Artist Greely Myatt doesn't let his past life events go to waste. Take the pine tree he planted decades ago in his mother's yard. "When I was in the third grade, my teacher — Mrs. Davis — gave all the kids in the class a little pine sapling, and we were supposed to take it home and plant it," says Myatt, who is 65 and a professor of art at the University of Memphis. "Well, I was a reasonably good student, and I did. Fifty-five years later, my sister called me up and said, 'Hey, I cut your tree. Do you want any of it?'" Their mother had the pine tree cut down because she was afraid it would fall on her house. Myatt said he wanted all 60 feet of it.

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Hodges Taylor, in collaboration with David Lusk Gallery, presents the recent paintings and sculptures by Kit Reuther. The Nashville-based and self-taught Reuther has evolved over her career from realism to complete abstractionism.

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American photographer William Eggleston (who has been credited as “the godfather of color photography”) has announced his debut record at age 78. It’s called Musik, and it arrives October 20 via Secretly Canadian. He’s also shared the first song from the album. Watch the visual for “Untitled Improvisation FD 1.10,” and view the LP’s cover art and tracklisting below. Musik (in the German spelling in honor of “his hero” Johann Sebastian Bach) is produced by the Numero Group co-founder Tom Lunt.

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Rachel Bubis: As a TN native who has been living and working here many years as an artist and curator, how do you take the temperature of the current art scene in TN? Do you notice any similarities or differences between the Memphis and Nashville communities? Hamlett Dobbins: I haven’t been able to travel as much as I used to when I was working as a curator. I think the energy and activism in the Memphis art community ebbs and flows. We have spurts where there are lots of popup alternative spaces and then people move away or get full time jobs or get burnt out and they close and then a few years later there’s another spurt. I feel like there are great things happening at a number of the institutions in Memphis, particularly thinking about the college galleries here. Patty Daigle is continuing great programming at the University of Memphis Fogelman Galleries, same with Joel Parsons at Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College. Now Cat Peña is running the gallery at Christian Brothers University. Dwayne Butcher organized a show for the newly renovated Art Museum at the University of Memphis. The Crosstown Concourse and Crosstown Arts will be a big bump for the community with a new space for exhibitions and its residency program. There are some new spaces and groups like the Orange Mound Gallery as well as The CLTV. I feel like it’s a good time to be in Memphis as an artist. Of course, like all communities, we could all use more patrons for the arts. I am afraid any observations about Nashville or Knoxville would be uninformed, based entirely on conversations with friends who live there.

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What could be more breathtaking than a series of photographs taken from the window seat of an airliner? If the clouds are right, the view can be unforgettable. But what if the Plexiglas you’re looking through is kind of smudged, as it often is? Or cracked? Even better, insists Catherine Erb, whose images of clouds and brilliant skies are on display from September 5 through October 7 at David Lusk Gallery.

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For years, Tyler Hildebrand’s wry, evocative work has been a refreshing addition to the Nashville art scene. Though cartoonish and often lurid, his bold, graphic work tells compelling, semi-autobiographical tales of distorted souls rapt in violence, vice or some absurd, very-American fate.  In his latest solo show, “The Retirement Party,” the artist says sayonara to the art world with over 60 signature mixed media pieces replete with fast food and sports imagery as well as cameos from Tim Allen, Oprah, David Letterman and. of course, Snoopy,

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One of the reasons I’m so enamored of Tyler Hildebrand’s multimedia painting and sculpture is because his subjects are so familiar. Hildebrand is fourteen years younger than me, but we have a lot in common: the artist is a former Nashvillian, but he was born in Cincinnati and he’s currently based back in Ohio. I’m currently a Nashvillian, but I was born in Detroit and raised in southeastern Michigan. Hildebrand’s work brims with images of Midwestern working class people and the popular culture of daytime television, country music, football, professional wrestling, fast food – all the same stuff everyone in that part of the country would recognize.

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There is only one flag in Jack Spencer’s photographic portrait of America. It withers under time and the elements, a symbol of bitterness instead of pride. It is at Wounded Knee, the site of the bloody oppression of the Lakota Native Americans over a century ago. The flag is a reflection of Spencer’s inner state as he started photographing in 2003 for what would become his book, “This Land” (University of Texas Press, 2017). The images started out dark — a reaction to jingoism that saturated the country after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and before the Iraq War.

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At 516 Hagan Street, Zeitgeist Gallery and Fashion Happening Nashville present “Wearable Surfaces,” an exhibition of collaborations between local fashion designers and artists.  A special ticketed preview reception will be held on Thursday, August 4 to benefit The Sewing Training Academy.  Next door, David Lusk Gallery hosts the opening reception for “The Retirement Party,” Tyler Hildebrand’s third solo show at the gallery. Hildebrand’s colorful, cartoonish multimedia paintings explore the ugly side of contemporary American culture.

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Confession time: Isn’t it true that when people look at exhibitions, particularly accumulations of precious objects, they mentally tally the pieces they would like to steal? Of course it’s true. I do it and so do you. Only theoretically, though. We would never actually purloin anything from a museum. We’re not even supposed to touch the objects and artworks.

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