Storm Stories talk and Exhibition coming to the Front Porch

Exhibition: Oct 1-Nov 9
Opening Reception: Oct 1, 5-7pm
Department of Art, Elliot Hall Space
http://www.tnstate.edu/ContactUs/CampusMap.htm


Artist Talk: Nov 9, 6pm!!!
Avon Williams Campus Auditorium
330 10th Avenue North, Nashville, Tennessee 37203
parking available

Karen Edmunds (New Orleans, LA) and Mary Perrin (Lafayette, LA), artists affected by the Hurricanes in 2005, have collaborated on a multi-media story/performance on their experiences after Katrina and Rita. They will perform their “Storm Stories” for Nashville and surrounding communities.

Storm Stories is a dialogue between Edmunds and Perrin who share their experiences of the hurricane season of 2005 in south Louisiana. Karen Edmunds, from New Orleans, did not evacuate immediately from the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina, nor did Mary Perrin, from Lafayette, LA, evacuate from Hurricane Rita a month later.

Sometimes silly, sometimes sad, they tell their stories of fear, frustration, grief but which end ultimately in triumph. It is the hope that this exhibition inspires healing. Approached with respect and reverence, TSU treats the topics of the Hurricanes of 2005 with care. The artwork that artist make is but only a small, however not unimportant part of the larger story that these events tell.

Nashville, Welcome to Art's Front Porch

The Front Porch, particularly in the south, is a space of dialogue and conversation. It is the architectural, liminal space between the inside and outside, connecting private and public.

Front Porch Conversations (FPC) is a program with a mission to encourage and support artistic (visual) excellence in Nashville. The conversations are designed to initiate and sustain high-level artistic dialogue in the community of Nashville and its surrounding cities--using the idea of the front porch as a metaphor for exchange and dialogue.

The Front Porch Conversations are a series of lectures and workshops (sponsors are in the works, but will be announced at a later date) designed to create dialogue between the growing, “inside” Nashville arts community and the “outside” artists living in other regions of the United States. Community involvement and further partnership is strongly encouraged. Topics include but are not limited to Working in a Collective, Why Paint?, How Disaster Effects Artists, and the Marriage of Art and Business. The Conversations are intended to be forums in which students, professional and independent artists, academics and community leaders can take part.

Inaugural events include public lectures with top US artists, coupled with a “private” conversation with said artist on an undisclosed East Nashville porch. The porch conversation will be recorded (since we can't fit a whole community on our front porch), made into a pod cast and housed on Front Porch Conversations’s web site. The idea is that some of the best conversations are born out of friendship and familiarity. Front Porch Conversations utilize new media to allow for a democratic use of formerly privileged information, providing access to more community members.

More to come...