Clarksville-Montgomery County Arts and Heritage Development presents Lifetime Achievement Awards to Dan Hanley, Mark Holleman

Clarksville, TN – The Clarksville-Montgomery County Arts and Heritage Development Council (AHDC) presented lifetime achievement awards to two Clarksvillians who have made outstanding contributions to the community’s artistic and historic heritage.

During Saturday’s Flying High celebration for Customs House Museum and Cultural Center, AHDC presented the lifetime achievement in art award posthumously to Dan Hanley and the lifetime achievement in heritage award to Mark Holleman. Jodi Hanley received the award for her husband, who had been notified earlier of the honor.

 

Dan Hanley’s Artistic Achievements

Dan Hanley steadily applied his creative abilities over many years as a designer and builder of homes and residential communities. In recent years, he turned his full attention to his life-long interest in painting—an interest he had kept alive and active for some 40 years since he graduated college with a degree in art & business administration. 

Hanley’s work is represented in many private and corporate collections. His paintings and home designs have received a number of professional awards. His original artworks have brought prices in excess of $20,000. 

Hanley served on Clarksville’s Public Arts Commission and worked regularly in support of the Customs House Museum and Cultural Center.  Following the devastating 1999 tornado that struck Clarksville, he served on the Mayor’s Recovery Task Force, chairing the Design Review Board and the Design Standards Development Committee.

 

 

His community contributions continued his family heritage, going back to his great grandfather’s emigration from Ireland to Clarksville in the late 1860s. His great grandfather, grandfather, father, and Dan Hanley himself have all left their mark on many of Clarksville’s architectural treasures.

Hanley lived what he called a “Tom Sawyer” boyhood in his parent’s home near the Cumberland River.  He often drew from this background for his subjects, describing his paintings as representations of “… a neighborhood of ordinary folks, unaware that they were living extraordinary lives, in extraordinary times—unwittingly heroic in their struggles to provide for families and build a community, making themselves matter.”

Mark Holleman’s Heritage Contributions

While Hanley’s family was influential in shaping Clarksville’s architectural landscape, Mark Holleman has been busy preserving and enhancing it. It is evident that Holleman loves Clarksville’s heritage. And he has used this love to keep the city’s history alive in a number of creative ways.

He has used public art to bring our history into the present. Holleman worked with Main Street Clarksville to spearhead the creation and installation of a statue of “John Montgomery,” who, in 1784, purchased land at the confluence of the Cumberland and Red rivers and is credited with founding Clarksville. That group, along with the Leaf-Chronicle, commissioned the “Morning After” sculpture to remember the devastating tornado that swept through downtown in 1999.

Then working with a number of generous donors, Holleman raised funds and provided the creative vision for the Frank Sutton statue that is such a popular photo spot on Franklin Street. Holleman is quick to point out that the creation and installation of these three sculptures commemorating Clarksville’s past citizens and events resulted from the work and donations of many. AHDC recognized his persistence in moving them forward.

Holleman has made sure we will remember the streetcar days of Clarksville when he purchased a trolley car to take folks around town. He even preserved some of the streetcar track that was being removed from Franklin Street and installed it in his Riverside office.

Holleman and his wife Ricki have preserved one of the lovely homes that date from the 1920s and ’30s and line Madison Street. He takes photos to mark Clarksville’s current history and shares them with many folks around town. Visitors to the St. Bethlehem Coldwell Bankers office can see many of his photos along with artifacts from the Courthouse, Arlington Hotel, the Roxy, and Baker and Dowdy Barbershop.

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