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The Hot List ‘08

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Emerging Arts Scene

Ovvio Arte
Art is a thing at Veta Cicolello and Theo Antoniadis’s innovative new space near Greer Stadium. It’s a force in the world, an ideal to achieve, a constant presence. It matters. But most importantly to these two New York City transplants, art is never something you can pin down, label or limit. It’s with that in mind that they’ve created Ovvio Arte (“Obvious Art,” for those of you who don’t speak Italian), a performance/exhibition space in a former gas station that, at 2,500 square feet, can just fit pretty much any kind of artistic endeavor you’d care to share with the edgy, art-thirsty audience that’s already calling the space home. From band performances to plays (a successful six-night run of three one-act plays by Joe Giordano finished in June) to art exhibitions and beyond (Cicolello is a painter and Antoniadis a designer and musician, and this fall, the well-known painter Clifford Bailey will be showing his new work), Ovvio Arte is primed to explore the outer limits of art in a city whose creativity is just beginning to be tapped.

Best Original Plays

Joseph Giordano

Religion and Rubber Ducks, Giordano's collection of short works, received a surprisingly lively production at the atmospheric new Ovvio Arte gallery space. Good performances and snappy direction by Lauren Shouse brought to life the author's quirky insights into relationships and religious doctrine, his plays crafted with humor and exhibiting a marked maturity. —MARTIN BRADY

Best New Creative Space

Ovvio Arte

Removed from the hipness of Hillsboro Village and the doings downtown, the Chestnut Street neighborhood has hosted some of the city's most challenging creative voices. With the opening of Ovvio Arte, even the most obscure expressions now have an official address. Veta Cicolello and Theo Antoniadis' new space is a black box theater, art gallery and music venue all in one, and it has already played host to—and served as inspiration for—some of this year's best art happenings and plays (see below). Expect great things from this dynamic duo in '09. —JOE NOLAN

Innovative gallery, performance venue

Ovvio Arte avoids the obvious

THE TENNESSEAN Sunday, May 25th 2008

By JONATHAN MARX STAFF WRITER

A lot goes on in our city, and yet life here can fall prey to a certain predictability. Go to a gallery opening, a nightclub, a stage performance, and you generally know what kind of experience you're going to have — who'll be there, what it will look like, sound like, smell like.

Transplanted New Yorkers Veta Cicolello and Theo Antoniadis have been craving something different, so they created Ovvio Arte. Housed in a 70-year-old, 2,500-square-foot building sitting in the shadow of Greer Stadium, the couple's venture makes its public debut next weekend with Religion and Rubber Ducks,an evening of one-act plays by Nashvillian Joe Giordano.

But Ovvio Arte isn't just a playhouse. It's an art gallery, a gathering place, a venue and a vehicle for "extraordinary events and spectacles," as the couple puts it.

"Nashville is so vibrant culturally, and there are so many things going on, but there's always been this sort of division," Cicolello observes. "There's no place where a variety of art forms can converge. That's one thing we miss about New York, the way so many different people intermingle all the time. We've always yearned for a place where that can happen here."

Cicolello, a painter who studied at Manhattan's School of Visual Arts, and Antoniadis had been talking about launching Ovvio — the Italian word for "obvious" — for a while. But the place became a reality through an unexpected sequence of events: Cicolello had to move out of her studio space in East Nashville, and the building at 425 Chestnut St. became available.

Antoniadis is a carpenter and designer who also sidelines as a musician.

"I was tired of working out of my basement," he explains, "so I said to Veta, 'I'll work in one corner, and you work in the other corner.'

"I was thinking of all the logistics (of opening a gallery and performance space) in here and thinking, 'Hmmm, maybe one day we'll do it.' Then Veta started to plan a staged reading of Charles Bukowski; then she started talking to Lauren Shouse, who's directing Religion and Rubber Ducks; then she started recruiting artists. And I was like, 'Uh . . . so we're doing this thing?' "

Already, Cicolello's paintings line the walls of Ovvio, a series of abstracts, portraits and nudes that betray her restless inclinations as an artist. Though she says she's not quite ready to host an opening reception for her own work — which will happen soon enough — she's already thinking about who she'd like to show later in the summer and fall: Nashvillians Joe and Jon Silva and Los Angeles-based painter Clifford Bailey.

Later in the year will come the evening of Bukowski writings, read entirely by women. Given the late poet and novelist's persona as a provocateur, it's a project entirely in keeping with the Ovvio sensibility — to engage and, if necessary, to incite.

"I've been verbally assaulted on two different occasions when I told people we were doing this," Cicolello says. "Women have gotten really ticked off about it. They'll ask, 'What would make you choose Bukowski?' and then they'll rattle off a whole list of women writers we should present instead."

It would be a mistake, however, to define Ovvio Arte on the basis of this one project. The programming and the space will always be a work in progress. Cicolello and Antoniadis talk about hosting everything from installation and performance art to local bands to chamber music. The only guiding principle is that it has to be unusual and unconventional, an experience that can't be had somewhere else. To that end, movable walls and soon-to-be-installed curtains and cables will enable the couple to transform the space so that it looks different for each event.

"There's going to be something happening that will make people want to come back," Antoniadis says. "It's not just about selling art; it's about coming here, meeting people and experiencing art."

"As artists ourselves," Cicolello adds, "it can only be a source of inspiration for us. It took a long time for me to move my paintings into this space, but now they're being fueled by all the energy here. Everybody likes the idea of the isolated artist, but I can't work that way. I love being around people."

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