If you've never seen a Pinkney Herbert painting, now is your chance to see a lot of them. Herbert's work, including drawings, is on view in two shows: "Distilled: The Narrative Transformed" at Crosstown Arts and "Arcadia" at the David Lusk Gallery. "It's all about Pinkney," jokes Herbert, 64. "I've got the big head. It's all me." Herbert's work has been displayed in national and international collections and in the permanent collections at Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, and other museums. Herbert, who taught painting and drawing at Rhodes College and the University of Memphis, is founding director of the Marshall Arts alternative gallery. He's president of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts-France, a residency program in Auvillar, France.

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One of the June openings I’m most excited about is the Vestige photography show at David Lusk Gallery. Vestige is guest-curated by Sam Easley and Jason Owens, and the show features a selection of works that speak to the human impact on natural environments without actually focusing on people at all. The results read like an environmental impact study, an anthropology exhibition and a crime-scene investigation all at the same time. I prefer art that asks questions about complicated problems over works that vainly struggle to offer answers, and I’m hoping there will be lots to talk about here. Vestige’s ace roster includes Caroline Allison, Coriana Close, Kevin Cooley, John Duckworth, William Eggleston, Catherine Erb, Huger Foote, Kristi Hargrove, Shannon Randol, Kathleen Robbins, Jack Spencer, Jeane Umbreit and William Wegman.

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A 30-year survey of Pinkney Herbert’s vibrant body of work. This exhibition tracks Herbert’s transition from his narrative beginnings through the development of a personal abstract vocabulary that both thrills and seduces the viewer. Opening reception: Saturday, May 26, 6-9 pm

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In her exhibition “New Abstractions” at Sandler Hudson Gallery through May 5, Kit Reuther demonstrates anew that a subdued color scheme can be a way of achieving striking paintings. The blandly inoffensive title also implies a problem that, for me, is a major issue. How does one write about a show in which two or three paintings (the ones making fresh use of that extremely subdued palette) stand out as haunting, even though Reuther’s overall approach not only breaks no new ground but in the weakest pieces is little more than repetitive.

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When it comes to cities birthing some of the most innovative and interesting contemporary art around the globe, historical hotbeds of artistic innovation like New York, London and Paris may immediately spring to mind. Even newer kids on the creative block like Los Angeles, Mexico City and Hong Kong have solidified their places as art destinations these days. But there’s plenty happening off the well-worn art pilgrimage path. Here are five cities witnessing big art booms. Not only do these worldwide sites offer unique art experiences, but they are also being credited with pushing the international contemporary art scene in exciting new directions.

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Brandon Donahue is a rad artist whose exhibit RIP is currently hanging at Elephant Gallery. I wrote this story for Vice.com about Elephant and its artists, including Brandon. We discuss his Basketball Blooms, but mostly stick to RIP, Brandon's experience working as an airbrush artist, and the way to memorialize victims of gun violence while also celebrating their lives. And mussels.

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This poem fragment makes an appearance in the final pages of the book as an epigraph from younger sister Boo Boo to brother Seymour to commemorate his wedding day and resurrects an age-old pastoral sentiment among a modern audience. Through the use of metaphor, Salinger cleverly interweaves the structure of carpentry and the emotion of matrimony to represent the weighty potential of what is yet to come for the newlyweds, yes, but more important for the cast of characters as a whole who do not yet know what the reader knows: that Seymour will commit suicide a few years later.

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It's way cooler than country music and bachelorette parties. Anybody who says Nashville, Tennessee, doesn't have an interesting art scene definitely hasn't gone to a gallery party where there’s black lasagna.

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For renowned photographer Jack Spencer, Mississippi-born and Nashville-residing, the image captured by his camera, be it a digital file or a negative, has always been a jumping-off point. It’s in the “wet” or “digital” darkroom, as he refers to them, where those images come alive.

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Big bucks aren’t necessary to buy a piece of high-caliber contemporary American art: that’s the premise of this light flooded art gallery with soaring wood ceilings, which the seasoned art gallerist David Lusk opened in a former truck mechanic business in 2014. In fact, it was this venue from the Memphis-based gallerist that helped generate interest in the neighborhood. Mr. Lusk’s collection includes paintings, photographs and sculptures, and he takes pride in having a close relationship with the close to three dozen artists he sells. Several Nashville natives are part of the mix, including Kit Reuther, who is known for her abstract paintings and sculptures in muted tones. Prices from $500.

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