Tradition matters at The Arts Company, and with good reason

The Annual Avant-Garage Sale (the 15th edition this year) is one of our top gallery traditions. It is a bear of an event to curate from the point of view of gallery staff, but it's a truly fun, affordable, festive summertime event for the groupies who come every year. Not to mention the new friends we make during the event, we think mostly because they didn't know coming to an artsy garage sale could be such an offbeat and surprising event...so "avant," you might say.

From the August 2010 Garage Sale

The selection of goods is wide and random, though our job is to try to corral the treasures we pull out and try to make sense of them. This year in particular, the sale kind of reveals what happens in the backstage areas of our gallery. Every year is like an archaeological dig with this year's treasures including: extra frames that have lingered long after the project was over; some gear for making shelving; and a few special baskets and boxes used for exhibit props. Our well-loved vintage drafting table and stool have long outlived our need for them, same with a couple of flat files.

Some great white empty frames that need a new home!

Photographs, paintings, and sculpture from estates and/or from our customers who collect and for one reason or another need to bring in pieces that no longer fit their decor or lifestyle or they are moving and can't take it all with them. This second chance for these pieces is a great opportunity for our avant-garage guests to find neat artwork or furniture or related artifacts that suit them perfectly.

Billyo O'Donnell, Last Light of the Construction, oil on canvas

This year in particular, folks have brought us a lot of pieces from a variety of regional artists.

Plus, we always add a lot of truly unexpected fun decor kind of stuff that has lingered for more than a few generations in people's closets far too long and needs new homes. Pieces such as odd assortments of neat bowls, pitchers, baskets, chairs, tables, lamps, some of which are true treasures that mix well in contemporary settings. To name a few: 2 book presses, vintage gold leaf cornices, a rare folding wooden farm table, and 2 sets of sofa chairs designed by Nashville's interior design legend, Herbert Rodgers. We even have signed, limited photographs by Eisenstadt, John Loengard, and others.

Vintage 4-part couch - by renowned Nashville designer, Herbert Rodgers

And then there are the art books and the vintage children's books and the cd's and a selection of classic record album covers (with the records still in them), and a few lingering art posters. Some are signed and rare.

Equally important, the prices are right. And the lemonade is plentiful and ice cold. We give up our two gallery parking spaces in the avant-garage for this one-week-long event.

This Arts Company tradition--our Avant-Garage Sale--continues each year just to see how much neat stuff we can pull out and make sense of so that our guests are inspired to give it a new life in their own lives. Remember, this is a curated exhibit, which means we have seriously searched through the remains of the past year and come up with some gems worthy of your attention.

How many curated art-related garage sales have you been to lately?

15th Annual Avant-Garage Sale

Opening Saturday, August 6, 2011

11-9:00 pm / Reception 6-9 during First Saturday Art Crawl

Continues one-week only: August 6-13

When Artists Collect Art, People Want to Know What and Why

...not just to be nosy, but to know more about the particular mindset, taste, and interest of the collecting artist. The why's and when's are particularly interesting in the forthcoming August Collectors Art Night guest collector/artist, John Nikolai, because John's work is seemingly eons removed from Andy Warhol's. Yet, John has collected more than one Warhol, and he has lived with them for a long while. The last one we helped him sell sold virtually overnight to an art dealer in London who specializes in Warhol.

John Nikolai in Ireland with his trademark toboggan

But before we put the information out online this time, we wanted to host a special collectors night with John--one of our favorite artists--as our guest so we could pick his brain a little about what has driven him to collect. He's also bringing along a rare hand-written letter from Greta Garbo and lots of Garbo memorabilia he has collected since he was a teenager. Reading the letter will show you just how cranky her mind could be; and looking at the photographs that are beside it reminds you how glamorous she could be.

Andy Warhol, Self-Portrait, offset lithograph on silver-coated paper, 243/300, 1966

The Warhol and the Garbo material will be available for purchase, along with a few other miscellaneous selections John is bringing. But, in addition, we have asked him to bring along other pieces that are of particular personal importance to him, though not for sale, but just there as samples of artwork he chooses personally. For instance, two pieces he is bringing just to show are related to two of his Nashville friends who are also artists--a watercolor by John Baeder and a classic photograph by Jim McGuire.

Greta Garbo hand-written letter and photographs

There is a sub-text to all of this as well. This is our gallery Bon Voyage to John, who will be moving to his beloved Ireland this fall. We will also be showing selected work from his exhibits at The Arts Company in recent years. Their subject? Mostly Ireland, of course. All hauntingly beautiful. Each one an original. No two ever alike.

John Nikolai, Waiting on Shore, archival photograph

We may have to whip up some Irish champagne if there is such a thing, and hope we can persuade him to continue to send us new work from across the water. He just now came back from a trip to Ireland, bringing many rolls of film. Since John prefers the old-fashioned method of shooting with film, it takes time to get everything converted, selected, and printed by him personally according to his most precise expectations. Maybe by the time he leaves the country, he will have a group of new photographs to leave with us.

Come join the conversation with John and consider what makes collecting passionate and personal in your own life. His artistic vision and energy will engage you, for sure.

John Nikolai, Self-Potrait

So, Bon Voyage, Farewell, So Long, and au Revoir to John...and come back soon bringing more fresh art and neat insights.

Visit with John during

Collectors Art Night at The Arts Company

Friday, August 5, 2011

5:30 Reception & refreshments

6:00 Conversation with John Nikolai

Remember: Space Limited. Reservations required.

and Complimentary valet parking

R.S.V.P. to 5thAvenueOfTheArts@gmail.com

and be our VIP guest for the evening

Nashville's tipping point in the arts Commentary by Anne Brown

You know for sure Nashville is nearing the tipping point in the arts when a national business publication makes the point for us. Here's the way Jason Ankeny put it in his article, "The art of online commerce," in the current issue (July 2011) of Entrepreneur magazine.

"Nashville is justly celebrated as Music City, but the Tennessee state capital's dedication to the arts doesn't end at the Grand Ole Opry. Downtown Nashville is also the nexus of a thriving visual arts community." Pointing out that the city's Fifth Avenue corridor now boasts more than a dozen gallery spaces that attract some 1000 visitors each month during First Saturday, Jason calls what's happening here "Nashville's creative renaissance."

"Spirit of the River" by Charles Keiger

The article then credits The Arts Company as the gallery that pioneered the idea of making the arts a central part of the Nashville marketplace by establishing an art gallery in the middle of a downtown block full of dark empty buildings in 1996, now a vibrant artistic block that boasts many other art venues today.

But that's only the tip of the tipping point to which this article refers. That was then. This is now. The real challenge ahead for the world of art galleries and related artistic enterprises is the same as for other businesses--how to define and build a bold and energetic role for the arts in the new online marketplaces that are evolving all around us. The Arts Company is still leading a charge forward to making an art business a successful player in the middle of the new online marketplaces.

"Dancing Feet" by Norman Lerner

We have learned already that a brick and mortar location is part of the new way of doing business, but expecting that to remain the one and only venue for showing and selling art is a pipe dream. Those days are over. Not gone. Just over. That cannot be the sole model. The business of art is being challenged to the bone like all other businesses. Fortunately, the new days promise to be more interesting.

Necessity number one is latching on to the online revolution. How to harness social commerce in tasteful, exciting ways requires turning a business upside down and recreating it. Constantly recreating it. It helps that art is a passionate and creative enterprise by definition. Clearly, this is no time to be timid.

"Shelby Street Bridge" by Steven Walker

That's why we were attracted to Moontoast, our online social commerce platform. They are open to the challenge of taking online commerce beyond widgets. We are still at the very beginning of re-thinking our online initiatives. What we can say is that it is very labor-intensive. And very exciting!

We can also say there is something about Nashville that brings out the entrepreneurial spirit in lots of folks. It's the spirit that tells you when you know you are on to something you just go with it however far you have to go. For The Arts Company, being singled out as part of "Nashville's creative renaissance" gives us incentive and responsibility to keep on keeping on.

We are ready to embrace the new online art frontier to complement the 5th Avenue storefront we established 15 years ago, and we're looking forward to this unscripted future....

www.theartscompany.com

Why Serendipity at The Arts Company? A Call to Expect the Unexpected

The real question is what took us so long? Serendipity pretty well defines the personality of our gallery. In the early years, we used to hear the phrase "always the unexpected fun part." Now we have come to think of the way we select and present artists and artwork as a deliberate act of serendipity--namely, finding neat and interesting art and placing other neat and interesting pieces around it to create a comfortable and welcoming environment. For sure, it's an unpredictable way to approach art--finding something really interesting, something unexpected that you hadn't thought of before. Then suddenly, you couldn't stop thinking about it.

For our gallery, context is of equal importance to the art. We want the art and the setting to disarm you and get you comfortable with seeing art in different contexts. That's always seemed important to us, because few of us live in white wall gallery environments at home. Our idea is to engage you with adventure and discovery in ways you haven't thought of art before. Often, this gives you new ideas about how to make art part of your own environment, to begin making your own new connections.

Right now, our Summer of Classic Serendipity at The Arts Company is an experiment in its own right. We are taking our little bizarre idea one step further. We are setting various spaces throughout the gallery as small tableaux or sets that feature a mix of art, furniture, decor, books, music, and whatever else we think fits the particular scenario. Our goal is catch our guests off-guard, to make you want to sit a minute in a particular environment just to try it on for a minute, to see the many ways art can fit into your work or living space.

It's all about welcoming guests into our sense of serendipitous adventure, which is what we think art can be at its best and most personal. We love taking this new approach in our gallery, but that's still not enough. Very soon, we will present our online version of this same kind of art adventure. Stay tuned for that.

Who knows where these new serendipitous adventures will take us?

A Summer of Classic Serendipity begins
at The Arts Company
Saturday, July 2, 6-9 pm
Continues through August 20


www.theartscompany.com

Welcome in to The Intimate World of Leonard Piha

Leonard Piha's work is a great fit with The Arts Company. We pride ourselves on being the gallery that over the last 15 years has consistently presented artwork that is fresh, original, and contemporary. With Leonard's work, there is something more--a rare artistic vision, in the same spirit as our own Brother Mel. In both artists, their spiritual commitments are deep and personal--Brother Mel in Catholic traditions and Leonard in Jewish traditions. In each, their academic backgrounds are stellar--Brother Mel with a master's degree in art from the University of Notre Dame, and Leonard with an M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Neither of them has ever sought fame and fortune for themselves and their work. Both of them use unusual materials, and they both see themselves as builders, though they are trained in painting as well. They are each genuinely modest about their work, more interested in making the work than in what happens to it.

Leonard Piha, Judah Buddha, 69 x 80 x 3 inches

My first entry into Leonard's world was by fluke, not by plan. It was truly a dark and dreary (and cold) night when some friends and I finally found Leonard's complex of home, studio, gallery, and a large hillside yard full of sculpture of all sizes. Flashlights in hand, we spotted art on buildings and in trees, and on the walls inside various buildings, including his house. It can only be described as a magical evening. We knew we were seeing something we had not seen before. Returning the next morning in daylight confirmed the magic. We were surrounded by literally hundreds of pieces of art as yet unseen beyond the confines of his complex. We knew we were seeing an accomplished artist at work, a trained artist with an outsider aesthetic.

Upstairs at The Arts Company--the right venue

I can only hope that we do some justice to that experience in the way we present The Intimate World of Leonard Piha Upstairs at The Arts Company. We chose the upstairs galleries for his exhibition because it is expansive space that makes it possible to show the scope and scale of his work.

The upstairs gallery at The Arts Company

We hope you will walk through this exhibit and experience the thrill of discovery of a truly unusual body of work, all of it related through Leonard's series of icons gleaned from his personal life and Jewish traditions that are repeated in fresh and surprising ways, using fresh and surprising materials.

Discovering the outsider aesthetic

When Leonard began to study art, his first inclination was to draw rabbis, menorahs, and other Jewish symbols from his family traditions. One college professor steered him away from that and suggested he needed to learn to create art in the style and subject matter of his contemporaries. However, once he discovered outsider art and artists, he was attracted to their work, considering it more direct and profound in subject and form than what he had been doing. Inspired by the work of outsider artists, he began to rediscover his Jewish roots and began to create a new artistic alphabet for himself, both in subject matter and in his choice of rough materials. Equipped with his academic training, but this new passion, something new was bound to happen.

The result is distinctly intimate, engaging, original, and contemporary. "I love finding stuff and putting it together," says Leonard, "I'm always on guard, ready for some idea or some feeling--but I just do things that are important to me." The fact that he translates religious and personal themes into contemporary icons adds a universal dimension. See below his Mondrian's Torah, constructed from cardboard, painted with oil paint, as a sample.

Leonard Piha, Mondrian's Torah, 36 x 41 x 7 inches

Leonard and his wife Cyndy literally built their home together. Since then, he has continued to add various outbuildings such as a studio, gallery, garages, and a gazebo; and he has populated his hillside property with very large and very small sculpture of all kinds. He is an elementary art specialist in a nearby school, a satisfying way to pay his way as an artist. He likes best staying at home and building his work, whether sculpture or painting. He and his wife have two young sons, both of whom have recently completed assignments in Afghanistan.

If you love the adventure and discovery of what a good artist has to offer, come spend some time in the intimate world of Leonard Piha. His is not art as usual.

Meet Leonard

during the First Saturday Art Crawl

at The Arts Company

May 7, 2011, 6-9 pm

Remarks by Anne Brown

Brother Mel has done it again...and again and again

Brother Mel's 83rd year--which we will be celebrating at The Arts Company during his 14th Annual Artistic Pilgrimage to Nashville June 3 & 4--has truly been another phenomenal year for this rare artist who has been a Catholic brother in the Marianist community for over 60 years and a practicing artist for over 50 years.

Brother Mel outside his studio

Between now and the time we will see him in early June, his year will be topped off in three important ways:

1) First and foremost: On May 21, St. Louis University will award him an honorary doctorate in the arts for his lifetime of making art.

2) As if that is not enough, some 18-20 of his large outdoor sculptures have been purchased by St. Louis University to be placed in a special park at the entrance to the university in the middle of downtown St. Louis in mid-May, just ahead of the degree ceremony. While the university and other businesses and public spaces have purchased and commissioned his work for years, this newest purchase and special presentation, plus this academic honor, is further testament to the demand for and quality of his work.

...and the best for last...

3) Lucky for Nashville, Brother Mel will be coming to Nashville just two weeks after this honor and the formal dedication will have taken place. If you are one of his special collectors and fans, listen up. He will be at The Arts Company for two occasions, accompanied by his latest exhibition of new work.

On Friday, June 3, he will be the subject of that night's Collectors Art Night at The Arts Company. To honor him further, his visit that night will be hosted and presented by some very special collectors who will be there to talk about why they keep coming back to his work and why it matters to them--from corporate to individual collectors.

On Saturday, June 4, he will be available to meet and greet his Nashville friends as they come to see his latest work...and to celebrate his 83rd birthday.

Brother Mel, Ovals, 11 x 21 x 21 inches

This year, we have asked him to focus on small sculptural shapes and colors, more artwork to "bring beauty to space to lift up spirits." It's exciting work commissioned especially for this year's Nashville exhibition. It's artwork we can all take personally.

In true Brother Mel fashion, once St. Louis University made their selections, within a short time Brother Mel had produced more large sculptures to re-populate his own sculpture yard outside his studio. He is never at a loss for new ideas, and his love of working at art all day six days a week never wanes.

We are lucky in Nashville to have direct access to this rare artist during his annual exhibitions.

The Shapes & Colors of Brother Mel

Opening at The Arts Company

Saturday, June 4, 6-9 pm

An Artistic Life in the Fast Lane

Drew Doggett is an energetic young artist whose entrepreneurial skills keep pace with the broad scope of his artistic vision and philanthropic commitment.

To give you an idea: Drew flew to Nashville, the day after returning from his recent second documentary trip--this one to Africa, to measure every inch of our downstairs gallery walls so that he could tailor-make every piece selected for the exhibit, each one large scale and to be mounted on aluminum. In addition, he was interviewed for a two-part story to appear in the April and May issues of Nashville Arts magazine. All that in a whirlwind trip of six hours.

Drew Doggett (far right) talks with Arts Company Owner and Director, Dr. Anne Brown; Michael Burcham, Executive Director, Entrepreneur Center (far left); and Lon Bouldin, Ventures PR.

His is an artistic life in the fast lane, for sure.

In the five years since he graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in Human and Organizational Development, he has established himself as a significant emerging photographer with three distinct bodies of work:

1) high fashion, beginning his NYC-based career with accomplished photographers Mark Seliger and Steven Klein, followed quickly by creating his own trend-setting style of high fashion photography;


2) documentary, committing himself to a 10-year series of documentaries focused on vanishing cultures in remote areas--the first one, Slow Road to China, about the people and landscapes of a remote Himalayan region of Nepal, will be part of this exhibition; and initiating Art Cares, a non-profit organization to benefit the cultures he documents;

3) and urban landscapes, through commissions from private, business and government clients.

As with any artist, the heart of the matter is in his work--his meticulous attention to detail both in his photographs and in their presentation; his clear understanding of what he is looking for in each of the areas in which he works; and his commitment to capturing the beauty of obscure and vanishing cultures in the world. All of this will be clear to you when you step into the door of our gallery. You will know this is a different kind of artistic journey.

The photographs speak for themselves, but they also speak of the spirit of adventure and the vision of this photographer's passion for his work. Think of this as an art lover's adventure--a remote primitive culture meets high fashion and urban environments, each offering distinctive visual insight into some of the beauties and realities of three cultures, all co-existing in our contemporary world, each one enriching the other.

This exhibition introduces Nashville to a young 21st-century artist whose photographic images reveal the work of an artist and entrepreneur who has achieved artistic, commercial, and philanthropic success in a very short time. This is Drew's first exhibit in Nashville, and, we hope, just the beginning of more great photographs and exhibits he will bring back to Nashville.

Join us to welcome Drew back to Nashville

Saturday, April 2, 6-9 pm,

during First Saturday Art Crawl.