By Shana Thornton
Art often changes someone’s life – motivating them to switch careers, become inspired to complete a creative endeavor, and pique curiosities to learn a new topic. During interviews, artists highlight those turning points in their lives. But when art actually saves a life from grief and sadness, that’s a different type of experience.
Opryland Hotel Background
Frank Lott, the Executive Director of the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center, is also a watercolorist and has been entering his paintings in competitions since the 1970s. Lott entered the painting, Colonial Door, in a competition staged by the owners of Opryland Hotel, Gaylord Entertainment, when they were building the hotel originally to open in 1978. They invited entries from artists all over Tennessee, and they were going to select and purchase 100 works of art from Tennessee artists to hang in the hotel. Lott submitted Colonial Door, and it was selected as one of the 100 paintings. He was paid for the painting, and the Opryland Hotel installed and hung it at the top of the grand spiral staircase next to an office beside the lobby. Colonial Door was there for about 30 years, from 1978 to about 2008.
Colonial Door Rescue
Then, it was no longer there. Opryland Hotel was being renovated, and they took down all the artworks from the original 1978 competition and placed them in storage. Lott noticed that the paintings were gone and determined that Colonial Door must have been relegated to some other place besides a public art viewing area.
Around the same time, Lott and his wife, Patti Marquess, attended a civic event when a woman approached them and said that she owned one of Lott’s paintings. He told her that he is always pleased when someone tells him that they have one. She said, “You won’t believe the one that I have. It’s the one from Opryland Hotel.” He asked how she acquired it.
She said that her name is Emily Ellis, and she is originally from Charlotte, TN, and her father, William R. Pentecost, co-owned a country grocery store with Ray Dillingham in Charlotte from the 1940s until 1972 when he retired. The store, Ray Dillingham & Company, was located on the square in Charlotte, where the new courthouse is currently, and the grocery store had a Colonial Bread screen door just like the one in Lott’s painting. Emily had left Tennessee to work for the Disney Corporation as a Customer Service Training VP for about twenty years, and when her father became ill, she came home to care for her parents. Mr. Pentecost, her dad, passed away, and Emily didn’t want to leave her mom. She took a job at Opryland Hotel as a Customer Service Training VP, the same title she had at Disney. Emily’s office door was at the top of the grand spiral staircase, to the left, so Lott’s painting Colonial Door hung outside of her office. Emily told Lott, “Every day, I would walk past that painting, and it would help me grieve my father’s passing because of that Colonial bread door. Then, one day it was gone.”
Lott asked what had happened to it. Emily revealed that it had been put in storage during the renovation of Opryland Hotel. She was so distressed about it that she continued to ask the hotel manager about the painting. He promised that she could have the painting when she retired. Thankfully, he kept his promise, because as Emily realized, if the painting had remained in storage, it would have been ruined in the 2010 flood that damaged the hotel. Luckily, Emily had already brought the painting back to Clarksville, TN, where she now lives.
She said to Lott, “That painting saved my life, and I saved it.”
The painting, Colonial Door, by Frank Lott (1978). On Loan from Emily Ellis.
After Lott shared this story, he said, “That’s one of the most touching stories of how a piece of my artwork affected someone’s emotional connections, helped them through a difficult period – I never dreamed that something like this would be part of my artistic journey.”
“I’m very honored that Emily Ellis allowed me to share this painting in this exhibition with everyone who comes to the museum,” said Lott.
Legends Bank Presents A Dream Deferred: Hanley, Redmond, & Lott Exhibition
You can see the painting currently on view in Legends Bank Presents A Dream Deferred: Hanley, Redmond, & Lott exhibition, which is a joint retrospective showcasing the work of three artists—Dan Hanley, David Redmond, and Frank Lott—and their unwavering dedication to the pursuit of painting, while highlighting each man’s creative evolution over the course of five decades.
The exhibition is on view through October 19, on the lower level of the museum in the Kimbrough Gallery.
References:
Read the article in Second & Commerce Magazine. A Dream Deferred: Hanley, Redmond, Lott Exhibition by Cindy Podurgal Chambers
Shana Thornton is the Managing Editor of Second & Commerce, the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center’s arts, history, and culture magazine. She is an author and publisher, Founder of the Clarksville-Montgomery County African American Legacy Trail, and the Montgomery County Deputy Historian.