This week, we’re doing a countdown to last week’s most widely read post. So … let’s start with No. 5, shall we? Fun!
5. Zell Miller: Obama should be restrained with ‘Gorilla Glue’ (Hey Zell, I think there’s a booth with your name on it at a certain bar referenced in post No. 1.)
Eyedrum, the city’s longest-running alternative art and music space, is facing possible closure and asking for help.
From Eyedrum:
Facing a heavy rent burden and ever-increasing operating expenses, Eyedrum’s board of directors held an emergency meeting Sunday, July 11, to consider the survival of the longtime art and music organization.
The options are few. They include a significant decrease in rent, bringing on other Atlanta-based arts organizations to sublet part of the 6,0000-square-foot space, a move to a smaller space, or an end to the award-winning venue altogether.
…
The board plans to attempt a negotiation with its landlord, Braden Fellman, later this week, and will reconvene no later than July 26 to discuss any developments on rent reduction, and to consider proposals from other arts organizations. Arts organizations and investors who are interested in partnering with Eyedrum should contact Vice Chairman Allen Welty Green at agmedia(at)mindspring(dot)com.
Any donations received through Eyedrum’s website (www.eyedrum.org) will be directed toward operating expenses. And while such donations are greatly appreciated, the urgency and severity of Eyedrum’s financial burden cannot be overstated. Without a hefty reduction in overhead costs, a major move – physically or in terms of the organization’s identity – is unavoidable.
Full release here (PDF). We’ve got a call in with Robert Cheatham, Eyedrum’s executive director. We’ll update when we hear word.
All day Sunday, a small cadre of local artists and arts lovers gathered at Eyedrum to kick off the first phase of a grassroots project to add a touch of art to the Beltline — and to make more people aware of where it is.
The project, which has been months in the making, involves creating more than 100 artful signs to designate where the 22-mile smart-growth project crosses public streets.
Angel Poventud, one of the project’s co-organizers, says WonderRoot staff spent $400 on wood on Saturday night. The next day, artists brought whatever materials they had — oils, pastels, even house paint — and got to work.
“It’s hard to believe you can pull off a project like this for less than a grand,” Poventud says. “But it’s all about the passion. And it’s here.”
The group plans to install the signs along the project sometime this week. After the jump, more photos from the event.
It’s time once again for the highly coveted annual Creative Loafing music issue. This year we’re offering up an honest-to-goodness old fashioned 12-inch vinyl LP compilation that features cuts from several of our favorite local artists.
Dubbed The Mixt A Vol. 1, the record includes 10 songs from the likes of Predator, Grip Playaz, the Balkans, the N.E.C., A. Leon Craft, Anna Kramer & the Lost Cause, Mums F.P., Stanza, Carnivores and Zoroaster featuring Brent Hinds from Mastodon.
The record is strictly limited to 500 copies that will be available at not one, but two record release shows. The first show happens at Eyedrum on Thurs., May 7. The $10 cover gets you into the show as well as a copy of the record. The N.E.C., Grip Playaz, the Balkans and A.Leon Craft are all scheduled to perform. Doors open at 7 p.m. Music starts at 8 p.m.
The second record release party goes down at Criminal Records on the afternoon of Sun., May 10. The Carnivores, Stanza, Mums F.P. and Predator are on the bill. There is no cover charge to attend the show. LPs will be on sale at the store for $10 and the music starts at 3:30 p.m.
In addition to the 10 songs on the LP, dozens of bonus tracks will be included in a free online download that includes songs by Abby Go Go, All Night Drug Prowling Wolves, Batata Doce, the 4th Ward Afro-Klezmer Orchestra, the Coathangers, Danny!, Pill and many more.
Go to clatl.com/music for more info.
One of Atlanta’s best cinema series, Film Love, will continue a winning streak on Friday with Minutes to Go, a night of rare films and ephemera from William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Naked Lunch, perhaps Burroughs’ best-loved transgressive cut-up novel, Minutes to Go will
[explore] the surprisingly wide range of artistic experiments undertaken by Burroughs and Gysin during their Paris stay. Rare books and other items from the Danowski Collection at Emory University’s Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Library will be on view. Also featured are the short films The Cut-Ups and Towers Open Fire, two collaborations between Burroughs, Gysin, and filmmaker Antony Balch which encapsulate on film the cut-up technique and its powerful, hallucinatory effects.
Check Eyedrum for more details.
CL’s Chanté LaGon and Chad Radford chat about soul legend James Shaw, better known as the Mighty Hannibal, who performs tonight, Jan. 16, with Noot d’ Noot at Eyedrum.
Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.
Subscribe to the Air Loaf RSS feed to download each new episode automatically
Creative Loafing’s eighth annual Fiction Contest party was — we must admit — a literary hit. Thank you to everyone who came out to Eyedrum last week — whether it was for the readings from the winning authors, the book sale, the sweet treats from Highland Bakery, the great tunes from Night Moves Gold, or simply the PBR.
Check out photos from the party.
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
Tell all your friends! It’s time for the 8th annual CL Fiction Contest Party!
Joins us TONIGHT from 7-9 p.m. at Eyedrum (290 MLK Jr. Drive, Suite 8, 404-522-0655, www.eyedrum.org).
We received more than 200 entries and had to whittle them down to our three faves. It wasn’t easy, believe us. We had amazing help from our three local judges: award-winning children’s author Carmen Deedy; author, playwright and professor Phillip DePoy; and bookworm, aspiring author and Wordsmiths Books marketing guru Russ Marshalek.
The party, which is FREE!! and open to the public, is a great chance to mingle with writers in the community, listen to author readings from the three winning stories, dance to some smooth party jams by local band Night Moves Gold and indulge in refreshments from Highland Bakery.
Aside from the readings, live music and food, Wordsmiths Books will be on hand to sell books, CL will open up its press closet for a book swap and party co-sponsors Oxford Comics and Eyedeology, who’ll be collecting old eyeglasses, will have tables at the event.
Come help Creative Loafing support Atlanta’s burgeoning literary scene. We think you’ll like what you hear.
Tell all your friends! It’s time for the 8th annual CL Fiction Contest Party!
Joins us Thurs., Jan. 8 from 7-9 p.m. at Eyedrum (290 MLK Jr. Drive, Suite 8, 404-522-0655, www.eyedrum.org).
We received more than 200 entries and had to whittle them down to our three faves. It wasn’t easy, believe us. We had amazing help from our three local judges: award-winning children’s author Carmen Deedy; author, playwright and professor Phillip DePoy; and bookworm, aspiring author and Wordsmiths Books marketing guru Russ Marshalek.
The party, which is FREE!! and open to the public, is a great chance to mingle with writers in the community, listen to author readings from the three winning stories, dance to some smooth party jams by local band Night Moves Gold and indulge in refreshments from Highland Bakery.
Aside from the readings, live music and food, Wordsmiths Books will be on hand to sell books, CL will open up its press closet for a book swap and party co-sponsors Oxford Comics and Eyedeology, who’ll be collecting old eyeglasses, will have tables at the event.
Come help Creative Loafing support Atlanta’s burgeoning literary scene. We think you’ll like what you hear.
Join us on Thursday, January 8 at Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery as we celebrate the winners from the eighth annual Creative Loafing Fiction Contest. This year’s event will include readings from all of winners, refreshments, live music, and so much more. This CL event is free to the public and will kick off at 7 p.m.
More details to come!
If you’d like to help shut down the former School of the Americas at Fort Benning, but can’t spare the time and gas money to join the march in Columbus this weekend, you still have an option. Tomorrow night, Eyedrum will host a benefit concert for SOA Watch, the group founded by Father Roy Bourgeois that sponsors the annual protest march.
Maybe “rock out” is overstating it; perhaps it’ll be more like “strum out,” given the folk-heavy lineup, which includes scene vets Caroline Aiken and Elise Witt, social activist Alice Lovelace, the charmingly named Atlanta Sedition Orchestra and many others.
The event begins at 6:30 p.m. with an exhibition by socially conscious graphics group Beehive Collective. The concert starts at 7 p.m. Tickets start at $25 for early birds and drop the later you walk in, but a sell-out is expected, so don’t say you weren’t warned. Tix are available at Charis Books. Details are here.
1) Eyedrum celebrates its anniversary with A 10-Year Affair.
2) Vinyl Harvest is at the Little Five Points Community Center.
3) Taste of Atlanta kicks off at Atlantic Station.
4) Oglethorpe University holds Scandinavian Fest.
5) Fertile Ground plays Sugarhill.
(Photo courtesy Eyedrum)
1) Chrome/Helios Creed, Sour Vein and Tenth to the Moon play the Drunken Unicorn.
2) Captured, the art show by, for and about cell-phone photography, opens at Apache Cafe.
3) Candace Bushnell, author of Sex and the City, reads from her new novel, One Fifth Avenue, at Margaret Mitchell House & Museum.
4) Atlanta’s best paired band names on the same bill this week, Climax Denial and Stillbirth, play Eyedrum.
5) The Journey group exhibition at Bennett Street Gallery lives out its final days.
(Photo courtesy Helios Creed)
1) Visit the 17th Street Art Fair for its final day at Atlantic Station.
2) In the tradition of the Harlem Renaissance, Linda Villarosa discusses her new novel, Passing for Black, at Charis Circle.
3) Brian Henson, co-CEO of the Jim Henson Company, presents his oeuvre, The Future of Digital Puppetry, at the Center for Puppetry Arts.
4) Stop by Eyedrum for the Gimme Shelter Benefit for the Madhousers, builders of shelter for the homeless.
5) Relive history and take the Grant Park Tour of Homes.
(Image by Dagmar Bruehmueller)
(Photo by Tara-Lynne Pixley)
(Photo courtesy http://duetonline.net)
We’re pleased to announce more reasons for folks to come check out our annual Fiction Contest party at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 10, at Eyedrum. Not only were we blessed with a record number of submissions this year, but we’ve also got some cool sponsors (Café Intermezzo, Chattahoochee Review) and cool judges (David Fulmer, Joshilyn Jackson, Fiona Zedde).
Now we’re a bit geeked to have confirmed one of the more mood-enhancing musical acts in town in the form of Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel. Featuring Scott Burland (pictured, at right) on theremin and Frank Schultz on lap steel, this duet is often described as experimental, ambient and minimalist — their music seems to come more in surges and streaks, strains and swoops, with stops and starts thrown in for good measure. You might call it sonic! It’s intoxicating stuff that stands on its own or as a heady soundtrack behind the winning entries, which will be read by the winners at the end of the evening.
Check out this U.K. appearance …
Well, we’ve heard from you loud and clear, and we here at CL would like to make one humble suggestion to our blossoming literary scene: Get help.
Seriously, y’all are messed up. That’s as simple as we can put it, judging from the entries to our seventh annual Fiction Contest — the (extended) deadline of which passed on Wednesday. The theme is “scratch,” and let’s just say the entrants took the notion and ran with it in every manner possible. There’s the scratching of the itch (with images too vivid to recount here), Old Scratch (a particular favorite), scratching on the eight ball in pool, scratch as in money. Now, I didn’t read all of them — thank you, thank you, thank you, CL staff — but I don’t recall it being used in the racetrack vernacular (as in scratching, or removing, a horse from a race), although I’m sure every other angle was covered. And this stuff was so gothic, so dark, so supernatural, so … icky … we just wonder if we’ve opened some wounds with this one.
Best of all, from rudimentary research, we’ve learned our submission total of 240 is an all-time best. And our apologies for any confusion caused by the extended deadline, which resulted in a FLOOD of extra entries. Now comes the judging phase; and as we mentioned in a previous PopSmart post, we’ve got an impressive lineup: Fiona Zedde, Joshilyn Jackson and David Fulmer.
Now, onto the next phase: the party! We’re scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 10, at Eyedrum. We’re working furiously to set up the appropriate musical and other ambient moods, and of course there will be refreshments aplenty. Mark it on your calendar; it’ll be the first cool literary event of the new year, so don’t scratch it off your list …
A group of artists and arts advocates meeting at Eyedrum arts center Monday night agreed that legal action is needed to force the city of Atlanta to implement its own percent-for-the-arts program for public art.
The question, however, is: What arts organizations will be willing to put their local grants on the line and sue the city?
The issue has heated up since CL recently reported that an in-house study shows that, over the past four years, the city has collected only $1.7 million for the program while letting additional millions go uncollected. Under a longtime ordinance, the city is required to set aside 1.5 percent of the cost of new construction projects for public art. But the city’s own report estimates that as much as $3.6 million has gone uncollected because no one at City Hall seems to be enforcing the ordinance.
The report was completed last fall and kept under wraps until activist Bill Gignilliat recently gained a copy through an open-records request, but the city still has apparently done little to rectify the problem.
The goal of a lawsuit by arts groups would be to push the city to account for the money that should have been collected and to put a system in place to make sure the percent-for-the-arts money is collected from now on.
Arts advocate Evan Levy announced that he had spoken to several local attorneys interested in taking what could well be a high-profile — and easily winnable — case. The trick will be finding arts groups willing to sign on as plaintiffs, since most receive some funding from the city’s Office of Cultural Affairs.
Eyedrum, which currently gets about $5,000 a year from the city, could become the lead plaintiff if its board gives the go-ahead in coming weeks, says Chairwoman Nisa Asokan.
“We could be shooting ourselves in the foot,” she says, “but if not Eyedrum, then who else?”
PLASTIC PEOPLE OF THE UNIVERSE: Bohemian rhapsody
(photo by Joeff Davis)
Even for a venue known for its unique events, this one was a doozy.
Last night, Eyedrum hosted Czech rock legends Plastic People of the Universe.
PPU is best known for the impact it had on politics. The band defied the crackdown on public artistic expression in Czechoslovakia that followed the Soviet invasion in 1968 – performing and even recording albums in secret. In 1976, the Communist government jailed members of the band simply for daring to be musicians – an act so egregious it mobilized Czechoslovakian civil society against its government’s tyranny.
As luck would have it, it’s also a great band – combining the Velvet Underground’s relentlessness and Zappa’s absurdity with an unmistakably Central European sense of melody.
If you were careless enough to miss them last night, you have another chance. On Saturday, the band has a gig at Prague in Motion, a Czech bar in Norcross.
Last Friday night at Manuel’s, Tom Webb had the microphone in the back room, exhorting the crowd to draft Al Gore for president in 2008.
"He’s the perfect candidate," Webb told an emptying barroom of patrons.
"You know Al Gore is the best-qualified person to be president," he added.
There was no objection to the statement, but neither was there a sense anyone took it seriously. Still, there was no rallying cry for "Hillary" or "Dodd" from the drooped heads up at the bar.
Between guitar and singing acts, Webb was a little more impassioned even as the crowd was a little smaller and a little more unimpassioned — or disoriented.
