Meet Alex Lockwood | Artist and Gallery Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Alex Lockwood and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Alex, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
I’m from Seattle, Washington. My Dad was born in Seattle – his family came to Northwest in the 19th C from Italy and England when Seattle was a logging and fishing town. My Mom was born in Germany and came to the US as a stewardess in the 60s. My family believed in the value and power of art – going to local galleries, traveling to museums and collecting when they could afford it.

That belief in the value of art has informed both of my businesses and own art career.

At my gallery – Elephant Gallery – I focus on exhibitions by early- and mid-career artists. My priority is always on the experience of the exhibition for both the artist and the visitor. For the artist, developing and following through on an idea that expresses a unique and personal vision is our lifeblood. For the viewer, discovering a personal connection to art is like being spoken to by a song or a meal – it sustains, expands and validates your inner life.

In 2020 I started a non-profit art school called Buchanan Arts with my friend John Donovan. It is a ceramics based program – for now – that offers continuing education and free afterschool classes year round. Again this program is based on the importance and value of art in our lives. John and I both feel like our lives were saved by art-making. By that I mean we found purpose through art – John at a very young age, me in my early 30s. Art-making provided us with a means to express our inner voices, to develop practices that grew through consistent effort and that connected us to our peers and communities. At Buchanan Arts our aim is provide that experience to people of all ages, abilities, backgrounds.

Lastly, all of these projects grew out of my own art making practice. When I started making art, relatively late in life compared to most, I found purpose, challenges, success, failure, struggle and growth. I found that I was talented in a way that was unique to me, my brain and the patterns and needs of my own body. Most importantly I found what was missing from my life.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I make colorful, attractive work, usually out of unconventional art-making materials. Mostly I build sculptures but I am increasingly making and showing two dimensional work – collage, drawings and paintings. My most successful pieces combine material and message into forms that draw the viewer in through beauty and color, then reveal another layer of pain or struggle or warning. That combination – external beauty and internal hardship – is important to my work because that is my experience of life, of my physical and emotional self, of what i see around me in both in friends and family and as a resident of earth. Of my recent artwork I’m most proud of plants that I’ve made by cutting up .223 shell casings – which are used in AR-15 rifles and responsible for most of the mass shootings in the US. These sculptures are visually striking and hide their material until close inspection. The story is that these plants from a dark future where the bullet casings have littered the American landscape to such a degree that they are sinking into the earth and merging with plant species. The flowers grow both as a testament to the destruction we are causing in this country – both to human life and the natural world.
I am also quite proud of the drawings that I have been making recently. This work is new to me. I’m proud because to be a successful artist is to be a risk taker, to feel an aversion to comfort or repetition.
I became an artist relatively late in life. I was surrounded by artists in New York in the late 1990s and early 2000s who provided an example and, along with galleries and museums, an education. It was hard to start. And it continues to be hard after twenty years. People make an assumption about my work, that it is fun to create or that it comes easily. But that is so rarely the case. Making art is a lesson in failure. Showing art is a lesson in rejection. Being an artist means expecting and preparing for both. It also means, if you are lucky and I consider myself lucky, tapping into a drive to create that supercedes and is rewarded by that struggle.
I think about art making the way I hear other people talk about love. When I found it I knew it was right and the thought of growing old with my practice brings me relief and joy.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
We have a massive number of world class parks and hiking trails in the city. My favorites are: Beaman Park – where you can hike a loops of 3 to 18 miles and see nearly no one.
Bells Bend State Park – with grassly lowland trails filled with wildlife along the cumberland river.
Shelby Park – by neighborhood green space in East Nasville. Summer days at the Cornelia Fort Airpark – a former airport within Shelby – are a joy.

My favorite restaurants in town are:
V/N Pho Deli – I haven’t been to Vietnam but this family run spot rivals anything I tasted in New York or Seattle.
Hai Woon Dai – and excellent Korean spot in Antioch just out of town.
In my East Nashville neighborhood I love the pizzas and pilsner-heavy beer selection at Smith & Lentz Brewery.
Folk and Rolf and Daughters are two incredible fine dinings spots opened by Philip Krajeck
My two favorite BBQ joints are Martin’s (with locations all over town) and the Peg Legged Porker
And if you’re here you need to get Hot Chicken at Prince’s – its the original and the best.
Oh and if you visit me at Elephant Gallery get a bite at Ed’s Fish. They make an amazing fried Whiting sandwich. Get it with everything. Cheese onions and mustard. It may not sound right but it definitely is.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Three shoutouts: My Aunt, Marlies Hessel, an incredible collector. Her walls, floors, ceiling are covered with artwork and she showed me the beauty of immersing yourself in other people’s creations.

Second my former partner and friend Tracey Baran who passed away in 2008. Tracey was a stunning photographer and showed me what it meant to really commit to an art practice.

Third by great friend Paul Collins here in Nashville. Paul has been a huge influence and most importantly has taught me the art doesn’t work without risk and change.

Website: alockwood.com, elephantgallery.com, buchananarts.org

Instagram: @alexlockwood, @elephantgallery, @buchanan_arts_nashville

Image Credits
All photos credit: Sam Angel Photography except – Elephant Gallery and American Weeds Alex Lockwood