Press in Nashville, TN
This is Love: Six Affecting Works from Cheekwood's More Love
Laura Hutson
“While still in graduate school at Yale, Nakadate began to explore ideas that would dominate her video work for years to come — the intersection between sexuality and awkwardness, and the fine line between earnest expression and exploitation. "Happy Birthday" was one of the earliest videos Nakadate created, and in many ways it's the perfect embodiment of her work. The three-channel video documents the sweet, baby-faced artist as she shares a birthday cake with a different middle-aged man in his apartment…”
Gregory Sale is dating America, one city at a time
Veronica Kavass
“Love's role in art is a dizzying contemplation. "Love for Love," part of the Cheekwood exhibition More Love: Art, Politics and Sharing Since the 1990s, attempts to reframe this contemplation through basic human interaction. "Love for Love" originated in the beating heart of Arizona-based social practice artist Gregory Sale, when he started distributing tens of thousands of buttons inscribed with meditations on love that had been written by his poet and writer friends. Back in 2008, "Love for Love" was called "Love Buttons, Love Bites." Today those writer friends have been replaced by prisoners, refugee populations and underserved youth, whom Sale refers to as "voices less heard." But in both iterations, the love buttons are meant to be taken and worn by the public. Sale's art depends on audience participation in the same way a protest movement or political campaign requires civic engagement…”
More Love at Cheekwood and 30 Americans at The Frist help set a high bar for fall art
Laura Hutson
“Amid the over-the-top outdoors show by lighting designer Bruce Munro and the over-the-top glamour of the annual white-tie fundraiser Swan Ball, Cheekwood is quietly planning one of the most important contemporary art exhibits of the year. Independent curator Claire Schneider, who brought work by artists as influential as Ryan Trecartin, Kara Walker and Paul McCarthy to Cheekwood in 2011's stellar video art exhibit Soaps, Flukes and Follies, has organized the first major exhibit to seriously examine the role love has played in art over the past 20 years…”
Make a date with a composite sketch artist at Cheekwood
Abby White
“"His face was more angular than that. And not so long," I say. "The chin is too long."
"How much shorter should the chin be?" asks the man across from me, Phil Cicero. He scrubs away at the chin with his eraser, and as it disappears, the face — just a rough outline at this point — appears grotesque. I shudder. Is the room getting colder?
I scrutinize the skeleton of a drawing and try to remember. The eyes look right, but the chin is wrong. How can I explain how to fix the chin?
Cicero is a composite sketch artist in Nashville, and I'm describing a man to him. We've already had an in-depth conversation wherein I did my best to recall his height, weight, skin color, hair color, eye color, what he was wearing when I first saw him, and what his most prominent facial feature was. But I'm struggling with the chin...”