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"✨ New Year, New Vibe: Art Bites! 🎨

In 2025, I’m setting aside a lunch hour each month to explore a local art gallery. I’m calling this personal project “Art Bites.”🍴🎭

Today’s visit took to me to the Frist Art Museum
🖌️✨ #ArtBites2025 #LocalArt #CreativeBreaks #LunchHourMagic
#Museums
M. Florine Démosthène WHAT THE BODY CARRIES Didier William Inis project oners an oopertunity to consider te connectons dix departures between the work of two artists of Haitian descent. M. Florine Demosthene and Didier William. Both artists often represent the complexity of personhood through multiple forms-a reference to the divine twins of Haitian Vodou, Marassa Jumeaux, as well as a reflection of the myriad experiences that inform the artists hybrid identities. Both also leverage ambiguity, often placing figures of undeterminable gender and race within imaginary geographies that suggest a liminal space between here and homeland. And both artists emphasize eyes, asserting the need to be seen while subverting the judgmental gaze too often cast upon immigrants and other marginalized people. Démosthène animates the eyes of her figures with glitter: William carves hundreds of eyes into the wooden panels that serve as the substrate for many of his paintings. In doing so, the subject's and viewer's eyes meet, and a connection is forged. While each artist embraces the impact of their familial and cultural tethers to Haiti, these legacies manifest in their practices in very different ways. Démosthène is particularly influenced by Haitian-and, by extension, West African-spiritual traditions and myths, as can be seen in sculptures suggestive of shrines and deities and in the otherworldly aura of her collages. William's work engages politics through personal history. Frequently using his coming of age in Miami with his family as new immigrants as a springboard, he dives into critical inquiries into nationhood and borders, familial memory and mythmaking, violence and tenderness. While immigrant experiences have been fixated upon and flattened in mainstream media throughout the history of the United States, the works presented in this exhibition ask us to attend to questions about who is granted the grace of a full humanity and how the stories we carry with us form the foundat… DAVID C. DRiSKELL & FRIENDS While many envision the modern artist as solitary, David C. Driskell's career tells a different story-one rooted in collaboration and community. As an artist, educator, curator, and historian, Driskell championed and elevated African American art, emphasizing the importance of both individual achievement and collective support. Driskell's collaborations-whether in workshops, dialogues, or shared creative endeavors-shaped his artistic vision and deepened his connections with other artists. He was instrumental in organizing solo exhibitions for artists such as Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Alma W. Thomas, and Earl J. Hooks. He also played a key role in curating retrospectives for figures like Aaron Douglas and Claude Clark. In 1976, Driskell organized Two Centuries of Black American Art for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a groundbreaking exhibition that traveled to Atlanta's High Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition received widespread recognition, and its accompanying catalogue remains a key text for artists and scholars of African American art. David C. Driskell & Friends celebrates Driskell's generosity of spirit and the mutual support he shared with his friends and collaborators. Featuring over sixty works by prominent African American artists, many of whom were included in Two Centuries of Black American Art, it honors his legacy and the enduring bonds he cultivated throughout his life. We are proud to bring Driskell's story back to Nashville, a city that played a central role in his journey. Kindred Spirits Intergenerational Forms of Expression, 1966-1999 Kindred Spirits: Intergenerational Forms of Expression, 1966-1999 spans the overapping tenures of David C. Uniskel (1906-1376) 316 Can. Hooks (1968-1339) 20 Fisk University's art department. The year 1986, Fisk Unversity's centennial, marked a pivotal transition following the retirement of Aaron Douglas, founder and chair emeritus of the art department and a leading figure of the Harlem Renaissance. David C. Driskel's appointment as Douglas's successor ushered in a bold new era of experimentation, pedagogic innovation, progressive exhibitions, and artist-centered programming. Artistic networks and geographies, in the context of art historicism, give rise to movements or schools of thought that become canonized or framed many times in retrospect. This exhibition examines how mobility, cultural exchange, and sociopoltical cimates shaped the artistic expressions and consciousness of the artists whose works are on view, placing them within the context of broader artistic movements and art canons whie also exploring their influences and highlighting their unique visual languages and schools of thought. lluminating the interplay between individual and institutional artistic contributions, this exhibition underscores Fisk University's role in shaping a global cultural discourse. Kindred Spirits celebrates the profound interpersonal and artistic relationships between students and faculty, colleagues and peers, and the greater Nashville community. These connections form a lineage of kinship, homage, and mutual respect, mapping the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next. Featuring more than fifty artworks and archival materials. Kindred Spints is co-organized by and on display at both the Frist Art Museum and Fisk University. Visit the Carl Van Vechten Gatery at Fisk University to experience the other half of the exhibition in the heart of the artistic network it celebrates. A Chicken Pot Pie, salad, and fruit tea.
April 7, 2025 at 10:20 PM