NUMBER, Inc.: In Conversation: Lain York on the Newly-Resurrected Untitled Artists Group
Published September 4th 2024
By Justin Stokes
It is the artist’s role to beautify the space they occupy. In honoring this role, artists become indispensable to their respective communities.
But the relationship between artists and their community should not be a one-way street. Instead, the community surrounding an artist should provide them with resources and encouragement so that creatives may continue doing what they love while a sponsoring locale benefits from the artist’s labor.
Nashville artist and community builder Lain York understands this relationship all too well. A respected painter, Lain has worked as director of Zeitgeist Gallery for more than 20 years. His work as an arts organizer in Middle Tennessee goes back even further than his time at Zeitgeist, and his reputation for bringing artists and communities together earned York the nickname “The Mayor of Art Town.”
After the pre-COVID shuttering of the beloved Nashville Arts Magazine and the loss of opportunities felt by local artists in recent years, Lain decided in the spring to resurrect the iconic Untitled Artist Group. Following the return of artists to downtown Nashville’s arcade, Lain feels that Untitled’s infrastructure may be the next step in revving up the Music City arts scene.
Our interview with Lain is below.
For people unfamiliar with your work or efforts in community building, how would you define yourself?
First of all, having gone through university while not really understanding why I was studying art as well as volunteering in the Nashville art scene… I think that getting involved in the Metro Art Commission at the time, being introduced to various art groups, and working with the Summer Lights Festival all gave me a crash course in what Nashville’s art scene was. It was so much fun, and that immediately gave me an answer for “Oh, this is why I want to make my stuff!”
So, the pursuit of art through both the academic track as well as volunteering was an instinctual was for you to learn what you knew that you didn’t know.
Just for the record, are you a Nashville native?
I was actually born in Lebanon, TN. But I’ve been in Nashville pretty much all of my life.
And you knew early on that you wanted to be a visual artist?
Oh yeah! Either that or play professional football. But I knew that was never going to happen (Laughs)
So, what was it early on that attracted you to art? Was there a particular aesthetic, or a particular person that made visual art appealing for you?
It was comic books, album art… there was definitely a connection between art and music, such as Roger Dean’s work for Yes, or the cover of KISS’s “Rock and Roll Over” album, the artwork Hipgnosis did for album covers. When you’re a kid, and you’re sitting there listening to music and looking at album covers, you absorb the artwork along with the narrative and the music. And that gets you interested in the concert photography covering those musical artists, which further carries the narrative of what you’re listening to.
It seems that album cover artwork between the 1960s-1980s invited listeners to take more of a journey.
Right, like seeing Frank Frazetta do a Molly Hatcher album cover. But yeah, I became a big fan of artwork as a kid through those album covers and comic books that I was exposed to early on.
So the emotional journey that art provided you was enough to make you pursue art as a career. And where did you go to school to study art?
I went to Auburn University. I was at Belmont [University] for a while, too. And then I eventually made my way to The University of Tennessee Knoxville.
Being exposed to art through three different universities, do you feel satisfied with the level of education and training you received at the time?
This definitely fits into what we’re talking about with Untitled Artists Group and other artist-run initiatives for how these educational institutions fit in.
I got exactly what I needed from those schools. I don’t waste time going, “Only if I knew back then what I know now” I’m very fortunate that as a creative individual, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. Not New York, not London, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Install day for the Untitled Artists Group Show in March 2024
And what year did you graduate college? And what did you set out to do after you graduated?
I graduated in 1990. The mission was to get the fuck out of school. I didn’t like it. I couldn’t quite figure out why I was there. I just had to stick it out.
Fortunately, a year before I graduated I had volunteered for the Summer Lights Festival in downtown Nashville. This festival featured arts, music, dance… From that experience, I got a quick view of what creatives were doing in Nashville across the board. After graduating, I went right into production for the festival in 1990.
As a person driven by their instincts, it would seem that most of the time you’re rewarded for trusting your gut. Trusting your gut, however—and not relying on a mapped-out gameplan—must put you in some situations where you have no idea what to do.
Yeah… I would say that, being tossed the keys to a 24-foot-truck by Anne Brown for my first day on the job, and then crunching somebody’s Honda… or being given a skill saw and immediately sawing right through a cable you’re trying to avoid cutting into.
Luckily, I had mentors there, people who were totally laughing at my ass. But at the same time, they helped me. So in spite of not having the developed skill sets or experience, I was able to learn what I needed to learn. And I’m very grateful to those people. Through these independent initiatives working with other artists, I’ve been a resource to others who are now less experienced than I am. That’s super important, and I want to continue doing that. I want to be that person who steps in and helps when others need it.
Being an artist and creative problem-solving, you know, it’s identifying and managing particular resources. And coming up in the festival situation that I did, you learn pretty quick. There’s a lot of pressure.
I’m sure that many young creatives starting their career want to avoid making mistakes. But those mistakes can be valuable lessons. Trial and error is all part of the creative process too, no? And as horrifying as, say, crunching someone else’s vehicle may be during the first day on the job, you’re likely not the first person on said job who made big mistakes early on.
Exactly. And what constitutes a professional creative? Whether you’re a studio artist, in the field, a curator, or you’re doing something else, what I learned is that when you made these mistakes—this is after the immediate consequences are dealt with, mind you—that nobody cared. As far as visual arts went, the Nashville that I landed in, nobody took it seriously. This was Country Music City. It always was. And nobody took the arts seriously.
That was a real issue in the music circles that I was moving in. My friends who were musicians thought it was cool that I painted and made art. But my artist friends were pretty quick to say, “Are you one of them or are you one of us?” The pervasive brand of Nashville was music, and that’s it. It was like, “What does Nashville know about art?” And I would go, “What about Red Grooms? What about Robert Ryman?” Nashville was a great area even then, an intellectual center. It was actually one of the cities that partially influenced the Harlem Renaissance.
But back then, nobody was really watching visual artists, and nobody cared. We had so many empty buildings downtown in the late ‘80s. This was right before Fulton came in and really started cleaning house, getting all of the adult cinemas out of there. We had acres of spaces, and these great networks to immediately get busy in.
Let’s get some background information on the Summer Lights Festival. What can you share? And what made the Summer Lights Festival so special for you?
It started in the early ‘80s. I remember going to it in high school.
To the best of my recollection, Anne Brown was director of the Metro Arts Commission at that time spearheaded that. And the idea was to bring to Nashville something along the lines of Spoleto Festival USA out of Charleston. And it happened downtown, showcasing local talent presented in the context that these were nationally relevant acts. And from what I saw, there was an equal focus of music, dance, theater, visual art, and spoken word.
It was a place where you were going to see Garth Brooks before he was Garth Brooks. The talent that was trafficking through Nashville at that time was incredible. And not just for country music. The rock and roll scene was just so magical back then. Everything was done really well, and it was just so much fun. It was very much for Nashvillians. But it happened close to the CMA Fest back when it was Fan Fair. Summer Lights hit I think the first weekend of June, and Fan Fair followed I think the weekend after that. So there was some overlap which brought in tourists, but this wasn’t just about country music. It was about Nashville itself.
Summer Lights Festival ran until ‘95 or so. But it stopped being a city festival right as the Greater Nashville Arts Foundation took over, which was maybe around 1991 or so.
So you understand: At the time I was working with Metro Arts Commission, there was the Summer Lights Festival, Arts in the Airport, numerous mural projects downtown, and at least one gallery that showed local artists.
What happened for your career after Summer Lights Festival?
Well, the engagement from visitors at the art shows I was doing for my own stuff became more fun. And I was certainly learning more.
I jumped from the Metro Arts Commission to the Greater Nashville Arts Foundation, which Anne Brown founded. There were two galleries then, as that’s when the foundation was really kicking in high gear. We were based in the Church Street center if you remember that.
In addition to my day gig, there were a whole bunch of independent, artist-run initiatives that I participated in. After I would finish work, I would make an appearance at some of these, like the Visual Artist Alliance Nashville (V.A.A.N.), which was located in the old Alamo building off of Fourth Avenue and Broadway. And, my God, they had maybe 500+ members in that organization at the time I was stopping by, and they were just starting to manage a space downtown as opposed to doing one-night pop-ups… There were a dozen of these independent groups, having meetings and having shows. And as a working artist, you were presenting your artwork all over town, and on a lot of different levels too. For instance, V.A.A.N.’s membership was established studio artists who were represented by galleries. And at their shows, you had to present slides. That’s totally different from how Untitled would do things, which was simply telling folks “Okay, we’re having a show on Thursday!”
Things were a bit different back then. A lot of these groups expected you to have your shit together.
At some point in this journey, you eventually transition into being a leader, and people begin to trust you with their ideas, projects, etc. Let’s discuss that.
(Laughs) Am I really to be trusted with anything?
In terms of event production… I had this sense of “A lot of shit needs to get down pronto.”
And with that came these other notions of “You need to be prepared. You need to be on board with other things that are going on.” That situation started with me and a couple of older guys who were showing me the ropes. All of a sudden, they’re gone, and I’m having to run a crew, and all of a sudden this crew is getting larger and larger. And there was a very particular way things needed to be done. I don’t know that I was necessarily prepared for it.
I will say that as all of that was unfolding, Untitled came to me. This was 1991. The group had already been up and running. Jumping in and helping them out with shows after I had been used to working with older artists made the thing feel like a different animal. These were artists who did not have a lot of experience, but they were super passionate about what they were doing. By the time I got involved, I had a pretty extensive logistics background, and it was really fun to take the things that I had done on the clock and apply them to Untitled. Plus, the people I was working with here became my friends. I was setting up a show downtown, I’d bring my tools, and as soon as I’d see what I got to do, I’d tell myself “This is going to be fun!”
A really valuable thing about Untitled above other groups is the expectation of participating and sharing knowledge. When I jumped in, I knew that I had some skills that other people didn’t, and vice versa. There were so many more skills that others had that I didn’t. And when I saw the flow of things, I realized that this needed to be more democratic as much as it needed to be fun. I couldn’t just boss people around.
I learned that if there was anything to leadership, it’s letting people feel that they can offer you input.
So when you came to Untitled, would you consider yourself one of the founders of a particular iteration of the collective?
I showed up at a meeting at [restaurant] Multi Bob in 1991. The group was in full swing and they were planning a themed show, called "Heaven and Hell." Super volatile group. Really fun. I was there just as another artist looking to help, you know. “Where can I jump in?” That percolated along until 1994 when the wheels of Untitled came off.
It started back up again in 1995 after a meeting that happened in Rebecca Walk’s kitchen. There were four of us that had been involved earlier, and we were drinking beers. We got to talking, and one of us said, “Hey let’s do a show!”
That group took off wildly. In nine months, we were drawing 250 exhibiting artists that included northern Alabama and southern Kentucky, many driving in for weekly meetings. Those shows became very heavy for logistics, and very quickly. We were seeing more than a thousand patrons for these one-night events. I think it freaked a lot of the members out. They were reticent to step up into responsible committee positions. To be fair, none of us really felt that we knew what we were doing on that front, and we all just figured it out on the fly.
Eventually, that version of Untitled collapsed under its own weight in 1999 because artists weren’t spinning out and forming new groups.
In 2002, it reinvented itself again and ran until 2012.
The fact that things can start back up again after a lull, that is the magic of these sorts of initiatives. Particularly with creatives in Nashville. The city is so flush with creatives across the board. They’re all underground because the infrastructure for creatives is so woefully behind that we all find each other in a minute. That’s the history of country music here too. But things with these organizations always caught fire so fast.
And we’re smack in the middle of one of these moments right now with this latest iteration of Untitled. In over thirty years, I don’t think I’ve seen anything like what I’m seeing now in terms of creative potential that’s ready to blast off. And all of this usually starts with four knuckleheads sitting at a kitchen table, and within a year we’re doing art shows with 250 artists in Marathon Village showing 500 works of art.
Sure. And when we talk about creative potential, we’re talking about just for Untitled? Or are you saying that this zeitgeist is felt in communities outside of arts groups?
Uhm… Untitled is a vehicle for this. Granted, it’s the perfect vehicle. But really, it’s just a gathering point. I’m referring specifically to the hunger for local creatives to engage. Forget the market. Forget the commercial gallery system. Forget the museums… Outside of all of that, people across the board—everyone from enthusiasts to veteran artists—are realizing that Nashville has a rich pool of people who are primed to do amazing work together. And from that comes everything else.
Aside from the energy, how do you think this iteration of Untitled is going to be different from its predecessors?
At this point, I’m still not sure. There are a lot of people in the group currently who have been involved in the past Untitled iterations and want to relive those experiences. The actions of Untitled touch people. Deeply, on both a personal and professional level, as the experiences from Untitled can be very rewarding.
Is there another arts organization that comes close to being like Untitled?
No. And many of these artists came from feeling like the community didn’t care what we were doing. You just kind of threw these things together, and they were what they were. And in the past, we literally had so much real estate to play with, these empty buildings. But these things would come together, and bring in patrons that were always flabbergasted by what they were seeing. Later, Untitled artists were being trafficked to major entities like the Frist Art Museum or Cheekwood. Cheekwood had a murderous contemporary art program! (Laughs) And I will stand on my own coffee table and say, “Cheekwood was a direct beneficiary of the hard work done by the independent artists assembled through Untitled!”
And, these little breakout groups would generate a lot of excitement. The kind of excitement that would get the attention of visiting artists who’d popped in from New York or LA and would later tell us, “I’ve never seen anything like X artist!”
They were all super impressed with the sense of community that we used to have, as well as the funky nature of the shows.
So, Untitled could be understood as a “feeder organization” that put events together of which bigger artists and organizations took note.
(Laughs) There was a jaundiced eye cast on Untitled by a lot of the local establishment. A lot of these people—who both knew that I was involved with Untitled and had personal relationships with me since I hung most of the art in these commercial gallery spaces—called it the “Untalented Artists Group.”
I think they did at least pay attention. As did many of the local academic institutions, which were very grateful for what we were doing. We were able to get a lot of students involved, and some of those students went on to go do amazing things after their Untitled experiences.
More than a group, it sounds like Untitled is an ecosystem for different personnel in the arts to come together.
Yes! And we’ve been in touch with Beth Inglish from Nashville Creative Group about where they can intersect with Untitled.
But backing up a little bit, we need to know what we’re talking about when we talk about the Nashville arts scene. Are we talking about it as an ecosystem? Or are we talking about it as an industry? And are those identities mutually exclusive? I don’t necessarily think they are.
We can and should talk about it as an industry… but talking about the arts in both of those terms is how we make these dialogs productive.
What can you share in terms of future Untitled projects?
To answer that, let me reference something from one of the past Untitled iterations. Around Mach 2 of the group, we noticed that there was a huge constituency of graphic designers. And a lot of these designers were working with the early digital printing companies. Nashville has always been a media center, and at that time there was this transition from traditional printing to digital printing. So whenever there was an Untitled show in Mach 2, there was a graphic campaign behind all of it… This led to a lot of people being tech-savvy, and Untitled began putting together databases of artists and patrons. And this was beyond the Metro Arts Commission, the museums, etc. And eventually, the people that were trashing Untitled came to us hat in hand asking to have access to these databases that we had put together, which they did not get because you don’t simply give those things away.
In terms of interaction, I think this new frontier that we’re in has a lot of potential for the application of tech. As we talk about engaging others, the sub-groups within Untitled are empowered to do more with tech and also be lightning-quick, especially if people opt for both physical meetups and digital communities. Right now, a lot of these other art groups are going to Slack. The ability to engage both physically and online is going to jack Untitled into more communities, such as communities based around certain neighborhoods. It’s important to plug into these communities to find new opportunities for art. Galleries in Nashville seem to be closing, not opening.
It sounds like there’s a lot of possibilities for Untitled to tap into.
Yes, but I would also say that Untitled is an extremely limited vehicle. That’s by design. We want people to come into the group, see what the group’s about, and be inspired to go start something else that bridges the gaps where Untitled doesn’t. The idea is for people to come here, meet some people, and then spin out their own thing while also maintaining a relationship with us. That way, no one entity is in control of everything.
Unfortunately, past versions of Untitled ate a lot of other groups. That meant that when the wheels of Untitled fell off, the momentum from those other groups died. This time around, we’re looking to avoid that entirely by not placing every group under one roof.
We just want to get people going again, but this time with creative groups forming in neighborhoods.
Untitled Artists has a Facebook page that can be used to keep up with current events and shows.