Random Sample

is a multi-disciplinary art space aimed at giving Nashville’s community an approachable meeting ground for people with diverse backgrounds, practices, and skill levels. The gallery began in October 2021, just a small, white cube of cinderblocks off Charlotte Pike over on the West side of town. With neighbors like Headquarters Coffee, Global Education Center, Betty’s Grill, and Rhino Booksellers; founder/owner Linda Parrott, and assistant directors Ivy Welsh, and Andie Billheimer have found a home for their vision in this quiet, yet vibrantly eclectic village for a few years now. Since then there have been 20+ installations, two monthly book clubs, weekly music, film, and poetry events, and countless outdoor markets, festivals, and clothing swaps.

Over time, several seeds have begun to develop out of their infancy and take on a life of their own… A goal from the beginning was to create a space where some of this growth might be nurtured. While there has been a great variety of experience levels among the artists who display their work on the main floor, a large number have expressed it is either their first time solo or first time ever. There have also been group shows with a mixed crowed of novice explorers and lifetime creators.

Ideally, this building, at its core, is an empty, blank box waiting to be filled with color and energy. For this reason, it has been important to stay as malleable as possible in order to adapt based on different necessities required to fully flesh out a vision. There are, of course, physical barriers that inevitably arise due to basic limitations of square footage; however, we are always trying to figure out different ways around these obstacles to keep it bubbling with all sorts of activity.