HAUS-building
A fundamental part of being an artist is, as my friend Lain likes to say, “making work and showing work.” The first can be tough enough, but the second, while equally beneficial, is almost as hard. The decision to show in exhibitions forces you to define a body of work and create a coherent visual, and it also puts you in the eye of the arts community, increasing your chances of getting constructive feedback and opportunities. However, the scheduling, effort, and overhead involved in the business of maintaining a dedicated gallery schedule requires preparation months – if not years – in advance…and that’s just the amount of time it might take for you, the artist, looking to submit work. For a gallery owner, it’s a lot harder in a lot of other ways.
I’ve had the benefit of administrative access to an on-site gallery space before, and despite the occasional frustrations with scheduling conflicts, patching holes, replacing lighting, mopping floors, last-minute changes, late-night installations, thrown circuit breakers, shaky ladders, dropped paint cans, lost screws, awkward sales conversions– wait. I’m making this sound terrible, but it wasn’t: it was exciting. Seeing a show come together, and seeing people connect to work, and knowing you were helping other artists connect to other people through their work: it was exciting. Every obstacle was a challenge; it taught us more about ourselves and what we were capable of doing. When the location finally closed, I felt like I’d had lost something a lot greater than bricks or wires.
That’s why it felt right when I sat down with Emily to have a coffee and conversation moment a few months ago, and we started talking about why there aren’t more adaptive showing opportunities in Nashville. While I love what’s been happening with the arts and gallery scene here, I’m naturally an action lady (sans eyepatch), ready to face challenges head-on. When something starts brewing, I like to get right in the kitchen. And why when we started talking over the same conversation at Casa Corteza, about the feasibility of creating a more flexible showing environment – something that doesn’t rely on buildings with utilities and upkeep, or on the fickle market of art to turn a buck and save the day – it felt right. Thinking about why to do it at all – why Gunter Reski claims that choosing an accelerated setting urges artists to get to the heart of their work – felt right. And so the culmination of this week feels right: releasing our first call for submissions to “Works in Progress,” a show hosted collectively by HAUS Rotations and hosted by the kindness of the community in provided homes and public spaces.
Is the first idea of it’s kind? No, not in the slightest. But like all of these efforts, it’s artists and creatives helping other artists. Whether it’s one artist talking to another artist to collaborate on a sweet logo, three artists organizing for a swarm, or one artist letting a bunch of other artists use another house to do an art show, it’s for something larger than ourselves, something that challenges us to learn more about why we’re doing what we’re doing and where all that is in the world. And that’s an idea I can get behind, that I can be excited about again.
And it feels…well, right.
So come check us out: on Facebook, as an applicant, or at the show opening on September 17th, hosted in our very own community of Sylvan Park at the house at 3530 Murphy. We’d like to know what you’re up to.
