The Vol State Art Gallery showcases works by visiting artists from across the country, as well as those from Tennessee artists, students, and faculty. On February 14th, the gallery will present an exhibit featuring the works of artist John Paul Kesling. This exhibit will be on display until April 7, 2025.
All gallery events are free and open to the public. The gallery is located on the first floor of the Steinhauer-Rogan-Black (SRB) Humanities Building on the Gallatin campus at 1480 Nashville Pike.
During the Spring and Fall semesters, when in-person classes are being held, gallery hours are:
- Monday - Thursday, 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
- Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
The Visual Art Program at Vol State offers courses in Drawing, Painting, Design (including Graphic Design), Printmaking, Photography, and Ceramics. You may be interested in a few courses for your personal growth or you may be planning to pursue a career in the art and design fields.
Read a statement from the artist:
In 2004, I lost my younger brother to his years-long struggle with opioid addiction. He was only 23 years old. We grew up in a small Appalachian town in Northeastern Kentucky. Industrial and coal-dependent, Ashland, Kentucky was ground zero for the start of the opioid crisis in the late 90s. The 2017 Netflix documentary Heroin(e) featured nearby Huntington, WV, just ten miles away. That city had been dubbed “the overdose capital of America” where the overdose rate was ten-times the national average. In the years that have followed, the problem has only gotten worse. In my hometown of only 20,000 people, the effects of this addiction hang in the air of the Ohio River Valley. In this ongoing collection of portraits shown in a gallery setting, the stigma is lifted. They were spouses, mothers, fathers, grandparents, children, grandchildren and friends and they were loved by somebody. Representing the fugitive beauty of a life, they're painted in haste, half from life and half from memory in the same way we remember lost loves.
Pairing these small, intimate portraits with the larger and widely recognizable Pietà wall pieces based on Michelangelo’s iconic sculpture, the personal becomes Universal. These shaped-plywood pieces are responses to tragic events (school shootings and gun violence, violence towards LGBTQIA+ communities, addiction, illness and overdoses, new and ongoing wars, and victims of racism and generational trauma) that have claimed loved ones throughout history.
ReUnion Soldiers is a yearbook of sorts for those that were not able to make it to their class reunions. Their energy is now together, forever spinning and as vibrant as it was once before.
