Exhibitions

RELIQUARY: ICONS, TRASH, AND THE SPIRIT IN FRAGMENTS

The Browsing Room Gallery (Downtown Presbyterian Church) / 154 Rep. John Lewis Way N. July 12 - August 22nd (Reception: July 12 6:00pm - 9:00pm)

BJ Barbee, Julia Martin, Janet Decker Yanez, Richard Feaster

The Browsing Room is pleased to present Reliquary: Icons, Trash, and the Spirit in Fragments - an exhibition of Resident Artists of the Downtown Presbyterian Church.

Made within the upper floors of one of Nashville’s most historically resonant buildings, Reliquary brings together the current artists-in residence of the Downtown Presbyterian Church for a powerful and unconventional group exhibition.

Since 1817, the building’s rounded central chapel has hosted worship and reflection—yet surrounding this sacred core, the church’s third and fourth floors have become fertile ground for experimental and deeply personal art-making. In Reliquary, artists mine this unique environment for meaning, crafting modern-day relics that blend sacred and the secular, the discarded and the divine.

Featured Works Include:

• Gold and darkly themed paintings that shimmer like relics and rumble with unease

• Ink drawings on Yupo paper, intimate, fragrant, and almost liturgical

• Sculptural constructions made from fragments of shipping materials and paint—part shrine, part survival artifact

• Mixed media canvases that embed symbols of everyday grief and resilience

This isn’t nostalgia.

This is reclamation.

Each work stands as a fragment of personal mythology an an object transformed, imbued, and left behind.