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Current + Past Exhibition Images

September 1 - October 21, 2023

Black Utopias: Black Distractions + Disruptions in Time Space is a design research project looking at systems of oppression and resistance through black and white logo designs and illustrations that use the emptiness of white gallery walls as the backdrop for extracting black resistance commentary. The systems examined springboard a burgeoning theory compromised of Black-created systems that can function as a form of Black liberation government in lieu of Black Reparations, justice, and failed integration.



Funding was generously provided by the TN Arts Commission Art Access Program, Arts & Culture Alliance, Knox County, the Department of the Treasury, Jerry’s Artarama, and UTK co-sponsorship from the Department of Africana Studies, Multicultural Student Life at the Frieson Black Cultural Center, the Office of Community Engagement and Outreach, the School of Design, UT Libraries, and the School of Art Programming Committee.



This project was supported in whole or in part, by federal award number 21.027 awarded to the City of Knoxville by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Arts & Culture Alliance.

November 4 - December 15, 2022

A two-person exhibition of work by Birmingham-based artist, Amy Pleasant, and Alfred University associate professor, Katarina Riesing. Using repetition and hard-edged shapes in paint and clay, Pleasant meditates on fragmented silhouettes of the human form. In contrast, Riesing illustrates the patterns of textiles over the contours of the human body, marks on skin left by clothing or people, and skin’s natural blemishes with dye and embroidery.

December 4, 2020 - January 30, 2021

Knoxville native Beauford Delaney persevered through poverty, racial discrimination, and mental illness to become an internationally recognized artist. As a teenager, his work caught the eye of Lloyd Branson and became his apprentice. The opportunity catapulted Delaney towards New York City during the Harlem Renaissance where he cultivated a circle of friends, including poet laureate Countee Cullen, artist Georgia O’Keeffe, and writer James Baldwin. In 1953, Delaney left New York for Paris, France, as Europe had begun attracting African-American artists and writers. His works began to shift from figurative compositions to abstract expressionists of color and light.

The exhibition featured 21 works, including 4 oil on canvas paintings, abstract watercolors, pastel portraits, and 3 self-portraits, that range across various stages of Delaney’s life. Exhibition highlights included a pastel portrait of Harriet Tubman and an oil portrait of Delaney’s longtime friend and frequent model, New York singer Dante Pavone.

2019

Violins of Hope
January 4 – January 27, 2019

The Violins of Hope are a collection of restored violins that were played by Jewish musicians during The Holocaust. These instruments have survived concentration camps, pogroms and many long journeys to tell remarkable stories of injustice, suffering, resilience, and survival. The collection was assembled and restored by Israeli master violin maker and restorer, Amnon Weinstein.

In some cases, the ability to play the violin spared Jewish musicians from more grueling labors or even death. Nearly 50 years ago, Amnon heard such a story from a customer who brought in an instrument for restoration. The customer survived the Holocaust because his job was to play the violin while Nazi soldiers marched others to their deaths. When Amnon opened the violin’s case, he saw ashes. He thought of his own relatives who had perished and was overwhelmed. He could not bring himself to begin the project.

By 1996, Amnon was ready. He put out a call for violins from the Holocaust that he would restore in hopes that the instruments would sound again.

Amnon started locating violins that were played by Jews in the camps and ghettos, painstakingly piecing them back together so they could be brought to life again on the concert stage. Although most of the musicians who originally played the instruments were silenced by the Holocaust, their voices and spirits live on through the violins that Amnon has lovingly restored. He calls these 50 instruments the Violins of Hope.

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Images of Human Rights Portfolio
February 1 – 23, 2019

The South African Bill of Rights was born out of a long struggle against racial segregation and human rights violations. Until the first democratic election in 1994, the majority of South Africans had been excluded from participating in the political process. Talks in the early 1990s between political prisoner Nelson Mandela and then South African leader F.W. DeKlerk ultimately led to free elections and a new government which aimed to respect the rights of all its citizens.

Images of Human Rights features fine art prints, created by artists representing the nine provinces of South Africa and hand printed by master printmaker Jan Jordaan. The print portfolio was conceived of and released in 1996 by the Images of Human Rights Portfolio Committee, in commemoration of the newly post-Apartheid nation’s Bill of Rights. Funds generated from the sale of portfolios are deposited in the Artists for Human Rights Trust account and are used by Amnesty International and other organizations for human rights education programs for the young people of South Africa.

These prints are in the permanent collection of the Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture.

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Big Ears – 4 Experimental Filmmakers
March 1 – 24, 2019

In our fourth-annual collaboration with Knoxville microcinema masters Public Cinema, Big Ears 2019 will host free screenings of films by Beatrice Gibson, Wang Bing, Johann Lurf, and Jodie Mack in the UT Downtown Gallery starting March 1. From an engrossing nine-hour look at Chinese activists in exile to an enormous montage of shots of stars culled from across the history of cinema, it’s one of the most sharply curated blocks of film programming we’ve ever presented.

I’m Only Here to Leave – Tommy Kha
April 5 – 27, 2019

Tommy Kha is a photographer based between Brooklyn, NY and his hometown, Memphis, TN.

He is a recipient of the En Foco Photography Fellowship, the Jessie and Dolph Smith Emeritus Award, and a former artist-in-residence at Center for Photography at Woodstock, Light Work, Fountainhead, and Baxter Street at the Camera Club of New York. In December 2015, Kha published his first monograph, A Real Imitation, through Aint-Bad. His next book, Soft Murders, will be released Fall 2019.

He was the cover of Vice Magazine’s 2017 Photography Issue and a finalist for the Hyeres Photography 2019 Festival.

He occasionally performs, writes, and appears in some films, including Laurie Simmons’ feature, My Art.

Kha holds an MFA in Photography from Yale University.

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Art Source 2019
May 3 – May 17, 2019

Every day, Knox County art teachers devote their time and energy to cultivating creativity and critical skills in their students. For more than a decade, ARTSOURCE, the exhibition dedicated solely to Knox County art educators, has given these same teachers an opportunity to nourish and showcase their own artistic talents. Please join us to celebrate the achievements of our art educators!

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Carl Sublett – A Centennial Celebration
June 7 – July 13, 2019

The UT Downtown Gallery is pleased to present the art of Carl Sublett (1919-2008) celebrating the 100th year anniversary of his birth. Over 20 regional collectors have graciously loaned works that will be on public display together for the first time. This exhibition celebrates the life and work of Knoxville’s beloved painter and UT professor, Carl Sublett. The concept for this tribute exhibition was suggested by the artist’s late son Eric prior to his passing in September 2018. A small number of Eric’s works will also be on display.

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Howard Hull Paintings: 1989 – 2019
July 19 – August 17, 2019

In 1965, Howard Hull began teaching at the UT Knoxville College of Education. During his tenure at UT, Hull’s painting, collages, and sculpture were frequently seen in various competitive Mid-South and one-person invitationals.  Hull’s articles have routinely filled the pages of Arts and Activities, Tennessee Education, and School Arts, and his in-depth history of Tennessee WPA post office murals was published in 1996. Before his 1999 retirement, Hull coordinated numerous art educational workshops, curricular projects and extension courses on behalf of his department. Since leaving UT, he continues to be a productive painter and writer.

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First Year MFA
August 30, 2019

Join us for an exhibition of the incoming MFA class of 2022!

Exhibiting students are:
Muriel Condon – Printmaking
Nuveen Barwari – Painting and Drawing
Nichole Schappert – Painting and Drawing
Hannah Oakes – Painting and Drawing
Ashley Ekstrum – Painting and Drawing
Tasha Lewis – Sculpture
Amalia Mermingas – Ceramics
Gary White – Ceramics

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10x Relay – Cat’s Cradle
September 6 – 28, 2019

The passing back and forth of ideas in painting is like the relay and return of the knotted patterns in the game of cat’s cradle. Each painting is a string configuration that we hold out to be received by another, or that we receive and respond to by adding something new, by proposing another knot, another net. We play cat’s cradle with ourselves, with each other, with art history. Entangled in a myriad of configurations, we start from a place that doesn’t wipe out what comes before – we make paintings of inheritances and remembering.

10 X Relay includes artists: Kylie Heidenheimer, Pinkney Herbert, Erick Johnson, Jackie Meier, Laura Newman, Pierre Obando, Jennifer Riley, Russell Roberts, Lisa Taliano, and Chuck Webster. It is a celebration and recognition of these artists’ indebtedness to each other as friends and painters. Companions in conflict and collaboration, the artists in this show are tied together by the threads of making, thinking and doing, entangled in a painting dialog, bound together in a knotted net of past, present, and future.

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False Calm – Sam Vernon
October 4 – 26, 2019

False Calm is a site-specific installation by Sam Vernon.

Sam Vernon earned her MFA in Painting/Printmaking from Yale University in 2015 and her BFA from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2009.

Her installations combine xeroxed drawings, photographs, paintings and sculptural components in an exploration of personal narrative and identity. She uses installation and performance to honor the past while revising historical memory.  Sam lives in Oakland, CA and teaches printmaking as an Assistant Professor at California College of the Arts (CCA).

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Collecting Histories – Selections from the Collection of Floyd Jones and Mary Sabol
November 1- December 7, 2019

Collecting Histories spotlights the collection of UT alumni Floyd Jones (Transportation/Logistics ’72) and Mary Sabol (Sociology ’72). The couple met as undergrads and have been collecting artwork since their days in Knoxville. The exhibition showcases the couple’s diverse collecting interests—dolls, Black Americana, Black portraiture, and images of children.

The couple have lived in Chicago since the mid-1970s, and first began collecting dolls—an interest Mary acquired from her mother. Her first doll purchase, as an adult, was in Gatlinburg, TN. Their doll collection sparked interest in collecting art and other historical objects. Floyd became an independent doll appraiser and was an appraiser on PBS’s Antiques Roadshow for several seasons.

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2020

Lens – David Wolff
January 3 – 25, 2020

Paintings by Knoxville artist and Fluorescent gallery owner, David Wolff

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AIR Biennial
January 31 – March 6, 2020

The School of Art’s Artist-in-Residence Program was initiated in 1982. Each semester an invited resident artist teaches both undergraduate and graduate level courses in the Painting & Drawing curriculum. The AIR program is highly successful in making a direct connection to the marketplace of ideas that surrounds art centers such as New York City, Chicago, and LA. The AIR invited to campus represent a spectrum of current sensibilities in painting and drawing holding sway in the art world today. This exhibition showcases the work of Dana Lok, Fox Hysen, Tracy Thomason, and Caitlin MacBride.

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The Society at Black Pond – 3 Films by Jessica Sarah Rinland
March 13 – March 28, 2020 (COVID CANCELLATION)

JESSICA SARAH RINLAND

The Society at Black Pond explores the activity within a common land in the south of England. Previously occupied by the 17th century agrarian socialists The Diggers, the land is currently inhabited by a Natural History Society whose occupations include bat and moth trapping, mycology, tree measuring, and botanical walks.

The exhibition includes three film works that offer a social and natural history of this particular location while exploring more intimately human’s relationship with and within land and nature.

Black Pond

JESSICA SARAH RINLAND, 2018, 43 MINUTES
16MM FILM, 35MM PHOTOGRAPHS AND ARCHIVE DIGITAL TRANSFER

Black Pond is an odyssey through a common land in the south of England told through the hands of the members of the local natural history society. After two years of filming on the land, the footage was shown to the members of the Society. Their memories and responses were recorded and subsequently used as part of the film’s narration.

Bosque

JESSICA SARAH RINLAND, 2007/2008, 4 MINUTES
16MM FILM, DIGITAL TRANSFER

Rinland has lived near these commons most of her life. In 2007 when she first picked up a Bolex H16, a tool she has since gone on to work with on most of her films, she filmed on this land. Bosque shows her first study of this land in 2007 and 2008 when a significant shift occurred: trees were being felled in exchange for heathland.

Moths Interior

JESSICA SARAH RINLAND, 2018, 3 MINUTES
16MM FILM, DIGITAL TRANSFER

Moths Interior shows Paul Wheeler, amateur entomologist and member of Elmbridge Natural History Society, at home dissecting a micro-moth’s genitalia with a microscope he rescued from a local skip. This process is necessary to determine the species.

In March 2020, the UT Downtown Gallery closed to the public due to COVID-19

Please click here to view our virtual ART SOURCE 2020 exhibition.

First the Wurst
August 26 – 29, 2020

An exhibition of First Year MFA Students – Griffin Allman, Abby Hedley, Chloe Wack, Megan Wolfkill, Anthony Huang, Gino Castellano, Casey Wolhar, Landin Eldridge, Saloni Parekh, and Haleigh Eicher.

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Living Epistle – Steve A. Prince
September 4 – 26, 2020

Steve A. Prince will present Living Epistle, and exhibition of large-scale prints and drawings at the UT Downtown Gallery September 4 – 26, 2020.

During his time on campus, Prince will work with faculty and students in the School of Art Printmaking Program in the creation of a large woodcut and a stone lithograph. His exhibition is co-sponsored by the Beck Cultural Exchange Center and his campus visit is supported by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Engagement, the UTK Africana Studies Program, and the UT School of Art.

Steve A. Prince is a native of New Orleans, LA and is currently the Director of Engagement and Distinguished Artist in Residence, Muscarelle Museum of Art at William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia. He received his BFA from Xavier University of Louisiana and his MFA from Michigan State University. He has shown his art internationally in various solo, group, and juried exhibitions, at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, the National Gallery of the Bahamas, the Museum of Cultural Arts Center in Santa Catarina, Brazil, the Grand Rapids Museum of Art, the Portsmouth Courthouse Museum, Hampton University Museum, the Museum of African American Culture in New Orleans, Xavier University of Louisiana Gallery, Charles H. Taylor Art Center in Hampton, and the Peninsula Fine Arts Center.

Prince has created a number of public commissions, including large-scale sculptural and printworks. Prince is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the 2010 Teacher of the Year for the City of Hampton Virginia. In addition to being an accomplished lecturer and preacher in both secular and sacred settings, Prince has conducted workshops internationally. He is represented by Eyekons Gallery in Grand Rapids, Michigan and ZuCot Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia.

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Through the Trees – Tom Riesing
October 2 – 31, 2020

Through the Trees, presents my recent paintings and drawings produced since 2007. The images are thematic and site specific generated from extensive observations and time spent exploring East Tennessee, the Delaware Valley, the Oregon Coast, and Lower Silesia in Poland among others. I respond to the elegance of the trees, and to the light and space that exists between and beyond the persistent verticality of the trees.

It is evident in this exhibition that drawing is an essential component of my studio practice. I utilize drawing not only as a means to develop ideas before and during the painting process, but also as independent works of art. Materially they include graphite, silverpoint, and ballpoint pen. Ballpoint pen is my preferred method of sketching. I respond to its fluidity and to its unique ways of developing relative densities and layers of information. The graphite drawings allow for erasing and reduction while the silverpoint drawings require a more deliberate subtle approach to image and surface development.

– Thomas Riesing
Riesing received his BFA and MFA from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. He taught painting and drawing at the University of Tennessee School of Art for 37 years and most recently was the Chair of the School of Art at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana before his retirement.

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Shiny – Drawings by David Wilson
November 6 – 25, 2020

Shiny, an upcoming exhibition by Professor Emeritus David Wilson at the UT Downtown Gallery, will feature 49 drawings of imitation silver leaf on translucent vellum.

Wilson began his academic career at the UT School of Art in 1985. He uses non-traditional materials and approaches, including process and chance, in his large temporary artworks and drawings. The drawings in Shiny rely on reflected light to reveal the image.

“This exhibition is an opportunity to realize images that have been in my head for a long time and to do so using a process that makes them new.”

All the drawings in Shiny are available for purchase, and proceeds benefit the UT School of Art David C. Wilson Community Outreach Endowment that supports local community engagement projects and initiatives by students and faculty. The endowment was established in honor of Wilson’s service to the School of Art by his long-time friends and School of Art development council members Sarah and Oliver Smith.

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2021

Beauford Delaney – Transcending Race and Time
December 4 – January 30, 2021

The UT Downtown Gallery is pleased to present a selection of paintings and drawings on loan from the Estate of Beauford Delaney. This exhibition of 21 works includes 4 oil on canvas paintings, abstract watercolors, pastel portraits, and 3 self-portraits. Some of these pieces have never been exhibited publicly.

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Beauford and Joseph Delaney – Lives in Art
February 5 – 27, 2021

In 1970, Beauford and Joseph Delaney were approached by art historian Elsa Honig Fine at the University of Tennessee about the possibility of a joint exhibition of their paintings at the university’s McClung Gallery. Beauford had agreed in principle, and on April 4th, Mrs. Fine wrote to Beauford in Paris to say that the show – in September and October – would be sponsored by the Black Student Union, that it would be retrospective, and that the union would pay to ship his paintings from Paris to Knoxville. Unfortunately, due to Beauford’s fragile mental health, the joint exhibition never came to fruition and became a solo exhibition of Joseph’s drawings and parade paintings. Beauford was regretful that he could not participate, but very proud of this accomplishment for his brother.

Now, 50 years later, this first joint exhibition of their art features works loaned from the estate of Beauford Delaney and works from the permanent collection of the Ewing Gallery of Art + Architecture, and the private collection of Dr. Fred Moffatt.

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Salvador Dali’s Divine Comedy
March 5 – 27, 2021

In 1957, the Italian government commissioned Dali to create a complete set of illustrations for Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the author’s birth. Dali began the arduous task of selecting imagery and creating a watercolor painting for each of the 100 cantos of the poem. Shortly after Dali started the project, the Italian government withdrew its commission. Italian citizens had been outraged that a Spanish artist had been selected for this undertaking, instead of inviting an Italian artist to honor one of Italy’s greatest authors. However, it was very fitting that one of the leading artists in the Surrealist movement would be chosen to interpret the bizarre punishments of Inferno and Purgatorio and the fantastical images of Paradiso that Dante created – drawing inspiration from classical and biblical imagery, as well as his own imagination.

The UT Downtown Gallery is pleased to present the complete collection of 100 prints. The prints are part of the permanent collection of the Ewing Gallery of Art + Architecture and were a gift by alumnus, Gary Johnson.

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Community of Eight
April 2 – 30, 2021

This exhibition recognizes the contributions of our full-time faculty at area community colleges – Roane State, Walters State, and Pellissippi State.

Join us in celebrating the work of Jennifer Brickey, Caroline Covington, Amy Evans, Stacy Jacobs, Jeff Lockett, Herb Rieth, Jessie Van der Laan, and Bryan Wilkerson.

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Artsource
May 7 – 22, 2021

Every day, Knox County art teachers devote their time and energy to cultivating creativity and critical skills in their students. For more than a decade, ARTSOURCE, the exhibition dedicated solely to Knox County art educators, has given these same teachers an opportunity to nourish and showcase their own artistic talents. Please join us to celebrate the achievements of our art educators!

Walker Evans and James Agee
June 4 – August 20, 2021

80 years ago, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was published. To commemorate the anniversary of this text by Knoxville-born author, James Agee, we are exhibiting photographs by Walker Evans from the Ewing Gallery permanent collection that accompany that text.

Walker Evans’ photographs paired with James Agee’s classic work, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, served as the culmination of Evans’ talents as well as the realistic portrayal of the conditions of the American tenant farmer during the 1930s. Walker Evans’ images revolutionized the standards of documentary photography.

This exhibition includes 50 framed photographs printed by the Library of Congress from Evans’ original negatives and original archival material from the James Agee Papers loaned by the University of Tennessee SpecialCollections.

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New in Town
August 25 – 28, 2021

Join us for an exhibition of the work of the UT School of Art MFA class of 2024. We are excited to welcome these students to Rocky Top!

Exhibiting students are:
Casey Wolhar – Time-Based Art
Haleigh Eicher – Ceramics
Abby Hedley – Sculpture
Griffin Allman – Painting + Drawing
Landin Eldridge – Painting + Drawing
Saloni Parekh – Painting + Drawing
Megan Wolfkill – Painting + Drawing
Gino Castellanos – Printmaking
Anthony Huang – Printmaking
Chloe Wack – Printmaking

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Alabama Abstraction: Paintings by William Dooley + Alex McClurg
September 3 – 25, 2021

Alabama Abstractions features paintings by William Dooley and Alex McClurg. William Dooley serves as the director of the Moody Gallery at The University of Alabama,Tuscaloosa. Alex McClurg received his MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Tennessee in 2013 and is currently head preparator at the Birmingham Museum of Art.

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Illumination: The Sculpture of James O. Clark
October 1 – 30, Illumination: The Sculpture of James O. Clark

James O. Clark is a New York-based sculptor who works with light and illumination.

“Light as a material has illuminated my creative search, I continue to be captivated by the mysterious dialogue between light and form. Light is ephemeral, as it dances and changes composing space, defines, reflects, refracts, bends, and teases the volume and mass of forms. Light has created a symbiotic relationship with me in my exploration capturing my childhood creative adventure and developing an exciting lifelong journey.”

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Chromatic Rhythm – James Little
November 5 – 27, 2021

Born in Memphis, Tennessee, JAMES LITTLE (b. 1952) received a BFA from the Memphis Academy of Art (1974) and then an MFA from Syracuse University (1976). Since the 1970s, the work of James Little has been extensively exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe. Among his awards and honors, Little has received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award in Painting in 2009 and the Pollock-Krasner Award in 2000. In 2016, Little was commissioned by the Metropolitan Transit Authority to create public artwork for the Long Island Rail Road’s new Brooklyn-bound platform at Jamaica Station.

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2015

Paul Sacaridiz: Configurations
January 23 – February 28, 2015

The work in this exhibition explores the non-objective and propositional quality that sculpture can have, and the ways in which we can understand something devoid of specificity and illustration. Presented on custom-built risers and linear structures, individual components are often physically or conceptually networked together with arrangements of objects ranging from the random and chaotic to the precise and articulate. Through careful positioning and intentional framing the works are suggestive of abstracted models and diagrammatic systems that allude to a sculptural logic that is both pragmatic and allusive at the same time.

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Time and Again: Ruth Weisberg
March 6 – 27, 2015

Ruth Weisberg has been an important influence on printmaking both as an artist and educator. Her creative activity and scholarship encompasses not only studio production in printmaking, painting, and drawing, but central and influential articles, essays and book chapters that have played a vital role in advancing print theory. Her 1986 essay “Syntax of the Print” published in the Tamarind Papers is frequently assigned to students in printmaking programs and remains relevant almost 30 years after it was first published. As one of her nominators, Mark Pascale, Associate Curator of Printmaking at the Art Institute of Chicago, praised not only her work as a printmaker and draftsman, he also emphasized her writings as an important contribution to the field of printmaking. Ruth Weisberg is 2015 recipient of the SGC International Printmaker Emeritus Award.

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ARTSOURCE 2015
April 3 – 17, 2015

Every day, Knox County art teachers devote their time and energy to cultivating creativity and critical skills in their students. For more than a decade, Art Source, the exhibition dedicated solely to Knox County art educators, has given these same teachers an opportunity to nourish and showcase their own artistic talents.

Click here to view installation images

Strangers and Stand-Ins: Sunita Prasad
April 22-25, 2015

The three works on display express my desire to distill and undermine normative expectations about which behaviors and expressions are appropriate for whom. A choreographic example can be found in Presumptuous?, an ongoing video series shot in cities around the world which disrupts the codes of urban co-existence by inserting hyper-intimate and often queer interactions into public space.

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The Civil War Series: Richard J. LeFevre
May 1 – June 27, 2015

Richard J. LeFevre’s Civil War Series presents the history of United States Civil War (1861 – 1865) through works on paper that depict 32 of the war’s most significant battles. By combining his love of history and his skill as an illustrator, LeFevre used inventive mixed-media techniques to create these powerful images inspired by his personal investigation into that terrible and definitive era.

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Land Report
July 3 – 31, 2015

Jason S. Brown, Brian R. Jobe, David L. Jones, Patrick Kikut, and Shelby Shadwell

The Land Report Collective deals with landscape in fundamental ways and as a foundational reference point. Brown considers the politics of mountaintop removal in his construction of objects and installations while also creating playful formal assemblages. Jobe crafts meeting places for public interaction through the delineation of pathways and works with brick and wood. Jones responds to desert environments with experimental interactions, model scale sculpture, and large scale outdoor works. Kikut incorporates a lifelong interest in the horizon line in a series of paintings with flat Midwestern landscapes as his muse. Shadwell views the landscape from a non-traditional lens, responding to ephemeral images from highway road cameras, monumental mining operations and the optical nature of the salt flats through drawing, sculpture and video installation.

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Life in Light: An Exhibition of Poems in Paintings
August 7 – 15, 2015

Life in Light is an exhibition of paintings inspired by the poetry of local doctor, Humayun Kabir. Dr. Kabir’s poetry has been transformed into image by Bangladeshi artist, Mostafiz Karigar.

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Non-Exempt: A Staff Exhibition
September 4 – 26, 2015

Our hardworking staff members step out from behind the scenes and exhibit what they work on when they’re not at work.

Media and subject matter were not stipulated at the outset of this exhibition. The pieces on display, therefore, represent an honest ‘work sample’ from a talented segment of the UT community in the School of Art and College of Architecture and Design whose artistic skills might otherwise remain unrecognized outside of their duties as staff members.

Devin Balara – Metal Shop Tech, Sculpture/Installation; Mike C. Berry – UT Downtown Gallery Manager, Painting; Eric Cagley – Ewing Gallery Staff, Painting; Debbie Cooper – School of Art Staff, Quilting; Heather Eades – Media Pool, Painting; Jeremy Hammond – Wood Shop Manager, Sculpture; Tally Locke – Fab Lab Manager, Sculpture; Sarah McFalls – Ewing Gallery Staff, Multi-media installation; Hannah Shimabukuro – Printmaking Tech, Installation/photography; Jason Tyler – School of Art Media Tech, Photography

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Lorrie Fredette: between locations
October 2 – 31, 2015

Lorrie Fredette creates site-specific investigations that examine beauty, harmony, and comfort to comprehend the incomprehensible aspects of infection, pandemic and the plague.

Her pieces have been exhibited nationally and internationally including solo and group exhibitions in the US and Europe. Exhibition venues include Cynthia–Reeves Project (Brattleboro, VT), Art Southampton (Southampton, NY), Seton Hall University (South Orange, NJ), Bank of America Headquarters (Charlotte, NC) Mass MoCA (North Adams, MA), Cape Cod Museum of Art (Dennis, MA) and Jyvaskyla Art Museum (Jyvaskyla, Finland) Fredette holds a BFA in sculpture from the Herron School of Art / Indiana University. Cynthia-Reeves in New York represents her work.

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John Messinger
November 6 – 28, 2015

John Messinger combines elements of photography and tapestry to create large-scale, 3-dimensional mixed media artworks. His body of work consists of thousands of individual 3.25 x 4.25 inch instant photographs assembled together to create photographic tapestries that examine the proliferation and ubiquity of the photograph in the digital age.

Inspired by the notions of singularity and time, Messinger combines hundreds of varying images and transforms them into a single experience. His work fuses indexical and abstract imagery to question the notion of photography, photographer, and subject.

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2016 

You Call That Art!: An exhibition of editorial cartoons by Charlie Daniel
December 4, 2015 – January 29, 2016

The exhibition featured a large selection of “Rosy’s Diner” cartoons as well as a variety of subjects and themes from the past two decades. Charlie Daniel came to Knoxville in 1958 as the editorial cartoonist for The Knoxville Journal. He moved to the Knoxville News Sentinel in January 1992 and has been the editorial cartoonist here ever since.

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Larry Brown: Science and Nature
February 5 – 27, 2016

Larry Brown is a painter who has taught drawing in the Cooper Union School of Art Since 1991. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Washington State University and his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Arizona.</p><p>Larry’s paintings and works on paper are based on concerns with relative relationships between science and nature. His most recent work is defined by a geo-political narrative focused on ecological and geological tensions related to the environment and climate.

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Allison Berkoy: Performances

Jonathan Lukens: Time-Based Visualizations of Local Particulate Matter Data
March 4 – 26, 2016

Allison Berkoy presents recent works in video, electronic sculpture, and interactive installation. The exhibition features performances by tea cups, a cockroach, a clock, projected actors, computer algorithms, and more.

Jonathan Lukens employs design as a means of understanding and explaining relationships beyond the visual. This exhibition presents time-based visualizations of particulate matter data recorded at an air monitoring station near Pearl Place and Stewart Street in Knoxville. Particulate matter is a term for airborne pollution in the form of very small particles which can pass through the throat and nose and enter the lungs.

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Modes of Faltering: Shambahvi Kaul
April 1-2, 2016

Artist Shambhavi Kaul premiered her latest video installation, Modes of Faltering, at the UT Downtown Gallery as part of a special exhibition in collaboration with the Big Ears music festival. Kaul’s work has been exhibited in galleries and on the film festival circuit, including the Toronto International Film Festival, the Berlinale, the New York Film Festival, the London Film Festival, Rotterdam, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and the Shanghai Bienniale.

Art Source 2016
May 6 – 20, 2016

Every day, Knox County art teachers devote their time and energy to cultivating creativity and critical skills in their students. For more than a decade, Art Source, the exhibition dedicated solely to Knox County art educators, has given these same teachers an opportunity to nourish and showcase their own artistic talents.

Click here to view installation images.

Through the Lens of Ed Westcott
June 2 – August 6, 2016

In 1942, the Army Corps of Engineers relocated James Edward Westcott to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and assigned him the task of official photographer for the Manhattan Project – a massive wartime effort to produce the first atomic bomb. As secrecy of the project was paramount, the “atomic” city was fenced, and communication with the outside world was limited. What is more, no cameras were allowed inside its boundaries. Thus, Westcott became not only the official photographer for the Manhattan Project, but he also became the sole photographer of the social and recreational events of Oak Ridge. It is only through Westcott’s photographs that the visual history of Oak Ridge can be appreciated.

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Top Soil: Body Farm
August 19 – 27, 2016

Top Soil: Body Farm is an exhibition of the incoming class of 2019 MFA students. The exhibition includes, Printmaking, Transmedia & Design, Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics and installations. These student artists have chosen UTK School of Art as their home for the next three years to complete their Master of Fine Arts Degree. The exhibition highlights their current work and their artistic accomplishments prior to arriving at the University of Tennessee.

Artists included in the exhibition are: Katie Gentner – painting and drawing, University of Wisconsin, Parkside;  Eric Hines – painting and drawing, Ohio State University;  Miles Ingrassia – printmaking, OCAD University, Canada; Holly Kelly – sculpture, Massachusetts College of Art & Design; Cara McKinley – ceramics, Florida Atlantic University; Rachel Sevier – ceramics, Southeastern Louisiana University;  Mengmeng Shang – Transmedia Design, Communication University of China; Lila Shull – printmaking, Winthrop University; Baxter Stults – printmaking, University of Alabama, Huntsville; Michael Tracy – painting and drawing, University of Iowa.

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Persona: Process Portraiture
September 2-30, 2016

An exhibition of work by Leah Schrager, Marcia Goldenstein, Judith Page, and Gail Skudera.

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Fired Up! UT Collects Ceramics
October 4 – 29, 2016

Fired Up! UT Collects Ceramics showcases a collection of work from the Ewing Gallery permanent collection as well as from private collections of professors, staff and community members.

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Guts Coming and Going: Jessica Ann
November 4 – 23, 2016

An exhibition of new and recent works by artist Jessica Ann entitled; Guts Coming and Going. Featuring video, sculpture, and interactive installation, the exhibition explores the material potential at the edge of the world wide web. Composed of many parts, each component is networked together by Ann’s desire to meet what she calls the “aggregate monster.” An entity lurking and learning amidst the ever cooled data banks of your external and eternal memory. Data siphoned daily among a trillion other self published transmissions, happening across facebook, text messages, phone calls, emails, twitter, cameras, and networked refrigerators. What fabulation might emerge among all this noise is presented here as objects and subjects oozing off the grid and into mixed reality.

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Drawn But Not Forgotten
December 2 – 23, 2016

Drawn But Not Forgotten is a selection of sketches and lithographs from the Ewing Gallery Permanent Collection. On display are working and finished sketches and print portfolios from four illustrators working during the “Golden Age” of illustration. The four men whose works you see here, worked tirelessly drafting ad campaigns, illustrating children’s books, comic strips, and covers for weekly publications, such as The Saturday Evening Post. The Ewing Gallery is fortunate to have acquired many of these works through generous gifts to the gallery. The 4 drawings on display by F.R. Gruger were given by his son, F.R. Gruger Jr.. The sixteen lithographs illustrating scenes from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer were given by Harold Shaw. Many of the illustrations by Walter Haskell Hinton were given by his son, Ray Hinton and later by his children as part of Ray’s estate. The illustrations and prints by Harrison Cady were gifts of David Eldredge, a nephew of Cady.

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2017

Meandering Mythologies: Timothy Massey and Gary Monroe
January 6 – 26, 2017

Meandering Mythologies is a two-person exhibition featuring the work of Timothy Massey and Gary Monroe. Timothy Massey is the associate professor of art and chair of the Art Department at SUNY Brockport. He also serves as the director for the Tower Fine Art Gallery at SUNY Brockport. He studied printmaking and drawing at the University of Tennessee and Ohio State University. Gary Monroe is an artist from Knoxville, Tennessee who has exhibited nationally since the 1980’s. Most recently Monroe’s work has been featured in one-person exhibitions at the Estel Gallery, Nashville, TN, in 2011; the Clayton Center for the Arts at Maryville College in 2011; the Leu Art Gallery at Belmont University, Nashville, TN in 2009; and the Cue Art Foundation, New York, NY, in 2006.

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Intersections: an exhibition of glass from Ball State
February 3 – 25, 2017

Ball State University Glick Center for Glass opened in fall 2011 and this relatively new program has made significant grown and national recognition with the support of fellow educators and artists using this medium. Joining Ball State University faculty and students in this exhibit are Jonathan Chapman and Kristin Thielking from the University of Wisconsin, Stevens-Point, and Eoin Breadon from the University of Wisconsin, River Falls. It is through the intersections of Ball State University’s students and their mentors that the glass program is evolving from its regional prominence to national recognition.  The glass program, and the Glick Center for Glass at Ball State marks a return of glass production to Muncie. The university gets its name from the Ball brothers who had a food storage manufacturing business in New York and Muncie that made sealable glass jars for home canning – colloquially known as ball jars. In the 1880s glass manufacturing was moved from New York to Muncie due to an abundance of natural gas in the area. By 1917, the brothers had bought the foreclosed Indiana Normal University and gave it to the state of Indiana, creating what would become Ball State University.

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Open Ended: films by Kevin Jerome Everson
March 3 – 31, 2017

With a sense of place and historical research, Kevin Jerome Everson’s films combine scripted and documentary moments with rich elements of formalism. The subject matter is the gestures or tasks caused by certain physical, social-economic, and environmental conditions in the lives of working class African Americans and other people of African descent. Instead of standard realism he favors a strategy that abstracts everyday actions and statements into theatrical gestures, in which archival footage is re-edited or re-staged, real people perform fictional scenarios based on their own lives and historical observations intermesh with contemporary narratives. The films suggest the relentlessness of everyday life—along with its beauty—but also present oblique metaphors for art-making. This exhibition is in partnership with The Public Cinema and Big Ears music festival.

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Breach: Alison Saar
April 7 – 29, 2017

Alison Saar weaves narratives relating to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 into the mixed-media sculpture and paintings featured in Breach. Saar explores issues of gender, race, racism, and the African diaspora. She mines mythology, ritual, history, music, and her biracial heritage as sources for her work. During a 2013 residency at the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, Saar was dismayed to see how little had been done to rebuild African American communities devastated by Hurricane Katrina eight years earlier. Upon her return to Los Angeles, she began researching the histories of American floods and the effect on African Americans. The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927, described as one of the worst natural river disasters in U.S. history, piqued her interest. Heavy rains resulted in the river breaching levees, creating a historic catastrophe that had a profound impact on the life of African Americans living in the Mississippi Delta. The flood exposed the conditions of poor African American sharecroppers and tenant farmers and their relationship with cotton plantation owners. The flood also resulted in social, cultural, federal policy, and political changes. With water imagery woven throughout, Breach is the culmination of Saar’s creative research on American rivers and their historical relationship to the lives of African Americans. Through mixed media sculpture, paintings, and works on paper, she explores floods not only as natural phenomena; but also the complex interaction of social, cultural, and political factors associated with flooding and its aftermath.

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Art Source 2017
May 5 – May 20, 2017

Every day, Knox County art teachers devote their time and energy to cultivating creativity and critical skills in their students. For more than a decade, Art Source, the exhibition dedicated solely to Knox County art educators, has given these same teachers an opportunity to nourish and showcase their own artistic talents.

Click here to view installation images.

Living On: Tennessee Survivors and Liberators
June 2 – July 27, 2017

Living On is an exhibition of 24 portraits of holocaust survivors and liberators living in Tennessee by Robert Heller. Heller, a professor in the School of Journalism and Electronic Media at the University of Tennessee since 1986, received his B.S. and M.A. degrees in photojournalism from Syracuse University. He taught photography and graphics for five years at the University of Miami, and was publications designer and photographer at the State University of New York College at New Paltz, and Elmira College in New York. Heller also taught photography at The Center for Photography at Woodstock, New York. His photographs have been selected for numerous juried exhibitions and he continues to do freelance work in both graphic design and photography. Living On is a project of the Tennessee Holocaust Commission, which is funded by an annual appropriation from the Tennessee State Legislature and by private donations. Assistance in the development of this documentary project was provided, as well, by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Inc. The traveling exhibition was curated by Susan W. Knowles.

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Reprocessed
August 4 – 19, 2017

Reprocessed is an exhibition of art by three Knoxville artists who use found imagery and materials to create their unique pieces – Judi Gaston, Kelly Hider, and Beth Meadows Judi Gaston recalls as a child poring over books with photographs of exotic places. Now she seizes every opportunity to visit far away lands – Kenya, India, Peru, the Amazon Basin, Australia, Samoa… She tries to incorporate some of the contributions that these cultures have made, blending them in new and distinctive forms using old buttons, beads, patching, knotting and embroidery techniques in her woven clothing. Along with her wearable fashions, she also designs a recycled wearable art series. She likes making wearables that have a history of having lived previous lives. Beth Meadows‘ artwork is inspired by fashion and design, folk art, children’s books, and the strength, confidence, and beauty of women. She lives and works in Knoxville, Tennessee. Kelly Hider was raised in Rochester, NY. She received her BFA from SUNY Brockport in 2007, and an MFA from the University of Tennessee in 2011. She is a founding member of the Vacuum Shop Studios, where her studio is currently located, and is Co-Chair of the Dogwood Regional Fine Arts Exhibit. Hider is the Gallery Coordinator at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts and resides in Knoxville, TN.

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Dual Current: Inseparable Elements in Painting and Architecture
September 1 – October 7, 2017

Dual Current: Inseparable Elements in Painting and Architecture, curated by Gabriele Evertz, examines the relationship between painting and architecture in a contemporary context through color, shape, and theory. The artists whose works are featured in this exhibition are: Josef Albers (American, born Germany, 1888–1976), Matthew Deleget (American, born 1972), Peter Dudek (American, born 1952), Cris Gianakos (Greek-American, born 1934), Michelle Grabner (American, born 1962), Lynne Harlow (American, born 1968), Changha Hwang (Korean, born 1969), Russell Maltz (American, born 1952), Rossana Martinez (Puerto Rican, born 1969), Kristine Marx (American, born 1969), and Manfred Mohr (German, born 1938). Their works link three-dimensional space and the picture plane to create radical new forms.

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Click here to view the exhibition catalogue.

Morehshin Allahyari
October 20 – November 22, 2017

Morehshin Allahyari is an artist, activist, educator, and occasional curator. She is the recipient of the leading global thinkers of 2016 award by Foreign Policy magazine. Morehshin was born and raised in Iran and moved to the United States in 2007. Her work deals with the political, social, and cultural contradictions we face every day. She thinks about technology as a philosophical toolset to reflect on objects and as a poetic means to document our personal and collective lives struggles in the 21st century. Morehshin is the co-author of The 3D Additivist Cookbook in collaboration with writer/artist Daniel Rourke– (published on December 2016 online in 3DPDF format and in print by the Institute of Networked Cultures). Her modeled, 3D-printed sculptural reconstructions of ancient artifacts destroyed by ISIS, titled Material Speculation: ISIS, have received widespread curatorial and press attention and have been exhibited worldwide.

Nocturnal Suns
December 1, 2017 – January 6, 2018

An exhibition of work by 4 professors from the University of Tennessee School of Art: Emily Bivens, 4D;  John Kelley, 4D,  Mary Laube, painting; and John Powers, sculpture.

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2018

Stage Left: Christina West
January 24 – March 8, 2018

In this immersive installation, Christina A. West integrates figurative sculptures into a space that is suggestive of a house, playfully alluding to the idea of the home as a stage set.  “Stage left” is a term used in theatre to direct actors as they move around the stage.   Though a term traditionally used to orient, it is used here as a foil to highlight the viewer’s disorientation within the fabricated space, while reinforcing theatrical associations with the installation. As people move through the gallery, spaces recede and reflect, sometimes offering a glimpse into another room, sometimes reflecting back the space one is in, and occasionally reflecting a reflection. Additionally, exposed studs on one side of each wall create a sense of front and back (or stage and backstage) that shifts throughout the gallery.  Objects such as sheets, blinds, and picture frames conjure the context of the home, charging this “stage” with a sense of a private space. As viewers bend, squat, and peek around corners to view tableaus, their own reflections appear throughout the space highlighting their participation in the scenes.

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10,000 Shards of Bliss (the rhythm that forgets itself)
March 16 – 31, 2018

For his film installation at The University of Tennessee Knoxville’s Downtown Gallery, in conjunction with the 2018 Big Ears Festival, Los Angeles based collage film artist Lewis Klahr will present a looped, rotating selection of his films that explore the vicissitudes of time and memory. Lewis Klahr uses found images and sound to explore the intersection of memory and history. He is primarily known for his uniquely idiosyncratic films, which he began creating in 1977 and has screened extensively in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Lewis Klahr teaches in the Theater School of the California Institute of the Arts and is represented by The Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London.

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On the Fringe of Conformity: Clarence Morgan
April 5 – 28, 2018

This exhibition of drawings and paintings explore linear patterns that operate in a pictorial space. Utilizing random shapes and biomorphic forms within an intricate network of drawing, collage elements, and subtle color, Morgan’s work ranges from highly patterned organic painting compositions to meticulously articulated and somewhat minimal collage-drawings. A native of Philadelphia, PA, Clarence Morgan has been a professor in the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota since 1992.

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Art Source 2018
May 4 – May 19, 2018

Every day, Knox County art teachers devote their time and energy to cultivating creativity and critical skills in their students. For more than a decade, ARTSOURCE, the exhibition dedicated solely to Knox County art educators, has given these same teachers an opportunity to nourish and showcase their own artistic talents.

Click here to view installation images.

Celebrating the Life and Art of Kimberly D. Iles
June 1 – July 14, 2018

Kimberly D. Iles was known for her vivacity, generosity of spirit, and passion for the arts. She graduated with honors from the University of Tennessee in 1990, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. As a graphic designer, she poured her talent and energy into her work for clients ranging from Oak Ridge National Laboratories to the White House tech corps, and started her own very successful design firm, Ilesnet Design. She designed a web-based textbook – the first of its kind – for the Computational Science Education Project, a K-12 educational program to teach the principles of high-performance computing. She later transitioned into a full-time career in fine art, exhibiting her paintings and photographs in juried shows around the world.

Iles and her husband, Dr. James J. Hack, established the Kimberly D. Iles Art Scholarship Endowment in 2015. The endowment supports multiple scholarships awarded annually to undergraduate students in the School of Art.

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Alumni in the Permanent Collection
August 3 – 25, 2018

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The Dirty Dozen – First Year MFA Exhibition
August 31 – September 1, 2018

Exhibiting students are:

Alissa Walls, Washington & Lee University
Quynh Nguyen Duc Diem, University of Architecture, Ho Chi Minh City
Erin Wohletz, University of Nevada-Reno
Mary Climes, Art Institute of Chicago
Gina Stucchio, University of South Florida
Kate Clark, University of Minnesota- Twin Cities
Conor G. McGrann, Syracuse University
Nyasha Madamombe, Chinhoyi University of Technology, Zimbabwe
Lauren Terry, VCU
Lilly Saywitz, Boston University
Kelsie Conley, VCU
Jake Miller, Western Illinois University

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Ben Seamons
September 7 – 29, 2018

The UT Downtown Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of work by Ben Seamons. Ben received his MFA in Painting from the University of Tennessee in 2012. He passed away in 2016, and this exhibition is in celebration of his life.

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Chakaia Booker: Auspicious Behavior
October 5 – 27, 2018

Sculptor Chakaia Booker fuses ecological concerns with explorations of racial and economic difference, globalization, and gender by recycling discarded tires into complex assemblages.Booker began to integrate discarded construction materials into large, outdoor sculptures in the early 1990s. Tires resonate with her for their versatility and rich range of historical and cultural associations. Booker slices, twists, weaves, and rivets this medium into radically new forms and textures, which easily withstand outdoor environments.

Face To Face – Joseph Delaney
November 2 – December 8, 2018
An exhibition of portraits by Knoxville-born artist, Joseph Delaney.

2011

Walter McConnell: Installation in Clay
February 4 – 26, 2011

McConnell, who is well recognized for his large-scale, unfired ceramic sculptures will work with UT art students to construct this project. McConnell’s installations address the relationship between nature and culture – more specifically, the means through which contemporary culture constructs an understanding of nature. McConnell currently serves on the faculty at the New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred, NY.

Seeing Things: Joel Carreiro
March 4 – 26, 2011

Joel Carreiro’s work organizes and recomposes small squares of imagery borrowed from Renaissance paintings, European drawings and Medieval manuscripts and transforms them into large works on wood panels that create a new visual language entirely different from its original intent. Joel Carreiro is an artist based in New York City.

Art of Poland
April 1 – 30, 2011

The UT Downtown Gallery is especially pleased to present Art of Poland, the Collection of Ambassador & Mrs. Victor Ashe during the month of April and the Dogwood Arts Festival Celebration. This exhibition includes paintings, sculpture, folk art and glass works by some Poland’s leading artists working today such as Edvard Dwurnik, Stanislaw Borowski, Leszek Sokol and Michal Puszczynski among others. Victor Ashe, was mayor of Knoxville from 1987-2003 and served as the U.S. Ambassador to Poland from 2004 until 2009.

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ARTSOURCE 2011
May 6 – 27, 2011

Every day, Knox County art teachers devote their time and energy to cultivating creativity and critical skills in their students.  For more than a decade, the Knox County Art Educators Exhibition has given these same teachers an opportunity to nourish and showcase their own artistic talents.  The exhibition has greatly increased awareness of the importance of art education in Knox County. This is the Downtown Gallery’s third year to host this exhibition, which includes, paintings, drawings, sculpture, printmaking, photography and video.

Richard LeFevre: The Civil War Series
July 1 – August 13, 2011

Richard LeFevre taught graphic design and illustration courses at The University of Tennessee for 33 years and was the first graphic design faculty member hired by the School of Art.  He continued his professional career while teaching at UT. One of his most enduring interests was the history of the Civil War.  He served as President of the Knoxville Civil War Roundtable.

Goes to Eleven: First Year MFA exhibition
August 19 – 27, 2011

The UT Downtown Gallery is pleased to exhibit the work of our first year graduate students who are entering the UT School of Art Graduate program within their various disciplines. The exhibit showcases the outstanding talent and artistic visions of these new students, which includes painting, printmaking, graphic design and sculpture works. Exhibiting students were: Andrew Merriss, April Bachtel, Eric Cagley, Cierra Reppert, Daniel Ogletree, Hannah Skoonberg, Jennifer Scheuer, Jonathan Lisenby, Justin Clay, Tamra Hunt, and Victoria Buck.

Scott Sherk: Mapping Sound
September 2 – 30, 2011

Mapping Sound explores ideas about the representation of space through the use of sound. If sculpture is an exploration of space through form, in these works of sound sculpture, sound becomes the primary focus of the exploration of three-dimensional space.

Scott Sherk is a sculptor who often works with sound. His work has been widely shown, including his Katonah Sound Project installation at the Katonah Museum of Art and several exhibitions at the Kim Foster Gallery in New York City. He has released several collections of field recorded and manipulated sounds.

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Justin Randolph Thompson: The Pits
October 7 – 28, 2011

The Pits is a multi-disciplinary installation and performance that investigates the political employment of sound, both in realm of propaganda and as protest, and the visual hierarchies of the architectural organization of theatre space. The orchestra is collaboration with students and faculty of the UT music department. Jazz musician, composer, and UT alum Jason Thompson will work with this group to create an 8-10 piece pit orchestra that will be conducted to perform a score that shifts from classical, triumphant marches, into the drum and flute sound of Black Power poets, through folk styles of spiritual praise, and finally into abrasive Hip Hop.

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Unseen and other projects: Holly Zausner
November 4 – 26, 2011

Holly Zausner’s work is about transformation through mediums both literal and metaphorical. For this body of work, she has transformed Unseen, a super 16 mm film made in 2007, which was shown at the Bode Museum, into a series of black, white, and colored collages. In the film “Unseen” the artist searches through key locations and museums in the city of Berlin attempting to find metaphorical space and literal rest for two rubber sculptures, one female and one male. As Zausner and her two rubbery protagonists move through the city, a non-linear narrative unfolds. They encounter sites central to the life of the city, like a bread factory and a newspaper plant, as well as historical sites, like a defunct amusement park in the former East. Zausner’s fascination with the imagery from the film compelled her to reexamine the content and the structure of the different scenes through collage. Using repetition and reconfiguration, the collages are a different way of exploring the act of filming, editing, and making the sound, which are all components that create the foundation and meaning of the collages.

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Genus species: Ewing
December 2, 2011 – January 15, 2012

Genus species: EWING focuses on selections from the permanent collection of the Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture. Each work of art is united by a common subject matter — the Kingdom Anamalia. This exhibition includes art in all media — video, sculpture, painting, printmaking, and photography. Genus species: EWING includes works by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Andy Warhol, Sue Coe, Eleanor Dickinson, Walter Haskell Hinton, Salvador Dali, Mark Steinmetz, Harrison Cady, Bessie Harvey, and Ed Westcott. A number of the pieces are also by current and former University of Tennessee art professors: Clark Stewart, Paul Lee, Beauvais Lyons, Byron McKeeby, and Diane Fox.


2012

Redefining the Multiple: Thirteen Japanese Printmakers
January 20 – February 25, 2012

This exhibition examines the state of contemporary printmaking in Japan, and challenges the traditional definitions of prints and printmaking.  All of the participating artists received their formal training as printmakers and the production of multiples remains at the heart of their creative process. While utilizing tools and techniques of the printmaker, some of the artists now create work that has transitioned into forms that are associated with other media, such as sculpture, painting, and digital imaging. Of the selected participants, four make three-dimensional objects and installations, two paint with printmaking tools, three utilize digital photography and technology, while the others pursue traditional and recognizable printmaking techniques. Each artist exhibited three to five works, resulting in a diverse selection of objects and images from the hands of an equally diverse group of artists, including men and women of various ages from their mid-twenties to mid-sixties. The artists reside and work in different regions throughout Japan, and the visual content of their work ranges anywhere from formal abstraction, to iterations of traditional Japanese cultural images. Co-curated by Ewing Gallery Director Sam Yates and Hideki Kimura, Chair of Printmaking at Kyoto City University of Arts, Redefining the Multiple brings the best of contemporary Japanese printmaking to the United States.

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Click here to view the exhibition catalogue.

In Action: Mark Newport
March 2 – 31, 2012

Artist Mark Newport creates hand-knit acrylic yarn recreations of hero costumes, prints of the artist in costume, and carved, costumed figure sculptures. The costumes are life size, wearable objects that hang limply on hangers. They challenge the standard muscular form of the hero and offer the space for someone to imagine himself or herself wearing the costume, therefore becoming the hero. Mark is an artist and educator living in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He is the Artist in Residence and Head of Fiber at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. He earned his BFA at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1986 and his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1991. Newport’s work has been exhibited throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

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ARTSOURCE 2012
March 2 – 31, 2012

Every day, Knox County art teachers devote their time and energy to cultivating creativity and critical skills in their students. For more than a decade, Art Source, the exhibition dedicated solely to Knox County art educators, has given these same teachers an opportunity to nourish and showcase their own artistic talents.

Click here to view installation images.

NEXUS 2012
April 2 – 14, 2012

As one of the Dogwood Arts Festival’s feature exhibits, NEXUS, showcases national and international artists working in contemporary sculpture and 3-D media. Indoor sculptures comprising all styles and genres from emerging and established artists were selected by internationally recognized juror, Allen Peterson, for exhibition at the University of Tennessee’s Downtown Gallery.

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MFA 2012: Vickie Phipps and Jon Purtill

In partial fulfillment of their graduation requirements, students pursuing the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree are required to mount a solo exhibition of work, and to defend their work during an oral examination in front of a faculty committee. Due to the number of graduate students enrolled in the UT School of Art, these exhibitions generally take the form of small groups of students presenting concurrent solo exhibitions in the gallery space.

Click here to view work by Jon Purtill

On Location Part I: Five Tennessee Plein Air Painters
June 1 – 30, 2012

Plein air painting has a rich international tradition, and our regional Tennessee artists are part of that continuum. Mike C. Berry, manager of the UT Downtown Gallery, and a plein air painter himself, curated this exhibition. We are grateful to the artists who have so generously allowed their work to be shared with the Knoxville Community. The five featured artists were: Anne Blair Brown, Franklin, TN; Roger Dale Brown, Nashville, TN; Lori Putnam, Franklin, TN; Brett Weaver, Chattanooga, TN; and Dawn Whitelaw, Franklin, TN.

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On Location Part II: Land Portrait
July 6 – 27, 2012

Land Portrait features works from members of the Culture Laboratory Collective based upon their relationship with a particular place, landform, landscape, topography, or state of current residence. These pieces, when combined, serve as comprehensive land portraits. Translations of localities can act as reflections of communities continually in flux. The visual statements produced for this exhibition may provide a more complete understanding of who (and where) we are. The value of place and landscape is immeasurable. Memories from places can become etched in our minds and contextualized over time. This exhibit offers a view into a collective memory and re-locates interpretations of place into a public, conversational setting. Curated by Brian R. Jobe

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Figurative Works on Paper from the Ewing Gallery Permanent Collection
August 3 – 18, 2012

This exhibition featured figurative works on paper, including watercolors, drawings, photography, and printmaking. Notable works include: portraits by Chuck Close and Alice Neel, prints by Francisco Goya, Leon Golub, Kathe Kollwitz, Keith Haring, Luis Jiminez, and William Hogarth, and photography by Helmut Newton and Walker Evans. Also in the exhibition were works from School of Art professors, students, and visiting artists, past and present. These artists are, Baldwin Lee, Don Kurka, Eleanor Dickinson, Mark Steinmetz, and Joseph Delaney.

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Sweetbreads
August 23 – September 1, 2012

The UT Downtown Gallery is pleased to exhibit the work of our first year graduate students who are entering the UT School of Art Graduate program within their various disciplines. The exhibit showcases the outstanding talent and artistic visions of these new students, which includes painting, printmaking, graphic design and sculpture works. The following artists exhibited work: James Boychuck-Hunter, David Harman, Raluca Iancu, Kevin Kao, Alexandra Kirtley, Kevin Varney, and Thomas Wharton

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The Legacy of James Randolph Denton
September 7 – 8, 2012

A native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA), James Randolph Denton founded the Association for Creative Zoology in 1908 an effort to rebut the popularization of evolutionary theory in American public schools and universities. Working with the London publisher Everitt Ormsby Hokes, founder of Hokes Scholarly Lithography, Denton published two collections of color lithographs documenting the principle of animal hybridity, what he referred to as “zoomorphic juncture.” These were Rare Zoological Specimens and Ornithological Quadrupeds, both published in the 1920s, the second of which emulates the publications of the British naturalist John Gould. Arguing for Creation Science, Reverend Denton cited the unicorn and the dragon, each of which are mentioned in the King James Edition of the Bible, as examples of this phenomena. Denton argued that animal hybridity explained species diversity and disputed the principles of natural selection.

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Pencil Pushed
September 19 – October 28, 2012

 In this exhibition, the word pencil functions simply as a metaphor or symbol for drawing and its activity. The artists selected are known for their drawing or drawing activity as their primary means of expression and have either pushed the material, process, or boundary of conventional drawing. Media included video, sculpture, animation, installation, and of course, works on paper. This exhibition is neither a survey nor the definitive grouping of mark-making artists. It is more a conversation about artists who have and continue to explore these regions in drawing. The diversity of the exhibition favored mid-career artists, but ranged from emerging to late.

Featured artists in Pencil Pushed are:
William Anastasi, William Pittman Andrews, Caroline Burton, Elisa D’Arrigo, Mary Reid Kelley, Sharon Louden, Jennifer Macdonald, Peter Mollenkof, Darcy Brennan Poor, Bill Richards, Beatrice Riese, Hilda Shen, Drew Shiflett, Stephen Talasnik, and Sam Vernon

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Click here to view the exhibition catalogue.

Based on a True Story
November 1 – November 21, 2012

Curated by New York artist Joel Carreiro, Based on a True Story features work by artists who use narrative in a variety of ways. This exhibition includes 2 and 3 dimensional works, as well as video projections. Matthew Garrison is based in Reading, PA; Yeon Jin Kim lives and works in New York, and Chris Miner is based in Memphis, TN.

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Capstone 2012
November 27 – 30, 2012

The Capstone course is a requirement for all BFA Studio Art majors. Students take Capstone in the final semester of their BFA degree. During Capstone students engage in a self-initiated research project to demonstrate that a graduating senior has learned and can practice the skills and concepts of a chosen concentration (2D, 3D, 4D). The Capstone also demonstrates the student’s ability to intellectualize and articulate issues and ideas about contemporary art. Successful completion of the Capstone course is a requirement of graduation. The UT Downtown Gallery is excited to present the work of 5 graduating seniors in this year’s capstone exhibition. Exhibiting students are: Sarah Crumley, Kayla Courtoy, David Holland, Bill Warden, and Catherine Widner.

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Revealed: Pat Badt and Paul Briggs
December 7, 2012 – January 18, 2013

The UT Downtown Gallery is pleased to present Revealed, an exhibition of paintings by Pat Badt and ceramic sculptures by Paul Briggs. The paintings and sculptures share a similar modesty in size, creating an approachable and intimate relationship between object and viewer. The work is meditative in process. Lines and leaf-forms vary in length, color, orientation, and proximity to the next. It is repetitive, yet unique.

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2013

Northern Exposure
January 23 – 25, 2013

In the summer of 2013, six students accompanied Ewing Gallery director, Sam Yates to New York, Philadelphia, Boston, New Haven, and Washington DC. They visited major art museums, had studio visits with artists, and learned about the contemporary art world. The work on display was inspired by their travels. The exhibiting students are, Alexandra Gellis, Eric Cagley, Brandon Donahue, Sarah Campbell, Jessica Beeler, and Kelly Householder.

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Chad Curtis: Panorama of Desire
February 1 – 23, 2013

Chad D. Curtis is an artist and technologist living and working in Philadelphia. Drawing inspiration from both digital technology and homebrew DIY makers, Curtis’s work examines the abstraction of materiality in the digital age and the effects of high technology on the relationship between human beings and the natural environment. Curtis has exhibited internationally, including more than fifty solo and group exhibitions in the past ten years. He holds an M.F.A. from Alfred University and is an Associate Professor at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University.

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William Lamson: Fieldwork
March 1 – 2, 2013

William Lamson is a Brooklyn-based artist who works in video, photography, performance, and sculpture. His work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and a number of private collections. Since graduating from the Bard M.F.A. program in 2006, his work has been shown at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, P.S.1 MOMA, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, among others. Lamson is currently working on two installations for Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York.

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NEXUS 2013
March 25 – April 6, 2013

As one of the Dogwood Arts Festival’s featured exhibits, NEXUS, showcases national and international artists working in contemporary sculpture and 3D media. Indoor sculptures comprising all styles and genres from emerging and established artists were selected by nationally recognized juror, Durant Thompson, for exhibition at the University of Tennessee’s Downtown Gallery.  Durant Thompson is an Associate Professor of sculpture in the Department of Art at the University of Mississippi. In 1997, Durant received a BFA in Sculpture from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and in 2001 he earned an MFA in Sculpture from Louisiana State University. He has also worked at The Johnson Atelier School of Technical Sculpture in New Jersey and at the University of Southern Mississippi as a technician and instructor before accepting his current position.

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MFA: Greg Daiker, Alex Merchant, Shelly O’Barr, and Neil Ward

In partial fulfillment of their graduation requirements, students pursuing the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree are required to mount a solo exhibition of work, and to defend their work during an oral examination in front of a faculty committee. Due to the number of graduate students enrolled in the UT School of Art, these exhibitions generally take the form of small groups of students presenting concurrent solo exhibitions in the gallery space.

Click here to view installation images for Daiker and Merchant.
Click here to view installation images for O’Barr and Ward.

ARTSOURCE 2013
May 3 – 18, 2013

Every day, Knox County art teachers devote their time and energy to cultivating creativity and critical skills in their students. For more than a decade, Art Source, the exhibition dedicated solely to Knox County art educators, has given these same teachers an opportunity to nourish and showcase their own artistic talents.

Click here to view installation images.

Knoxville Watercolor Society 50th Anniversary Exhibition
June 7 – 29, 2013

The KWS celebrates its 50th anniversary with an exhibition of works by the current members as well as highlighting the founding members: Robert Birdwell, Ted Burnett, Richard Clarke, Kermit “Buck” Ewing, George Galloway, Martha Godwin, Arlene Goff, David Joyner, Josephine Mayo, Margaret Scanlan, Walter “Holly” Stevens, Carl Sublett, and Betsy Worden.

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Print Resonance
July 5 – 27, 2013

Fifty graduate students and faculty members at five universities: the University of Alberta, Canada; the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium; Silpakorn University, Thailand and Musashino Art University, Tokyo, Japan created prints specifically for this project. The participating artists made their prints on the same size paper, allowing the viewer to focus on the image, rather than the scale of the work. The audience is encouraged to consider the artistic expression from each university and to find commonality across geographic and cultural borders, as the printmakers share ideas about their own interests, lives, and values.

The works were created using various print techniques, which include inkjet, etching, drypoint, chine-colle, lithography, woodcut, intaglio and blind printing. This portfolio is a limited edition of 10 copies, two for each of the five universities, with the goal of further development of printmaking education around the globe.

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20 Years After
August 2 – 24, 2013

This exhibition features the work of 14 MFA artists from the UTK School of Art Class of 1993. Artists will be displaying work that is current or important in their journey in fine arts over the last 20 years. The UT MFA program attracts students from different regions of the United States as exemplified in this exhibition, which include artists from Mississippi, Florida, Minnesota, New York, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee. Artists included in the exhibition:  Scott Palmer — Ceramics, Annette Bongers – Ceramics,  Melody Reeves — Printmaking, Rob Tarbell — Painting,  Eric Fracassi — Sculpture, David Deitrick — Graphic Design, Eric Smith — Graphic Design,  Joel House — Sculpture, Melanie McLaughlin — Graphic Design, Kris Rehring Jones — Graphic Design, Debi Henry Danielson — Painting, Brad Cantrell — Ceramics, Laurie Robichaux — Ceramics, Earl Watson — Graphic Design.

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Echo of the Object
September 6 – 26, 2013

Echo of the Object is an exhibition featuring work by Ball State faculty members: Hannah Barnes, Jennifer Halvorson, David Hannon, and Jacinda Russell. This exhibition brings together several series of works in drawing, painting, photography, and sculpture. Each body of work explores how objects of symbolic or personal significance play a role in the construction of memory, identity, and meaning. The metaphor of containment is a consistent theme in each artist’s work, both in the use of objects whose literal function is to contain (bags, jars, boxes), and also in the suggestion that seemingly insignificant objects have a certain capacity to become filled with meaning. Time, humor, absurdity, the domestic, and the everyday are additional themes this exhibition will seek to explore.

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Ossuary: A project by Lorrie Beth Clarke
October 4 – 26, 2013

Three hundred artists have contributed to Ossuary. Their work, in many media, includes single bones, clusters of bones, and art works inspired by, using, or playing with the idea of bones. These bones are political statements and personal elegies, memorials to individuals and statements about mortality. They represent connections to our ancestors and/or to our descendants. Some works are serious and some use bones in a completely playful manner. Ossuary was developed in response to the repositories of bones that have accrued in countries like Cambodia and Rwanda, but Ossuary is not a project about those traumas. Rather, Ossuary offers a poignant counter-image to mass violence. It is a project about the hope that art brings. Ossuary is a cumulative traveling project. It began in Madison, Wisconsin. Artists interested in contributing bones to future exhibitions should write to ossuaries@gmail.com.

This relational project was initiated and developed by the artist Laurie Beth Clark. Clark, who is a Professor in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin, has shown work in galleries, museums, theatres, and public spaces in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa.

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AAA 75th Anniversary Print Portfolio
November 1 – 16, 2013

This is the first digitally produced portfolio published by American Abstract Artists. All past portfolios—1937, 1987, 1997—were produced using various forms of lithography and means of transferring image to plate. Unlike traditional printmaking, the digital inkjet process does not involve a physical matrix from which ink is transferred to paper. This marks both a technical and a conceptual shift in printmaking. Our choice of the medium situates this portfolio squarely in the current century and is an indication of the group’s forward momentum.

The artists were asked to provide a digital file meeting predetermined specifications, yet no restrictions were placed on how the file could be created. The digital process enabled a wide variety of approaches that include abstract and documentary photography, scanning of flat-work made expressly for the project, digital compositing and image manipulation, as well as the use of vector-based software and hand-coded algorithms. The results are as varied as the artists’ individual sensibilities.

Click here to view installation images.

AIR 30th Anniversary Exhibition
December 6, 2013 – January 10, 2014

Begun after the retirement of painting professor Carl Sublett, the Artist-in-Residence Program enriches a student’s experience further by regularly bringing new artists from outside the university who are active in the contemporary gallery and museum arenas. Each semester an invited resident artist teaches both undergraduate and graduate level courses in the painting and drawing curriculum. The AIR program has been highly successful in making a direct connection to the marketplace of ideas that surrounds art centers such as New York City, Chicago, and LA. The artists we bring to campus represent a spectrum of current sensibilities in painting and drawing holding sway in the art world today. This exhibition features work from past participating artists from the Ewing Gallery permanent collection.

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2014

Death Rock City: Dannielle Tegeder
January 24 – February 28, 2014

Featuring new and recent work, Death Rock City examines how New York artist Dannielle Tegeder challenges the two-dimensional boundaries of traditional painting through the integration of animation, sculpture into her work.

Dannielle Tegeder earned her BFA from the State University of New York at Purchase and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has had solo gallery exhibitions in Paris, Berlin, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston and participated in numerous group exhibitions at PS1/MoMA, The New Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.Her work is in the collections of a number of museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

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New Topology: Paul Krainak
March 7 – March 29, 2014

Topology employs elements of early modern logic and its attendant forms in art and technology. It considers aesthetic and industrial incentives originating in rural America and calls into question modernism’s strictly urban mythology. Grids, cruciforms, and wood grain details are embedded in extended patterns calling to mind Constructivist and Bauhaus Schools’ principals of industrial hybridity and utopianism. But the site of industry here is agriculture with distilled forms taken from domestic textile design, land management diagrams, and vernacular architecture. Paul Krainak is an artist, critic, and Chair of the Art Department at Bradley University.

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NEXUS 2014
April 4 – 19, 2014

As one of the Dogwood Arts Festival’s featured exhibits, NEXUS, showcases national and international artists working in contemporary sculpture and 3D media. Indoor sculptures comprising all styles and genres from emerging and established artists will be selected by esteemed professor, Laticia Bajuyo, for exhibition at the University of Tennessee’s Downtown Gallery.

Click here to view installation images.

MFA Exhibition: Eric Cagley
April 21-25, 2014

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ARTSOURCE 2014
May 2 – May 22, 2014

Every day, Knox County art teachers devote their time and energy to cultivating creativity and critical skills in their students. For more than a decade, Art Source, the exhibition dedicated solely to Knox County art educators, has given these same teachers an opportunity to nourish and showcase their own artistic talents.

Click here to view installation images.

Marion Greenwood in Tennessee
June 6 – August 9, 2014

Marion Greenwood in Tennessee features her mural of the history of Tennessee music painted for the University Center at the University of Tennessee in 1954; “The Partnership of Man and Nature,” a WPA mural painted in 1940, graciously loaned by the Crossville, TN Post Office; preparatory sketches loaned by UT Special Collections; and lithographs from the permanent collection of the Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture.

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Click here to view the exhibition catalogue.

Ask Me, I can Help.
August 22 – 23, 2014

An exhibition of the incoming class of 2017 MFA candidates. Twelve student artists feature their current work as they begin their graduate studies at the University of Tennessee, School of Art. Exhibiting students are: Corinna Ray, Anna Wehrwein, Jing Qin, Josh Shorey, Jessica Gatlin, Abigail Lucien, Elysia Mann, Adam Higgins, Meg Erlewine, Geoff Silvis, Chris Spurgin, and Bailey Davenport.

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AIR of UT
September 5 – 27, 2014

AIR of UT is an exhibition of the Limited Box Edition project, curated by artists Wade Guyton ’95, Josh Smith ’98, and Meredyth Sparks ’94.

The Limited Box Edition project is part of a fundraising campaign to support the School of Art’s Artist-in-Residence in Painting and Drawing program. Now in its 32nd year, the Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program enriches a student’s experience by bringing a different artist to spend the semester teaching undergraduate and graduate students. The resident artists are selected because they have launched successful careers in the contemporary gallery and museum world nationally and internationally. They furnish students with significant role models and faculty with new professional connections beyond Knoxville.

Each of the organizing alumni — Wade Guyton, Meredyth Sparks, and Josh Smith — benefited from this program, and have asked their former School of Art peers as well as past Artists in Residence to contribute images to the three curated portfolios making up the Limited Box Edition. AIR of UT and the Limited Box Edition is a celebration of the legacy and impact of the Artist in Residence program on the School of Art and its graduates.

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DeWitt Godfrey: Drawings, Proposals, Plans, Models, Diagrams, Documents
October 3 – 31, 2014

DeWitt Godfrey is a Professor of sculpture in the department of Art and Art History at Colgate.  Godfrey completed his undergraduate work at Yale University, was a member of the inaugural group of CORE Fellows at the MFA Houston, and received his MFA from Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh, Scotland. He is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Arts Artist’s Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Artists Fellowship, a Japan Foundation Artist’s Fellowship, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Artist Fellowship. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas and the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York. His commissioned work includes “Concordia” for Lexarts, Lexington, KY; “Waverly Place” Cambridge Arts Council; “Greenwich South” a visioning exercise by the Downtown Alliance, New York, NY and installations at Frederik Meijer Garden and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI; The DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA; and the Kennedy Art Museum, Ohio University, Athens, OH.

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Louis Chan: My Home
November 7 – 26, 2014

My Home is an on-going project aimed to help define my identity as a Chinese American and attempt to preserve generations of memories and experiences of Chinese immigrants through photography. My Home serves as a contemporary marker for Chinese Americans to reflect on the hopes, dreams, and sacrifices made for them by older generations in order for their children to have a chance of a better life in America.

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Of A Feather
December 5, 2014 – January 15, 2015

Artists throughout history have found inspiration in the form of birds. Man imbued birds with mystical and religious meaning due to their fascinating ability to exist in two worlds – the earthly world, and the sky, or heavenly realm. Drawn primarily from the Ewing Gallery’s permanent collection, Of a Feather features works from historic and contemporary artists who represent birds in a diverse assortment of styles. While some artists approach the bird as studies of simplified form others utilize strategies of space and distance to take a more poetic or analytical look at the economic and social issues attached to birds. Works range from hyperrealism to whimsical to abstract. This exhibition incorporates a number of artists of artists from New York and Chicago including Keith Haring, Michael Kirk, Keith Long, Diane Churchill, and Laurie Hogin; regional artists, Howard Finster, Todd Johnson, Kelly Hider, Heather Middlebrooks, Gary Monroe, and Richard Jolley, as well as distinguished faculty from the University of Tennessee – Jered Sprecher, Diane Fox, Beauvais Lyons, Marcia Goldenstein, Don Kurka, Bill Kennedy, Clark Stewart and Byron McKeeby. The artworks on display consider themes of scientific inquiry, symbolism, environmental consciousness, and the rituals of birding, among others. The exhibition is in tribute to the late artist Ellen Lanyon who often used images of birds in her art.

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2004 

Life in the City: The Art of Joseph Delaney
September 11 – October 30, 2004

Like Lloyd Branson, Catherine Wiley, and his brother Beauford Delaney, Joseph Delaney was a Knoxville-born artist who gained international recognition. Inaugurating The University of Tennessee’s Downtown Gallery, Life in the City: The Art of Joseph Delaney highlights some 60 works that demonstrate Joseph’s interest in urban life – parades, public parks, architecture and street scenes.

Click to view the exhibition catalogue.

The George & Helen Spelvin Folk Art Collection
November 6 – December 19, 2004

Created by Beauvais Lyons, Professor of Art and Director of the Hokes Archives at The University of Tennessee, The George and Helen Spelvin Folk Art Collection presents fictitious contemporary folk art. As the “exhibition curator,” Lyons created all the artworks and designed biographical text panels with photographic portraits of each of the 11 imaginary artists. Included are enamel painted records by Lucas Farley, Arthur Middleton’s portrait paintings of American presidents, velvet paintings of brides by Charlotte Black, Max Pritchard’s hand-painted religious tracts on cereal boxes, Rufus Martinez’s ceramic face jugs, and Lester Coleman Dowdy’s “limberjack” puppets. This irrelevant exhibition emulates folk art, and at the same time, it ironically imitates museum conventions.


2005 

Gregg Schlanger: Holston River Diaries
January 12 – March 8, 2005

Created by Gregg Schlanger, Holston River Diaries is a two-part exhibition that links the communities of Emory, VA and Knoxville, TN – the first being near the headwaters of the Holston River and later being nears its confluence with the French Broad River, thus forming the Tennessee River. The exhibition’s second part continued at Emory & Henry College’s 1912 Gallery.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Walker Evans’ Photographs
March 11 – April 17, 2005

Walker Evans’ photographs made for James Agee’s classic work Let Us Now Praise Famous Men served as the culmination of Evans’ talents as well as the realistic portrayal of the conditions of the American tenant farmer during the 1930s Depression. Walker Evans’ images revolutionized the standards of documentary photography.

MFA Thesis Exhibition: Jennifer Leach, Printmaking
April 20 – Apr 27, 2005

Graphic Design Senior Show
April 30 – May 6, 2005

Senior Graphic Design Students display their design work and attend the opening to meet and greet potential clients and employers

Through the Lens of Ed Westcott: A Photographic History of World War II’s Secret City
June 16 – September 3, 2005

In 1942, the Army Corps of Engineers relocated James Edward Westcott to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and assigned him the task of official photographer for the Manhattan Project – a massive wartime effort to produce the first atomic bomb. As secrecy of the project was paramount, the “atomic” city was fenced, and communication with the outside world was limited. What is more, no cameras were allowed inside the fenced boundaries.

Thus, Westcott became not only the official photographer for the Manhattan Project, but he also became the sole photographer of the social and recreational events of Oak Ridge. It is only through Westcott’s photographs that the visual history of Oak Ridge can be appreciated.

Click to view the exhibition catalogue.

Enduring: The Social Conscience of Eleanor Dickinson
September 10 – November 5, 2005

Eleanor Dickinson, a native of Knoxville, TN, received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Tennessee in 1952, becoming one of the department’s first graduates. One year later, she moved to California and began redefining her process of creating traditional figure drawings via strong emotions. Since then, Dickinson has maintained a life-long commitment to the human form and has responded to intense moments of human existence, ranging from the experiences of Pentecostal Southerners, to the ecstasies of lovers, to the trials of the homeless, to the sufferings of AIDS victims.

Alternative Typestyles: An Homage to Vernacular Letterforms
Nov 12 – Dec 20, 2005

Alternative Typestyles features original art by exhibition creator Matt Tullis, including hand-drawn typefaces, unique collected fonts, and wall-mounted sculptures based on the assemblage of typographic artifacts. Individual photographic prints of vintage letterforms and signs are also featured.


2006

Mysterious Pleasures: The Art of F. Clark Stewart
January 7 – February 25, 2006

Over the past 40 years, educator F. Clark Stewart has impacted the lives and maturation of countless aspiring young artists at the University of Tennessee. Many former students directly credit him for their own success as professional artists and teachers. His contributions as both a dedicated teacher and a cognizant, active member of the university community are immeasurable. The goal of Mysterious Pleasures: The Art of F. Clark Stewart is, however, to celebrate the achievements and work of the artist. The works on exhibition, as with his tenure at the university, span 40 years.  Clark never strays far from his primary subject – the human figure- or his primary interest – the human narrative. Art movements, like fashion, have developed and faded with time, but Clark has remained steadfast in his commitment to figurative art and its ability to create mystery and a range of emotional responses.

Click to view the exhibition catalogue.

Unfiltered: AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers
March 3 – April 1, 2006

Since 1924, The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) has mounted an annual exhibition that recognizes excellence in book design and production. Books are entered in categories such as trade, reference, juvenile, university and museum publications, and also limited edition and special-format books. The exhibition includes books and book covers designed in 2004. Esteemed jurors selected winners from more than 920 entries. Jurors included; Andrew Blauvelt, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, John Fulbrook III, Simon & Schuster, New York, Sara Gillingham, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, Julia Hasting, Phaidon, New York and Cheryl Towler Weese (chair) Studio Blue, Chicago.

MFA Thesis Exhibition: “Valuistics: The Making of” by James Greene
April 7 – April 14, 2006

The print Installation is both a display of James Greene’s valuistics as well as a printed history of the word itself. With ”the Making Of,” Greene – a former grocery store clerk and retail employee – reveals his own consumer politics (contradictions and all) by symbolizing and accounting for each of his consumer decisions. The installation is a scale re-creation of Greene’s home, family, and friends printed on pink insulation board and installed in the Downtown Gallery.

MFA Thesis Exhibition: Ryan O’Mara
April 19 – 26, 2006

The work consists of large abstract ink drawings and paintings some measuring more than 20 feet long. “Abstraction has the ability to exist in a realm of non-logic, idealism and an absence of a system. In my work I change this theoretical space into a physical image, thereby defining the gray”, says O’Mara.

AGIA Poster Design Show
Apr 28 – May 10, 2006

Three Design Students from the University of Tennessee were included in the American Institute of Graphic Arts National Poster Competition. 30 posters were exhibited from national and international designers.

Portrait of Self
May 13 – June 3, 2006

Portrait of Self is a community arts project of the Knox County after-school program Shade of Development led by artist and educator Diane Hovis. Created by African American children and adults, the drawings, prints, and photographs on view explore each individual’s sense of self. These visual works are interpretations of written responses to questions posed by Hovis and recorded in journals kept by each participant.

Thresholds: Expressions of Art & Spiritual Life
June 23 – Aug 4, 2006

New York critic Eleanor Heartney has curated an exhibition that showcases the diversity of both art media and religious beliefs in the work of over fifty artists from five southern states, including Tennessee. This is a joint exhibition, on view simultaneously in both the Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture and the UT Downtown Gallery.

Drawings from the Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing, China
August 25 – October 11, 2006

30 figure drawings from students at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, China. Organized and curated by University of Tennessee School of Art Professor, Tom Reising.

The Color of Diaspora: Afro-Ecuadorian Images
October 20 – November 24, 2006

40 black and white photographs of the Afro-Ecuadorian culture. Organized by University of Tennessee History Professor William Dewey.

Polska Fraba/Polish Iink: Contemporary Printmaking on Poland
December 1 – December 22, 2006

Polska Fraba/Polish Iink: Contemporary Printmaking on Poland
An exhibition organized and curated by Beauvais Lyons, which includes 30 prints by Contemporary Artist from Poland working in Printmaking.


2007 

Reverberating Echoes: The Art of Indian Artist M.R. Renjan
January 5 – February 24, 2007

Black and white ink paintings by Indian Artist M.R. Renjan. Organized and curated by University of Tennessee graduate student, Shaurya Kumar.

Shelter: A Mixed Media Installation
Mar 2 – 31, 2007

An exhibition organized through the Samek Art Gallery at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA by sculpture professor Tulu Bayer and paining professor Xiaoze Xie.

MFA Thesis Exhibition: Lin Lee
April 2 – 9, 2007

MFA Thesis Exhibition: Tea Kim Kasor
April 10 – 17, 2007

MFA Thesis Exhibition: Shaurya Kumar
April 18- 23, 2007

Human Rights Portfolio from South Africa
May 4 – June 8, 2007

Hunt Clark & Deborah McClary
June 15 – August 3, 2007

Recent collaborative work by Tennessean sculptors, graduates of the UT School of Art. The mixed media piece consists of multiple video projections on Plexiglas suspended from the ceiling, and a white ceramic life-sized sculpture of a calf being roped around its neck.

Shoebox Sculpture Exhibition
August 10 – September 7, 2007

This International Traveling exhibition of small sculptures from around the world show how artists have handled the challenges of space and scale dictated by sixe of a shoebox. An invitation only exhibition, this exhibit has attracted a large number of well – known artists from Hawaii, the U.S. mainland, Argentina, Cuba, Australia, Korea, Japan, Chia, Thailand, France, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, and Mexico.

AIGA 365
September 14 – Oct 5, 2007

The 2006 juried selection of the best communications design produced in 2005. 365 is widely recognized as the most discerning statement on design excellence today, extending a legacy that began 90 years ago. By means of competitions, AIGA creates a chronicle of outstanding design solutions, each demonstrating the process of designing, the role of the designer and the value of design.

Jean Hess & Jeffrey Morton: Reverie
October 12 – November 7, 2007

This two-person exhibition consists of recent works by Knoxville-based painter Jean Hess and Chattanooga-based painter Jeffery Morton. Hess’ work addresses dream, recollection, nostalgia, and memory with an emphasis on obscure imagery, dissolving texts, and marks and natural forms suffused with light. Jeffery Morton explores images of wind, electricity, twilight, humidity, photosynthesis, and pollen juxtaposed against creatures in flight.

Lineages
November 16 – December 20, 2007

This exhibition of ceramics explores the pathway and influences of the academic ceramicist. UT professors of ceramics, their spouses, and their mentors will all have work on display. Artists included are; University of Tennessee School of Art professors Sally Brogden and Frank Martin,  their spouses Todd Johnson and Polly Martin, and mentors John and Susanne Stephenson, and Ken Ferguson.


2008 

Crave
January 4 – February 1, 2008

An exhibition initiated by former UT School of Art Artist in Residence, Pinkney Herbert, and organized by Memphis Arts Organization Delta Axis. InCrave these six artists use paint and photographs to explore craving, yearning, longing for, or hankering after. Their diverse work is unified by an attachment to charged images and obsessive processes that speak to this underlying appetite or “craving.” Artist included in the exhibition are, Joel Carreiro, Betsy Chaffin, Amanda Sparks, Thomas Weaver, and Brian Wood.

Corapeake
February 15 – March 29, 2008

This exhibition showcases an award-winning documentary, by Kendall Messick, about the town of Corapeake in North Carolina. The exhibit uses oral narratives, black and white photography, and artifacts to describe and commemorate the lives led by now-elderly African-American inhabitants of this small, rural town. This film has been shown at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, Wake Forest University, UVA, and many other reputable venues.

MFA Thesis Exhibitions: Crystal Wagner and Katherine Nanfro
April 4 – 19, 2008

Graphic Design Senior Show
April 24 – 26, 2008

Air Box
May 2 – 28, 2008

An exhibition by Korean artist Dong-Yong Lee, 2007-08 UT Artist in Residence

Carl Sublett: Image Tracks
June 2 – 29, 2008

A retrospective view of Carl Sublett’s art, curated by his son, Eric Sublett.


Objectionable Action

July 3 – 19, 2008

Objectionable Action represents an art exchange with participants from around the country. Organized by two University of Tennessee alumni, Lee Marchalonis and Jessica Meyer, Objectionable Action features other University of Tennessee graduates now residing throughout the United States.

The Beauty of Holiness: The Art of Arnold Schwarzbart
July 25 – August 16, 2008

Schwarzbart is a Judaic artist who lives in Knoxville. He has worked for over eighteen years designing and producing ceremonial objects as well as donor recognition walls and decorative wall pieces for Jewish organizations throughout the United States.


My Home Town: Images of New York City by Baldwin Lee

August 22 – September 20, 2008

Photographic images documenting New York City both pre and post 9/11 by New York native, and UT School of Art professor of photography, Baldwin Lee. Lee is the recipient of three Guggenheim and NEA grants. This exhibition was curated by the artist and UT Downtown Gallery director, Sam Yates.

Global Mapping
September 26 – October 18, 2008

Andrea Loefke, a Brooklyn, New York and Leipzig, Germany-based artist creates hierarchies in which events and narratives compete and communicate. The groupings of objects and their placement within a particular space become a journey of discovery.

Future States:  Atlas
Recent works by Pennsylvania mixed-media artist Dan Mills. This group of drawings addresses issues of American imperialism and globalization. This exhibition was curated by the artist and UT Downtown Gallery director, Sam Yates.

Compassionate Voices: Issues of Animal Rights
October 24 – November 15, 2008

Compassionate Voices: The Art of Sue Coe, Maia Dery, Diane Fox, and Jack Ketner
These artists address issues of animal treatment and exploitation.

Lyrical Tableaux by Conley Harris
Nov 21 – Dec 20, 2008

Inspired by his many trips to India, Boston-based painter Conley Harris pays tribute to the history of Indian paintings while using it to explore questions of composition, figure/ground relationship, and other painterly issues.


2009

American Institute of Graphic Arts
January 2 – 31, 2009

AIGA, the professional association for design, creates an authoritative chronicle of outstanding design solutions, each demonstrating the process of designing and the value of design.  AIGA’s suite of competitions is widely recognized as the most discerning statement on design excellence today.

Alicia Henry: The Walk
Damond Howard: Still America’s Greatest Problem
February 6 – 28, 2009

African American artists Alicia Henry, Nashville, TN, and Damon Howard, Orangeburg, SC, examine issues of identity, heritage and gender in American society. Henry, who holds an MFA from Yale University, and Howard, who holds an MFA from the University of Florida, have been nationally recognized for their poignant art.

Beyond Surface:  Paintings by Tom Riesing and Allen Cox
March 6 – 21, 2009

Although one an abstractionist and one a realist, Knoxville painters Allen Cox and Tom Riesing focus on the “surface” in this exhibit. This exhibition was curated by Sam Yates and the artists.

University of Cincinnati / University of Tennessee Art Exchange
March 25 – April 4, 2009

This exhibition will feature new work by graduate students representing all disciplines—2-D, 3-D, and media. The exhibition will be on view concurrently at The University of Tennessee 1010 Gallery.

MFA Thesis Exhibition:  Jessie Van der Laan
April 7-12, 2009

MFA Thesis Exhibition:  Hilary Williams
April 17 – 24, 2009

Art Source 2009
May 1-31, 2009

Every day, Knox County art teachers devote their time and energy to cultivating creativity in their students. The Knox County Art Educators’ Exhibition gives these teachers an opportunity to nourish and showcase their own artistic talents.

Japan International Artists Society Exhibition
June 5- July 2, 2009

324 works of art by 305 Society members who create in various media ranging from traditional Japanese calligraphy and ceramics to contemporary landscapes and abstraction is on exhibit here and in the Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture.

Face It: Contemporary Portraiture
July 15 – August 8, 2009

A national juried competition open to artists from all media and backgrounds. Dr. Carl Gombert, Associate Professor of Art at Maryville College, was the juror for the exhibition.

Michael Aurbach: The Administrator
August 14 – September 12, 2009

This exhibition featured the work of noted sculptor Michael Aurbach who serves on the faculty at Vanderbilt University. Curated by Sam Yates.

Beyond Surface: Contemporary Ceramics Artists
September 18 – October 17, 2009

This exhibition featured the art of eight east coast ceramicists. The works on view
represent the variety of techniques and concepts found in the ceramics field today.

Contemporary Taiwanese Artist HoJang Liu
Oct 23 – Nov 28, 2009

This exhibition featured the photographic work of HoJang Liu, a Taiwanese artist who lives in Taipei.

Intimate Source: The Artist’s Sketchbook
Dec 4, 2009 – January 2, 2010

Much of the development for an artwork happens well before the brush meets canvas, the hand meets clay, or the finger meets camera shutter. These preliminary inspirations and concepts go mostly unnoticed and unappreciated. This exhibit brings to light the methods artists employ to inform themselves of the possibilities for their as yet unrealized works. Curated by former Ewing Gallery staff member Timothy Massey, Director of the Tower Fine Arts Gallery at SUNY Brockport.


2010

The 10th International Shoebox Sculpture Exhibition
January 15 – February 20, 2010

The 10th International Shoebox Sculpture Exhibition continues a tradition begun by the University of Hawai‘i Department of Art.  By invitation only, this exhibition is comprised of 81 sculptures by artists from 14 countries and includes “Meta Physical #4” by Knoxville artist Richard Jolley. The small format of the works in the exhibition, with the subsequent ease and economy of handling, provides exposure to a broad spectrum of contemporary sculpture. These triennial exhibitions were initiated as an attempt to incorporate a variety of multicultural traditions and a range of sculptural ideas, styles, and materials.

Deliquesence and Other Transformations: The Photography of Robert Creamer
March 5 – 27, 2010

In his recent series of photographic studies of botanical subjects, Maryland artist Robert Creamer blends his interests in technology and the aging process. These photographic images, captured using a digital flatbed scanner, began as an investigation into the revelatory power of technology. Although the scanner is a tool that enhances Creamer’s ability to observe, it is not the apparatus, per se, that interests him most. Moreover, these images are about time, transformation, and transitions.

Dali Illustrates Dante’s Divine Comedy
June 4 – July 9, 2010

The exhibition represents Dali’s visual interpretation of Dante’s literary masterpiece The Divine Comedy, chronicling Dante Alighieri’s symbolic journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Salvador Dalí was one of the most well known of the surrealist artists who concentrated on depicting the unconscious and subconscious mind. Dalí labored for nine years to produce a series of 100 watercolors as illustrations to Dante’s classic epic, with each print depicting a verse from the poem.

His paintings were reproduced by Jean Estrade of Les Heured Claires and released as a limited edition print suite in honor of the 700th anniversary of Dante Alighieri’s birth in 1265.

This collection of work was generously donated to the University of Tennessee’s Ewing Gallery by UT alumnus and businessman Gary Johnson.

Through A Transparent Lens Inside Out
July 16 – August 14, 2010

Through A Transparent Lens Inside Out, is a unique installation of video, films, and multi-image performance works by Norman Magden, School of Art Professor of 4D Arts.The exhibition’s title, THROUGH A TRANSPARENT LENS INSIDE OUT,  refers to the time based images displayed and Magden’s focus on transparent and superimposed images to create a mesmerizing effect. The exhibition is a quasi-retrospective showcasing earlier work alongside more recent pieces.

Fresh Pickins
August 20 – 28, 2010

The First Year Graduate Show is held annually to commemorate the acceptance of the Student’s candidacy for Graduate work at the University of Tennessee, by which the public becomes acquainted with the newest of the Fine art Graduate students. Exhibiting students were: Alex McClurg, Natalie Harrison, Brandon Donahue, Gretchen Bundy, Alex Merchant, Greg Daiker, Kelly Porter, Alicia Faciane, Hannah Short, Jessica Anderson, Ashton Ludden, Clifton Riley, Shelly O’Barr, and Neil Ward.

Happens Everyday
September 3 – 25, 2010

Happens Everyday features a wall painting/installation by UT Professor David Wilson, who joined the faculty in 1985, and Chicago artist Pamela Fraser, who taught at UT during the fall semester, 1999.

Everything Shines
October 1 – 30, 2010

Everything Shines features recent paintings by UT Professor of painting Marcia Goldenstein, who joined the faculty in 1976, and New York artist Julia Jacquette, who taught at UT during the fall semester, 1995.

Pictures Hold Us Captive
November 5 – 24, 2010

Pictures Hold Us Captive features recent paintings by UT Professor of painting Jered Sprecher, who joined the faculty in 2006, and New York artist Carrie Moyer, who taught at UT during the fall semester, 2001.


Walter Haskell Hinton: The Golden Age of Illustration
December 3 – January 15, 2011

This collection of work includes original drawings, watercolors, and oil paintings representing an array of clients during his prolific career as an illustrator. Some of Mr. Hinton’s clients include, Outdoor Life Magazine, Sports Afield magazine, Mammoth Western Magazine, The John Deere and Company, Fairmont Railways, and Washington National Insurance Co.

Click to view the exhibition catalogue.