“It’s like the equivalent to a music major having their senior recital,” said Emily Brown, a design communications senior. “This is just the complete culmination of what we’ve done in college.”

Belmont’s art department regularly holds student exhibitions, but this is only the second year that senior art has been organized into a “crawl” between several different on-campus venues.

The art crawl spans a total of four venues: Gallery 121, the Belmont Mansion, the lobby of the Leu Center and the lobby of the Leu Gallery.

Organizers had hoped to make use of the Leu Gallery itself but were unable to secure the space due in part to a conflict with the final days of the “American Experience” exhibit, which has been running since February.

“We’re not able to use the Leu Gallery for reasons that are out of our control,” Brown said. “It is frustrating because that’s one of the best places on campus to display art.”

Despite being unable to utilize Leu, the participating artists are hoping for a good turnout for the event, particularly family, friends and people involved in the arts industry. Brown also hopes that students and other locals will take advantage of the opportunity to support student art.

“It’s becoming a bigger deal as the years go by which is great because a lot of people don’t know much about the art department,” Brown said.

The event comes hot on the heels of final exit interviews for several students, particularly design majors who will present their work to their professors for a grade at 9 a.m. that morning.

“That night is really kind of a party for us. We want it to have that very celebratory vibe.”

And if the art offerings aren’t enough to bring in outsiders, the organizers hope to entice people with free food.

“One good thing about this year is that we have an expanded food budget,” Brown joked. “So, come get some hors d’oeuvres and check out some art.”

There’s just one thing. The gallery takes up less than 7 square feet on a wall, and the artworks inside were created using small paperback pages, measuring 4.5 inches by 7.5 inches. This is Nashville’s Smallest Art Gallery.

In January 2008, after moving his graphic design studio, KNI, into the upstairs office space between Peabody Shoe Repair and the Cosmetic Market, curator Daniel Box discovered a graffiti-scarred panel attached to the wall outside. Neither of the adjacent shop owners claimed ownership and it’s still something of a mystery as to where it actually came from.

“The building is so old, maybe it was a restaurant at one point,” Box suggested.

After getting the go-ahead from his neighbors, Box and a few friends bought some Goo Gone cleaner to remove the graffiti and set to work to refurbish the inside.

After finishing the panel’s makeover, the group installed lights powered by a small solar panel bolted to the top of the gallery. Effectively, the gallery is completely self-sustaining, a point that, nine months later, won them an award for “best environmentally friendly gallery” in the Nashville Scene’s 2008 Best of Nashville awards.

“We’ve gotten a lot of press online, mostly comparing us to other small galleries,” Box said. Although there could conceivably be a smaller gallery, Box is confident that the 120-square-inch space is the smallest operational gallery. Other contenders like Locker 50B, the creation of a Virginia Commonwealth University student who turned her square locker into a gallery, may be smaller, but no longer hold shows.

The only problem with the size: It isn’t always easy to spot. If you couple the compactness of the display with the fact that Tag, a gallery now in the Arcade, once occupied the space upstairs, you have a recipe for confusion.

“The No. 1 question that we get is ‘Where is the gallery?’” Box said. “Sometimes people will come upstairs to our offices looking for the gallery and we have to explain that it’s outside, downstairs.”

Since hosting its inaugural show on the Ides of March in 2008, the Smallest Art Gallery has run a show each month until February’s winter storms caused a break in the streak.

“We’re hibernating for winter,” Box joked. “I have an exhibit ready to go up, but after my fingers went numb putting in the last exhibit, I decided to push it back to March.”
Aside from a couple of themed pieces—the aforementioned “Beware the Ides of March” debut and a later show where local artists made figurines based off a popular design by vinyl toy manufacturer Kidrobot—the gallery has only one mandate for its artists: keep it small.

“You’ve got to let the artists do what they’re going to do,” Box said of his philosophy towards shows in the gallery. Other shows have included photography, cartoons and acrylic on canvas with titles like “Times Are Changing,” “Cut-n-Paste” and “Killer Robots of the Future.”

But while the Smallest Art Gallery quietly celebrates simplicity, everything around it is spreading out. Most recently, Fido expanded into the space once occupied by Taste of Tokyo, while rumors of massive development projects ranging from parking garages to residential space to office high-rises have haunted the stretch of shops for years.

“We can only sign three-year leases and every three years [our landlords] threaten to tear the building down to make something bigger,” Box said. The gallery operates on the face of one of the oldest buildings in the area, which is both a blessing and a curse.

Although the building is sometimes plagued by electrical and heading problems, Box says that he doesn’t mind the inconveniences too much.

“If you lose the oldness of the village, you lose some of the character,” he said.

Box doesn’t intend to make any changes to the gallery, despite the development occurring around him.

“I think from this point on, it’s maintenance,” he said, although he has considered petitioning the Hillsboro Village Merchants Association to put a bench outside of the gallery.

Even with the three-year leases and the economic uncertainty surrounding the space, Box does know one thing about the gallery’s future: “It’s not going to grow.”

According to the PBS Web site, Luray specializes in American cultural history and collectibles and is an expert in art history. Naturally, she should fit right in as a guest speaker for an exhibit featuring American antiques.

The question, however, is whether or not the Leu Art Gallery is well-known enough to draw a crowd to support a nationally-recognized television personality.

“The Leu isn’t treated like a big deal,” Belmont senior Brian Clark said. “I never know when it’s open or if they have new stuff. There seems to be no publicity whatsoever.”

Victoria Boone, director of the gallery, admitted that getting publicity for the exhibits can be a challenge, especially when trying to publicize outside the university. She cited the gallery’s trouble getting publicity in the Nashville Scene, a free local weekly paper, as an example.

“We have a very hard time getting coverage in the [Nashville] Scene,” Boone said. “[They] are an old boy network to me. … It’s a tight-knit group of young men in their 20s and they all kind of pat each other’s backs.”

However, things may be changing, as the gallery did receive coverage from The Tennessean when the Nashville paper decided to run a story about one of its exhibits last August.
In fact, Boone said that things have changed quite a bit for the gallery since she was hired as director five years ago. She was able to start organizing convocation events at the gallery three years ago, which she said has added tremendous visibility to the gallery for students.

The gallery, housed within Belmont’s Lila D. Bunch library, features four exhibits each year, and each opening also serves as a convocation event for students. The openings currently average between 200 and 250 students, which Boone said is a dramatic increase from when the events first started.

“It’s definitely increased over three years, but I would love to have more students and teachers show up,” she said.

Clark said that, other than one time when he went to the gallery out of curiosity, these convocation events have been his only reason for going.

“But I do think it’s a very cool opportunity for students,” he added.

Boone has been able to create a unique opportunity for students and the Nashville community by bringing in a variety of art from established professional artists that can be viewed free of charge.

Boone served as director of the Tennessee Arts Commission Gallery for 13 years, during which she got the opportunity to meet many established artists throughout middle Tennessee and the Southeast. She is able to draw from the knowledge and network yielded from this experience to select artists to display in the gallery.

The last exhibit featured at the gallery consisted of pieces by artist Gary Monroe that portrayed fairly provocative religious scenes of snake handlers.

“Everybody was very supportive,” Boone said when asked about the potential controversy involved with any art treading religious waters.

“It was very provocative and there were a lot of good debates and conversations, but no one thought it should be censored. At all.”

She was quick to commend Belmont for never censoring any of her selections for the gallery.

“They’ve never censored me, which I think is a very important point. … The administration has never put me in a compromising position,” Boone said.

Both Boone and Dr. Judy Bullington, chair of Belmont’s art department, consider the gallery to be quite a nice space for art exhibits.

“We have a very nice, decent gallery space. The lighting is great, which is very important,” Bullington said.

Within the past year, the gallery has had brand new flooring, walls, and lighting installed.

Bullington also mentioned that the university has added signage in order to attract more visitors and increase visibility.

“There’s a humongous sign on the library. I don’t know if people don’t see it or what,” Bullington said.

Boone is confident that a fair amount of students will show to see Luray and the American Experience exhibit, as it will be an opportunity for them to receive convocation credit.

However, beyond these convocation events, there is uncertainty as to what can be done to further publicize the gallery and bring in more students and, especially, non-students.

“It would be a nice thing for tourists to see,” Bullington said. “But whether they know about it or not and are going to take the time to find parking begs another question.”