Author Archives: jolanta

There is nothing remotely dark about Leah Tinari’s recent solo show, “We Could Definitely Run For the Presidency,” at Mixed Greens. The artist’s work here doesn’t tackle any major issues and it certainly doesn’t take itself a bit seriously. Since her graduation from RISD in 1998, Tinari has consistently depicted the people, objects and moments […]

Sometimes all it takes to make an already professional art world event even more serious is a big pink tent adorned with amateur art and condoms. The concept behind Gulay Alpay’s not so silk, Silk Room construction of wood, pink paint, condoms and plenty of brushes and paint palettes for the general public to take […]

Gnarled branches and splayed tree trunks twist with kinetic energy in Mary Hrbacek’s charcoal drawings, “World Tree Series,” an exhibition curated by Matt Semler, director of the Roger Smith Lab Gallery. A culmination of ten years of experience in tree and figure drawing has resulted in Hrbaceks’ confident prowess in taming the vine medium to […]

In the information age, meaning has been broken into fragments: bold headlines, disembodied images and floating SoundBits are the rapid and constant messengers of knowledge. War and politics are disseminated into 15-second clips of gesticulating politicians, or bodies dispersing across a distant desert. We attempt, in our own ways, to make sense of this environment […]

Growing up around animals in a small town in Pennsylvania, Matt Forrest subsequently chose to put animal images into his prints, oil paintings and drawings. Through the small town aspect of his life story, education and church-going lifestyle, he discovered the importance of animal symbolism— that animals held a great deal of significance in every […]

The nightmares first started when I was about eight. It didn’t help that the house I lived in at the time was haunted, and that, by this time, I had already experienced several apparitions and poltergeist events—from flying cutlery to my mother’s spinning wheel turning violently while home alone watching “Laverne & Shirley.” It’s true […]

Chen Yufei’s paintings provide commentary on the difficulties that contemporary China faces in terms of its rapid urbanization and industrialization. Chen studied painting in Germany in the late 90s, and his visual vocabulary recalls the angst-ridden, fractured compositions of the pre-World War I work of Franz Marc. The artist constructs behemoth transport vehicles (jeeps, SUVs, […]

Becca Durnin is interested in creating nonsensical narratives that are at once precious and over-the-top, personal and monumental, beautiful and grotesque. Her drawings may include elements of human anatomy, sullen, scantily-clad women, or decadent, overly-ornate interiors.  While they may vary in subject matter and size—some are ten feet by ten feet, others are drawn on […]

Whitney May: You were a toymaker and an industrial designer before you became a full-time artist.  In what ways have your previous pursuits shaped your paint- and ink-filled oeuvre so far?Stella Im Hultberg: I don’t know if there is any direct influence from my having been a product designer to be found in what I […]

The Art House Gallery & Studio is unique to Nashville as it is the only gallery focused solely on the work of local artists. While the definition the Art House assigns to “local” is a broad one—John Hung Ha, one of its top-selling artists, currently lives in Brooklyn, but grew up in Nashville—the Art House […]