Capturing beauty

Heads turn when Ann Street enters a room. Without even speaking, her presence commands attention. It's only appropriate that this whisper of a woman with her slender frame, brilliant white hair, sparkling emerald eyes and cheekbones that won't quit has the gift of capturing beauty. She defines beauty, herself.

Throughout her career as a portrait artist, Ann has found the spark in countless Nashvillians and translated it into art. Testimony to her talent hangs on the walls of homes all over town. Children, parents, couples, family pets—Ann has caught them at their peak and immortalized them.

"I always liked to draw," Ann says with a shrug when asked how she came to be this city's go-to artist. As an English major at Barnard College, Ann only took one life drawing class at Columbia, and it horrified her. "I couldn't look at the models," she recalls. "I was so humiliated for them." Nevertheless, her artistic gift flourished and she continued to sketch.

Her artistic, adventurous side is primarily what drew her to New York City for college, and the city agreed with her. One day, while sunbathing on the roof with girlfriends, Ann was approached by a woman who turned out to be a model scout. She asked Ann to go with her, sneaked out (as scouts weren't allowed on campus), got in a taxi with Ann and took her to be reviewed. "She's too short," Ann remembers the group saying, as she stood there being scrutinized. Short or not, they liked what they saw and booked her for modeling and runway work. She was breezing along successfully until her father caught wind of her adventures. That's when he decided she needed to come home and attend Vanderbilt.

Ann continued modeling in town and was a regular guest on one of the first television shows in Nashville that aired Sunday nights. She tells the story of modeling a pricey gown and having to pet a monkey resting on the shoulder of an organ grinder. On live TV. You know where this is going. The monkey jumped on Ann and proceeded to maul her dress, all while the camera rolled. Good times. How we miss the days of live television.

While still a student, Ann met and fell in love with Bob Street, another artistic soul who is now one of the city's greatest architects. They live together in a home he designed, nestled in the woods off Chickering. A natural beauty, just like Bob's wife, the home is regal, yet warm and inviting—showcasing nature's greatest assets.

Ann's studio is an airy, well-lit room off Bob's study. The set-up is interesting—separate, yet together, much like their personalities. They are both powerful as individuals yet also magnetic as a couple.

While Ann studio is not as busy as it used to be since she retired more than four years ago, she still seems at home in it, using all sorts of mediums, but obviously enjoying the drawing. Since she's retired, Ann says she's learned that "pressure is my muse," and she hasn't been as active as she thought she might be on the artistic front. But, she still draws.

"Drawing is seeing," she explains. "There's a want to see, to draw." After listening to her, it's easy to see how people can be taught to paint, but drawing is a different connection, something more innate. It's most certainly a gift. Ann's gift exploded after she had children, and she jokes, "I began drawing them so I wouldn't strangle them." Friends saw her work and started asking her to draw their children. Then the ripple effect took hold. Soon, everyone was calling Ann. From Vanderbilt University, where there are more portraits by Ann Street in Kirkland Hall than by any other artist, to Nashville dynasties, including the Ingrams, the Wallaces, the Kitchels, the Dales, the Kings, the Pattons and on and on. For 40 years, Ann honed in on the essence of countless people and brought that inner light to life on canvas.

While childrens' portraits initially drove her business, Ann weaned herself out of that arena after it became less fun. "The children don't enjoy it," she says, referring to posing while Ann sketched them. "Why should they?" Ann commented that after a few years, she realized it was necessary to make the mothers leave while she sketched the child. "Otherwise, the children wouldn't be themselves," she said. They would play to the mom or throw a tantrum.

Somehow, even through tantrums, Ann had this ability to capture the honest light in people's eyes. When asked how she could see past someone who was beautiful on the outside but not on the inside or how she overcomes seeing someone's external beauty fade because of a ugly spirit, she paused. "You know, the beauty is always there," she said. "It's always there." And Ann always finds it—that little spark of hope that makes people believe in humanity. Even through her witty, self-deprecating remarks, it's obvious there's a beautiful optimist in Ann Street who seeks out that good in people. And Nashville is all the more beautiful for it.