Exhibit featuring disabled artists opens May 16
“The works in The Artist’s Voice are a testament to the power of art to eliminate barriers as it offers healing, strength, and encouragement to its creators, while giving voice to the varied lives of these resilient artists,” says Anne Henderson, director of education at the Frist Center. “The artwork provides a visual language that broadens our own understanding as well, not only of people with disabilities, but also of our connections with each other and the world.”
The works featured in the exhibition have an expressive force and sense of beauty that transcend any limitations that might be imposed by their makers’ disabilities. The artists’ personal circumstances often inform their art, as well as their chosen media. Some of the works explore an artist’s daily struggles of living with a disability; others convey a positive outlook, rich with vitality and raw energy that is often achieved through the use of bright, bold color. Intertwining themes of strength, resilience, fragility, contentment and endurance can be seen throughout this exhibition. Though each work stands on its own artistic merit, the individual stories of their creators make the art even more engaging and awe inspiring.
The artists in this exhibition are motivated to make art for many reasons. Some use the creative process as a means of coming to terms with their particular situations and the world, while others use art as an escape from it. All of the artists attest to the therapeutic value of art and maintain that creating it assists them in their personal efforts to heal, live, and flourish in the world at large.
For Lyrica Marquez, an artist with autism who usually relies on her mother’s support and assisted typing to communicate, the act of painting benefits her in the same way sculpture benefits the Clover Bottom residents. “In art, I am free to lose my disability over [to] the ways that the colors and lines flow from a soul’s expression,” writes Marquez in her artist’s statement. “It frees the ‘me’ who has no spoken words, only color and form as my own independent language. My art gives me a home in an otherwise hard-to-fit-in world.”
Last summer, the Frist Center announced a statewide Call for Works to receive entries for this exhibition, open to Tennessee artists ages 18 years and older who have physical, cognitive or mental disabilities (a disability is defined as an impairment that substantially limits a major life activity). Submissions were reviewed and chosen by a selection panel that included Donna Glassford, director of the department of cultural enrichment at Vanderbilt University Medical Center; Carol Mode, Nashville-based artist and Frist Center artist council member; and Mark Scala, chief curator of the Frist Center.
Gallery admission to the Frist Center is free for visitors 18 and younger and to Frist Center members. Frist Center admission is $8.50 for adults, $7.50 for seniors and military and $6.50 for college students with ID. Thursday evenings, 5’9 p.m., admission is free for college students with a valid college ID. Discounts are offered for groups of 10 or more with advance reservation by calling 615.744.3246. The Frist Center is open seven days a week: Mondays through Wednesdays, and Saturdays, 10 a.m.’5:30 p.m.; Thursdays and Fridays, 10 a.m.’9 p.m. and Sundays, 1’5:30 p.m., with the Frist Center Caf?? opening at noon. Additional information is available by calling 615.244.3340 or by visiting our Web site at www.fristcenter.org.