Chattanooga Pulse

Summer in Chattanooga is no time to hop, and although many galleries close their doors for the season, there are quite a few offering rewards for those brave enough to battle the elements. From emerging to established, local to international, in July, Chattanooga’s galleries feature work for every type of artists, for every type of viewer.

Keeping It Alive: A Street Art Installation
Asher Love Studio + Gallery
3914 St. Elmo Avenue, Suite G
(423) 822-0289
July 10, 2010 – August 29, 2010
Opening Event: July 10, 6 –9 p.m.

Asher Love Studio + Gallery hosts a site-specific exhibition called “Keeping It Alive;” opening July 10 in St. Elmo and running through August 29. “Keeping It Alive” features the work of graffiti artist Sourone, who will paint directly on the walls of the space. The show also includes significantly more mobile pieces: signage, found object and canvas works, and a wall of broken televisions, tagged and stenciled.

Sour’s work starts with the common (if recently less-held belief) that graffiti is a singular act of vandalism. That stigma is what drives much of his work, both in process and exhibition. “Graffiti isn’t all about destroying things,” he says. “Unfortunately, that’s the first thing that comes to people’s minds.”

Sour is a former Chattanoogan currently living in Atlanta, and “Keeping It Alive” is his first gallery exhibition. For Mary Barnett, the studio’s curator, and Sour alike, it’s an opportunity to push the art form into a conversation that legitimizes it locally.

“Not all [graffiti] artists are running around, painting janky pieces on the walls of businesses or scribbling on churches or writing their name in etching fluid on a store window,” says Sour. “There are plenty of people doing great things in a respectful way.”

According to Barnett, Sour usually creates work in the off-the-beaten path environment of street artists: under bridges, on trains, and in other hard-to-get-to corners of cities. For the exhibition, he’s been given free rein of the space. Part of the studio will be dedicated to recreating the environment Sour works in, day in, day out.

In being true to graffiti’s birth in the urban environment, Sour’s work is inspired by architecture, the uncomfortable intersection of nature with the built world, and graffiti’s hallmark: the letter form.

“The goal is for the space to look like it’s been tagged over and over again for many years,” says Barnett. “Beautiful graffiti exists in places we don’t normally interact with. Largely, it’s appreciated by purveyors of street culture: they’re the only ones who can see it as artists look for new, untagged spaces.” For this exhibition, however, that will not be the case.

But Sour’s work is deeply personal as well. The son of a graphic and tattoo artist, Sour explains that he’s been interacting with the visual arts his whole life, even before he learned to write. “My father and I were lost in Atlanta, looking for a skate shop, and I happened to spot a HazeAM7 piece in a legal yard I’d later spend countless hours painting with my dad,” he says. “The colors, the shape, the structure—everything about the piece was so intriguing.” Three years later, he was painting.

Sour is quick to admit that his earliest work as a 13-year-old graffiti artist is laughable. Only after sifting through various letter styles and numerous names did he arrive where he is today. Even now, Sour is his own toughest critic and sees room for improvement in every piece he creates.

“I never want to just stop moving forward—I’d rather try 50 new things and fail 45 of those times than never try something new. Those five successes are why I do what I do.”
Photographic Works by Swinnson
Leo Handmade Gallery
22 Frazier Avenue
(423) 634-7755
Through July 30, 2010

Leo Handmade is a retail shop and gallery on the Northshore featuring handmade (and often locally-made) products exclusively. The space features work from a different artist or duo monthly. This month, Laura Winn and Kevin Swenson, graphic design and painting/drawing majors at UTC respectively, team up to present photographic works and an installation piece under their collaborative pseudonym, Swinnson.

The show starts with richly layered photography, the staging of which involved huge skeins of white string and several wild landscapes. The pair threaded themselves to rocks and trees, and both describe the experience of it as highly performative.

“A friend of mine inspired this work,” says Winn. “All of us understand the idea of paths in life, but this friend imagines them as ropes of white string. It is rare that we struggle to visualize something so shared. It really intrigued Kevin and I.”

“We were out in the woods shooting and even just the process [of staging the images] was so closely tied to our concept. We’d each lead the photographs a certain way,” says Swenson.

As emerging artists, it is not surprising that Winn and Swenson’s work focuses on futures, known and unknown. “Kevin and I are both interested in the intuitive paths you take in life,” Winn says. “We can’t see time, and can’t see what five years from now looks like, but we understand the way to these things is a path nonetheless.”

From the literal visualization of this concept in photography, Winn and Swenson collected objects, personal as well as found, to create a less palpable story that addresses journeys as well. Among those pieces are letters, photos, and keepsakes. “It’s like visiting your grandparents’ house and finding a box full of secrets. That’s the atmosphere we wanted to create,” says Winn.

“The show is full of objects that are important to Laura, but also found pieces that could have been important to others,” says Swenson. “We won’t know, but what’s important is the evocative nature of the small things that surround us.”

The pair have worked together on creative projects for a little over six months, and though this is Winn’s second public exhibition, it is Swenson’s first, as well as the duo’s premier.

As for their nontraditional hosts at Leo Handmade, Winn said the venue is a perfect fit. “The fact that Leo is both retail and gallery is a good tribute to the use of space,” says Winn.

Sensation
River Gallery
402 East 2nd Street
(423) 265-5033
Through July 31, 2010

The Bluff View Arts District’s River Gallery presents work from three non-local artists throughout the month of July. “Sensation” features pieces by Tatiana Hill of Georgia, John Kelley of Alabama, and Kelly Jean Ohl of Minnesota. What connects these decidedly diverse artists is their preoccupation with different environments, and that is where “Sensation” draws its landscape theme.

Hill’s work is notable for its use of unusual glazing techniques, which lend significant luminosity to each painting. Originally from Venezuela, Hill’s work in “Sensation” is evocative of our own Tennessee Valley, in color, form, and temperature.

Kelley’s pastel paintings are full of optimism and traditionalism, with titles like “The Old Way” and “By The Bend.” The exhibition pieces are all treescapes that draw their moods from a shifting, though sometimes singular palette.

Ohl’s work is distinct from that of the two other participants in “Sensation” in that she is a ceramics artist, and uses found objects and household items to cast impressions into clay. The result is a landscape evoked, rather than directly represented. Her sculptural work is organic yet foreign, almost submarine, but undoubtedly based in the intersection of mood and place.

Together, these artists bring an organic, and even muted, mood to a gallery space that just one month ago featured bright, industrial works.

Team Lump: Skins & Skeletons
Association for Visual Arts (AVA) Gallery
30 Frazier Avenue
(423) 265-4282
Through August 27, 2010

This summer, the Association for Visual Arts (AVA) presents work from Team Lump, an artist collective based out of Raleigh, NC. Founded by Bill Thelen 14 years ago, the team fluctuates on a project-to-project basis as new artists are “curated” into the group.

For “Skins and Skeletons”, a team of five artists collaborated to produce a single, large structure that occupies the better part of AVA’s Frazier Avenue gallery space. According to Tory Wright, Lump team member and one of the artists who contributed to the AVA exhibition, “Skins and Skeletons” is a response to the idea of a sculpture garden, as interpreted by each of the participants.

“[In the collective] we tend to start very organically,” says Wright. “We’ll see who we want to work with, who’s around, and we’ll start to brainstorm. A few of us have always wanted to do a sculpture garden, but in a less high brow way.”

Each of the artists has struggled with the concept of public art, and the final piece speaks to that. The large table-like work features a mock-up of what a Team Lump sculpture garden would look like, with a built environment attached to it where viewers can watch a video installation. “We each had a lot of freedom with our practices,” Wright continues.

Team Lump has garnered a host of accolades, and the group’s work has been exhibited in London, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Seattle. The group is dedicated to supporting the work of emerging and mid-career artists, and is known for producing works that combine sculpture, paintings, drawings, and video, in addition to site-specific wall drawings and installation pieces. In their own words, the works are “laden with biting commentary.”

Wright has been working with Team Lump for eight years, and is joined in this show by Thelen, David Colgiavanni, Rich McIssac, Megan Sullivan, and Gerscin Crousy.
So take the opportunity to beat the heat and take in some great artwork at the same time.