KCM wants to thank Magnolia Records for sponsoring our #urbanexplorerknoxville event on October 7, 2022!

Located at 1515 N Central St. Knoxville, TN 37917, this place is packed full of goodies! Records, tapes, &CDs a-plenty!
Our director, Amos Oaks - who happens to be typing this up right now, shops for his collection here often!

These are an amazing bunch of folks who can meet your needs, be it The Cramps, The Carpenters or anything in-between!

We are honored to know them and have their support!

Jim Houser is a self-taught artist, musician, designer, and original member of the renowned artist collective Space1026 in Philadelphia. He is celebrated for his iconic patchwork paintings, color theory, stylized figures, and for challenging the definition of object versus painting.

Jim was born in 1973 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the city where he currently resides. Houser’s collages, paintings, and installations have been exhibited extensively in institutions such as the Laguna Art Museum and the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art as well as galleries in Milan, Paris, Sydney, and São Paulo. His work is included in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Artist Shepard Fairey has stated, “I’ve known Jim Houser since the mid-90’s when he worked with me in Providence primarily cutting stickers by hand. At the time, his unique drawings began to evolve into complex compositions of characters and typography within a mosaic of color blocks. This approach to his work has only evolved to become more sophisticated and beautiful over the years. Jim’s pieces straddle several aesthetic zones harmoniously, allowing them to be playful, mesmerizing, and profound all at once. Because Jim’s pieces work as entire compositions, with so many compelling elements at different scales, they must be seen in person.”

jimhouser.com

Bio 
Lynne Marinelli Ghenov is a visual artist who primarily makes drawings and works on paper. She showed this past summer at UT’s Downtown Gallery in Knoxville, TN, in a two-person show called A Rose Goes with Ada(formerly Amanda)Friedman. Lynne has also shown at Crosstown Arts in Memphis, TN, Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Brooklyn, NY, LA, and GCCA in Greenville, SC, as well as Proto Gallery in Hoboken, NJ, Monte Vista Projects in Los Angeles, CA, and University City Arts League in Philadelphia, PA. She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1975 and raised in Southern New Jersey. She currently lives and works in Knoxville, TN, where she co-founded and co-directed C for Courtside Gallery, an artist-run curatorial space in north downtown Knoxville, from 2017-2020. She graduated from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA, receiving her BFA in sculpture in 1998. She also studied abroad at Temple University Rome in Italy in 1996. Lynne is the Associate at Loghaven Artist Residency in Knoxville, TN. 


Artist Statement
My work mirrors the act of bricolage, though most of the elements mixed in are absorbed and translated through and in the process of drawing. An array of ephemera and objects that spur memory, generate a story, or conjure sentimentality, is vital to my drawing practice. Family business ledgers, old lined paper, children’s toys, found architectural drawings, and antique letters encompass the material choices that create the work’s substrate. The translation of objects takes shape via the act of rubbing, tracing, and observational drawing. The primary materials utilized in my drawings consist predominantly of graphite and colored pencils, pens, and watercolor. Conceptually the themes that embody my work draw heavily from memory, loss, and how to assemble the present through summoning the past. As mentioned earlier, this past, which often resides in the ephemera, forms space to allow for an intuit call and response between found articles and the triggered within the imaginary. The grid in a ledger paper, a tracing of a childhood toy, or a house key are factors that frequently ignite the operational characteristic of the work. Objects are an integral part of my internal logic, though, at times, they reside invisibly on the piece’s surface. A blend of tightly drawn geometric shapes and sometimes recognizable forms related to home, decor, decoration, pattern, and more emerges, interacts, and overlaps.

lynneghenov

The skateboard rail was an invention that helped a skateboarder grab their board when doing vert tricks like airs and inverts.  They also helped protect your boards graphic back when that mattered.  I'm sure many skateboarders wish that they hadn't installed rails at all - much less skated their board with the prices some of these vintage decks are fetching now.

Rails also assisted with sliding on your board.  Sliding on the surface of your board was a bit of a mission because the deck was pretty flat - they had little to no concave.  The rails allowed a contact point for a more efficient slide.

Rails all but disappeared from skateboard culture in the 1990's with smaller boards that had concave but have recently made a comback - both for utilization and flare.

We want to thank Riff Raff Rails for stepping in to sponsor our Urban Explorer Knoxville event on October 7, 2022!  This is their story:

Riff Raff Skate Rails spawned out of another project. After manufacturing large children's exhibits we were left with an abundance of plastic raw material of many different colors which was very expensive. Rather than sit on it and wait for a random project to come through our manufacturing doors we decided to utilize the material to make skateboard accessories and contribute to the resurgence of board rails. We could've thrown the material away but decided to follow our teenage dreams of creating a skate company within our supportive fabrication business. The creation of Riff Raff Rails has allowed us to sponsor skate events and skaters all over the country. We have contributed to many skate competitions, skate jams, and nonprofits to show support for the skaters who want colorful, creative, and edgy board rails! We design and manufacture the skateboard rails in our own fabrication and plastics shop. We love to see the comeback of the rails because skating's legendary forefathers all grew up skating on tricked out boards covered in plastics (rails, lapers, copers, nose bones, tail skids). Those were the glory days... Now we are doing our part to bring back the traditional rail with a modern design and extremely durable quality.