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Parthenon

Nashville is often called "The Athens of the South".  It seems fitting then for us to have a replica of the Parthenon.  However, I feel that in bringing the Parthenon to Nashville, it loses some of its meaning.  It is a wonderful place to visit and it truly looks just like the original Parthenon in Athens.  I think it's a great thing to have but I wish there were a way to communicate what the Parthenon meant to the Athenians.  The Parthenon is a temple to the goddess Athena.  People would make sacrifices on the steps and worship there.  When seeing the Parthenon in Nashville, you don't get that sense.  You really just see it as a replica and don't always get the back story on it.

The Parthenon

So perfect and exact

Walls and pillars are without cracks

Nothing like the Parthenon in Greece,

Except the physical design

All the meaning was left in Athens

It’s just a building here

Athena stands tall and powerful but

She’s too contemporary

No one would guess this stood as a temple

White walls and items behind velvet ropes and glass

You call this the Parthenon?

You should see the one in Athens.

They would walk up on steps covered in ruby pearls.

Sacrificing all they had to Athena

A place of worship

But not here

In Nashville we gawk at the architecture and the brilliant art inside

Losing all knowledge of what the Parthenon is,

What it stands for

What is was hundreds of years ago

in Athens

The Parthenon is located in Centennial Park on West End. It is a wonderful park that has a huge field for families and friends to play Frisbee, play catch, just sit and read and have a picnic.  It is really cool that there is the big open field and then places that are surrounded by trees as well. I also like that it’s this calm place but if you turn your head you can see a lot of downtown buildings.  I think that it shows a lot about Nashville. Nashville is a very business oriented city but it also is very relaxed and calm. People love to play Frisbee and just relax outside.

I really like that I feel like I’m 20 miles outside of the city but in reality I’m almost right in the middle of it.  I thought it was really funny that when two friends of mine and I were sitting by the water, I could turn my head and right through the trees see some buildings that didn’t match where I felt I was. Downtown is even visible from here.  When I sit on the steps of the Parthenon I don’t even feel like I’m in Tennessee.  It has a different feeling to it as if I were a tourist going to Greece or just some place that is “vacation like”.  I definitely don’t feel like I’m in the year 2012 while I’m there because it looks so “old” and many places these days aren’t as vast with gardens and small bridges. I think a lot of tourist places have been taken over by information signs and tons of buildings but the Parthenon and Centennial Park have avoided that and I think that it’s because the Parthenon is located in a park, it’s not a building on it’s own.

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Hillsboro Village

One of our trips was to a place literally two blocks from my home.  It's a little place called Hillsboro Village. I have been there many times to get some Sweet Cece's or to interview bands at Fido's.  What I didn't know was that every month they have an art crawl.  In a large majority of the shops and restaurants, there is art hanging that is made by local artists.  Not many cities embrace their local artists like this and I think that is a shame.  It shows the pride this city has in its constituents. Having art so easily available to the public creates a much different experience for the viewer than if it was in a private building like the Frist.

I think that having these paintings in shops and businesses helps the viewer to imagine it in their own home.  These paintings were chosen because the shop owner thought they would fit the look of their building.  They don’t look out of place or awkward on the wall.  The paintings look like they were made to hang in those specific buildings.

The Zeitgeist Gallery, which also holds an architectural business, had huge paintings on the wall.  They also had these pull out “walls” of paintings that you could just roll out to see the paintings they contained.  It seemed like the perfect fit for that building.  In Retropolitan, the paintings were fun and random. My two favorites were of giraffes.  One was a giraffe on a motorcycle and the other was three giraffes in a band. I thought they were great!  The other store I thought did a really good job, was next to Sweet Cece’s (I can’t seem to recall the name at the moment). They sold candles and other things of that sort and most of the artwork they had was made out of many pieces of paper. They were very cool and seemed to fit the store perfectly.

Painting above is made of all paper. Below is one of the paintings on the movable walls in Zeitgeist.

Below is the painting "Born to Ride" in Retropolitan.

I wrote a poem about the painting pictured above.  I thought that it was so funny and just wonderful so I wrote about how I felt when I first looked at this painting.  The reader is not supposed to know what the painting looks like at first so they can make up the image in their head and then see that I was talking about a giraffe on a motorcycle the whole time! Here is the poem:

Well this is something you don’t see everyday!

It brings a smile

Accompanied by a cheerful chuckle.

He’s smiling back at me.

The sky is alive behind him as he rides.

His orange and brown arms reach up to the handlebars

 And his helmet protects that head of his

Held up so high

Have you ever seen a giraffe on a motorcycle?

No?

Cause they were

BORN TO RIDE

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Cheekwood

Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art was a very wonderful place.  Cheekwood does have some galleries but they also have some pieces outside.  It think that having art in nature really enhances my experience.  Art seems to blend/fit much better in nature, like it belongs there. It makes me pay more attention to the space I'm in.  I like seeing art in nature because when it's in a building I feel like I'm supposed to look at and enjoy it but when it's in nature it's my choice.   The property at Cheekwood was beautiful and I really wish that I was able to explore it more.  I plan to go back and spend more time outside exploring.  I sketched a picture of one of the cool places I found while there (warning: I'm not a good drawer haha).

Inside the mansion, there is a gallery upstairs.  There was one piece in particular that really stood out to me.  It was called "American Indian Gothic" by David P. Bradley.  This painting is a parody of Grant Wood's "American Gothic".  Bradley was a part of the Chippewa tribe which is located in Minnesota (where I am from).  I've grown up learning about the plight of the Native Americans and their untold stories. This painting reminded me of all that I have learned.  I wrote a poem where at first I simply described the painting so that someone could picture it but then I realized I needed to add context to really make someone connect, to teach them about these people and just a small part of their story. Here is the painting and my poem.

As soon as my eyes fell upon the painting I couldn’t help but think American Gothic

And that’s what it is--

But with a twist

Two Native Americans, a husband and wife, stand before their tipi and field of corn

They are from the Chippewa tribe in Minnesota

We call the same place home but experience it differently

Her shirt is the color of corn and his of salmon

They are one with the land, the land that we took from them

I’m drawn back to a few years ago

I learned about the biggest mass execution in American history

Just a few miles from home Abe Lincoln

(One I thought did much for this country)

had set 303 Native American men to be hung

The number was slimmed down to 39 men

Lincoln promised the state of Minnesota that they would kill or move the Native Americans

The reward would be two million dollars of federal funds

I see why the man has such a hard look on his face

He knows pain and trouble

He has been treated poorly

Promises have been broken

And he can’t do anything about it but be filled with hatred for the “white man”

The soft colors of the sky do not reflect the people underneath it,

But they too are beautiful

 I tried to use fresh words and concrete images with very little adjectives.  I felt that that was the best way to get the reader to form the picture in their mind.  I made an allusion to the events in Mankato to pull at the emotions of the reader. To see that what the Native Americans went through and how someone that we consider to be one of the greatest Presidents ever was responsible for the largest execution in American history.  I also tried to use low frequency words when I wanted a softer, sadder tone in the line and use higher frequency words at the end of lines if that was not the feeling I wanted to pull out.

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Wow! great website! I just love the fairy tale pieces you have on here. I also went to this exhibit and getting this different point of view to these stories was very intriguing to me

Thank you so much! Keep checking back for more posts :)

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Fairy Tale Poems

She walks on feet of vines

Passing through the misty woods

A coat of bark surrounds her

Arms of green weave

Around nearby trees.

Her eyes look right into mine

She wants to tell me

The secrets of the woods.

The trees have lost

All their leaves for they now

Surround her from every angle.

She’s been here since

The beginning of these woods

She knows

Each twist

Each turn

Each leaf

Each tree.

She knows the secrets of the woods

But she can’t tell me, instead

She’ll show me

You will never hear her coming; she walks on feet of vines.

Slithering between each tree, flowers grow in her wake.

The trees are dead but she is more alive than ever.

A coat of bark falls over her shoulders for protection

She looks right at me, I am a stranger in her beloved woods.

She’s been since the first seed was placed in the ground.

She knows every bird, every tree, every animal that has stepped foot in these woods.

Her arms of green call me forward; she has something to say.

Closer now, I see the moss, the roots, vines and leaves and make this Green Goddess.

Slowly she shows me her woods; her secrets are for my eyes only.

She never speaks but she doesn’t need to.

I have never been to these woods, but every night I see them while I sleep.

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The Frist: Take Two cont.

As I said in my previous post, there were some other exhibits at the Frist that I was able to see as well.  

The Answers to Questions exhibit was very very cool. There were a ton of videos of these two guys doing the most random things but it was great.  I was transfixed by these videos and I didn't want to stop watching all of them! Some were quite odd like my favorite one which was the two guys tied together by their legs (like in a 3 legged race) and there was a machine shooting tennis balls at them. They didn't know where or when a ball would be released so they were just hopping around trying to not get hit. It was great!

·      Decisions:  Dougherty organized/composed this image as if it were a picture of the storm itself. It’s how the eye would see things if it could just freeze a moment in time.

·      Color: Dougherty kept the colors to themselves.  Each section has it’s own color scheme with very little blending between the elements.  The sky has a mix of pinks and purples, the water is a mix of blues and whites and the rock is a mixture of browns and blacks. The fact that the top and bottom of this painting are darker colors makes the blue in the middle really pop which is the focus of the painting; the storm.

·      Light:  Like I said above the light is important in this painting because it draws you to the storm.

·      Texture:  You can really see the texture in the rocks. They look very jagged and sharp.

·      Volume:  Volume is created in this painting by the use of shadows and overlapping showing distance.

·      Line: There are many implied lines in this painting that bring you to the storm and the spray about to fall over the rocks.  The waves point to it and so do the rocks. The spray also points to the dark but pretty sky.

·      Space: Having light and dark spots and also having busy and calm sections in the painting create space. It is very balanced.

·      Scale: Scale is used with perspective. Rocks that are farther away are smaller than the rocks right up close.

·      Symbolism:  The sky can symbolize beauty in the storm because in my mind the sky doesn’t look very menacing.  The rock could be a symbol of a person. The rocks in the back are being washed and attacked by the waves while the one up front is staying strong. Sometimes we let the waves overcome us but other times we stand firm and fight.

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The Frist: Take Two

My friends were talking to me about this new exhibit at the Frist called Fairy Tales, Monsters, and the Genetic Imagination and how much they loved it. I was absolutely thrilled when my professors took us there on a field trip and I got to see it for myself. Let me tell you something, it's WONDERFUL! There are two other exhibitions we saw as well that I will discuss later on in my next post (they are called The Phillips Collection and Answers to Questions: John Wood and Paul Harrison).

Fairy Tales was a really cool exhibit to see. I loved that a lot of the art was a mixture of all types of mediums.  There were some photographs, lights, paintings, sculptures, etc.  I was able to experience these fairy tales I grew up hearing in a totally different light.  Some were quite freaky but they were incredible.

I think that this show is valuable because it shows another side of the story. It goes deeper in and makes me realize that I can't take everything for what one person says it is. Fairy tales have always had a darker side that I never knew about until I was older. I never knew that stories like Cinderella were originally much different. It brings a new light to all the stories we have been told throughout our lives and how people interpret things differently.

I highly encourage you to go look at this exhibit if you can. It was amazing!

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Radiator Building - Night, New York, 1927

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Tete de Femme (Head of a Girl)

Poem I wrote about this painting. It is untitled.  I wrote this trying to use adjectives sparingly but instead tried to use concrete nouns and verbs.

Lost and cold she stares ahead

Calm waves of the sea lay on her head

Blood, as if gone from her face, she does not look at me

Her mouth parted uttering a small cry of help

She’s lost in her own world

Swimming in a sea of blue

Her shawl wrapped around her shoulders,

The only thing keeping her alive

All color has left her lips; she sees nothing ahead

Almost gone, she feels no pain

Her will has left,

She holds a blank stare at a future she cannot see.

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Fisk University

In the painting "Type Study I" by Winold Reiss this is what I found.The vibrant colors in the patchwork behind the woman lead me to believe that she is Native American. I am also led to believe that she is Native American because the other portraits on display have very little color and those are all of African Americans and I was told that a few were Native Americans. The fact that this was one was so different from the others in it’s use of color led me to believe she was Native American. The same vibrant colors are used in her clothing. This really ties her to her surroundings and probably how that is a big identifier as to who she is as a person.  Her shawl first draws you slight in to her hands and then immediately up to her face and the patchwork behind her. The lines in her body are very vertical and horizontal while the background is extremely horizontal.

Winold Reiss’ “Type Study II: Two Public School Teachers” uses very interesting lines and color.  In this portrait of the two school teachers, there is very little color. The entire painting is black, white and grey. The only color comes from the women’s skin, which is brown. That makes their skin color pop and the focus of the painting. Reiss also chose to not show much of their skin except for their faces, which is where the focus is.  One of the women has her head resting on her hand. If you draw lines from her two knuckles joints, you will see that they lead directly into the two faces. If you continue the lines, they go right into their eyes. The eyes in this painting show a lot of emotion. You can see how tired, exhausted and sad they are. The necklaces that both women wear lead you down to the book on the table that I’m assuming is a schoolbook. When I look at the color around the women and see that it is so dull and grey it leads me to believe that their lives/jobs are very repetitious and somewhat dull.  Grey also makes me think of exhaustion, which is the feeling I get from their faces and the color used in the painting.  I apologize for not having these paintings on my blog but maybe you can picture them from these descriptions.

My two favorite paintings were Tete de Femme (Head of a Girl) by Pablo Picasso and Radiator Building - Night, New York, 1917 by Georgia O'Keeffe. I will post pictures of both of those in another entry.

My other favorite thing about Fisk was their architecture. Inside one of the buildings you feel like you are in Hogwarts (from Harry Potter).  It was very very cool.  Their other buildings were designed in a cool way as well and made you feel like you were back 100 years or so ago.  

Fisk University has a lot of controversy about their exhibit with the paintings I mentioned above and how they will take care of them or if they will sell them. I encourage you to look into this and help Fisk to keep this amazing exhibit in Nashville.

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Belmont Mansion Poem

The following is a poem that I wrote after my trip to the Belmont Mansion and seeing her statue of the sleeping children.  I wrote this as if I were Adelicia Acklen.

My babies are angels; I know that to be true

My first day without them I wasn’t sure what to do

So stilly they would lie those nights in their beds

A fever so hot upon their small heads

When people come visit they marvel at my art

What beautiful children they say

My babies aren’t here

Well maybe next time!

They just could not see the girls ran out of time.

Before the last days, so perfect they slept

Mine for only so long, their souls the Lord kept

My babies are angels; I know that to be true

My 500th day with out them, I’m still not sure what to do

 

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Belmont Mansion

I am currently a student at Belmont University so of course one of my trips included a visit to our very own Belmont Mansion.  The mansion is open to the public but there is a fee for a tour.  It has a very interesting history and some of the art in the mansion is wonderful!

The mansion was owned by a woman named Adelicia Acklen. It was used as the Acklen's summer home and after time became a college for women and now is part of Belmont University.  The property and mansion was also used during the Civil War during the "Battle of Nashville". Many of the statues on Belmont's property are originals from Miss. Acklen's personal collection as well as the main gazebo.

I think that the Belmont Mansion is full of character because it was someone's home. It has a spunky, free spirited character due to the many patterns and vibrant furniture colors (like the pink polka dot chairs).  I also think it has an elegant character as well due to the many expensive pieces and items throughout the mansion.

When I recall my trip to the mansion two things stick out in my mind.  One is a statue sitting right inside the door of two young girls sleeping.  Adelicia had this personalized to remember two of her daughters that died at a young age.  You can see their names carved into the base. 

The other piece that sticks out in my memory is a piece in their breakfast dining room (not the formal dining room).  It is a small piece hanging on the wall. It is very complex and made completely out of hair.  I was absolutely amazed that people could make these things! I was told that years ago when somebody died they would have a wreath made out of their hair.

The Belmont Mansion is a wonderful place to visit and has a lot of history not only for Belmont but also for Nashville.

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On my first visit to the Frist Center I saw the Divine Light exhibit and the Woman on the Run exhibit.  My favorite painting from Divine Light was called "The Risen Christ" (by Gerard David) and I wrote a poem about how I felt looking at this painting. It goes like this:

His eyes so kindly look right at me

His hands, a promise fulfilled.

He wears the robe of a king, my king.

A heavenly light surrounds Him and brings peace

My sins pour from the center of His hands.

I know why he came; I know why He died

His eyes are compassion.

His hands, my freedom.

This was one of the paintings I saw that really connected with me.  It was weird seeing these paintings outside of the area that they were meant to be shown in.  When these paintings were done they were probably hung in churches surrounded by many others similar to it, they were just pieces in a large puzzle.

The Woman on the Run exhibit was very interesting. I think it was very creative to tell the story in one room and then you get to see it played out on videos playing in windows of buildings and then you get to go into the space as well and be a part of the story.  I liked being able to step into the creation and the fact that it was more interactive than a painting.  Also when you walk around the room the story unfolds before you (unless you accidentally go backwards like I did).

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The "train station" like area in the Frist that I discussed in my last post.

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I have been to the Frist on two different occasions.  I have really enjoyed both of my trips. Look for my posts from both trips discussing the exhibits that I saw.

It is very important for a viewer to look at the space that the art is in.  I never thought about that until my class entitled "The Art Experience" began.  I would not pay attention to the buildings that I was visiting and how they changed my experience. Now that is one of the first things I notice since it really does have an impact on my viewing of the art.

The Frist is a very nice building architecturally speaking.  When I first entered I felt like I had just stepped foot in an old fashioned but very nice train station.  I felt like I was just about to step foot on this journey and indeed I was.  The lobby is the entrance into this world that the artists have made in their works and the world the curator has made holding these pieces.  

I was shocked by how different the exhibits looked the second time I visited.  I really did like that the atmosphere reflects the pieces you are going to see.  The Frist also has a very nice kids area called the Martin ArtQuest Gallery that I made sure to visit each time.  Kids can learn about lines, color, texture, shading and so much more.  The kids can also make a stop motion video and create their own art that fits in to the exhibits on display throughout the rest of the Frist.

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Welcome to Nashville! I'm going to help you find your way around Nashville's unique art scene. Check back often for more places to visit and to see my reviews of different locations!