NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Grammy winning singer/songwriter Amy Grant has been through a lot since her last album of original music. There was an open-heart surgery, a brain injury, and a legal battle over a downtown church with deep family connections. For her new release, she wanted the album cover art to reflect the journey of her life.
"Any of us who are on the shady side of 55, we've all lived a lot of life," Grant said.
Grant met me at the Museum of Christian and Gospel Music and shared how a few years ago, she'd gone with husband Vince Gill as he saw a cardiologist.
"He said, 'you're doing great!'" Grant remembered the cardiologist telling Gill. "Out of nowhere, he looked at me and said, 'I want to see you.' I was like, me?"
Grant went through open-heart surgery to correct a lifelong condition, and just two years later, came something else. She was riding a bike at Percy Warner Park when it happened.
"I had a horrific bike accident," Grant nodded. "I don't remember any of it, but my bike hit a pothole. I guess I flew. I had two subsequent surgeries after that. I had a head injury, and that was a long recovery."
At the same time as all of this, Grant was in a legal battle over the downtown Nashville Church of Christ, formerly the Central Church of Christ.
"It was a property downtown that was so much a part of my life," Grant said. "It was costly for me personally. I was just trying to honor my great-grandfather who had purchased a church downtown. It did wraparound services for the homeless, for housing, daycare, medical, dental. It was boarded up."
A settlement allowed control of the building to revert back to the heirs of Grant's great-grandfather, A.M. Burton.
There was a lot of reason for lifelong reflection when Grant was set to release her first album of original music since 2013.
"Just trying to wrap my arms around my own life and be kind to myself," Grant said. "Hey. You woke up with this package and how are you going to live today?"
When it came time to design the new album cover, Grant's team reached out to a certain local artist.
Wayne Brezinka uses found objects to tell the stories of his many subjects.
"He asked me collections that I had, what things really reflect my childhood," Grant remembered. "I was like,' to keep?' He said, 'yeah.'"
That's how Brezinka completed Grant's album cover for The Me That Remains.
"He took all this disparate threads of my life and wound up putting together a piece that, to me, is so inspiring," Grant said, looking over at the original album cover art.
"It was very difficult for her to let go of these things that meant something to her," Brezinka said.
"When any of us die, what are any of our kids or grand kids going to do with the boxes?" Grant said of her reconsideration. "It's like, whoop. Outta here!"
"He asked to see my childhood shell collection and asked me if he could have some of the shells," Grant continued. "I'm going, 'am I going to get any of these back?!' There's some handwriting from when I was six-years-old. The first book I remember getting was a Bible from when I was six. It was the first time I ever saw my name embossed. I kinda wished I had a fancier name. So, on the inside, I had renamed myself, and I wrote it out on the first page, Amy K. Lee Goldfish, cause they're shiny, Lin Grant. He used Lee Goldfish and Lin Grant. Nobody would know."
Also in the work is a 1927 article about Grant's great-grandfather.
"He included that, and I'm like, 'oh my gosh, this is really about the family that shaped me,'" Grant said.
The piece will be featured alongside other portraits by Wayne Brezinka in a gallery show 2 pm to 4 pm this Saturday, June 13, at Main Street Gallery in East Nashville.
"Life is full of everything," Grant said. "We are all the cumulative effect of all the layers of things done right, things done wrong. I would hope that people would see this and say, 'my whole life is an art piece as well.'"
For more on Wayne Brezinka's show, visit here.
Do you have a positive, good news story? You can email me at forrest.sanders@newschannel5.com.
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