by Jonathan Lisenby
Open Studios Nashville is a semi-annual, city-wide artist and maker studio tour that offers the chance to meet local artists, see the spaces where they work, and learn about their creative process. Large group studio spaces available for tour like Platetone, 100 Taylor Arts Collective, and Ground Floor Gallery & Studios, represent artists in East Nashville, historic Germantown, and Wedgewood-Houston, and make it simple to visit several studios in one stop. Open Studios Nashville 2017 was the inaugural Open Studios event.
Ciona Rouse just celebrated the release of her book of poems, Vantablack, the first poetry chapbook published by Jack White's Third Man Records. Painter Jonathan Lisenby sits down with Ms. Rouse at her favorite writing spot in East Nashville, a tea parlor, to address her new book and the growing poetry scene in Nashville. Instead, they discuss reading with your body, being "quick" on twitter, locking yourself in the trunk of an old car, and habitual narcing, among other things. You can preview and purchase Vantablack, through Third Man Records, here: https://thirdmanbooks.com/books/vanta/
Omnifold artist and curator Jonathan Lisenby sits down with East Nashville-based painter Marlos E'van to discuss his large canvases and his, then, upcoming solo show, Dyin' By Tha Gun. They talk about painting as therapy, asking permission to work large-scale, the Great Dierks Bentley Barbecue, and eating Big Mac cheeseburgers, among other things.
Video Preview of Jessica Lynn Clay's "Into The Watershed" at Bijan Ferdowsi Gallery in Nashville, TN. Created by Jonathan Lisenby for Omnifold, 2017.
Erin Murphy is a painter and sculptor based in Nashville, TN. This audio interview was recorded in her studio at Ground Floor Gallery + Studios in the Wedgewood-Houston area. Curator Jonathan Lisenby sits down with Erin to talk about growing up in a creativity-quashing environment, rubbing gravestones, and becoming Xena: Warrior Princess, among other things.
David Onri Anderson in his basement studio in the Wedgewood-Houston area of Nashville, 2017.
David Onri Anderson shows Omnifold curator Jonathan Lisenby around his basement-studio-gallery in Wedgewood-Houston, Nashville. They eventually sit down outside to look at paintings arranged on the ground. They talk about color's relationship to spirituality, Nashville's arts cultivation problem, living simply as a practice, and the skink being the spirit animal of the conversation, among other things.
Kelly S. Williams is a painter and educator and is currently based in Nashville, TN. She earned her BA from Vassar College and her MFA from SAIC in Chicago. She is represented by David Lusk Gallery and often exhibits with her old mentor, painter Michelle Grabner, at the arts project space The Suburban.
Artist and Omnifold curator Jonathan Lisenby sat down with Kelly in her Germantown home-studio to talk about adjusting to life after art school, the peculiar mysticism of the South, the effects of Nashville's recent intense gentrification on artist spaces, and the tondo versus the mandala, among other things.
Still from video "Apartment", 2016
Claire Stigliani is a painter, sculptor, and video artist currently based out of Knoxville, TN. She began teaching painting and drawing at University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2014 and previously taught at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Among other distinctions, Stigliani received a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant in 2015 to begin work on her most recent series, Half Sick of Shadows - work that this interview attempts to address.
