The Reece Museum presents “View from West Poplar Street to Gilmer Park,” an installation of 31 out of the 200 and ongoing paintings in artist Bill Nickles series, being held until Friday, March 8. The exhibit was coordinated by Spenser Brenner as he worked closely with Nickles.

The series started out as a drawing in 1989 of Nickles’ view of the hillside of Gilmer Park from his friend’s front porch on W. Poplar St. in Johnson City. Nickles recollected this drawing often, but it wasn’t until 1993, when he was fresh out of new ideas, that he returned to the drawing with a new perspective, producing that view with the spring colors he once saw. The drawing then began to multiply, as Nickles experimented with colors, texture, structural elements and much more to produce iterations of this drawing.

Photo taken at the “View from West Poplar Street to Gilmer Park” exhibit. (Nick Ransom/East Tennessean)

“When I saw [the paintings Nickles selected] and saw the range of the work, I thought this would be a really interesting way to experience that series. When we can’t see all 200 plus of them together, this is a way to look at it all as one piece. It is the same idea being redone in many different ways and being viewed as one individual artwork in a series,” said Brenner. “I think it’s a good example to showcase someone’s idea because, in many cases, you’re shunned for not having new ideas and them needing to be bigger and better every time but sometimes it’s okay to spend a lot of time producing an idea in many different ways and different mediums.”

As Nickles’ exhibit ends, the presentation room will now be passed on to current bachelor of fine arts students, which is fitting since Nickles graduated from ETSU with his bachelor’s of fine arts degree. The exhibit will display the work of three graduating BFA students, all pursuing the same process as Nickles did pre-graduation. This spring exhibit will be available for viewing from March 18 to April 26 with a reception on April 4.

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