SHOP BENNETT
Fine Art
Fine Art by Brad Sells
Brad Sells first learned to throw clay at the Appalachian Center for Crafts, a satellite campus of Tennessee Technological University, where he earned his B.S. in psychology. His artistic path shifted when he carved a bed frame from cherry wood for his home—an experience that revealed his true medium. Sells’ career gained momentum when his work was awarded Best in Show in a competition juried by renowned furniture maker Sam Maloof, whom Sells counts as a role model. His pursuit of new materials and inspiration led him to South Africa in 2007 and Hawaii in 2009, where he explored exotic woods and regional traditions. Guided by the grain and texture of the wood itself, Sells shapes fluid, sculptural forms that celebrate the natural knots, lines, and contours of each piece.
Fine Art by Denise Stewart-Sanabria
Denise Stewart-Sanabria was born in Massachusetts and received her BFA in Painting from the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. She has lived and worked in Knoxville, TN since 1986.
Sanabria paints both hyper-realist “portraits” of everything from produce to subversive jelly donuts. Her anthropomorphic narratives often serve as reflections on human behavior, exploring humor, irony, and cultural commentary through unexpected subjects. In addition to her still-life works, she creates large-scale installations and drawings, further expanding her dialogue between the ordinary and the surreal.
Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States and is included in numerous public, corporate, and private collections.
Fine Art by Maggie Taylor
Maggie Taylor was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and in 1967 was honored as the Crown Bearer for the May Queen at Hathaway Brown School. She went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from Yale University before pursuing graduate study in photography at the University of Florida, where she earned her Master of Fine Arts.
For the first decade of her career, Taylor worked primarily with a camera and traditional film, producing still-life images composed within her studio and garden. In both 1996 and 2001, she was awarded the State of Florida Individual Artist’s Fellowship in recognition of her artistic achievement. In 1996, she made a pivotal shift in her practice, turning to digital technology and adopting the flatbed scanner as her primary tool. By arranging objects directly onto the scanner’s glass surface, she developed a singular method of image-making that retains photographic qualities while expanding into the realm of digital collage.
Taylor’s work has been acquired by numerous prestigious institutions, including the Art Museum at Princeton University, Princeton, NJ; the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ; the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, FL; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; the Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, AL; Musée de la Photographie, Charleroi, Belgium; Museet for Fotokunst, Odense, Denmark; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; NationsBank, Charlotte, NC; and the Prudential Insurance Company, Newark, NJ, among others.