Work by Recipients of Bailey Opportunity Grants
November 5-23, 2021
Work by Recipients of Bailey Opportunity Grants
Opening reception: Friday, November 5, 5:00-9:00 PM
Gallery hours: Monday-Friday 9 AM – 5 PM and Saturday 10 AM – 1 PM. Closed Wednesday-Saturday, November 24-27.
The Arts & Culture Alliance presents an exhibit of painting, photography, woodwork, forged metal, jewelry, sculpture, and more by 24 of the individual artists who are recipients of an FY22 Ann and Steve Bailey Opportunity Grant. Artists in the exhibition include: Sarazen AnYin, Gabrielle Barnhart, Julie Belcher, Mike C. Berry, Karen Bertollini, Kate Buuck, Yvonne Dalschen, Amy Evans, Abby Fisher, Curtis Glover, Betsy Hobkirk, Risa Hricovsky, Linda King, Kathleen A. Kinney, Andreas Koschan, Megan Lingerfelt, Sarah Moore, Brigid Oesterling, Rebecca Parr, Roberta Smashey, Alex Smith, Ben Smith, Joanna Warren and Brandon Woods. In addition, the First Friday reception features music by Abby Fisher, Nicholas Eric Horner, Domino Ensemble, Frou-Frou Foxes, and Tinca Tinca, who are also Bailey Opportunity grantees.
A part of the Arts & Heritage Fund, the Bailey Opportunity Grants provide financial and technical support to individual artists and small, professionally-oriented arts and culture organizations. The grants are designed to spur continued artistic and administrative growth in innovative, entrepreneurial artists and organizations at any stage in their development. Throughout the next eight months, the 31 individual artists will utilize their collective funds for local, regional, and national workshops, studio time, technical equipment, and more.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Sarazen AnYin
My fiber art is crafted not only with fine materials and artistry born from years of experience in various textile crafts, but also with story. Each new image is linked together with the thread of narrative. Every piece, a new window into the mountain town of Pinnacle, a small hamlet best known for the once admired estate of Towering Elms.
Sarazen AnYin is a fiber craftswoman, wordsmith, abuse and trauma survivor, PTSD sufferer, and single mom of four amazing near adults. Her youth was shadowed by familial mental illness. The arts, fiber craft and writing were her sanctuary from the chaos. Knitting and sewing carried her through the long years of getting an English degree. She picked up spinning 22 years ago shortly after the birth of her oldest daughter. Themes of identity, authenticity, vulnerability, psychology, the complexity of reality and the terrible beauty of nature itself are regular creative visitors. A member of the Foothills Craft Guild, she lives and works in Eastern Tennessee, surrounded by lush forests and the legacy of the Manhattan Project.
https://sarazenanyin.com/
Instagram: @sarazenanyin
Julie Belcher
Julie Belcher’s art reflects her upbringing in Appalachia, encompassing both the natural beauty and the hard work and ingenuity mountain life demands. Her approach has been refined by formal education, a Bachelor of Fine Art at the University of Tennessee and an MFA at the School of Visual Arts, and informed by her pivotal role in reviving the art and practice of handset letterpress printmaking. She preserved literally tons of type and vintage presses gone to rust in the 90s, and today adds elements of printmaking to drawings, paintings and collage layered in beeswax The final encaustic pieces are mixed media ballads to her roots, with the easy appeal of penny candy wrapped in wax paper. Belcher is a mixed media instructor at Arrowmont, has showcased her work in national and regional galleries, produced an illustration of Cormac McCarthy featured on the cover of the New York Times Review of Books, and with her partner was named as a Vogue World 100 creative influencer of 2019. She would like to thank the Bailey Opportunity Grant committee for awarding her support to continue her encaustic journey in homage to Appalachia, thrift, humor, and hard work.
Instagram: @SquirrelsGoneWild
https://www.pioneer-house.com/
https://www.facebook.com/PioneerHouseofLetterpress
Mike C. Berry
Mike C. Berry is a contemporary cityscape painter working in pastels, acrylic and oils. Considered a versatile painter who works in vibrant colors, bringing energy and rhythm to each work, he creates urban compositions that bend and twist the cityscapes that have become his identifiable style. His paintings consist of gestural brushstrokes and pure bright color. He credits the work of Wolf Kahn, Edward Hopper, and Knoxville artist, Joseph Delaney for encouraging his use color, line and the cityscape as subject matter. Berry is originally from the Midwest and earned a MFA in Illustration from the Savannah College of Art & Design. His original works can be viewed and purchased at The District Gallery in Knoxville or The River Gallery in Chattanooga.
http://www.mikecberry.com/
Instagram: @mikecberry
Blue Heron Art Collective: Besty Hobkirk and Karen Bertollini
Blue Heron Art Collective teaches in-person, online and hybrid art classes. Our goal is to support anyone who would like to develop as an artist. Blue Heron Art Collective instructors, Betsy Hobkirk and Karen Bertollini, have 32 years of combined teaching experience.
Yvonne Dalschen
Yvonne Dalschen is a photographer in Oak Ridge. As an outsider, she is looking for signs and meaning, searching for memories and history of places and objects. Living in the Secret Cities of the Manhattan Project has always filled her with unease. For the “Ghosts of the Manhattan Project,” she combined her own work with historical pictures to create new layers of meaning, hinting at untold stories and questioning atomic nostalgia. The Bailey Grant gave her the opportunity for an artist residency where she focused on preparing and printing this body of work.
www.yvonnedalschen.com
Instagram: @yvonnedalschen
Amy Evans
Many years ago, I chose pottery as a vehicle for self-expression as an artist. I found joy and meaning in the making of objects that weave into our daily lives through use. Pottery is an active participant in the coming together of people and the enjoyment of food. I came to understand just how ripe with possibility the connection between pottery and food could be. The idea that the complexities of art and food can exist in the same plane fueled an understanding that this interaction is capable of providing joy and value in our daily lives.
Nature and the natural are inspirations for my surface treatments. I often find inspiration while hiking or walking my dogs. Growing up in a rural area acquainted me with a love and appreciation for the natural world. In my youth, family members blessed me with this love of nature teaching me to identify plants and trees in the gardens and the woods on the family farm.
My first introduction to clay was in high school where I found a place of confidence and familiarity after spending many summers assisting my grandparents in their gardens on their farm. I went on to teach ceramics at summer camps in Maine while earning a BFA from the University of North Texas, and a MFA from East Carolina University. After completing my degrees, I returned to Maine to teach ceramics at Gould Academy. In 2001, I returned to the south where I married and started a family. Since then, I have been a resident artist at several arts and crafts facilities including, the Appalachian Center of Craft in Smithville, TN, Morean Center for Clay in St. Petersburg, FL and the Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, ME. In addition to keeping a home studio, I have been teaching art full-time for 15 years at Walters State Community College in Morristown, TN where I am a professor of art and department chair.
Instagram: @amyevansstudio
Abby Fisher
Abby Fisher is a percussionist and educator who is focused on performing and supporting continued growth of new music. Her solo and collaborative performances have been heard nationally and internationally including: Stony Brook University’s TEDx (Stony Brook, NY), Transplanted Roots Percussion Symposium (Brisbane, Australia and Guanajuato, Mexico), New Music Gathering (Baltimore and Boston), Festival Internacional de Músicas y Artes Sonoras Contemporáneas (Cuenca, Ecuador), Big Ears Festival (Knoxville,TN), Percussive Arts Society International Conventions, and One World Trade Center (NYC). Abby is a dedicated educator and currently teaches at University of Tennessee Knoxville (Lecturer of Percussion), Pellissippi State Community College (Music Instructor), and maintains a studio of piano and percussion students at the Yamaha Music School (Knoxville, TN). She is a co-founder of the duo Fisher/Lau Project with percussionist Matthew Lau, and she is regularly collaborating with composers and musicians on new works. She is the Managing Director for Nief-Norf.
Abby holds degrees from Stony Brook University (D.M.A), New York University (M.M), and Lawrence University (B.M). Abby is a Marimba One, Vic Firth, and Black Swamp Percussion artist. In addition to performing at the First Friday reception on November 5, she will exhibit a video compilation of performance videos, including the ones for which she received a Bailey grant.
Curtis Glover
Curtis has been running his mural business for over six years. Based in Knoxville, he is known for his large-scale, highly detailed work covering a multitude of walls in and around the city. His style and content vary to suit the needs of his clients. As a commercial artist, he mainly works with acrylics and spray cans while adding multiple layers to provide depth in his work—which can be seen from Tennessee to Costa Rica.
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Risa Hricovsky
Risa Hricovsky received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a post-bacc from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BFA from Bowling Green State University. Risa has exhibited nationally and internationally and she has attended many prestigious residencies. Most notable residencies are The Studios at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA, Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Center in Skealskor, Denmark and SIM in Reykjavik. Iceland. Risa Hricovsky is a post-discipline/installation artist. Her work pushes the boundaries between painting and sculpture, and between art, design and craft. The artworks she creates punctuate space through pattern, color and my use of the multiple. Working though dichotomies such as order & chaos, attraction & repulsion and similarity & difference, she makes visual poems about perception. The work juxtaposes similarly colored materials with opposing properties, such as fired porcelain with soft sculpture or paper. In doing so, each material takes on characteristics of the other, giving rise to misperception and subtly introducing tension within the calm of repetition. Through this mimicry and indexical object making begins a critique of our ideological perceptions of different materials.
Instagram: @Risa.Hricovsky
Linda King
My work is influenced by traditions of art making and the idea that artistic practice is a living, breathing thing in which the various parts and pieces work together in harmony. Reworking, recycling, and the pleasure of rendering are important aspects of the process. It is important to feed that entity and create a thriving, working environment. This process is an exploration of and homage to things meaningful-nature, folk creations, spirituality, and catharsis. Birds are a symbol of the soul and of freedom. Peace and solace can be found in nature. My work is about that sensation in part. There is a quiet celebration we can discover through an exploration of the natural world.
Instagram: @lindankingart
Kathleen A. Kinney
Kathleen works in mixed media, fiber and metal arts, and photography. Her studio is in Suite 113 of the Emporium Center.
Andreas Koschan
I have been a photographer my whole life but became more serious at it in the last decade. That said, I have been working in the field of digital imaging for more than 40 years – initially through my work in computer vision in the 80s, while I was still a Ph. D. student in Berlin, Germany. My work in this field progressed over time, ending with many years of research at the University of Tennessee in related areas including image segmentation and enhancement. This technical background has informed my interest in creating art through digital manipulation of photographs, allowing me to add a technical component to my artistic work and use photographic imagery to tell stories about the world we live in.
Megan Lingerfelt
Megan Lingerfelt grew up in Western North Carolina and studied drawing and painting at UNC Asheville. Graduating in 2010 with a BFA she spent the following years building her studio practice in Seattle, where she discovered a love for murals. She now lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee where she continues to work in public art.
Inspired by engineered forms, flora, and fawna her work engulfs the bits and pieces that make her mural locations unique. Exploring the evolving urban landscape and growths of wild greenery, she mingles subject matter with weaving shapes in dreamy jewel tones and desaturated mid hues on surfaces of all sizes. Glazing warmth into light touched surfaces, pushing the shadows into dark depths, her compositions place an emphasis on light, contrast, and a myriad of repetitive forms. When creating for public spaces she works to imbue the character of each site into a design that may serve as a placemaking visual for all to enjoy.
www.meganlingerfelt.com
Instagram: @meganlingerfelt
Sarah Moore
Sarah Moore makes paintings that are invitations into wild places. She brings a multi-disciplinary background in architecture and public health to her creative practice, focusing on the impact that connecting within nature has on our creativity, health, and well-being. Sarah earned an M.Arch degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 2012, and was a Danforth Scholar for the duration of her study there.
Most days I walk alone in silence around the neighborhood near my studio, or go on a hike with friends. I’ve learned from these walks that nature is not a place we go, but relationships we inhabit. My paintings are the embodied expression of documenting how, as I pay deeper attention, a landscape expands from a flat scene into an ecology of meaningful lives which inherently include my own.
Website: https://sarahmoore.studio/
Instagram: @rahmoore_studio
Brigid Oesterling
I am a self-taught jeweler who has been creating jewelry art pieces in Silver and Brass for the past 8 years. I create one-of-a-kind pieces designed to be everyday adornments and custom talisman. I am inspired by the textures and colors of the natural stones that I use such as Turquoise, Malachite, Carnelian and Opal. Every piece is made by using a torch and hand tools to manipulate the base materials, like sheets of Silver and spools of Brass wire. I enjoy the process of creating new and unique pieces of art jewelry that can be worn as well as displayed.
www.brigidko.com
Instagram: @brigidkojewelry
Rebecca Parr
Rebecca Parr is a writer and artist who has spent her career in opera theatre production, and serving as an advocate for people living in poverty. In 2017 she co-founded Next Step Initiative, an organization that works primarily with people living on the streets, and individuals who suffer around issues of addiction. She studied at the University of Tennessee Theatre Department, worked 19 years with Knoxville Opera, and has been working with the UT Opera Theatre program since 2005.
During 2020, Rebecca began painting and continued writing poetry. She began making her own paint using dried flowers and plants and exploring different techniques of mixed media. She has found that the process of creating each painting is where she finds the greatest reward of her art. She seldom knows where each painting is going, and is always surprised by the end result. Rebecca adds found objects in her paintings and often uses symbology in her art.
This past year Rebecca was part of a collaborative song cycle, “From Last Year”, with the University of Tennessee and the University of the Philippines, that featured her poetry, photography, and some of her art. Rebecca is studying sacred art practice with Allyson Grey, and painting classes, thanks to funding from the Bailey grant. She also collaborates with artist Nicholas Dillander, in their Cosby studio.
Roberta Smashey
I am a stained glass artist creating both nature-themed and abstract works using the glass foiling technique developed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. By utilizing hand-made glass sheets of various colors and textures, I produce dynamic depictions of the beauty found in nature. The variations in artisanal glass give a unique feeling of depth and movement with this challenging medium. Using the Tiffany technique coupled with the beauty of glass, and a lifelong study of wildlife, I seek to evoke appreciation of our natural world in all who view my creations.
Alex Smith
Alex Smith is a native Knoxvillian. A graduate of Carson Newman University, he also studied at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and completed his MFA at The New York Academy of Art. He received the Elizabeth Greenshields grant and an Artist’s Teaching Residency at the Altos de Chavon School of Art and Design, and he has been the featured artist at the Dogwood Arts Festival and ArtXtravanza in Knoxville. His work has exhibited at the Emporium in Knoxville as well as numerous galleries in New York, including Sotheby’s, Panepinto Galleries, Dacia Gallery, and the Wilkenson Gallery at The New York Academy of Art.
He enjoyed living and working in Brooklyn, New York until the pandemic. Knoxville has welcomed him home. The past year and a half have informed this new exhibition. Like most of us, I’ve grown accustomed to constant detours and changes of plans. Detours send us down roads we didn’t anticipate, and now that we’ve gone this route, we have had to find new ways to interact and experience the world. This exhibition includes works of New York’s grit alongside East Tennessee’s verdant landscape, ranging from hyper-realism to abstracts. While my landscape has changed, I aim to remain true to my classical training and goal, which is to make work that invites viewers to look closer and know the painting’s story.
www.alexsmithstudios.com
Instagram: @alexsmith_artist
Ben T O Smith
Ben T O Smith makes hand-cut collage artworks out of pieces from magazines, textbooks, photography books and anything he can get his hands on. The pieces range from contemplative to playful, surreal to psychedelic. His artwork has been used for commissions, musical albums, concert and event posters. In addition to making art, he runs a small record label Gezellig Records, releasing music from artists all over the world.
www.bentosmith.com
Twitter and Instagram: @catfoodcollages
Joanna Warren
I am a small leather fabrication studio in Knoxville, dedicated to 100% hand-made goods. I have always loved making things but I discovered working with leather and love the durability and flexibility of the material. My inspiration comes from Japan and Scandinavia considering function and minimal design creating materials with simple beauty and utility as well. Everything is hand cut, punched, sewn and woven, therefore unique details are by design, ensuring your product is one-of-a-kind.
www.Joanna-warren.com
Instagram: @joannawarren0
Brandon Woods
Brandon Woods (b. 1987, Knoxville, TN, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist who creates artworks which bridge art, craft, science, and mathematics. Woods earned his MFA in Painting from SCAD in 2015 and his BFA in Studio Art (Painting and Sculpture) from Middle Tennessee State University in 2010. He has received numerous awards and grants for his work, including, most recently, a Bailey Opportunity Grant through the Knoxville Arts & Culture Alliance. His work has been exhibited and collected throughout the United States and internationally: in New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami, Hong Kong, Canada, and France. His most recent solo exhibition was “Spatium” at the Emporium Center in Knoxville, TN in July, 2021. He currently lives and works in Knoxville.
Instagram: @brandonwoodsart
www.brandonwoodsart.com