Sister City: Works by Elizabeth Tubergen
Mar. 5 - Apr. 16, 2010 Reception: Friday, Mar. 5, 5:30-8pm
Back in the U.S. for just a week to set up this exhibition, video and
mixed media installation artist, Elizabeth Tubergen, a Covenant College
alumnus, will bring her thought-provoking work to the AVA Gallery, then
return to Iceland to continue her work funded by both the Fulbright and
America-Sandinavian Foundations.
Artist Statement: "My artistic methodology incorporates fearless belief powered by doubt, muscle, and careful, patient labor. My work is project-based and experimental, employing various mediums and drawing on broad knowledge bases inside and outside of the art world. My projects involve an ever-increasing library of skills, from sewing to woodworking and canning. I find inspiration in voids, pauses, memory, ephemera, place, narrative, habit, paradox, and the everyday. I work to create art that fights dislocation, incites curiosity, and commands a reconsideration of space and locational identity. My current body of work consists of photographs, drawings and altered everyday objects with carefully thought-out material narratives. Whimsical and often pathetic, the work in Sister City contemplates time, spirituality, death, disappearance, failure, and day-to-day life with patience, persistence, playfulness, sincerity, and comfortable uncertainty."
Chris Scarborough: Drawings and Photographs
May 7 - Jun. 22, 2010 Reception: Friday, May 7
Produced with help from a Tennessee Arts Commission / Allied Arts ABC
grant, AVA welcomes drawings and photographs by Chris Scarborough into
the AVA Gallery.
Team Lump
Jul. 2 - Aug. 27, 2010 Reception: Friday, Jul. 2
Located in Raleigh, North Carolina, Lump combines the rigor and
professionalism of a commercial gallery with the experimental attitude
of an alternative space. Dedicated to the promotion of emerging,
mid-career and under-recognized artists, Lump is committed to the
exhibition of challenging and thought-provoking contemporary art that
falls outside the confines of the commodity-driven art market and
conducts itself without commercial compromise. Team Lump, an
ever-evolving collective of artists, works organically to adapt to each
new exhibition space, combining paintings, drawings, sculpture, wall
drawings, and video tocreate installations laden with biting commentary.
AVA’s commitment to supporting young and emerging artists
remains a touchstone of the organization. Every year, AVA hosts an
exhibition of emerging visual artists from across the region. This
competitive, juried exhibit is designed to showcase artists who display
artistic promise, commitment to their work and fresh ideas. This
opportunity is only open to artists who have not had a major solo show
and who are not represented by a gallery.
PAST EXHIBITIONS
Hot Mess: AVA's Juried Member Show January 8 - February 24, 2010 AVA will kick off the 2010 exhibition season with a juried AVA
member show. Annette Cone-Skelton, president and co-founder of the
Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA), served as the juror
for this exhibit, which features thirteen artists working in the fields
of painting, drawing, mixed media, and sculpture: Chad Adair, Gay
Arthur, Clay Binkley, Harriet Chipley, Peter Ewing, David Fox, Michael
Holsomback, Melissa Krosnick, Mary Britten Lynch, Glenn Merchant,
William Payne, Gabriel Regagnon, and Brent Weston.
The first AVA Invitational features six professional artists
working in oil, acrylic, metal sculpture and installation. Each member
of AVA’s Selection Panel was given the opportunity to invite two
professional artists whom he respects to participate in this show, and
the panel’s efforts have culminated in an interesting exhibition of
contemporary works. Isaac Duncan, one of the three selection panel
members, said he chose artists for the show who don’t just create but
push the process on how they create. “What I respect about these
artists is that they work day in and day out, creating as many painting
or sculptures as they can. They keep pushing their time and limits to
create great works of art,” Duncan said. “Chattanooga will have another
opportunity to really see big city works in our home town. We do not
need to go to the big cities when the big cities are visiting us.” This
exhibit will feature the art work of Rob Colvin (originally
from Chattanooga, lives in New York, NY), Patrick DeGuira
(Nashville, TN), Gerald Ferstman (Lexington, KY), Bryan
Jones (originally from Chattanooga, lives in New Haven, CT), Brett
Price (Orange, CA), and Terry Thacker (Nashville, TN).
AVA’s commitment to supporting young and emerging artists remains a
touchstone of the organization. Every year, AVA hosts an exhibition of
emerging visual artists from the region. This competitive, juried
exhibit is designed to showcase artists who display artistic promise,
commitment to their work, and fresh ideas. This opportunity is only
open to artists who have not had a major solo show and have no gallery
representation. This year, AVA is pleased to present ten emerging
artists, representing 4 states and 7 colleges and universities: Matt
Christy, Lindsay Lewis Ethridge, Sharon Farrelly, Kara Gunter, Michael
Iauch, Amanda Ladymon, Alison Oakes, Marie Porterfield,
Charlie Shepard, and Matt Sigmon.
In this exhibition of works on paper, the AVA gallery will serve as
a metaphor for the artist’s brain, according to Jeffrey Morton,
professor of art at Covenant College. Morton, who served as curator for
the show, was inspired by a 1984 installation at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art, in which the artist Jonathan Borofsky exhibited a series
of large-scale self-portrait sculptures that served as symbolic
representations of the artist. “There is something special about the
drawings of an artist, and it seems to me that when I view such
drawings, I have an immediate access to the thoughts and mind of the
artist,” Morton said. The artists who will have works on display in the
show include: Bill Thelen, John Tallman, John W. Ford, Jean Hess,
Joseph Peragine, Jake Kelley, Jered Sprecher, David Young, Ron
Buffington, Marilyn Murphy, Mark Hosford, Jodi Hays, and Chris
Scarborough.
“The Salty Side of Sweet” features Kirsten Stingle's mixed media
works in which she creates human form ceramics and employs found
objects to highlight the dichotomy of human emotions and life
experiences. “I work with human form because while it is instantly
approachable, the presentation of its inner psyche can be infinitely
complex,” explains Stingle. There is often more to Stingle’s pieces
than what instantly meets the eye. The beauty of her work is found in
reading the forms’ expressions and looking for the unexpected elements
that help each story unfold. Stingle has a fine arts degree in theatre,
which she says “strengthened my desire to express common threads of the
human experience and honed my understanding of imagery and gesture as
powerful narrative tools.” Stingle was a new exhibitor at the 2009
Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington D.C.
For close to a decade, the Chicago Housing Authority has been
involved in the controversial process of replacing current public
housing complexes with mixed-income townhouses. Reblando creates
portraits that challenge commonly held assumptions that public housing
developments are simply places of poverty and misery. His portraits of
public housing residents under the transformation plan attempt to
convey the complex relationship residents have with the place in which
they live, amidst the uncertain future of their community.
Chattanooga’s own art collective, SEED, has joined forces with a
few of the country’s best collectives to create an installation that
will transform the AVA gallery into a distance-collapsing intersection
of social practice + collective action + time/site sensitive
negotiations. Participants include Basekamp (Philadelphia), DeadTech
(Chicago), Fugitive Projects (Nashville), Graffiti Research Lab (New
York), Guerrilla Girls, InCUBATE-Chicago, Paintallica, and TEAM LUMP
(Raleigh).
ON EXHIBIT 
Accessing the Artist’s Brain: Drawing as
Metaphor
The Salty Side of Sweet: Works by Kirsten
Stingle
A Portrait of Public Housing: Works by
Jason Reblando
Bin