THE FOCUS

The work of Juan Rojo has always been rooted in tradition, from Spanish Baroque painters to more contemporary masters like Lucien Freud or Frank Auerbach. While the paintings still contain allusions to those works, they exist as points of reference instead of the kind of derivative mimicry of his early paintings. In his new body of work, decoration plays a primary role as an element that intrudes and at times even obscures the faces of the subjects and disguises their...

David Underwood is a Professor of Art and the Director of Exhibitions at Carson-Newman University, in Jefferson City, Tennessee, where he has been teaching since 1990. As a former Chairperson of the university’s Art Department, he led his academic department through two successful reaccreditations with the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. Underwood is pictured here (below) in one of the campus galleries that he manages, with his 2019 mixed-media piece, “Finding a New Honesty.” David Underwood, Virtual Studio Visit,...

"I’m interested in the apophenia one curates to make sense of the world around them. I tend to explore themes of safety, control and power and how these are implemented visually. I want the works made to perform a woven narration, constantly looping back informing and reimagining themselves to reference a larger, futile attempt at solving a mutating puzzle of our fictionalized ideal of America." Jesse Butcher, Virtual Studio Visit, June 2020 Jesse Butcher, Virtual Studio Visit, June 2020 Jesse Butcher, Vi...

Notes by Jana Harper on This Holding: Traces of Contact "I began working on This Holding several years ago with a simple question: 'What are the burdens we carry? And what might they look like?' In the process of researching, I talked to hundreds of people in dozens of community workshops: doctors, dancers, middle-school kids, college students, retirees, folks from many different countries, and from all walks of life. I always start by asking them to name the burdens...

Kimberly Dummons, Virtual Studio Visit, June 2020 Kimberly Dummons, Virtual Studio Visit, June 2020 "For several years my work has explored the concept of home, through sculpture, prints and collage. Lately, my sculptural work explores the two types of sculpture, relief and in-the-round, simultaneously, to talk about the juxtaposition of the inside and the outside. In my two-dimensional work, I am using color, pattern and texture to create prints and collage to talk about place, both literally and figuratively. I am simultaneously...

"My work investigates the essence of being. It explores my relationship with the present world, bound to the ancient African tradition of my ancestors. Ancestors who exist in rituals, stories, artifacts, spirit, and through me. My experience of new worlds is intimately rooted in the African philosophy of Hunhu/Ubuntu, the essence of that which makes us human. The thread that binds the individual to the collective. It puts human connection at the center, by embracing a timeless truth that, “I...

Corkey Sinks, Virtual Studio Visit, May 2020 "The type of work I make is typically a response to the type of studio space I have access to. In a big, open studio space, I work on a large scale. In my home studio, I have been focusing on writing and drawing, designing zines and books, things that fit into boxes and onto hard drives. Now, my studio feels more like an office and a home gym than a space for art-making....

Joe Nolan, Bud Powell Died For Your Sins, 2018, C-Print, 20 X 11 in "This photograph [above] was on display at the Stories of the South exhibition at Ground Floor Gallery & Studios in Nashville this March before the show was shut down by the global pandemic. I’m promiscuous when it comes to mediums and materials so I’ve revived an old Fluxus term and describe myself as an intermedia artist. My practice includes photography, public radio poetry broadcasts, live performances, musical releases, mult...