Calendar of Events

The Arts & Culture Alliance is pleased to present five new exhibitions at The Emporium Center in downtown Knoxville from June 4-25, 2021. A free reception with the artists will take place on Friday, June 4, from 5:00-8:00 PM. All visitors to the Emporium are required to wear a mask and maintain physical distancing guidelines. Most of the works will be for sale and may be purchased through the close of the exhibition by visiting in person or the online shop at www.knoxalliance.store.

S.K. Simmerman: Mug Shots: A Motley Crew of Miscreants in the display case

During the summer of 2020 I became fascinated with a treasure trove of images I discovered on a public domain photograph site. Most of the photographs were from Newcastle, England around the turn of the 20th century. Not only were the rough portraits intriguing — ranging from young and old, male and female — their descriptions of crimes committed were equally compelling. As I began preliminary sketches from these visual archives, I could not help but ponder on whatever became of these wayward souls. Later, I expanded my research to other digital troves, unearthing several mug shots from Leavenworth, Kansas and a few other federal prisons. The stories these individuals could tell...some tortured in mind, others genuinely penitent...captured my thoughts and reminded me that we all have redemption stories and human failings.

S.K. (Stephen) Simmerman follows in the tradition of Andy Warhol, who did a series of screen prints of New York criminals’ mugshots, which he viewed at the Whitney Museum of American Art on his last trip to Manhattan before the pandemic. Artists he counts as inspiration are Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Stuart Davis, and Jacob Lawrence. He admires how James Rosenquist and Jasper Johns parlayed elements of commercial art into their paintings and sculpture. Simmerman completed an MFA in graphic design at the Savannah College of Art & Design in 2002 and has taught art for over eighteen years. His work is primarily mixed media: an alchemy of acrylic, watercolor, oil pastel, and ink often layered with “found” or hand-rendered type. Exploring the pairings of hand-drawn faces and intertextuality, he enjoys discovering many routes towards visual storytelling.

https://ssimmerman.myportfolio.com
https://www.instagram.com/simmanbydesign/
https://cicadacreative.wordpress.com/

The exhibitions are on display at the Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, in downtown Knoxville. The Emporium is open to the public Monday-Friday, 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM. For more information, please see www.knoxalliance.com or call (865) 523-7543.