The Washington Theatre and Patterson Park Community Center host the premiere of “Spring Into the Arts,” an exhibition of modernist paintings by Murfreesboro-based artists and community advocates Leroy and Dr. Barbara Hodges. Spring Into the Arts is the first exhibition to open at the new art gallery and community project space in the lobby of the Washington Theatre.
Featuring an extensive selection of paintings the artist-couple has produced both together and independently over the last several years, the exhibition celebrates their robust arts practice and contribution to Murfreesboro’s creative community.
The show surveys the Hodges’ work related to community, time and music, with particular emphasis on work that denotes the regeneration, renewal and the metamorphosis associated with various phases and moments of life.
“This exhibition signifies the passion, joy and hope found with springtime. The observer determines the story as it relates to their life,” the Hodges said in a statement. “It is our hope that the viewer finds these artworks to be inspiring, uplifting and empowering.”
Working with intense, colorful and poignant palette choices the Hodgeses’ respective creative practices converge in the exhibit with a shared vibrancy of color and subject matter. Working between a number of modernist stylistic references—from drip and slash painting, cubism and color fields to abstraction—the two artists cover a breadth of technical mastery with paint.
Currently unnamed, the new gallery space is a partnership between The City of Murfreesboro’s Washington Theatre and Patterson Park Community Center.
Spring Into the Arts is open through April 27. The artists invite everyone to attend the opening reception on Saturday, April 6, 3–5 p.m. at the gallery.
Following this exhibit, the gallery will highlight young, emerging, and established local and regional contemporary artists working in experimental and traditional mediums.
“Arts allows me to express what I feel, think and experience. I grew up during the Civil Rights era in Meridian, Mississippi,” Leroy Hodges said. “I learned to appreciate the beauty of life and nature despite challenging times and events. Nature with all its beauty reflects a moment in time.”
Patterson Park Community Center is located at 521 Mercury Blvd.
