Wanamaker exhibits at Station Pure Art

Vicki Monroe Spivey’s Station Pure Art is presenting what is to be a very special art exhibition by artist Monty Wanamaker, representing more than four decades of creativity. The show, scheduled for September and October, will feature works dating back to the early 1960s with selections spanning the entire career of the artist to be woven in among numerous recently-created works.

A highlight of the exhibition will be “Eternal Woman,” a unique oil portrait of Wanamaker’s mother, the late Louella Roberts Wanamaker. It was painted in 1962 and exhibited in 1963 in the young artist’s first one-man exhibition presented at The Parthenon Museum Galleries in Nashville. Reproduced at that time in The Nashville Tennessean in a review of the showing by art critic Clara Hieronymus, the large portrait was later exhibited in McMinnville when librarian Agness Cook requested that the artist exhibit his paintings at Magness Library. After being viewed locally, the art works were then displayed in the McCaughn-Burr Galleries in St. Louis, Mo.

Wanamaker relocated in Washington, D.C. where he joined the staff of The Phillips Collection and continued to paint and exhibit his art. After moving to New York in 1967, he studied at The Art Students League and presented his first gallery exhibition in 1974. Critics, writing about his work in published reviews, referred to the artist as “a master craftsman? with inordinate skill.” One critic called his images “breathtaking” and “spectacular.”

In 1999, a series of his exotic collage assemblages was exhibited publicly for the first time at The George Thomas Hunter Museum of Art in Chattanooga.

In McMinnville, the artist has opened his own gallery, Monty Wanamaker’s Art and Antiques Emporium at 111 East Morford St. Located next door is his Southern Museum and Galleries of Photography, Culture and History.

The Station Pure Art exhibition is scheduled to open to the public Sept. 2 and can be seen through Oct. 14. A public reception for the artist is scheduled Sept. 1 from 1 to 4 p.m.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the service station-turned-art-gallery is on the corner of Spring and Morford Streets. For additional information contact Vickie Monroe Spivey at 931-473-0821.