The Artist Mapping Knoxville’s Art Scene With Wood and Wire
Three years ago, Lauren Farkas sketched a plan to see exhibitions during the city’s monthly art walk. Now, she crafts eclectic maps for each event to make the art scene more accessible.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — On the first Friday of each month, a dozen or more exhibitions open across galleries, studios, and temporary spaces in Knoxville. For many people in the small city’s art community, the night is either an overwhelming jumble or a repetitive routine. Artist Lauren Farkas’s maps offer a way through.
“If everything is on the map, people get overwhelmed,” Farkas told Hyperallergic. “I put all the things that I would like to go to if I had enough time on the map.”
Farkas, a high school art teacher at L&N STEM Academy who has lived in Knoxville for nine years, said that she considers her educational work to be “a long-form performance piece.” She approaches each map as an artwork with a similar sense of structure: The geography remains fixed, while the shows and events shift from month to month.
Anchored by the Knoxville Museum of Art (KMA) and the University of Tennessee School of Art, the city's arts ecosystem extends beyond downtown’s familiar gallery circuit to include a growing network of artist-run spaces, community studios, and exhibitions that many attendees might otherwise overlook.
