Nashville, TN -- David Lusk Gallery is pleased to present I Got Something to Say, a group exhibition bringing together artists whose practices explore the complexities of lived experience through material, memory, and cultural reflection. Featuring works by Red Grooms, John Salvest, Anne Siems, Tim Crowder, and Briena Harmening, the exhibition examines how the objects we collect and the landscapes we inhabit become mirrors of larger economic, environmental, emotional, and historical systems.
Working across diverse media, each artist employs layered materials as a form of inquiry. Cardboard, recycled business cards, textiles, and fine-line drawing are transformed from ordinary objects into sites of reflection. Through processes of accumulation, transformation, and recontextualization, the artists reveal the ways meaning is embedded within the materials and images that surround us.
Anne Siems creates drawings inspired by memories of her childhood in the woodlands of Germany. Her recent works invite contemplation of identity, nature, and transformation while offering a quiet call for resilience. Her practice reflects the enduring capacity of art to function as both refuge and resistance.
John Salvest approaches the act of salvage through a conceptual lens, collecting and repurposing materials such as romance novels, postage stamps, cigarette butts, and shredded art-world business cards. In his Omnia Vanitas series, Salvest collages hundreds of torn business cards to underscore a central premise: all worldly pursuits are ultimately fleeting. Through these acts of collection and reconstruction, he transforms discarded materials into meditations on value, ambition, and impermanence.
Red Grooms brings his signature blend of satire and spectacle to a series of works centered on the American dollar. Through hand-drawn bills populated by pop-cultural references, political figures, and cartoon-like characters, Grooms distills complex ideas about commerce, identity, and value into a single image. His energetic drawings transform familiar symbols into pointed observations on the intertwined worlds of art and economics.
Tim Crowder engages recognizable imagery through a Surrealist lens, challenging conventional understandings of reality and perception. Combining humor, imagination, and social commentary, he reimagines familiar forms and symbols, encouraging viewers to reconsider the purpose and possibilities of art itself. His layered compositions create space for reflection on the absurdities and complexities of contemporary culture.
Briena Harmening transforms recycled textiles into layered, sculptural surfaces that combine Southern vernacular, humor, and text-based imagery. Drawing from storytelling traditions, politics, and belief systems, she creates visual puzzles through screen printing, stitching, repetition, and masking, disrupting the way language is typically processed. By reclaiming and reworking domestic materials, Harmening explores themes of labor, memory, and cultural inheritance while honoring a lineage of craft passed down through generations of women in her family.
Through their varied approaches to material and image-making, the artists in I Got Something to Say offer distinct perspectives on the systems, memories, and values that shape everyday life. David Lusk Gallery invites visitors to explore this thought-provoking exhibition and engage with works that transform familiar objects and images into powerful acts of observation and inquiry.
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