MIDDLE TENNESSEE ARTISTS

Artist Statement

Drawing is a form of virtual meditation for me: I feel transformed during the process, much as I do seeing the hills and valleys near home. It is easy to become mesmerized in either activity, lost in the impressions that resonate, hoping my pencil captures the image before it vanishes. Franklin County, Tennessee, is quintessentially “country”, but its fragile yet productive fields are marked by man and machine in our push for progressive change.

In order to leave evidence of what still has poetic significance – the land - I feel challenged to blend the “space of intimacy and world space”, using the act of drawing. Bachelard speaks of “daydreams [that] transport the dreamer outside the immediate world to a world that bears the mark of infinity”. Graphite is my material of daydreaming, conveying images not limited by my own understanding. It is my way of reliving and renewing the memory, or “dreaming in two registers … for the simplest image is doubled; it is itself and something else than itself.”

Roxane Brinkley Garrett

Roxane Binkley Garrett is a resident of Franklin County, Tennessee with roots from nearby Tullahoma. After receiving an AS degree at Motlow State Community College, she continued her education at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She received her BFA with a concentration in painting and drawing from UTC in 2008, obtaining concurrently a BS in Entrepreneurship, both degrees Cum Laude.

The themes evident in her works are the familiar rural landscape of the Middle-Tennessee area and the importance of nature in an increasingly urban-industrial setting. Mediums used by Ms. Garrett include oils, watercolors, pen and ink, and graphite pencil.

Her depiction of a waterfall, “York’s Mill, Number One” in graphite earned her the Best-Of-Show award for the 2007 Student Exhibition at the University. She was awarded the Senior Level Lillian B. Feinstein Memorial Scholarship in 2007-2008, for which she was included in the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Cress Gallery exhibition in February, 2008. Her work has been exhibited at other local galleries and is included in several private collections in the country.