Atlanta-based artist Jo Peterson will show an exhibition of new work at Sandler Hudson Gallery
Another weekend of great art events in Atlanta. Highlights include the Zhang sisters at Whitespace tonight, short films from Martin Scorsese at Eyedrum, and Here We Hide at Mint Gallery. More good times after the jump.
Joe Tsambiras, Sam Parker, and the Paper Twins standing in Mint Gallery
The four artists collaborating on Mint Gallery’s upcoming show, Here We Hide, are not content to throw a few of their latest works on white gallery walls. Instead, Sam Parker, Joe Tsambiras, and Paper Twins (who go by Edgar and Nica) are transforming the small gallery into an intricate, detailed domestic space layered with works ranging from wheatpastes to cuckoo clock assemblages. Drawing influence from Swoon’s immersive installations, the group is working in the gallery all week to put the finishing touches on the show.
Last night, they were kind enough to take a short break from stenciling the walls and sawing chairs in half to tell CL a few things about show.
Continue reading “Here We Hide opens at Mint Gallery on Saturday” »
Atlanta isn’t home to a plethora of reading series, but we do have a few. Solar Anus, Poetry at Tech, and the always-massive lineup at the Georgia Center for the Book come to mind, but True Story! sets itself apart as a venue exclusively for literary non-fiction. Tonight’s lineup includes locals Jamie Allen (Slate, Missouri Review, and McSweeneys.net), Jim May (editor-in-chief of New South), and Hugh Sheehy (Best American Mystery Stories 2008, The Kenyon Review, The Antioch Review).
True Story! has a short preview of the writers on Facebook, or you could just check out this great piece by Allen on McSweeney’s. Inside Access has a nice interview with True Story! founders Kate Sweeney and Dionne Irving, as well.
The reading starts at 8 p.m. tonight at Kavarna.
Untitled (Brother and Sister Quilt) by Clare Rojas. 2009 gouache on paper 18 1/2" x 23 1/2"
Break out the walking shoes this weekend. The Westside Art District will be leading crowds from gallery to gallery for a sequence of artist talks and the WonderRoot folks are calling out for artists and art-lovers to help with their pedestrian friendly project, Art Sign the Beltline 2.0 at Eyedrum. Clare Rojas quietly opens a show this weekend at the ACA gallery, too. Check out a full weekend of events after the jump.
GENRE: Oversized, full-color monograph
THE PITCH: Olaf Hajek’s painted illustrations are a hot commodity amongst magazines, appearing everywhere from the New Yorker to National Geographic. Flowerhead collects some of this editorial work and presents it with a selection of his personal work.
THE DRAW: Flowerhead is dominated by stunning uses of color and bewildering combinations of image. “Black Antoinette” reimagines the Queen with pitch black skin and hair stuffed with flowers, insects, a bird, and color-field flourishes. “Masked Girl” covers a woman’s chest with black and grey tattoos of botanical etchings and flat, incongruously bright dots of turquoise and orange.
INFLUENCES: “I have always soaked up the things that touched me on the most basic level – powerful, immediate images like naive art, Art Brut and primitive expression. When I look at American folk art, Indian miniatures or Mexican mythology, for example, I find myself spellbound by the sheer force and imagery of their simple depictions, a visual language unconcerned with perspectives or realistic parameters,” Hajek says in the preface.
Hope Larson’s Mercury is a graphic novel for young readers. In other words, you could call it a comic book for kids. You could also call it a multigenerational family drama, a work of magical realism, and a story of the legacy of gold mining in rural Canada. Yet, the truth about Mercury falls somewhere between all those generic tags.
The novel transpires in French Hill, Nova Scotia, a fictional town near Halifax. The Fraser family has lived in the same house in French Hill since the mid-19th century, when Nova Scotia was still unincorporated frontier. Mercury alternates between two young members of the family – from the rustic life of Josey in 1859 to the 10th-grade concerns of Tara in 2009.
A calamitous fire in the Fraser family home has turned Tara’s teenage life upside down. She’s living with a friend since her mother has left town to find better work. Her interactions at school are perpetually awkward. She fields insinuations about her short hair in the locker room. Fickle, tactless teenage boys stumble around her, not sure of what to say.
Continue Reading “Hope Larson digs for treasure with Mercury“
(Photo courtesy Atheneum Books)
When the Georgia Association of Historians convene for their annual meeting on Thursday, the occasion will also celebrate Georgia Women: Their Lives and Times (UGA Press). The two-volume work reaches deep back into Georgia history to tell the stories of women who played vital roles in the state. The scope ranges from accounts of women during the American Revolution to blues singers in the Great Depression.
Volume editors Ann Short Chirhart, Betty Wood, and Kathleen Clark will be on hand during the event. Wake Forest professor Michele Gillespie will discuss Mary Gay, author of the civil war account Life in Dixie During the War. Margaret Mitchell is said to have drawn on the stories in Gay’s book for Gone With The Wind. University of West Georgia professor Steve Goodson will discuss Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, legendary blues singer. Aside from her resonant, Bessie Smith-like voice, Rainey had a way with salty couplets like “Chains on my feet, padlock on my hand / It’s all on account of stealing a woman’s man” or “My life is all a misery when I cannot get my booze / I spend every dime on liquor, got to have the booze to go with these blues.”
Georgia Association of Historians meet on Thurs., Feb. 18 at 7:15 p.m. at the Decatur Library Auditorium.
A scene from "pour" by Lauri Stallings and gloATL at last year's Le Flash. Photo by Adam Davila
This is the sort of weekend that can make you fall in love with Atlanta’s art scene. The latest collaboration from Lauri Stallings and gloATL will premiere in the arteries of the Lennox Square Mall, Castleberry Hill’s always dependable Art Stroll happens tonight, Eyedrum is screening erotic films all weekend long, and the list goes on.
Check out our weekend agenda after the jump.
GENRE: A short but thorough neighborhood history
REASONS TO HAVE THIS BOOK: If you’ve ever wondered how a little neighborhood of former Confederate civil war soldiers, fiery Baptist preachers, and Inman Park bluebloods could transform into a destination for train hopping crusties, tattooed fashionistas and dreadlocked poets, this book has your answers.
SUBCULTURAL CURRENTS: While Hartle’s book is organized mostly around the business history of Little Five Points, that history often sheds light on the movements of Atlanta’s subcultural history. Atlanta’s hippie district in Midtown, we learn, was on the wane by the early sixties, leading many to relocate in L5P. Lesbians, health nuts, and skinheads all play pivotal roles in the neighborhood’s development.
THE COP BEAT: Altercations with the cops are a common and entertaining theme. Lou Arcangeli, a former chief of police, recalls the time he walked into the notorious Redwood bar and a patron asked, “‘Who’s that four-eyed fuck?’ So, I had to take him outside and hit him once or twice. The next night another guy said he was going to have to kick my ass. But the guy from the night before stood up and said, ‘Don’t do that. He’s a good guy. He whipped my ass last night.’”
Continue reading “Shelf Life: The Highs & Lows of Little Five by Robert Hartle Jr.” »
Wheat paste by Paper Twins
I almost wrecked my car trying to get a look at this piece on Moreland Avenue. Tucked between all the amateurish tags from Shine and Steal, this wheat paste is a blinding example of how good street art can be.
The local duo Paper Twins is responsible. Mike Germon’s ThoughtMarker blog has some more photos.
Expect more hair-braiding awesomeness on Sat., Feb. 27, when Paper Twins, Sam Parker and Joe Tsambiras open a group show at MINT Gallery.
(Photo by Mike Germon)
Justin Richel’s new show at Young Blood, Columns, Stacks, and Heaps, is filled with seemingly innocuous objects. Cupcakes, milkshakes, ornate furniture, teapots, and all sorts of pastel and cute objects are arranged into precarious forms. Teetering stacks are lit aflame by birthday candles. Furniture threatens to come crashing down. The Young Blood show selects smaller pieces that Richel has created in this series of deceptively sweet work.
I felt some darker undertones in these pieces. I kept on thinking of trash towering above my head, threatening to fall down on me. Are you trying to induce a sort of vertigo or anxiety with the stacks?
The sweets series is an attempt to anthropomorphize something that is man-made in order to talk about society without having to point the finger directly. I choose sweets because they are very unassuming. On the surface they’re attractive and make friends easily, but if you look closely at a cupcake for instance, you will see that it is wearing a mask. It is loaded with calories and trans fats and does not have its host’s best interests in mind, it clearly has its own agenda. I try to create situations where they become human in their context to one another.
The stacks and columns for me are about the precarious balance; they allude to the fragility of circumstance. For instance, the stack can only exist so long as all of its pieces are cooperating together, to shift or remove a piece would inevitably send the whole thing crashing to the ground. So the paintings themselves become social commentary. I am fascinated with how far I can push it before it collapses.
Atlanta’s much-loved chapter of PechaKucha is among the 200 cities planning a simultaneous global fundraiser to help rebuild Haiti. The global event will kick off in Tokyo and travel around the globe for 24 hours. The Atlanta event will happen at Octane, as usual, on Feb. 21 at 7:30 p.m. This video explains the plan at length. They hope to raise a $1,000,000 for rebuilding efforts. More details to come.
PROSE POSE: Zora Neale Hurston, author of Their Eyes Were Watching God
What would happen if everyone in Atlanta read Their Eyes Were Watching God at the same time? The city has an opportunity to answer that question this month during the Big Read, a National Endowment for the Arts-sponsored civic-reading program.
The civic reading trend (in which one book is chosen for an entire city to read) has been around since at least the late ’90s, when a Seattle librarian chose Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter to inspire conversation and community throughout the city. The idea caught on, copycat events sprung up across the country, and the American Library Association even put out a guide on how to organize a citywide reading program.
The Big Read hasn’t been without its problems, though: Choosing a single book to please an entire city isn’t easy. In 2002, New York City’s selection process devolved into a publicized fight, causing the library system to decline from participating altogether.
Since 2006, the National Endowment for the Arts has made efforts to streamline the process, offering grants to cities that choose a book from a short, predetermined list.
Continue Reading “Atlanta participates in the Big Read with Their Eyes Were Watching God“
(Photo courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection)
If you’ve ever pondered the significance of Space Invaders in the canon of Western art, this is a good weekend for you. A symposium on The Art of History of Games kicks off today and continues throughout the weekend, thanks to some serious planning from Georgia Tech and SCAD. Art Papers is hosting their annual art auction, Justin Riechel will show some ’sweet’ works at Young Blood, and a group show will haunt the Alcove gallery.
Continue reading “Weekend Arts Agenda: ‘Players are Artists, too’” »
