Public Art
Call for Public Art.
Artville is back and we're excited to work with the artist and local community to host a visually and culturally rich temporary site-specific public art program, which will be displayed during Artville on September 27 - 29, 2024 in the Wedgewood Houston Chestnut Hill neighborhoods.
We are looking for artists interested in submitting immersive, experiential public art installations, murals and concepts that can co-exist in urban spaces and highlight the dynamic and creative community of Nashville. The Artville team has mapped out several locations throughout the neighborhood for public art installations along with our community and local partners which will be finalized in the coming months.
In the meantime, it is best to imagine your work living outside in a green space, in and around the buildings throughout the neighborhood, safely secured and visible throughout the weekend event - rain or shine. We invite you to check out the video below to get inspired by the amazing artists' works that were featured at Artville last year or visit our website to learn more. We hope you will dream big and share your vision for Artville 2024.
The 2023 Public Artists
The following artists all received Artville cash awards to create unique site-specific works for the 2023 Artville Public Art program.
Andrés Bustamante
Nashville, TN
Andrés Bustamante is a sculptor and muralist born in Cali, Colombia, based in Nashville, TN. His immigrant experience at a young age led him to existential questions about reality, exploring the abstraction in human emotion, concepts of human divinity, and researching the abstract mystery of life. Unquenched awe and wonder inspire his creative journey. Bustamante lives by the conviction that creativity is healing for humanity. He is passionate about community empowerment, mental health, and accessibility in the visual arts.
Troy Duff
Nashville, TN
Troy Duff is a graffiti and fine artist based out of East Nashville, Tennessee. His passion lies in public art and a spontaneous creative process. Through graffiti, he pays tribute to the lost art of penmanship. As a fan of photorealism, painting and typography, Troy discovered that graffiti perfectly combines all three. Over the years, he crafted a clean, legible lettering style and honed his scaling, 3-D and blending techniques. Troy began receiving calls from corporations requesting live graffiti demos. The raw, street art canvases he created appealed to Calvin Klein, Converse and the Dish Network. Troy wants graffiti to be a means of connecting with the community. He wants his art to be accessible and assembled like a puzzle. It is a challenge both for himself and the viewer, and when he creates it, it is the moment when he feels most alive.
Rachel Hayes
Tulsa, OK
Rachel Hayes was born in Kansas City, Missouri and lives and works in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Often using fabric to create large-scale work, she is interested in inserting color and form into both built and natural environments. She is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Award in Painting and Sculpture, Augustus Saint-Gaudens Memorial Fellowship in Sculpture, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Professional Fellowship in Sculpture, Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture, and a Charlotte Street Fund Award. Hayes has collaborated with the Italian fashion house Missoni on four projects, culminating with a solo exhibition during Milan Design Week. Her work has been covered by The New Yorker, The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Vogue, The Cut, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Boston Art Review and Artforum among others.
Brett Douglas Hunter
Nashville, TN
Brett Douglas Hunter, a self-taught artist from Illinois, creates whimsical creature sculptures using papercrete, a fibrous cement mixture. He is forever inspired by his family of self-propelled artists and builders. His work can be seen at Franconia Sculpture Park in Minnesota, yearly installations at the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, or at his campsite-for-rent on his home property outside of Nashville, Tennessee.
Bryce McCloud
Nashville, TN
Found on a misty morning in 1997 swaddled in a bespoke hand printed paper suit, Bryce has sought to do his family and uncle proud by manufacturing novelty letterpress ephemera and inflicting public art mayhem on the largest possible audience allowed by the laws of nature. He is closely associated with Isle of Printing, the shop he founded in 1997 with the international magnate Hiram Kneesch in Nashville, Tennessee. He has used this combination letterpress print shop and public art generator to create novel works of art in the public and private spheres for over 20 years both locally and abroad. Bryce is also the Director of Art and Chief Instigator of art events at Noelle where new and exciting art happenings and installations appear regularly.
Kit Reuther
Nashville, TN
Anchored by an intuitive awareness of spatial order, Kit Reuther employs her own brand of architectural abstraction to deconstruct representational forms in paintings and sculptures. Reuther’s powerful sculptural works are sleek, linear distortions of abstracted shapes and more organic, totemic forms. Reuther’s elegant juxtapositions of forms and approaches recalls masters of abstract sculpture and painting like Louise Nevelson, Cy Twombly, Alberto Giacometti, and Constantin Brancusi. Reuther, a graduate of the O’More School of Design, in Nashville, is a born and bred Nashville artist. She exhibits frequently across the United States, including San Francisco, Santa Fe, Charlotte, Atlanta, Nashville and Memphis.
Vadis Turner
Gallatin, TN
Vadis Turner’s first solo museum presentation was at the Frist Art Museum in 2017 followed by the Huntsville Museum of Art in 2022. Her current exhibition is on view at the Abroms-Engel Institute for Visual Arts at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. She was awarded the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant in 2016. Turner’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, 21C Museum, Kentucky Museum of Arts and Crafts, Tennessee State Museum, Huntsville Museum of Art and the Hunter Museum of American Art. She teaches at Vanderbilt University and is represented by Geary in Millerton, NY.
Herb Williams
Nashville, TN
Herb Williams was born in Montgomery, AL, and received a BFA in sculpture from Birmingham-Southern College. He moved to Nashville, TN, where he has lived and created art since 1998. Williams received The Joan Mitchell Foundation Museum Purchase Grant in 2005, the Next Star Artist Award in 2008, and was sponsored by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2011. He received his first public art commission in 2017 to create “Skylake” for the Smith Springs Community Center, and has just been awarded another public art commission to create six larger-than-life sculptures for the International Concourse at the Atlanta Airport.
Lindsy Davis
Nashville, TN
Lindsy Davis was born and raised in northern New Jersey. She spent time in South Africa studying paper-making and printmaking at the University of Johannesburg, Artist Proof Studio, and Phumani Paper. She relocated to Nashville Tennessee to build and run a small nonprofit papermill. Lindsy is featured in the permanent collection of Soho House and Four Seasons Hotel, plus private collections throughout the country, Europe, Canada, and South Africa. Recently, Lindsy has shown at the Mint Museum in North Carolina, Ice Cream Social and Buster Levi Gallery in New York, Zeitgeist Gallery, the Parthenon Museum, and Elephant Gallery in Tennessee. Lindsy is represented in Tennessee by The Red Arrow Gallery.
Alex Lockwood
Nashville, TN
Alex Lockwood is a sculptor and the owner/director of Elephant Gallery in Nashville, TN. He works with repurposed materials, primarily plastics, in very large numbers. Since moving to Nashville in 2011 his work has been featured in solo shows at Zeitgeist Gallery, Belmont University, Lipscomb University, Vol State, OzArts and David Lusk Gallery Nashville and Memphis. Alex founded Elephant Gallery in 2017 to curate ambitious and off-beat shows of early and mid-career local and regional artists.
Beth Reitmeyer
Bowling Green, KY
Beth Reitmeyer is a visual artist who likes to make people happy with her colorful installations. Her work investigates landscapes and the joy of unexpected yet beautiful spaces and places that are discovered as one explores the land and structures within it: clouds, rivers, caves, geodes, stars. Comprised of rich, luscious, inviting materials, such as fabric, glitter, and twinkle lights, these inviting environments allow viewers to explore and get to know one another in a deeper, more profound way, providing space for renewal and perseverance. Reitmeyer teaches with Western Kentucky University, Cheekwood Estates and Gardens, Briarwood Elementary and Cumberland Trace Elementary. She is a member of COOP Gallery in Nashville and serving as its President.
Camilla Spadafino
Nashville, TN
Camilla Spadafino boldly explores color and pattern, capturing the essence of pop culture while engaging viewers. Her extensive body of work includes commercial and fine art, including her playful paint-by-number kits, inspired by Andy Warhol's famous quote, "Art is what you can get away with." Her seamless blending of mediums invites us into a world where art, culture, and imagination converge. Through vibrant compositions, she sparks dialogue, encourages participation, and reimagines artistic expression's boundaries. With bold colors, intricate patterns, and a playful nod to popular culture, Camilla invites viewers to celebrate the fusion of art and life.
Yanira Vissepo
Nashville, TN
Yanira Vissepo is from Santurce, Puerto Rico, and moved to Tennessee at the age of 11. Her work merges her cultural upbringing with her life as a visual artist in Tennessee. Vissepo has shown locally at Lipscomb University, ZieherSmith, 21c Museum and Hotel, Elephant Gallery, Open Gallery, and has had solo shows at The Electric Shed, Fort Houston and Coop Gallery. In 2019 she studied traditional woodblock printmaking at The International School of Mokuhanga, Japan. Vissepo has taught at the Frist Museum and the Nashville Public Library.
GROW LOVE was our first ever public art installation hosted at the American Artisan Festival in Centennial park back in 2017. Created by FOREST ALCHEMY. artists Tracy Ginsberg and Theodore Lillie use an interdisciplinary approach that combines installation, sculpture, video, photography, painting, drawing, sound and performance and immerses viewers in transformational art in nature. The artists created a large scale white labyrinth in the shape of a magnolia flower, which is native to Centennial Park. Thousands of people walked through it during the festival weekend meditatively, leaving behind written messages of hope.
GROW LOVE has always been an inspiration for us fueling the dream and possibility of Artville - an event that provides opportunities for other artists to create public art for our community. Years later, the event will now be hosted in Wedgewood Houston Chestnut Hill with over 20 different installations and murals. We want to honor the legacy of GROW LOVE as our muse and our inspiration and thank FOREST ALCHEMY for their vision.