Calendar of Events

STEVE EARLE & THE DUKES 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF COPPERHEAD ROAD WITH THE MASTERSONS
http://www.steveearle.com

Almost twenty years ago, Steve Earle and I took a ride through South Nashville. It was down those mean streets that Steve had spent his famous “hiatus” in the early 1990’s mostly shooting dope. It was a crazy, unprecedented thing. Here was a guy ’ the supposed “new face” of outlaw country ’ who had already put out a near unbroken string of instant classics, including chart hits like “Guitar Town,” “Someday,” and the immortal “Copperhead Road.” And he just up and disappears, drops from sight for four years, making no records, playing no shows. Many thought he was dead. By the time we met, Steve was on the way back, through his sixty-day stint in the Davidson County Jail, firmly in recovery. He’d already released a couple new discs, the masterly acoustic Train A Comin’ and the defiantly electric I Feel Alright. But you could tell, he wasn’t all the way back. Clean and sober can be a transitory thing, the ghosts of the old days are far from fully vanquished, if they ever will be. Steve wasn’t sure he wanted any more of South Nashville, but being Steve, which is to be an adventurer and a sport, he agreed to take the tour. “This is Lewis Street,” Steve said as we turned right off Fain. The neighborhood hadn’t changed all that much since Steve holed up there, listening to Dr. Dre’s The Chronic on a near permanent loop. A number of local denizens were killing time on the corner, craning their heads to see if these particular white boys were buyers or cops. But I was already familiar with Lewis Street from the tune “South Nashville Blues,” which appears on I Feel Alright. “The Devil lives on Lewis Street, I swear, I seen him rocking in his rocking chair,” the song goes, prefaced by one of the hundred or so all-time great Steve Earle lines, “I took my pistol and a hundred dollar bill, I had everything I needed to get me killed.” A bit of old-timey shuffle, “South Nashville Blues” was very definitely a blues song. This was a little unusual, Steve told me back in 1996. “Because I don’t play a lot of blues tunes. I don’t think I’m really that good at them.” This is a perhaps not so roundabout way to getting to Steve Earle’s newest collection of songs, the sixteenth studio album of his singular career. It is called Terraplane, and as those familiar with the Robert Johnson song should know, it is very much a blues album, a very good, typically heartfelt blues album.

Bijou Theatre, 803 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. Information/tickets: 865-522-0832, www.knoxbijou.com, www.ticketmaster.com

The Knoxville Bar Association is pleased to announce that a Legal Advice Clinic for Veterans will be held on May 9, 2018 from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the Knox County Public Defender’s Community Law Office at 1101 Liberty Street, Knoxville TN 37919. The Veterans’ Legal Advice Clinic is a joint project of the Knoxville Barristers, the Young Lawyers Division of the Knoxville Bar Association (KBA), KBA/Barristers Access to Justice Committees, Legal Aid of East Tennessee, Knox County Public Defender’s Community Law Office, the University of Tennessee College of Law, and the local VA office. This is a general advice and referral clinic and it is anticipated to serve between 20 and 30 veterans in the community each month with a wide variety of legal issues, including family law, landlord/tenant, bankruptcy, criminal defense, consumer protection, contract disputes, child support, and personal injury, among other issues.

The Knoxville Bar Association is currently working on a number of initiatives to assist Tennessee veterans and has established lines of communication with a number of veterans' organizations to help identify and match local resources and needs.

The Veterans Legal Advice Clinic is a project sponsored by the Knoxville Bar Association (KBA), the Knoxville Barristers (the Young Lawyers Division of the KBA), Legal Aid of East of Tennessee, Knox County Public Defender’s Community Law Office, the University of Tennessee College of Law and the local Veteran’s Affairs Office.
www.knoxbar.org.

Bring your blankets or lawn chairs and join Ijams for a fantastic FREE concert by the Knoxville Jazz Youth Orchestra next Wednesday, May 9, from 6-8 p.m.! Kick back and enjoy some great tunes from this talented 21-member group featuring high school students from Knox, Blount, Hamblen, Loudon and Cumberland counties. Food and beverages will be available for purchase. No coolers please.
http://ijams.org/events/special-event-knoxville-youth-jazz-orchestra-concert-2/

Ijams Nature Center, 2915 Island Home Ave, Knoxville, TN 37920. Hours: Grounds and trails open during daylight hours. Call for Visitor Center hours. Information: 865-577-4717, www.ijams.org

Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit with Richard Thompson, May 8 & 9, 7:30PM, at the Tennessee Theatre.

Tennessee Theatre, 604 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. For information/tickets: 865-684-1200, www.tennesseetheatre.com, www.ticketmaster.com

May 8, 3pm - 5pm
May 9, 10am - 4pm
Free and open to the public

"Lumination" is defined as the emission of light. The Knoxville Garden Club is proud to shine a light on the extraordinary treasures of East Tennessee. Our horticultural treasures are The Great Smoky Mountains National Park and surrounding gardens, lakes, rivers and other natural resources. We hope the flower show participants and guests will enjoy these treasures through our hospitality, floral design, horticulture, photography, botanical arts, conservation, art exhibits, speakers, and our combined love of natural beauty.

The Lumination Floral Exhibits will be free and open to the public at Knoxville Museum of Art, 1050 World's Fair Park Dr, Knoxville, TN 37916. Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10AM-5PM, Sunday, 1-5PM. Information: 865-525-6101, www.knoxart.org

Jim Joyce takes a lot of pictures. He captures images of landscapes, flowers, big cats, all sorts of images from the great outdoors, but one subject that doesn’t catch his eye is people. At least not anymore.

Our featured artist in our Market Square location, Joyce spent a lot of his adult life trying to capture perfect moments of people interacting for PR shots and the like. But the challenges of blinking eyes, crooked smiles, funny faces, and even hair mussing gusts, finally got to him: “I got over the people pictures and so the only ones I take now are of my 7-year-old granddaughter.”

Although he didn’t include his family shots, Joyce did manage to bring a wide variety that includes dogwoods, tigers, flowers and more. For this exhibit Joyce selected some of his favorites from a large collection that now takes up considerable space in his home. He’s learned how to maximize every square inch of space from closest shelves to the space beneath beds in order to house his growing collection.

Joyce takes his camera along wherever he goes because, he says, “one morning I was walking my dog and there was a bald eagle right in the tree right above me. I didn’t have my camera on me so I took a picture with my cell phone. Of course, it was a minute detail on my camera screen, and it was a minute detail on my camera screen when I got back home to edit. I blew it up so I could show people. It was bigger than a speck, but you still couldn’t tell what it was. And I don’t think anybody believed me. Since then I take my camera with me everywhere.”

Joyce’s eye for the unexpected often gives his photography a fresh kind of realism, but the exhibit has more than a few shots that will make you stop for a second glance to check just what you saw. The striking color of a bird’s nest or the tendrils of a fern have an extra, alluring dimension, and the photo of a dance studio seems somehow slightly surreal. The dance studio shot is actually a photo of mural that he caught in some particularly serendipitous light, but even so, it captures the spirit of Joyce’s work – an eye for on the spot composition and a little bit of luck.

Jim Joyce’s photography will be on view at the downtown Knoxville Tomato Head on Market Square from May 7th thru June 3rd, 2018. Mr. Joyce will then display his work at the West Knoxville Gallery Tomato Head from June 4th thru July 2nd, 2018.

Tomato Head, 12 Market Square (865-637-4067) and 7240 Kingston Pike, Suite 172 (865-584-1075), in Knoxville. http://thetomatohead.com

Elementary and middle school students from Knox County, Anderson County, Oak Ridge City and Clinton City schools are invited to participate in the 2018 Sack Pack Donation Drive during National Goodwill Week, May 7-11.

Gently used clothes, toys and household items that students and their families no longer need will be collected at school and then donated to Goodwill Industries-Knoxville to support their life-changing job training programs in East Tennessee.

All students who donate during the Sack Pack Donation Drive will receive a free pass to the American Museum of Science and Energy and a free meal from McDonald’s.

In 2017, nearly 1,500 students from Knox and Anderson County generously gave over 33,000 pounds of clothes and goods to Goodwill! As a result, Goodwill was able to provide job training and employment services to nearly 3,000 individuals in 2017. Learn more about Goodwill uses these donations.

Thanks to WBIR, McDonald's and the American Museum of Science and Energy for their support of the Sack Packs. http://www.gwiktn.org/upcoming-events/2018sackpack

A reception will take place on Saturday, May 5, from 7:00-9:00 PM with a gallery talk at 6:30 PM.

In 1963, the Knoxville Watercolor Society began when the head of the University of Tennessee’s art department, Kermit (Buck) Ewing, invited watercolor artists exhibiting at the university’s McClung Museum to form the nucleus for the organization. The purpose of the organization is to educate the members as well as the community to the understanding of watercolor as a significant art form. Active membership is juried by the members and consists of Knoxville area artists who are currently active in the serious pursuit of aqueous painting and meet regularly to share knowledge and new techniques.

KWS donates a yearly scholarship to a University of Tennessee student majoring in watercolor, maintains membership in local art organizations, and contributes to watercolor awareness by funding awards for the Tennessee Watercolor Society's biennial exhibit and grants for other worthwhile art associations and programs. Additionally, grants have been made to the Arts Council of Greater Knoxville, the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Tennessee Resource Center, and the Tennessee Art Association High School Scholarship Program. Recent exhibitions have been held at the University of Tennessee Conference Center, the Oak Ridge Community Art Center, the Art Market at the Candy Factory and the Knoxville Museum of Art.

Members exhibit with the Tennessee Watercolor Society, other state watercolor organizations, the Southern Watercolor Society, Watercolor USA and the American Watercolor Society and consistently win regional, state and national awards. Local watercolor artists interested in joining KWS have the opportunity to apply for active membership each October and submit paintings to be juried by the membership at the November meeting. For more information, please visit www.knxvillewatercolorsociety.com.

On display at the Oak Ridge Art Center, 201 Badger Avenue, Oak Ridge, TN 37830. Hours: Tu-F 9-5, Sa-M 1-4. Information: 865-482-1441, www.oakridgeartcenter.org

The Appalachian Arts Craft Center will hold its annual Plant Sale starting Saturday, May 5, and running for about 2 weeks during shop hours.

Appalachian Arts Craft Center: 2716 Andersonville Highway, Clinton, TN. Hours: M-Sa 10-6, Su 1-5. Information: 865-494-9854, www.appalachianarts.net

The opening reception on Thursday, May 3 from 5:30-7:30pm is free and open to the public.

The Knoxville Museum of Art presents Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from the Johnson Collection, featuring more than 40 paintings from the extensive holdings of the Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Scenic Impressions examines the influence of the Impressionist movement on art created in and about the American South. Artists represented in the exhibition include Kate Freeman Clark, Elliott Daingerfield, Gilbert Gaul, Alfred Hutty, Rudolph Ingerle, Willie Betty Newman, Alice Huger Smith, William Posey Silva, and Catherine Wiley, many of whom exhibited their work in Knoxville in the early twentieth century. The exhibition enables KMA viewers to appreciate the accomplishments of East Tennessee Impressionists such as Catherine Wiley within the larger context of her peers from around the Southeast.

Scenic Impressions is organized by the Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, South Carolina. The Johnson Collection is one of the premier collections of Southern painting in the country. Scenic Impressions underscores the Johnsons’ commitment to illuminating the rich cultural history of the American South and advancing scholarship in the field.

“The artists in Scenic Impressions were inspired by the beauty and variety of Southeastern landforms, especially along the extensive coastline and in the mountains of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina,” said KMA Executive Director David Butler. “The vision of these painters stimulated a new appreciation of the Appalachian landscape that eventually led to the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. They showed us how to value what’s in our own backyard. The Johnson Collection has done us all a tremendous service by gathering so many first-rate examples of this rich and creative period.”

Knoxville Museum of Art, 1050 World's Fair Park Dr, Knoxville, TN 37916. Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10AM-5PM, Sunday, 1-5PM. Information: 865-525-6101, www.knoxart.org

Reception: Friday, May 4th, 3-5PM in the Ewing Gallery

A celebration of the work of students from the School of Art + The College of Architecture and Design

Initiated by the Ewing's Director Sam Yates 28 years ago, this exhibition recognizes outstanding students graduating from The University of Tennessee with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Art, College of Arts and Sciences; a Bachelor of Architecture or Bachelor of Science, Interior Design, a Master of Architecture, and a Master of Landscape Design from the College of Architecture and Design.

Selected by a School of Art Faculty Scholarship committee, six art students from various art disciplines were chosen from the qualifying applicants for this year's exhibition. These students are Michael Seagraves, Kristen Wasik, Sierra Plese, Marcus Taylor, Jesse McAdams, and Jade Knox

The College of Architecture and Design participants will be selected by the faculty-at-large, and by outside review teams.

Abbreviated Summer Hours Beginning After May 11, 2018
CLOSED: Sunday and Monday, OPEN: Tuesday - Friday, 12 - 4 PM

The Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
1715 Volunteer Boulevard, Art and Architecture Building, Knoxville, Tn 37996

An artistic exploration of water & environment
EXHIBITION: MAY 4TH – MAY 30, 2018
OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY MAY 4TH, 5:00-8:30 PM

Modern Studio is pleased to announce Just Add Water, a collaborative art exhibition exploring water and the environment. The Just Add Water exhibition references the plants, people, animals, forests, and water crafts that require water to fully inhabit this world. The show features paintings and prints, and the opening reception includes dazzling parade-size fish puppets and hip-hop sound recordings highlighting our connection to water and the environment.

Knoxville-based collaborating artists include Betsy Hobkirk, Hawa Ware, Jennifer Willard, Martha Robbins, Suzanne Wedekind, and members of the Cattywampus Puppet Council. Fish puppets designed by Cattywampus and students at West Hills Elementary School.

Modern Studio, 109 W Anderson Ave, Knoxville, TN 37917. Information: 865-323-2425, www.modernstudio.org