Author: Robyn Gentile

Editor’s Note: This artist profile is part of a statewide series highlighting Tennessee artists participating in Ars Gloria, a visual arts initiative presented by the Tennessee Press Association and the Tennessee Art League. Follow Ars Gloria on Facebook and Instagram for additional artist features, competition news, and updates throughout the year.

Mixed-media sculptor and public artist Sherri Warner Hunter has spent decades creating large-scale community installations across the country.

Known for work that is colorful, whimsical, and often inviting physical interaction, her practice blends concrete sculpture, mosaic, and other materials. Over the course of her career, Hunter has taught, written several books on the creative applications of concrete, and completed major public commissions. Her art has earned statewide and national recognition, including a 2019 CODA Awards Top 100 selection and a 2021 Best of Tennessee Craft Merit Award.

Yet for all of her success, Sherri’s career was hardly assured.

After moving to Tennessee, Sherri gave herself five years to establish a career as an independent artist. She would teach, sell her work, pursue commissions, and do whatever she could to make a living through art. If it didn’t work, she would find a job and make art on the side.

At four years and eleven months—one month before her self-imposed deadline—Sherri received her first public art commission through a statewide competition to create a sculpture for one of Tennessee’s Interstate Welcome Centers.

Reflecting on the deadline, Sherri says that she “almost” missed it.

“Almost,” she says. “But the Universe was watching out for me.”

Childhood Crafts

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Sherri grew up with her family in the East, primarily in Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia.

She grew up in a family where making things was simply part of life. “I consider myself very lucky because I had a family that really valued hand-making processes,” she says.

Every October, her father would begin assigning projects the family could make as personal Christmas gifts. Made with love and care, these gifts included ornaments, caned stools, and woven mats.

While gifts and decorations were for the holidays, everyday domestic life included gardening, cooking, canning, and sewing. That comfort with materials eventually shaped the way Sherri approached art.

That openness to learning also had roots outside the home. When Sherri was in third grade, her mother became seriously ill with encephalitis and was hospitalized.

In the years that followed, several adults took a particular interest in her, aware of what her family had experienced.

One of them was Becky Desmond, her junior-high art teacher.

“She continued to mentor me and include me in non-school activities that were very artistic,” Sherri says. “We remained friends over the years.”

Desmond became one of the first in a succession of teachers and mentors who would help shape Sherri’s artistic development.

In college, Sherri enrolled at the Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) in 1970. Entering the program, she expected to become a painter. The foundation program, however, encouraged students to broadly explore creative interests, and Sherri found herself interested in sculpture.

One instructor—the acclaimed artist and educator Willem Volkersz—introduced her to vernacular architecture, folk art, outsider art, and environments built by self-taught artists.

That exposure remained a lasting influence. Years later, Sherri would describe being especially drawn to art that changes how people move through and experience a space rather than simply asking them to look at an object.

Those early influences became part of a cumulative learning process that would shape Sherri’s career: childhood making, mentorship, formal art education, new materials, professional experience, and eventually the lessons she would pass along herself.

At KCAI, however, learning would not always come easily.

Go Big or Go Home

At the time Sherri attended the institute, its sculpture department was overwhelmingly male.

She remembers it being jokingly referred to as the “I-beam and railroad-tie school of sculpture.”

The environment toughened her. “It was not for the faint of heart,” she says. “One had to develop a thick skin for criticism, whether it was warranted or not.”

Sherri, meanwhile, had little interest in learning welding or following the dominant model of sculpture around her. Instead, she gravitated toward materials and techniques that drew on skills she already knew, particularly sewing.

While the department chair, Dale Eldred, was traveling on a Fulbright Scholarship, a clean room was being prepared for electronics. Sensing that it should serve another purpose, Sherri commandeered the space, converting it into a sewing room.

After the conversion, other students gravitated to the new ‘sewing room’ to create large-scale soft sculpture and fabric installations.

“When the department chair came back, he was not especially pleased,” she says.

Several factors likely contributed to the tension. The students had overridden the faculty’s intended use for the space, and fabric still carried strong domestic and feminine associations. But the work emerging from the sewing room challenged those expectations. Rather than making small or delicate pieces, the students often worked at a monumental scale.

Some installations were even large enough for people to walk through them.

The sewing room gave students like Sherri a place to build from the skills and instincts they already had. Instead of abandoning those abilities, they could use them as a starting point for sculpture and installation.

“At the time, the work coming out of that room was often regarded as some of the strongest work in the department,” she says.

There was also a broader principle at work. Students like Hunter were not attending KCAI simply to become the kinds of artists the department expected them to be. They were there to discover the kinds of artists they wanted to become.

This meant finding the materials, techniques, and language that would allow them to make work on their own terms.

The experience also helped turn Sherri into an advocate for other artists.

Her concerns extended beyond gender. She began pushing for art students to receive practical professional training that could help them thrive outside the classroom: how to write a résumé, prepare an artist statement, approach galleries, and understand the business of sustaining a career.

“I was looking for the tools to be a professional artist,” she says.

 

Finding Success Out West

Sherri’s initial plan after graduating from KCAI was to continue her education. She was invited to apply to the prestigious Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a graduate school known for its programs in art, architecture, and design, by the chairman of the textile department, Gerhardt Knodel, after he visited KCAI and viewed her work.

Sherri was accepted to Cranbrook but realized she could not afford to attend. Forced to pivot, she eventually narrowed her options to two destinations: New York City or Los Angeles.

Recalling the decision, she says, “I figured, ‘I’d rather be warm if I was going to be a ‘starving’ artist.’”

Opting to move to L.A. in 1974, Sherri quickly found opportunities that might not have been available to her elsewhere at that stage of her career. She freelanced, helped establish galleries, pursued a graduate degree at Claremont Graduate University, curated exhibitions, and lectured through University of California art departments on professional development for artists.

In many ways, the city became a testing ground for questions Sherri had already been asking as an undergraduate student: How does an artist actually build a sustainable career?

Years later, Sherri remains reluctant to prescribe a single path for younger artists.

If someone feels drawn to a major city and has the means to make the move, she sees no reason to resist the idea.

“If you’ve got the fire and the resources, give it a try,” she says.

At the same time, she believes the landscape has changed. Technology now allows artists to build audiences, maintain professional networks, and participate in creative communities from places that would have been far more isolating in 1974.

“There’s not a formula that’s going to work for everyone.”

After roughly a decade in Los Angeles, Sherri returned to Kansas City and eventually became Career Services and Alumni Director at KCAI. In that role, she established the school’s first credited professional-development class.

It was a bookend moment for Sherri. As an undergraduate, she had pushed for artists to receive better preparation for life beyond school. Years later, she returned to KCAI in a position where she could help build exactly that kind of support.

The work was meaningful, and Sherri was able to influence how KCAI prepared young artists for professional careers. From that position, she transitioned into the Director of Continuing Education, developing both adult and children’s arts programs. But the deeper she moved into arts administration, the further she found herself drifting from her own studio practice.

Eventually, she would leave the institute and return to making art.

A Studio in the Country

After returning to Kansas City, Sherri met her husband, Martin. Working in the printing industry, Martin would eventually be offered a job in Nashville.

Martin and Sherri discussed the offer, with Sherri agreeing to relocate to Music City under one condition: “If we move for your job, the next move is for my job.”

And this is when Sherri decided to give herself five years to establish herself as an independent artist.

She would teach, sell her work, pursue commissions, and do whatever she could to make a living through art. If it didn’t work, she would find a job and continue making art on the side.

With that understanding in place, the couple left Kansas City for Nashville and settled in East Nashville. Once there, Sherri continued teaching, developing her studio workshops, and selling her work, and at one point enrolling at Nashville Tech.

Her reason for enrolling was practical: she wanted to learn how to weld.

It was the same technique she had resisted at KCAI. Now, however, Sherri was approaching it on her own terms and because her evolving practice demanded it.

By this point in her career, she had also become increasingly comfortable learning new processes on her own, most notably, concrete. Sherri explains that one of the most valuable things art school had given her was not mastery of any single material, but the ability to teach herself what she needed to know.

Her welding training soon proved useful. Around that time, a visual arts coordinator at TAC, Victoria Boone, told Sherri that bronze sculptor Russ Faxon was looking for an assistant in Bell Buckle—someone who could weld and work across different media. Sherri possessed exactly that mix of skills.

Faxon was then working on his Roy Acuff and Minnie Pearl commission for the Ryman Auditorium. Sherri assisted with some welding and with modeling details on Minnie Pearl’s ruffles and flowers.

The work brought her regularly to Bell Buckle.

“Boy, it sure gets pretty once you get past Murfreesboro,” she remembers thinking.

Eventually, she asked Faxon if he knew of any property for sale. He told her about a farm that was available. The owner was a mechanic known as “Sweet Pea” who used the property to repair cars. Car parts were scattered about, while the house and surrounding buildings had fallen into disrepair. Some of the windows were covered with plywood.

When Sherri visited the property, she did what she had done before at KCAI: she looked past its present condition and saw what it could become. Excited, she informed Martin, who later made a special trip out to the property on his motorcycle so he could inspect it for himself.

Within days, they made an offer to Sweet Pea. By New Year’s Day 1989, they were living in Bell Buckle.

Reading the Vibe

Four years and eleven months later—just one month before her self-imposed deadline—her first public art commission arrived.

That first commission did more than validate Sherri’s five-year gamble. It opened the door to a new phase of her career.

As public-art commissions became a regular part of her work, Sherri found that many required something she considers central to her practice: an understanding of how others will engage with her work.

One example is “The Gathering,” now installed at William Edmondson Park in Nashville. Created in 2001 with Oasis Center staff, students, and community volunteers, the work involved Sherri training teenagers in Oasis Center’s PULSE program—People United Leading and Serving Everywhere—to serve as mosaic assistants.

That interaction matters to Sherri. Some of her sculptures can be sat on. Others can be climbed. Whether designed for sitting, climbing, or simply moving around, many of Sherri’s sculptures defy the expectation that viewers should simply stand back and look.

Another commission—“Ward’s Lobster”—required a different kind of attention altogether. Created for Bell Buckle’s Ward Anderson Playground, the piece memorializes a young child who died in a drowning accident.

Sherri knew the design would have to be approached carefully. Her first instinct was to make the lobster red, since that was the color most people associated with lobsters. But living lobsters can actually display a range of colors, while the familiar red is associated largely with cooked lobsters.

Her solution? Prepare two proposals: one featuring a red lobster and another using pastels. She presented both options to the people involved and invited them to choose.

During that process, Sherri learned that Ward had liked the color red and that his grandfather had taken him to Red Lobster. With that added context, the decision became clear: the lobster would be red.

“When I do a commission, I listen to a lot of different voices,” she says. “I try to fold everything together to create a piece that resonates not just with me, but with the community at large.”

Making, Mistakes, and Moving Forward

Sherri has spent much of her career teaching others, sharing techniques, and learning through experimentation. Russ Faxon once asked how she could give away all her secrets. Sherri never saw much reason to guard them.

“There is always a lineage,” she says. “Somebody taught somebody something, and they took it, and they changed it, and then the next person changes it.”

Sherri has done the same throughout her own career: learning new processes, breaking rules, making mistakes, and adapting what she learned to suit the work in front of her.

“I always tell people I can write the books because I’ve made the most mistakes.”

These days, some of that experimentation is turning inward. After decades of commissions, Sherri is trying to reserve more time for her own ideas and become more selective about the projects she accepts.

“‘No’ is probably my hardest word,” she says.

Ideas sometimes remain in her sketchbooks until she has the tools, time, or perspective to approach them differently. Even then, the first solution is not necessarily the best one.

“I may sketch something out, make notes, and then come back to it later and realize, ‘I can do better than that.’”

Because after more than five decades of making things, “almost” still fails to stop her.
 

For further information about Sherri Warner Hunter, visit her   website and   social media.

Editor’s Note: This artist profile is part of a statewide series highlighting Tennessee artists participating in Ars Gloria, a visual arts initiative presented by the Tennessee Press Association and the Tennessee Art League. Follow Ars Gloria on Facebook and Instagram for additional artist features, competition news, and updates throughout the year.

For Memphis photographer Andrea Morales, a picture holds more than what appears within the frame. It is a record of the relationships between everything in focus. And tied to those relationships are important questions: Who agreed to be seen? Who was allowed access to the subjects? What power passed between them? And which responsibilities remain after the image is taken?

According to Andrea, these questions are part of the “inherently extractive” process of taking a picture. A camera takes something from a moment and carries it to an audience that may never encounter the people depicted in person.

Thinking about what photographers take from moments in time, Andrea was left with a pressing question: What should I give back?

She found part of the answer while considering the work of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. Known for sweeping documentary projects chronicling workers, migration, and some of the world’s harshest realities, Salgado prompted Andrea to describe an approach to photography with a word she had not previously considered in that context: mercy.

“It felt right,” Andrea says.

To Andrea, mercy begins with using her camera to illuminate inequity while preserving a subject’s humanity. She draws inspiration from photographers who meet people as equals, rather than treating them as subjects required to perform their suffering for an audience.

Andrea brings that same ethic to her role as creative director at the nonprofit newsroom MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, which reports at the intersection of power, poverty, and public policy.

That principle also shaped “Roll Down Like Water,” a decade-spanning body of work exhibited at the Brooks Museum of Art in 2024. In the project, Andrea carried many of the same questions she asks in journalism into a museum setting: how people are represented, what context is preserved, and what obligations must be fulfilled after an image is made.

The work moves between journalism and art, but Andrea is less interested in defending the boundary between those categories than in questioning what each one permits. Her photographs bear witness to public struggle, but they also refuse to treat struggle as the only truth worth recording.

“The photograph isn’t trying to traffic in suffering and pain as much as it is the number of other things—the number of other multitudes,” she says.

Finding Her Focal Point

Born in Lima, Peru, Andrea moved with her family to Miami in 1989 when she was four years old. She recalls Peru in the ’80s as a difficult place to live, marked by political turmoil, American intervention, and failures across the ideological spectrum.

Her parents joined friends in Miami and pursued what she calls “the American dream, kind of.”

Andrea was young enough to adapt quickly, but the experience of migration never fully disappeared. “The things that are confusing as a kid, I feel, are still confusing as an adult,” Andrea says, especially the sensation of feeling other—or “moving like an other sometimes.”

Miami gave her memories she still loves. She remembers Florida’s beauty and the energy of growing up there in the late 1980s and 1990s. Yet the city seemed to organize itself around appearance and wealth, which she found frustrating.

When college offered an exit, Andrea was ready to leave. She attended the University of Florida, where she initially imagined studying some form of writing or storytelling. But even as an avid reader in childhood, her bilingual education had left her uncertain about her command of written English.

Andrea considered sociology and archaeology before attending an orientation for the journalism program and learning about photojournalism. There, she discovered a medium that gathered her scattered interests into one practice: storytelling, observation, and what she calls “this way of making meaning out of moments, so that we are on a constant journey of learning, retelling, and remembering.”

Photography also gave her a creative language that felt more accessible at the time than writing. But she would have to work against a program culture that was male-dominated and leaned heavily toward sports. While many of the young men around her wanted to create monumental sports images, Andrea wanted to use photography more expansively—to connect with people, ideas, and cultures.

Andrea earned her journalism degree in 2006. Afterward, she interned at small daily newspapers and spent two years at The Lima News in northwest Ohio.

Small-town life was unfamiliar, and learning its rhythms appealed to her. So did the work emerging from Ohio University’s renowned photojournalism program in Athens. She followed its graduates online, studied their approaches, and eventually decided to enroll.

At Ohio University, Andrea found the time and community to develop long photographic essays. Rather than chasing only the decisive image, she stayed with ordinary people over extended periods, using individual lives to reflect larger shared realities instead of documenting isolated moments.

Through this photographic essay work, she learned what kind of power the camera really possessed—and what kind of person she wanted to be while holding that power.

There, she also found a stronger connection to fellow photographers. The relationships formed there would help sustain her through a profession increasingly defined by low pay, shrinking newsrooms, and unstable employment.

After working at a family-owned newspaper in Concord, New Hampshire, Andrea moved to Memphis in 2014 and began freelancing full time.

M-Town and the Work of Staying

In Memphis, Andrea was struck by the “aggressively charming” nature of the city.

At first, she accepted nearly any assignment that required a photographer. But gradually, she built an editorial practice that included work for national publications such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, along with community projects closer to home.

An artist residency at Crosstown Concourse gave her studio space and an opportunity to photograph the neighborhood where she lived—and still lives.

By 2018, the freedom of freelancing had become inseparable from its instability. Slow months were “crazy-making,” and Andrea wanted more from her work.

She joined the Southern Documentary Project at the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture, producing documentary work while pursuing an MFA in documentary expression.

The degree widened the frame again. Documentary expression drew from sociology, musicology, history, food studies, oral history, folklore, film, audio, and still photography. Its purpose was not to lock documentary into a definition, Andrea says, but to preserve space for the many ways people keep records of what was. That interdisciplinary approach changed not only how she understood documentary practice but also how she understood the ways people teach and learn.

During the MFA program, Andrea began assembling “Roll Down Like Water” as a photographic meditation on Memphis and its place in the struggle for collective liberation. She continued the project through the pandemic with guidance from thesis adviser Ralph Eubanks.

After Andrea returned to Memphis in 2021, curator Rosamund Garrett championed the work within the Brooks Museum. It ultimately became a solo exhibition accompanied by a catalog and community programming.

When Documentary Becomes Art

Seeing the photographs inside the museum unsettled some of Andrea’s assumptions about her own work. The images had been made within journalism and community, where the feedback loop is tight and people can hold a photographer accountable.

At the Brooks Museum, some were printed at 50 by 60 inches and set in gilded frames. Printers, framers, curators, and gallery staff gave them the formal treatment of what Andrea calls “big-A Art”—special, rare, and often commodified.

That treatment seemed, at first, to conflict with the accessibility she valued. Photography had given Andrea freedom when the medium became accessible to her. She did not want her own work to reproduce the exclusion or misrepresentation she resisted.

Yet the exhibition revealed another possibility: care itself could be celebrated.

People in Memphis told her they were pleased to see their community presented with such attention. Andrea is careful about the distinction. Marginalized people in Memphis have been photographed many times; the problem, she says, is that those images can flatten the complexities and histories needed to understand them. “Roll Down Like Water” attempts to make space for lives that contain pain without being defined by it.

The exhibition included 60+ photographs, three essays, workshops, community resources, and programming that extended the work beyond the gallery walls.

Even now, Andrea is processing what it meant. The project had occupied roughly a decade of her life, and she has no desire to invent a next grand exhibition simply because the last one succeeded.

A photograph installed at Memphis International Airport creates a smaller version of the same tension. Selected through a public-art initiative coordinated by the UrbanArt Commission, the image shows people in line at the National Civil Rights Museum as they pass the room where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was staying when he was killed. Windows and mirrors layer the scene with reflections, multiplied again by the airport’s difficult lighting, which Andrea jokes “is not cute.”

Still, she values being part of a collection of local art that introduces travelers to Memphis through the work of people who live there.

What the Photographer Gives Back

At MLK50, her attention has expanded from making photographs to shaping a broader visual and editorial culture. Andrea writes, supports reporters, does some of her own reporting, and thinks about how people can enter a shared storytelling process. She rejects the idea that writers and photographers operate in separate worlds. Both observe the same material realities; their outputs simply look and feel different.

“My writing is visually driven,” she says. “I compose on the page much as I compose within a frame.”

She is photographing less now, but differently. The change does not signal a retreat from image-making so much as a wider understanding of what the work can contain. A photograph may be an object, a document, a news image, a piece of public memory, or an invitation into a community conversation. It may enter a newspaper, a museum, an airport, or a book. Wherever it lands, Andrea remains interested in what happens around it—and in who is allowed to answer back.

Her approach begins by refusing an old journalistic cliché: that a photographer or reporter “gives voice to the voiceless.” Andrea once understood the expression’s appeal. Now, movement journalism and her own practice begin with the power people already possess.

“No one should have to prove themselves in front of a camera for some future audience,” she says. “I try to meet people where they are because that connection comes through in the photograph.”

Mercy, in that sense, is not softness or distance from hard realities. It is a discipline of looking without flattening—a decision to witness inequity while leaving the people inside the frame fully human.

For further information about the work of Andrea Morales, visit her website and social media.

Editor’s Note: This artist profile is part of a statewide series highlighting Tennessee artists participating in Ars Gloria, a visual arts initiative presented by the Tennessee Press Association and the Tennessee Art League. Follow Ars Gloria on Facebook and Instagram for additional artist features, competition news, and updates throughout the year.

Taking on the role of an observer with each new project, artists uncover details others can’t see. Through an understanding of visual language and the close study of a subject, they learn what makes a person, place, or thing singular. Using their creativity, artists can make the granular visible.

An acute observer of such detail, Middle Tennessee artist Camille Engel catches the elements others often overlook. A realist oil painter, Camille uses light, color, and texture to draw attention to the extraordinary qualities of marvelous and mundane subjects alike.

Capturing the details that make life rich, Camille believes that beauty—and even the divine—can be found in all things.

“Every morning is a fresh opportunity to find extraordinary joy in the most ordinary things,” she explains. “My art overflows out of that joy.”

That outlook accompanies a career that includes more than forty awards and an international following. Represented by the Sugarman Peterson Gallery in Santa Fe, her work is part of collections such as the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, The Chattanoogan Hotel, Metropolitan Nashville Government, the Tennessee State Museum, and the Ellen Noel Art Museum in Odessa, Texas.

“I live in Nashville and work with the Nashville Artist Guild (NAG),” she says. “I do smaller shows through that organization. I also do a lot of larger solo and group exhibition shows… I love Nashville. It’s been very good to me.”

No Accounting for Talent

Born in 1955 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Camille showed an interest in art as a little girl.

“My great-aunt Rae gave me my first Barbie doll in third grade,” she says. “This was in the early ages of Barbie, and I realized that the box’s images were illustrated and not photographed. When I noticed that, I began telling people that ‘When I grow up, I’m going to draw Barbies!’”

But this growing interest in art was not immediately encouraged. Fearing the uncertainty of an artist’s life, Camille’s mother encouraged her to pursue a more reliable career.

She explains, “My mother was a bookkeeper. Her dream for me was to be an accountant, which was higher than a bookkeeper. She wanted me to have a real job so I didn’t have to depend on anybody else. I tell people that had I become an accountant, I would be in prison and wouldn’t understand the mistake that put me there!”

Camille jokes that this mother-daughter dynamic has now come full circle. “Numbers are not my gift. And the irony there is that I encouraged my daughter to pursue her artistic desires. And where does she wind up working? An accounting department!”

Such concerns did not stop Camille, who found creative inspiration through exploring nature and sketching her discoveries. Recognizing that they had an artist on their hands, Camille’s aunt and stepfather supported her interests.

“He saw how creative I was,” Camille recalls. “And he would tell my mother, ‘Vicki, leave her alone! Can’t you tell she’s an artist?’”

Her talents were appreciated at school as well.

By 16, Camille had landed her first professional art job. Her high school selected her for a statewide vocational-technical pilot program. It was here that she studied commercial art in the afternoons.

That experience later helped Camille land a job on a department store’s advertising team, illustrating products and creating layouts.

“This was back when things were sketched out for the newspaper. The quality of photography transferred to newsprint wasn’t as clear and crisp as an illustration,” she explains.

Finding Sight in Darkness

After graduating from high school in 1973, Camille attended Tulsa Junior College for two years, taking night classes.

In 1975, she met a young man and married him after an eight-week courtship. She left college and her job, but soon returned to work at a local advertising agency, where she learned the business side of the industry and eventually decided to strike out on her own.

In 1978, Camille launched her own advertising agency.

“Random House Publishing came across my logo designs,” she explains. “They were launching new educational software for schools, and they asked me if I would be willing to hire staff to handle their graphic design. Delighted, I agreed, hiring two artists plus, regrettably, my husband as office manager.”

The marriage, however, had become physically abusive and manipulative. Camille’s husband gradually gained control over both her personal life and her business, eventually forcing her to hand the agency over to someone else.

Trapped in the relationship for eight years, Camille relocated with her husband to rural Arkansas. It was during this painful period that she began developing a way of looking at the world that would later become fundamental to her art.

“During the abuse, I was thinking about what was happening through a spiritual lens,” Camille recalls. “I felt like the Lord was telling me, ‘Find three things a day for which you are grateful.’ And I began to notice the beauty around me. I would pick up an apple and observe the little nuances in its skin. Or I would look closely at the African violet flowers near my windowsill, and I’d notice how they glistened.”

Camille was learning to find joy and beauty in circumstances that offered little of either.

“We adopted our daughter toward the end. She was just two and a half days old when we got her. And one day, when she was just a year old, I was holding her when my husband got really mad. In a moment of rage, he threw me up against the wall. And she began screaming in fear.”

The incident made the danger to both Camille and her daughter impossible to ignore.

“He convinced me that I was wonderful with children, and that I should leave our daughter with him to go to Africa as a nanny for missionaries,” she says.

Preparing to leave for missionary service, Camille visited her family to say goodbye.

“My Aunt Rae could tell something was off. She finally cornered me and said, ‘Something is wrong. I know something’s wrong. You’re not leaving this kitchen until you tell me what’s wrong.’ And then I burst into tears, telling her that my husband was sending me to Africa, and that I was there to say goodbye to everybody.”

Her aunt brought Camille’s mother into the conversation. Together, the two women convinced her that she had to leave her husband to protect herself and her daughter.

“Then and there, with just the weekend bag I packed for me and my daughter, I decided to leave my marriage, staying with my aunt,” she says.

A noncompete agreement Camille had signed after relinquishing her advertising agency prevented her from working in advertising in Tulsa. Familiar with Nashville and Dallas through her design work, she visited both cities in search of a place to begin again.

“I’d already designed album covers for MCA, as well as several Christian record companies in Nashville. So when I visited, I made contact with Aladdin Industries and a few other companies. They put me under contract to do graphic design. Having the promise of real work made the move to Nashville easy.”

Art, Direction, and Art Direction in Music City

Camille relocated to Nashville in late 1984, taking on brochure, logo, and annual report work for corporate clients including Aladdin, Fruit of the Loom, and Kitchen Art.

“Nashville ended up being a blessing!” Camille says. “I met all sorts of wonderful people—including my current husband, whom I married in ’86!”

She also designed album covers for the music industry.

“The joke that others would make was that if I designed an album cover for an artist, then that artist would become artist of the year,” Camille says, referring to work for musicians like Reba McEntire and George Strait. “Labels wanting album cover work often gave me their hottest stars.”

After 16 years of commercial work in Nashville, Camille wanted something more. In 2000, she contacted Cheekwood Estate and Gardens about adult art classes and was referred to Charles Brindley, whose freeform approach encouraged students to choose their own subjects.

For Camille, that freedom was intimidating.

“When you’re a professional working under creative parameters for decades, those parameters become your comfort zone. Now, it’s like, ‘Here’s the world, choose something.’ And you’re not sure where to go,” she explains.

Working through that discomfort, Camille found her groove in what she considers “unheralded subjects.”

“I went through a phase of painting things like rusty buckets,” Camille says. “And my stepdad would tell me, ‘Camille, you find beauty in everything! I see those buckets, and I want to sand them down and repaint them. You paint their rust, and the more beaten up things are, the more beauty you find in them.’ I wanted to bring that beauty out for other people to see in my work.”

At Cheekwood, several artists observing Camille would tell her, “You paint wrong.”

“And, of course, I’m so naive at the time, I had no idea that my intuitive style of painting followed the footsteps of the Dutch masters. They were known for painting in transparent glazes, starting with an underlying color and gradually building layers of color and detail to create luminosity.”

After concluding her studies at Cheekwood, Camille had her first public exhibition at the 2002 Main Street Festival in Franklin. She regards it as the moment she transitioned into being a fine artist.

“So I was there with my paintings in a sea of vendor tents on the street,” Camille recalls. “And a woman comes by, and she buys five of my paintings for her new house in downtown Franklin!”

A local reporter interviewed Camille early in the festival. At the end of the event, the reporter returned to her booth.

“She was standing in front of my paintings, studying them, and tears started rolling down her cheeks. And she turned around to tell me, ‘I don’t mean to offend you, but there’s just so much God in your work!’ And I got goosebumps.”

The encounter came only days after Camille had wrestled with a question about the purpose of her art.

“That reporter had no idea that only a few days before, I asked the Lord, ‘How can I glorify you by painting fruits and flowers?’ I had a strong urge to glorify God through my paintings because he helped me escape abuse and find joy. I was feeling guilty I wasn’t wooed to paint biblical stories. But in hearing that woman’s reaction, I knew I was doing exactly what I was supposed to do.”

Birds of a Feather

For Camille, the joy she finds in the process remains inseparable from the finished work.

“Painting is such a joyful, spiritual moment for me. And a lot of times, I cry at my easel,” Camille says. “And I don’t know if it’s because I’m noticing the detail of my subject, the process of the painting, or that it always feels cathartic to explore my creative side since I was held back from doing that for so many years.”

That connection between process, instinct, and skill also shapes the way Camille approaches commissioned work. She tells clients that they are hiring not only her technical abilities, but also her ideas and judgment—the combination of vision and experience that makes the finished work distinctly hers.

All of Camille’s work falls under realism, and she is a member of the International Guild of Realism (IGOR), where she currently maintains the honor of being the second-most-awarded member.

“I’ve won different IGOR awards for the work that I’ve done, including the Best Trompe L’oeil Award—which comes from the French phrase meaning ‘fool the eye’—and an International Artist’s Choice Award (IACA). So I’m not pigeonholed into making one type of painting. But so many people know me for my bird paintings, since the first one won an IACA. After winning that award, birds became what the galleries wanted from me. I observe birds in my backyard, study their movement and character,” Camille says.

For Camille, having her work held in the permanent collections of two museums represents a particular honor—and the fulfillment of a dream shared by artists everywhere. That recognition follows a broader museum presence: from 2017 through 2019, her solo exhibition, “My Tennessee Home: The Paintings of Camille Engel,” celebrated Tennessee’s official state symbols through stops across the region.

Her most recent IGOR honor came in June 2026, when “Goody Gumdrop” received the Best Trompe L’oeil Award. The painting depicts what appears to be a photograph of a bowl of gumdrops taped to a weathered wooden surface—until one gumdrop seemingly tumbles out of the photograph and casts its shadow on the board below.

“In this series, I combine surrealism with trompe l’oeil, and I always try to select a title that draws the viewer’s attention to the surrealist element of the painting,” Camille explains. “My goal is to trick the viewer’s eye, then stir the imagination.”

To heighten the illusion, Camille painted all five of the work’s apparent surfaces.

In June 2025, Camille received IGOR’s International Artist Publishing Award for “Rhapsody in Blue,” a figurative piece featuring a woman dancing underwater in a sheer dress and long scarf.

“I’m mostly known for my nature paintings. Doing ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ for IGOR’s exhibition was a fun challenge that let me play in the world of figurative paintings. I’ve always felt drawn to water, and was even the Oklahoma State Champion Water Ballet Soloist to the Junior Olympics. Being able to show the grace and ethereal sensation of being underwater is special to me.”

Camille continues creating new work for upcoming exhibitions. She is currently developing “Heaven & Earth,” a two-woman traveling exhibition with Peruvian-born Tennessee artist Clorinda Bell. Bell paints sacred art, while Camille draws inspiration from nature. Together, they are creating the work and booking venues for the developing exhibition.

“When teaching children, they always ask me which painting is my favorite. And my answer is, ‘It’s always the painting I just finished. I love to paint! I love creativity in any form. Find joy in the world around you and be creative!’”

For further information about Camille Engel, visit her website and social media.

Editor’s Note: This artist profile is part of a statewide series highlighting Tennessee artists participating in Ars Gloria, a visual arts initiative presented by the Tennessee Press Association and the Tennessee Art League. Follow Ars Gloria on Facebook and Instagram for additional artist features, competition news, and updates throughout the year.

The narratives held within Tennessee’s history are richly layered. Chock-full of depth and emotion, they remain embedded across the state’s landscape. From the rural communities that once measured life by the seasons to metropolitan areas continually remaking themselves, each locale in the Volunteer State behaves much like a living character acting out a much larger drama.

Nashville visual artist Brady Haston has spent much of his career exploring that drama. Moving freely through the annals of Tennessee, Brady works to capture the memory of a landscape. This might involve studying the details of nineteenth-century imagery one moment and comparing them with the appearance of a modern-day downtown street the next.

“When people see my work, they can find that there’s a local narrative going on,” Brady says. “I feel really comfortable jumping in and out of time. It all comes from this idea of relating to the area you’re in at the time you’re in.”

Pivoting between chronologies in his paintings and drawings, Brady’s art has grown more representational in recent years. But this kind of representation is more focused on the spirit of the thing than its literal depiction. “It’s the idea of a landscape more than the actual look of a landscape.”

The approach reflects an artist interested not just in what Tennessee looks like, but in how a place accumulates its stories.

Drawing From History

But where did this interest in the ties binding one generation of Tennesseans to the next—and each generation to the land—even begin for Brady?

The answer? Right at home.

Hailing from Spencer, Tennessee, Brady proudly shares that he comes from a line of Tennesseans who’ve called that area home for generations.

He recalls that when he was young, his father was deeply interested in the state’s history. Copies of historical books were always lying around the house, acting as gentle reminders of the past’s importance.

Brady also absorbed this knowledge, stealing moments with the books in his own downtime. Through them, he learned to appreciate these histories. “Years later, I went to the Tennessee State Library and Archives (TSLA) and searched its materials for Van Buren County. I found all these books I had grown up with, so I didn’t really learn anything new there. I thought that was interesting.”

Brady’s interest in the state’s history stays with him today. He says that one particularly influential book he read was “Chronicles of the Cumberland Settlements” by Paul Clements. A collection of letters and firsthand accounts from the 1780s and the period preceding Tennessee statehood, the book gave Brady a detailed window into the people and events that shaped the Cumberland settlements.

Those accounts directly influenced Brady’s “Fragmentary Survey,” which includes paintings inspired by early settler Thomas “Big Foot” Spencer and Tennessee’s first surveyors.

Reading about historical figures who had become obscure helped Brady see where local experience entered a national narrative. “I try to capture where Tennessee becomes part of the American story rather than focusing only on the regional.”

He regards the past as an unusually rich resource, taking a cue from contemporary artist Kara Walker. Walker’s work showed Brady how nineteenth-century iconography could challenge perceptions of the American South’s history.

By bringing his own historical inquiries to paper and canvas, Brady aims to enrich a viewer’s experience of living in a particular place. “Everybody is so concerned with the day-to-day that they forget about the past,” he says. “In some ways, history may feel trivial. But it’s also interesting to slow down and investigate it. You have a richer experience with your city—and maybe even with the people surrounding you—if you know more about its historical context.”

Finding Art and Community

Although Brady had always drawn, he initially entered college as a pre-med student. That path quickly lost its hold after he enrolled in an art class and found himself absorbed by it.

Another revelation occurred in the library at Tennessee Tech University, where Brady encountered the intricate engravings of German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer. Their remarkable detail made him want to understand how such images were created.

Following that interest led Brady to Middle Tennessee State University, where he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1992. More than an education, MTSU gave him a lasting community.

“A lot of artists in Nashville went to MTSU, including a lot of my good friends,” he says.

Brady later attended Montana State University, completing his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1997. Drawn west by a curiosity he could not fully explain, he encountered a landscape dramatically different from the one he had known in Tennessee.

Montana also introduced him to the nineteenth-century watercolors of Karl Bodmer. Along with Winslow Homer, Bodmer influenced Brady’s use of landscape and color.

The distance from home ultimately sharpened Brady’s understanding of it.

“It helped me understand Tennessee even better because it’s such a different place and a different type of landscape,” he says.

After returning to rural Tennessee and working in construction, Brady followed friends to Chicago. There, he found a studio, exhibited, and taught at Columbia College Chicago. The city’s competitive art world pushed him toward a more serious understanding of his practice.

“If you’re serious about being an artist, the only thing you can do is make work and see what happens,” Brady says. “You can’t sit around and complain. You just have to work.”

Returning to Nashville

Even while living in Chicago, Brady continued developing relationships in Nashville. He began showing with Zeitgeist Gallery in 1998 after introducing his artwork to gallery founder Janice Zeitlin.

A teaching opportunity at Watkins College of Art and Design eventually offered him a path home. Brady joined the Watkins faculty in 2006, teaching drawing, printmaking, foundations, and independent study.

“Watkins at the time was a wonderful place,” he says. “There were really high-quality art students and faculty, and we had good synergy going on.”

The position also brought greater stability. In 2008, Brady purchased a house in East Nashville with space for a studio. A Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in 2016 helped him finish the workspace, while a Tennessee Arts Commission grant that same year provided further support.

“Owning the place has helped me focus on building art over time in a way I had never been able to do,” he says.

His Dickerson Pike-inspired painting “Streetwalker” also entered the Music City Center’s permanent collection.

Brady remained with Zeitgeist through three locations and nearly 27 years of Nashville’s transformation. The gallery was still operating when his interview was initially conducted in 2025, but closed at the end of that year.

“Zeitgeist has been responsible for my career in many ways, and I’m incredibly grateful,” he says. “Their support has been amazing, not just for me, but for Nashville’s entire art community.”

Brady now tries to extend that support to younger artists. He and his wife, fiber artist Jennifer Haston, also purchase artwork when they can. His East Nashville studio hosted the release of David Piñeros’ book “62,” an event later named the Nashville Scene’s 2025 Best Photography Event.

Watkins’ closure, Nashville’s March 2020 tornado, and the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in close succession. Although the loss of Watkins saddened him, the end of the school unexpectedly gave Brady more time in the studio. He subsequently joined Austin Peay State University as an adjunct professor.

A Monument of Time Spent

Additional studio time did not make Brady a fast painter. One painting may require more than two years to complete as he enters the work, loses his sense of its direction, steps away, and later finds his way back inside it.

“The element of time has been really important for me,” he says.

One sketchbook took 14 years to complete and grew to between 500 and 600 pages. Brady calls it “a monument of time spent.” Its pages preserve discipline, uncertainty, changing ideas, and the gradual development of an artist’s hand.

“It shows the growth and the ebb and flow of ideas,” he says. “Some pages look terrible, and others are really nice. That reflects my psyche, but it also shows growth and decay in ideas, images, and skill.”

In 2021, Brady presented six paintings, five drawings, and eight sketchbooks arranged chronologically in a Zeitgeist exhibition. Years of private accumulation became a visible record of time passing.

His 2024 exhibition, “Optimist’s Journey,” expanded that exploration. The work drew from Pieter Bruegel’s sixteenth-century “Large Landscapes” prints, nineteenth-century illustrations from Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, and contemporary accounts of ʻOumuamua, the interstellar object observed passing through our solar system.

Though separated by centuries, these sources converged around travel and transience.

“We are all passing through this place and time,” Brady wrote in his artist statement for the exhibition.

Between Series

When Brady spoke with Ars Gloria in 2025, he described himself as being between bodies of work. Reading had generated ideas in the past, as had unexpected encounters with graffiti, painted-over marks, torn paper, unfamiliar colors, and unusual shapes.

“I think artists have a strong affinity for their unconscious or subconscious,” he says. “There’s always something unexpected that can happen.”

Rather than pursuing monumental projects, Brady continues painting and drawing while waiting for the next idea to reveal itself.

“Some years are better than others in terms of productivity, but I keep hammering on,” he says. “One of my friends said I make art like I’m plowing a field.”

Since that interview, Brady has begun working with Nashville’s Red Arrow Gallery. His paintings “Hydra” and “Lake Camp” appeared in the gallery’s 2026 group exhibition, “Nashville Hot Summer: Edition 4.”

An Artist-Poet’s Document

Despite years spent in Montana, Chicago, and Nashville, Brady remains tied to rural Tennessee. He values its landscapes, seasons, people, and subtle sense of humor while recognizing the tensions created by the state’s rural-urban divide.

His mother grew up without electricity, while older relatives in Spencer organized their lives according to the seasons.

“Time for rural people is different,” Brady says. “I think that’s one reason I don’t get so caught up in time in my work. Everything is steady.”

That steadiness exists alongside the ebb and flow of history. Brady hopes his artwork will preserve something recognizable about Nashville and Tennessee for viewers encountering it long after the present has become the past.

“I would like people to look at my work a hundred years from now and say, ‘This is what an artist-poet would have been looking at in Nashville. This is what the city looked like. These are some of the things people were thinking about,’” he says. “I want it to be a document for the future. I want it to be relevant to the culture.”

For further information about Brady Haston and his work, visit his  website and  social media.

Editor’s Note: This artist profile is part of a statewide series highlighting Tennessee artists participating in Ars Gloria, a visual arts initiative presented by the Tennessee Press Association and the Tennessee Art League. Follow Ars Gloria on Facebook and Instagram for additional artist features, competition news and updates throughout the year.

To Nashville artist Sharon Harms, still life is anything but lifeless. And each object found on one of her canvases is brimming with vitality and meaning.

“My art is hyperrealistic, narrative still life,” she explains. “It’s a response to the symbolism that I see in man-made objects that people interact with.”

Those objects can include anatomical models, vintage toys, typewriters, glass figurines, and advertising ephemera. Sharon gathers them without a specific story in mind, responding instead to symbolism, memory and an instinctive sense that certain things belong together. Every composition begins with an object that captures her curiosity, something that seems to have more to say than its surface suggests.

As other objects are added, connections appear, and unexpected stories begin to emerge. “I’m a visual storyteller,” Sharon says. “And that comes from my graphic design background.”

A Designer from the Beginning

That background stretches back more than half a century. Raised in rural western Michigan, Sharon could draw accurately from an early age. One of her earliest artistic fascinations came from her family’s “Golden Book Encyclopedia Set.” The covers featured still-life illustrations with a trompe l’oeil quality.

“When I was eight or nine years old, I used to just stare at those encyclopedias,” she recalls. “I couldn’t get enough of the covers of those books.”

The thought was simple: “Boy, I don’t know how you do this, but I sure would like to learn!”

At ten or eleven, she made pop-up greeting cards, gluing items inside so that objects emerged when the card opened. “There was always this designer and maker in me,” Sharon says. “I was one of those kids who said, ‘I can do that!’”

By sixteen, that instinct had become a profession. In 1973—while still in high school—Sharon received an opportunity to apprentice at a graphic design studio for class credit. She never really left the industry.

She graduated at seventeen and later enrolled part-time at Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids. Without money or family support, Sharon lived at the YWCA, eventually becoming weekend manager of a facility housing people dealing with homelessness, addiction, and domestic abuse.

Even there, however, her design education continued. Friends from school helped Sharon turn the YWCA basement into a makeshift studio, and before long they were coming to her for instruction.

“I had already been working in graphic design and art direction for three years at this point,” she says. “And I knew a lot of technical things that the other kids weren’t really being taught at the school.”

Sharon might have anywhere from three to ten students gathered around a table while she worked, critiqued their projects, and showed them techniques.

Eventually, unable to afford tuition, she left school after one year. “I thought if I was qualified to teach, I don’t know that I need to go to school!”

Sharon thought of herself less as an artist at the time than as a visual designer. “It might sound arrogant to say this, but I always felt that I just knew how things should look.”

Her original dream had been architecture. She comes from a family of engineers and says she has often thought more like one herself. “I think I’m a hybrid of different abilities in many ways.”

That combination of artistic instinct and technical thinking would continue to shape her career.

The Discipline of Design

In 1977, Sharon returned full-time to the design studio where she had started. Roughly a year later, she left Michigan for Denver with $200, a van, and no contacts.

She lived out of the van briefly before finding another design job.

Confidence, she admits, was not necessarily what drove the decision.

“No, I never did!” she says when asked whether she felt prepared. “And I was a little stupid, of course. But it all worked out.”

Graphic design in that era still required drawing ability. Layouts were drawn by hand, and art directors had to communicate ideas visually before finished designs could be produced.

“We used to just sketch everything out,” Sharon says. “All of our layouts were hand-drawn.”

Her career advanced quickly. Sharon eventually joined the Adolph Coors Company’s internal graphic design operation, producing promotional work that reached national and international audiences. Still in her twenties, she rose into a supervisory role overseeing other designers and art directors.

“I started so early that even though I was so young, I was ahead of some of my older coworkers.”

Over the years, Sharon moved through agencies in cities including Cleveland, St. Louis, Miami, and Nashville, along with production work in Los Angeles and New York. Her clients ranged from regional businesses to recognizable national brands, including Coors, Skittles, Twix, and Anheuser-Busch products.

But the size of the client was never necessarily the point. Sharon was interested in working for agencies that wanted “smart advertising that made a connection with the audience.”

The work should be interesting. Artful. Clever. Funny.

“That’s what I tried to develop, and that was the goal I always reached for!”

Smaller agencies also gave Sharon something she valued: autonomy.

She could get to know clients directly rather than being insulated from them through layers of a large organization. “I was a good listener; in meetings, my clients would talk about their brands, and I would immediately start formulating ideas for how to tell their stories.”

That approach eventually became central to the way Sharon understood her profession.

“Advertising should be thought of as a form of storytelling,” she says. “As a designer and art director, it was my job to visually bring the stories to life.”

In advertising, a good visual should pay off the headline. Her paintings now reverse that process. “I paint the visual first and then come up with a title that expands meaning to the piece,” Sharon explains.

When the Client Says “No”

Advertising also taught Sharon what to do when an idea failed.

At one point, she developed a campaign for Edy’s Ice Cream that she loved. Sharon thought the proposed posters and full-color magazine ads were beautiful and believed the campaign could win awards.

The client rejected it. Sharon was devastated and angry enough that she considered walking out. But her writing partner offered another perspective: “Now, you’ve got an opportunity to do something even better.”

The comment stuck. Sharon reworked the campaign into black-and-white newspaper advertising. She says the result was better. It ran regionally, won awards, and ultimately became part of her portfolio.

“Hearing that changed me,” she says of her writing partner’s advice. “A lot.”

She still fights for ideas and maintains strong opinions about what works creatively. But rejection no longer necessarily means defeat. “If you get another chance at the bat, you can probably do something even better if you try.”

That lesson would become particularly important when Sharon finally became a full-time painter.

After moving to Nashville, she worked at agencies including The Buntin Group and Lewis Communications before moving into freelance healthcare advertising. Her clients included HCA Healthcare (HCA) and Vanderbilt Health.

The HCA work grew considerably. Sharon hired designers, a writer, and production personnel while handling video, rebranding, enterprise messaging, and advertising.

By then, she felt decades of experience converging. “It felt like all the experience I had earned had finally paid off when executing these projects.”

But the work was exhausting.

Sharon planned to retire at the end of 2020. Then COVID-19 arrived earlier that year, and HCA indefinitely paused all her projects as healthcare organizations shifted priorities.

She took it as a clean break.

“I knew immediately that it was my chance to go to work in the studio and start painting again.”

Painting had always been part of the retirement plan. Sharon had attempted to pursue it while working, but the advertising business left little energy.

“I would always come home way too tired to pick up a brush.”

When the career finally ended, there was no uncertainty about what came next.

“When I retired, I had no doubt that I was going to start painting again.”

She was entering professional fine art in her 60s, but Sharon did not see herself as beginning from zero.

“In many ways, being older was a huge advantage for me,” she says. “I had a lot of life experience to draw from. It gave me awareness and confidence I didn’t have in my 20s, 30s, or even in my 40s.”

“I feel like I was already a professional artist before I started painting.”

Creating Her Own Box

Still, one unexpected problem emerged.

For decades, clients set the parameters, and Sharon was tasked with solving the creative problems within them.

Suddenly, nobody was providing the box.

“When I first decided to paint for myself, I struggled quite a bit,” she says. “I was so used to working on projects that started with a set of limitations.”

Unlimited possibility was not necessarily liberating.

“When you’re facing endless possibilities, you don’t necessarily see a direction to take that excites you. It’s like everything becomes white noise.”

Constraints, Sharon realized, could be useful.

“You can treat working within parameters like being trapped in a box. Or you can choose to see the parameters as both a filter and a framework.”

Her solution was to create her own.

“As an artist, you really have to know who you are, what you’re doing, what you want to do, and why you want to do it,” Sharon says. “That’s your box. Those are self-inflicted parameters, and you can grow them.”

“That’s much better than just flailing in the wind.”

Where Intuition Meets Precision

Advertising had also given Sharon another habit: rationale.

“I’m more comfortable having a rationale for how I approach painting,” she says.

That rationale becomes clearer when considering the artists and movements that shaped her.

Trompe l’oeil fascinated her from childhood, including the work of Claude Yvel. Sharon is careful to distinguish her paintings from traditional trompe l’oeil, but the idea of creating three-dimensional presence on a two-dimensional surface has always appealed to her.

Later came the photorealists.

Audrey Flack’s large-scale still lifes became particularly influential. Sharon also cites Chuck Close, Ralph Goings, and Richard Estes, whose paintings of reflections in glass made a lasting impression.

“I usually try to represent elements of glass in my work,” Sharon says. “I like the notion that I can make it look transparent and fool the eye.”

Then there is surrealism.

Sharon says she “just can’t get enough” of René Magritte, particularly his ability to tap into the unconscious mind while maintaining precise technique.

“I love how he was able to use dreams and bypass logic but do it with the precision of an engineer or designer,” she says. Her own compositions begin intuitively.

“There’s no agenda,” Sharon says. “It’s all intuition. I let the objects tell me what to do.”

In Sharon’s mind, that intuitive process matters as much as the finished image. This distinction informs her response to critics who question the usefulness of photorealism in an age of ubiquitous photography.

She believes such criticism overlooks artistic motivation. Her goal in painting is to bring “into existence a presence on a two-dimensional canvas” through her own hand.

A loose rendition would not have the same resonance. Nor would simply taking a photograph. “That’s a view that prevents one from looking at art as a personal projection of the artist,” she says.

The final image is only part of what matters. “It’s the pursuit of the art, not just the product itself.”

Sharon describes painting as an intensely focused activity. The process creates a space in which she can remain present with the objects, ideas and associations developing before her.

“I’m taking intangible ideas, symbolism, emotion, and thoughts, and transferring them to the canvas through the objects that I paint,” she says.

“And in that process of giving presence to objects, I’m able to experience intense presence and focus within myself.”

For Sharon, the ordinary object is therefore never merely ordinary.

A still life can contain memory, cultural meaning, symbolism, and fragments of a story that neither the painter nor the viewer necessarily understands just by looking at the individual objects.

“The still life is not an endpoint but a doorway,” she writes in her artist statement. “My work is a space where intuition and precision meet, where the imagined becomes real, and where nothing is simply still.”

Sharon’s work is currently on view at the Customs House Museum through Oct. 22.

Beyond that exhibition, she is already looking toward a more personal body of work. “I am working on a series of paintings that are more personal,” she says. “I want to tell some specific stories from my life. My way of painting is very slow, so I’m also exploring ways to speed up the process. I have a lot of stories to tell.”

For further information about Sharon Harms, visit her website and social media.

Editor’s Note: This artist profile is part of a statewide series highlighting Tennessee artists participating in Ars Gloria, a visual arts initiative presented by the Tennessee Press Association and the Tennessee Art League. Follow Ars Gloria on Facebook and Instagram for additional artist features, competition news and updates throughout the year.

For as long as he can remember, Tennessee artist Jairo Prado has been making something from almost nothing.

As a child growing up in Colombia, he fashioned toys from old car parts behind his father’s mechanic shop. He painted discarded bottle caps and sold them to classmates during recess. He rescued worn leather shoes from the trash, carefully disassembled them and transformed the material into jewelry and wearable art.

Limited resources did not discourage him. Instead, they became an education in creativity.

“I learned to be resourceful with what was available,” Prado says. “Ingenuity helps creativity. Anything can be transformed into art if you have the vision for it.”

That lesson would follow him across continents and through a career spanning decades.

Today, Prado is widely recognized as one of Tennessee’s leading visual artists, working across painting, sculpture, mosaics, mixed media and public art. During more than 40 years in Tennessee, he estimates he has received roughly 60 awards and more than 80 throughout his lifetime.

Among the milestones he considers most meaningful are the Best of Show Purchase Award at the 34th Tennessee All-State Exhibition in 1995; inclusion in the Tennessee State Museum’s Millennium Collection in 2001; a National Endowment for the Arts creation grant supporting his large-scale mosaic mural “Migration” in 2011; and the Tennessee Arts Commission’s Individual Artist Fellowship for Craft in 2022.

Each recognition, he says, affirmed years of persistence and exploration. Yet even after decades of acclaim, Prado hesitates to speak as though he has arrived.

“I’m still learning,” he says. “I don’t think I will ever stop learning and looking for solutions to create ideas.”

Learning Through Exploration

Born in 1947 in Cali, Colombia, Prado spent most of his childhood in Bogotá, where the city’s museums, churches, architecture and surrounding landscapes made an early impression.

His desire to experience art was so strong that he sometimes skipped school — in the name of another kind of education.

“I would go downtown to hang out with the saints, look at the carvings, study the decorated walls and the murals,” Prado recalls. “I spent time studying the etchings of Dürer and the other greats. I was taught by the pre-Columbian art all around me and the primitive art that came from the indigenous people of the Amazon.”

His fascination began even earlier. One of his first memories is watching a university student paint on an easel in his grandmother’s courtyard. Told to wash his face before returning to watch, the 4-year-old Prado came back and observed the entire process.

“I knew then I wanted to be an artist,” he says.

His curiosity eventually led to formal training. Prado earned a commercial art degree in Bogotá while studying ceramics, art history and fine arts at several institutions. He learned under artists including Antonio Madero and Carlos Rojas as he continued to develop his own ideas.

Recognition followed early. Prado says he began receiving awards as a teenager. Around 1968, he received the top award presented to a graduating commercial art student at the Academy of Pittsburgh in Bogotá. Faculty members told him it had been nearly a decade since they had seen student work of that quality.

“I’ve always considered myself self-taught, although I did get a lot of formal education along the way,” he says. “Everything in my world taught me.”

A New Home

By the early 1980s, Prado had established himself as both an artist and entrepreneur in Colombia.

After studying fine arts in Bogotá, he launched a business designing wearable art, including clothing, hats, shoes, purses and other leather goods. At its height, the company operated its own factory, employed about 40 people and sold products throughout Colombia and neighboring countries.

Prado remained committed to originality rather than mass production, but political and economic instability gradually changed the course of his life.

“In the early ’80s, the economies of those once-wealthy countries, particularly Venezuela, began to unravel due to political and economic unrest,” he says. “I closed my factory and started painting still lifes, landscapes and portraits.”

Crime also had become an increasingly common reality.

“People chose crime as a way of life because there was no other way to make a living honestly,” Prado says. “It wasn’t long before the economic and political uncertainty started to influence my decision to relocate. I didn’t want to choose the life of a criminal, so I left the country.”

Prado set his sights on the United States. Before settling in Tennessee in 1984, he visited several cities, including New York and New Orleans. He ultimately chose Nashville for its cultural opportunities, slower pace, access to nature and proximity to family.

The transition was not easy.

Prado’s early years in Nashville were marked by isolation, communication barriers and limited transportation. The city had a much smaller Hispanic population than it does today and fewer opportunities for visual artists.

Determined to build a life in his new home, Prado enrolled at Watkins College in 1987. Already an accomplished artist, he began exhibiting through organizations including the Nashville Artist Guild and Visual Arts Alliance of Nashville and developed relationships with local galleries.

Over time, those connections led to regional exhibitions, public murals and large-scale commissions.

Looking back, Prado sees his artistic development reflected in Nashville’s evolution.

“Nashville has been an interesting city for me to live,” he says. “It’s grown culturally over time, really in parallel to my own personal growth as an artist. The grassroots artists of that day were very committed to building community and seeing Nashville become a more cultural place that is more supportive of visual artists.”

Many Creative Directions

Asked to describe his work, Prado speaks first of ideas rather than medium.

“My work reflects a fusion of colliding worlds,” he says. “Ancient and modern, Colombian and American, urban and rural, abstract and representational, fine art and cultural craft, external and internal, agony and ecstasy, protest and celebration.”

That outlook has led him across an unusually broad range of disciplines. His portfolio includes paintings, mosaics, wood sculpture, plaster figures, mixed-media constructions, textiles, etchings and public art.

Rather than pursue a single recognizable style, Prado allows the subject to determine the medium.

“I choose a particular medium or method based on the subject matter or the vision for the outcome,” he says. “I’m constantly exploring and looking to push the boundaries of what I already know and what I have already done as an artist.”

That philosophy runs counter to conventional artistic advice.

“Academic voices typically encourage artists to continually develop a singular style over time,” Prado says. “But my signature style has been crafted through the development of dozens of unique bodies of work.”

The approach has required him to keep learning new materials, techniques and processes.

“Out of this constant exploration has come a more expansive vocabulary of materials and processes that encourage originality and an emphasis on craftsmanship,” he says. “That has required a dedication to developing the technical skills needed to create effectively with each medium.”

Despite the variety, Prado points to two elements that consistently unite his work: color and movement.

“Color is a key element in much of my work,” he says. “Movement is another essential element.”

Through vivid palettes, diagonal lines and repeating geometric and organic forms, he wants viewers to experience more than an image.

“I want you to feel the work through your feelings, not just your eyes.”

His willingness to embrace unfamiliar media has led to some of the defining projects of his career.

In 2010, Prado and his wife, Susan, accepted a commission requiring them to work in mosaic on a scale they had never attempted. The result was “Migration,” a 30-foot architectural mosaic created for the façade of Casa Azafrán Community Center.

“We dove headfirst into the deep end of that medium,” Prado recalls. “We had no real understanding of the learning curve we would need to take on, except the faith that ‘we’ll figure it out.’”

Mosaic offered both artistic and practical advantages. Unlike a painted mural, it could withstand decades of exposure to Nashville’s changing seasons. It also allowed Prado to apply lessons from painting, mixed media and sculpture to a new form.

The project became a turning point.

“It established us as real contributors to the portfolio of public art mosaics in America,” Prado says.

The work opened the door to additional commissions, including a terrazzo medallion installation at Nashville International Airport.

“The confidence that came from our work in mosaic translates to terrazzo, to concrete and plexiglass and all types of other mediums,” he says.

The Work of the Artist

For Prado, creating art has never been simply about inspiration.

It is about hunger — the determination to learn and the discipline to keep working.

As a young man, when he could not afford formal instruction, he found other ways to learn.

“I was very determined to be an artist even if that wasn’t the easiest or most acceptable path,” he says. “When there were no funds for me to enroll in art institutions, I would sit in as the guest of friends who were enrolled, on the back row of lecture halls and studio workshops, taking every available opportunity to grow my skill.”

Art gradually became more than an occupation.

“When I realized that art could be a tool for expressing all my emotions, life experiences and viewpoints, there was no going back.”

That commitment shaped the way Prado thinks about creativity.

“You have to decide to value the pursuit of your own creativity more than you value the circumstances in life that would try to discourage you from continuing forward,” he says. “And you have to put in the work.”

It is an idea he returns to often.

“The spirituality of the artist is cleaning brushes, developing the discipline and the consistency,” Prado says. “It’s not enough to have the idea; you have to do the idea.”

The same outlook extends beyond the studio. Prado believes artists should continue learning throughout their lives, regardless of experience or recognition.

“My work is still developing,” he says. “I enjoy exploring mediums and overcoming new challenges, which always makes the work stronger.”

As Prado became more established in Tennessee, he increasingly devoted time to helping others discover their own creative voices. His curiosity led him into classrooms, community centers, public art projects and mentorship — work that became as defining to his career as the pieces hanging on gallery walls.

Leaving a Cultural Legacy

Today, Prado continues to balance public commissions with personal studio work. While completing mural projects and developing new proposals, he has returned to paintings and mosaic sculptures that have waited for his attention.

More than four decades after arriving in Tennessee, he remains motivated by the opportunity to create work that challenges both himself and the communities he serves.

Prado believes his greatest legacy will be measured not only by the art he has created, but also by the creative community he has helped build.

Through exhibitions, public installations, teaching and community partnerships, he has supported other artists, created spaces for neighborhoods to tell their stories and contributed to Tennessee’s cultural landscape.

It is a legacy he hopes will continue long after individual projects are complete.

“I’ve been able to contribute to the creative landscape of this vibrant city in meaningful ways,” Prado says. “That is my legacy, and I hope to keep going and building and fulfilling all the dreams still left to do.”

To learn more about the work of Jairo Prado, visit the Prado Studio website and social media.

Editor’s Note: This artist profile is part of a statewide series highlighting Tennessee artists participating in Ars Gloria, a visual arts initiative presented by the Tennessee Press Association and the Tennessee Art League. Follow Ars Gloria on Facebook and Instagram for additional artist features, competition news, and updates throughout the year.

Discussing the role of error in creativity in Psychology Today, psychiatrist Albert Rothenberg, M.D., observed that “errors constantly occur with the technical and demanding work of creation in art.” According to the Milan Art Institute, many artists discover that creative block often begins when mistakes become something to fear.

Tennessee artist Peach McComb has reached the opposite conclusion. After decades at the easel, the award-winning painter believes an errant brushstroke is no real threat to a painting.

 Rather, hesitation is.

“If I’m painting over something and I make a mistake, then so what?” she says. “You’ve made a mistake. What’s the worst that can happen?”

It’s a philosophy that she repeats when teaching or advising other artists who hesitate before making their first move. The worries that stop them dead in their tracks—concerns of criticism, failure, or just not being good enough—are something Peach has little patience for.

“A blank canvas is an invitation to experiment. It’s not something to be feared,” she says. “And if you wind up making something dreadful, paint over it.”

For Peach, “just keep going” is more than creative advice. It is a mantra shaped by discipline, resilience, and decades of experience. She believes that progress belongs to those willing to move through uncertainty, and that the desire for creative comfort is a trap.

That same philosophy is evident in her paintings. Working across watercolor, oils, acrylics, and pastel, Peach chooses each medium according to the emotional and technical demands of the subject. Whether painting Tennessee landscapes, historic architecture, or intimate still lifes, she is less interested in rigid formulas than in capturing the fleeting qualities of light, color, and place. Her paintings balance confident brushwork with quiet observation, allowing light to do much of the storytelling. In lieu of photographic precision, she suggests form through expressive strokes and carefully observed color, inviting viewers to experience a place rather than simply observe it.

Like the artist herself, the paintings reward decisiveness over hesitation. They reflect the same belief that has guided Peach’s life: progress comes from moving forward, not waiting for certainty.

The Courage to Start Over

It was not a path anyone—including Peach—expected to take. Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, Peach was one of four children. “My grandmother, mother, and father were all creative people,” she says. “They all liked trying new things, and my mother—who taught the fifth grade—was always trying to find something new and fun for her students to do. My father also taught, but he was a professional choreographer and dance master. He helped form the New England Chapter of the Dance Masters of America.”

Although creative interests were always present, they gradually gave way to more practical pursuits.

After graduating from high school, Peach decided to serve her country by enlisting in the United States Air Force (USAF). She recalls being among the first groups of women assigned to work on the flightline, entering aircraft maintenance as the USAF expanded opportunities for women in previously male-dominated specialties.

“It’s a bit technical and I can’t go into too much detail, but my specialty in the USAF involved avionics electronic countermeasures for jets, including the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II. These jets rely on sophisticated systems for protection during combat operations,” she says.

Peach valued her time in the military, staying with it for much of her professional life. After her time in active duty ended, she continued serving through the Air Force Reserve and the Air National Guard.

During her military career, Peach relocated several times, and at one point found herself living in Illinois. Familial obligations would bring her to Middle Tennessee in 1995, and she would be pleasantly surprised by her new surroundings.

Describing her appreciation for the Volunteer State, she says, “I like Tennessee because it’s just so green here. And the people here are so wonderful, so friendly and kind. I’ve gotten quite a good reception from them, even though I am a carpetbagging Yankee.”

After 24 years, she retired from military service. She stayed in the workforce, though, putting her systems analyst and project manager background to good use. She found work with the state government, and much later moved to the private sector.

Over this period, painting would gradually become a larger part of her life.

In 1997, Peach was working on renovating her bedroom. In the process of removing a set of shelves, she found herself staring at a damaged wall. Rather than simply repairing it, Peach decided to transform it. She painted a large abstract mural filled with flowers and organic forms.

A friend of Peach’s—visual artist Mary Field Neville, who was something of a mother figure to Peach—came to her home. When Peach showed Mary the mural in her bedroom, Mary did not merely compliment it. She recognized something Peach hadn’t yet seen in herself.

“She told me, Miss Peach, ‘I think we found you a new career,’ ” Peach says.

Peach laughed. But Mary wasn’t joking. Earlier, Mary had encouraged Peach to replace reproductions and commercial prints throughout her home with original artwork. Now she was suggesting something even more profound: Peach was capable of creating those originals herself.

Peach took the advice seriously. The reproductions came down. One by one, original paintings took their place. Many of these original paintings were her own.

Looking back, Peach is quick to admit that those first paintings were not particularly good. “They were awful,” she says. “But the goal isn’t to produce something perfect. The goal is to improve.”

Over the years that followed, Peach devoted herself to learning the craft, attending workshops and painting outdoors.

Lessons in Truth 

The idea of truth surfaces repeatedly whenever Peach discusses art. This was something that Mary instilled in her early on.

“Mary never pulled her punches. She knew that she didn’t have to with me, but she was always one to offer informed critiques, and not empty compliments,” she says. “And whenever I spoke to her about my art, I always knew that she wasn’t going to steer me wrong or lie to me.”

For Peach, an opinion that is honest, informed, and given solely to help is one of the greatest gifts any mentor can provide. And in an age of instant encouragement and social media approval, Peach believes meaningful criticism has become increasingly rare. She suspects much of that reluctance stems from a fear that even constructive criticism will be interpreted as a personal attack instead of genuine help. 

To some, sharing feedback honestly to be helpful can feel almost radical. Peach has a different take: Honest critique is not cruelty. It is generosity. It is the supply of a needed resource. Artists cannot improve if everyone simply tells them that their work is wonderful.

“People say they want a critique,” she says with a laugh. “Sometimes they really don’t.”

Throughout her artistic career, Peach sought artists who challenged her. Workshops with respected painters such as Joel Knapp and Roger Dale Brown refined both her plein air technique and her understanding of composition. Brown, in particular, reinforced a lesson Mary Field Neville had taught years earlier: surround yourself with people willing to tell you the truth.

To Peach, artistic growth is not driven by occasional bursts of inspiration but by thousands of small decisions repeated over years of steady practice. That philosophy explains why she continued seeking new insights long after becoming an accomplished painter herself.

As her confidence grew, so did recognition from her peers. She earned Signature status in the Tennessee Watercolor Society, one of the organization’s highest professional distinctions. Her paintings have also found their way into distinguished collections, including the permanent collection of the Tennessee State Museum. Along the way, Peach became active in organizations such as the Tennessee Art League, Nashville Artist Guild, Oil Painters of America, the American Impressionist Society, and The Chestnut Group. She currently serves as Arts Advocacy Chair for the Tennessee Watercolor Society and has taught watercolor classes through institutions like Monthaven Arts & Cultural Center.

Never Done Learning 

Recognition, however, was never the destination. Instead, it became another opportunity to give back through teaching and mentorship.

Over the years, Peach became known among fellow artists as someone willing to offer thoughtful, direct criticism. The habits she developed during military service—discipline, intellectual curiosity, and a commitment to honest communication—gave her a natural foundation as a teacher.

Yet despite decades of experience, Peach insists she is still a student.

She continues attending workshops, experimenting with new subjects and media, and painting outdoors whenever possible, believing that mastery is never a destination but a lifelong pursuit.

That same curiosity shapes the way she experiences the world.

“The world is full of beauty,” she says. “But you have to tear yourself away from distractions and actively look for it.”

Painting, she believes, teaches people to notice what others overlook—to see changing light, subtle color, and quiet moments that often pass unnoticed.

If there is a single thread running through Peach’s life, it is the conviction that growth belongs to those willing to remain curious, accept honest criticism, and keep moving forward despite uncertainty.

Because, in the end, the worst thing that can happen is remarkably small.

The painting doesn’t work.

You paint over it.

Then you begin again.

Peach McComb’s solo exhibition, “Framed & Dangerous,” is on view at the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center in Clarksville through the end of September. For further information about Peach McComb, visit her website and social media.