EAST
Knoxville
Highlight Events
March 26 - 29, 2026
Chattanooga
Highlight Events
March 5 - 8, 2026 16-18, 2026
The highlight events will include receptions and celebrations at select participating venues.
KNOXVILLE
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In Spring 2026, the KMA will present a solo exhibition by the Chattanooga-born provocateur Wayne White – a multi-faceted artist, designer, and musician who has charted a kaleidoscopic path through multiple frontiers of art and culture. From Emmy award-winning work as Art Director for Pee Wee’s Playhouse and orchestrating pioneering music videos by acts like Peter Gabriel and The Smashing Pumpkins, to crafting illustrations for The New York Times and singing lead in the art band Username Password, White defies convention to revel in the fray of pop culture. He has also been the subject of the epic 2009 monograph Maybe Now I’ll Get the Respect I so Richly Deserve and an eclectic 2012 documentary titled Beauty is Embarrassing, but the breadth of his work still feels under-appreciated. At the KMA, in concert with a wall painting and a wide-ranging survey of his canvases, drawings and sculpture, White will create a newly commissioned, room-sized kinetic puppet inspired by his memories of the South. This show will be a magnet for collaborators, and will open in conjunction with the Big Ears Festival in 2026 – furnishing a marquee platform for White to unleash an especially unique rendition of his idiosyncratic enterprise.
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February 20 - April 25, 2026
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Solo Exhibition by Brittney Boyd Bullock, a Memphis-based visual artist whose practice traces the intimate relationship between craft legacies, material labor, and identity. Working through textiles, beading, and collage, in slow, modular processes, she builds abstracted worlds that honor both personal and collective memory. Her work is grounded in repetition - stitching, beading, spinning, cutting, arranging - each functioning as a form of embodied research and ritual. Bullock draws on archival photographs, family histories, and Southern craft traditions to examine what has been preserved, overlooked, or obscured within Black American life. Rather than reenacting memory, she reframes it by treating materials as carriers of cultural knowledge. Her signature use of grids, layered images, textiles, and fiber reflects her interest in labor as a site of beauty, resistance, and renewal.
CHATTANOOGA
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The Hunter Invitational, conceived by Hunter Museum Chief Curator Nandini Makrandi and launched by the museum in 2007, highlights emerging trends and current events through the work of artists practicing in the Southeast. Opening January 2026, its fifth iteration will present new or expanded works by eight artists – including Anna Carll, Corrine Colarusso, Craig Drennen, Amie Esslinger, Jerushia Graham, Katie Hargrave with Meredith Lynn, and Althea Murphy-Price – offering audiences a chance to discover some of the region’s most innovative talent.
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Shapeshifting by Raymond Padron
Jan. 22 to Feb. 27, 2026
4501 Amnicola Highway Chattanooga TN 37406
10am- 4pm M-F
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In this body of work, Padron employs both traditional and contemporary woodworking techniques alongside the sculptural practice of relief carving to create representational forms. These objects, seemingly flattened against the wall, imply an emptiness—more specifically, the absence of a body. This deactivation, combined with shifts in scale, distances the objects from lived experience and moves them toward an almost iconic presence. Padron understands these familiar forms as symbolic of range of performative roles he identifies with, as well as for the people in his life—personally and culturally—who have helped shape those roles. The work considers how such roles are learned, inherited, and performed within traditions, yet continually reshaped through improvisation. This unresolved relationship between tradition and improvisation is central: tradition offers a structure to confront, respond to, or adopt, while improvisation creates space for expression and adaptation within and beyond those constraints. Through these objects, the work invites contemplation of the tension between the ideal, the expected, and lived experience.
Raymond Padron is a multidisciplinary visual artist, experienced in a broad range of processes and materials. Most recently, he has been focused on using both traditional and contemporary woodworking techniques to create relief carvings. Born in 1983, he grew up in the Northern Virginia suburbs of DC. In 2005 after receiving his B.A. in sculpture and graphic design from Messiah College in Grantham, PA, he moved south to the city of Chattanooga, TN. In 2011 he received his M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has since returned to Chattanooga where he now works in his studio, exhibits nationally and teaches.
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Paradise, Curated by Jen Sova and Graham Feyl
Friend of a Friend, Works by Brooke Frank and Bucky Miller
Hard to Handle, Organized by Jackson Hussey
Feb. 27- June 6, 2026
1250 E 13th Street, Chattanooga TN 37408
Wed - Sat, Noon - 6:30
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We have three exhibitions on view: "Paradise," curated by J Sova and Graham Feyl, which explores how do those historically pushed to the margins build their own worlds and sense of paradise in order to survive, connect, and seek pleasure. Other exhibitions on view include "Friend of a Friend," organized by Bucky Miller and Brooke Frank, and "Techno-animism" organized by Jackson Hussey.
Artists in "Paradise" include: Hannah Banciella, Michael Childress, E. Saffronia Downing, Nicholas V. Elbakidze, Angie Jennings, Aaron McIntosh, Jorge Palacios, Lyra Purugganan, Kit Rutter, Brian Smith, J. Sova, Lisa Waud, Yu Yan.
