The exhibit Oraien Catledge: Cabbagetown, now on view at Opal Gallery, displays 30 of some 50,000 images taken by photographer Oraien Catledge in the small Atlanta neighborhood from the late 1970s through the ’90s. Here, Catledge discusses a few of the works in the show and some from his broader collection with CL’s Chad Radford and Opal Gallery director Connie Lewis.
"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…
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” »
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)
Andrea del Verrocchio (Italian, 1435–1488) and Leonardo da Vinci? (Italian, 1452–1519), Beheading of St. John the Baptist, from the altar of the baptistery with scenes from the life of St. John the Baptist, 1477–1483, silver, 12-3/8 x 16-1/2 inches, Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence.
Like most museums, the High mornally sits closed on Mondays. Not today, however. The High’s holding a FREE public preview of Leonardo da Vinci: Hand of the Genius from noon-7 p.m. today. The exhibit officially opens tomorrow, Oct. 6 and runs through Feb. 21.
12 NOON TO 7 P.M. (Last Ticket issued at 6 p.m.; No Advance Reservations)
Today, the High will offer a free preview of “Leonardo da Vinci: Hand of the Genius” on Monday, October 5 from 12 noon to 7 p.m. (no advance reservations; last ticket issued at 6 p.m.) The exhibition, which officially opens to the public on Tuesday, October 6, explores Leonardo da Vinci’s profound interest in and influence on sculpture. It features approximately 50 works, including more than 20 sketches and studies by Leonardo, some of which will be on view in the United States for the first time. The exhibition also features work by Donatello, Rubens, Verrocchio, and Rustici—including Rustici’s three monumental bronzes from the façade of the Baptistery in Florence that comprise “John the Baptist Preaching to a Levite and a Pharisee,” which was recently restored and has never left Florence. Also included are works from world-renowned collections, including those of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, the Vatican Museums, the Musée du Louvre, the British Museum, and the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence.
(Photo by Antonio Quattrone, 2009)
Lauri Stallings' 'Pour'
Le Flash burns up Castleberry Hill tomorrow night. The folks behind the event have been kind enough to offer a mini guide to the night’s goings-on so that you know when to be where.
FLASH ON THE MOVE
PRESENTED TWO TIMES ONLY
The following performances are timed, of short duration, and move through specific sites in the neighborhood:
#1 Pour | gloATL + Lauri Stallings
7:30pm + 10:30pmTwo 40 minute performances
Each performances begins corner of Fair St. @ Bradberry St.
Moves through Bradberry to Haynes, then jogs down Spur-Alley between Walker and Peters to Mangum St.
Left on Mangum, right on Walker/Nelson. Concludes in building and inner courtyard @ Castleberry Point, corner Nelson and Walker st.
ART SIGNED THE BELTLINE: Critics Pick for Best Public Art
Armed with maps, Sharpies and $400 worth of wood, a group of local artists organized by WonderRoot and local do-gooder/merry-maker Angel Poventud ART SIGNED THE BELTLINE in June. Artists and regular folk from around the city gathered to produce more than 100 works to install along 108 points where the Beltline crosses public rights-of-way. The group then tagged the city with its guerilla signage under the cover of night. The effort’s reach is undeniable: From an I-20 overpass in Grant Park to Edgewood Avenue to south Atlanta, the art signs are spunky reminders of Atlanta’s vast expanse and the link the Beltline could offer among its numerous communities. City of Atlanta take note: This is how you do public art.
Want more Best of Atlanta? Of course you do! Our expanded BOA site has it all.
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
THE DREAMER: Lucha Rodriguez
When Wall Street’s house of cards caved in last fall, scores of Sunday morning spinmasters pinned the Great Recession on us as our rightful national comeuppance. For years we spent more than we earned, so someone somewhere had to pay the bill, right? But even as the rest of the economy had shifted into overdrive, the vast majority of those who make art for a living never had it all that easy. Now, with the demand for art screeching to the same halt as the demand for everything else, many Atlanta artists find themselves suffering a hangover from a party they were never even invited to.
Four Atlanta visual artists of various ages and career paths recently reflected on their practice, their prospects, and how they navigate the high seas of a rough economy.
The Dreamer: “We’re willing to create our own country.”
Printmaker Lucha Rodriguez always seems to be wearing something purple. Or violet. Or lavender. Her dark hair is punctuated with fuchsia stripes, and she rolls her feet in her gold lamé sneakers as she walks through SCAD’s mostly abandoned hallways.
“I’m gonna work on my group,” she says, describing how she’ll spend her time after receiving her MFA in December. “There are five of us right now. One from Mexico, one from Bulgaria and the rest from here in the U.S.” The art collective, still without an official name, plans to swap art ideas online and take on cooperative art projects. It’s also planning a website and manifesto. “We’re willing to create our own country,” she says. The new art practice of the network generation.
Continue reading “The art of the deal”
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
GROWTH SPURT: Rich's "Massive Fantastical Sculptural Garden"
Artist Leisa Rich picks up where Al Gore left off. In Beauty from the Beast at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center Gallery, Rich taps into the pervasive global anxieties that betoken our doom-ridden, post-Kyoto world.
Framing the entire exhibition, Rich’s 10-part “Comic Book” consists of 10 individual canvases, each of which illustrates one particular way that things might go horribly wrong. In one, Rich imagines an asteroid careening into Earth, burning through the wreckage of human civilization. In another, a tsunami rises from the sea, obscuring everything on the coastline beneath it except for a shattered and ruined Hollywood sign tossed around by the waves.
Continue reading “Artist Leisa Rich gets to the root of the problem”
(Image courtesy Leisa Rich)
Well we certainly hope so! In honor of its one-year anniversary, local community arts center WonderRoot will hold (among other events and to-dos) an I Love Atlanta exhibit, for which it’s currently accepting submissions. WonderRoot wholeheartedly requests that “Artwork should comment on your love for Atlanta. Submission deadline is Saturday, May 23. Please email kristy@wonderroot.org for details.”
So get crackin’ folks, and if you’re not the art-makin’ type, let us know here why you think Atlanta’s so fine and dandy.
SCREEN DOORS OF PERCEPTION: “Video Still Sheet #4, Information Series”
“Information Randomized Mix-up #4″ is an encyclopedia. The artwork, a scintillating grid of tiny inkjet images by Atlanta video artist and VJ Ben Worley, contains a world. Everything from elephants to earthworms to an ironic-looking guy with a beard rolls across the surface in a Red Bull- and NoDoz-fueled mesh of nervous animation. The work also happens to be a literal encyclopedia — at least in part. The piece re-creates elements from Worley’s earlier works, which used images from an actual encyclopedia to explore fractured, unassimilated visual data in constant flux.
In Information, the artist’s master’s thesis show at Get This! Gallery, Worley continues his examination of the explosion of information occasioned by digital media and a networked world.
Worley also goes by the nom de plume Bean Summer. Like his names, the artist’s work concatenates random elements to hint at secret meanings hidden in the spaces where objects collide and images jostle one another in an aggressive, energetic dance.
Continue reading “Ben Worley, aka Bean Summer, data mines Information“
(Image courtesy Ben Worley/Bean Summer)
WAR GAMES:A reinterpretation of "Spy vs. Spy" by Chainsaw Chuck
A timely, almost bittersweet subtext informs The Mad Generation: A Lowbrow Tribute to the Art & Artists of Mad Magazine at the Gallery at East Atlanta Tattoo. The 56-year-old satiric humor magazine goes from monthly to quarterly publication with its April issue. Sometimes it’s hard to see the lighter side of the slumping print business model.
Nevertheless, Mad shaped generations of creative sensibilities, as proved by the more than 30 artists who pay affectionate homage to its daffily iconic images at East Atlanta’s self-styled lowbrow gallery. Curator Dirk Hays clearly struck a chord with the gallery’s stable of artists. Most of the pieces tend to avoid complex deconstruction or politicized interpretations, but will tickle people who are already fans of Mad’s mildly subversive cartooning.
PUBLIC ART … BY THE PUBLIC: Malaika Favorite's community-implemented 'Women of Brewster' mural on Auburn Avenue
Yesterday the city’s Office of Cultural Affairs released word of a new public art commission by Malaika Favorite. West End Remembers will be the “first of many” public art projects to be incorporated into the overall Beltline design. Favorite (besides having one of the best artist names in recent memory) likes working with kids. Her Women of Brewster Place mural on Auburn Avenue was created with the help of neighborhood youth as well the Alliance Theatre as part of a community involvement effort to coincide with the theater’s production of the Women of Brewster Place.
Cleta Winslow, Council Member for District 4, comments:
This vibrant, colorful artwork will be an interactive and unique learning tool for the children of Brown Middle School, who will get the opportunity to work with Ms. Favorite to create the mural. This mural will also teach the children and the community about the West End’s history, and its cultural richness and diversity.
West End Remembers will be located on White Street under the Laughton Street Bridge. Of course, Atlanta newbies (of which I include myself, after seven years) should remember that the West End is: a) a much older and wholly distinct entity from the Westside Arts District and b) contrary to its name, is actually located to the south of Five Points station, not the west.
(Photo by David Dower)
The famed French impressionist used up a lot of paint depicting the water lilies that coated the pond at his home in Giverny, France. He painted the aquatic blooms more than 250 times — enough to make his name pretty much synonymous with the flower. Through a collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the High Museum will bring four of the popular works to Atlanta (and the Southeast) for the first time.
From the High Museum:
The installation will feature MoMA’s renowned 42-foot-wide triptych, “Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond,” which is the largest “Water Lilies” painting in the U.S. The High’s presentation of “Monet Water Lilies” launches a multi-year, multi-exhibition collaboration between the High and MoMA, with additional exhibitions currently under development for 2011 through 2013.
… “Monet Water Lilies” will also include another monumental painting of the water lilies in the Japanese-style pond that Monet cultivated on his property in Giverny, France (“Water Lilies,” c. 1920, 6′ 6 1/2″ x 19′ 7 1/2″), as well as “The Japanese Footbridge” (c. 1920-22) and “Agapanthus” (1918-19), depicting the majestic plants bordering the pond.
The exhibition will run June 6-Aug. 23.
(Photo courtesy the High Museum)
