Fresh Loaf

Brian Newman, who many moons ago was the director of IMAGE Film and Video, has just taken a quantum leap forward in supporting directors and artists working in film.

Check out Brian’s blog here.
IndieWire and Variety both carried stories today about Newman’s new job as the CEO of the Tribeca Film Institute, an East Coast version of the Sundance Film Institute.

Read the rest of this post here, on PopSmart, CL’s arts and entertainment blog.

Bookmark It

(Photo courtesy bldgs)

What a great surprise to open the New York Times magazine Sunday and find Pilar Viladas’ profile of David Yocum’s and Brian Bell’s West End architectural firm, bldgs.

Read the rest of this post on PopSmart — CL’s arts and entertainment blog.

Bookmark It

Erik Fyfe tries to live simply and do as little harm to the planet as possible. By day, he helps offset global warming through his work with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy’s Refuel Biodiesel program. In his off hours, he harvests apples, mulberries, figs, muscadines and blackberries from city trees and bushes.

Fyfe took a year off after high school and hitchhiked through New Zealand. “I think it was during that time that I realized that I could be very happy with very little.”

While he was at Emory, he spearheaded a drive to convert 27 of the university’s diesel shuttles to B20 (20 percent biodiesel + 80 percent ultralow-sulfur diesel).

For the past three years, Fyfe and like-minded friends have thrown a Ciderfest party, pressing fruit “growing along interstate on-ramps, behind grocery stores, in vacant lots.” They use a homemade cider press and pedal-powered apple grinder.

“It gives us urban dwellers a little taste of rural life. People are always amazed at how many apples we find around Atlanta, and the event gets people talking about various old-time traditions.” (For more information about the Sept. 29 event, contact ciderfest07@gmail.com.)

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

Bookmark It

A vital ingredient in Castleberry Hill’s cool energy is Lloyd Benjamin’s Get This! Gallery. Its cast of young, emerging artists makes it a must-see venue. Benjamin lives above the gallery and is almost always on hand to talk about the work in his quietly enthusiastic manner.

A self-taught artist, his work has been shown at galleries such as Young Blood and Ty Stokes. The Little Rock, Ark., native’s refined, subdued aesthetic is reflected in his gallery and his own stencil-based artwork.

A real renaissance man, Benjamin plays bass in the All-Night Drug Prowling Wolves and is “mildly involved” with the online magazine Dry Ink.

Benjamin has been riding trains since he was 19. “It is my preferred way of travel, if I got the time.” His gallery is 200 feet from the railroad tracks, “with about 50 trains going by a day. There is a nice green spot back there that I go and sit every morning to read and plan my life with a cup of coffee.”

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

Bookmark It