Exhibitions
BJ BARBEE: JUMPING FROM THE CEILING TO THE FLOOR
The Browsing Room Gallery (Downtown Presbyterian Church) / 154 Rep. John Lewis Way N. May 3 - June 21st
BJ Barbee
The Browsing Room is very pleased to announce a solo exhibition entitled Jumping from the Ceiling to the Floor featuring work by Artist in Residence (AiR), BJ Barbee.
Opening Reception: Saturdays, May 10 & June 14, 6-9 pm with performance by Brother James Barbee and band Good Country Dark, starting at 6:15pm on May 10th.
About the Exhibit:
DPC is pleased to welcome one of our own Artists in Residence (AiR), BJ Barbee for the May and June art crawls in association with Downtown Arts District Alliance (DADA). BJ moved into the studios here in 2024 and immediately submerged himself into being a part of the artist community and into his new series, Jumping from the Ceiling to the Floor. BJ feels his work is all over the place stylistically as a result of the thought processes and the emotions he has been dealing with having suffered the horrific loss of his dad and then his mom within a short time of each another. His materials, themes, and techniques reveal the tumultuous struggles he has faced between the internal and external worlds, exposing the truths he has unearthed. Join us for the May and June Artist’s Opening Receptions during the Downtown Arts District Alliance (DADA) Art Crawl Saturdays, May 10 & June 14 at 6-9 PM.
Artist’s Statement:
This work explores the raw terrain of grief, tracing the contours of loss through layered, symbolic imagery. In the wake of trauma – the loss of both my parents in a cold, traumatic fashion and in quick succession- I turned to the visual languages of nature, memory, and myth as a means of understanding what cannot be given back. These images are both a salve and a summons: a way to cope, but also a way to listen more deeply. The aftermath of loss often brings with it a spiritual reckoning. This work seeks to inhabit that liminal space – the fragile veil between life and death, presence and absence. At the heart of this practice is a confrontation with our damaged relationship to the natural world. The Earth’s wounds are mirrors of our own, and through these paintings, I ask what it means to grieve, not just for people, but for ecosystems, ancestors and possible futures. Each piece is an elegy – and a call – to recognize the sacred in all forms of life, even in their vanishing. Ultimately, this work is about thresholds: between inner and outer worlds, destruction and healing, forgetting and remembering. In that space, I see beauty not as an escape, but as a force for reckoning, transformation, and loud hope.
About the artist:
Brother James Barbee (1979) graduated from the University of Tennessee Knoxville in 2004, before relocating to New York City, where he worked in film and print set design over the next decade. Now located in Nashville, Tennessee, his work is found in private collections on every continent of this mighty globe. BJ creates work culled from the dark/light intersection of the physical and spiritual world and the joys pulled from the terrors of daily life. A multimedia artist and multi-instrumentalist/vocalist with the band Good Country Dark, BJ was raised in the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, and the ghosts of this region permeate his output.
“Like a choir singing from the bottom of an empty bottle. This is southern phantasmagoria. This is crocodile rock.”
About the Gallery: The Browsing Room is a non-commercial gallery created in the space of the historic DPC’s old congregational library. The gallery serves as an extension of DPC’s long standing studio community known as the Artists in Residence (AIR) who have studio spaces above DPC’s chapel. The Browsing Room connects an art-seeking community with their AIR, as well as with other local and regional artists, by featuring a rotation of quarterly exhibitions. The gallery currently opens each 2nd Saturday by appointment only.
Image: But They Never Really Come Back, 2025, Acrylic paint, ink, gold on canvas, 48 x 48 in.
