage Gallery at The Arts Company, mixing art and film. Selected trailers to be premiered this year at the Nashville Film Festival (April 15-22) will be projected onto one of the garage walls. Nashville Film Festival Planners will be on hand to meet and greet our guests and clue them in on what new films are coming this year. Representatives from the Watkins College of Art Filmaking Department will also be available to offer information about their film programs.


Our host for the event will be Nashville's own Elaine Wood, an artist in her own right and an avowed film groupie, on hand to greet guests in a great trailer park drive-in theatre she will set up and host in our Avant-Garage space. Elaine's diminutive Scamp trailer, hand-painted and outfitted by Elaine, is an artistic happening in its own right. We want guests to enjoy trailer art and hospitality as a backdrop for checking out film trailers from the forthcoming festival.

Other artistic highlights in connecting art, film, and hospitality include: larger-than-life 3-D gallery-goers created by Denise Stewart-Sanabria, located throughout the space to invite conversation with guests; and a group of Brother Mel's new pieces from his "On the Town" series, to be placed on the wall as on-site art and film critics for the evening.

The Avant-Garage gallery is situated on the way from our downstairs galleries to our upstairs galleries. Our front gallery downstairs will be full of April Street's gorgeous and intricate new paintings--accompanied by April herself on hand to meet and greet gallery-goers. And, as always, who knows what we will be showing in our upstairs galleries?


The Arts Company is pulling out all the stops to call attention to one of our primary Partners in Art--the Nashville Film Festival. It's our down home artsy way of presenting this year's preview of the festival, just barely two weeks before the films start rolling. As the film festival folks like to say it: "Something wonderful is about to happen."

April comes but once a year, so listen up!

The Arts Company is always aflutter when we present April Street's work each year. Last year we missed presenting her new work in a Fall show as usual, because her opportunities in Los Angeles would not allow yet another full body of exhibition-ready work all in the same year. But not wanting to wait through another year, we persuaded her to make an exhibition of new work for us in the Spring this year.


April is one of the hardest working artists we know, and one of the most inventive. Many of our customers have had a chance to meet and talk with her over the last decade. It is unfailingly interesting to follow her annual shifts into new ideas and challenges she creates for herself as an artist. This year is no exception. Those who already know her look forward to seeing what her work is like this year. Is it figurative or abstract or...? Those who haven't had a chance to meet her will want to know how on earth she can produce such intricate and thoughtful work - all by her hand, no gimmicks - and so much of it in just a year's time.

She will be at our place for her First Art Saturday opening reception this Saturday, April 3, from 6-9 pm. Now is your chance to catch up with this deluxe artist who is always willing to talk with folks personally about how she makes the paintings she makes.

THE ARTS COMPANY, NASHVILLE, ELLA STEVE, WOODY AND DENISE

ELLA
We're thinking about clearing out a space upstairs during First Saturday this weekend (6-9 pm) for those who are inspired to dance to the music of Ella Fitzgerald from the new album, "Twelve Nights in Hollywood." This is the first time these recordings have been made public. They were all recorded in a series of 12 live sessions at the Crescendo in Hollywood in 1961-62, and none of the cuts has been released before. The performances are intimate and swinging--pure Ella. She is accompanied only by a piano, bass, and drums. You may be used to hearing Ella only with big bands and orchestral arrangements, but try this one out. There are 4 discs in this album and a small book of information about the recording sessions.

We have a couple of the albums for sale. We've had a tough time finding them, but we have been able to find them for friends. They are expensive, 4 CD's for one thing, but worth every penny. Whether you check this out this weekend by looking at art and listening or getting up for a quick turn of dancing, this album is an experience.


STEVE
Must mention also that we have been able to corner two of the LP's of Steve Martin's Grammy Award-winning banjo album (just this week). Even Rounder Records has no more, so they are sending us a handful of CD's so that those who are interested can get one this weekend. But the LP is terrific. It even has a special pop-up of Steve and the Crow on stage. Steve has long ties with Nashville. He performed at Exit In in another decade early in his career. This new album, "The Crow," is totally connected with Nashville. Is there a banjo anywhere not connected with Nashville?


WOODY AND DENISE
Thanks also to Rounder Records for sending us another unusual boxed set album, "The Dusty Road." Packaged like a small suitcase from the 1940s, this definitive collection of Woody Guthrie recordings from the mid-40s is Nashville rich by association, if nothing else. The haunted songs and sounds of folks coming out of the Depression have that long and lonesome Nashville feel and sound. The packaging of memorabilia, including reproductions from some of Woody's artwork, takes the listener back to the day. Again, this is on the expensive side of CDs, but worth the price for 4 CDs and all of the materials that come with it. I spotted this small vintage suitcase replica across the room in Denise Stiff's office. Denise has been singularly vigilant and tenacious in bringing The Fairfield Four, Allison Krauss to the forefront, and heavily involved in making the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack a classic. Denise is one of those people who ignites Nashville.

THE ARTS COMPANY AND NASHVILLE
What does it have to do with The Arts Company and Nashville? Everything. It's great music that has heart and soul. In our gallery, the art, music, ideas, and ambience are all eclectic, fresh, original, contemporary, and engaging. It's all about what we care about for ourselves and for our customers.

Jubilation: The Obama Inauguration One Year Later

Lou Outlaw (aka Lucius Outlaw, Associate Provost at Vanderbilt University) has been a serious student of photography for many years. When he went to Washington last January to be part of the Obama inauguration, he reacted as a photographer. Instead of focusing on Obama taking the oath, at that very moment he could not resist capturing images of the impassioned response of a lady nearby who was totally into the moment of Obama's taking the oath. Lou turned his attention to her and started snapping. He called those moments "Jubilation." The resulting photographs are paired with some images he took a couple of years ago of the Nashville Freedom Riders re-convening in Nashville to re-take the famed civil rights bus ride from Nashville to Birmingham.

Lou has had a distinguished lifetime of personal and professional involvement in black history and civil rights, and has found his own way through photography to express his emotional and intellectual response to historic occasions that mark that part of our common history.

The Arts Company has invited Lou to be our guest during Art After Hours (Thursday, February 4, 5-7 PM). A conversation with Lou begins at 6 PM.

Nashville Town and Country

The February exhibit of Steven Walker's new paintings of "Nashville Town and Country" has been a long time coming, because of the demand for the work of this rising young artist in other cities. We scheduled this new series as soon as he felt he could complete the work after his last show. Steven's canvases are reminiscent of Edward Hopper's. Each new canvas has more abstract details than the last. We have not seen all of the canvases to be in the exhibit, but we are certain that they will be fresh and very well executed. To see a young painter interested in the traditional techniques of realism, but adding his own brand of insight and abstraction is particularly exciting to The Arts Company.

Steven's first passion in painting is clicking photographs of landscapes while riding down the highway. Typically, his landscapes are seen from a broad distance. But he also excels in selecting urban buildings and urban landscapes as subjects for his paintings. This particular exhibit focuses on both the town and country parts of Nashville. Seeing Nashville downtown up close and landscapes outside the city limits, presented side by side, offers a new context for thinking about this particular city through the eyes of a painter who is only recently acquainted with Nashville. He paints us as we are--a sophisticated and complex city in the middle of trees and farmhouses.

Steven will be in town to talk with guests during the First Saturday opening, 6-9 PM, February 6.

We Like Our Winters Hot!

We like winter that has such things in it—Mexican-style cinnamon chili hot chocolate made and served by Scott Witherow and associates from Olive and Sinclair Chocolates, a Nashville original.

We also like winter nights with art such as Rod Daniel’s striking new black and white photographs of Canyon de Chelly.

We like classic winter nights spent browsing through Bill Starke’s sculpture that climbs the walls and dives from the ceiling.

We especially like winter nights with friends who share our love of art, books, and imagining what our New Year will turn out to be.

All of this and much more begins this Saturday, January 9, 6-9 pm. It’s only a preview of things to come in this brand new year of what’s fresh, original, and welcoming at The Arts Company in downtown Nashville.