A&E: Fresh Loaf, Creative Loafing Atlanta

Atlanta Streets Alive takes over Downtown, Midtown this weekend

Connor Jones — Fri, 17 May 2013 09:20:00 -0400

Although the streets of Atlanta are usually dominated by cars, for a few hours this weekend, some simpler forms of transportation will take over one of the city's most famous thoroughfares.

This Sunday, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., Atlanta Streets Alive will shut down a 2.7 mile section of Peachtree Street for people to use for whatever they want - including but not limited to biking, skating, break dancing, rapping, and pushing cats in strollers.…

Countdown to Derby Day: The Hunt for Hats and Dresses

Laura Straub — Fri, 03 May 2013 10:00:00 -0400

Hat before dress - that has been our mantra as we've outfitted ourselves for the Kentucky Derby. Short of the Fifth Avenue Easter Parade and the British Royal Wedding, there is perhaps no other event that places so much emphasis on what ladies perch atop their noggins.…

Weekend Arts Agenda: Whitespace's A Moveable Feast

Henry Samuels — Fri, 28 Dec 2012 10:03:00 -0500

The annual December show at Whitespace Gallery titled A Moveable Feast will be closing this weekend. The show which encompasses both the Whitespec and Whitespace galleries, with works from gallery artists on paper in the main gallery and work from emerging artists in the Whitespec space.…

Wyatt Williams returns to 'Creative Loafing' as culture editor

Debbie Michaud — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:40:00 -0500

As much as I like doing two jobs at once, I'm happy to announce that as of today Wyatt Williams is taking over as culture editor here at CL. You'll recognize Wyatt's name because, well, he's been contributing to the Loaf off and on since 2008, writing such memorable features as profiles of CNN personality Don Lemon and local authors Blake Butler and Kathryn Stockett, for which he won first place for feature writing in the Association of Alternative Newsmedia 2012 awards.…

Atlanta's Bill Pacer is all about the Benjamin

Curt Holman — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 09:20:00 -0500

Veteran Atlanta actor Bill Pacer wants to expand people's perception of Benjamin Franklin as simply "the man who tamed electricity." "I'm helping to educate about a person everyone knows," says Pacer, who finds Franklin an inexhaustible subject.…

Robert Rauschenberg Foundation recognizes five Atlanta arts organizations

Andrew Alexander — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 16:39:10 -0500

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has awarded five Atlanta-based arts organizations each with three-year grants of $10,000 per year. The recipients are Dashboard Co-op, Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery, gloATL, Living Walls and The Lucky Penny.…

Fabrefaction Theatre's 'Assassins' hits the bull's-eye

Curt Holman — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 10:34:00 -0400

Critics often like to describe ambitious plays, movies and other art forms as presenting “the dark side of the American dream,” often to read more thematic meaning than, say, a gangster film can support. Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman’s musical Assassins genuinely earns the label, however, as it examines some uncomfortable implications of American idealism through the example of the men and women who have attempted to kill U.S. presidents.…

Dad's '44 Plays' takes a romp through the Oval Office

Curt Holman — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 08:44:00 -0400

“We lived in Hoovervilles,” says actor Rene Dellefont in a description of Herbert Hoover’s unhappy term in the Oval Office. Meanwhile, Chris Rittelmeyer, playing the engineer-turned-president, tries to make a Rube Goldberg contraption work as a metaphor for Hoover’s vain attempt to solve the Great Depression.…

VIDEO: What do Atlanta tweets look like?

Joeff Davis — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 11:45:00 -0400

As part of this month's annual Atlanta Celebrates Photography event, which includes photo activities throughout October all over the city, artists Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman brought their geolocation project to Atlanta. They've traveled all over the world for the series, shooting pictures at specific locations based on tweets sent from those areas.…

Dad's Garage announces new season amid uncertain future

Curt Holman — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 11:20:00 -0400

It's been a turbulent year for Atlanta theater, featuring the unexpected closure of Theatre in the Square in March and PushPush Theater's recent decision to close its New Street performing space in Decatur. Now Dad's Garage Theatre faces the potential loss of its longtime playhouse in Inman Park.…

PushPush Theater closing New Street Arts, launching 'GRFX'

Curt Holman — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 13:14:00 -0400

Thanks in part to a two-year grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, PushPush Theater is moving from its New Street Arts space into cyberspace. At least partially.…

Atlanta launches power2give, a Kickstarter-like program for arts funding

Debbie Michaud — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 12:14:00 -0400

This morning, the city's Office of Cultural Affairs and Mayor Kasim Reed launched the new arts granting program power2give. Like Kickstarter, power2give is an online crowd-sourced funding tool that allows donors to contribute in comfortable increments to projects that resonate with them.…

Artists, Poets & Madmen: Best of Atlanta 2012 voting open

CL staff — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 10:51:00 -0400

"Is it that time already?" you're asking. "Doesn't the Best of Atlanta issue come out in, like, SEPTEMBER?…

The Object Group gives a kick-start to 'Chapel Perilous!'

Curt Holman — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 09:19:00 -0400

The Object Group, a performing arts ensemble dedicated to creating interactive shows for nontraditional spaces, has announced a Kickstarter campaign for a new project that will combine live silhouettes, film clips and animation. Chapel Perilous comments on religious ritual and spiritual experience by putting a single member of the audience into the titular chapel.…

RAW artist throwdown at Terminal West

Debbie Michaud — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 13:13:52 -0400

In three years, RAW: natural born artists has grown from an L.A. art party to an international network of artists in 54 cities across the U.S. and an outpost in Brisbane, Australia with plans to expand into Europe and China next year. Tonight, RAW hols its coming out party in Atlanta with Solstice, a showcase highlighting local emerging artists working in film, fashion, music, visual art, performing art, hair and make-up artistry and photography.…

The $10 Art Mystery comes to an end

Debbie Michaud — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 09:14:00 -0400

A year ago April, I received a piece of mail at work that would lead to one of the more memorable experiences I've had while working at Creative Loafing. It included free money, cryptograms, breaking and entering (kinda), free cocktails, and plenty of fist shaking.…

Review: Mike Daisey's The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs

Andrew Alexander — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 16:30:37 -0400

"This is my first scandal," performer Mike Daisey said in March. "And, as they say, if you're going to go, go big."…

A few questions with ASO Concertmaster David Coucheron

Andrew Alexander — Tue, 29 May 2012 07:24:00 -0400

At 27 years old, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's concertmaster David Coucheron is the youngest leader of a first violin section in the nation. When he's not cackling over his success or calling other concertmasters "gramps" (well, that's what we'd be doing anyway), he's accepting awards: Coucheron is the new recipient of the Mabel Dorn Reeder Honorary Chair, awarded for a period of five years to an ASO musician "who demonstrates excellence in artistry and leadership."…

The Alliance gives a taste of its 2012-13 season

Andrew Alexander — Tue, 22 May 2012 23:22:52 -0400

An evening at the theater that involves an all-female country band with a washboard rhythm section, slick projections of the Zorro "Z" slashing out in flames, cameos by Ebenezer Scrooge, a rap song about divorce, frequent spins of a giant roulette wheel to give away gift certificates to local restaurants, and a scene from Charlotte's Web is bound to feel a bit surreal. It's a credit to the Alliance Theatre that last night's "Taste of the Season" event, which offered short previews of the shows that will make up the 2012-2013 season, ran smoothly on the Alliance stage and gave a nice glimpse of the intriguing productions that we'll be seeing soon.…

Office of Cultural Affairs gets a quarter-of-a-million-dollar bump in Reed's budget

Eric Celeste — Fri, 11 May 2012 16:38:49 -0400

There's also an update on the new gallery planned to go into the city-owned former AJC building. Debbie Michaud has the story on Culture Surfing.…

Atlanta, stop being so unhipstery

Gwynedd Stuart — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 11:51:39 -0400

If "hipster culture" was still a thing or was ever a thing it is officially R.I.P.ing alongside punk rock's rotting corpse thanks to a feature in this month's issue of Travel + Leisure entitled "America's Best Cities for Hipsters." According to the hip, happening hip-hopsters at T+L, Atlanta is NOT hipster friendly, ranking 32nd out of 35 cities. For people who take any pride in Atlanta being a cool place, this should come as an enormous relief.…

Pop Traveler enumerates 10 awesome things about ATL

Curt Holman — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:25:43 -0500

The Pop Traveler, a new feature in USA Today's Pop Candy blog, has posted an article from local blogger Rachel Mason, "Ten reasons why Atlanta is so awesome." Her assertion that "Atlanta residents love the alphabet, because it places us first in almost everything (unless Albuquerque and Anchorage are involved)" is a new one on me, but I can get behind most of 10 choices, which include the Starlight Drive-In, Dragon*Con, The Center for Puppetry Arts and King of Pops.…

Does the Atlanta arts community need to act more like right-wing Republicans?

Eric Celeste — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:49:23 -0500

Over on Culture Surfing, arts editor Debbie Michaud asks this question (sort of; she puts it in a more thoughtful, elegant way, as she is wont to do). She basically asks if arts supporters need to rethink how they make the case that arts are a crucial part of a community.…

Simanga wants to develop the National Black Arts Festival

Eric Celeste — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:04:39 -0500

Over on Culture Surfing, Debbie Michaud has a quick exit interview with former Fulton County Arts & Culture Director Michael Simanga. Read it with your eyes.…

Local car thieves to become TV superstars

Thomas Wheatley — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 10:35:44 -0400

Good morning, Fresh Loaf reader! Do you steal cars?…