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laura Nugent

“Family” has become a complicated term in recent days, one that has been politicized, sliced and diced, defined, redefined, and let’s face it, had the idea of fun sucked out of it.

If you are longing for simpler times when family meant community, sharing, and fun, then this coming Father’s Day weekend, June15–17, you will be able to find all that and more at the 42nd annual American Artisan Festival in Nashville’s Centennial Park. It is a weekend tailor-made for families to spend time together enjoying fine art, the best in contemporary American handcrafts, food, and live music.

The American Artisan Festival was built by the Saturn family. The late Nancy Saturn, a beloved Nashville retailer and early pioneer in the contemporary craft movement, started the festival with a vision to represent the highest quality of craft from every area of the country, from jewelry, furniture, sculpture, stained glass, to ceramics and textiles. That vision and tradition of excellence is being carried on by her daughter, Samantha Saturn, who, along with Nashville’s Jerry Dale McFadden and their co-sponsor, the Nashville Board of Parks and Recreation, helps draw more than 30,000 festival-goers each year.

Samantha Saturn explains what the festival means to her personally. “My entire life was spent at this festival with my father, the late Alan Saturn, and together we loved walking the show, eating together and enjoying the park each year. I now continue that tradition with my husband, Steve, and our two children.”

The festival organizers also reach out to the local artistic community each year to pick a winning design for the festival’s poster, partnering with Watkins College of Art, Design & Film. This year’s winning design was created by Hunter Hodge. As well, this year includes a new partnership with Musician’s Corner, who provide free, outdoor music programming in Centennial Park, with performances by David Mead, the Hogslop String Band, Ferrier, and Sam Lewis.

“I am always reminded that the Artisan Festival has always been about family,” Samantha Saturn says. “A family of artists, families celebrating Father’s Day in Centennial Park together, and the greater Nashville family that has supported the artists exhibiting at American Artisan Festival for over 40 years.”

The festival honors the life of Nancy Saturn, who lost her battle with breast cancer in 2010, by donating proceeds to Gilda’s Club in Nashville and the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center.

www.american-artisan.com

by Currie alexander Powers

A Family FeastAt the American Artisan

Mr. hooper

ron and Christine sisco dana shavin

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20Richard GentryArtistry in WoodFurnituremaker Richard Gentry has built things since childhood. His innate understanding for woodwork and his openness to ideas have established his career as an artist. Gentry could recite a long list of celebrity clients, but when he talks to you, he sticks to his passion for

craft. “I’m not formally trained,” he says, “but I’ve studied the masters. I am largely self-taught. As a restless human being, I just need to push the limits of design.” An admirer of Biedermeier furniture, Gentry considers himself a student of furniture history, but he lets his intuition be his guide. “I am not stuck in Queen Anne, and I am not stuck in Chippendale. I use an amalgamation of design.” Gentry was inspired to experiment with his craft when interior-designer clients approached him with new designs from California. “It was all very whimsical,” Gentry explains, and that whimsy and creativity breathed new life into his work. Calling himself both “classic” and “contemporary,” Gentry bridges the divide between rustic Americana and

rococo chic. At the moment, Gentry is working with reclaimed wood from a log house that is over 185 years old. The “rare, extinct” lumber will soon be transformed into beautiful farm tables and cabinetry.

www.richardfgentry.com

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Cumberland Gallery SelectionsCumberland Gallery takes a short vacation for a week each summer. When the doors reopen (this year on June 12), it’s a cause for celebration. Summer Selections indulges in the rich, established talent in Cumberland’s broad roster of artists. From June 12 to September 8, the gallery rotates the selection of art every two weeks to give art lovers a regular treat. The end result is a tour of Nashville’s artistic diversity in media and style. Featured artists include Kit Reuther, Marilyn Murphy, Tom Judd, Andrew Saftel, Barry Buxkamper, Ron Porter, and Jeff Danley (see our cover). Please note: the gallery will be closed between June 3 and June 11.

www.cumberlandgallery.com

Jeff danley, Submerged No. 2 (Hand with Flower)

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Inspiration for his current work can be found throughout Davis’s garage studio. The ground level shelters his prize 1938 MG-TA as well as spare tires and boxes of reclaimed parts—treasured finds from the Beaulieu Autojumble, the mecca for vintage British motorcar salvage in England. Upstairs, easels and paint, computers and cameras dominate the studio space, while car paraphernalia of unimaginable variety is crammed into the shelving that lines the walls.

Davis’s lifelong fascination with British cars started in childhood with the construction of plastic models and culminated in college with the purchase of his first MG-TF in 1965. In the forty years since, Davis estimates that he has owned and repaired at least a dozen classic British cars. Currently he “crews” for Nashville’s Zapata Racing, a six-car vintage racing team that competes at premier U.S. tracks, including Laguna Seca, Watkins Glen, Road Atlanta, and Sebring.

Cars were also the dominant subject for his childhood sketches. An ability to visualize objects in perspective and to create three-dimensional illusions in his drawings sustained his early interest in art, despite the fact that it was not offered in his hometown schools in Crossett, Arkansas.

Pile of Parts, 2009, Oil on canvas, 38" x 55"

Second and Church, 1988, Oil on canvas, 61 3/4" x 56 3/4"

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”“Are those animated forms, enlivened with points

of reflected light and subtle but luscious color, an attempt to seduce the audience with notions about

Zen and the art of automobile maintenance?

But at the Memphis Academy of Arts (now Memphis College of Art), Davis found ample opportunity to develop his artistic skills. When asked about the earliest influences on his painting, he explains, “When I was in school most of the painting instructors were doing abstract expressionist work, and I really wasn’t interested in that.” However, he remembers seeing an exhibition of photorealist paintings on campus that made a lasting impression. Photorealism was a new movement in the late 1960s; its practitioners typically projected photographic slides onto canvas to create hyper-realistic paintings of everyday imagery—cityscapes, still lifes and portraits. Davis remembers thinking, “I could do that.”

With characteristic practicality, however, he chose a major in commercial art, and for two years reveled in his study of illustration under modernist architect Francis Gassner. “This was a great opportunity. I had always loved architecture, from the simplicity of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work to the complexity of late-nineteenth-century iron-clad buildings.” After graduation in 1967 and a two-year stint at an advertising agency, Davis began a lengthy freelance career in architectural illustration, transforming the design ideas of some of Nashville’s most prominent architects from

Paris Rain, 1987, Oil on canvas, 56" x 78"

backgrOund: TA Pistons, 2009, Oil on canvas, 55" x 42"

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28YORK & Friends

fine art

107 Harding Place • Tues-Fri 10-5, Sat 10-3 • 615.352.3316 • yorkandfriends@att.net

Follow us on at Ron York Art • www.yorkandfriends.com

San Marco Shadows, oil/canvas, 14” x 11”

Nashville • Memphis

Announcing Exclusive Representation of

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blueprints into fully realized gouache sketches of buildings, often set in landscapes of his own invention.

In 1986, Davis made the life-altering decision to paint full time. “I was ready to do something that was not conceptual and to move away from small tight renderings. It was a natural transition from architectural illustration to painted cityscapes—after all, they had cars, architecture, everything I liked.” One of his first large-scale works was Paris Rain, painted from a slide taken twenty years earlier on a student trek through Europe—“when it could be done on $5 a day,” he adds, smiling. Paris Rain won first place in a painting competition, earning Davis a one-man show in a New York gallery. His new career was launched.

That same year, he took an extended trip to New York City. “Part of the time I just wanted to be a tourist,” Davis remembers. “I would hop the subway to Coney Island or ride the ferry out to Staten Island just to enjoy the vistas of the city from a distance.” The streets of New York became the subject for thousands of 35mm color photographs—and the source material of paintings for years to come. “I knew from that first trip that I needed to be in the city to capture its energy in my paintings,” and for the next six years he split his time between Nashville and New York, staying with friends and working in a borrowed studio on the upper west side for two months at a time.

“I visited museums to study the work of the old masters and the impressionists and went to the Soho galleries to see the work of contemporary artists.” He was particularly drawn to the urban landscapes of photorealist painters Richard Estes, Ralph Goings, and Robert Bechtle. However, Davis was not interested in emulating their sharp-focus realism, preferring instead a more painterly approach that combines realism with impressionistic brushwork. Similarly, he avoided a direct replication of the photograph by making alterations to the image in stages, first in his drawing of the photograph and then in his painting of the drawing.

Davis partly attributes his success in making a living as a painter to understanding the importance of networking. Through Nashville artist John Baeder he formed a friendship with John Kacere, one of the original photorealists of the 1970s. Later, an introduction to renowned art dealer Ivan C. Karp led to a long-term association with New York’s Gallery Henoch.

Today, at almost 70, Davis is truly freewheeling, freed from gallery ties and the dictates of the art market. “I’m just doing things for myself, and if others like it, that’s icing on the cake.” What’s next? Davis answers slowly, “Well, I painted New York for a long time. I feel like I’ll paint car parts for a number of years. I’ve been thinking about wire wheels . . . you know, a hub with a few of the spokes coming out from the center. . . . ”

bill davis’s work can be seen and purchased through his website at www.billdavis.org.

”“It was a natural transition from architectural illustration to painted cityscapes—after all,

they had cars, architecture, everything I liked.

Mulberry St., 2001, Oil on canvas, 48" x 60"

Pete's NE, 2010, Oil on canvas, 20" x 16"

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Kim (Pont Lezica’s wife), was probably made to feel essential to the project. And, indeed, probably was.

Pont Lezica, though, never seems to play the temperamental artiste. He throws his arms around a bit as he talks, but that might be because he’s enthusiastic about everything, or because he’s from Argentina. (No, he doesn’t tango.) Apparently, he’s lived and worked everywhere but the moon—Paris, Tokyo, New York, Italy, Spain, Buenos Aires. However, his cosmopolitan background doesn’t display itself in any sort of overbearing way.

“So,” I ask, “Why Nashville?” He sweeps his arm around one cavernous room, diffuse light tumbling in from walls of windows on all sides—the ideal photographer’s studio. “You couldn’t find, or pay for, this big a space in Tokyo, New York, Paris. There are great advantages to living in Nashville.”

Pont Lezica and I wander around his ten-thousand-foot studio on Chestnut Street, now, at 3:30 p.m., mostly empty, the sets and the models departed for the day. So, I ask, does he specialize? No. Does he advertise? No. Does he have an agent? No. Does he have a publicist? No. So, how does he get to take pictures of the beautiful people, all those skinny models in designer clothes, show biz types, people who look like they could own airplanes?

demetria Kalodimos in Le Fifre

alecia davis in Flaming June

Modigliani, Young Redhead in an Evening Dress

ilya repin, Portrait of Composer Mikhail Glinka

Giancarlo Guerrero in Portrait of Composer Mikhail Glinka

hope stringer in Young Redhead in an Evening Dress

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Latin shrug. “Word of mouth,” he says. “People talk to people. Then they call me. If I specialize in anything,” he emphasizes, “it’s the kind of portraits I do. I have one goal—not to make people as beautiful as they can be, but to make them feel as good as they can about themselves. That’s the key. What people all want, even the already pretty ones, is to feel good about themselves.”

Here are a few parting bones for the techno-geeks. Pont Lezica uses high-end Canon digital cameras, with some “secret” alterations, so I can’t reveal them. Hint: they have something to do with optimizing the full frame of the recording medium.

“I love the old glass lenses and heavy bodies, but you can’t beat digital cameras for resolution and convenience. Still, I don’t use strobes much, just a standard light scheme—key, fill, and back lights—like in the old days of film and darkrooms.”

Is Pont Lezica a Photoshopper? “Not really,” he says. “Photoshop is a handy tool for cleaning shots up, but the finished prints are pretty much as they were shot.”

Just an old-fashioned boy with new toys.

June 2 to september 15 at the Parthenon’s east Gallery. www.parthenon.org, www.cycstudio.com

ann Patchett in The New Novel

Winslow homer, The New Novel

Jean auguste dominique ingres, La Grande Odalisque

unidentified Nashvillian in La Grande Odalisque

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48ArTiST PrOFiLe

M ario Moreno is a dreamer who, in spite of nearly lifelong handicaps, has been able to

make his dreams of becoming an artist come true. Mario was born in Cuichapa, a maize-and-beans-producing small town of approximately 12,000 people in Veracruz, Mexico. Sadly, during his childhood, a severe infection in both ears left him deaf and mute, which prevented his going to school. In spite of those considerable challenges, or perhaps in part because of them, he started to draw at the age of nine, and while working at shining shoes, he sketched his clients whenever he could.

Gradually, opportunities arose to develop his talents. At the Instituto Mexicano de Seguro Social (Mexican Social Security Institute), he experimented with watercolors and oil paints. In 1983, he met a sculptor and learned to carve wood. Seven years ago, he decided to come to the United States to seek opportunities as a visual artist. Encouraged by his sister Maria, he moved to Tennessee—a move that has proved to be a good one.

Recently, he made his professional debut, with eighteen other local artists, at the first Hispanic collective art exhibit by the Metro Nashville Arts Commission, where he earned immediate praise and recognition. The experience gave him renewed enthusiasm and confidence in his talent.

Mario MorenoA Life Without Wordsby yuri Cunza | photography anthony scarlati

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”“In spite of the fact that he is silent...his ability to transcend language is a priceless gift.

”“

At the exhibit’s artists reception, another of Mario’s talents became apparent. In a room full of people loudly interacting with each other, his animated personality and enthusiastic demeanor stood out from the crowd, in spite of the fact that he is silent. He seems to communicate telepathically, and, clearly, his ability to transcend language is a priceless gift.

His colorful landscapes and portraits transport viewers into his surrealist world of magical shapes and modest symbolism that are reflections of the sentiments of Mario himself.

Scenes from his native land—nature in its most blunt but delicate form and powerful religious images that reflect the most treasured beliefs of the people in his native Mexico—immerse his audience in a compelling warmth and flow of movement. There is energy in Mario’s work, and there is music, captured within a state of profound silence.

Now 52, Mario lives in Springfield with his family in an ample country house with a big yard where he has set up a workshop. He carves wood and assembles battleships in bottles for a change of pace, but he spends most of his time painting landscapes and portraits. His favorite place to paint is a corner of the living room near a photograph of his mother, Paula. Ending their long separation is another dream he hopes to fulfill one day soon.

if you wish to reach visual artist Mario Moreno, please contact the Nashville area hispanic Chamber of Commerce at 615-216-5737 or www.nashvillehispanicchamber.com.

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S tatus quo is sarah souther’s dirty word. From a stint in the film business after studying design in her native Ireland to the

juggling of five jobs while raising a child in Nashville, Sarah has turned an experiment with homemade marshmallows into a thriving business with a little help from Nashville friends.

Ten years ago Sarah was a single mother living on a remote family farm in Ireland. A vacationing Nashville songwriter asked her to marry him. Excited to escape a country that views change with suspicion, the twenty-five-year-old didn’t hesitate. Change was her mantra. And though the relationship did not last, she found the supportive and positive vibe she longed for in Nashville.

Guns and Marshmallows Explode at the Bang Candy Companyby hilary lindsay

Marshmallow became a passion after she dined with friends at a local tapas restaurant. She encountered a homemade version of the heretofore-dumpy marshmallow in her dessert, and her curiosity was piqued.

She experimented that night, making her own with rosewater and ground cardamom. Friends loved them, demanding she make them for their dinner parties. Five jobs quickly became one, and the budding candy empress declared marshmallow the new cupcake. “In England and Northern California and New York, women have taken up a tape measure, noticed that their asses have expanded far beyond their wildest dreams, and now the marshmallow is the future of classy decadence.” With that she began to market her “fluffy confections.”

After a brutal winter selling from an unheated cabin on a trailer, she took the leap to leasing a space that would become the Bang Candy Company in Marathon Village. A framed silk scarf with a handgun motif in pink hangs on the exposed brick wall above an antique jukebox in the café’s doorway. The scarf was part of a line of apparel designed by Sarah years ago as a “bored housewife” looking for something to do. The gun motif runs through her collection. Why?

“You know, guns are, well, sculpturally interesting and rather provocative.” Souther was held up at gunpoint fourteen years ago in Ireland in a run-in with the I.R.A. and again on Belmont Boulevard a year ago. She’s dealing with it. She feels that inscribing women’s silk adornments with guns is a function of taking control of uncontrollable circumstances. It is a declaration of power.

Advised that the logo of pink six-shooters would offend people, she countered, “Then I have to use it. It’s provocative and interesting, and people will talk about it. Better than a dancing marshmallow!”

The café offers a variety of soups, paninis, gourmet coffee and teas, and a variety of her own delicious simple syrups recently featured in bon appétit magazine. An array of marshmallows is sold individually or in gift boxes.

Romance carried her here and friendship held her. Find Sarah at Bang Candy at 1300 Clinton Street. She’ll be the redhead resembling Florence from the Machine, head thrown back at the slightest provocation exclaiming “grand!” or “brilliant!”, her voice a dead ringer for Julia Childs. Come for the good food and treats and you’ll likely leave with a new friend.

hours are 10 to 5 tuesday through saturday. look for an expanded schedule this summer. and if you venture to ireland you can stay with her folks at their country guesthouse.

www.bangcandycompany.com www.lismacue.com

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70ArTiST PrOFiLe

O ne must suppose there is something addicting about high steel work, about spending hours above the

world, suspended in air, defying gravity, your life given over to trust. To see form take shape beam upon beam, a skeleton developing skin, design becoming function. But after many years, Joe Sorci knew when it was time to come back down to earth.

Like a skydiver knows his number is bound to come up, Sorci knew gravity was reminding him of its power the day he stood on a thin beam and realized his legs were shaking. It had never happened before. Down on the ground once again, he counted his fingers and toes, counted himself lucky, and left the world of high steel.

By then, working with metal was in his blood. He started a pipe fitting business after college, sold it, and worked for another company brokering and supplying metal pipes for sewage- and water-treatment facilities. But the beauty of metal against a backdrop of sky never left him.

He found himself one day asking the question, “If I had to pick one thing I had to do the rest of my life what would it be?” He wanted to marry creativity with his love of metal and steel.

With his sculpture commissions ticking along, Sorci started painting, drawn to the Flemish method of applying paint over copper. “There’s something in back of the paint,” Sorci says. “I like the way the paint pushes and pulls on it.” Painting on copper also keeps him connected to his first love.

It is perhaps Sorci’s background working on large buildings that gave him the ability to see things without scale, to imagine something small being large, bending the possibilities of function, always just a step from nature. It is this ability that led Sorci to furniture design. Looking at his sublimely streamlined tables, graceful steel legs and frame holding a thick wood box, a beautiful blending of wood and metal, one sees exquisite design, furniture as sculpture.

Joe SorciWorking Without a Netby Currie alexander Powers

Threshold, steel

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Yet Sorci wasn’t initially envisioning a table in a living room. He saw a platform for a house, raised off the ground, a way to protect homes built on flood plains. That encapsulates the heart and methodology of Sorci. Houses as tables, buildings as sculptures.

At 56, he is conscious of taking advantage of every minute. “That sweet spot in a career is when you’re eighty,” he says with a wry smile. “It’s always about the journey.” His has been manifold, a fine balance of labor and expression, the wilderness world and the corporate world. “The art is in creating,” he says. The simple act of welding a cannon ball found in the ground to a piece of metal is part skill and part inspiration, art suggested by the elements. Sorci makes his world a fugue of the organic and the intellectual.

“I prefer nature to any other setting for my sculpture. Creating shapes that stand out against sky,” he says. Always just a step away from the rush and pull of the wind, high above the world.

www.joesorci.com

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The Map, rutherford County Chamber of Commerce, Concrete and brass

The Lift, steel "O", bronze and indiana limestone

The Guardian, steel and rope

New Madrid, First metal aluminum

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B obby Keys has mastered the art of the crackling, memorable sax solo

in rock and r&b just as superbly as the great jazz musicians he idolizes. While best known for frenetic contributions to classic LPs by the Rolling Stones, the Who, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker, and John Lennon (for starters), Keys has also appeared on albums by artists ranging from B.B. King and Dr. John to Donovan and Barbra Streisand. Yet, despite an impressive legacy that dates back to the '50s and stints with Buddy Holly and Bobby Vee, Keys never wanted to be a saxophonist.

"I got hurt playing baseball and couldn't play any contact sports," Keys recalled. "In Texas, everybody wants to play football. The only thing left was to join the band. By the time I got there they had one instrument left. It was a beat-up baritone saxophone. I wanted a guitar, but my parents wouldn't get me one. So I was stuck with that old sax." But Keys quickly became a terror on the instrument, even if he deviated from the normal tunes bands of that era preferred. "I used to listen to the all-night radio stations, especially the ones that played all those great R&B songs," Keys continued. "All the rock & roll and R&B records that I liked had sax solos. Little Richard, Fats Domino, that really resonated with me."

Keys incorporated into his approach the big sound, huge tone, and vocal effects of premier R&B horn guys like Sam "The Man" Taylor, Plas Johnson, Hal "Cornbread" Singer, Earl Bostic, and most notably King Curtis, whom he  met when Curtis was recruited to play on a Vee session. "They needed someone to pick him up, so I volunteered," Keys added. "Of course, my band director and the guys weren't real pleased when I told them I was blowing off a football game because I was picking up this black horn player and taking him around town. But I didn't really care, because I was

Timing Is Everythingby ron Wynn

Bobby Keys

PHOTO: anTHOny scarlaTi

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Julie Boehma Nashville Patron and Community Volunteer

I love art that brightens a room, that reflects the natural light of the space. When I first saw this trio by Sterling Strauser I was immediately drawn to its carefree attitude, and I

knew exactly which room they would look perfect in. There is a fourth painting in this series, but I have no idea where it is though I often wonder how it would complement the others. I like the way Strauser used long sweeping strokes to generate a sense of movement in the paintings. You can almost feel the energy being exerted by the riders. The three paintings together create a great whimsical effect that draws the eye and touches the heart.

My FAvOriTe PAiNTiNg

artist iNFO sterling strauser was born in bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1907. he died in 1995 after a lifetime devoted to painting. strauser was a natural painter with a keen sense of vision, both social and artistic. though he was completely untrained, his innate passion and tactile awareness of his world drove his art. a firm realist, the painter was seduced by the energy of european modernism. like many american artists, he found this style liberating and full of new possibilities. strauser worked in every genre from still life to landscape to figural compositions.

Bicycle Triptych by sterling strauser