Summer Vacation!!

Hi everyone! Nashville Art Makers is on a little summer vacation at the moment, but we will have more interviews in the future. Thank you for your continued support and I look forward to bringing more talented local artist to you! Best wishes and God Bless!!!

May 2012 Artist Bryan Clark

 Nashville has plenty of songwriters, session players, singers, pickers, producers and CEOs but rarely to do you get all these in one person. Well meet Bryan Clark! 


 Bryan is the founder of Rainfeather Records. He's a singer/songwriter who's also a songwriting professor at Belmont University and in terms of musicianship, Bryan is world class. He can just about play anything. He's been heralded as a guitar virtuoso by Got Country Magazine and according to Steven Stone of Vintage Guitar Magazine “Bryan Clark’s Singing and guitar playing easily rank with the top big-name country stars like Keith Urban and Brad Paisley. (He’s) simply a monster player, songwriter, singer and a musician with prodigious talent…” With press and a resume like that what more could you want.   

 For Bryan it's all about the music and what it can do for people! Bryan is on a mission to create positive music that lifts people up! He enlists his undeniable talent to write, perform and produce his latest record "Southern Intermission" This album sets out to prove in Bryan's own words "...that southern culture isn't an oxymoron"!  If Elvis Costello and the Allman Brothers decided to make a record "Southern Intermission" just might be what it would sound like. 


The writing is painterly in its ability to convey the characters, places and emotions in each song! The musicianship is nothing short of fantastic and you don't get much better production than you do on this record. 

The lead single "Southern Amen" is a guitar assault right out of the gate with Blues, Southern Rock and Gospel all sharing in the glory! The boys squeeze every bit of juice out of the lemon! Another standout track is "Alabama Macedonia Blackwater Church of Christ" which is simple tender and heartfelt.  One of my personal favorites is "Transistor Love"! This song is a love song but from a whole other perspective! Here are the lyrics:

Transistor Love

Music & Lyrics by Bryan Clark

Here’s a courtesy beep for you
Harmonic gigahertz to relay number two
Don’t leave me in this half duplex hang-time
My rectifier is on the line

Your propagation regulation is a shame

Modulation is my primary thang

But baby your impedance is too high

But I get through your transmission screen

We’d Both be grounded and loving our frequency

I’m center loaded but in decibel hell

I’m bouncing signals off the clouds for your love

You got me bound up in gigahertz

I might spark gap in the skip zone

But honey, baby, please don’t pull the plug on me

Will my message ever reach your ears?

Transistor love is such a bitch to hear

But baby let me keep you chassis ground

I wanna hear and touch and kiss all your FM dBs

So let’s get grounded in the elements of what we could be

And start loving transistorly

Another song I want to point out is "I Heard A Voice" The record version makes you want to rejoice! Here is an acoustic performance of it by Bryan:

Recently I had the pleasure to sit down with Bryan and discuss the record and much more. Here is the video:

Overall this is a fabulous record and Bryan & the band deserve all the success in the world for their hard work and tremendous craftsmanship! Get your copy today!!


www.bryanclarkmusic.com
http://rainfeatherrecords.com/

April 2012 Artist Interview: Beth Inglish

One year ago I started this blog as an opportunity to shine a light on talented artists and musicians here in Nashville. Really to give them a chance to speak for themselves and not just through their art work. From painters, photographers and sculptors to musicians and songwriters, I have interviewed 12 very talented Nashvillians. With one year under my belt I've decided to bring back my very first artist to see where she is at one year later. 

Beth Inglish sat down with us in April of 2011 and got this thing started. Today she is busier than ever! In one year she got married, began writing songs and continued her prolific pace of art creation! Beth is pretty much at home with any medium. Most importantly she enjoys trying new things and always being original. Some of Beth's newest works reach way back into all of our childhoods. By working with Crayon on paper, she has made beautiful fine art with the most innocent of materials. These works are full energy and beauty. The kind of beauty we all admire when we look into the eyes of a child. Beth has found a way to capture that spirit in this new series. It's currently Spring and like the season the works bloom! 

Beth is also a singer/songwriter and has spent this past year writing songs and getting ready to hit the songwriter circuit! Her style is influenced by a lot of genres but you can immediately hear the folk, blues, country and gospel in her music and her performances. 


Here is a song she performed just for Nashville Art Makers entitled "Lord I Want To Sit With You Today"
I'm so proud to know her and to share what she is doing with all of you! 

I think it is safe to say that Beth Inglish is blossoming into a real creative force here in Nashville. Here is the video of our sit down, hope you enjoy!!

Her Statement

I would describe my work as playful and peaceful; my intention is to pass those feelings on to the viewer. My greatest inspiration comes from music. It is my portal to the divine.  Music allows me to experience God and through this same channel, he communicates through me to the world. While immersed in the creative process colors, shapes and patterns will come to me seemingly out of nowhere. I often become seduced by curiosity, experimenting with different techniques and materials.


Because of the role music plays in my creative process there is a recurring theme in many of my pieces: music and art united. My pieces reflect my own inner joy and my intention for my artwork is to cultivate joy in others.

Her Bio

I was born and raised in Port Arthur, Texas. My creative education began at a young age. My father’s paycheck came from the local oil refinery, but he was a musician at heart. He taught me how to sing, write, and play the piano and guitar. A girly-girl with a wild imagination, I remember always having a Crayola in my hand. I’d play dolls in the monkey grass and pick flowers from my mother’s garden. She was a school nurse, but it was her after-school hobbies that bonded us. Cooking and gardening together, I was always by her side, except when I snuck away to draw on surfaces I shouldn’t with my crayons. My mom may have fostered my love of outdoors and fascination with nature.

I was always a good student, staying glued to my books so I could leave my small town as fast as possible. In 2001 I moved to Austin and began my freshman year at The University of Texas. I found the opportunities of the big city and giant university astounding. I studied marketing, but also dabbled in creative outlets, taking art classes and designing costumes for theatrical productions.

After graduating college, I saved money for a year, packed up my bare necessities, and sold everything else. I had been offered my dream job, to teach SCUBA diving at a local resort on a tiny island in the Bahamas. The next two months would be the hardest of my life. Without friends, family, or any real work to do, I finally accepted that I was in over my head. Whatever I was searching for, it was not on Andros Island. But I was determined to find what I was looking for—the oasis I envisioned in my mind so many times.

I moved to the US Virgin Island of St. Croix for one year and it changed my life—this time for the better. I found my love and my purpose. My love came from Mississippi and my purpose came the day I had the accident. Looking back, I should have always known my calling. But for some reason it took a 42-foot catamaran to knock some sense into me. After a concussion and a trip to the ER, the thought of returning to work on the boat terrified me. This change in perspective allowed me to quit my job and make the bold decision to stay home every day and make art. I felt different, as if God had spoken to me. It was at this time in my life that I committed to being an artist.

Since then I have left the islands and now I call Nashville my home. My artwork is inspired by a love of music and an insatiable curiosity. Each piece is an experiment using different techniques and materials.

Her Exhibition Record

Solo Exhibitions

2010

Fanny's House of Music, Nashville, TN, March

Monroe Harding Academy Fundraiser, Nashville, TN, May

Hillsboro Village Art Walk, SEE Eyewear, Nashville, TN, July

2009

Change Series, The Delta, Nashville, TN, January

Guitar Series, The Delta, Nashville, TN, February

Dinner of MS Champions, Loews Vanderbilt Hotel, Nashville, TN, April

Sip Cafe, Nashville, TN, June

Live painting performance, The Cannery Ballroom, Nashville, TN, October

Music & Art United, Billups Art Gallery, Nashville, TN, December

2008

Guitar Series, The Delta, Nashville, TN, March

Guitar Series, MSG, The Stahlman Building, Nashville, TN, September

Guitar Series, Criallo’s, Franklin, TN, September

2007

Caribbean Collection, Mango Melee, St. Croix, USVI, June

Selected Group Exhibitions

2011

Harpeth Hall School, Nashville, TN, March

Dunn Bros Coffee, Nashville, TN, March-April

Ensworth School, Nashville, TN April

Fifty Forward, Nashville, TN April

2010

The Harding Art Show, Nashville, TN, April

Art Flood, Nashville, TN, May

Nashville Scene Summer Pool Party, Nashville, TN, May

Second Place, "In The Nude" Juried Art Competition, Nashville, TN, June

MasterPanels Gallery and Gifts, Nolensville, TN, June - August

Taking Nashville To Higher Ground, Nashville, TN, July

Tomato Art Festival, Nashville, TN, August

The Local Taco, Nashville, TN August

The Local Taco, Brentwood, TN August

Simon Ripley's Music & Art, Nashville, TN August

Art Stock, Dickson, TN September

A Mighty Voice Art Auction, Nashville, TN October

Friends With Benefits, Billups Art Gallery, Nashville, TN, October

Retune Nashville, Nashville, TN, October

"65 Roses" Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Nashville TN, November

2009

Observations,The Center for the Arts, Murfreesboro, TN, December

Abstraka, Plowhous Exhibit, TN Art League, Nashville, TN, April

Oak Hill Elementary School, Community Auction, Nashville, TN, April

In the Fairy Garden, Riverside Village, Nashville, TN, April

The Miracle of Music, Cadillac Ranch, Nashville, TN, April

Management Solutions Group Open House, Nashville, TN, June

Tomato Art Festival, Art and Invention Gallery, Nashville, TN, August

2008

Jigsaw Blues, Fusion, City Hall, Nashville, TN, April

Lockeland’s Folklore Festival, Bongo Java, Nashville TN, May

Guitar Series, The Mill at Lebanon, Lebanon, TN, June

Tomato Art Festival, Art and Invention Gallery, Nashville, TN, August

Star Spangled Blues, Williamson County Fair, Franklin, TN, August

Commissions

Hibbie and Jeanie Barrier: Nashville, TN

Timothy and Alison Douglas: Nashville, TN

Daina Evans: Lebanon, TN

Bobby and Tiffany McMillian: Meridan, TN

John Brittle: Nashville, TN

Chet Garner: Austin, TX

Collections

Nancy Parish, Asheville School

360 Asheville School Road, Asheville, NC 28806

Liz Allen Fey, Management Solutions Group LLC

211 Union Street Suite 102, Nashville, TN 37201

Publications

Inglish, Beth. Capture Music City. Canada: Pediment Group, 2008. 30.

Inglish, Beth. “The Naked Issue.” Her October 2008: Cover.

Inglish, Beth. "Tracie Grace Lyons." Nashville Arts October 2010: 26-27

Inglish, Beth. "Lindsey Pearsan's World of Wonder." Nashville Arts January 2011: 70-71

Press

The Tennessean, “Artists Make Observations,” January 25, 2009.

Professional Services

2010 Donated work to Art Stock

2010 Donated work to Retune Nashville

2010 Donated work to Taking Nashville To Higher Ground

2010 Donated work to MBA Project Graduation

2010 Donated work to Nashville Scene Silent Auction

2010 Donated work to Monroe Harding Academy Fundraiser

2010 Donated work to Art Flood, Event Benefiting Nashville Flood Relief

2009 Co-Chair for Lockeland Design Center In The Fairy Garden, Art Show and Sale Event

2009 Donated work for The Miracle of Music

2009 Donated work to Oak Hill Elementary School Auction

2008 Donated work to Fusion, Minnie Pearl Cancer Foundation

Clients & Non-profits

Ole Miss Woman's Council, Oxford, MS

redpepper Marketing, Nashville, TN

The Parlor Recording Studio, Nashville, TN

Greater Nashville Association of Realtors, Nashville, TN

Project Redesign, Nashville, TN

Expressways To Learning, Nashville, TN 

The Collective Muse, Nashville, TN

Monroe Harding Academy, Nashville, TN

rebarcamp, Nashville, TN

Mobile Loaves and Fishes, Nashville, TN

Hands of Hope, Nashville, TN

The Contributor, Franklin, TN

Cheatham Country Animal Shelter, Pegram, TN

Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Nashville, TN

Retune Nashville, Nashville, TN

The Olive Branch Fund, Nashville, TN

Ensworth School, Nashville, TN

Harpeth Hall School, Nashville, TN

Fifty Forward, Nashville, TN

Brentwood Women's Club, Brentwood, TN

Her Links

                                                                        

http://www.binglishart.com/

http://www.bithinglish.com/

www.facebook.com/binglishART

www.twitter.com/bethinglish

http://www.binglishart.etsy.com/       

March 2012 Artist Dana Romanello

Here in the Nashville music scene plenty people can write. Plenty people can sing and a precious few have that IT factor that makes people stand up and pay attention. In Dana Romanello, you have all three! Originally from Ohio, Dana grew up on Bluegrass and Country! A fourth generation musician and the daughter of a mandolin player, Dana was raised on the likes of Ricky Skaggs and country radio. Her grandfather was an aspiring songwriter who routinely mailed new compositions to the copyright office. He always had the dream of hearing his songs on the radio. For Dana music is in her blood. Now carrying on that tradition, she lives and works in Music City writing, performing and chasing her own musical dreams. Her sound is fresh and original. She affectionately calls it "Sassy Grass"  It is a blend of bluegrass and  the spark of classic country female songwriters with a modern sensibility. 

Her songs speak to the emotional core in all of us. With "A New Perfume" the beautiful melody pines to the listener to be brave, to take a chance and start over. Inspired by her aunt, the song "Cowgirl on a Carousel" which happens to be the song we discuss in the interview, touches on the fact that for some you'll never be able to tame the heart.  "No Matter What I Do" was a co-write with her grandfather and I. He passed away some years ago but left behind many notes and song lyrics. These are precious items to Dana and I was honored to sit down with her and finish something that was started so long ago! There is a haunting quality to this song and you can almost feel the spirit of Dana's grandfather coming through.

When Dana isn't working on music she is also the manager of country programming for Cumulus Media Networks and the host of ACC TV Around Town for American Country Countdown with Kix Brooks .  Her list of other credits include being a cast member of “Music City on Stage”, spending three years singing backup for Louise Mandrell and is even a former Tennessee Titans Cheerleader! 

Click here to see Dana working the Red Carpet

Dana is one of the hardest working women in this town and is destine for greatness!. I've had the tremendous honor and pleasure to call Dana a personal friend and co-writer! Dana and I have been writing for almost 4 years now so I know firsthand how talented she is. Recently we sat down for an interview to talk specifically about our song "Cowgirl on a Carousel" and also about Dana's past, present and future. Check it out below and we are proud to have Dana as our March 2012 Artist Interview! 

Interview with Dana part 1

Interview with Dana part 2

Dana's official BIO

A fourth generation musician, Dana Romanello began singing with her family's bluegrass band in Lucasville, Ohio at a very young age. With her sweet blend of bluegrass and the spark of classic country female songwriters, Dana developed her own original style audiences know and love. Dana likes to call it "Sassy Grass". Along with her career as a singer/songwriter, she is also the manager of country programming for Cummulus Media Networks and the host of ACC TV Around Town for American Country Countdown with Kix Brooks .  She was a cast member of “ Music City on Stage” and spent three years singing backup for Louise Mandrell.  She is a former Tennessee Titans Cheerleader and graduate of Marshall University , holding a BA in Communications and a minor in Music.   Dana has released a live DVD and digital EP titled “Porch Swing Sessions,” her self-titled debut album is available at iTunes, and she has brand new music coming in 2012 courtesy of 1925 Entertainment.


Website


www.danaromanello.net/

February 2012 Artist: Lori Anne Parker-Danley

How an artist sees and experiences the world impacts the work they produce. Lori Anne Parker-Danley is no exception. She's a local Nashville artist. Her work is a rich depiction of her mind and her heart full of color, motion, life and death. Her new show "The Garden of Evolution" which opens Feb. 4th at the Twist Etc. here in Nashville, Tennessee is a mix of paintings and mixed media. Lori has a PhD in philosophy, she's a strong naturalist and a heart attack survivor. All of these perspectives are woven into her work with energy and passion. The show is about transformation and growth, death and decomposition, origins and destinations. Her goal is to expose people to the beauty of such things and how our world is an ever changing and adapting garden of life and death. I had the pleasure to sit down with Lori Anne recently to get to know her a little more, talk about this exciting show and her goals for the future. Here is the video! I hope you enjoy!

Artist Bio:

Lori Anne Parker-Danley is a Nashville-based artist with a Ph.D. in philosophy from Binghamton University in upstate New York. Among the artists who inspire her are Hyman Bloom, Chaïm Soutine, Elaine DeKooning, and Anselm Kiefer. She is also influenced by the imagery, ideas, and playfulness of the Surrealists—especially Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington—and broadly considers her work to be a conversation between expressionism and surrealism, albeit from a contemporary perspective. Despite and in spite of all the pitfalls, exclusions, and erasures associated with creating canons, schools, and art-historical categories, Lori Anne thinks that trying to make art without listening, responding, and acknowledging the artists who came before you is like painting with your eyes closed. 

As a national spokesperson for the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign since 2010 and a woman who had two heart attacks and bypass surgery at the age of 38 in 2009 (even though she “never thought it would happen to her”) Lori Anne has been using her art as a way to help get the word out about the risks of heart disease in women. She had her first “Art for the Heart” event in February 2011 at Rumours Wine and aRT Bar, 12 South, Nashville, which was well-received. With The Garden of Evolution, showing at Twist Etc. in February 2012, she is continuing these efforts. In honor of National Go Red month and the American Heart Association, Lori Anne will be “going red” by donating 10 percent of the artist proceeds from exhibition sales to Go Red for Women. 

Artist statement about The Garden of Evolution:

Broadly conceived, The Garden of Evolution is an attempt to evoke the phenomenology of human corporeality, its relationships with the non-human natural world, and its place in the history of evolution. The exhibition and series of paintings by the same title are inspired by questions of human/biological materiality that have interested me as an artist and philosopher for many years, as well as the life-saving, emergency heart surgery I underwent in 2009, which focused my attention on these questions in a more profound, directly personal way. One of the most intense moments that happened in the days after my surgery was the experience of seeing my own heart (My surgeon took a picture of it with his iPhone during my operation). Seeing my own heart was akin to seeing my animality: the image of my heart in my cut-open chest, which could have been anybody’s heart in any cut-open chest, was jarring to me because of its biological anonymity. The heart I saw was mine, but I could never know as my own. It was me, but beyond me—the experience of looking into a mirror and staring at a stranger. 

To see one’s own heart is an invitation to notice the repetition of forms, to hear the echo that beats in the chests of a billion others, to understand that there is nothing special or significant or even that original about your own heart even though it is necessary for you to live. To see one’s own heart is also an opportunity—to see through it, past it, to notice and recall patterns—such as the chambers of a human heart alongside the heart of a feline or the spiraling twist of the human inner ear alongside the curves of a buoyant nautilus or the branches of alveoli in the lungs of a rabbit that might remind one of a copse of trees. Repeating forms evoke our connections and common origin, our shared animal-plant biology. Repeating forms invite us to contemplate our existence as part of the material world and the fact that human life is but a single, small, beautiful moment in a much larger 4.5 billion-year planetary history. The Garden of Evolution is the place we all begin and a place where everything is made of stardust. The Garden of Evolution is also a dream, the other side of waking life, the strangeness that is familiar, and the constant striving where forms both old and new emerge, mingle, and transform yet again.

The paintings in this exhibition are a departure from much of my past work in terms of their increased expressiveness and the materials I’ve used. While working on this project, I have tried to simply release myself to the muscularity of the gesture and the physicality of paint. I am after paintings that aren’t representations of bodies but highly physical, bodily moments in and of themselves. This effort has drawn me to new materials: in addition to oil, graphite, and charcoal, some of the paintings in the series include elements such as cat fur, twigs, cicada exoskeletons, human hair, orchids, foliage, moss, snakeskins, and sculpted paper. Instead of using these materials to “augment” the paintings, my intention is to put these additional materials and objects in conversation with the paint and make them part of (or a continuation of) my gestures and brushstrokes. The use of various nontraditional media is also another way of expressing the subject matter of the work itself, generally the connections, transformations, and relationships between natural life forms that are part of the evolutionary process.

The exhibition at Twist Etc. has been an opportunity to push my work even further in direct response to the particular environment of the gallery space. As such, The Garden of Evolution is not simply an exhibit of paintings, but a larger on-site, multimedia art installation that includes the paintings, additional objects and effects, and a sound composition by Nashville-based guitarist and composer John Danley: Another evolution.

Listed in order of appearance:

Lori Anne Parker-Danley. Oscar's Nightmare (The Garden of Evolution #4), 2011. Oil, graphite, leaves, shedded snakeskins, and human hair on canvas, 30 x 40 in.

Lori Anne Parker-Danley. Rite of Spring (The Garden of Evolution #3), 2011. Oil, graphite, branches, various foliage, and cicada exoskeletons on canvas, 40 x 30 in.

Lori Anne Parker-Danley. Exuberant Bodies (The Garden of Evolution #6), 2011. Oil and graphite on canvas, 36 x 24 in.

Lori Anne Parker-Danley. Eerie Frondescence (The Garden of Evolution #9), 2011. Oil, graphite, charcoal, sculpted paper, cat fur, twigs, and plants on canvas, 24 x 30 in.

Lori Anne Parker-Danley. Eerie Frondescence (The Garden of Evolution #9), 2011. Oil, graphite, and charcoal on canvas, 36 x 24 in.