Brick Factory Nashville @ Cummins Station
209 10th Ave S Suite 126, Nashville, TN 37203

Ever get the urge to make a chair out of a single sheet of 4′ by 8′ plywood? How about learning aerial dancing or space painting? Are your ideas bigger than your studio apartment? The Brick Factory, a new creative space in the Cummins Station complex, would like to help. Here you can take (or teach) art classes, use the community workshop, see performances, and get your make on.

Hackerspaces are few and far between in Nashville. There’s Hacker Consortium in Germantown, a dues-taking collective that owns a laser cutter and Maker Bot. Then there’s my group HackNash, which does not charge dues but lacks a community space. That’s why I’m incredibly excited about the opening of The Brick Factory, which bills itself as a “creative space.” They have a full wood shop, access to a CNC machine, and a photography wall with one of those half-pipe-looking floor curves for corner-free backgrounds. When I checked out the space last week, they were still working feverishly to finish the wall by opening.

The Brick Factory opens February 1st, but the best time to check them out may be during the February 4th First Saturday Art Crawl. From 8pm to midnight, the Brick Factory is hosting an open house, complete with live music and an art show curated by The Open Lot. (Full disclosure: I’m an Open Lot board member.)

Finding the space can be a bit of a challenge. Cummins Station is HUGE. Your best best is asking the front receptionist or just following the event signs.

Although co-founder Ryan Schemmel told me The Brick Factory is not primarily a performance space, they will still host events. I’m helping to organize a show on February 7th featuring Theatre Intangible participants C.J. Boyd, Kyle Hamlett (Lylas), and Sugar Sk*-*lls (Ben Marcantel). On February 29th, DeKalb, Illinois circuit-benders CMKT4 will host a bottle cap contact mic workshop and performance. Their performance at the 2010 Circuit Benders Ball was a fan favorite. More on these events soon. Also check The Brick Factory events calendar.

UPDATE: More details on the art exhibition. In solidarity with Gallery F, Sabine Schlunk’s gallery at Scarritt Bennett Center that will soon be relocated, all of the artists on exhibition are somehow involved with Gallery F. Here is the list of artists:

Carolyn McDonald
Perrin Ireland
Sierra Faye Mitchell
Duncan McDaniel
Laura Willace
Patricia Earnhardt
Sabine Schlunk
Matt Christy

The Brick Factory @ Cummins Station
209 10th Ave South
Suite 126
Nashville, TN 37203

There’s a very cool show tonight projected outside Local Honey in the Belmont area. Artist Alexis Gideon mixes stop motion animation and music, colliding pop culture and experimentation.

This show is presented by Open Lot. Full disclosure: Though I was not involved in organizing this show, I am on the Open Lot board.

More info in the press release:

The Open Lot presents Alexis Gideon at Local Honey for the screening of his animated/stop motion video opera Video Musics II: Sun Wu-Kong.

Building on his genre-busting animated/stop motion video opera Video Musics (2009 Sickroom(US) / Africantape(EU)),Alexis Gideon, after two years of dogged research and collaboration, is set to premiere that work’s follow-up, Video Musics II: Sun Wu-Kong(Disjecta in Portland, September 3).

A one-hour multimedia video opera based on the 16th-century Chinese novelThe Journey to the West, Video Musics II joins the brightest lights of contemporary animation (Becca Taylor (Punk Planet, Arthur);Cynthia Star(Coraline, Moral Orel, Robot Chicken); Ezra Claytan Daniels(The Changers and Black Violet)) with the most promising talents of contemporary music (Rachel Blumberg (M Ward, Arch Cape);Cory Gray(Norfolk & Western, Carcrashlander);Shelley Short(Hush)) to create an aural and visual universe that gleefully transcends both media. Is it film or music, high art or pop? Gideon’s work would fit snugly at either the Whitney Biennial or SXSW, which is to say it cannot be contained, really, by either venue. Marked throughout by the ambition, commitment to detail, and refusal to settle that have earned Gideon a cult following on both sides of the pond.

Alexis Gideon has toured nationally with Dan Deacon and Shelley Short as well as played with Barr, Marnie Stern, Panther,Tune Yards, Parts and Labor, Zs,People, Matt and Kim, and many, many others.

The limited edition DVD/Vinyl release was slated for fall/winter 2010 on Africantape (EU) / Slowtrain (US).

Oct 26th 7:30 – 8:30. Limited seating. Bring a folding chair.
Where: Local Honey’s back parking lot.

Local Honey
2009 Belmont Blvd
Nashville, TN 37212
(615) 915-1354