Visual Arts
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Visual Arts Art Seen: All Folk at Barbara Archer
Posted by Wyatt Williams on Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 11:14 AM
- Whirligig by R.A. Miller and two works of Tramp Art
The term "folk art" gets thrown around too often. It's a broad term, of course, meant to encompass a wide variety of styles and skills and approaches that don't fit comfortably in the canon of western art. Lately though, it brings to mind the imitators cranking out work for the shopping mall style booths at neighborhood festivals, whether they're selling mass-produced whirligigs or by-the-numbers wood carvings.
All Folk at Barbara Archer is a relief, a group show full of visionaries and outsiders and tramps offering welcome reminder of the varied pleasures of folk. Archer, who once dealt exclusively in folk art, has carefully balanced the show among styles, including a couple of pieces of anonymous tramp sculpture, a couple drawings from the self-taught outsider Robert Lindsey Walker, a particularly great whirligig from R.A. Miller, and so on.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Visual Arts Too many Folk Art Fest photos
Posted by Marc Schultz on Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 3:11 PM
The 17th annual Slotin Folk Art Fest rolled into town this past weekend at the North Atlanta Trade Center, up I-85 a piece in Norcross. As always, it was an overwhelming experience, ultracrowded with the colorful work of self-taught, outsider, visionary and otherwise artists, along with the folks who love to collect (and sell) their work. Herewith is a (very) small sample of what was on display. In the coming weeks, we'll be taking a closer look at these and other folk artists, along with where you can find their stuff for sale in the Atlanta area.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Visual Arts / Books John Morse offers poetry for the rush hour
Posted by Wyatt Williams on Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 9:00 AM
- Flux Projects
She said she didn't see any phone number for a lawyer, "And what sort of lawyer advertises by quoting Freud?" Later, she told me that she'd kept thinking about the sign all the way to the therapist and then talked about it more there.
That sort of disruption of your daily commute might be exactly what artist John Morse is hoping for. With a little help from Flux Projects, Morse has installed 500 roadside signs around Atlanta that subtly subvert the language of advertising into insightful haiku. There are ten different haiku (only two are in Spanish, the rest are in English) among the signs and if you want to read them all, you'll have to find the signs themselves.
If you really want to track some down, Morse has supplied a map to all of the locations (though I imagine that'll change as some torn down for actual advertisements, stolen by thieving poetry fans, run over, and so forth). A relaxed approach, though, might be closer to the point: keep your eyes open and you'll be surprised by what you read.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Visual Arts Want to see the last Living Walls mural in progress? Party today!
Posted by Jessica Blankenship on Sun, Aug 22, 2010 at 11:53 AM
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Visual Arts This is a Momentary Spectacle opens at Twin Kittens this Saturday with fancy beer
Posted by Jessica Blankenship on Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 8:24 PM
This afternoon, Bob Butler and Jeff Guy, the ever-delightful purveyors of arty goodness at Twin Kittens gallery, let CL creep around and snip some snaps of their newest exhibition This is a Momentary Spectacle by Athens artist Denton Crawford.
The show opens Saturday, August 21 during the Westside Arts District Saturday Art Walk. The gallery will have their doors open all day, but they'll be offering up an increasingly notorious beer selection during the opening reception from 7-10 p.m.
Picture time!
Friday, August 13, 2010
Visual Arts / weekend arts agenda Weekend Arts Agenda
Posted by Wyatt Williams on Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 9:14 AM
- Jason Murphy
International street artists are pouring into Atlanta this weekend and that's not even half of it. Check out all the details after the jump.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Visual Arts Step into Guest House. It's air-conditioned.
Posted by Jessica Blankenship on Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 10:15 PM
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Visual Arts Art Seen: Thousands attended the opening of Dali: The Late Work
Posted by Debbie Michaud on Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 11:47 AM
- "Dali's Mustache" by Philippe Halsman
- 3,534 people?! Damn!
My sister and I made plans to go together. Since the event was scheduled to start at 8 p.m., we figured we could roll up around 8:30 p.m., maybe grab some street parking and head in. Wrong. Sooooo wrong. As we approached the High heading north on Peachtree, we began to make out a mass of bodies on the sidewalk. "Is that the line?" my sister asked. "No way. ... Well, wait, is it?" I said.
We immediately grabbed a spot in a deck across from the High and headed over. It turned out that the crowd we'd seen from the car was, in fact, part of a long, well-dressed queue snaking from the museum's plaza-side entrance, around the courtyard, down the steps past Table 1280 and extending out into the sidewalk on Peachtree. The line was for ticket holders and ticket needers alike. My sis already had a ticket, and since I was on the press list we were able to scoot around the masses inside to the security desk. (I know, I know, but hey, this job's got some perks...).
(Photos and more after the jump.)
Visual Arts Katrina: Five Years of Reflection opens at Spruill tomorrow
Posted by Wyatt Williams on Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 11:37 AM
- Elyse Defoor
Reacting to the large spray-painted Xs, which search teams used to keep track of damage and lives, Defoor began to create a body of work around the figure of the X.Defoor's figure-X drawings and paintings range from just a few inches to more than 6 feet high. Defoor's palette is characteristically restrained and grim; blacks, whites, and browns are punctuated by an occasional earthy red or bright orange. The surfaces are variously oily, cruddy or crinkled.
Most often employing a simple X in the middle of the composition, Defoor avoids the pornographic quality of human catastrophe. She creates no salacious pity, no maudlin nostalgia. The X calls back to New Orleans recovery efforts, but also drags in a range of cultural associations from Malcolm X to X-rated movies. The associations are rich and inch toward making catastrophe graspable.
The exhibition, Katrina: Five Years of Reflection, also features work from Krista Jurisich, Brian Nolan, Debra Howell, Jan Gilbert, Lori K. Gordon, Neil Alexande, Norman DeShong and Douglas Adams, Jr. The opening reception begins at 6 pm. More details at Spruill.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Visual Arts Karen Tauches unveils a Paradise in progress
Posted by Wyatt Williams on Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 6:27 PM
- The future site of "Paradise"
“I’m a connoisseur of spaces, the in-betweens, and here in Atlanta there are plenty of holes. We’ve got a lot of urban meadows and, if we learn to love them, this is something that can be incorporated into the city as we grow,” she says, sitting outside Carroll Street Café with a morning cup of coffee.
Tauches walks me down to that vacant lot, adjacent to Tauches home, trying to explain what she means. Thanks to a few pounds of seeds and advice from the botanically-gifted Cooper Sanchez, the former parking lot is overflowing with the color of towering Sunflowers, Marigolds and Black-Eyed Susans being attended to by the occasional butterfly and white, fluttering moth. Unlike a manicured garden, the lot feels loose, almost like a container of wilderness boxed in by historic bricks of the cotton mill lofts and concrete walls of the train yard. A small, construction-yellow sign reads "Meadow In Progress."
Pointing at wooden scaffolding that rises twenty-feet-tall from the corner of the lot, Tauches explains her plans to unveil a neon billboard that reads “PARADISE” in slick, deco lettering this Friday, August 13. “It’s not exactly an art project,” Tauches says, demurring from any direct explanation of her intentions.
