As I am getting ready to launch a new chapter of Art Beat, which will be an online artists’ marketplace (think Etsy but local), with pop-up events around Nashville, I thought I would take a little time to talk about how I got to Art Beat in the fall of 2021.
I lost my late husband, Jay, in December of 2015, and while there have been many difficult lessons I have learned from this, there have also been some happy ones. And Art Beat is one of those for me.
It all began in Miami. We were there with the kids for winter break that year, visiting Wynwood Walls for the first time. As I walked the streets, looking up at these gigantic, stunningly painted walls that were alive with vibrance and depth, I said to Jay, who was in commercial real estate and working on a project that involved art/artists:
"You should bring something like this to Nashville," I said to him more than once. If anyone could do it, I thought, it would be him.
Mural: Codo a Codo by INTI, Wynwood Walls, Miami
The four of us had bought Vans on the trip, and I was wearing my black flower-covered low-tops. The colors, and the perfect Miami night with my kids and Jay, walking the murals with some of our best friends and their kids, and all of this with the art, was running through my veins that night, making my thoughts race with excitement. My heart beating to the rhythm of Miami streets was the last act of a chapter of my life.
On that night, I would not even dare to dream that big for myself, and then six years after Jay died, I opened Art Beat. A "Wynwood Walls" style of murals in Nashville is a faraway dream, but I know that the path I am about to begin again, working with artists and sharing art that deserves to be seen, is where my curtain began to rise. To be continued...