January 6 – 29, 2023 | Arrowmont Gallery in Knoxville
Come visit 110 S. Gay Street in Knoxville to see work by just a few of the talented artists teaching community classes this winter at the Arrowmont campus in Gatlinburg. Featured artists included John Allen, Sam Chumley, Kelly Hider, and Katie Anne Sharpe.
Community Classes are an opportunity for local residents to take advantage of Arrowmont’s quality art instruction in professionally equipped studios. Classes are fun and a great way to meet new friends in a creative learning environment. Classes are taught by professional working artists and offer a wide selection of media for all ages and ability levels.
Most classes welcome students at all levels however a few require experience or specific skills. Any information regarding required skills will be included in the class description. Community Class workshop materials will be provided and that cost is included in the class fee.
Registrations are accepted on a first-come, first-registered basis. Class size is limited — early registration is recommended.
John Allen is an interdisciplinary artist living in Knoxville, TN. Earning a BFA from Clemson and an MFA from the University of South Florida, John has also attended workshops at Arrowmont and Penland, in addition to artist residencies at the Hambidge Center and Maker’s Circle. John’s works have been featured in national juried shows including Art Now America at ETSU, the Cimmaron National Works on Paper Juried Show, the Somerville Toy Camera Festival and the UNCA Drawing Discourse. Active in community arts organizations, John was a founding member of The Big Camera, for which he wrote or co-wrote multiple project and organizational grants, and is currently a board member of A1LabArts. John has been a speaking panelist at Click Photo Festival, and at Webster University.Formerly an institutional advancement staff at Arrowmont, and adjunct instructor at Maryville college, John is currently a professor at Pellissippi State Community College
Photography, like drawing or painting from observation, is a means of connecting to a sense of awe derived from experiencing seeing/perceiving anew or differently. Utilizing a variety of experimental, alternative, and lense-less approaches to the medium of photography, I intentionally seek approaches which do not produce predictable results. Motivated by a sense of play, I still experience the childlike wonder of my first projects in a high school photography course—recreating our mind’s ability to perceive light through the camera obscura, then recording such images with self-constructed pinhole cameras. The foundation of my photographic practice is still anchored in these most humble, hands-on approaches.
The images in Ephemera are a dialogue between digital and analog approaches to photography. Physically destroying found photo negatives before scanning them, I am equally interested in the process as a metaphor for mortality/the passage of time, and for the formal qualities of this translation. Iridescent reflections obscure photographic forms, sometimes entirely, producing images more resembling abstract paintings. Ash and debris scattered on the scanner bed also make part of the composition, balancing other forms. The resulting images contemplate transience and transformation in a deadpan, clinical language.
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Sam Chumley’s work intersects a variety of techniques in ceramics and printmaking to create functional pots. “For me, the functional crafted object that exists in the home or in the daily life of the user creates an experience that is drastically different than high art, which traditionally exists in a sterile gallery setting. This subversion is paralleled in the imagery that I use on the surface of my pots which draws influence from American traditional tattoo culture. A culture which has historically existed outside the walls of academia and social acceptance. And it is by these influences and function I wish for my work to be bold and antithetical to mainstream systems of thinking and living.”
Sam Chumley received his BFA in ceramics from Indiana University Southeast in 2017 and his MFA in ceramics from Ball State University in 2020. Sam’s work focuses on functional ceramics and he has exhibited across the united states and Canada.
Kelly Hider is a regionally and nationally exhibiting studio artist living in Knoxville, Tennessee. She received her BFA from SUNY Brockport in 2007, and an MFA from the University of Tennessee in 2011. Recent solo shows include exhibits at Unrequited Leisure in Nashville, the Central Collective in Knoxville, the Clayton Arts Center in Maryville, TN, and Lincoln Memorial University. Hider’s work was featured on the cover of the independent art journal, Number: Inc. in 2016, and she has been twice awarded Ann & Steve Bailey Opportunity Grants through the Arts & Culture Alliance’s Heritage Fund in Knoxville. A proud Hambidge Fellow, Hider completed an artist residency at the Hambidge Center in Rabun Gap, Georgia in 2019. Kelly Hider works at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts as their Youth Education Programs Manager, facilitating Arrowmont’s local programming and outreach for area kids and young adults, as well as the new youth outreach program ArtReach on the Road, which brings craft education to K-12 students throughout central Appalachia. Hider has served on the board for Tennessee Craft since 2021.
This series of work begins with found photographs of gardens and floral arrangements from the 1930s – selected for their lush patterns, compositions, and high contrast. Through layering of photocopies and single-color transparencies, photographed and digitally edited, the original images are transformed into abstract, haunted botanical scenes. Moments that were composed and captured by an unknown photographer now seem to miraculously exist by way of the object passing hands for nearly a century.
This legacy is further transformed through layering, tracing, and manipulation of the image. The original allure of these transitional moments is highlighted through carefully applied surface embellishments – further expressions of the artist’s hand. Seductive and unsettling, these shimmering forms both hide behind the primary images, as well as assert their presence. Acknowledging death, as exemplified by preserved fleeting moments, these works are at once a lament as well as a celebration.
The original photograph acts to memorialize an ephemeral moment, and through my alterations, I form a collaboration with the anonymous photographer, the natural space, and the history of photography. From object to collaged photocopies, to digital editing and reproduction, back to an embellished object – the vernacular image becomes fine art. A transformation carried into surreal, illuminated spaces.
Katie Anne Sharpe received her B.F.A. at Idaho State University in May 2018, while in school she also competed on the ISU rodeo team in the intercollegiate rodeo association. She spent the next three years in Oregon rodeoing and using a grant to bring art to the rural kindergarten through twelfth grade school in the area. She now lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, working as a studio technician at Arrowmont School of Craft. She is sculpture artist and mostly works with clay and paper as her primary mediums. All her artwork surrounds the themes of rodeo and Cowboy Culture.
“My Skull Series is an idea about how skulls can be interchangeable with other natural materials to highlight the decomposition and break down processes. I scavenged skulls from the High Desert of Oregon and Idaho and cast paper on top, making it thick and strong in some places and translucent and thin in others to mimic how the bones decayed in the outdoors. It’s very much a fashion to have skulls displayed as decoration in a Western house, usually now painted or adorned with flowers or sparkles. I almost want to “adorn” my skulls with the beauty of nature that is either juxtaposed or connects the history of the species the skull comes from and that emotional connection I have with Cowboy Culture.”
Arrowmont Gallery in Knoxville is located at 110 S. Gay Street and is open Fridays 5:00 pm – 9:00 pm; Saturdays and Sundays, noon – 5:00pm.
