Artfully taking the next step

Corrected to properly identify John Reed as Tinney Contemporary curator and director and Randy Read as publisher of Nashville Arts magazine. We regret the confusion.

Susan Tinney is poised to positively impact Nashville’s visual arts community in 2009.

The veteran arts advocate wants to both elevate the influence of her downtown art gallery, Tinney Contemporary, and work with other local arts industry officials to position Nashville as a nationally respected arts center. In the process, the fashionable Tinney could become a major player in downtown’s for-profit and nonprofit cultural business communities.

No doubt, Tinney is committed. In March 2006, she bought the first-floor space in downtown’s Kress Lofts for her gallery. Working full-time since 1989 for San Francisco-based Fortune 100 company Genentech, she has funneled some of her income into Tinney Contemporary and now toils at two demanding jobs.

That work has not come without challenges. The past 15 months saw Tinney discontinue relations with two business partners. With a new business model involving no partners and a charitable contribution component, the personable Tinney is due a momentous year.

"My Genentech income and investments have fully funded the gallery,” Tinney said. “So when it came to protecting the gallery’s interests, including those of the artists the gallery represents, some tough business decisions had to be made. As I was the sole investor, becoming the solo proprietor was a liberating decision.”

In early 2008, Tinney hired respected local artist John Reed as Tinney Contemporary’s curator and director.

“John has been invaluable to this new model,” she said. “His background as an artist, a museum curator and a businessperson was exactly what the gallery needed.”

Tinney said strong artist and customer support and the modified business model will help sustain the gallery despite the current economic malaise. Tinney Contemporary’s current exhibit is “The Art of the Lost Boys of Sudan.” A percentage of proceeds will benefit the Lost Boys, while the gallery’s March and April installations will aid the Tennessee Land Trust.

“I have learned much from the couple of years of trial and error and am very positive about the future of the gallery, our staff and our portfolio of artists," she said.

A proponent of 1950s-era art and an advocate of art as a tangible medium with investment return potential, Tinney was raised immersed in a creative world. Her mother is a painter, as was her late grandmother, who studied art at the former Peabody College and met her husband (a fringe member of Vanderbilt University’s Fugitive Poets) at a Nashville art opening.

Also, iconic Nashville puppeteer Tom Tichenor was a cousin.

“I watched him make marionettes and perform wonderful ‘private’ puppet shows,” Tinney said of the deceased legend.

Prior to opening the gallery, Tinney worked 15 years as an independent art broker handling salon shows and supplementing her Genentech income. With her strong eye, she would assess a house and then, for one night, display within it the works of an artist or two. Tinney represented well-known Nashville artists such as Arlyn Ende, Jack Hastings, Adrienne Outlaw, Bruce Peebles and Somers Randolph.

Now Tinney’s goals are more “big-picture.”

About four months ago, she and fellow Fifth Avenue arts gallery proprietors Anne Brown, Jeff Rymer and Nashville Arts magazine publisher Randy Read met to work collaboratively in a joint marketing and promotional effort.

“Those conversations very quickly led to us thinking we need a broader-based approach with the downtown arts community,” Tinney said.

So the group invited Connie Valentine, president and CEO of the Arts and Business Council of Greater Nashville. From there, things began to pop.

“We want the various arts community members to work together cross-promoting each other’s cultural efforts,” Tinney said. “We are now working with Connie and the Council, the Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Nashville Downtown Partnership in a collaborative effort.”

A major goal is to lure more people to downtown’s First Saturday Art Crawl. Now two years old, the event (held the first Saturday of each month) sees every downtown art gallery open its doors from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

“Our group is committed to increasing awareness to the art crawl,” Tinney said. “We expect 2009 to be a big year.”

Much like the year should be for Tinney herself.