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One of the smallest communities in the state of Arkansas to have an arts center, Nashville, Arkansas is home to the Elberta Arts Center located on downtown Main Street. The center is the home to the Elberta Arts Council and Humanities, a non-profit arts organization founded by Marie Murray Martin in February 2000. [1] The Center features a permanent collection of various local artists and includes the neon marquee from the 1950s Elberta Theater. [2]
The Elberta Arts Center's grand-opening began with an artist reception honoring Lankford Moore [3] in November 2000. Since 2000, the Center has been instrumental in bringing public art to the small city. The Center's first public art project was the downtown mural painted by Johnce Parrish [4] on the corner of Main and Clark Street. The mural highlighted Howard County's long prominence in farming and its love affair with the Elberta peach.
The first board of directors were Dolly Henley, director of Nashville City Parks and Recreation; Deborah D. Phillips, former-director of the Hot Springs Fine Arts Center; Becky Rockenbach, former-director of the Literacy of Howard County; Linda Spillers, R.N., Arkansas Dept. of Health IHS; Sarah Terwilliger, former-juvenile ombudsman, Arkansas Public Defender Commission; Diane Morrow, artist and owner of Henley Graphics and Marie A. Martin, founder/director of EAC and former-director of the Fine Arts Center of Hot Springs, Arkansas (2002–2004). [5] Martin is a native of Winthrop, Massachusetts.
In the summer of 2001, the Elberta Arts Council and Humanities was named among several arts organizations chosen to be a grant recipient of the Arkansas Arts Council's [6] three year expansion arts program. [7] The grant began in 2002 and ended in 2005.
Just two years after the center opened it was named the Nashville Chamber of Commerce Organization of the Year-2003.
The Arkansas Department of Heritage awarded the Elberta Arts Council a grant in observation of Arkansas Heritage Month. The grant funded a program called, "Preserving Howard County's Heritage." During the month of May 2007, the Center hosted activities that included a month-long quilt exhibit which was organized by the Elberta Quilter's Guild. In addition, area artisans demonstrated bladesmithing, leather-tooling and needle-work. [8]
In 2001, Martin was nominated for an Arkansas Governor's Art Award in community development.
Bob Tommey, famed cowboy artist shows at Elberta on Thur., July 11, 2002. [9]
Dr. Frank Latimer, UACCH 'Reclaiming Space' June 1, 2006 [10] [11]
Home address: 109 S. Main Street Nashville, AR 71852 870-451-9966
Nashville is a city in Howard County, Arkansas, United States. The population was 4,627 at the 2010 census. The estimated population in 2018 was 4,425. The city is the county seat of Howard County.
African-American art is a broad term describing visual art created by Americans who also identify as Black. The range of art they have created, and are continuing to create, over more than two centuries is as varied as the artists themselves. Some have drawn on cultural traditions in Africa, and other parts of the world, for inspiration. Others have found inspiration in traditional African-American plastic art forms, including basket weaving, pottery, quilting, woodcarving and painting, all of which are sometimes classified as "handicrafts" or "folk art".
Daniel Rhodes was an American artist, known as a ceramic artist, muralist, sculptor, author and educator. During his 25 years (1947–1973) on the faculty at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, in Alfred, New York, he built an international reputation as a potter, sculptor and authority on studio pottery.
The Kentucky Foundation for Women promotes feminist art and social justice by awarding grants to individual artists and organizations, providing time and space for artists and activists at its retreat center, sharing information, and building alliances.
Loki K. Gordon is an artist and founder and co-owner of Marrakech Henna Art Cafe in Marrakech, Morocco. She is also founder and president of Six Degrees Consortium, a 501(c)3 organization dedicated to the creation and dissemination of art that addresses compelling social issues and that builds bridges across cultures. She is also Founder and President of El Fenn Maroc, a NGO based in Marrakech, Morocco and dedicated to supporting artists in Morocco. She is known for The Katrina Collection, her series of mixed media assemblages which incorporates debris from the massive hurricane which ravaged the Mississippi Gulf Coast in August 2005, for The Labat Project, a piece of which has been acquired by the Smithsonian Institution, and for Six Degrees: West to East" which addresses the gulf between the western and Islamic worlds.
The Asian Arts Initiative (AAI) is a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia which focuses on art and the Asian-American community. It was founded by Gayle Isa, who also served as AAI's first executive director until June 2018. Its current executive director is Anne Ishii.
Rosie Lee Tompkins (1936–2006) is the art pseudonym of Effie Mae Martin Howard, a widely-acclaimed African-American quiltmaker and fiber artist of Richmond, California. The New York Times called her "one of the great American artists," and her work "one of the century’s major artistic accomplishments." More than 500 works by Tompkins reside at the Berkeley Art Museum.
The Arts and Science Center for Southeast Arkansas is a 22,000-square-foot (2,000 m2) art and science museum located at 701 Main Street in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. It includes four galleries, a 232-seat theatre, classroom space, administrative offices, vault and adequate preparatory and conservation space for the Center's current programming efforts.
Roland L. Freeman is a photographer and award-winning documenter of Southern folk culture and African-American quilters. He is the president of The Group for Cultural Documentation based in Washington, D.C.
Evan Lindquist is an American artist and printmaker who was appointed to be the first Artist Laureate for the State of Arkansas. He has concentrated on the medium of copperplate engraving for more than 50 years. His compositions are memorable for their emphasis on calligraphic lines.
Wini "Akissi" McQueen is an American quilter based in Macon, Georgia. Her artistic production consists of hand-dyed accessories and narrative quilts. Her techniques for her well-known quilts include an image transferring process. In her work, she tackles issues of race, class, society, and women. Her quilts have featured in many museum exhibitions, including the Museum of African American Folk Art, the Taft Museum, the Bernice Steinbam Gallery, and the William College Art Museum. In 2020, her quilts were featured in a retrospective dedicated to her textile art at the Museum of Arts & Sciences in Macon, GA.
Laurie Swim, BFA, is a Canadian visual artist, best known for her quilt art. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the New York Museum of Arts and Design, the Nova Scotia Art Bank, the Nova Scotia Designer Crafts Council, the Ontario Workers Arts and Heritage Centre, and in private collections. She won the Portia White Prize in 2013.
The Division of Arkansas Heritage (DAH) is a division of the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage, and Tourism of the U.S. State of Arkansas responsible for preserving, promoting, and protecting Arkansas's natural and cultural history and heritage. It was known as the Department of Arkansas Heritage until it was merged with the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism (ADPT) on July 1, 2019, becoming a division of ADPT's successor, the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage, and Tourism.
Charles Counts (1934–2000) was an American potter, designer, textile artist, quilter, teacher, writer, and activist. Counts worked to preserve the art forms of his native Appalachia, and later moved to Nigeria where he taught until his death.
Martha Neill Upton was a watercolorist, sculptor and studio quilt artist. Her quilted tapestries helped quilts become seen as fine art, rather than craft work, during the early 1970s. Her quilts were shown in the first major museum exhibition of non-traditional quilts, The New American Quilt at New York's Museum of Arts and Design, then called the Museum of Contemporary Craft, in 1976.
Lia Cook is an American fiber artist noted for her work combining weaving with photography, painting, and digital technology. She lives and works in Berkeley, California and is known for her weavings which expanded the traditional boundaries of textile arts. She has been a professor at California College of the Arts since 1976.
Sedrick Ervin Huckaby (1975) is an American artist known for his use of thick, impasto paint to create murals that evoke traditional quilts and his production of large portraits that represent his personal history through images of family members and neighbors.
Lucy Marie (Young) Mingo is an American quilt maker and member of the Gee's Bend Collective from Gee's Bend (Boykin), Alabama. She was an early member of the Freedom Quilting Bee, which was an alternative economic organization created in 1966 to raise the socio-economic status of African-American communities in Alabama. She was also among the group of citizens who accompanied Martin Luther King Jr. on his 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
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Alvia J. Wardlaw is an American art scholar, and one of the country's top experts on African-American art. She is Curator and Director of the University Museum at Texas Southern University, an institution central to the development of art by African Americans in Houston. She also is a professor of Art History at Texas Southern University. Wardlaw is a member of the Scholarly Advisory Council of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and co-founded the National Alliance of African and African American Art Support groups in 1998. Wardlaw was University of Texas at Austin's first African-American PhD in Art History.