Scene & Herd - Antiques roadshow
And some sad goodbyes
On Thursday, I went to a meet-and-greet reception at Prime in Lenox for 99X’s “The Don Miller Morning Show.” I never learned why the station discarded the recognizable “Morning X” name in favor of the nonexistent (and unfunny) “Don Miller.” While I was there, though, I did learn from a fellow receptioneer about a real Don — Don Scott.
Scott is the founder of the Scott Antique Market, a mobile gathering of antique dealers. He founded the market (located in the south side’s Atlanta Expo Center every second weekend of the month) after picking up a love of antiques while traveling to exotic locales as a pilot. (Of all the things one can develop while traveling the world as a pilot, I think he picked wisely.)?
If I ever buy a house, I’m heading to Scott to furnish it. The place was filled with beautiful old wood furniture. They’ve also got tables full of African masks and a huge stash of anthropomorphized animal art — busts of owls playing guitar, hippos in snow suits and, most confusing, smiling pigs in chef’s outfits. And if you’re a collector of 100-year-old painted portraits of the unattractive children of wealthy people, Scott is the place for you. It was filled with comically ugly decorative art. I think the dealers get the stuff from estate sales.?
A deeply tanned, leathery, raspy man with an unlit cigarette in his hand very nearly sold me an old sectional couch. He bought it for a house he decorated in south Florida, but didn’t use it. He told me repeatedly that it’d be ideal for my “beach or lake house.”?
I was proud to think that someone thought me as so well-propertied — until I realized the same someone also boasted about how he’d reupholstered a beautiful old chair with fabric depicting a banana-hungry monkey.?
Bon voyage: Last week was filled with sad goodbyes. Dad’s Garage’s Lucky Yates Show ascended to talk-show heaven, Suede (one of my favorite bands) announced its breakup, Righteous Brother Bobby Hatfield lost that livin’ feeling, and Stomp & Stammer editor Jeff Clark sent packing his final shreds of decency and dignity.
Bu perhaps the saddest goodbye of all involves ArtSpot, CL’s critics’ pick this year for Best Alternative Art Space. It hasn’t closed quite yet, but Saturday night it hosted its final opening. You still have a month to go see some art, but you’re gonna have to provide your own wine and cheese. Saturday’s opening was for the second installment of the Joey Orr-curated Triple Point show featuring three “emerging” Atlanta artists. I must have come late, because when I arrived, the artists were standing next to their pieces, fully emerged.?
Brian Holcombe, founder and curator of nearby Saltworks Gallery, stepped out from wherever it is founder/curators stand to present “Basis,” his own work for Triple Point — two gigantic tuning forks, one vibrating at 50 hertz (cycles per second), the other at 80 hertz. Regular tuning forks are held in one hand and struck with the other. Because the 70-foot-tall beast needed to operate a real 50-hertz tuning fork was unavailable, Holcombe cheated by putting subwoofers into his. When Holcombe wasn’t playing the forks in steady tones, they always seemed to be playing OutKast.?
Upstairs, in a white room with white curtains, Venezuela-born Victoria Martin-Gilly created an installation piece consisting of squares painted on the walls. The squares were made from little teeny-tiny brushstrokes. The artist who drew the biggest crowd of the night was Drew Conrad, who covered ArtSpot’s balcony walls with drawings of what looked like deconstructed graffiti. It was too crowded to get a good look though.?
Whinin’ and dinin’: Sipping wine on the square in downtown Decatur is usually a crime. But on Saturday, Decatur continued our nation’s tradition of suspending open-container laws on behalf of partying white people. This excuse was the second Decatur Wine Festival, benefiting the Decatur Arts Alliance. Tickets sold out early in the afternoon as the crowd (described to me by participants Dan Brindis and Bart White as a “three-dimensional J. Crew catalog”) sucked the festival dry. If not for Roy, whose Sage on Sycamore bistro was one of the main sponsors of the festival, I wouldn’t have been able to get in. In fact, so high was demand, and so quickly did participants drink the festival dry and begin leaving, that the prize raffle had to be moved up by an hour so there’d still be people there to witness it. Binge-drinking, yes — but for a very good cause.
Homographs: On Friday night, I saw a great show at the Earl by The Close (as in Glenn). I’ve been tearing my hair out trying to describe the music since Friday, and the best I can come up with is www.thecloserocks.com. (Why read when you can just listen there?)
Anyhoo, I can at least describe the visuals — namely bassist Dustan Nigro. I haven’t a clue what he’s like off-stage, but on-stage he’s a preening, posing icon unique from so many of his underground rock brethren in that he doesn’t hide that he enjoys being on stage. Also a winner in the “fun to watch” department was the gorgeous Theresa Marie Fedor on keyboards and vocals. A fellow gig-goer tapped me on the shoulder and requested that I snap 100 photos of her and send them to him. His date was standing right next to him. I wonder what he told her when she asked him what he said.