The Interesting-Net

I started out to write this morning about the excitement I am feeling about heading to Cincinnati tomorrow for what I call my annual art sabbatical.  But, as so often happens with me and the internet, I was derailed by the unexpected, but interesting.

As I searched for my ever elusive blog (yes, I lose my blog) on Google this morning my search led me to a call for art by a group here in Nashville that is known as the Music City Sisters.  Since I am really interested in anything artistic that is going on right here in my own neck of the woods and this was a call for alphabet art (which I find particularly enticing given that I am a letter person myself), I cruised on over to the website to check it out.  I was also interested in the group itself.  Their logo is the image of what appears to be a winking nun and the call for artwork specified that the reason for the exhibition was to promote LGBT artists.  I was pretty sure this was not a group affiliated with the church, but, hey, you never know and I had recently heard a report on NPR of how many younger girls are deciding to join convents in Nashville so who knew if this might be a new kind of mission for the group of young progressive nuns that had been highlighted in that story?  After digging around on their website, it turned out that I was right.

Apparently, the Music City Sisters is a group that is affiliated with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence which, as it turns out, is a group started in California in the 1970s, but that now has spawned other 'orders' across the United States.  Their mission (according to their website) is to promulgate universal joy, expiate stigmatic guilt and serve the community.  Here in Nashville (where this order was officially formed in August, 2010), they are hosting a juried exhibition for alphabet art as a way to fulfill their mission.  How interesting is that?  I love it and I hope they have a great response (although I do see that the deadline for submissions has been extended which normally means that they have not had as good a response as they had hoped).  But I have already contacted one of my daughter's childhood friends who I think might love this group and I have plans to contact a couple of others who are artists themselves and might actually be interested and able to meet the deadline.  Hopefully, I'll post an update following the actual exhibition if it actually happens (which I hope it does).  In the meantime, you should check out the Music City Sisters website (http://www.musiccitysisters.org/).  They look like a fun group to have here in the Music City.