Union City, Tenn.—Discovery Park of America will be featuring the work of internationally-acclaimed pop artist Red Grooms in its “Artist Showcase” gallery Oct. 18, 2019 through April 30, 2020. The show will be launched with a free reception on Oct. 17, 2019 at 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. featuring a discussion about Grooms with Bill Hickerson, executive director of the West Tennessee Regional Art Center and Letha Botts, an artist who is originally from Union City and who worked with Grooms in the late 1970s.

Born in Nashville in 1937, Red Grooms stands among Tennessee’s cultural icons. A performance artist, filmmaker, printmaker and cartoonist, he is best known for colorful pop art that captures both the grotesqueness and humor of everyday life.

Grooms’ work has been widely influential for generations of artists and his work has been exhibited in galleries across the United States, as well as Europe, and Japan. His art is featured in the collections of more than 35 museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art in Nashville, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art and the Knoxville Museum of Art.

Organized by the museum’s exhibits director, Jennifer Wildes, the show at Discovery Park will feature color lithographic print sculptures, lithographic prints, paintings and mixed media pieces.

“Red Grooms is the most recognized living Tennessee artist,” says Bill Hickerson, executive director of the West Tennessee Regional Art Center. “This sampling of works from his career will give Discovery Park visitors a look at his style, and the whimsical spirit that created it.

Although Grooms continues working primarily out of the same studio in the TriBeCa neighborhood in New York that he’s been in since 1969, he also has a home and studio in Tennessee.