If you follow me on social media, I hope you've noticed I've been posting artwork each week that anyone may name their price in order to claim it. It is aptly called "Name Your Price." 

BACKGROUND

A few years ago, I put on a show at Old City Java called Art For the People where I asked people to send me offers for the work. There were two large reasons why I wanted to do this: 

1. One of the greatest challenges of my career is selling artwork in Knoxville. Even with our huge art crawl called First Friday that happens every month, it's a tough town for any artist, especially contemporary and young artists.

But nothing inspires me more than a challenge. It's made me stretch myself and become more creative. "Art for the People" was an innovative way to sell work and learn a little more about what art interests people in Knoxville.

2. While sales are important for me to sustain what I do, Art For the People wasn't only about that. It was also about engagement with people and making artwork accessible to anyone. I wanted to let people make offers so that they could own an original piece of artwork. I also, in general, wanted to hear more from people, and I did!

STUDIO PURGE

I have so much artwork that's accumulated over the 10+ years since college and I'm ready to let it go. I've thrown out a lot of it, but Name Your Price is a way to find homes for some of it that I'm not going to show in exhibitions but someone may still want. 

It's also become very important to me to not look at older work anymore. I'm ready to move forward and make changes in what I'm making...

TRANSITION IN MY CAREER

I've hit a transition period with my work where things are moving a direction I really like. I'm experimenting more, but this means I'm not necessarily making work to to show in a gallery or include in an exhibition, which means I can't easily sustain this time of exploration. This work I'm doing is good and important and so Name Your Price allows me to recoup some expenses so that I can keep moving forward. 

SUPPORT MY WORK

In essence, this is a great way to support my artistic endeavors while I'm in, what feels a little like limbo. It's a really good limbo, but this work just feels like something I can't easily put a price on, so I'm asking you to. 

HOW IT WORKS

It's a work in progress, but NYP happens every Wednesday. I post a photo of the artwork available on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter with a link to my website giving more details about the piece. There's a form there to fill out with your name, email, and the price you'd like to offer. The highest offer will claim the piece.

I'm working out all the details, but each time there is a deadline to make your offer. It might be the same day or you may have a few days.

An hour or so before NYP closes, I send an email to anyone who has made an offer to let them know what the highest offer price is. This gives them a chance to counter offer if they want.

IMPORTANT DETAILS

1. You can offer any amount. My hope is that this will be a number that is a good compromise between what you can afford and what still places a good value on my work. My main purpose is to move this work, so you could also just walk away with a steal! Why not try it?
2. I add on shipping cost so you can make an offer from anywhere in the continental US. 
3. All the work so far has been original, but in the future I will offer some limited edition and fine art prints.
4. I think everyone should own original artwork and while I know the value (time and cost) of making artwork, I am happy to make some work accessible for anyone and everyone that wants it.
5. I want to turn Viewers and Fans of my artwork into Customers, and hopefully Collectors. I hope this will help to get your foot in the door. 
6. I want to make buying original artwork easy, affordable, and/or accessible. I know it's not always that way.
7. I want NYP to be mutually beneficial. I can make some dollars to support what I do and move some work that is filling my studio and you can adorn your walls with something you love and will enjoy forever.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. I'd love to hear your thoughts! You can comment or email me at beth@bethmeadows.com. 

The Dusk Love series began long, long ago, when I was taking a Printmaking class at UT in 2007.

Our assignment was to make a book, and I devoted mine to one of my favorite things: driving home- or wherever- at dusk, when everything becomes dark silhouettes against a glowing blue sky.

So I drove around Knoxville taking pictures from my driver's seat with my digital camera (yes, I said digital camera), and traced those photos- the outlines of street lamps, wires, buildings, and trees- to create screenprints.

In the end, I only bound one collection of prints and had hundreds of loose pages leftover.

Several years later, as my style evolved, I added the red, gold, white, and green lights. I took those pages and framed them. See below.

Fast forward to this year when I re-visited these images yet again, enlarging and altering them in Photoshop, something I learned how to do at the print and photo studio I worked last year. The title of this series is called Dusk Love (Ret), "ret" being what we'd put at the end of file names after editing them. 

Gay Street Bridge

Computers have never been my strong point, but I liked that this project allowed me to go in a direction I could not otherwise go without the challenge of using one. Seeing the small screenprints I made a decade ago evolve into large and striking graphic prints is a nice reward for the struggle computers give my brain. 

Old North Knoxville II

VIEW & PURCHASE DUSK LOVE PRINTS

The Dusk Love (Ret) series is a series of 6 limited edition prints. Each edition is of 5. All prints are signed and numbered.

Right now, you may view these framed prints at The Tomato Head on Kingston Pike through May 1. 

Green Light

In May, they will go to one or both of these places: Nest on the 100 block of Gay St and/or the With Bear Hands Gallery at Magpies.

PURCHASE ONLINE

To order a print online, please visit my shop!

I watched Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette again last week, and it got me thinking about a piece of artwork I made in 2015:

Wooden Lady, reclaimed wood in salvaged window, 2015

Inspired by this:

I was working at The Salvage Shop then, and as usual, coming up with ways to re-use all the wood we had on hand, a mission that inspired the hundreds of mason jars I printed and painted on salvaged wood during my years there. 

Her face is tongue and groove flooring, her headdress is wood that was all ready painted white and I added gold accents, her blouse painted and carved wood. The frame is an old window from some house in East Tennessee that probably has vinyl windows now.

The carved blouse was inspired by a box I bought in Haiti that summer. Something about the painted wood, then carved, gets to me deeply, so much so I daydream about living in a different country, making colorful jewelry and carved and painted wooden boxes by the ocean...

Anyway...

The same year I made the wooden lady, I also made this:

Dolce & Gabbana, food packaging on paper, 11 x 14"

Inspired by this:

Karlie Kloss in Dolce & Gabbana

And it seemed to be a favorite of the Good Packaging series, I think because of the floral headdress and striking stare. Also probably the lace dress. It's a solid image all around. 

I always wanted to make more wooden women. "Wooden Ladies" has been on my To Do list for two years, and I'm excited because I'm ready to make more. 

So I've been searching the internet and saving images on Instagram. My goal is to make three by the end of the month. My inclination is to make them wildly intricate, but they will be a little different than the first one I made.

While we wait for them, here are some of the images I found for inspiration, the last one an added bonus because it's ridiculous. 

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

I've been hanging a lot of artwork lately, for my own shows and in people's homes and offices. I don't want to give away all of my trade secrets, but I'll tell you one thing that's been a game-changer for me: 

When you drop a nail,

or a screw,

follow it with your eyes. 

You're welcome, young grasshopper.

#themoreyouknow

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:

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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!

I am so excited to finally share this event with you!

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Please come out to celebrate the Grand Opening of the Small Hall Gallery, view and purchase work by local artists Amy Campbell and yours truly, and treat yourself to some holiday sweets from Magpies!

Magpies Bakery has generously provided a space for local artists to display artwork for the past several years. This space, known as the Small Hall Gallery, has been given to me to display my work and to put on shows with other artists.

The hours of the Grand Opening are the same as Magpies retail hours on the following days: 

Monday, Nov 21 10:00-4:00
Tuesday, Nov 22 10:00-5:30
Wednesday, Nov 23 8:00-2:00

Amy and I will have original artwork, prints, postcards, and calendars for sale. Buy a treat for Thanksgiving at Magpies- or just because you're a lover of life- and receive 20% off select artwork.

The gallery entrance is between Magpies and Holly's or you may access through Glowing Body or Magpies.