ARTS AT THE AIRPORT: SUMMER FLYING SOLO SERIES OPENED JUNE 13

The summer installment of the art showcase at Nashville International Airport (BNA) opened June 13 and will run through Sept. 6. To view photos from the exhibits, please visit http://flynashville.com/newsroom/photos.aspx.

Each season, the Flying Solo series offers talented local artists an opportunity to exhibit their work at BNA.

“The Flying Solo series is an important part of what we call the Nashville Airports Experience, reflecting the tastes and talents of the community we serve,” said Raul Regalado, president and CEO of the Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority. “We are pleased to have another fantastic set of artists’ works to share with the passengers and visitors of our airport.”

The summer 2010 Flying Solo series artists are Duncan McDaniel, Carol LeBaron, Kimberly Winkle, Mike Andrews, Bob Delevante and the Zuri Quilting Guild.

Duncan McDaniel (Nashville, Tenn.)
Ticketing Lobby North
McDaniel’s work covers a broad range from large oil paintings and drawings to playful balloon installations that fill entire rooms. He graduated in 2006 from the Savannah College of Art and Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting. McDaniel works as an art handler for the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Vanderbilt University and the Nashville International Airport’s Arts at the Airport program.

“In this series of paintings, I wanted to visually illustrate the diversity of sound a piece of music comprises. In other words, I wanted to render music synesthetically, the way I imagine the auditory sensations, such as tone, melody, rhythm or tempo, would appear if transmuted into visual sensations. In particular, using flowering piano keys, metrical lines and energetic colors, I created an eclectic ensemble of images that evoke the visual anatomy of a musical expression.”

Carol LeBaron (Stony Creek, Tenn.)
Ticketing Lobby South
LeBaron’s clamped wool and jacquard work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and has won several awards. Recent venues include the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville, the Association for Visual Arts in Chattanooga and the Caleb Bingham Gallery in Columbia, Mo. Her work has been published in Surface Design Journal, 1000 Textiles and Fiberarts Design Book Seven.

“The inspiration for my fine art textiles comes from forms and colors found in nature. I use these elements to create pieces that guide the atmosphere of interior spaces through color and the inherent sound-absorbing qualities of fiber. The pieces designed for the airport installation represent the flora that grows around my studio in Stony Creek, Tenn., as well as endangered species from the rain forest in Roan Mountain.”


Photographer Adair Freeman and textile artist Carol LeBaron

Kimberly Winkle (Smithville, Tenn.)
Art Case at Concourse C/D Meeter-Greeter Area
Winkle’s work combines furniture and sculptural elements and involves the scrutiny of form, color and line. She has toyed with the simple arrangement of the dot and line, and the combination of these marks has resulted in an exciting, somewhat quirky dialogue of characters that animates the painted surface. Her furniture forms are simple and serve as empty canvas for color and line. Her work has been shown nationally, internationally, and in a number of public and private collections.

“Employing traditional furniture-making techniques and materials, I build forms and structures with results that are, oftentimes, untraditional. My interest lies in the pursuit and potential of the medium as an expressive device versus function being paramount.”

Mike Andrews: Pieces from the Past (Cunningham, Tenn.)
Art Case at Concourse A/B Meeter-Greeter Area
Andrews was born in Baltimore, Md., in 1961 to a military father and a stay-at-home mom. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Austin Peay State University in sculpture and later earned a teaching degree. Andrews studied with artist Olen Bryant and worked as an instructor for more than 20 years. He has taught at the Clarksville Academy, Clarksville Montgomery County School System and APSU.

“My work is typically modern with clean lines carved from stone or cast in metals. For this exhibit, however, I have taken wooden foundry patterns crafted by old-world craftsmen and changed their function from industrial parts to artistic abstractions.”

Bob Delevante (Nashville, Tenn.)
Concourse C
Delevante is a photographer, singer-songwriter and graphic designer who balances music with the demands of running his full-service art, photography and graphic design studio. His award-winning work has gained local, regional and national attention. He works with many creative mediums – photography, songwriting and design – to capture and document glimpses of everyday life. Delevante’s unpretentious approach in both subject matter and method makes his pictures instantly accessible and keeps the emotion in his work honest and true to life.

“Capturing an image for me is simply capturing a moment. Sometimes that beauty is a vast landscape, sometimes it’s my daughter jumping off a diving board. Both beautiful, both equally challenging and rewarding to render.”

Concourse A Cases:
The Zuri Quilting Guild (Nashville, Tenn.)
“Sistahs of the Cloth: Piecing Together Our Past While Keeping Ourselves in Stitches”
The Zuri Quilting Guild is open to quilters committed to preserving the African-American quilting tradition and those who believe in an African-American aesthetic. Zuri was inspired by the 18th-century story of Harriet Powers, the best-known Southern African-American quiltmaker, whose two Bible quilts hang in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History collection and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Zuri consists of women with stories of learning to sew from mothers, grandmothers, aunts or home economics teachers who had left their mothers’ craft for fancy careers and store-bought designs and returned to weaving fiber because they discovered they were artists at heart.

“We are African-American women who took the name ‘Zuri’ (‘beautiful’ in Swahili) for our quilting guild because making something beautiful out of our lives is what we do. Our Zuri guild meetings have become our own special time to gather with sisters of like aesthetics, women who share our love for bold colors, whimsical designs and Afro-centric themes.”


Zuri quilt artist Nicole Jenkins discusses her work


Zuri quilt artist Peggy McGowan in front of her work (to the right)