Red Grooms Tennessee Fox Trot Carousel: The First Drawings, Original Carvings, & New Wall Paintings

David Lusk Gallery is excited to announce an exhibition of new and historical Red Grooms works about the Tennessee Fox Trot Carousel. This dynamic exhibition takes viewers behind the scenes of one of Nashville’s most iconic public artworks, an artwork that has been hidden from public view for decades. The exhibition reunites Grooms’ original sketches, the foam carvings used for the Carousel figures, a recent sketch of the Carousel, and drawings that Grooms will create directly on the Gallery walls.

Grooms, born in Nashville in 1937, began drawing ideas for the Carousel figures in 1996, the figures were then developed and cast into carousel pieces and the Tennessee Fox Trot Carousel opened to the public in downtown Tennessee in 1998, and closed in 2003.  This exhibition offers an intimate glimpse into Grooms’ creative process and his particular skills as a cultural historian.  Where most carousels had horses to ride, the Tennessee Fox Trot Carousel replaced the horses with historical characters from Tennessee’s colorful past (HG Hill, Kitty Wells, Andrew Jackson, Sequoia, William Edmundson, etc.)

Each of the 20 sketches on paper showcase his signature animated, whimsical style and introduces the characters who would later become the beloved carousel figures. From musicians to historical icons, Grooms’ drawings are lively, colorful tributes to the spirit of the state. The accompanying foam carvings—precursors to the final carousel figures—offer viewers a tactile element to the show, allowing them to visually connect with and understand the sculptural process. With the sketches, the carvings represent the artist’s transition from paper to three dimensions, transforming flat lines into the exuberant, full-bodied personalities that Grooms brought to life.  This month Grooms also created a new large triptych drawing of the Carousel that shows how 30 years has not dimmed his excitement for this project.  Further, during the exhibition installation at the Gallery Grooms will personally create a large wall drawing for new Carousel figures.

Grooms grew up in Nashville and showed a fascination with art at an early age. He took classes at the Tennessee State Children’s Museum, worked for the Nashville artist Juanita Green Williams at her studio on West End Avenue, attended Hillsboro High School, where, during his senior year, he and his friend Walter Knestrick exhibited their paintings at Myron King’s Lyzon Gallery in Nashville.

He studied professionally at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Nashville’s Peabody College, and the New School in New York City. Since the early 1960s his work has been widely exhibited, admired, and collected. Since Ruckus Manhattan, his acclaimed exhibition at Marlborough Gallery in 1976, Grooms has staked his claim as one of America’s most original, inventive, and popular artists. He has received numerous awards and commissions throughout his career, including the National Academy of Design’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. His work can be found in more than forty public institutions, including his monumental “Bus” which was installed this year as a permanent part of the new Rotterdam Museum of Migration.  Presently, a large portion of Ruckus Manhattan is on view at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. He continues to work in his Manhattan studio every day - or at least when he is not in his Tennessee studio in Beersheba Springs.

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