Coop is Nashville’s longest-established, artist-run project space and curatorial collective, established in 2010.
Theresa Buffo received a BA in Studio Art from The Colorado College with honors in Painting and a Minor in Italian Studies. She studied Industrial and Graphic Design at the University of Illinois, Chicago and her past experience includes historic textile and rug conservation for a private collector in Chicago, IL; product design for a Nepali Adventure Travel company; and she is self taught in leather work, stitching leather goods for retail customers under the label bocUe.
She recently moved to Nashville with her husband and two sons and is currently working on a new body of work that blends her interests in textiles, leather work and painting. Buffo enjoys experimenting in the garden, exploring textures and colors. In her art, she embellishes found materials to maximize surfaces, connecting to a sense of lush and overgrown. She has participated in group shows at Dadu Gallery, Nashville, TN; Artemisia Gallery, Chicago, IL; Around the Coyote, Chicago, IL; The One of a Kind Show and Sale, Chicago, IL; Kohler Arts Center, Kohler, WI.
Holiday Noel Campanella grew up in South Philadelphia and spent her teenage years working on the boardwalk at the Jersey shore. A high school dropout turn Ivy League grad, she’s interested in creating work that is about paradoxical desires and identities. Consequently, she is the editor-in-grief at NINETENTHS Press, (@ninetenthspress) an editorial project that ruminates on the inevitability of losing and loss, which she co-edits with her husband in Nashville, TN. She has a dual-degree Certificate of Painting and BFA from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied Fine Arts and Creative Writing. Campanella’s work often plays with combinations of the written and the visual and the high and low brow.
While her art and poetry has been exhibited in The Smithsonian Museum, The Clay Studio, and The Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, sold in national retailer Anthropologie, performed at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and published in journals such as Gigantic Sequins, Philadelphia Stories, Meow Meow Pow Pow, and Imposter Lit they’re currently the most interested in focusing on what to make next.
Sai Clayton is a visual artist and curator in Nashville, TN. Her work exploits the self-portrait as a vessel for racial representation and as a personification for female sexuality and Asian biraciality. She is currently an American for the Arts Diversity in Arts Leadership intern at OZ Arts in Nashville, TN., and was the 2021-22 Curatorial Fellow at the Frist Art Museum. She holds a B.A. in Visual Arts and minors in Dance and Japanese from Middle Tennessee State University.
Find her at: saiclayton.com
Tina Gionis is an artist working primarily with photography and video. Her work investigates the continuing evolution of cities. She is also interested in memory, especially how it influences the present. She received her BA in Creative Writing and Psychology from the University of Toledo. After graduating, she spent ten years in Asia working as a travel photographer and ESL Writer. After repatriating to the States, she received a certificate in Documentary Photography from the International Center of Photography in NYC and an MFA in Digital Arts from Bowling Green State University. She is currently based in Nashville.
Find her at: www.tinagionis.com
Shayna Hobbs is an Indigenous creator from the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican nation. She is the mother of two and owns a reclaimed wood business with her husband called Sons of Sawdust. She teaches piano and music healing to children and adults, on and off the Autism Spectrum. Shayna creates from her experience of growing up as a mixed indigenous kid. She transforms pain, generational trauma, and grief, into freedom and healing through the art she creates.
By using light and shadows, her work evokes mystery and emotion. She is an artist, musician, singer-songwriter, photographer, poet, healer, dancer, and designer. She plays with illusions, bright neon colors, projectors, colored lights and she enjoys blending earth elements with technology, whether that’s through designing a space, creating an immersive experience, or with fashion, digital art, or glitter and collage.
Messages of indigenous wisdom, the divine feminine, and sacred spirituality can be found in her work. She likes combining the simple with the sacred. She experiments with balance, contrast, reflections, self portraits, arrangements and collections, and she loves adding pieces of her native heritage and childhood into the art she makes.
Shayna creates under the name Vonalisa, to honor her late brother, who had a band named Vonagarden. “Vona” is Icelandic for “hope”, so Vonalisa means “hope of the promise of Creator”. By honoring her pain, it is Shayna’s desire to bring hope and healing through her creations, and to help people connect with beauty and the heart.
Louis Holstein is a creator, storyteller, and community builder who believes in the power of art and the strength of community. A collaborator at heart, Louis enjoys working with artists and creatives who long to build a world where everyone has a place to belong, space to grow, and the ability to thrive. His art reflects the importance of being bolstered by community, and deep conviction that art is the bridge from intolerance to empathy. Playing in various mediums, Louis’ artistic voice is communicated through abstract expressionist paintings, film-making, and writing.
Born and raised in Central Florida, Louis currently resides in Nashville, TN with his wife and two children.
Find him at: www.louisholstein.com, www.behance.net/louis-holstein, www.louisholstein.substack.com, and www.letterboxd.com/louisholstein
Rachel McKee is a mixed media artist living and working in the Nashville, Tennessee area. Working with a variety of materials, both natural and synthetic, she explores her own place in the natural world through slowness, contemplation, curiosity, and play. Rachel received her BFA from Watkins College of Art at Belmont University in 2021 and has been an active member of COOP Gallery since 2020.
Cesar Pita is a ceramicist raised in the South to Mexican immigrant parents. This experience influences Cesar’s work and is the motivation for him to advocate for his community in and out of the studio. His work revolves around addressing social issues, cultural exploration, and celebration.
Cesar has obtained his bachelor’s degree at Middle Tennessee State University. He is currently an art handler and a teacher at Buchanan Arts in North Nashville.
Austin Reavis (b. 1987) is a painter from Sewanee, Tennessee. He earned his BFA from Perdue University and Herron School of Art at Indianapolis in Sculpture in 2010 and currently lives and works in Sewanee.
Beth Reitmeyer is a visual artist based in Nashville, TN who likes to make people happy with her colorful installations. Her work investigates landscapes and the joy of unexpected yet beautiful spaces and places that are discovered as one explores the land and structures within it: clouds, rivers, caves, geodes, stars. These environments allow viewers to explore the land and get to know one another in a more profound way, providing a space for renewal and hope for persevering.
Beth attended Northwestern University (MFA), The School of the Art Institute (Post Baccalaureate program), and the Pennsylvania State University (BFA). Her work has recently been exhibited at the Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN; The Elizabeth Foundation, New York, NY; OZ Arts, Nashville, TN; 1708 Gallery/Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA; FIGMENT, Chicago, IL; The Downing Museum, Bowling Green, KY; Kindling Arts Festival, Nashville, TN; Ground Floor Gallery, Nashville, TN; Zg Gallery, Chicago, IL; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; BOX13 ArtSpace, Houston, TX. Beth has been an artist-in-residence at The Studios at MASS MoCA, The Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest, IL, Mineral House Media, and CONVERGE, Nashville, TN. Recently awards include grants from Metro Nashville Arts Commission/National Endowment for the Arts and a finalist for a Burning Man grant.
Sarah Spillers is an award-winning contemporary painter and educator from Nashville, Tennessee. She’s achieved her bachelor’s degree at Austin Peay State University studying Art Education K-12. As a professional educator, she strives to help young learners foster the same enthusiasm for art that she has. Spillers currently teaches middle school art in Clarksville, Tennessee and is a full-time member of both COOP Gallery and DAC Gallery. Some of her current work explores the aftermath of Nashville going through the COVID-19 Global Pandemic with the use of lively color and texture.
Find her at: SarahSpillersArt.com and @SarahSpillersArt on Instagram and Facebook
Evelyn Theon is a multimedia artist based in Nashville, TN. Her work explores time, memory, and place through printmaking, drawing, and installation. In her work, she explores feelings and experiences through a combination of words, color, and sketches. Her 2021 series “Prints from the Cairo Sketchbooks” transformed a catalog of sketchbook drawings into eight large-scale screenprints. Focused on daily observations, thoughts, and snippets of conversation, this practice continues in her ongoing sketchbook project. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows and can be seen on her website www.evelynthoen.com. Evelyn graduated with a Bachelor’s in Art with a minor in Art History from Westmont College in 2021.
Thoen is new to Tennessee, having grown up in southern California. She currently works as a seamstress and has a love for theater design. She will also be teaching junior high art classes at WEB Tutorial Nashville starting in fall of 2022. She is excited to be a part of the art scene in Nashville. Beyond art, she likes to explore Nashville’s greenways, read fiction novels, and listen to music.
Ashleigh York currently lives and works in East Nashville, TN. The driving creative forces behind her work are bright colors and how colors and shapes create abstraction. With a unique artistic voice and a playful and evocative exploration of planet Earth’s color palette, she strives to inspire through inventive and experimental work.
Find her at: ashleighyorkart.com and @ashleighyorkart on Instagram
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