This season’s Soundwaves Gallery: THE HE(ART) OF NASHVILLE continues to grow with two more stunning additions to the Starting XI, a collection of 11 specialty artworks commissioned by Nashville SC and created by local Nashville artists using soccer-related items. Each piece will be unveiled throughout the 2025 season and auctioned off at its conclusion, with proceeds benefiting the Nashville SC Community Fund.
Today, we’re thrilled to introduce works from two Nashville-based artists, Taylor Walton and Jennifer Folsom.
CITY OF GOD
Taylor Walton
Acrylic, oil pastel, team memorabilia, and postage stickers on plexiglass from an NSC Substitution Board
Taylor Walton is an African-American visual artist based in Nashville, Tennessee; his passion for creativity has been evident since his upbringing in small-town Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he was always sketching and experimenting with different artistic mediums. His work currently focuses on themes of race relations and America’s socioeconomic history. Walton is a graduate of Middle Tennessee State University, where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Graphic Design.
City of God represents Nashville’s Geodis Park as a living, breathing movement built on community. A combination of paint, screen-printed imagery, hand drawn additions, and team memorabilia, this collage depicts the spirit of fútbol in its rawest form. Taking inspiration from Nashville’s geographic history as well as Brazil’s favelas; I built a structure that combines the bustle and infrastructure of Brazilian neighborhoods with Nashville’s municipal optimism. The final product, a work of art that properly celebrates the culture of fútbol, and Nashville’s exponential growth. Learn more about his work at https://taylorwalton.myportfolio.com/work.
Artist’s Statement
Growing up as Black male in the American South, I occupied a heavily scrutinized demographic. Introduced to prejudice at an early age, my existence felt used and discarded—the lack of visible representation made it difficult to see myself within the sphere of art-making. The ‘need’ to provide constantly outweighed the ‘want’ to express. I
purposefully use mediums and techniques that have previously empowered the disenfranchised in order to juxtapose this messaging. The goal is to create work that encapsulates the surrealism of the Black existence. My goal is to create work that conveys the gravity and importance of these interactions. I combine elements of painting, printmaking, illustration, and collage to discuss intersectional themes of class, race, and gender. I work primarily in illustration—utilizing everything from acrylic markers, oil pastels, and color pencils; I use screen printing and risographs to elicit a sense of urgency through use of texture and multiplicity. Printmaking has been a vehicle of expression for various protest movements; printed media also played an integral role in the advancement of African-Americans socially and politically. I continue to use these techniques as a way to connect to those previous protest movements and community builders. Collage allows me to bring these disparate elements and inspirations into my work—creating new textures, helping to illustrate a visual metaphor of displacement/ forced migration; similar to Diasporic cultures prevalent throughout history.
In the Net: Capturing the Spirit of Play and Belonging
Jennifer Folsom
Upcycled goal net from Nashville Soccer Club, indigo, black walnut ink, yellow fiber-reactive dye, paper, wood, waxed linen
Jennifer Folsom is a fiber artist who explores how craft weaves together history, tradition, and community. Her practice combines a deep curiosity about the history of making with a living approach that treats fiber as both heritage and evolving art form.
As Programs Chair for the Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance, she creates opportunities for makers to learn and grow, and as a founding member of the Highland Rim Spinning Guild, she helps strengthen community among fiber artists in Middle Tennessee.
She believes that craft connects us across time, place, and tradition to the ongoing story of human creativity. Learn more at j-folsom.com.
In the Net moves beyond a traditional codex into a sculptural book. Its conical form, bound with upcycled goal netting, transforms the material of the game into a living structure. Hand-dyed pages are all visible in the conical shape, echoing the energy of play and the interwoven connections of team, fans, and community.
Artist’s Statement
With In the Net, I wanted to transform a familiar piece of soccer, the goal net, into both material and metaphor. Bound with a piano hinge that incorporates upcycled netting from Nashville Soccer Club, this oversized artist’s book moves beyond a traditional codex into something sculptural and architectural. Its conical form allows every hand-dyed page to remain visible at once, turning the book into a book structure that celebrates teamwork, place, and belonging.
The pages are dyed with black walnut and indigo to evoke the textures and tones of Nashville’s landscape. Repeated woven motifs run through the work, echoing the interlacing connections of the game and the community it gathers.
By using the goal net as a binding element, I wanted to literally and symbolically tie the book together, just as soccer binds teammates, fans, and city through shared energy, play, and the spirit of belonging.
Starting XI
Both of these pieces are on view now as part of the Starting XI at the Soundwaves Gallery in GEODIS Park, displayed alongside THE HE(ART) OF NASHVILLE, a rotating exhibition of 44 works by 44 local artists curated in partnership with the Arts & Business Council in collaboration with a three-person curatorial committee comprised of local arts leaders Michael J. McBride, Artist, Illustrator, Printmaker, Painter, and Instructor of Art at Tennessee State University; Amanda H. Hellman, Director of the Vanderbilt University Museum of Art; and Michael Mitchell (aka mikewindy), Artist and Art Education Coordinator at Tennessee State University.