Right now, I have work on display through the end of July at Lowe Mill Arts & Entertainment in Huntsville, AL. This marks my first solo show outside of Knoxville, so if you're in the area, I hope you'll take some time to go see it.

You can find my Artist Statement below if you'd like to learn more about my thoughts behind this series. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

The Good Packaging Series first began in 2015, inspired by two unrelated things: a growing fascination with the fashion industry and my dislike for grocery shopping. To shift my perspective, I turned the grocery into an art store, buying alluring food package designs to use as materials, allowing colors and fonts to entice me for the first time, something I was taught at a young age not to do. It wasn’t quite like buying Gucci, but it sure felt indulgent, and I liked it.

This series of supermodels adorned in collaged packaging has evolved into works made using recycled textiles and materials with bold colors and patterns.

Pashmina 3x2' mixed media

I have always been inclined to recycle materials. As an artist, I’m overwhelmed by the message to mass produce work, as I see many artists and creatives doing on social media. I’ve also learned, through a podcast I listen to called Pop Fashion, how much of the world’s clothing ends up in landfills and how much of it doesn't break down easily due to synthetic fibers. I'm motivated to recycle what I can, finding beauty in discarded things. I acquire materials from unconventional places: parties, restaurants, thrift stores, trash cans, office supply stores, and more.

This series has several themes:

• Mixing accessible, inexpensive or free materials to reference high design, inaccessible fashion and unattainable goals
• Supermodels/ fashion design as symbols for unattainable, idealistic or unrealistic goals
• The layering of materials as a symbol for how people package themselves, physically and emotionally, making themselves more acceptable or pleasing to others, yet hiding aspects of themselves
• The delicate nature of materials. While a person may be able to create an acceptable external persona, the internal still exists and will surface. The exterior is a delicate and unreliable facade.
• My personal struggle with "packaging" myself physically- how it feels like clothing was not designed with my body shape in mind, how it can actually be really painful. As an act of rebellion, I buy beautiful clothing from thrift stores that I can’t wear and create something beautiful with it anyway.
• My personal struggle with "packaging" myself emotionally
• How internal beauty shows itself externally, in surprising and unconventional ways 

Reclined mixed media 11x14" 

Please stop in Good Golly Tamale in the Old City (Knoxville) during the month of July to see some recent folk style paintings. The show lasts all month, and I'll be there during First Friday to answer any questions and sell work.

During the month, work is for sale and can be purchased at the counter. Hope you can pop in for a tamale soon!

It's with a little sadness that I announce I'll be discontinuing the sale of certain fine art prints that I've made available for the past several years. I have a stock of these prints that I'll be selling at art openings and events until they're gone, so I hope you'll come out and claim the ones you want. Some examples are in this blog post, but there are many more that I'd love for you to come look through. 

THE NEXT CHANCE TO PURCHASE THESE PRINTS WILL BE

TOMORROW, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1

5-8pm at White Oak Gallery in Magpies Cakes- 846 N Central St, Knoxville, TN 37197

I've made this decision in order to find some much needed focus, to create some newer original works and to pursue some goals that have been on the backburner for a few years now. 

I will still be offering fashion-themed prints which you can find on my Etsy shop, but this means that all other themed prints will be discontinued, such as pools, narratives, animals, and the Dusk Love series. (Disclaimer- there may be a time in the future I roll these out again, but at the moment, there are no plans for that.)

I'm not exuberantly discontinuing these prints. It was a hard decision BUT (BIG BUT)  I am really excited about freeing up some mental space to devote more time and energy to new ideas and projects. That was enough to help me let go of this and some other things. 

So please let me know if there are any questions you have or a print you'd like. I'm happy to help get it in your sweet hands!

Good Packaging is the second iteration of the food packaging series, the first influenced by a desire to improve one of my least favorite tasks: grocery shopping. 

When it comes to going to the grocery store, I lack the knack for doing it efficiently. All of the brands and differing price points overwhelm me, so I spend far more time wandering the aisles than I'd like to. 

I also learned at a young age not to be swayed by fancy packaging, which for a visual person, really takes the joy out of looking at all those labels. 

To improve this task that I will spend the rest of my life doing, I decided to turn the grocery store into an art store, allowing myself to buy alluring items that I could use to make art. This shift has made a world of difference, and in my hunting, I do that thing I aspire to do as often as possible in my life: Lose track of time.

I'm also deeply fascinated by the fashion industry and like mixing images I find in magazines and on social media with my life in East Tennessee. 

In Good Packaging I explore:

• themes of craftsmanship in the greater design world and also in folk art found in the mountainous region where I live. 
• the inaccessibility of high fashion and the accessible materials I've chosen to work with.
• the fashion world, a field and craft I greatly admire.
• the positive and negative effects of food and fashion

Special thanks to Dennis Perkins who did a write up about my artwork now on display at The Tomato Head. I'll write some more about the series myself, but in the meantime, click the button below to read the interview:

View fullsize

This Friday is the opening of Self-Rising, an exhibition of paintings by Sarah McFalls inspired by vintage flour sacks, originally created for The International Biscuit Festival (IBF). The opening will be from 5-7pm at the With Bear Hands Gallery located at Magpies, 846 N Central St in Knoxville. The show will last through the end of April.

I've known Sarah for several years now and have admired her work even longer. She typically makes more conceptual work, but she humored the IBF Art Committee, which I serve on, when we asked her to create paintings with a biscuit theme for the festival.

Sarah is the Collections Manager at the University of Tennessee's Ewing Gallery, which also means she does a great deal to put on the shows at UT's Downtown Gallery on Gay Street. And when I say a "great deal," that's an understatement. That crew works like crazy to put those exhibitions on, mentally and physically. Please shake their hands and thank them frequently.

Sarah and I have been studiomates at 17th Street Studios as well as the Salvage Shop. We both share a deep affinity for cats. Most importantly, we are both from Memphis, which means she probably knows me better than most people in Knoxville by default, considering I've been displaced from there for so long. I do love Knoxville (I willingly chose to reside here after all), but Memphis is forever my home. It's got a soul and grit like no other city in Tennessee, and I miss it a lot if I think too much about it, which I try not to. I'm thankful to know that Sarah knows how I feel about this without having to explain it.

Just so you know, the With Bear Hands Gallery is a space that Peg, the owner of Magpies has generously given to me as a token of her support. I'm beginning to feature some of my favorite artists there every three months. My hope is to have one First Friday opening there with each artist and to eventually showcase multiple artists at a time. It would be a tiny step toward having a space dedicated to some artists that don't really have a gallery setting at the moment in Knoxville that fits them too well, myself included.

I always have artwork there, as well as a vast array of fine art prints of my work. Right now, I have the Cats and Tennessee Wooden Cut Outs and the Dusk Love screenprint series featured there. I am also using the space to showcase a lot of older work, to help clear out my studio in what I have been calling the WBH Studio Purge. 

I hope you'll come out this First Friday for free cupcakes, to meet Sarah and me, to buy some work OR you can visit the Gallery anytime Magpies is open. Their hours are:

Sunday    Closed
Monday    10AM–4PM
Tuesday    10AM–5:30PM

Wednesday    10AM–5:30PM
Thursday    10AM–5:30PM
Friday    10AM–5:30PM
Saturday    10AM–4PM

All artwork may be purchased at the Magpies sales counter and on First Friday, you can find me or the featured artist if you need assistance.

Please let me know if you ever have any questions about the work there. You can contact me through this site or at beth@bethmeadows.com

See you Friday!

At the moment, I'm busy making work for this show. It's a spin off of the cats cut out of wood I hung at Old City Java in July. A re-mix, if you will. 

Please stop by during the opening on First Friday. I'll be doing a stamp carving demo and will have mason jar and fine art prints available for sale.

If you can't make it November 7, stop by later in November during regular business hours. Sweet Treats will be up until December 1.

Right now, I'm accepting offers on the following pieces of artwork.

Click on the thumbnails to view each piece's information. Then email beth@bethmeadows.com with your offer. 

You can view all of these pieces (live and in person!) right now at Old City Java on Central Street near Jackson Avenue in Knoxville, Tennessee. 

Offers will be accepted until noon on August 31 and each piece will go to the highest bidder.

*****

This is the second annual Art For the People, and I do it for two reasons:

One- It helps me move work out of my studio to create more space for new work and

Two- I want to put original artwork into the hands of those that want it but may not necessarily be able to afford work sold in galleries. 

"Will she be offended by the amount I offer?" you might wonder. 

The answer is no, I will not be offended, because that's probably all I could offer, too.

I hope you'll participate and help this artwork move to walls to be enjoyed by more and more people. Thanks in advance for your offers!