OZ ARTS NASHVILLE PRESENTS PI DAY…

FEATURING VISUAL ART, LIVE PERFORMANCE AND DISCUSSION FOCUSING ON THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, MATH AND ART, SATURDAY, MARCH 14

Contributions from Artists Laurie Anderson, Roy Wooten, Mark Hanf, Joseph Hazelwood and Cano Ozgener, Founder of OZ Arts Nashville, and Griffin Technology President Mark Rowan

Food Trucks Including Music City Pie Co., Crankees Pizzeria, Feisty Goat Coffee, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams

Since its establishment last year, OZ Arts Nashville has broken a path for installations and performances spanning art forms, including music, theater, dance and visual art in various mediums. The institution expands its focus even further with Pi Day, a day of performance, visual art, and discussion focusing on the connections between art, science, technology, engineering and math.

Doors for Pi Day 2015 at OZ Arts will open at 9:26am on Saturday, March 14. Tickets, $20, can be purchased at www.oznashville.com. Food and beverages from Music City Pie Co., Crankees Pizzeria, Feisty Goat Coffee and Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams will be available for purchase. OZ Arts Nashville is located at 6172 Cockrill Bend Circle in Nashville.

The day’s program begins at 10am. Following opening remarks, North Carolina-based, mathematics-inspired arts educator Mark Hanf will deliver a brief multimedia introduction to pi. Then, around 10:15am, OZ Arts will present a panel discussion in which a variety of luminaries will talk about the intersection of art and science in their work. Participants will include Hanf; Laurie Anderson, one of America’s most consistently daring creative pioneers and NASA’s first and only ever artist-in-residence; Roy Wooten, five-time Grammy-winning percussionist and composer; Cano Ozgener, visual artist and the founder of OZ Arts Nashville; and Mark Rowan, President of Griffin Technology, the industry-leading consumer electronics company headquartered in Nashville. Prior to Griffin, Rowan developed mixing consoles used on independent films, TV shows, and Hollywood blockbusters including Spiderman and Pearl Harbor.

Pi Day is a return to origins for OZ Arts, whose founding grew out of an epiphany that Cano Ozgener had, about the healing power of the arts, while he was ill with cancer. In art-making, Ozgener found spiritual and mental nourishment to balance his physical frailty, and a way to channel his lifelong fascination with math and numbers, especially pi. Ozgener also finds synesthesia compelling; the ability of some to sense that specific numbers have associated specific colors. Influenced by Sol LeWitt, who often used numbers, letters and geometric figures in his art, the works in Ozgener’s Pi Synesthesia series display varying shapes, and collections of shape, coded by the specific color that Ozgener has chosen for that numeral in the constant (3.1415…): yellow for 3, red for 1, brown for 4, red for 1, light blue for 5, and so on.

“The entire team is excited about celebrating Pi Day at OZ Arts,” said Tim Ozgener, CEO. “I am particularly proud to have my father’s Pi Synesthesia work and his views shared with our guests on this once-in-a-lifetime date. My dad’s genius has been expressed through business, math, and love—and now through art. We are fortunate to be able to share it with Nashville on 3.14.15.”

Throughout Pi Day, visitors can take in a range of visual art installations, including more than a dozen paintings and sculptures Ozgener created in collaboration with OZ Arts artists-in-residence Brian Somerville and Jammie Williams.

Mark Hanf will guide audience members in the creation of sculptures onsite throughout the day. A Raspberry Pi-powered digital video wall by Joseph Hazelwood, re-inventor and technical engineer in antiquenology, will be constructed using multiple vintage tabletop TV sets and permanently installed in the Escaparate, OZ Arts’ glass-paned central gallery. The Escaparate was previously the grand walk-in humidor of the headquarters of C.A.O., the Ozgeners’ world-renowned cigar company.

At 1pm, backed by a 17-member ensemble, Nashville-based artist Roy Wooten will perform the world premiere of Pi and the Circle of Harmony, his musical score for the pi constant.

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OZ Media Contacts

Nashville press, please contact Amy Atkinson at Amy Atkinson Communications, 615.305.8118, amy@amyacommunications.com or www.twitter.com/AmyAComm.

National press, please contact Blake Zidell at Blake Zidell & Associates, 718.643.9052 or blake@blakezidell.com.