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News Room
Temple Arts Festival 2007: Artists at a Glance - 3.26.2007
THE TEMPLE | CONGREGATION OHABAI SHOLOM
5015 Harding Road, Nashville, TN 37205
615.352.7620
www.templenashville.org
CONTACTS
Lisa Small, Co-chair/Publicity
615.356.2735 or 615.308.2836
essmall@bellsouth.net
Julie Schuffman
julieschuffman@gmail.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Temple Arts Festival 2007 -- Artists-at-a Glance
Nashville, TN: Spanning AL to WA, the 44 artists in the 2007 Temple Arts Festival are bringing sculpture, glass and 2-dimensional works for exhibit and sale from across the country.
To see the artists at a glance, click on one of these three views:
1. Artists: A to Z.
2. Artists: by Medium/Media.
3. Artists: by Price Range.
PRESS PASSES & PRIVATE MEDIA TOURS are available to the news media up to two days before the opening of The Temple Arts Festival and must be coordinated by appointment only through:
Lisa Small, Co-chair/ Publicity
615.356.2735 (home)
615.615.308.2836 (cell)
Email: essmall@bellsouth.net.
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Temple Arts Festival and Sale -- April 14 and 15, 2007 - 4.1.2007
THE TEMPLE | CONGREGATION OHABAI SHOLOM
5015 Harding Road, Nashville, TN 37205
615.352.7620
www.templenashville.org
CONTACTS
Lisa Small, Co-chair/Publicity
615.356.2735 or 615.308.2836
essmall@bellsouth.net
Julie Schuffman
julieschuffman@gmail.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TEMPLE ARTS FESTIVAL: THIRD ANNUAL EXHIBITION AND SALE
Now in its third year, the Temple Arts Festival has surprised and delighted the Nashville arts community with extraordinary exhibitions of distinctive collectible art and a host of master artists and craftsmen. This addition to the Southern cultural landscape quickly earned national renown, and artists and arts enthusiasts alike now eagerly await the Third Annual Temple Arts Festival in April.
On Saturday and Sunday, April 14-15, 2007, the Temple Arts Festival will present its third juried exhibition and sale featuring the works of internationally, nationally and regionally acclaimed professional artists and jewelers. The Temple’s Art Selection Committee hand-picked more than 40 artists from 22 states, Israel, and Italy, who will exhibit and sell approximately 500 pieces in glass, ceramics, painting, sculpture, metal, drawing, photography and jewelry.
“We have selected highly professional artists who already have a following and know this is a special kind of show,” said Art Selection Committee Co-Chair Alice Zimmerman. “Care was taken to select artists not represented by local galleries, artists whose works are rarely available in the Nashville area.”
Most art and jewelry will be priced between $200 and $12,000, with many works available for under $1,000. “For people who believe they might enjoy collecting art—who believe it may enhance their lives and their aesthetic environment—this is a good way to start a collection without a large investment,” Zimmerman says. She encourages everyone to take home art that “appeals to your senses in an illusive, if significant, way.”
The collectible works of this year’s artists have been exhibited in museums, galleries and juried shows across the country. Most notably:
Porcelain sculptor/painter Bennett Bean of Blairstown, NJ, is one of the nation’s premier workers in clay. Best known for his exquisite collectible ceramic vessels—in particular, brightly-colored bowls and teapots enhanced with gold leaf—Bean’s asymmetrical forms are wheel-thrown, cut and manipulated into graceful, complex, stunningly beautiful shapes, lines and curves. [www.bennettbean.com].
Website: www.bennettbean.com
A brilliant, prolific artist, Caleb Nelson Carter paints in oil to create magnificent still-lifes, figure works and landscapes. Carter’s vividly realistic paintings capture and illuminate the timeless elegance he discovers in his subjects.
Website: www.calebnelsoncarter.com
Each of Alison Helm’s large, abstract sculptures uses a variety of media—glass, metal, wood, composites, found objects such as rocks or gems—reflecting a balance between culture and nature. Helm’s collection of sculptures includes some furniture works, as well.
Website: West Virginia University: Alison Helm
Dale Chihuly is renowned for his intensely vibrant, multipart blown masterpieces in glass. Each year, Chihuly collaborates with Portland Press to create colorful Studio Editions from several of his stunning series. As of April 1, four new Studio Editions will be available for a limited time; they will be offered during the Temple Arts Festival.
Website: http://www.chihuly.com
Lisa Ernst, of Nashville, uses acrylic paints to amplify nature’s colors and forms in wonderfully realistic/impressionistic florals, still-lifes and landscapes. Ernst’s paintings capture fleeting moments in nature, in celebration of life’s beauty and brevity.
Website: http://www.lisaernst.com
Many artists from the 2005 and 2006 Festivals will be returning, including both years’ Best in Show winners: painter Kathy Stark and glasswork artist Wes Hunting.
Website: kathystark.com
Website: www.weshuntingstudio.com
Art exhibited at the Temple Arts Festival will be judged by Kevin Grogan, director of the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia. Grogan will select Best of Show and other winners, who will divide $4,000 in prize money.
A percentage of all proceeds benefits The Temple, Congregation Ohabai Sholom, Nashville’s oldest and largest Jewish congregation. Because The Temple is a 501(c)(3) organization, sales tax will not be charged. "Up to 40 percent of artwork purchased may qualify as a charitable donation, but everyone is advised to consult with a certified public accountant or tax advisor," said event co-chair Lisa Small.
Advance Purchase Certificates are recommended for those willing to commit to a purchase in advance, in exchange for the opportunity to browse the exhibition and make their selections before the general public is admitted. Certificates can be purchased for between $500 and $2,000, all of which will be applied toward the purchase of art and/or jewelry at the 2007 Temple Arts Festival.
To get your Advance Purchase Certificates, call The Temple by April 6: 615.352.7620.
Here is the schedule of events and admissions:
Saturday, April 14, 2007
4:30 p.m: Connoisseurs’ Champagne Preview: For holders of Advance Purchase Certificates of $2,000 toward the purchase of art or jewelry.
5:30 p.m: Collectors’ Cocktail Supper Preview: For holders of Advance Purchase Certificates of $500-$1,999 toward the purchase of art or jewelry.
7:00 p.m: Wine and Cheese Reception: Open to the public. Donation of $20 per person required for admission (not applicable toward purchase).
Sunday, April 15, 2007
10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m: Free admission. Lunch by Noshville is available for purchase
Ample and adjacent free parking is available for all events.
The Temple Arts Festival is held at The Temple, Congregation Ohabai Sholom, 5015 Harding Road [next to Belle Meade Mansion], Nashville, TN 37205; phone 615.352.7620; www.templeartsfestival.com (to be updated with 2007 information no later than February 20).
Event Co-Chairs: Royce and James Fishel, Rae and Bruce Hirsch, Leslie and Howard Kirshner, Lisa and Mike Shmerling, and Lisa and Steve Small; Betty and Bernard Werthan are Honorary Chairs.
Art Selection Committee Co-Chairs: Julie Boehm, Robin Cohen, Laurie Eskind, Raye Ann Greenbaum, Jenny Lewis, Suzanne Schulman, Bonnie Small, Jessica Viner and Alice Zimmerman.
PRESS PASSES & PRIVATE MEDIA TOURS are available to the news media up to two days before the opening of The Temple Arts Festival and must be coordinated by appointment only through:
Lisa Small, Co-chair/ Publicity
615.356.2735 (home)
615.615.308.2836 (cell)
Email: essmall@bellsouth.net.
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Something for Everyone: $150 to $25,000 - 3.12.2007
The Temple Arts Festival: Nashville, TN, April 14-15, 2007 -- The price ranges of the works of art and jewelry featured at The Temple Arts Festival range from $150 up to $25,000, with work appealing to all types of collectors.
Below is a partial list of those artists and jewelers with the highest priced works of art and jewelry.
Kimberly Pucci (Jewelry: $300 to $25,000);
Bruce Peebles (Sculpture Dimensional: $2,500 to $15,000);
Danny Eliav (Jewelry: $200 - $10,000);
David Bacharach (Sculpture-Metal: $450-$5,500);
Wes Hunting (Sculpture- Glass: $500 to $4,200);
Deborah Gold (Painting Oil: $1,200 - $3,800);
Over 45 internationally, nationally and regionally acclaimed professional artists will be featured at The Temple Arts Festival who specialize in glass, sculpture, drawings, paintings, photography, tapestry and jewelry.
The art was selected and juried by The Temple's Art Selection Committee, tasked with identifying artwork that is not found locally as well as provide a broad range of artwork and jewelry for our exhibition and sale. The Temple's Art Selection Committee is co-chaired by Alice Zimmerman and Raye Ann Greenbaum, who combined have over 65 years of experience as art collectors and gallery owners.
The art will be judged by Kevin Grogan, executive director of the Morris Museum in Augusta, Georgia. He will select a Best of Show as well as second and third place winners from the entrants. Prize monies totaling $4,000 will be divided among the winners.
There's much, much more: www.templeartsfestival.com
PRESS PASSES & PRIVATE MEDIA TOURS are available to the news media up to two days before the opening of The Temple Arts Festival and must be coordinated by appointment only through:
Lisa Small, Co-chair/Publicity
615.356.2735 (home)
615.615.308.2836 (cell)
Email: essmall@bellsouth.net.
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An Interview with Kevin Grogan, Art Judge for TAF - 3.12.2007
The Temple Arts Festival: Nashville, TN, April 14-15, 2007 -- The Morris Museum of Art, in Augusta, Georgia is home to a broad-based survey collection of Southern art. The museum's director, Kevin Grogan, is judging The Temple Arts Festival for the second straight year.
The juried exhibition and sale features the works of internationally, nationally and regionally acclaimed professional artists and jewelers.
The Temple Arts Festival is open to the Nashville community. Last year, most of the artists in the show sold every piece they exhibited.
A portion of the proceeds from the show benefit The Temple, Congregation Ohabai Sholom, Nashville, Tennessee's oldest and largest Jewish congregation.
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Q. What do you look for in judging a show with more than 50 artists and so many styles and types of art? How do you choose? It's not just paintings -- it's oils against acrylics against sculpture against fabric and so on.
Kevin Grogan: Generally speaking, quality is the final determinant, regardless of medium. I realize that must sound glib. But if you wind up comparing the very best painting against the very best basket, at some point all you can do is make a decision about which is better.
Q. What do you think art means to a community in general, and what does a show like this one, with its roster of well known talent, bring to a community?
Kevin Grogan: It means quite a lot -- but look who you're asking. Everyone's going to see this question from a highly individual perspective, and my opinion is shaped by 35-plus years of museum work which, inevitably, boils down to public education of a very particular sort.
Art sometimes means a document of a community's past (that is certainly the case in Nashville, particularly prior to the advent of the camera). It can be a response to a contemporary event, a record of emotional response (both the individual's and a group's) to the dynamics of a community. Sometimes, art can also mean something that falls under the umbrella of "economic development." What do I mean by that? Just think about the impact of the Frist Center on its part of downtown Nashville, particularly when an exhibition as popular as the highlights show from The Phillips Collection was on display there.
It can also mean things more abstract -- a sense of community well-being, dignity, and pride. And competitiveness.
As for this festival, The Temple Arts Festival is bringing the work of certain artists to Nashville that might not get there under other circumstances. So, with that, it also brings fresh insights, ideas, and modes of expression.
Q. How do people become collectors? What does it take to get started?
Kevin Grogan: I honestly can't say how or why people start collecting art. I can only say with certainty that, once started, it's hard to stop.
So the question is not so much "What does it take to get started?" as it is "What does it take to get stopped?" That said, I suspect the right answer to the latter is "When satisfaction is achieved." That sometimes occurs when interest wanes or moves on to something else, or -- and this is less likely -- when the collector has assembled a collection entire. An example of every Budweiser bottle ever made, for instance.
Q. What makes some art better than other art? How do I know it when I see it?
Kevin Grogan: Skill and ability, and not just technical skill. If you have technical skill but lack expressive skill, you will make art that is just not engaging on an emotional level. As for how one might know it, I can't say. I know when I know it. You? You're on your own.
Q. Why do artists make art? Why do collectors buy art?
Kevin Grogan: Well, Picasso once said, "I paint, because I can't put it into words." Really, everyone has an expressive need -- that is, everyone has a need to express their own feelings and ideas. Some of us have the great good fortune to be able to exercise that in ways that naturally involve and move others. Generally, that naturally entails a kind of "public medium" -- that is, a mode of expression that enables others to participate.
As for collecting, I think that's somewhat more complicated. People collect for many different reasons.
Sometimes it has to do with the representation of an interest in something larger than the object that a person has collected to represent that interest -- whether that representative object is a baseball card or a handmade pot.
Sometimes it has to do with economics, and sometimes -- perhaps most often -- it is as a result of a visceral response to beauty, pure and simple, and/or the symbolic representation of emotion.
I may be the wrong person to ask, since this is what I have done professionally for more than 35 years and personally for more than 40. If I had to characterize myself as a collector of some one thing it would be American prints made between 1900 and 1950. I love the drawing and the extraordinary challenges in the various print mediums -- whether lithography, etching, or engraving. As often as not, I love the representation of subject matter.
Other people buy things for different reasons, and we'd probably buy paintings -- and may yet someday -- had we the wherewithal.
Q. How did you come to be a judge for the Temple Arts Festival? It's very gracious of you to come from Augusta to do this, for the second year in a row.
Kevin Grogan: I suppose I should mention that my agreement to judge this show has less to do with personal graciousness -- not a characteristic for which I am particularly noted -- than it has to do with my complete inability to resist the blandishments of Alice Zimmerman, one of the Art Selection Commitee co-chairs, who is an old and dear friend.
TICKET INFORMATION
The Temple Arts Festival is scheduled for Sat., April 14 and Sun., April 15, 2007, at The Temple, 5015 Harding Road in Nashville, Tenn., next door to the Belle Meade Mansion.
The festival's grand opening is Sat., April 14, 2006 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Cost is $20 per person.
Free general admission is Sunday, April 15, 2006, from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
For information or directions, call 615.352.7620, or e-mail taf@templenashville.org.
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Let There Be Light - 3.13.2007
Let There Be Light: Glass Art and Judaica
Michael Gore, Featured Artist, Temple Arts Festival, April 14 and 14, 2007
Nashville, TN -- March 7, 2007: "When I see glass, I see light," said artist Michael Gore, whose secular work and Judaica pieces will be featured at the Temple Arts Festival, on April 14 and 15.
There will be plenty of light at the Temple Arts Festival, where Gore is one of a dozen of the glass artists in the group of more than 40 sculptors, painters and jewelry makers exhibiting their work at the two-day show and sale.
The light that glass art catches, fractures, and reflects is a big part of why it so sharply catches the imaginations of so many collectors, Gore said: "People respond to light."
Some of the new pieces Gore is offering call for sprinkling Avventurina -- a rare glass mixed with bits of copper -- into the cracks of a partially finished piece, reheating the glass, and watching the final surface catch light in unpredictable ways. "It's a crackled, textured look," Gore said. "It's like lightning."
Born in Chicago, and educated everywhere from the University of Illinois at Champaign, to the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, PA, and that art school's Italian program in Rome, Gore was once a criminal defense lawyer.
He looked for light in the legal system for 17 years, until he wearied of the darkness in that life, and decided to make art fulltime.
For the past decade, Gore has worked at home in the US and in Venice, using the techniques and traditions he discovered as a student, and acquiring new skills along the way.
"I've worked in Venice for 30 years, and I've made more than 200 trips," Gore said. Today, he spends much of his time working collaboratively with the master glass blowers and artisans of the legendary Anfora Furnace of Murano, using both traditional and contemporary Venetian techniques.
In his secular work, Gore makes everything from architectural style windows to tableware, windows, and jewelry.
When he turns to Judaica, Gore's work scales up from mezuzot, yads, kiddush cups, dreidles and shofars, to cloth hangings and entire interior settings for synagogues.
His pieces can be acquired from his studio, or by commission.
Contact the artist here:
Email: mpgore@aol.com
Phone: 708.209.9988
Website: www.judaicdesigns.com
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Susan Maakestad: Filling in the Empty Spaces - 3.14.2007
Susan Maakestad: Filling in the Empty Spaces
Temple Arts Festival Featured Artist
Nashville, March 2007: Blurred but sharp, and bright but dull, the post-industrial, modern scenes Susan Maakestad paints are like a dream where things feel familiar, but different.
This is how the artist describes her work: "I am interested in the spaces between things, the unnoticed marginal spaces in the urban landscape."
Those places could be everything from a snaky, highway overpass under a glowing sky, to a view of long, wide fields in colors nature doesn't make.
Maakestad describes her art this way: "I like painting in that precarious place between abstraction and naturalism."
Susan Maakestad earned her M.F.A. in painting from The University of Iowa in 1987 and a B.A. and M.A. from Central Washington University in Ellensburg, WA. She is Associate Professor of Art at Memphis College of Art, where she has taught since 1997.
Living in Memphis informs Maakestad's work: "Memphis is both earthy and atmospheric. Here humidity and pollution turn air to mass. Heat waves dissolve substance. The river appears to be dense and slow yet it is swift and deadly. Humans and the land coexist in uneasy tension."
Maakestad was awarded a regional National Endowment for the Arts fellowship from Arts Midwest in 1988. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Vermont Studio Center.
Her work was included in the national publication "New American Paintings," Midwest Edition, in 1995. Her watercolors are included in The Drawing Center's slide registry in New York.
Her oil paintings are part of The Painting Center in New York's online "Art File."
Her work has been exhibited nationally. She is represented by Groveland Gallery in Minneapolis and Perry Nicole Fine Art in Memphis.
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