Nathan Beard: Ten Measure Tune

Name: Nathan Beard: Ten Measure Tune
Start: 2025-04-04T17:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-04-04T21:00:00-04:00
Location: The Werk

Schedule

Fri Apr 04 2025 at 05:00 pm to 09:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

The Werk | Saint Petersburg, FL

Nathan Beard: Ten Measure Tune is Beard’s first solo-exhibition in St. Petersburg in over 10 years. This homecoming exhibition will showcase a selection of his classic “Exit Music” paintings, as well as a number of new bodies of work in the “Exit Music” vein that he developed for exhibitions and projects outside the region over the last decade, from Illinois and Ft. Lauderdale, to California and Japan.

Central to the exhibition will be a 90-piece dimensional work called “Ten Measure Tune”, an interpretation of the classic jazz composition “Blue In Green” by Miles Davis and Bill Evans, featuring John Coltrane on saxophone. This song is famous for being 10 measures long, rather than the typical 8, 12 or 16 measures. Beard color-coded each note of the main piano and bass line, as well as the trumpet, piano, and sax solos floating above the main line, using online charts that translate sound to color based on the relationship of their wavelengths. Initially developed in 2019 as a potential commission for a large column in a condo, Beard couldn’t escape his obsession with guiding this piece into existence and is excited to share it publicly for the first time at The Werk Gallery.

Also featuring heavily in the exhibition are several collaborations, and an installation meant to benefit children born with heart defects requiring surgery. Beard worked with Kaitlin Crockett at Print St. Pete to produce a large-scale Riso print of the 4x4 ft. painting he cut apart to make “Ten Measure Tune”, allowing that painting to live on in a transformed state as a “Design for a Rug”. Crockett also printed 180 Riso prints of two older paintings to complete an installation in the gallery’s ancillary exhibition space that will speak to his youngest daughter’s heart defect and subsequent surgery at 5 months old to correct her Tetralogy of Fallot. During her hospital stay, Beard created a painting called “Aurora vs. Typhon” that served as a talisman protecting young Samantha Ivy Evelyn and her family from peril and adversity. Beard also collaborated with metal artist Eric Folsom, who made a unique frame for the painting that incorporates the mythical dance between light and chaos, as well as the chambers of the heart.

A percentage of sales from the riso prints will be donated to Heart Kids Foundation, started 4 years ago by Dr. Jim Thompson, the director of Interventional Cardiology at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital. The Foundation organizes an annual fishing tournament, Casting for Cardiac Kids, to benefit the Heart Institute. The proceeds benefit families of children with congenital and acquired heart disease and supports education. Congenital Heart Disease affects 1% of all newborns.
With works ranging from linoleum reduction cut prints, small acrylic studies, riso prints, experimental work on re-purposed scraps of wood, mural designs, and large-scale acrylic paintings, Beard’s exhibition is a feast for the soul and mind. His work is inspired by an enormous range of subject matter, from music to cosmology, mythology to quantum physics, and all tied together with an obsession for patterns that relay the stories and rhythms of life. The variety of media and size also allows for a price range that makes his work collectible for a wide range of income levels.