Now living in Santa Fe , this veteran New York artist produces welded bronze sculptures that are noted for their delicate balance and flowing rhythms. They reflect his interest in creating lyrical forms that suggest human interaction in dance-like movements. As Barrett explains, “I take two-dimensional ideas...and translate them into three-dimensional realities. My work is about what we're all dancing about---living.” His sculptures often begin as sketches, which are then translated into the smaller wax models before being enlarged and cast in bronze. He bends and shapes the wax with his hands in order to “put his own humanity” into each work. Barrett cites Rodin, Henry Moore, David Smith and Picasso as important influences.
Lloyd Branson (American, born 1854-1925) Ellen McClung Berry, n.d. Oil on canvas
Gift of Dr. Aubra Branson, 1999.01.00
Branson was one of a few 19 th century Tennessee artists to study at New York City 's National Academy of Design. His classmates included American artists Thomas Anschutz and Frederic Church, among others. There he won a first prize that allowed him to travel to Europe to study art. In 1876 he returned to Knoxville to paint and to pursue his interest in regional history. Here he portrays Ellen McClung Berry who, with her husband Thomas Berry, was a patron of the arts in Knoxville.
Frederick Brosen (American, born 1954) At the Marais, 1990 Watercolor on paper
Gift of Richard Segal, 1992.05.00
Brosen's precise watercolors on paper interpret the unique character and romance of historic architecture and panoramic vistas around the world. Sketching on paper on-site, Brosen then paints small studies which he later uses to create large-scale works in the studio. Much like an architect, he creates highly structured compositions which allow viewers seemingly to wander through the places he has chosen to depict for their picturesque character and historic atmosphere.
Jim Campbell (born 1956) Reconstruction #4, 2005 Custom electronics, white LEDs, cast resin; 3 from an edition of 3
Purchased with funds from the 's Collectors Circle , 2005.02.00
Chuck Forsman (American, born 1944) Park, 1992 Oil on panel
Purchased with funds from the Collectors Circle , 1996.06.00
Forsman is known for his large scale, stunning paintings of the American landscape. He often focuses on this country's national parks. Park is first in a series of paintings Forsman titled Arrested Rivers . The painting is based on a dam in the mountains outside Los Angeles . To Forsman, the site seemed desperate and haunted.
Charles Griffin Farr (American, born 1908-1997) Birds, People, Palace of Fine Arts , SFC, n.d. Egg tempera on board
Gift of Thomas G. Davis, 1999.04.03
Red Grooms (American, born 1937) The Flatiron Building, 1995 Color etching and lithograph on paper
Gift of Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY, 1997.04.00
Grooms (born Charles Rogers Grooms) is a painter, sculptor, and performance artist known for his cartoon like images and for his “sculpto-pictoramas” which are exuberant 3 dimensional environments. He attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, The New School of Social Research, NY, and the Hans Hofmann School, Cape Cod, MA. During the 1950s and 1960s Grooms participated in “happenings” with other New York artists Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, and Jim Dine, setting the stage for his interest in theatrical sets and performance art. Grooms often depicts popular culture. Here, he images New York City's famous Flatiron Building on 23rd street at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, named for its shape.
Edward Hurst, Jr. (American, born 1912-1972) Cabbage, n.d. Pencil and watercolor on paper
Gift of John Folger, 1963.01.00
Sarah Hobbs (American, born 1970) Untitled (ladies' man), 2004 Small Problems in Living series
Chromogenic print, ed. 5
Purchased with funds from the Knoxville Museum of Art's Collectors Circle , 2007.03.06
Hobbs is an Atlanta-based installation artist and photographer known for her large color prints of domestic environments. Although her settings appear authentic, each is designed and arranged by the artist beforehand in order to suggest a certain state of mind. This print stems from one of her most successful bodies of work—Small Problems in Living series (2000-2005), in which she explores obsessive behaviors and the way in which they are categorized. Untitled (ladies' man) presents a well-appointed suburban seating area in which wine cork-lined shelves serve as a detailed record of one person's romantic conquests.
Hobbs ' work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Columbus Museum, Georgia. Hobbs was the focus of a one-person show organized by KMA in 2004.
Richard Jolley (American, born 1952) Garden #9 , 2007 Blown glass, steel
Gift of the KMA Guild
Richard Jolley, of Knoxville, is one of America's foremost figurative glass artists. He is well known for his expressive human figures presented with acid-etched surfaces and for his unique palette of hand-formulated colors. Garden #9 represents a recent series in which the artist composes a single large-scale work using dozens of individually crafted glass sculptures attached to an elaborate, wall-mounted armature made of welded steel. Jolley's glass sculpture was the focus of a retrospective exhibition at KMA in 2001. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, NY, and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, among others.
Robert H. Laessig (American, born 1920) Evening Afterglow , n. d. Watercolor on paper
Purchase award, 1st Dulin National Print & Drawing, 1964.06.00
Fay Lansner (American, born 1921) Anemones, Iris, Astor: Palette with Japanese and Egyptian Masks in Border , 1987 Charcoal and pastel on paper
Gift of the artist and Erica Lansner , 1990.09.00
Minna Resnick (born 1946) Untitled, 1977 Lithograph on paper
Edition of 20
Purchase award, 11th Dulin National Print & Drawing Competition, 1977.11a-c
Resnick, a printmaker and adjunct drawing professor at SUNY Cortland, emphasizes the public and private nature of women, noting incongruities that arise. She received her M.F.A. in printmaking from San Francisco Art Institute and a B.F.A. in graphic design from University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, NY; the Denver Art Museum, CO; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England.
Christine Patterson (American, born 1961) Swinging Bridge, 1994 Hand-colored photograph on paper
Gift of the artist
1997.01.00
Christine Patterson recreates the emotional quality of a bygone era by extensively manipulating the photograph on paperic negative and print. Starting with infra-red film and adding filters, the original photo begins with an ethereal look. She may apply petroleum jelly to the filter to soften details. She retouches the negative to remove distracting elements. After printing the image on canvas textured paper, the print is toned a warm brown to resemble early photos. Then she applies color with watercolor on paper, oil on canvas paint, chalk, and colored pencil on paper.
Andrew Saftel (American, born 1959) Passed Time, 1994 Mixed media on wood panel
Purchased with funds from the 's Collectors Circle , 1995.04.00
Saftel refers to the geology of time in his works by layering paint and small objects on the paintings' surfaces. He suggests layers of thoughts, ideas, and things, revealing that all histories, both personal and public, are strata to be excavated.
Brad Sells, born 1969 Eclipse , 2007 Carved pecan
Purchased with funds from the Knoxville Museum of Art's Collectors Circle , 2007.03.02
Sells, from Cookeville , Tennessee , has received national recognition for his large carved wooden vessels. The undulating surfaces of his forms are inspired by nature and his experience as a potter experimenting with wet clay on a wheel.
To create vessels like Eclipse , Sells first cuts a basic form out of a piece of green wood using a chainsaw. He then repeatedly sands and buffs the wood until the vessel's shape is properly defined and its surfaces are smooth and even. Sells leaves a strip of rough bark along the lip of the vessel as a striking contrast.
Sells' work has been shown in museums and galleries across the country, and is represented in museum collections such as the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Cincinnati Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor ; and the Tennessee State Museum , Nashville.
Therman Statom (American, born 1953) Antarctica, 1999 Glass, mixed media, paint, pencil on paper
Purchased with funds from the Collectors Circle, 2002.01.00
Statom is one of the original artists of the Studio Glass movement, which started when he began working and experimenting at Washington 's Pilchuck. Rather than blowing or fusing glass, he works in sheet glass, cutting and assembling it and adding found objects to it. His works are often somewhat narrative with his repeated use of houses, ladders, and chairs providing a rambling storyline. He has also included small paintings in his glass “boxes.” Often the works refer to memories or dreams. He is known for his large glass installations, which seem unpredictable and thus exciting. Statom received a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design, and an M.F.A. from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn , NY.
Unknown Aged Lady in Lace Cap, n. d. Miniature on ivory
Collection of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1981.11.07
W. Waldron Painting of a Rooster, 1880 Oil on cardboard
Collection of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1981.11.02
William Walmsley (American, born 1923) Bad Drawing Series, 1963 Lithograph on paper
Gift of the artist, 1968.14.00
Eudora Welty (American, born 1909-2001) Side Show, State Fair, 1939 Black and white photograph on paper
Gift of David Lovett, 1992.06.17
Eudora Welty is one of the most well-known Southern writers. According to some, Welty is the twentieth-century genius of “human relationships.” She won the Pulitzer Prize and the French Légion d'Honneur . Her photograph on paperic work during the Depression underlines her empathetic view of humankind. Eudora Welty took this photograph on paper during the Depression as a publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). From 1933-36 she traveled across rural Mississippi as a junior publicity agent for the WPA, taking photograph on papers and documenting rural lives. The museum owns 20 Welty photograph on papers from this era.
Catherine Wiley (born 1879-1958) Morning, 1921 Oil on canvas
Purchased by the Women's Committee of the Dulin Gallery, 1972.11.00
Wiley was an important impressionist painter from Knoxville. Tragically, her career was cut short in 1926 when she was placed in a long-term assisted care facility due to mental illness. A hallmark of Wiley's late work is her increasingly thick and expressive application of paint. While Monet and other core French Impressionists painted almost exclusively outdoors, Wiley represents an interior scene in which she focuses on the dazzling effects of light reflected through a window.
John Wilson (American, born 1922) Martin Luther King , Jr., 2002 Chine colle, etching on paper
Artscapes Acquisition 2002, purchased with support provided by Barbara and Steve Apking, Sandra Emond, June and Rob Heller, Susan and Lee Hyde, Michelle and Raja Jubran, Barb and Robert Lederer, Celene and Jay McBride, Sheena McCall, Lindsay and Jim McDonough, Alexandra Rosen, Dorothy and Ceasar Stair, Carol and James Taylor, Debbie and Ron Watkins, Sheree and Jim Woods., 02.02.00
Wilson has chosen to portray King not as an idealized, heroic figure, but as a human being who appears to wrestle with the burden of responsibility for the fate of his people, and the fate of the entire country during an especially volatile period. As Wilson explains, “I wasn't concerned with getting a photograph on paperic likeness, but rather a universal significance. I wanted people to be moved by the sense of this man's photograph on paperic likeness, but rather a universal significance. I wanted people to be moved by the sense of this man's connection to humanity.”
This print is from a recent series related to Wilson 's bronze sculpture of Dr. King, which was commissioned for the Rotunda of the U. S. Capitol in Washington in 1985. A charcoal version of this image was recently chosen as the cover for the catalog of major Smithsonian exhibition, In the Spirit of Martin, which is traveling to museums across the country.
