The festival officially kicked off on Friday afternoon, with performances by soul band Lubriphonic, Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars and indie rock stalwarts Cold War Kids. As French indie pop band Phoenix began to set up their equipment, clouds gathered for an ominous sign of what was to come.

Saturday morning, the National Weather Service issued several advisories for Tennessee, including a “particularly dangerous situation” tornado warning for western counties, early in the morning.

As the storm progressed east, Middle Tennessee fell under the same watch advisory at 1 p.m., causing festival organizers to delay the 3 p.m. opening until the advisory ended at 9 p.m. The delay resulted in many bands having their sets called off.

The Delta Saints, who won the coveted “battle of the bands winner” slot scheduled for Saturday afternoon, was the first band to have its set cancelled as weather conditions deteriorated. The Belmont blues rockers, who were featured in the Best of the Best showcase on campus later that night, won a competition Thursday to secure the slot.

“It was an honor to be selected out of so many talented bands that auditioned, and it was a huge disappointment to have our set canceled,” said bassist David Supica. “The most frustrating thing was that the storm let up during our set time (3:30), so we would not have had any issues with rain or lightning.”

A total of four bands were waylaid by the weather, including New Orleans jazz musician Trombone Shorty and Salvador Santana, son of guitarist Carlos Santana. Another, Two Door Cinema Club, was forced to cancel their performance earlier in the week due to volcanic ash shutting down European air space.

The most disappointment from ticket holders, however, came from the announcement that Passion Pit, a popular electronic act known best for their song “Sleepyhead,” would not play the festival due to illness. Response on Twitter and Facebook reflected significant disappointment, with one user half-jokingly asking for “a doctor’s note confirming [their] ‘illness’.”

“Good lord, I am so glad I didn’t pay for my Rites tickets this year,” wrote junior music business major Emily Harris on Facebook in response to the announcement. “I’m bummed I didn’t get to have a Rites experience at all this year.”

Despite the cancellations, Supica understands the predicament that festival organizers were put in.

“Regardless, I can only imagine how hard coordinating an event like that must be, so there’s obviously no hard feelings,” Supica said.

“We’re looking forward to trying out again next year.”

Instead, the university is sponsoring a dialogue group, which has already met several times, on many of the issues set forth in the Bridge Builders proposal.

“Given the history of the type of campus that we are, we didn’t want to create a group to start a campus-wide organization around things that could be potentially divisive or difficult for the institution at this point,” said Dr. Andrew Johnston, Belmont University’s Dean of Student Affairs.

Junior Robbie Maris, who is now Bridge Builders’ president, first started Bridge Builders as a Facebook group. After that group gained members, he and other students held interest meetings to gauge student interest in turning Bridge Builders into an official organization.

Last semester, Maris and others began the process of trying to get this recognition, offering in their rationale that Bridge Builders would strive to:

•     foster examination of the intersection of Christian faith and LGBT related issues through group discussion, use of diverse guest speakers, and possible convocation events on Belmont’s campus;
•     promote healthy, respectful exchange between the Christian and LGBT communities present on-campus.

Earlier this semester, the Student Life Council recommended approval of Bridge Builders. While the council makes recommendations for chartering potential student organizations, the decision ultimately falls on the offices of the provost and student affairs. Belmont Provost Dr. Marcia McDonald decided to take the proposed organization “under review.”

Ultimately, the university decided not to charter Bridge Builders, and instead to sponsor the dialogue group.

“My decision was to respond to a student need for talking about some of the issues that were raised in the Bridge Builders proposal, and we have done that,” McDonald said. “I think it’s a responsible place for us to be as a university, given our broadly ecumenical community.”

According to Johnston, the potential for Bridge Builders to be divisive was one reason the group was not chartered. “Given our own history and the fact that we are a broadly ecumenical institution with all sorts of perspectives on the topic, we recognize that it’s potentially provocative or even divisive,” he said. “We don’t want it to distract or become a problem, and most of all we don’t want it to prove to be something that’s divisive to our university community.”

In the past, however, Belmont has chartered at least one student organization that centers on an issue – abortion – that has long been volatile in society.  Belmont’s Students for Life strives to “educate the campus, students, and faculty regarding abortion and infanticide” and “to put the abortion issue out front, promote a pro-life culture and serve local crisis pregnancy centers.”

Sophomore Pomai Verzon, a political science and international economics major, became involved with Bridge Builders shortly before the group learned it would not be chartered.  She questioned labeling Bridge Builders as potentially divisive while chartering Students for Life.

“I think if you’re going to say that this issue is divisive, it should apply to all issues that are controversial,” Verzon said. “I think it’s absolutely ridiculous for them to have a double standard.”

Johnston said another reason Bridge Builders was not chartered was because  “it was the type of organization that we have not found appropriate for the campus community in the past.”

But Dr. Bonnie Smith, who serves as an informal adviser to the group, disagrees that historical precedent should factor in the decision. “If we truly are student-centered, then we need to acknowledge that our students may bring things to us that make us slightly uncomfortable or that might not jive with our history,” she said.

Maris thought Bridge Builders could serve as a medium to dispel stereotypes about the gay community. Gay people, Maris said, are widely perceived as being promiscuous and rarely Christian.

“We’re not the stereotype,” he said, noting that Bridge Builders includes many students who are both gay and Christian, but welcoming to any interested Belmont students.

According to the group’s rationale, diverse opinions on LGBT issues within the Christian community, and in the wider culture, necessitate “fair, loving acknowledgment of LGBT individuals, their supporters, and their dissenters.”

As an alternative to chartering Bridge Builders as a student organization, Belmont is sponsoring a dialogue group to discuss issues in the group’s proposal. Participants include those who helped create the proposal, as well as other students, faculty and Johnston himself.

“While we didn’t want to charter an organization or to have a campus-wide conversation on that run by just a student organization, we did recognize that the conversation was important,” Johnston said. “We wanted to give that a place to occur.”

So far, the dialogue group is not open. “To have the kind of candid conversation we hope to have, we try to develop a relationship with one another,” he said.

The dialogue group is not designed to forge a consensus or answer a question, but “to produce a rich conversation, so that’s what we’re all working on,” Johnston said.

McDonald said the dialogue group provides a structured environment for a conversation to ensure that diverse perspectives are recognized. “A student organization is not necessarily committed to a range of perspectives,” she explained. University-sponsored dialogue groups, however, have to be “attentive to the broader university community.”

Dr. Andrea Stover, another informal adviser to Bridge Builders, said she believes there are good intentions behind the dialogue groups, and she hopes it will eventually lead to the organization being chartered.

But Stover said she thinks there is uncertainty about the ultimate purpose of the dialogue group.

“I don’t think there is a common goal among the members of the dialogue group, and I think that may be a source of confusion and frustration for people,” she said. That different people involved have different views on the purpose of the dialogue group makes it “a very curious establishment,” she added.

Maris commended Johnston for the way he is conducting the groups. “I think he was happy to take on this. It’s more focused, we can probably get more done.”

Some, however, are not content with a dialogue group alone and believe the organization should have been chartered.

Stover said she was disappointed when the proposal was not chartered, but she said the first dialogue group was supportive and respectful. But she also said, “If it had been in student hands, I don’t think it would have been any less successful.”

Some students felt that approving the organization would have been a better choice than choosing to hold the university-sponsored dialogue group. “A dialogue group kind of sounds like you’re shoving it to the side as opposed to an organization,” said sophomore neuroscience major Roxy Musharrafeia. “I think the organization would be very worthwhile because these issues need to be discussed.”

Sophomore biology major Sylvia Chac said the dialogue group seems like it was created to “appease the public.”

“I feel like the students are a lot more liberal than the people in charge, and I feel like we have a lot of different goals than the people in charge,” said freshman music business major Ale Delgado.

Sponsoring the dialogue group instead of chartering the organization, she said, seems “not so much hatred as disapproval, shoving it under the rug.”

Verzon said that, ideally, “students should be able to have their own sovereignty” to discuss these issues “without other people supervising it.”

Smith said she respects the people in the administration who made the decision, but she thinks that to charter an organization such as Bridge Builders is not out of step with Belmont’s mission. “We are a Christian university, and we are a student-centered university, and we say that we care about courage and compassion and faith,” she said. “Because I want to embody courage, which is part of our mission statement, I am not afraid to help that along.”

Maris specifically pointed out sections of Vision 2015, a document that outlines Belmont’s goals for the next five years and how, to him, not chartering Bridge Builders is not consistent with these sections. “If the administration wants to create a ‘culture of inclusion,’ they need to start owning up to what they preach,” he said.

As Belmont reaches out to enroll 7,000 students by 2015, Maris said, “there’s obviously going to be more gay, lesbian, bisexual students on campus. If we grow more, Belmont is really going to need a home for those students.”

But some students say the decision not to charter Bridge Builders should not come as a surprise. Senior mass communications major Ebony Cosby said she had no problem with the group existing, but felt the decision was understandable at a “school that’s openly Christian.”

And sophomore audio engineering technology major Jeremy Quarles said the dialogue group seemed like “a good solution” if the goal was to discuss how the group could eventually become a student organization.

Johnston said choosing not to charter Bridge Builders as a student organization was not a simple decision. “We want to be sensitive not only to … the number of people that are interested but even those that might not be speaking up or alternative perspectives on either side,” he said.

Whether or not Bridge Builders is ever chartered in the future, Maris thinks it is important to clear up confusion about LGBT issues and Christianity. “For any dissenters out there, you really can be gay and Christian,” he said. “If those in the divide actually opened their minds, it would benefit this campus, this country and above all themselves.”

The plan calls for continuing construction on and off the main campus, including everything from building new athletic facilities in Rose Park and renovating the Belmont Heights Sanctuary to restoring the historic bell tower and possibly redoing the cafeteria.

Most of the construction will occur on the northwest corner of campus near 15th and Wedgewood Avenues, said Steve Lasley, vice president of finance and operations.

The land will be home to the new School of Law scheduled to open to its first class of students for the 2011-12 academic year, as well as new conference center, which will also provide additional classroom space.  Later, the area might also house a new science and religion building.

The plans also call for a revitalization of the soccer field. By fall, the field is expected to be a park-like plaza open to students.

“It’ll be like the National Mall in Washington,” Lasley said. Concrete benches curving out from the new pharmacy building will surround the mall.

A 1000-car parking garage behind Belmont Heights Baptist Church is also planned. A connecting pathway will connect the main campus and the proposed garage.

But after years of construction in the middle of campus, many Belmont students say they are concerned about the ongoing building and the noise, dust and frequent street and sidewalk detours on campus.

“I’m all for Belmont trying to expand and improve everything, but it shouldn’t interfere with people studying or sleeping. When it does, it goes too far,” said Ian Drake, who has lived next to the new dorm construction for the last two semesters.

The new construction should also avoid affecting student life as much as possible,  Drake said.

“It depends on where it’s at and where it’s going to be close to,” he said. “But if it’s far enough away, it won’t have much of an effect, which will be good.”

Lasley is optimistic that what’s ahead may be better for students.

“I think this construction will be much less disruptive than the previous ones,” Lasley said. “It will run a lot smoother than other projects.”

More buildings will house more students, and many current students express concern that the small community feeling that brought them to Belmont is in jeopardy.

“They need to ask students how they feel about it,” said Ryan Combs, one of the first students to learn about Vision 2015. “One of the biggest things they have going for them is their smallness.”
Drake is also concerned about the university’s size, but doubts it will be an issue while he is on campus.

“I guess in the long run it will be good, but now it’s going to just be a pain,” he said.

Some of the construction, including the pharmacy building and the new freshman residence halls, will be completed when students return to campus in August. The psychology building – the red brick building north of the soccer field, will be gone, and that department will be housed in the pharmacy buiding.

Land shouldn’t be an issue with this phase of construction, as Belmont already owns more than 80 percent of the land. Lasley is certain, however, that Belmont will continue to try to buy more land around the area, including property on Ashwood, Delmar, Compton and Bernard avenues.

“There’s a lot of stuff we don’t have in the area,” said Lasley. “But it’s a real slow process to acquire property. It’s hard to come by.”

Combs said he believes that if the school does expand, it will need even more land on which to build.

“I think Belmont has to make a decision. If they want to expand, they’re need to expand with land and not just build on what we have,” he said.

The decision would have its share of consequences to many, Combs said.    “You’re going to lose the community feeling if it happens though.”

“I have one significant disappointment to report and that is related to our diversity goals,” Fisher said. “We have made what I would deem ‘acceptable progress’ in regard to the ethnic diversity of our staff (18 percent) and the ethnic and gender diversity of our Board of Trustees (36 percent). However, the ethnic diversity of our faculty seems to be stuck at about 5 percent and the percentage for our students actually declined last year from 13 percent to 10 percent.”

Seven months later, Fisher unveiled the Vision 2015 document, a five-year-plan for Belmont covering everything from enrollment goals and potential new building projects to turning Belmont into “Nashville’s university.”

The plan also touches on diversity among the faculty and students. Under the heading “Increase Diversity and Increase Cultural Competency” are three bullet points:

• Create a culture of inclusion;
• Actively and intentionally recruit diverse faculty, staff, board, and students;
• Ensure learning experiences that enable students to gain strong intercultural competency.

Over the past 10 years, Belmont has increased in diversity. According to the common set data from 2009-2010, there are more females than males, and the numbers of minorities on campus have risen from the neighborhood of 200 to close to 600. However, as Fisher said, though the numbers have doubled, so has Belmont’s enrollment. “It’s slow progress,” he said.

Diversity can include a wide range of categories, but Dean of Students Dr. Andrew Johnston says Belmont is identifying diversity in terms of race, ethnicity and gender specifically. As far as non-visible minorities, religious or economic, for example, Belmont does not have a plan to target these students, both Fisher and Johnston said.

“What we want to do is create an environment where everyone feels welcome,” Fisher said.

Meeting that goal has prompted Belmont to put a plan into place.

“It’s a big step to say, here’s what we’re doing strategically,” Johnston said. Belmont is working with Derek Young and his wife Allison on a program called “Welcome Home.” Young worked with Cracker Barrel after the restaurant chain found itself involved in issues with discrimination.

The program in part will cover making sure Belmont’s hiring practices are effective and focusing on certain high schools in the Nashville area that would “bring us a higher pool of minority students,” Fisher said. There is also a plan that will be formally introduced in the fall.

As far as where Fisher sees Belmont in the future, he draws on the current two classes enrolled in the school of pharmacy as examples.

“I say just walk into a classroom when they’re all there and look at them and you’d see what we’re trying to do, they’re from all over the world, they’re from all ethnic groups, it looks like the US of A, and the world together, it looks like the streets of New York City,” Fisher said. He also said he expects the law school to fill in similarly.

Part of what accounts for the make up of the pharmacy school is starting from scratch, as Fisher put it. For the rest of the student body, the process will be more gradual in terms of changing the ethnic and racial make up as well as changing attitudes about diversity.

On the admissions end, director of undergraduate admissions Anne Edmunds said that the admissions committee takes into account “the total picture.” In terms of diversity, “we also consider geographic diversity (all 50 states are represented on campus), academic program diversity (major), religion and classification (freshman/transfer/graduate student),” she said.

With regard to faculty, since 2000, Belmont has conducted hiring under an Affirmative Action Plan. In an October interview with director of human resources Sally McKay, she said that when an institution crosses a certain threshold in terms of the money it brings in, the government starts requiring an AAP to do things like keep federal grants.

When Belmont is looking to hire, the university tries to create an applicant pool that is representative  (or as representative as possible) of the available minorities based on statistics collected from the Department of Education and the U.S. census.

The challenge is filling that applicant pool.

“We proactively try to find ways of changing processes and the impact of those processes to reach better employment opportunities for those groups,” McKay said.

The 2008 AAP describes efforts taken to notify various groups that a position is open, saying that “the university… is utilizing online advertising venues including The Chronicle of Higher Education, HigherEdJob.com, InsideHigherEdJobs.com, the NCAA website, and the Black Coaches Association website.”

According to McKay though, filling out the applicant groups is an “imperfect science.” The numbers are based on “perfect world stats,” she said, meaning that the percentages “don’t always reflect that because the numbers are small.”

However, that is what McKay says the government is looking for in AAPs – a “good faith effort.”

McKay said that Belmont is always vulnerable to a random audit, but the government will not intervene unless there are complaints or anything that could be considered a lack of a “good faith effort.” To stay within that designation, practices are followed, applicants are treated equally and judgments are based on qualifications.

Fisher said he wants Belmont to be a place where people of all varieties feel welcome. Diversifying the faculty has been a struggle.

“I contend that if you can’t do that, you can’t really change, you can’t bring young people here to go to school and then look around and see who works here, what do they look like; there’s an unintended message there that we want to change,” he said. Apart from that, Fisher sees religious roots in the push for diversity.

He cited the story from the Gospel of John where the Pharisees asked Jesus what should be done with a woman who committed adultery. Jesus bent down and drew in the sand and when they continued to ask, he responded “let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Fisher likens what he’s doing to drawing in the sand.

“Jesus just opened his arms to people and loved them, cared for them, embraced them, he didn’t turn anyone away,” Fisher said.

Though, while the university might be open and in pursuit of diversity, all faculty at Belmont must be Christian.

“There is, at Belmont, sort of the big elephant in the room, which is, we hire Christian faculty,” Fisher said. “That’s Belmont, that’s part of who we are, and I try to make that clear to students before they get here.”

Similarly, Johnston said that changing and growing “does not mean that a place loses its identity.”

Fisher, who has worked at state schools in the past with plenty of non-Christian faculty, acknowledged that this might “complicate things a little,” and it does limit the international faculty Belmont can hire.

“That keeps us from being more diverse,” junior biology major Lindsey Dalton said, in response to learning about the Christian requirement.

Senior accounting major Jenna Davidson said that she wouldn’t mind having professors with different opinions. “If you let students who are non-Christians in, you should let faculty in,” she said.

“It is an issue that we have to be alert to, but beyond that, beyond the national implications of the predominance of different religions of most countries, we’re open to anyone who’s Christian,” Fisher said.

“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.”

Ezell is 79-61 in her head coaching career which includes a three year stint at Okaloosa-Walton Junior College and two years at Montevallo.

In fact, landing at Belmont is a full-circle event for Ezell, a Franklin native. Ezell was recruited by previous Belmont head coach Tony Cross and frequently attended Belmont basketball games. She ended up playing point guard at Alabama where she led the Crimson Tide to four straight Sweet Sixteen appearances.

“When you meet her, she’s got this tremendous grasp for the game and a tremendous enthusiasm—and she’s infectious,” Belmont athletics director Mike Strickland said of his hire. “She wins you over with a great personality. And when you put her background together with her enthusiasm and foresight, she’s just a great fit for everything we look for.”   

As for Ezell, she plans on capitalizing on the new excitement surrounding the program.

“Hopefully I’m bringing a sense of enthusiasm and renewed energy for (the team) and the program,” Ezell said. ”We’re going to try to get this turned around pretty quickly and Belmont basketball will be back.”

But at the same time, Ezell also addressed the challenges that come with change.

“They don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care. That’s what we’ve got to establish with them,” Ezell said.

And even though she was only a few short hours into her Belmont coaching career, Ezell was quick to lay out a game plan.

“We’ve got three main goals: they’ve got to be better women when they leave us, they’ve got to be better students, and they’ve got to be better basketball players,” Ezell said. “If I do those three things, then I’ve done my job and cared for them the way I’m supposed to. Hopefully, they’ll buy into that and trust us with that philosophy.”

After last year’s incredibly successful screening of “(500) Days of Summer,” a film that went on to screen nationally on the shoulders of significant critical praise, the film festival’s programming board was in the unenviable position of topping Marc Summers’ charming post-modern love story with this year’s opener.

Know this though: they succeeded.

Opening this year’s film festival was “Nowhere Boy,” a biography about John Lennon’s adolescence directed by first-timer Sam Taylor-Wood. At the beginning of the film, Lennon (Aaron Johnson) is a 15-year-old troublemaker living in Liverpool with his stern Aunt Mimi (Kristin Scott Thomas) and Uncle George (David Threlfall). When his uncle dies unexpectedly, Lennon is reunited with his free-spirited mother, Julia (Anne-Marie Duff), bringing conflict between the two sisters.

The young John Lennon comes off more like Ferris Beuller with a mean streak than the thoughtful, zen man who would later write “Imagine.” Johnson’s performance shows a clearly conflicted boy who struggles with his identity. This Lennon shoplifts jazz records, stows away on top of double-decker buses and assails authority figures with a sarcastic with that is as clever as it is occasionally cruel.

In a film like this, it’s a tempting to harp on the subject’s future. We all know what awaits Lennon and the Beatles in and beyond Hamburg. It isn’t controversial to refer to him as a genius that profoundly impacted popular music. But this isn’t the time or place to tell those stories.

Screenwriter Matt Greenhaigh wisely keeps the Beatlemania restricted to winks and nods. The film begins with the opening chord from “A Hard Days Night,” with a young Lennon running from an invisible crowd, but that is where the explicit Beatles references end. The word “Beatles” is never uttered—when Mimi asks what his “new” band is called, he responds, “do you really want to know?”

Although the film does an admirable job of communicating Lennon’s relationship with his estranged mother, his aunt, and later with Paul McCartney, the film fails to provide adequate context of Liverpool in the 1950s. The political and social environment that might breed rebelliousness isn’t addressed at all, which makes it feel a bit like Lennon is thrashing against a vacuum. Perhaps it is because the film was made by a British director for British audiences, but an entire side to Lennon’s development feels missing.

Despite that point of contention, “Nowhere Boy” is an interesting coming-of-age story that doesn’t lean too heavily on its subject’s star power. Beatlemaniacs will be pleased for sure, but the film does offer a well-acted drama for those who are only casually acquainted with the larger-than-life figures behind those classic songs.

“Nowhere Boy” will open in select American theaters in October.

Vision editor Lance Conzett will be covering the Nashville Film Festival all week. For full coverage, click the “2010 Nashville Film Festival” tag.

According to field supervisor over construction repair, Greg Knalls, the call came in around 6:30 a.m. though the system that monitors water pressure had detected a problem about two hours earlier.

“It was seriously 25 feet in the air and the stairs were covered in water,” residence life office manager Monica Gibbs said. She also said there was rushing water in the Curb Event Center garage.

Junior music business major Avery Watson and two friends watched the break for around 20 minutes.

“We went to our 8 a.m. and it was still a huge mountain,” Watson said.

The break was under control around 9 a.m. Knalls said they were looking at the air relief valve, but no definite cause has been determined.

Update: Check out the sidebar for video of the break courtesy of Dr. Sybril Bennett.

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.”

Ten years later, singer/songwriter James promotes his music through social media, his own producer and manager and a recently released album, “It Took the Fire.”  He also plays as a keyboardist with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, and will be with them on a tour that includes dates in Australia, as well as at Coachella and Bonnaroo.
“Hopefully I’ll be done with that tour by the end of June and then I’ll be doing my own stuff again,” James said.

It took him four years as a music business major at Belmont, performing at small venues and in the university’s showcases, two or three years working as a banquet server at Opryland Hotel after graduation and months at a time of optimistic touring along the east and west coasts to get to this point of success.

After he was “rejected,” as he called it, by Belmont’s School of Music, he decided he would continue to strive for a career in music and expand his knowledge of the field with a degree in music business.  He played at the Commons Clubhouse several times and performed in the Best of the Best showcase at the Ryman before the Curb Event Center opened.

“I think I produced the first event ever at the [Curb] Event Center, which was the 2003 pop/rock showcase,” James said.

When James came to Belmont, social media was not really popular or necessary for artists to promote their music.  Many students aiming for music careers did not know how to get started, James said.

“I feel like I was the only kid in my class that was actually playing gigs off campus,” he said.  “When I was there all anyone did was do showcase things and then they’d get out of college and have no idea of how to get a gig or even get started in Nashville.”

James knew he had to start early.  He played at venues like The End and Guido’s Pizza. In playing small shows, he discovered that in order to get more of an audience, he should keep his education information to himself.  That way he could avoid the misconception that all Belmont students play music similar to Dave Matthews or Radiohead.

“Belmont kind of gives this vibe in the Nashville scene like people assume that Belmont bands all kind of sound the same and don’t bring people out,” James said.  “In order to make it in Nashville I had to not let people know I was a Belmont kid so that it was easy to get gigs.”

Using his education of music business, he played a show at the Belcourt Theater with his three favorite bands.

“I finagled this thing with a friend where we booked the Belcourt Theater and we made up this company name then we invited my three favorite bands, the three biggest bands in Nashville at the time to play this showcase,” James said.  “Basically we fooled the three biggest bands in town to play a show with me.”

This idea led James to his first manager and producer.

After graduation, he got jobs at a retirement home and at Opryland Hotel to make money he needed to tour.

“I decided I could get a good job, or I could get a crappy job that allowed me make some money and get off when I needed to tour,” James said.

He worked in his secure jobs for a period of time, he then booked shows across the country. Then he’d return to his jobs in Nashville to continue the cycle.  He toured by himself for the most part, which made it easier to get started as a musician. By touring alone, he made more money for himself and did not humiliate the rest of his band if the show was not prosperous.

“If you get the feeling that not a lot of people are going to come and you’ve never played there before, you should do it by yourself,” James said.  “That way if it doesn’t go well you’re only hurting yourself and not five other people.”

Years of balancing working in Nashville and touring got his name out, and now some current Belmont students know his music from his MySpace page.

“You can really feel the emotion through his music,” said sophomore Lisa Bennett.

“His music works for any scenario, whether you’re working out or listening to it in the car or in a coffee restaurant,” said sophomore Michelle Rogers.  “It applies to a wide range audience.”

In 2009, a TV producer making a pilot asked James to be a cast member, which in the end led James to join Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.

One of the other cast members dated the band’s lead singer. The group needed a keyboardist, and James was chosen to be a replacement.

“They sent me the songs the day before the first show, and they put me up there and the next day I’m playing in front of thousands of people,” said James.

James plans on continuing touring his own music when he’s not busy performing for Edward Sharpe.  In future shows, he might open for the band.