Calendar of Events

Kathryn Clark is an avid photographer whose particular interest in the past few years has been mushrooms. She finds them camping, hiking, kayaking or just in her own backyard. See all the beautiful varieties she has captured in Ijams Hallway Gallery during the month of January.

Ijams Nature Center, 2915 Island Home Ave, Knoxville, TN 37920. Information: 865-577-4717, www.ijams.org

The Authors Guild of Tennessee (AGT) will hold its monthly meeting on Thursday, January 6 at 11:00 am at the Faith Lutheran Church in Farragut. Social time and book exchange begins at 10:30. Published authors are invited to attend.

Beginning in 2022, AGT will accept applications for associate membership from authors who have written a book but are not yet published. Serious authors only.

Info: www.authorsguildoftn.org

“HOW BAKING SODA HELPED SAVE OUR BIRDS” VIRTUAL PROGRAM THURSDAY, JANUARY 6 PRESENTED BY THE UT ARBORETUM SOCIETY

Join the University of Tennessee Arboretum Society for our First Thursday Nature Supper Club on Thursday, January 6th, 7:00 p.m. EST as we learn how baking soda once helped save our bird population.

It's our First Thursday Supper Club of the New Year via Zoom, January 6 at 7 p.m. You provide your own stay-at-home supper, and we provide the nature as local naturalist Stephen Lyn Bales will entertain and teach us via Zoom about this incredible story.

There was a time in the late 1800s when birds were under an all-out assault. They were shot to eat, shot for their feathers and simply shot for target practice. Few people knew all the different species they were shooting or realized they were party to bringing several species to the brink of extinction. A grassroots moment to raise awareness was started by conservationist Charles Church of the Church & Dwight Company when he began to insert “Useful Birds of America” trading cards into boxes of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda, one of their products. Under the slogan “For the Good of All, Do Not Destroy the Birds” the general public, especially children, began to learn about the birds that lived around them. Over the next century, hundreds of different small cards were produced and given away to avid collectors.

Join Michelle Campanis, education coordinator at UT Arboretum, and Bales for a look at the movement and learn more about some of the bird species on these beautiful bird cards. Please register for this free Zoom Program at www.utarboretumsociety.org. This program will be recorded, and closed captioning is available. Please contact Michelle Campanis at mcampani@utk.edu with any questions or registration issues. To contact Stephen Lyn Bales or buy one of his UT Press books, email him at hellostephenlyn@gmail.com.

Knoxville historian Jack Neely and local storyteller Laura Still invite you to listen in as they discuss creating A Fair Shake: The Leaders of the Fight for Women's Rights in Knoxville, written by Laura with contributions by Jack, and published by the Knoxville History Project. Topics include the process of collaboration, the challenges of research, the appeal of local history and its connection to national and world events. All politics are local, history more so.

Laura Still, a native of East Tennessee, is a published poet and playwright as well as storyteller and guide for Knoxville Walking Tours. Her latest tour, Misbehaving Women, highlights the Knoxville suffragists and other women who worked for gender equality and education, including the dramatic deciding vote in Tennessee.

Jack Neely, longtime journalist and executive director of the Knoxville History Project, has written several books about Knoxville and its history, most recently The Tennessee Theatre: A Grand Entertainment Palace (2015); Knoxville, Tennessee: Green by Nature (2014); Market Square: A History of the Most Democratic Place on Earth (2nd ed., 2011) and Knoxville, Tennessee: This Obscure Prismatic City (2009).

As always, programs are free, but you must register by midnight on Wednesday, January 5.

Thursday, January 6, 7-8 pm, ONLINE
Sign up today! You will receive an email with the Zoom link the morning after registration closes. https://knoxvillewritersguild.org/events/Jan2022program

Half-price adult admission every Wed in Jan & Feb!

Museum of Appalachia, 2819 Andersonville Hwy., Clinton, TN 37716 (16 miles north of Knoxville at I-75, exit 122, then one mile east). Open every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas. Information: 865-494-7680, www.museumofappalachia.org

No BPS will occur Jan 25-29 - please come back Feb 1 for more great music!

The WDVX Blue Plate Special® is a live performance radio show held at noon, with your host Red Hickey, Monday through Thursday at the Knoxville Visitor Center. On Fridays WDVX takes the Blue Plate Special to Barley’s Taproom & Pizzeria for “The Big Plate”, then back to the Visitor Center on Saturday with your host Evie Andrus.

It’s always free to join in, so please don’t be shy. Make yourself at home as part of the WDVX family. From blues to bluegrass, country to Celtic, folk to funk, rockabilly to hillbilly, local to international, it all part of the live music experience on the WDVX Blue Plate Special. You’re welcome to bring your lunch.

Just like at your favorite meat n’ three, the WDVX Blue Plate Special® is served up piping hot. This fresh and free daily helping of live music during the lunchtime hour that features performers from all over the world and right here in Knoxville has put WDVX on the map as East Tennessee’s Own community supported radio.

Previous performing artists include Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, The Avett Brothers, Old Crowe Medicine Show, Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, Jim Lauderdale, Marty Stuart, Nickel Creek, Red Stick Ramblers, Rodney Crowell, String Cheese Incident, The Del McCoury Band, Tim O’Brien, Yonder Mountain String Band, David Grisman, Claire Lynch Band, Brett Dennen, Tommy Emmanuel, Uncle Earl, The Infamous Stringdusters, the Jerry Douglas Band, Joan Osborne, John Oats, Mary Gauthier, Darrell Scott, and many many more! There’s plenty of great music to go around! http://wdvx.com/program/blue-plate-special/

Free 2-hour visitor parking located next door to the Knoxville Visitor Center. One Vision Plaza, 301 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. Info: 865-544-1029, http://www.wdvx.com

JANUARY 04, 2022 - FEBRUARY 19, 2022
An Exhibition of International Collage Artists
Monuments are ubiquitous on the landscape. Common and omnipresent, they blend into the background and go unnoticed until someone points them out. In recent years, monuments have become flashpoints of cultural controversy. It wasn’t that these monuments weren’t being seen, it’s that some people in the community weren’t hearing what others in the community were saying about them.

In 1747, a sandstone column was erected in the center of Birr, County Offaly, Ireland and topped with a statue of the Duke of Cumberland who just the year before brutally defeated the Scots at Culloden. The column and its statue was an act of imperialism, a message to the Irish people that a similar fate awaited them should they, too, resist English rule. In 1915, Birr Town Council voted to remove the statue. The Council’s action came during a period when the people of Ireland were asserting their independence from England. The column has stood empty ever since.

In 2021, at the invitation of the citizens of Birr, curator Ric Kasini Kadour invited eighteen collage artists from eleven countries to use an image by Robert French (1841-1917), The Square, Parsonstown, from the Lawrence Photograph Collection to imagine a monument that speaks to a world where all people enjoy safety, security, well-being, and dignity on their own terms. The collage prints debuted during the 53rd Annual Birr Vintage Week & Arts Festival, where the project was recognized with a National Heritage Award.

The exhibition of these works in the American South changes the context of the project from one rooted in British imperialism to an opportunity to reflect upon the role monuments can play in historical revisionism, in particular as we work to undo the legacy of slavery and the use of Confederate monuments to distort history and intimidate the descendants of enslaved people. That important civic conversation has focused on whether monuments should stay or be removed. We hope this exhibition invites a different conversation: What role do we want monuments to play in our community? What shared ideas or collective memories do we want future generations to celebrate? And ultimately, how can we build communities where all people enjoy safety, security, well-being, and dignity on their own terms. https://knoxart.org/kma_events/empty-columns-are-a-place-to-dream/

Knoxville Museum of Art, 1050 World's Fair Park Dr, Knoxville, TN 37916. Tuesday-Saturday 10 am-5pm, Sunday 1-5 pm, closed Mondays. Information: 865-525-6101, https://knoxart.org/

Tue Jan 4, 10-12: “Heat Emboss and Dry Emboss Note/Greeting Card,” with Louise Goodman, $30
Thu Jan 13, 12-1:30: Home School Children’s Art Class
Fri Jan 14, 10-1: PinCushion Parfait, with Twyla Marti & Vera Bogle, $50
Tue Jan 18, 9:30: Monthly Members Meeting
Tue Jan 18, 12-2: Artist Peer Review and Discussion Group, with Jack Retterer, $20
Wed Jan 19, 1-4: Chain Maille Jewelry: “Valentine Necklace,” with George Gallant, $80
Thu Jan 20, 10-1: “How to Paint Trees in Watercolor”, with Sheryl Reeser, $40
Wed Jan 26, 12-2: Life Drawing, with Dena Whitener, $5
Located at 451 Lakeview Drive in Fairfield Glade (off Peavine Road). 931-707-7249 or www.artguildfairfieldglade.net

Artwork by:

Kim Kimmons, Watercolors of Western Art
Ralph Parson, Wood Turning
Audrey Yates, Pottery

Westminster Presbyterian Church’s Schilling Gallery
6500 Northshore Drive, Knoxville, TN
865-584-3957
Hours: Monday thru Thursday, 9 AM to 4 PM and Friday, 9 AM - noon

December 18: Selections from the Permanent Collection Exhibition begins

Holiday Closings:
December 24—26—Closed
December 31 closing at 1 PM
January 1—Closed

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

Please join us for our Annual Art Education Exhibition featuring the work of our graduate students!

Congratulations to all of the art education students involved for such fantastic artwork and a job well done!

This is a culminative project for our Visual Culture and Critical Pedagogy course.

Every year, art education graduate students create a body of artwork as part of their graduate coursework and display the work through an art exhibition.

The exhibition will be on display at the Cookie Aytes Elliott Art Education Gallery in Bailey Education Complex, Room 105, and will be open Monday-Thursday from 9:00 am-4:00 pm from December 9th - January 31st.

Jane and David Bailey Education Complex, Room 105
1122 Volunteer Boulevard, Knoxville, TN 37996
https://calendar.utk.edu/event/exhibition_from_the_basement_annual_art_education_exhibition#.YdMmHWjMLct

Showing 22 images of Landscapes, Abstracts, and Flowers by David G. Liles

809 Oak Ridge Turnpike, Oak Ridge, TN 37830
(865) 483-6761
Hours: M-F 9-4 and Sun 10-12:30
http://www.oruuc.org/the-art-gallery-at-oruuc

The Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church hosts art exhibitions in the central corridor hall of the church. This not-for-profit gallery programs approximately six exhibitions per year, showcasing regional artists working in a wide variety of styles, media, and genres.