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Gallery One, among Nashville’s newest and largest art galleries, opened its doors two years ago when few contemporary art spaces were available in the city. The gallery became the lone contemporary art space in the tiny Belle Meade area of Nashville, an affluent suburban outpost of Nashville known more for its antiques and oversized oil paintings of hunt scenes than for contemporary art. Riding the tide of a burgeoning interest in the visual arts in Nashville, the gallery now features the works of nearly 30 artists from throughout the country, from promising new emerging artists to the more established. |
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Contemporary Art on View at Nashville’s Gallery One – Shelley Liles McBurney
Gallery One, among Nashville’s newest and largest art galleries, opened its doors two years ago when few contemporary art spaces were available in the city. The gallery became the lone contemporary art space in the tiny Belle Meade area of Nashville, an affluent suburban outpost of Nashville known more for its antiques and oversized oil paintings of hunt scenes than for contemporary art. Riding the tide of a burgeoning interest in the visual arts in Nashville, the gallery now features the works of nearly 30 artists from throughout the country, from promising new emerging artists to the more established.
An especially popular Gallery One artist is Chicago-based painter Susan Hall, who uses multiple layers of paint, other media and textures to create timeless figurative images. Her newest body of work in oil is an exploration of contrasts and uncertainties, and features silhouetted figures—mostly women—obscured by a veil or pattern of lace. Lit as if onstage, the figure demands attention yet is translucent, suggesting that it is a memory or a dream," notes Hall. "The pattern embedded in the painting interrupts the illusion of depth established by the figure."
With early training in printmaking, Hall says she’s particularly interested in the technical execution of a painting. In her newest work, patterns of lace or wallpaper are embossed or incised on the panel, giving each painting a tactile quality. Hall earned her bachelor’s degree from Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut, and her master of fine arts degree in painting and printmaking from the University of Georgia in Athens. She earned an Individual Artist Grant from the Georgia Council for the Arts in 1992; a Purchase Award from Parkside National Print Exhibition in Kenosha, WI, in 1993; and a Community Arts Assistance Program Grant from the city of Chicago in 2002.
Another featured artist at Gallery One is sculptor Debra Fritts, a native of Nashville, Tennessee now living in Atlanta. As a storyteller, Fritts builds her stories in terra cotta clay, layering the surfaces with found object marks and fired colorants. Fritts’ mixed media ceramic sculptures often incorporate items such as a flea market find—an abandoned object with a history—which inspires and adds to the narrative. “Never,” says Fritts, “do the stories have an ending, nor do they contain any answers to the questions they pose. The terra cotta pieces dwell on the mysteries and joys of daily living.”
Each of Fritts’ ceramic pieces are hand built, using thick coils, and then multi-fired. Fritts’ background as a painter reveals itself in the richly captivating surfaces she creates. A sculpture may be fired three to seven times depending on the color and surface treatment the artist seeks to achieve.
“I approach the color on the clay as a painter,” says Fritts. “My palette is a combination of stains, glazes, oxides and underglazes. I mix and I paint, never exactly sure of the end result.”
Fritts’ works has been featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout the country. The artist obtained her bachelors degree in arts education from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and completed graduate studies in advanced painting, printmaking and ceramic sculpture at the Penland School of the Arts and Crafts in Penland, North Carolina and Arrowmont School of Art and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. She currently serves as director of the Art Center West in Roswell, Georgia, and teaches ceramic workshops throughout the country, including Arrowmont in Gatlinburg and Sante Fe Clay in Sante Fe, New Mexico.
Nashville artist Rebecca Ruegger, who worked for 15 years as an illustrator before turning her attention to fine art, is among the gallery’s most promising emerging talents. Ruegger creates mixed-media figurative works using watercolor and pastels, with the occasional creation of collage in incorporating found items such as paper, lace and feathers. Her compositions reflect things that many of us may not see in our busy lives.
“I’m trying to create an emotion, a feeling of a time gone by,” says Ruegger, adding that her figurative paintings are all about life experiences. “I would like to leave it up to the viewer to fill in the blanks or make up the meaning as they see it. I like to tell part of a story, but not all of the story.”
Ruegger, who paints from imagination, received the top award for her work at the Central South Regional Art Competition in 2003, and her painting titled Rest won the Hawkins Memorial Award and the People’s Choice Award at the regional competition in 2005. Her paintings can be found in private collections across the United States, Mexico and Europe.
