Hutton Hotel Lobby Art

Diptych, Marble, Glass, Ceramic, Stone, Spray Enamel, Oil, and Acrylic on Panel 

The large-scale diptych Welch created for the Hutton Hotel Lobby draws on Nashville's local history through music-related motifs, depicting a band playing in a wild garden of fragmented designs inspired by those seen in ancient mosaics. Welch's mosaics are composed of tile, glass, marble, and printed images of ancient artifacts, drawing a parallel to the artist's idea of how the ancient and modern collide in the present day. By introducing elements of self-portraiture into his retellings of mythical stories, Welch considers how underrepresented stories can be uplifted in new depictions of antiquity.

Cameron Welch draws from both antiquity and modern life to create new mythologies. His work weaves personal memories and his biracial identity with broader cultural and historical references, forming visual narratives that reclaim underrepresented histories. Originally working across sculpture, collage, and textiles, Welch turned to mosaic in 2017—a medium introduced to him by his grandmother. He uses it to piece together disparate materials and stories, treating mosaics as physical intertextuality or “infiltration.” Though rooted in ancient tradition, his dynamic, layered compositions reflect the chaos of the Information Age, where figures—often including himself—emerge as both familiar and mythic within intricate, contemporary tableaux.

Archival Pigment Print

"The West" was selected for the Hutton Hotel Lobby from Prager’s existing body of work. In addition to being visually striking, the staged image taps into universal themes of modern life, connection, and sometimes isolation. Additionally, like other works from her series “Western Mechanics,” it reflects on the current state of the world and our emotional connection to it, intertwined with the past.

Alex Prager is an American artist, director, and screenwriter born in Los Angeles, California. She is a self-taught creator known for her uncanny images and films that blur the line between artifice and reality while exploring the human condition. Prager’s creations, characterized by a highly staged and cinematic quality, draw inspiration from a diverse range of sources, including classic Hollywood films, street photography, and her own life experiences. 

Thread, aluminum, wood & plaster

An Emil Lukas thread painting was selected for the Hutton Hotel Lobby because of its ability to create an optical illusion of depth and light. From a distance, the painting appears to be glowing. As the viewer moves around the artwork, the complex layers of threads shift and interact, creating a shimmering, dynamic color field. Up close, the intricate network of individual lines and angles are visible; from afar, it resolves into a cohesive, luminous image. Lukas does not plan the colors in advance but starts with one color and then reacts to it, creating a composition that feels both precisely arranged and spontaneously created, much like jazz improvisation. In this way, the artwork becomes a silent score for the Listening Lounge, enriching the guests’ sensory journey and deepening the connection to music.

Emil Lukas, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is an American artist celebrated for his innovative and process-oriented work. His "thread paintings", created on shallow wood or metal supports featuring plaster concave backing, are intricately crisscrossed with thread to form complex, glowing color fields. Each piece serves as an experiment in color theory, displaying optical and phenomenological qualities.

Oil on Canvas

Commissioned for Mimi’s Bar at the Hutton Hotel, Keith Boadwee’s “Before & After” bring a playful, witty energy to the space. Inspired by his “Frog Painting” series, the pair use their titles to spin a simple yet clever narrative—turning abstraction into something instantly relatable. Together, they create a humorous dialogue that perfectly matches the bar’s vibrant, social spirit.

Keith Boadwee, born in Meridian, Mississippi, is a conceptual artist and painter currently living and working in Emeryville, California. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from UCLA in 1989 and his Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2001. Boadwee is recognized for his performative and often provocative artwork that explores themes of identity and the queer body. In recent years, he has concentrated on a series of “Frog Paintings”, along with portraits of poodles and fish, using these animals to investigate formal aspects of painting. His work is an integral part of subculture history and continues to challenge social conventions. 

Dye Sublimation print

“Snow White” was selected from the artist’s existing body of work for its intricate craftsmanship and striking use of vibrant, luminous color. The extreme close-up draws viewers into an intimate space, while the soft focus and radiant light create a sense of distance and mystery. Its title evokes the fairy-tale heroine, inviting reflections on purity, beauty, and the constructed nature of idealized femininity. Displayed in the Hutton Hotel Lobby, the piece both inspires and challenges traditional notions of beauty and performance.

Marilyn Minter is an American artist based in New York City known for her unique approach to photorealistic painting that explores modern concepts of beauty. Minter’s artistic practice is distinguished by her provocative and sensual paintings, photographs, and videos. Her work delves into themes of beauty, glamour, and the female body, often approached with a critical and unflinching perspective.

Watercolor, ink, and gouache on paper

“Five Apparitions” was selected for the Hutton Hotel Lobby for its exploration of history, memory, gender, and religion in shaping identity. Departing from Campos-Pons’s well-known large-scale Polaroids and installations, this watercolor offers a more delicate, contemplative approach. The fluid medium mirrors both water and memory—its spontaneous flows suggesting how ancestral presences and histories surface unbidden. The result is a quiet, poetic meditation on loss, resilience, and the enduring presence of the past.

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, born in Matanzas, is a Cuban-American artist. Currently, Campos-Pons serves as the Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair of Fine Arts at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where she resides. Her artistic practice is multidisciplinary, incorporating photography, performance, painting, sculpture, film, and video. Campos-Pons addresses themes of history, memory, gender, and religion, exploring their roles in shaping identity.

32 Acrylic on Canvas Panels

Abúndez spent over a year carefully creating “(Hi)stories, Music”, a collection of 32 panels featuring written texts about significant moments in music history for the Hutton Hotel Lobby. These moments highlight the impact and power of music in everyday life and the creative process. Each panel is framed separately, allowing the viewer to approach, read the text, and appreciate the rich history of music and its impact on everyone, whether they are listeners or creators.

Octavio Abúndez, born in Monterrey, Mexico, is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is deeply rooted in philosophical inquiry. Abúndez’s artistic practice is characterized by its experimental nature and its exploration of existential questions. He often incorporates language and text into his work, drawing inspiration from a wide range of cultural sources.

C‑Print

Tammy Rae Carland’s “Smoke Screen” brings theatrical drama and mystery to the Hutton Hotel Lobby. The large-format photograph features rich purple curtains with a partially visible figure illuminated behind them, creating a sense of anticipation and intrigue. Carland, whose work is influenced by the idea that photography is born from theater, treats her subjects as performances to be staged and re-staged. The curtains suggest a moment before or after a performance—the reveal, the concealment, the space between presence and absence. The work’s cinematic quality and saturated color create a visually striking moment that invites contemplation on visibility, performance, and the stories we choose to reveal or hide.

Tammy Rae Carland, born in Portland, Maine, is an American photographer, video artist, and zine editor. Carland’s artistic practice is multifaceted, incorporating photography, video, collage, and zine production. Her work explores themes of queer identity, memory, and the politics of representation.

Rolling Stone Magazine, Record Label Content & Acrylic on Paper

For the Hutton Hotel Lobby, Phillips created a dynamic mixed-media collage that bridges her interest in urban ephemera with the hotel’s celebration of music. Drawing on a previous series in which she used discarded subway and bus advertisements from New York City, Phillips opted to use vintage album covers for this commission, layering fragments of Dolly Parton and other iconic musicians into a complex visual composition. Her distinctive approach results in a richly textured piece where blues, grays, whites, and yellows flow across and between the collaged elements, revealing the unique characteristics of each color. The work captures the energy and spontaneity of music itself, transforming album art and paint into a visual symphony of texture, memory, and movement.

The daughter of a scientist and a lover of nature, Renee Phillips grew up between the South Florida beaches and the Colorado mountains. At a young age, she learned through hands-on exploration of her environment. She received her BA in Fine Art from the University of Miami, FL, and continued her art education at the University of Paris, France, and the School of Visual Arts in NYC. Phillips, a process-based artist, continuously explores the physical properties of paint in her artistic practice. She manipulates paint to create sculptural-like results, creating surfaces that droop, ripple, crack, and pool. By employing heat, wind, water, and gravity, she pushes the paint to its limits, revealing the unique characteristics of each color.

Watercolor and Ink on Paper

Four paintings on paper by Alexa Guariglia were selected for the Hutton Hotel Lobby for their intimate celebration of everyday urban life. Working in gouache, ink, and watercolor, Guariglia weaves together patterns and forms from memory to create portraits of women in quiet reverie. Each painting is named for a day of the week and features a woman surrounded by the details of daily life—checkers, houndstooth, cats, books, florals, and more. The small-scale works elevate ordinary moments into something poetic and memorable, capturing snapshots of mood and atmosphere. They invite guests to slow down and find beauty in the rhythms of everyday experience.

Combining the immediacy of drawing with the textual and tonal diversity of painting, Alexa Guariglia's pictures collate fragmentary memories and moments into immersive wholes. As if by autonomous outpouring, patterns, coded objects, and actions create psychological stages for figures to perform various solitudes in full view. With the physical, emotional, and mental components of art-making as subject and conceptual engine, Guariglia embraces uncertainty and inconsistency as part of her process, freely moving between styles and modes.