Exhibitions
CHATTANOOGA LOCAL (CURATED BY STEPHANIE LOGGANS AND RAYMOND PADRON)
Stove Works / 1250 E. 13th Street, Chattanooga, TN June 25, 2021 - September 4, 2021
Tri-Star Arts is pleased to partner with Stove Works on Chattanooga Local, a continuation of our Local exhibition series highlighting TN Artists. Chattanooga Local has been co-curated by Stephanie Loggans and Raymond Padron and opens Friday, June 25 (6:00- 9:00 pm) at Stove Works, 1250 E. 13th Street, Chattanooga, TN 37408. It will remain on view through Saturday, September 4. Weekly hours are Thursday- Saturday, 12:00- 6:30 pm.
Participating artists include Alecia Vera, Angela Dittmar, Botany Rain, CC Calloway, Eden Anyabwile, Edward Kellogg, Isaac Duncan III, Jeff Morton, Kirby Miles, Kris Bespalec, Ron Buffington, Rondell Crier, Stephanie Loggans, Victoria Sauer, and William Johnson.
Chattanooga Local presents a broad range of media, art practices, and communities, emphasizing how artists support each other in their work. The curators trace friendship, collaboration, mentorship, and education connections by asking Chattanooga artists: "Who sustains you, and who are you sustaining?"
*image: Kirby Miles
Curatorial Statement
A “sustained” art practice does not mean unrelenting individual productivity. It can look that way, but sustainability is highly dependent on the quality of connection (it’s defined by this really). A sustained art practice requires time, space, materials, focus, pauses to absorb and digest new experiences, and phases of rest. Art practice is also sustained through impactful and meaningful exchanges that locate artists in something we often call “community.” This word is never clearly defined, but artists are compelled to actualize it anyway through a belief in art, a desire to exchange ideas and skills and affect the world through their work.
We approached artists with well-developed practices who also put a lot of their time and energy into elevating art in Chattanooga. When asked the question, “Who do you sustain, and who sustains you?” no one was confused by what we meant. They named artists with whom they had meaningful and impactful exchanges. Those artists were also brought into the show. The result is groupings of artists from different circles in Chattanooga whose work is already in dialogue, through actual conversation, mentorship, or collaboration - with some overlap and connections that we didn’t anticipate.
Some prominent themes and connections within the exhibition are: immersion in landscape through a long process of looking and mark making; reclaiming agency in representation and personal narrative; seductive materiality referencing the body; references to the mundane; unstable “thinging;” contextualizing and stabilizing motion through scale.
We intend to not only highlight some intersecting art practices in Chattanooga, but also create an opportunity for artists to gather, see their work in dialogue, and feel like a part of their community in a physical space. As we navigate our way out of the pandemic quarantine with hope and wisdom, this is a time to reemerge, reconnect, and celebrate.
About the Curators
Stephanie Loggans is an artist and metal fabricator from Chattanooga, TN. She received a BFA in Art Studio with a concentration in Sculpture from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Her work has been exhibited in group shows at LABspace in Hillsdale, NY; The Emporium Center in Knoxville, TN; ArtsPlace Gallery in Lexington, KY; Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery and Gallery 72 in Atlanta, GA. Loggans is a two-time recipient of the MSA Scholarship for Outstanding Student Achievement for 2016 and 2017 and serves as an Emerging Artist Member on the MSA Board of Directors. She is the Metal Shop Manager at Range Projects and a co-organizer with VERSA, an artist-run space exhibiting contemporary art in Chattanooga.
Raymond Padron is a sculptor and performance-based artist, working in a broad diversity of processes and materials. He uses traditional craft and its relationship to improvisation to explore how we form our identity and beliefs. Born in 1983, he grew up in the Northern Virginia suburbs of DC. In 2005 after receiving his B.A. in sculpture and graphic design from Messiah College in Grantham, PA, he moved south to the city of Chattanooga, TN. In 2011 he received his M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has since returned to Chattanooga where he now makes art, exhibits nationally, and teaches.
About Stove Works
In November 2020, Stove Works opened its 27,000 sq. ft. arts center located on the south side of Chattanooga. Stove Works offers three core programs: Residency, Exhibitions, and Education. Rooted in an intention to highlight the practice of contemporary art, we ask our audience to do more than passively view artwork. Stove Works seeks to use art to encourage conversations, inspire reflection, and provide opportunities to learn from the experiences of others. For more information, visit stoveworks.org.
About the Local Series
Chattanooga Local is part of a Tennessee-centric, Tri-Star Arts exhibition series. It highlights the work of hometown artists selected by guest curators from the same city. The series offers the chance to celebrate the depth of the Tennessee art scene through the eyes of the curators. It is an extension of the vision of Tri-Star Arts to spotlight and grow the contemporary visual arts in the state.
