Culture Surfing

Who is Etienne Abobi? Well, he’s from the small French/German border town Saint-Avold; he’s been a deputy consul at the French Consulate in Atlanta for the past two years; and he’s the man behind the AKA Photo Project — a small collective of “accidental artists” currently exhibiting its debut show, Face à Face, at Little Five Points’ Opal Gallery through Nov. 13.

I don’t think many people are aware that there’s a French Consulate in Atlanta, let alone a tight-knit French community here. Could you talk about the French presence in Atlanta?
We have had the consulate since 1989 and our last Bastille day was at the [International] school and the theme was the 20th anniversary of the French consulate in Atlanta. So far we don’t have a French school, we have the International School with the French section, but we have some different kinds of schools. You have International Community School, which specializes in refugees who are native French speakers. In the greater Atlanta area, almost 3,000 people are registered but we think we are really two times this number.

Continue reading “Speakeasy with Etienne Abobi” »

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What if you had the chance in high school to throw a school bus over a hill with Andrew W.K.? I agree — it would’ve been bad ass.

Well, check this out:

Here’s the premise of the show according to Cartoon Network:

The name says it all. Two teams destroy each other’s materials, then race to build something new from the pieces. Oh, and the losing team’s machine gets blown up. Andrew W.K. hosts Cartoon Network’s most explosive game show.

Show premieres tonight at 8:30 p.m. and pits the football team against the marching band. Should be awesome.

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I was only looking for costume ideas…

(H/T to Gawker)

I also came across this tale of teen angst/recipe for Oh-No-She-Didn’t Butternut Squash Soup from CosomGirl.com:

Lindsey was a shoo-in for head cheerleader. Her handsprings were Slinkies on speed; her pikes were 90 degrees of perfection; her dismounts put Nastia Liukin to shame. On top of that, while other cheerleaders decorated the football players’ lockers (Go Warhawks!), Lindsey decorated the other cheerleaders’ lockers. Everyone on the squad adored her.

Except Tiffany. Tiffany, who could only do the splits because she was born with some sort of weirdo ligament problem. Tiffany, who slipped cards into the football players’ lockers after the squad had decorated them so the guys thought the work was hers alone. Tiffany, who had a secret stash of embroidery supplies and could arrange it so that the word FARTER mysteriously appeared on a certain teammate’s black bloomers in bright yellow thread. Hmmm.

Find out what happens to Tiffany and grab the inexplicably accompanying recipe here. (And by the way, it’s none of your beeswax why I was reading CosmoGirl.)

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The Atlanta Business Chronicle reports that theater owner Bob Wood bought the building from Inman Park Properties founder Jeff Notrica for upwards of $2.8 million. According to the article, Notrica (yes, the same Notrica that owns the embattled, beer-crushing Clermont) was facing foreclosure and the pair’s deal had been in the works since April. A foreclosure would have forced the theater out of its 14th Street home.

The loan secured by the building was scheduled for foreclosure this month, according to a foreclosure auction notice. The value of the loan was $2.8 million, but Wood says “I paid more for the building than that.”…”It saved him from foreclosure,” Wood said. “He’s been a great guy to us. We wanted to help.”

Read more from CL’s Scott Henry about “Inman Park Properties’ implosion.”

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I guess, although Tony always seemed like the kind of guy to just say what he’s thinking. That’s one of the best things about his award-winning Travel Channel show “No Reservations.” That and the look on his face when he’s gotta eat another poop shoot.

But we ask because Anthony Bourdain has a new Web series on the way in 2010, which promises a presumably elusive look into the celeb chef’s mind. The show’s animated and it looks … kinda bad. For “Anthony Bourdain’s Alternate Universe” the well-traveled chef’s animated doppelganger is some sort of too-cool-for-school, brain-eating (see Sandra Lee and Rachel Ray) Dr. Evil type. Sure, the real life Tony is also a too-cool-for-school, brain-eating Dr. Evil type, but the brief Travel Channel teaser makes cartoon Tony look like a bratty, image-obsessed Frankenstein. I prefer the weathered human curmudgeon to the salty, well-coiffed drawing. The teaser’s porn-y music doesn’t help either.

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COCO BEFORE CHANEL: Coco (Audrey Tautou, left) deflowers the fashion industry.

About midway through Anne Fontaine’s new biopic Coco Before Chanel, the eponymous designer stands mesmerized on the shore of the coastal French town of Deauville. She’s a seaside anomaly, dressed in a loose-fitting, black-and-white tartan dress, as throngs of swimsuit-clad children and their corseted guardians swirl around her. The shot foreshadows Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel’s toppling of fashion’s garish, early 20th-century establishment. In this moment, Chanel is totally punk rock.

Doe-eyed French starlet Audrey Tautou (Amélie, The Da Vinci Code) plays the legendary Gallic designer, whose rags-to-riches story parallels that of another beloved femme, Edith Piaf. Both were poor little orphan girls, literally forced to sing for their suppers, who ultimately hit it big thanks to some help from their wealthy man-friends. Piaf was immortalized onscreen in 2007’s Oscar-winning La Vie en Rose by the similarly petite and brunette Marion Cotillard. While Cotillard’s Piaf was a ball-busting tour de force, Tautou’s Chanel is more self-deprecating in her brashness. As a result, La Vie en Rose puts audiences through an emotional wringer, but Coco delivers a more muted experience.

Continue Reading “Coco Before Chanel goes back in black” »

(Photo courtesy Sony Pictures Classic)

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"New Endings" in its original location at Walton Springs Park

Diane Kempler’s “New Endings,” the Seuss-ish multi-part fountain commissioned by the Corporation for Olympic Development in Atlanta before the ’96 games has its housewarming in Freedom Park today. Formerly located in Walton Springs Park at International Boulevard and Carnegie Way, the public art piece has been moved to Freedom Park at Euclid and North avenues. According to the Freedom Park Conservancy’s website, the shift is taking place to accommodate a a new sculpture honoring Andrew Young in “New Endings’” original spot.

While the fountain was a nod to the site of Atlanta’s first public water supply, “this new location gives a fresh start and access to a new and different audience,” said Kempler in a press release. Kempler discusses the sculpture and the move in a free lecture Sun., Nov. 1 at Emory. Kempler’s part of Emory’s visual arts faculty and a founder of the Atlanta Women’s Art Collective.

Maybe she can also talk about why it seems to be so hard for the city of Atlanta to support a regular rotation of progressive, innovative public art installations…

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Dad's Garage new artistic director Kevin Gillese

Dad’s Garage announced last February that then artistic director Kate Warner would be leaving the neighborhood theater staple in April 2009 to become artistic director of Boston’s New Repertory Theatre. In June, Curt Holman’s CL cover story on the playhouse’s changing lineup asked, “Can Dad’s Garage bridge the generation gap in its second decade?” The answer to that question may not be far off. Dad’s Garage announced today that its search for artistic director has come to an end: Kevin Gillese, current artistic director of sister theater Rapid Fire Theatre in Edmonton, AL, Canada, has been tapped to fill the vacancy.

From the press release:

[Kevin's] background includes improvisation, theatre and video work and his core strengths include ensemble growth and development, collaborative creation and the production of new and original work across multiple disciplines. “In addition to Kevin’s talent and intellect, he’s a whole lot of fun to be around,” said Managing Director, Lena Carstens. “In a time when we are presenting all new and original work, we’ll benefit from having fresh perspective from someone who’s already in the Dad’s family…even if he has been a distant cousin north of the border.”

Continue reading “Dad’s Garage taps new artistic director Kevin Gillese” »

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DEADLINE IS 5 P.M. FRI., NOV. 20!

Click on the photo for more info.

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A view of the crowd and ruins from the hill above.

Twilight had just set in when I arrived at Oakland Cemetery last Friday evening for Cooper Sanchez’s one-night-only painting/planting installation Oakland: In the Greenhouse Ruins. From the entrance on Memorial Drive, flickering white paper-bag lanterns lined the cemetery’s weathered walkways on a path that snaked through the graveyard and opened up on its northern half at the old greenhouse ruins.

Spirituals and jazz hummed from unseen speakers while an every-ages crowd swarmed in and out of the shed and through the greenhouse’s adjacent remains. For Oakland, Sanchez installed 13 paintings in and around the building and its accompanying ruins, and about 30 cyanotype (old-school photographic blueprints) lightboxes inside the roofed structure. The lightboxes illuminated the ghosts of flora and fauna past from the artist’s meadow in Clarkston: wraithlike strands of grass, the gossamer wings of a butterfly, the vacant skull of a small field creature. The plants had been photosynthesized in a whole new light, and the effect was sublime.

Continue reading “Postmortem examination: Oakland — In the Greenhouse Ruins” »

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This lil’ number played at the end of the “Tonight Show” last night. It’s probably NSFW if you’ll get in trouble for animated butt cracks. But then again, everybody loves a string dance.

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Oakland Cemetery before the tornado …

When a tornado ripped through downtown Atlanta and the city’s eastern neighborhoods last March, homes, businesses and local landmarks buckled under its fierce wallop. Oakland Cemetery sat directly in the storm’s path of destruction: Tress were uprooted, headstones overturned and pathways destroyed. Local artist/gardener Cooper Sanchez got in on the recovery effort at the historic site, and has spent the last year helping clean up and restore the cemetery grounds. He’s also spent the last year finding inspiration in the landmark’s history, architecture and foliage for a new body of work.

Tonight, Oct. 9, from 7-11 p.m., Sanchez mounts Oakland: In the Greenhouse Ruins, a one-night-only

… and after.

planting and painting installation situated in and around the cemetery’s greenhouse ruins (the first public one of its kind in Atlanta). The paintings reflect on and celebrate the cemetery’s Victorian history and perseverance over its more than 150-year life. In addition to the greenhouse, Potter’s Field, the nearly six acres of 7,500 anonymous, unmarked burials, will also benefit from Sanchez’s work. “I plan on donating a percentage of any profits from this show to plantings in this area of the cemetery which has so many unmarked graves that are gone but not forgotten.  I’d like to honor the memory of those buried with flowers and gardens as the cemetery with it’s functioning greenhouse was historically designed to do,” he said in a press release.

Live music accompanies the installation. Parking’s available across the street behind/next to Ria’s Bluebird and Six Feet Under. Check out BurnAway.org, too, for Karen Tauches’ feature on the event.

(Photos by Joeff Davis)

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Cirque du Soleil set up shop at Atlantic Station under the big tents last winter to present Kooza, a playful, vintage twist on old-school circus fun. The limber Montreal-based performance ensemble returns to Georgia, Augusta actually, Nov. 26-29 with Alegría at the James Brown Arena.

About the show:

Alegría is a Spanish word that means happiness, joy and jubilation. An operatic introspection of the struggle for power and the invigorating energy of youth, Alegría relates the tale of power versus weakness, the king versus his jesters, and age against youth.

A kingdom without a king, Alegría is a world where everyone feels imbued with power —from impish court jester Fleur to the young and vital Bronx, to the aged and aristocratic Birds. Alegría is inhabited by minstrels, rogues, beggars, nobles, children and clowns, the only characters able to adapt to the changing times and the upheaval it brings. In this enigmatic, troubling world of profound changes and uncertainty, despite all the trials and tribulations, there is only one constant: the human spirit remains implacable.

If November seems far off, consider Cavalia, an “equestrian extravaganza” from Cirque’s creator at Atlantic Station Oct. 27-Nov. 15. We’re intrigued by what’s involved in an equestrian extravaganza. Contortionist colts? High-flying fillies?

(Photo by Camir)

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DEADLINE IS 5 P.M. FRI., NOV. 20!

Click on the photo for more info.

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