DIET BLOOD: A Meditation On Recent Paintings By Donny Smutz (7.3.10)

“Happenings,” forms of participatory new media art, emphasize interaction between the performer and the audience. Blurring the line between “performer” and “spectator,” “art” and “art viewer,” “Happenings” are ever-evolving, one-time experiences that depend upon audience response.

DIET BLOOD seeks to revive the Happenings of the 1960s, inject it with an unhealthy dose of raw punk, and send it out, unbridled, into the Nashville scene. Featuring Dave Cloud and His Gospel of Power, DIET BLOOD will also offer the stage to underappreciated musicians such as Deluxin’, The Square People Jazz Maturity, and Marj as well as the sensual stylings of Nashville’s premier burlesque revue, Panty Raid, in a free-form jazz burlesque marathon performance.

Nashville-based visual artists present new two-dimensional works based upon, if not copied from, recent paintings from Nashville surrealist painter Donny Smutz, who describes his paintings as "blowing minds, one at a time."