Bluff Estate Art

Magnolia Bluff · 849 Bluff Drive, Knoxville

Main Entry

Lynne Taetzsch Performance Acrylic on canvas48 × 48 in

Lynne Taetzsch

Performance

Medium
Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions
48 × 48 in
Framed
In a thick black moulding
Year
Room
Main Entry

Taetzsch paints standing at the easel with music on, answering whatever is already on the canvas. Layers accumulate over days without quite covering what came before, which is why the white here reads as depth rather than as blank ground.

About the artist

American

Moved from oil to acrylic in the early 1980s because acrylic dries at the speed she works. She paints standing at an easel with music playing, responding to whatever is in front of her, and returns over many days so that layers accumulate without erasing what is underneath — which is where the sense of intense energy in the finished canvases comes from. TOSCA named her New York State artist of the year in 2011. She has painted full time in her Ithaca studio since 2000.

Marc Tickle Laura Slumped and fused glass11 × 15 in

Marc Tickle

Laura

Medium
Slumped and fused glass, reverse-painted in mica, with front-surface mirrors
Dimensions
11 × 15 in
Year
Room
Main Entry

The only thing in the house you are meant to pick up. Tickle builds kaleidoscopes with a duality to them — an object that reads as sculpture from across a room and opens into a second, three-dimensional image the moment you put your eye to it. The gold here is mica, ground into paint by the artist and painted onto the back of the glass, so the light has to pass through the image twice to reach you.

Shown in a case here for want of a photograph in situ. The maker's own image is a studio shot.

About the artist

English, working in Asheville, North Carolina

Founded On Reflection Kaleidoscopes in England in 1992 and moved to the United States in 2000. He makes his own paint from mica powders and reverse-paints it onto clear glass, then slumps and fuses the glass over clay moulds he throws and fires himself, and lamp-works the rest in the Italian manner. The scopes are built around front-surface mirrors so the image has no ghosting — sculpture on the outside, a three-dimensional illusion within. An exhibiting member of Piedmont Craftsmen since 2014, and much awarded for the complexity of his images.

Galleria Hallway

Joe Parrott Kendrick Place Oil on canvas24 × 30 in

Joe Parrott

Kendrick Place

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
24 × 30 in
Year
Room
Galleria Hallway

Kendrick Place is a short street in Knoxville, where Parrott has lived his whole life. He paints it the way he paints everything — for the light. “For me, it’s all about the light and shadows.”

About the artist

American, born 1944

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and still there. He took a business degree at the University of Tennessee in 1967 and spent forty-three years in the graphic arts trade, painting alongside it, before taking it up full time. Self-taught, and open about his debts — Hopper, Van Gogh, and the printmaker Martin Lewis. He paints sunlight on brick and the deep shadow beside it.

Josine Vignon Alpine Pass Oil on canvas26 × 41 in · 1960s

Josine Vignon

Alpine Pass

Medium
Oil on canvas, very thick impasto
Dimensions
26 × 41 in
Framed
≈ 36 × 50 in, in a carved wood frame with a cream liner
Year
1960s
Signed
Lower right, J. Vignon
Room
Galleria Hallway

Painted from a vantage that must have meant a long climb. The paint stands off the canvas far enough to throw its own shadow — the rock face is built rather than described.

About the artist

French, 1922–2022

Lived and worked on the rue Beautreillis, in the Marais in Paris, for most of a century-long life. Her painting descends from the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists but is entirely her own in handling: very thick impasto, a high and joyful palette, and enormous energy. She painted Paris, Provence, and the country in between, and remains largely undiscovered.

Anette Holmberg New Year Acrylic on masonite70⅛ × 47¼ in

Anette Holmberg

New Year (Nytår)

Medium
Acrylic on masonite, in a solid iron frame
Dimensions
70⅛ × 47¼ in (178 × 120 cm)
Framed
75.6 × 52.8 in (192 × 134 cm), in its solid iron frame
Year
1997–98
Signed
Monogram AH lower right; signed in full on the reverse
Room
Galleria Hallway

The largest thing in the house, and the only one that arrived with its own iron frame. Holmberg’s subject is usually the tactile difference between materials; here the paint is worked to feel like weather coming in off the Sound.

About the artist

Danish, born 1969

Holds a master’s in art education with an emphasis on art and aesthetic theory. She works in textured acrylic and in collages of metal, and describes her subject as the way different materials feel against one another. The paintings are usually read through Nordic light — spare, cool, and more concerned with surface than with image. She lives and works in Denmark.

Knoxville, and one night in Chicago Four photographs 19 × 25 in frames

The photograph wall

25 June 2014

Taken
25 June 2014, 8.43 pm
Where
35.9621° N, 83.9161° W
Frame
19 × 25 in frame, matted to 13 × 19
Room
Galleria Hallway

The photograph wall

30 June 2022

Taken
30 June 2022, 8.07 pm
Where
35.9701° N, 83.9188° W
Frame
19 × 25 in frame, matted to 13 × 19
Room
Galleria Hallway

The photograph wall

10 October 2023

Taken
10 October 2023, 7.35 pm
Where
39.7381° N, 104.9901° W
Frame
19 × 25 in frame, matted to 13 × 19
Room
Galleria Hallway

The photograph wall

10 December 2021

Taken
10 December 2021, 12.56 pm
Where
35.5406° N, 82.5529° W
Frame
19 × 25 in frame, matted to 13 × 19
Room
Galleria Hallway
Giacomo de Pass Untitled Oil on canvas40 × 30 in · 1971

Giacomo de Pass

Untitled

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
40 × 30 in
Framed
≈ 43 × 33 in, in a gilt frame
Year
1971
Signed
Lower right
Room
Galleria Hallway

1971 is the year de Pass’s figures begin to come apart into light. Five of them here, or four and an afterimage — the painting refuses to settle on a number.

About the artist

French, of Venetian descent, born Morocco 1938

Entered the Fine-Arts Academy of Casablanca in 1954 and was advised by his own master to leave it: “Flee this academic environment, avoid the workshops, preserve your nature and your personality.” He did, and showed for the first time at the Casablanca Independents Salon in 1956, aged seventeen. He has been impossible to place ever since — impressionist, expressionist, fauve, symbolist, fantastic surrealist, and at times very nearly abstract. Since 1978 he has worked at the Moulin de Peymeinade in the south of France.

Knoxville, and one night in Chicago Four photographs 19 × 25 in frames

The photograph wall

26 May 2010

Taken
26 May 2010, 8.57 pm
Where
Frame
19 × 25 in frame, matted to 13 × 19
Room
Galleria Hallway

The photograph wall

28 June 2013

Taken
28 June 2013, 11.47 am
Where
32.0786° N, 81.0947° W
Frame
19 × 25 in frame, matted to 13 × 19
Room
Galleria Hallway

The photograph wall

29 April 2013

Taken
29 April 2013, 2.29 pm
Where
29.7331° N, 95.4347° W
Frame
19 × 25 in frame, matted to 13 × 19
Room
Galleria Hallway

The photograph wall

Date unrecorded

Taken
Where
Frame
19 × 25 in frame, matted to 13 × 19
Room
Galleria Hallway
Lynne Taetzsch Exploring Joy Acrylic on canvas48 × 48 in

Lynne Taetzsch

Exploring Joy

Medium
Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions
48 × 48 × 1½ in
Year
Room
Galleria Hallway

The odd one of the three: where the others are all gesture, this is cut into flat, deliberate shapes that lock together like a pavement. The same palette, held still.

About the artist

American

Moved from oil to acrylic in the early 1980s because acrylic dries at the speed she works. She paints standing at an easel with music playing, responding to whatever is in front of her, and returns over many days so that layers accumulate without erasing what is underneath — which is where the sense of intense energy in the finished canvases comes from. TOSCA named her New York State artist of the year in 2011. She has painted full time in her Ithaca studio since 2000.

Living Room

Amos Oaks & Brian Scott-Pittman Like Spirits Entertaining Me Mixed media on wood48 × 28 × 2½ in

Amos Oaks & Brian Scott-Pittman

Like Spirits Entertaining Me

Medium
Mixed media on wood
Dimensions
48 × 28 × 2½ in
Year
Room
Main level

Enoch 13:14, where Enoch returns to the watchers and reads them their judgement. A city burns out of the light at the left and a single tower keeps its distance at the right, the two of them held apart by arcs of gold that ring outward across the whole panel.

About the artists

American, working in Knoxville

Amos Oaks and Brian Scott-Pittman make these together, and the Enoch pieces are signed by both. The ground is wood rather than canvas, worked with mixed media until it holds light the way a scraped and revarnished surface does — cities half-dissolved in it, spires and grids surfacing out of gold and smoke. Oaks has shown at Striped Light in Knoxville; the series is posted from Scott-Pittman's studio.

Mary Anne Reilly Dumbarton Gardens with Sculpture Oil on canvas65 × 54 in

Mary Anne Reilly

Dumbarton Gardens with Sculpture

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
65 × 54 in
Framed
≈ 71 × 59 in, in a carved gilt frame
Year
Room
Living Room

Reilly has painted the gardens at Dumbarton Oaks for years, and describes them as somewhere to disappear to — “the sense of asylum and quiet adventure that I discovered there.” The whole surface is built from separate touches of colour, so the light through the trees is mixed in the eye rather than on the palette.

About the artist

American

Studied printmaking and painting at the Corcoran School of Art, took a BFA at the University of Dayton, and continued at the Louvre and Schiller College in Paris, where she received the René Cassin Award. She is known internationally for pointillist paintings of the gardens at Dumbarton Oaks, and has shown in some 25 solo and 120 group exhibitions from Washington and New York to Paris, Tokyo and Kyiv.

Upstairs Bedroom

E. E. H——— Chadds Ford Oil on canvas60 × 41 in · Dec 1969

E. E. H———

Chadds Ford

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
60 × 41 in
Framed
≈ 67 × 47 in, in a white and black frame
Year
December 1969
Signed
Lower left, indistinctly; dated 12.69 beneath
Room
Upstairs Bedroom

Chadds Ford sits on the Brandywine in Pennsylvania — Wyeth country, and a landscape painted more or less continuously for a century. This one is handled fast and wet, the winter trees scratched back into the sky.

The signature reads as E. E. H followed by a run of connected strokes. Not yet resolved into a name.

Jim Twerell Empire Oil on canvas36 × 48 in2018

Jim Twerell

Empire

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
36 × 48 in
Framed
≈ 46 × 55 in, in an ornate gilt frame
Year
2018
Room
Upstairs Bedroom

Twerell paints New York from the one angle a resident actually gets: head tilted back on the pavement, the building foreshortened into something closer to a poster than a portrait.

About the artist

American

Born and raised in New York City and a graduate of the School of Visual Arts. He studied at the New York Film School and worked in independent film production before committing to oil paint. His canvases sit between pop art and expressionism, and return again and again to New York architecture — the Brooklyn Bridge, the Flatiron, water towers, and the towers of midtown seen from below.

Upstairs Room

Jeff Christ Talquin Mixed media37 × 47 in1982

Jeff Christ

Talquin

Medium
Mixed media on paper
Dimensions
37 × 47 in (as catalogued; framed)
Year
1982
Room
Upstairs Room

Lake Talquin sits west of Tallahassee, a drowned river valley full of standing cypress. The painting keeps the water’s two registers — the bright surface and the tea-coloured bottom — and lets the drawn marks stand in for the trees.

Basement

Jack Simonetta Heat of Midday Oil on canvas36 × 72 in

Jack Simonetta

Heat of Midday

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
36 × 72 in (3 × 6 ft)
Year
Provenance
pb&j Gallery, 35 Howard Street SE, Atlanta; acquired 13 July 2024
Room
Basement

Six feet of rooftop Manhattan at the hour when the brick starts giving its heat back. The blocks are stacked flat, one on the next, so the picture climbs rather than recedes — coral and hot pink at the bottom, a cool blue skyline at the top, and the whole thing reading as temperature before it reads as architecture.

Time-lapse of the painting being made, from a bare canvas through fourteen stages to the finished cityscape.
Simonetta recorded the painting from the bare canvas up — fourteen stages, the last of them what hangs in the sunroom.

About the artist

American

A painter working in Atlanta in oil, mixed media and sculpture. He shows at pb&j Gallery on Howard Street in Kirkwood, a small contemporary space he keeps with the photographer Bob Burkhardt and the printmaker Susan Provost-Dubois — open Saturdays, eleven to four, and otherwise by appointment. He photographs his canvases as they are built, so a Simonetta painting arrives with a record of its own making.

Training, exhibition history and dates still to be traced.

Richard Pryke The Lonely Drinker Oil on canvas29⅝ × 29⅝ in1999

Richard Pryke

The Lonely Drinker

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
29⅝ × 29⅝ in (75.2 × 75.2 cm)
Framed
≈ 36 × 36 in, in a wood frame with a white liner
Year
1999
Signed
Lower right
Room
Basement

Almost half the picture is empty carpet. The title tells you where to look, and the composition makes you cross the room to get there.

About the artist

British, born 1933

A British painter of interiors and figures, working in oil. His restaurant and bar scenes use a great deal of empty floor and a single occupied point, so that the architecture does the emotional work. The Lonely Drinker dates from 1999.

Training, exhibitions and representation still to be traced.

The photograph wall

5 August 2014

Taken
5 August 2014, 7.38 pm
Where
35.9652° N, 83.9264° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

5 July 2008

Taken
5 July 2008, 4.46 am
Where
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

4 July 2014

Taken
4 July 2014, 4.25 pm
Where
35.7869° N, 84.2949° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

9 May 2014

Taken
9 May 2014, 12.25 pm
Where
35.9576° N, 83.9261° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

6 April 2013

Taken
6 April 2013, 11.48 am
Where
35.9660° N, 83.9105° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

10 July 2004

Taken
10 July 2004, 5.02 pm
Where
35.9386° N, 84.0884° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

21 July 2004

Taken
21 July 2004, 7.23 pm
Where
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

29 June 2008

Taken
29 June 2008, 3.24 pm
Where
31.9699° N, 35.8714° E
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

16 September 2015

Taken
16 September 2015, 5.56 pm
Where
31.9697° N, 35.8719° E
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

3 November 2008

Taken
3 November 2008, 5.02 pm
Where
35.9502° N, 83.8683° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

1 June 2021

Taken
1 June 2021, 4.46 pm
Where
35.9402° N, 83.9589° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

9 June 2006

Taken
9 June 2006, 9.04 am
Where
32.0186° N, 35.8074° E
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

Date unrecorded

Taken
Where
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

14 August 2012

Taken
14 August 2012, 7.51 pm
Where
35.9612° N, 83.9223° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

1 December 2013

Taken
1 December 2013, 4.33 pm
Where
35.9612° N, 83.9223° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

Date unrecorded

Taken
Where
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

26 March 2013

Taken
26 March 2013, 8.32 pm
Where
35.9559° N, 83.9382° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

23 June 2005

Taken
23 June 2005, 9.35 am
Where
35.4417° N, 84.6389° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

30 December 2018

Taken
30 December 2018, 2.31 pm
Where
35.4587° N, 84.6396° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

2 July 2008

Taken
2 July 2008, 6.24 pm
Where
31.6804° N, 35.7329° E
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

Date unrecorded

Taken
Where
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

6 April 2013

Taken
6 April 2013, 10.17 am
Where
35.9660° N, 83.9105° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

15 June 2022

Taken
15 June 2022, 4.41 pm
Where
35.9553° N, 83.9382° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

Date unrecorded

Taken
Where
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

Date unrecorded

Taken
Where
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

1 December 2013

Taken
1 December 2013, 1.07 pm
Where
35.9612° N, 83.9223° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

1 June 2009

Taken
1 June 2009, 10.41 pm
Where
35.9586° N, 83.9333° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

18 May 2000

Taken
18 May 2000, 11.38 am
Where
35.4408° N, 84.6339° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

Date unrecorded

Taken
Where
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

30 April 2021

Taken
30 April 2021, 5.40 pm
Where
35.9559° N, 83.9382° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

Date unrecorded

Taken
Where
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

24 October 2004

Taken
24 October 2004, 7.11 pm
Where
35.9560° N, 83.9263° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

Date unrecorded

Taken
Where
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

5 July 2008

Taken
5 July 2008, 3.59 pm
Where
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

30 July 2004

Taken
30 July 2004, 6.12 pm
Where
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

30 June 2014

Taken
30 June 2014, 8.39 pm
Where
35.9570° N, 83.9207° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

14 August 2019

Taken
14 August 2019, 5.41 pm
Where
35.9561° N, 83.9380° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

17 July 2019

Taken
17 July 2019, 4.36 pm
Where
35.9559° N, 83.9391° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

24 April 2016

Taken
24 April 2016, 7.53 pm
Where
35.9573° N, 83.9259° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

9 March 2022

Taken
9 March 2022, 10.32 pm
Where
35.9701° N, 83.9188° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

1 November 2012

Taken
1 November 2012, 12.25 pm
Where
36.2121° N, 86.6945° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

26 November 2013

Taken
26 November 2013, 6.09 pm
Where
35.9592° N, 83.9331° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

26 January 2021

Taken
26 January 2021, 5.13 pm
Where
35.9324° N, 83.9667° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

4 September 2004

Taken
4 September 2004, 9.46 pm
Where
35.9598° N, 83.9251° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

12 September 2010

Taken
12 September 2010, 3.14 pm
Where
35.9205° N, 83.9895° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

20 June 2020

Taken
20 June 2020, 6.28 pm
Where
35.9292° N, 83.9744° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

10 September 2015

Taken
10 September 2015, 1.37 pm
Where
32.0025° N, 35.7986° E
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

5 October 2015

Taken
5 October 2015, 5.42 pm
Where
31.7192° N, 35.5831° E
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

17 July 2009

Taken
17 July 2009, 2.24 pm
Where
29.7331° N, 95.4347° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

6 September 2014

Taken
6 September 2014, 7.10 pm
Where
34.6821° N, 82.8374° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

12 June 2019

Taken
12 June 2019, 11.59 am
Where
32.0028° N, 35.7886° E
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

23 October 2015

Taken
23 October 2015, 8.06 pm
Where
35.9522° N, 83.9506° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

28 September 2013

Taken
28 September 2013, 11.15 am
Where
35.9536° N, 83.9285° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

2 July 2008

Taken
2 July 2008, 6.02 pm
Where
31.6804° N, 35.7329° E
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

17 July 2015

Taken
17 July 2015, 10.29 am
Where
36.0091° N, 83.8904° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

9 September 2004

Taken
9 September 2004, 12.41 pm
Where
35.9542° N, 83.9292° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

15 October 2015

Taken
15 October 2015, 2.46 pm
Where
35.9559° N, 83.9382° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

2 August 2011

Taken
2 August 2011, 7.18 pm
Where
35.9612° N, 83.9223° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

3 August 2000

Taken
3 August 2000, 9.42 am
Where
30.3252° N, 35.4426° E
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

6 August 2015

Taken
6 August 2015, 2.17 pm
Where
35.9818° N, 83.9042° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

15 April 2021

Taken
15 April 2021, 1.39 pm
Where
35.9400° N, 83.9584° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

16 July 2015

Taken
16 July 2015, 1.35 pm
Where
35.9561° N, 83.9378° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

30 March 2019

Taken
30 March 2019, 6.53 pm
Where
35.8397° N, 84.2667° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

10 May 2013

Taken
10 May 2013, 11.37 am
Where
35.9512° N, 83.9250° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

30 April 2022

Taken
30 April 2022, 11.48 am
Where
35.9652° N, 83.9265° W
Frame
8 × 10 in frame, matted to 5 × 7
Room
Basement

The photograph wall

30 May 2014

Taken
30 May 2014, 3.23 pm
Where
35.9612° N, 83.9223° W
Frame
11 × 14 in frame, matted to 8 × 10
Room
Basement
The photograph wall Family, in two courses 11 × 14 and 8 × 10 frames 403 in end to end
The basement wall: two long courses of black-framed, white-matted photographs running the length of the room above a pair of armchairs.

The photograph wall

Family, in two courses

Frames
11 × 14 matted to 8 × 10, and 8 × 10 matted to 5 × 7
Length
403 in, in two courses two inches apart
Room
Basement

Thirty-odd feet of black frames in two long courses. The lower course is set three inches along from the upper one, which is the whole trick of it — line the two rows up exactly and the gaps between frames stack into crosses that the eye follows instead of the photographs.

It was laid out before it was hung, frame by frame, to a total width and a running cost.

Plan a wall of your own — set a length, drag the frames into an order you like, and it repeats the pattern to fit and totals up what the frames and prints will cost.

Amos Oaks & Brian Scott-Pittman Mercy, Like Dew Upon the Earth Mixed media on wood48 × 48 × 2½ in

Amos Oaks & Brian Scott-Pittman

Mercy, Like Dew Upon the Earth

Medium
Mixed media on wood
Dimensions
48 × 48 × 2½ in
Year
Room
Basement

Enoch 39:4 — the dwelling places of the righteous, and mercy falling as dew. A cathedral is set down twice on the one panel: its spires in elevation at the upper left, its plan and rose window laid out below, both drawn in a gold line so fine it reads as engraving over the scumbled ground.

About the artists

American, working in Knoxville

Amos Oaks and Brian Scott-Pittman make these together, and the Enoch pieces are signed by both. The ground is wood rather than canvas, worked with mixed media until it holds light the way a scraped and revarnished surface does — cities half-dissolved in it, spires and grids surfacing out of gold and smoke. Oaks has shown at Striped Light in Knoxville; the series is posted from Scott-Pittman's studio.

Yet to be placed

Lynne Taetzsch The Knife Cuts, The Petal Falls Acrylic on canvas48 × 48 in2009

Lynne Taetzsch

The Knife Cuts, The Petal Falls

Medium
Acrylic on canvas, painted edges, unframed
Dimensions
48 × 48 × 1½ in
Year
2009
Signed
Lower left, front
Room
Yet to be placed

The artist on the title: “Delicate are the petals in a flower, but not this flower. These petals have fought their way to be here. They are solid and impenetrable. Until the knife cuts, and the petal falls.”

About the artist

American

Moved from oil to acrylic in the early 1980s because acrylic dries at the speed she works. She paints standing at an easel with music playing, responding to whatever is in front of her, and returns over many days so that layers accumulate without erasing what is underneath — which is where the sense of intense energy in the finished canvases comes from. TOSCA named her New York State artist of the year in 2011. She has painted full time in her Ithaca studio since 2000.

Novi Lim Cestrum Nocturnum Acrylic on canvas60 × 31 in

Novi Lim

Cestrum Nocturnum

Medium
Acrylic and metallic pigment on canvas
Dimensions
60 × 31 in
Year
Room
Yet to be placed

Cestrum nocturnum is night-blooming jasmine — a plant that gives nothing away in daylight and floods a whole garden after dark. The painting keeps that bargain: greys and whites that read as almost nothing until the gold catches.

About the artist

Indonesian-American

Born in Indonesia, trained in visual communication design at Pelita Harapan University, and now based in North Carolina. She works in acrylic and oil with fine metallic detail, building compositions whose forms suggest wings, petals and moving water. The first movement goes down instinctively; everything after it is slow layering for depth and contrast. She is represented by galleries across North America.

Areti Ampi I find the light in the gray days Acrylic on canvas55 × 28 in

Areti Ampi

I find the light in the gray days

Medium
Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions
55 × 28 in
Year
Room
Yet to be placed

The title does the work of an instruction. Almost the whole canvas is weather — pewter, slate, a white that has gone over to grey — and the gold is rationed to the seams, so you have to look for it exactly as long as the sentence says you should.

About the artist

Greek

A contemporary abstract painter working in Greece, in acrylic on canvas. She builds paintings out of layered texture and open, expressive brushwork, letting a composition find its own balance rather than imposing one, and takes her subject to be movement and feeling rather than anything in particular. Her work is collected internationally; each canvas is signed and issued with a certificate of authenticity.

Catherine Picard-Gibbs City of Light Oil on canvas48 × 30 in

Catherine Picard-Gibbs

City of Light

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
48 × 30 in
Year
Room
Yet to be placed

The light source is inside the town rather than in the sky, which is what makes it read as a vision instead of a sunset. Picard-Gibbs calls her way of working textural expressionism; the paint here is pushed around with everything but a brush.

About the artist

American, born 1959

Painter, curator, art educator and graphic designer, working from a former factory building in Easthampton, Massachusetts. She calls her method textural expressionism: bold strokes and saturated colour, the surface built up and scratched back with whatever tool suits. Recent work has moved onto copper, a Renaissance support she has taken up for its light. She shows throughout Massachusetts, in New York and in the Midwest.

Bill Tavis Mandelmap Offset lithograph36 × 24 in · 2016

Bill Tavis

Mandelmap

Medium
Offset lithograph, open edition
Dimensions
36 × 24 in
Year
2016
Room
Yet to be placed

The Mandelbrot set drawn as a seventeenth-century sea chart: compass rose, cartouche, named bays you can actually sail to. Every view on it was rendered with software Tavis wrote himself, and the ornament is built from shapes lifted out of the set.

The only printed work in the house — an open edition, not an original. Worth saying plainly on the label.

About the artist

American

A full-time artist in Austin, Texas, who has been making art on computers for well over a decade and has been taken with fractals since childhood. The Mandelmap took him more than a year, on the condition that it be both mathematically exact and genuinely beautiful. Since 2016 it has gone to fractal enthusiasts in at least fifty-five countries.

Fiona, Fritz & company Untitled (three impressions) Pigment on canvas26 × 15 in

Fiona, Fritz & company

Untitled (three impressions)

Medium
Non-toxic pigment on canvas, applied directly
Dimensions
26 × 15 in
Year
Provenance
Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, animal art auction; with certificates of authenticity
Room
Yet to be placed

Three hippopotamuses pressed their snouts to this canvas, one after another, and the pigment recorded every whisker and pore. The prints are bilaterally symmetrical because the animals are — you are looking at a contact print of three faces.

A hippopotamus at the barrier, snout still wet with magenta and orange pigment.
Magenta, immediately after.
A younger hippopotamus with its mouth open, upper snout coated in gold pigment.
Gold, unrepentant.
Contact sheet: the finished canvas above, the three painted hippopotamus snouts below.
The canvas and all three artists.

Which hippo made which impression is recorded on the certificates — to be transcribed here.

Magnolia Bluff

849 Bluff Drive, Knoxville, Tennessee

A Tudor Revival house above the river, with a long galleria hallway running through the middle of it. The hallway is the reason the collection looks the way it does: it wants pictures at intervals, and it has been filling up ever since.

Nothing here was assembled to a theme. There is a Knoxville street corner by a self-taught painter who spent forty-three years in the graphic arts trade before going full time, and a Danish abstract on masonite that arrived in its own iron frame. A gorge in the French Alps laid on so thickly the rock throws its own shadow, painted by a woman who lived on the same street in the Marais for most of a hundred years. Three canvases out of one studio in Ithaca. A gilded pointillist garden at Dumbarton Oaks. Six feet of Manhattan rooftops in the heat, bought off a wall in Atlanta from the painter who runs the gallery. A kaleidoscope from Asheville, reverse-painted in mica the maker grinds himself.

And three hippopotamuses at the Cincinnati Zoo, who pressed their snouts to a canvas one after another and signed it in pigment and whisker prints.

Most of these artists are alive and still working. Where the collection does not yet know something — a signature it cannot read, a canvas it has not measured — it says so.