Artist Hornsby selected for solo exhibit at Customs House Museum

In his studio, Hornsby works on his “Fracture” series for his first solo show exhibiting at the Customs House Museum and Cultural Center in Clarksville, Tenn., Mar. 7 until May 4, 2017.

Chris Hornsby, a Tennessee artist and president of Hornsby Brand Design, a Knoxville-based branding design firm, was selected for his first solo exhibit at the Customs House Museum and Cultural Center in Clarksville, Tenn. This show runs from now through May 4, 2017 and features 10 pieces of artwork from his “Fracture” series, which consists of 98 canvases.

Hornsby has shown his work in a variety of states and venues, including the nation’s art capital New York City, but this is his first solo exhibit. Hornsby said, “Art is a personal passion of mine of which I’m grateful to express both in my branding design business as well as in my fine art pieces. To be able to show and share my artwork is always quite an honor, but to have a one- man show in one of the state’s leading fine art museums is something that I’m very excited about.”

Inaugurated in 1898, the Customs House Museum is located in the heart of historic downtown Clarksville and is Tennessee’s second largest general museum with more than 35,000 square feet of exhibit space, 20,000 permanent pieces, and hundreds of thousands of visitors.

Hornsby’s “Fracture” series was born out of the artist’s exploration of dark and light fractured imagery used to express his vision of struggle, pain, defeat, and victory. Based on the complex interaction between control, contradiction, and humanity’s violent struggle to succeed, Hornsby experiments with shapes, mediums, ideas, and positions, birthing images that are unexpected, revealing, and exciting. He describes the rearrangement and juxtapositions of his design forms as expressions of raw emotional openings and “an evolution of experimentation and discovery.”

Hornsby has been applying his artistic skills in a variety of capacities after earning a BFA in graphic design from the University of Georgia. He has garnered more than 100 creative awards, been inducted into the Knoxville’s American Advertising Federation’s Hall of Fame, as well as being published in numerous prestigious design annuals such as Print and How. In addition to his dedication to a successful career, Hornsby proactively gives back to the community both monetarily and through donations of his time and talent to various regional, state, and international non-profits.

In his off time, he exercises his creative talent by continually exhibiting his sculptures and paintings, including a recent exclusive show in the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition’s “Black and White Show.” This show, of which his artwork was selected from 1,358 nationwide entries, garnered him a cash prize and an honorable mention awarded by NYC's art elite, Christiane Paul, the Curator of Media Arts at the prestigious Whitney Museum of American Art. Hornsby is also being featured in the April 2017 issue of Nashville Arts Magazine.

Published March 13, 2017