This exhibition features drawings by four members of the Southeastern College Art Conference, an organization of art faculty that promotes the importance of art in higher education and in the broader community. Conceived as a counterpoint to the exhibition Color As Field: American Painting 1950–1975, in which form and content are unified through the broad application of brightly colored areas of paint, Shades of Gray includes works in gray, white, and black in which the picture plane suggests spatial ambiguity, mystery, and personal and social narratives. The two exhibitions are connected by their emphasis on process, discovery, and the willingness to allow the beauty and expressive power of the artist’s raw material to speak for itself.

The artists in Shades of Gray include Kell Black (Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, Tennessee), Sue Mulcahy (Volunteer State Community College, Gallatin, Tennessee), Jane Allen Nodine (University of South Carolina Upstate, Spartanburg, South Carolina), and Carol Prusa (Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida).

View the Shades of Gray catalog

Organized by the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.


2008 Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery


Exhibition Sponsor:  Welling LaGrone and Morgan Keegan

Presenting Sponsor:  


Location: Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery and Education Gallery


Image: Kell Black. Drawings for Boys (P-47), ca. 2002. Charcoal and acetone on paper, 36 x 48. Courtesy of the artist