Exhibitions
DAVE PERKINS: POSTCARDS FROM ROSWELL
The Browsing Room Gallery (Downtown Presbyterian Church) / 154 Rep. John Lewis Way N. March 8 - April 26th
Dave Perkins
About the Exhibit:
DPC is pleased to welcome back our friend Dave Perkins. Known to many in Nashville for his career as a musician making big contributions across genres and for his work with Vanderbilt Divinity School, in this exhibit of his artwork he shows us another side of his creative and expressive life. We won’t miss out on his gifts as a musician for this show—for the April opening of the show during the Downtown Arts District Alliance Art Crawl, Dave will perform with some of his favorite collaborators in the DPC Chapel.
Artists Statement:
Postcard from Roswell is a collection of contemporary folk art portraits and masks. Imagine passport photos for galactic travelers or the senior class from the bad dream yearbook. I ask myself if painting these faces is an exercise in mining deep memory. I had that thought when my mother viewed several of my early attempts and stopped suddenly saying, “I know this person—who is this?” I, too, had recognized a persona. What I painted looked little like anyone we knew, but it captured a recognizable essence. My first impulse with a blank canvas is to paint a face. Occasionally I recognize it, or some aspect of it. More often, an image arrives and claims its own personhood.
About the artist:
As a musical artist, Dave Perkins’ journey crisscrosses the map of American music. Perkins' work as a guitarist includes playing bluegrass and swing with fiddle-great Vassar Clements, Texas renegade-country with Jerry Jeff Walker, singer-songwriter pop with Carole King, Americana with Guy Clark, blues and jazz with violinist Papa John Creach, reggae with Mystic Meditations, alt-rock with Chagall Guevara, and industrial hard-core with Passafist. Then, there were numerous other high points, such as accompanying Ray Charles on his "3/4 Time" video. Solo albums by Dave Perkins can be found on Spotify, et al, they are Local Life, Fugitive Colors, The Innocence, Pistol City Holiness, and the soundtrack from the film Deadline. His work with the alt-rock band Chagall Guevara reignited after an extended break with the release of The Last Amen in 2022 and Halcyon Days in 2023. After twenty-five years as a professional music maker, Perkins earned a Ph.D. in History and Critical Theories of Religion from Vanderbilt University where he was until 2020 overseer of Vanderbilt Divinity School's Religion in the Arts and Contemporary Culture program. In 2023, Perkins returned to a long-time passion, painting. Perkins says that his images are best categorized as contemporary folk art or outsider art. He is self-taught and sees visual art in a similar light as music making. Perkins’s musical performances always include improvisation. So, too, his painting. Clashing Cymbals: Adventures in Sound and Spirit is Perkins’ musical-spiritual memoir. It will be published in 2025.
Join us for a special performance of When Marian Sang by Nashville Opera on Saturday, March 8 at 7:30 PM in the chapel, held in conjunction with the downtown art crawl. This inspiring 45-minute production brings to life the extraordinary journey of Marian Anderson, the first Black woman to sing at the Metropolitan Opera, through powerful narration by Vineecia Buchanan and breathtaking vocals by Alysha Nesbitt. Don’t miss this moving tribute to a trailblazing artist whose voice broke barriers and changed history!
Image: Dave Perkins, King ‘o Vegas
