A TENDER HARKENING
Featuring works by Bridget Bailey, Meera Chauhan, Matthew Christy, Liza Clement, Georganna Greene, Jesse Hale, Ryan Rado, Cody Tumblin, and Yanira Vissepo
Curated by Georganna Greene
November-December 2021
At Open Gallery, a Lipscomb University affiliated student-run art space
507 Hagan St Nashville TN
Curatorial Statement
A Tender Harkening brings together works that address the notion of witness and remembrance —primarily, witnessing shifts and transitions during times of loss. As an artist, I am interested and often fueled by the way art making can play a transformative role in the process of coping with change and its disorienting after-effects. The pandemic altered social norms, customs, and other invisible things that we count on. Our relationships—with people, home, work, tech, entertainment, art, even with ourselves—shifted beyond known territories because they had to. Some things, however, we have held onto or sought to maintain or reinvent if need be.
Through the structures and metaphors in our work, artists both avoid and pursue complex feelings such as nostalgia, hope, apprehension, or awkwardness. The wide spectrum of materials within this particular grouping —which spans from reused fabrics, air-dry clay, and oil paint to drawings and experimental photographic techniques— offers a breadth of diverse approaches to visual thought. The obstacle of space carries significance throughout: whether surveying a forest floor, recalling a familiar dream, or a dimly lit dining room— these are containers for something important. The signature of a hand-drawn line works alongside photographic methods of transference, permitting a dialogue between slowness and immediacy. While each practitioner maintains a distinct artistic voice, this collective grouping of works illuminates the reward of identifying and carving out sacred, tender harkenings and giving them a place to rest.
-Georganna Greene, 2021