Past Exhibits

Amber Lelli - Rest in Pieces at LeQuire Gallery 2025

REST IN PIECES: A SOLO EXHIBITION FOR AMBER LELLI
FEBRUARY 8 – MARCH 20
RECEPTION FOR THE ARTIST: FEBRUARY 8 / 5-8PM
ARTIST TALK / INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY / MARCH 8 / 2:00PM

LEARN MORE about Amber Lelli

ARTIST STATEMENT

Title: Rest in Pieces

This exhibition, “Rest in Pieces,” is a reflection on new beginnings and grief, using the symbolic language of flowers—floriography—to navigate the complexities of loss, remembrance, and hope. While those who pass or leave may ‘rest in peace,’ those who remain are often left in pieces. These fragments—emotional, societal, and personal—are what we must mend, heal, and move through on a journey toward peace. Our country is in pieces. As individuals, many of us are in pieces. Yet it is only by traveling this journey together that we can reach a better, more unified place. Floriography, the study of the meanings assigned to flowers, offers a spectrum of interpretations, from cheerfulness and peace to sorrowful remembrances and unrequited love. Many of the sculptures in this collection incorporate a variety of flowers, each chosen carefully to narrate stories of “in memoriam” or to reflect the essence of a person’s character.

As the artist, I created this body of work while processing my own grief—grieving the loss of love and the ongoing struggles faced by my Hispanic community and country. In a time when making art felt futile against the backdrop of overwhelming global and personal challenges, I found meaning in the hope that these pieces could foster communion and connection through gathering. We are all grieving in some form. We are all entering new beginnings, often marked by uncertainty and fear.

Through these sculptures, I aim to represent values and emotions that unite us: friendship, respect, self-love, great expectations, good fortune, and love lost. My hope is that viewers will be reminded of the shared human experience and find resonance in the symbolic narratives these works embody. The collection features a variety of works, from wall pieces to freestanding sculptures, ranging in size from 1 to 6 feet. In a time of collective and personal change, “Rest in Pieces” stands as a challenge—for each of us to carry these values forward with renewed intentionality, embracing the complexity of both loss and renewal.

– Amber Lelli

THE FIGURE IN CHARCOAL & TERRA COTTA
Juliette Aristides and Alan LeQuire
Through January 2025

This exhibition premiered at Customs House Museum and Cultural Center in late 2023. From there, Aristides’ new series traveled to Boston where it exhibited at the Barrington Center for the Arts through October 2024. We are honored to have the collection back in Nashville, reunited with Sculptor, Alan LeQuire’s exquisite terra cotta small works.

Click here to view Juliette Aristides Master Price List.

Contact the gallery for more information: eave@lequiregallery.com

Download American Art Collector Magazine: Life Embodied. Contemporary masters of the human form
Juliette Aristides, Alan LeQuire and Richard Greathouse are showcased in concurrent Tennessee Exhibitions.
– Michael Pearce, American Art Collector. Click here to read the article (PDF).

CANEY HUMMON | DAYDREAMS

SEPTEMBER 23 – OCTOBER 28, 2023

The newest exhibition featured at LeQuire Gallery takes the viewer on a fantastical journey and most welcomed exploration of surrealism today. The surprising imagery and deep symbolism of Caney Hummon’s paintings and drawings transports us to unexpected terrain and untapped experiences

—————————————————————————————————-

Alan LeQuire
MONUMENTAL WOMEN
July 2020 – September 2021

Exhibition culminates 40 years recognizing women, bringing this contemporary sculptor’s career full circle. Sculptor Alan LeQuire has spent the majority of his career honoring women by making portraits. A walk through his Nashville gallery and studio reveals a vast body of work, miniature to monumental in scale, in bronze, plaster and terra cotta. His colossal Athena Parthenos, the largest indoor sculpture in the western world, recreates one of the most important monumental goddess statues of all time, and five of his public monuments commemorate woman suffrage in the state that had the final vote to ratify the 19th Amendment. In the centennial year of woman suffrage a comprehensive exhibit was curated, cementing what LeQuire has been quietly suggesting and aiming for, for forty years.

Monumental Women premiered summer of 2020, peak time for historians and suffrage fans to celebrate the centennial. The exhibit includes plaster casts of more than a dozen of LeQuire’s twenty-plus suffrage portraits such as Ida. B. Wells, Carrie Chapman Catt, J. Frankie Pierce and Anne Dallas Dudley. While the exhibit intends a nod to the hundreds of suffrage heroines, the depth of Monumental Women is much broader.

“From the beginning of my training as a sculptor, the female figure has been the focus. Any possible form or texture can be found in the human body, and the magical configuration of forms in the female body can prompt an emotional reaction from almost anyone. That is why it is used in traditional academic training and why I continue to pursue an understanding of it even after years of sculpting. My teachers also sculpted the female figure, and when I work I feel connected to them and to other artists going back centuries. Early in my career I honed the skills to make portraits in clay and bronze. Noticing how few portraits of women existed in public spaces, I wanted to bridge that gap. I have had some wonderful clients who felt the same way. One of my first commissions was a life-size portrait of Margaret Branscomb for Vanderbilt University. The goal of honoring real women was interrupted to some extent when I won the competition to re-create Athena for the Parthenon in Nashville. She is an idealized figure, of course, and I was attempting to mimic the style of Pheidias, but I see the Athena statue as part of the same objective that I have had all along – to honor women. I think the statue of Athena, at 42 feet tall does that for the contemporary audience.

In 2016 we unveiled my Tennessee Woman Suffrage Monument in Nashville, which has heroic scale portraits of five women. It seemed appropriate to place these real women on the same grounds in Centennial Park with the Parthenon and Athena. They are a reminder of the importance of real women taking real political action, and for me a continuation of the goal of honoring all women”. – Alan LeQuire

Threaded in and among the intense and captivating presence of LeQuire’s suffragists are new works — examples of his Caryatids, Women in Drapery, and Women with Animals series, as well as previous works such as a bust of Nashville aviator, Cornelia Fort and LeQuire’s colossal scale portraits of blues icons Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday. Many other female forms are on view — all unique with Alan LeQuire’s signature use of surface texture – all representing the strength, perseverance and physical beauty of women.

A 2016 Smithsonian Magazine feature focused on the lack of recognition of women: “When you walk the streets of cities like New York and Washington, D.C., it’s hard to miss the sculptures that mark the parks and neighborhoods. Historic figures often can be seen standing erect or sitting astride on their horses, stoically striking a pose. More often than not, these statues have another thing in common: their gender. The majority of public statues in the United States are of men”.

In 2016 alone, Alan LeQuire added 5 larger-than-life statues of women to the national equation in his Tennessee Woman Suffrage Monument. He will unveil 5 more with the upcoming Equality Trailblazers Monument. Coming soon to Memphis.

For more information:
Equality Trailblazers Monument: https://tnwomansuffrageheritagetrail.com/events/

Alan LeQuire: https://alanlequire.com