KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — On the first Friday of every month, more than a dozen exhibitions debut across galleries, studios, and temporary venues in Knoxville. For many in the city’s small art community, the evening can feel either like a confusing rush or a familiar loop. Artist Lauren Farkas’s maps provide a guide through it.
“If everything is on the map, people get overwhelmed,” Farkas told Hyperallergic. “I put all the things that I would like to go to if I had enough time on the map.”
Farkas, a high school art teacher at L&N STEM Academy who has lived in Knoxville for nine years, said she thinks of her teaching as “a long-form performance piece.” She approaches each map as a work of art with the same underlying logic: the geography stays the same, while the exhibitions and events change from month to month.
Centered around the Knoxville Museum of Art (KMA) and the University of Tennessee School of Art, the city’s arts network reaches well beyond downtown’s familiar gallery corridor. It also includes an expanding web of artist-run spaces, community studios, and exhibitions that many visitors might otherwise miss.
