“Homegrown Roses” by Susan DeGarmo

The Franklin Art Scene will host its first art crawl of the spring season Friday, April 5 from 6-9 p.m., just in time to celebrate the recent blooms around Historic Downtown Franklin.

The Franklin Art Scene is a first-Friday event presented by the Downtown Franklin Association (DFA). The art crawl and its 30-plus locations are free, but a $5 wristband includes unlimited stops on the trolleys that circulate throughout the circuit.

In addition to an online map and QR code, a Franklin Art Scene smartphone application is now available on Google Play. The download gives users up-to-date information on the upcoming event and its locations.

For more information on the event, visit www.franklinartscene.com.

April highlights include: 

Walton’s Antique Jewelry, the antique and estate jewelry shop on Main Street, will host Leila Platt during the April 5 event. Platt is a local watercolorist who uses colorful oils to portray her extensive travels. Her works have been sold in all 50 states, as well as in England and France. 

Platt says she attempts to put fleeting feelings and moment into tangible form through light or place. For more information about this artist, go to www.leilaplatt.com.

Riverside Antiques is a furniture and ironworks store that recently joined the art crawl circuit. The store, which has been in downtown Franklin 18 years, will feature Shelley Snow’s work. The Franklin native spent more than a dozen years growing up in the Carnton Plantation home with her family, and sometimes draws from those experiences.

Snow works predominantly in watercolors, but uses her talents in other mediums as well. Her oil and watercolor commissions for portraits and landscape pieces have taken her all over the world, including Europe, Japan, China, Tahiti, the South Seas and the Middle East. For more information on this artist, go to www.shelleysnow.com.

ReDo Home & Design on the Public Square is another new stop on the Franklin Art Scene for the spring season. The interior home and design shop is hosting local mixed-media artist Amber Wallace on April 5, and the artist will be working and painting on site during the event.

Wallace often executes her pieces on antique finds, such as vintage door panels, old barn wood and abandoned window frames and drawers. She transforms forgotten items, and re-purposed pieces into whimsical works of art through acrylics and oil pastels mediums.

• Kimbro’s Pickin’ Parlor, a music venue and restaurant on South Margin Street, is hosting three artists for the April art crawl: Audie Adams, Cristy Napier and Dina Lynan. Audie is a Nashville native who explores color combinations and texture varieties to produce colorful imagery in his paintings. A fan of drips and strategic splatters, the painter works with the same images more than once to challenge different perspectives. He gravitates towards architecture, cityscapes, and dynamic florals.

Cristy Napier is a Fort Lauderdale native and Tennessee transplant who specializes in one-of-a-kind custom works that create a detailed story for each individual piece. Many of her paintings include a modern twist on collage, with hundreds to thousands of different ideas and pictures formed into a greater piece. Between personalized pieces, Cristy is also working on a collection of birds and animals, as well as a series of women who influenced pop culture

Dina Lynan is a jewelry artist who’s “Artistic Soul” collection is heavily influenced by her love of music. Having lived previously in Los Angeles and worked for both Island Records and Qwest Records of Warner Bros., she draws from her background for each piece.

• The Heirloom Shop on Main Street will host Rhonda Polen Wernick for April’s art crawl. After years of painting and drawing, Wernick has recently become intrigued with mixed-media work and will showcase those works at the specialty gift shop come Friday. She utilizes canvas, wood and texture to add new dimension to her style, and often includes Swarovski crystals, broken glass and mosaic pieces as well.

Wernick, who is also an oil painting instructor at the Nashville Jewish Community Center, has commissioned pieces in wineries and distilleries throughout the Southeast, including Jim Bean and Fireball.

O’More College of Design, the non-profit, four-year institution on South Margin Street, will host local artists Susan Estes DeGarmo and Bebo in its fine art gallery in the Abbey Leix Mansion.

Susan is a painter, mix-media artist and illustrator. She is also an O’More instructor. For the April art crawl, Susan will provide her altered books, full of intriguing mixed media.

Bebo is a Kingston Springs folk artist, who constructs handpainted critters made out of old barnwood and boards.

Gallery 202, the private art gallery housed in one of the most historic venues in downtown Franklin, is welcoming guests to view the work of Toby Penney and Maya Blume-Cantrell. 

Penney uses color to extract and convey the small, simple moments from life. His work is mixed oil media, and often uses several mediums to layer for unique texture creation. In an effort to connect with history. He has recently incorporated traditional craftwork technique, such as sewing and knitting, into his pieces.

A native of coastal Alabama, Maya has always been drawn to aquatic inspiration from the gulf and bay waters that surrounded her as a child. In addition to the water and its life forms, plant life and its unique anatomy has also provided much of the basis for her work.