'Along the Horizon'

JOHNSON CITY (Jan. 19, 2018) – Tennessee is 440 miles across with six very different geographical regions – plains, plateau, basin, valleys, ridges and mountains.

Before advances in transportation, the rugged and varied terrain and elevations separated the state’s people and products. It still does, say Vanessa Mayoraz and Andrew Ross, East Tennessee State University Art and Design faculty members who have curated a new-year exhibition titled “Along the Horizon: Contemporary Drawing in Tennessee,” on display at ETSU’s Reece Museum through Feb. 23 and at Slocumb Galleries through Feb. 16.

“As soon as you say you’re going to do something that’s going to connect all Tennessee, all (artists) talk about is how different it is,” Ross says. “While picking up the artwork, I found that the artists themselves were making clear differentiations between the regions, where they were and where other artists are. . . . But one thing that was also very clear is that everyone would say that they feel very disconnected.”

So the two ETSU art professors decided to close the gap a bit with a Tennessee drawing exhibition.

“We thought it would be very nice to come together over the idea of drawing and sort of bringing Tennessee together through a medium,” says Ross, assistant professor of drawing.

Visual artists featured in “Along the Horizon”: are: Dawn Martin Dickins, Clarksville; Jonathan Adams and John Hilton, Johnson City; Nick DeFord, Althea Murphy-Price and Denise Stewart-Sanabria, Knoxville; Ben Butler, Paula Kovarik, Richard A. Lou and Joel Parsons, Memphis; Rob Matthews, Nashville; P.A. Turner, Telford; and Wade Guyton, formerly of Knoxville and currently in New York.

Adams and Hilton are ETSU Art and Design alumni, while Lou is chair of the Department of Art at the University of Memphis and DeFord is program director at the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg.

Lou will also serve on a panel that will convene Thursday, Feb. 15, at 5:30 p.m. in 127 Ball Hall to discuss drawing as a medium and drawing in Tennessee. Joining him will be Stewart-Sanabria and Stephen Wicks, Barbara W. and Bernard E. Bernstein Curator at the Knoxville Museum of Art.  The free public discussion will be followed by a 7 p.m. reception in the Reece Museum.

“As much as the artwork is important, the conversations around it are enlightening and energizing – and equally important,” Mayoraz says. “We don’t have to all agree on what a drawing is. We actually hope we don’t all agree on what a drawing is, because then we learn from each other. If we can spark that conversation …”

 “I like the approach to this exhibition because it’s not a cliché approach to drawing,” says Anita DeAngelis, ETSU art faculty member and director of exhibition co-sponsor Mary B. Martin School of the Arts. “This exhibition is exploring the variety of ways to render and make marks and manipulate surfaces, which many people may not even think about when they think of ‘drawing.’

“Some years ago, I led a discussion at a national conference on ‘What is drawing?’ I’m glad we’re having that conversation locally. It’s important to expand that dialogue.”

The discussion and the dual-gallery exhibition are designed to expand perspectives on drawing and mark-making, as well as the bond it creates across such a vast state as Tennessee, despite the inherent geographic silos.

“All the artists that we have chosen have this love of drawing that is central in their practice,” Mayoraz says. “It has a significant part in their practice – like a meditative process, they get lost in it. We get lost in it.”

“Along the Horizon” is an exhibition for all levels of viewers, from arts novice to practitioner, Ross says. “If they want to know more about drawing as a medium to begin with, this is a really good place to see that, to see the spectrum of what drawing has to offer contemporarily,” he says. “I think it will challenge their ideas of what drawing is.

“Also to be able to see an exhibition that really focuses on Tennessee as a whole. You won’t see an exhibition with that approach very often.”

The Reece Museum at 363 Stout Drive and Slocumb Galleries at 232 Sherrod Drive are open Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Other hours are on a case-by-case basis. Parking and access for individuals with disabilities are available.