ARTOBER

Premiere Gallery – Thomas Lavie, Recent Works. For three decades Thomas Lavie has created a dynamic collection of paintings. Both his figurative and abstract works are presented in a wide variety of styles and media, including oils, acrylics, house paint, ink and mixed media collage.

Lavie’s paintings hang in private collections in New York, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Texas, California, Utah, New Mexico, New Orleans and Nashville, including works at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He has had several solo exhibitions in New Orleans and Nashville.

A native of New Orleans, Lavie relocated to Nashville in 2006 after Hurricane Katrina. He began painting while in Medical School in New Orleans and has continued to paint while working as a psychiatrist. Currently he is a psychiatrist with the Mental Health Cooperative as well as serving as assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He resides in Brentwood with his wife Claire and daughters Sophia and Juliet.

Ethel Smith Gallery & Members Gallery – Steve Duffy, Life: Just Like I Pictured It. Steve Duffy is an artist, designer and educator who moved from New York City to Nashville more than ten years ago. Formerly vice president of design for one of the nation's largest retail design firms, he has led his own namesake design firm since 1996. He has designed retail spaces, including department stores, specialty shops and branded fixtures and has been a design consultant on major museums. He is also an artist and owner of Stonywoods Gallery. He believes that the magical quality of art is that it captures the essence of life in a way that is more "real" than reality itself.

Poston3 Gallery – Open Arms Care Corporation Open Arms Care Corporation (OACC), an organization that provides Intermediate Care Facility Services to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Nashville.

OACC has a unique art program called Artistic Realization Technologies (A.R.T.). The program allows OACC clients, many of whom are not able to speak, walk or hold a paint brush, to assume total control of the creative process by securing a laser pointer to their head so they are able to direct a tracker (the person painting) as to how they would like their canvas to look. The tracker works directly with a client and asks an infinite series of yes and no questions. The trackers use a board of colors and a canvas and continue to ask questions until the painting is exactly how the client wants it.

Studio A – Studio A Group's featured artists for October include Fran Werner, Jamie Sanderlin Parks, Jason Erwin, Noriko Register, and Vinci Kolodziejski. A diverse selection of subject matter and of artistic mediums will be presented.