Climate Change | COOP’s New Members June 2021 Exhibition Extended!

Amirmasoud Agharebparast, Blythe Colvin, Han Service-Rodriguez, Alicia Thompson, Patrick Vincent

June 5, 2021 – June 30, 2021 extended through JULY
Opening Saturday, June 5 from 3-6 PM

May 18, 2021: COOP Gallery is pleased to present work by five of our new members in Climate
Change, a real-life-in-person exhibition opening Saturday, June 5 in conjunction with the WeHo Art
Crawl and closing Wednesday, June 30.

COOP is Nashville’s longest running artist-run project space and curatorial collective, established in
2010. We’ve spent the last decade working to expand Nashville’s dialogue with contemporary art
through programming that presents challenging, new, or under-represented artists and artworks. We’re
excited to add these artists and more to our collective.
We are emerging into uncharted territory, navigating the changes within our artistic and community
climates. These five artists represent a cross-section of Nashville’s creative landscape.

Amirmasoud Agharebparast is an award winning photographer/educator who grew up in Isfahan, Iran.
He attended Art University of Isfahan (Master of Architectural Engineering), graduated from Penn State
(MFA, Art – Photography), and is currently the Assistant Professor of Photography at Austin Peay State
in Tennessee. Amir says, “…art is sometimes an act of visually proposing a question; It is the reflection
of investigating possible answers. It is an inward mirror of the situations “we” are currently dealing with
or have experienced.”

Blythe Colvin’s work surrounds the idea of culture + craft: the need for us to engage and articulate
feelings, moments, narratives, and lived experiences. Art and history engage with the need for
creation and connection, including nuanced and unimportant feelings, moments, emotions, and
worries. Her still-lifes and portraits bring together her personal struggles of the anxieties of belonging
in and accepting the world at hand.

Han Service-Rodriguez is a queer, latinx, artist born & raised in Nashville, TN. They attended
undergrad at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Han explores the subjects of identity,
sensuality, and sanctity through abstraction, ritualistic drawing, so-called “women’s work,” and collage.
Their work is influenced by their writing practice, past activism/community organizing, and work as a
teacher and outreach worker. From Han: “Art made as action taken: / Art as act of teaching, / Art as
act of ritual, / Art as act of conversation- / To grow, / To cope, /To recenter & / Reconnect.”
Alicia Thompson is a visual artist based in Nashville finishing her MFA at The School of the Art Institute
of Chicago. Her practice is driven by the exploration of the formal material qualities of objects,
assembled from surplus and discarded materials with glossy surfaces, radioactive color, and plastic
forms. Her work juxtaposes discarded and repurposed objects that ordinarily do not go together. Her
work suggests absurdity and misplaced priority, revealing that humanity is at odds with our natural

environment and that consumerism is a substitute for spirituality. Ultimately, her practice engages with
this disharmony on a societal level while trying to heal and understand it on a personal and spiritual
level.

Patrick Vincent was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota and currently lives in Nashville. He is
the Associate Professor of Printmaking at Austin Peay State University. Patrick uses print and
print-based structures to explore myth and narrative in graphic traditions, incorporating animal-human
iconography to survey contemporary social and ecological issues.