Thomas Dozol's photos of men and women immediately after showering (it requires two showers in succession in some cases before Dozol gets a psychologically haunting portrayal) remain at Opal Gallery through January 10, annoying a certain number of passing parents who seem unaware that their small children will see much more troublesome visual offerings just down the street in the window displays of any number of Little Five Points establishments. The full-body male nudity in some of these photos is far enough inside the gallery to require a commitment to looking at the show, and the 12-foot-tall closeup that covers one wall ought not to offend anyone.
Dozol is apparently getting more press locally for his relationship with Michael Stipe than as a photographer for French Vogue and other publications. The less gossip-obsessed will be pleased to know that these photos are presented to stand or fall on their own merits, even though they feature music personalities well known in the Athens and Atlanta scene alongside figures with greater face recognition. And it goes without saying that they stand rather than fall, documenting illuminating details of decor as well as bodies in various states of deshabille.
I have seen a rumor that Public Domain will shortly hold a signing at Opal for their latest FORT/da! books but will hold off on details till I get firmer information. PD deserves more support than it has gotten.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Carol Barton at the Papermaking Museum
I am left with the sense that the AJC's relatively small number of column inches devoted to the visual arts means that there isn't even room for stories about certain things that the general populace would like, such as Carol Barton's popup books for grownups at the Robert C. Williams Paper Museum on the Ga. Tech campus. Under the capable curatorship of Teri Williams, the Museum brings us serious yet often playful paper-related shows of contemporary art, such as Julie Püttgen's survey of Swiss and American cut-and-folded paper sculptures (one of the last things I was able to write about in the now-defunct AccessAtlanta tabloid before the AJC downsized still further).
And it is, as mentioned in a comment to an earlier post, scandalous that we have noplace to see the work of an Atlanta-based artist featured in Modern Painters whose work, were it available in sufficient quantity, would be ideal for a Paper Museum sculpture show. But no gallery locally shows Brian Dettmer, who came to Atlanta in 2006 because of his wife's employment here. His transformations of books (written up courtesy of Felicia Feaster in the December issue of The Atlantan) are much acclaimed elsewhere, as the London magazine's special feature in November indicates.
The AJC's Jonathan Williams interviewed Bethany Marchman in Sunday's AJC, providing insight into the life and work of a popular artist whose work was featured in the movie Juno and whose fiancé Rene Arriagada is not so coincidentally profiled in the same section, alongside an article on a 7 p.m. Friday book signing by Russell Howze of his Stencil Nation: Graffiti, Community, and Art, at A Cappella Books, in Little Five Points.
So this exercise in art history gives us hope for the future. Three interrelated articles fill in some of the context and implicitly correct some of the errors in an earlier story on the Atlanta practitioners of the lowbrow movement's aesthetic (discussed in the Marchman interview), and contextualize a subcategory of graffiti (stencil art) as well as putting a name to some of the stencils that most Atlantans know only from drive-by glimpses. (Those who went to Arriagada's exhibition of gallery art at Beep Beep Gallery were already knowledgeable on the topic, but the show attracted little enough attention in the print media. Given the reading habits of the Atlanta public, it is doubtful if many people who needed to be brought up to speed on stencil art actually attended the show to receive an education in the history of contemporary practice.)
So Jonathan Williams proves to be equal to the example of his famous modernist namesake when it comes to enlightening the masses regarding topics about which they are clueless.
And we may hope for similar AJC convergences with regard to the many other types of art exhibited around town, as well as meditations on why certain types of art are represented only in lectures regarding work that Atlantans will never see in local venues. (Given the lovely January convergence represented by Georgia State's "New WAVE Atlanta: When Urban Intervention Speaks French" and the Atlanta Gallery Association's ATLArt09 fest, a study in collisions of the contemporary could be undertaken by any number of commentators.)
We could be pleasantly surprised someday, and have a feast of the international contemporary to rival the unparalleled feast of antiquity currently available in the city. But it won't be because there is a market for it. Although there are significant collectors of contemporary work, too much of it doesn't fit the dominant commercial paradigm. There is a great deal of worthwhile work to be seen here, but within a context that is shaped by many distorting factors.
Right now the local market does not fit much of anybody, which is why I have been more preoccupied recently with the survival of art venues and the problem with keeping their events known to general audiences. But events continue to unfold.
And it is, as mentioned in a comment to an earlier post, scandalous that we have noplace to see the work of an Atlanta-based artist featured in Modern Painters whose work, were it available in sufficient quantity, would be ideal for a Paper Museum sculpture show. But no gallery locally shows Brian Dettmer, who came to Atlanta in 2006 because of his wife's employment here. His transformations of books (written up courtesy of Felicia Feaster in the December issue of The Atlantan) are much acclaimed elsewhere, as the London magazine's special feature in November indicates.
The AJC's Jonathan Williams interviewed Bethany Marchman in Sunday's AJC, providing insight into the life and work of a popular artist whose work was featured in the movie Juno and whose fiancé Rene Arriagada is not so coincidentally profiled in the same section, alongside an article on a 7 p.m. Friday book signing by Russell Howze of his Stencil Nation: Graffiti, Community, and Art, at A Cappella Books, in Little Five Points.
So this exercise in art history gives us hope for the future. Three interrelated articles fill in some of the context and implicitly correct some of the errors in an earlier story on the Atlanta practitioners of the lowbrow movement's aesthetic (discussed in the Marchman interview), and contextualize a subcategory of graffiti (stencil art) as well as putting a name to some of the stencils that most Atlantans know only from drive-by glimpses. (Those who went to Arriagada's exhibition of gallery art at Beep Beep Gallery were already knowledgeable on the topic, but the show attracted little enough attention in the print media. Given the reading habits of the Atlanta public, it is doubtful if many people who needed to be brought up to speed on stencil art actually attended the show to receive an education in the history of contemporary practice.)
So Jonathan Williams proves to be equal to the example of his famous modernist namesake when it comes to enlightening the masses regarding topics about which they are clueless.
And we may hope for similar AJC convergences with regard to the many other types of art exhibited around town, as well as meditations on why certain types of art are represented only in lectures regarding work that Atlantans will never see in local venues. (Given the lovely January convergence represented by Georgia State's "New WAVE Atlanta: When Urban Intervention Speaks French" and the Atlanta Gallery Association's ATLArt09 fest, a study in collisions of the contemporary could be undertaken by any number of commentators.)
We could be pleasantly surprised someday, and have a feast of the international contemporary to rival the unparalleled feast of antiquity currently available in the city. But it won't be because there is a market for it. Although there are significant collectors of contemporary work, too much of it doesn't fit the dominant commercial paradigm. There is a great deal of worthwhile work to be seen here, but within a context that is shaped by many distorting factors.
Right now the local market does not fit much of anybody, which is why I have been more preoccupied recently with the survival of art venues and the problem with keeping their events known to general audiences. But events continue to unfold.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
no joke: local places that could use our support, in Atlanta
Calavino Donati sends word that Calavino's in Oakhurst will close as of December 21 if people don't donate to her savemyrestaurant paypal account: http://www.myspace.com/savemyrestaurant
But I can't help but think that fans of Calavino at her old Roman Lily Cafe location, who have not found her new format quite as consistently compelling, can do something more creative than just give money. These events never raise quite enough, but can't we think of ways to add still more DIY fundraising events to the proximity of the holidays? I mean events that would split the proceeds with Calavino and that would provide a pre-holiday venue for people who are wishing they could sell some things that are more than odds and ends...it wouldn't replace the paypal donations but it may be a way for more people to donate and do good for themselves as well.
Or else we could just offer Calavino $20 per person to make a heumongous batch of her once world-famous banana bread dessert from the old days at Roman Lily.
On the financial apocalypse front, I am pleased that Atlanta Peach got in some plugs for some of my favorite artists before shutting down abruptly. And that Felicia Feaster signed on with The Atlantan, which now becomes the survivor of the luxury lifestyle magazine wars, and the go-to source for slick-paper accounts of the Atlanta art scene.
But I can't help but think that fans of Calavino at her old Roman Lily Cafe location, who have not found her new format quite as consistently compelling, can do something more creative than just give money. These events never raise quite enough, but can't we think of ways to add still more DIY fundraising events to the proximity of the holidays? I mean events that would split the proceeds with Calavino and that would provide a pre-holiday venue for people who are wishing they could sell some things that are more than odds and ends...it wouldn't replace the paypal donations but it may be a way for more people to donate and do good for themselves as well.
Or else we could just offer Calavino $20 per person to make a heumongous batch of her once world-famous banana bread dessert from the old days at Roman Lily.
On the financial apocalypse front, I am pleased that Atlanta Peach got in some plugs for some of my favorite artists before shutting down abruptly. And that Felicia Feaster signed on with The Atlantan, which now becomes the survivor of the luxury lifestyle magazine wars, and the go-to source for slick-paper accounts of the Atlanta art scene.
alcohol that supports the arts
For those few of you still holding a holiday party at levels higher than PBR, I would remind you that the chairman of the board of Glenfiddich Distillery supports an annual artist residency at the distillery in Dufftown, Scotland (sorry, invitation only and I'm not on the curatorial board) that is one of the more valuable and imaginative ventures among the producers of upscale beverages.
If you are buying single malt Scotch anyway, please consider the one that supports the arts and that paid my way on a press tour to the place in 2007, without preconditions. (For which they have never gotten more out of me than the occasional recognition that they do this sort of thing, plus my attempt to drink their product whenever possible, which is not at all often.)
If you are buying single malt Scotch anyway, please consider the one that supports the arts and that paid my way on a press tour to the place in 2007, without preconditions. (For which they have never gotten more out of me than the occasional recognition that they do this sort of thing, plus my attempt to drink their product whenever possible, which is not at all often.)
a roundup of footnotes to the foregoing few posts
Robert Cheatham’s incipient legacy includes a couple of compilations of writing that deserve greater recognition (findable, I believe, on lulu.com, wherein I have ensconced my own collected creations—along with my part of a family homage to a favorite aunt that also comes up when my name is searched on that website).
But just as there is never time for a proper debate about the relative merits of, say, Badiou versus Rabinow (who have little enough to do with each other—which is the point), there is never time to write about all the personal aesthetics that are of tremendous importance to artists’ careers, and to audience understanding. Exhibitions come and go without more than mysterious passing references, and often not even that.
I’ve weighed in twice on the issue of Whitney Wood because her accomplishment in something like one year has been prodigious, and her studio at Tula will guarantee her continued visibility. (Kudos to Mary Stanley, however, for an exhibition gloriously presented in the space once occupied by galleries from Kiang, which survives and thrives today in Midtown West, to Momus, which doesn’t.)
MB Andrews, on the other hand, gets little enough visibility in her Little Five Points Community Center studio, and when I consider the sheer number of artists for whom a three of four week exhibition is the one chance to have a significant number of people see their work, I am pained anew at the lack of a single reliable information source, where audiences of all types could find the insight they need to know what they ought to be seeing. Thoughtmarker, as I’ve said, covers the alt-scene nicely in that department when linked to all the blogs that deal with that set of aesthetics. The folks at burnaway.org are stretching their own aesthetics considerably and looking for ways to stretch them still further. I keep hearing rumors out of artrelish.com regarding new moves and modes.
But the situation is dire, and until someone comes up with a single vehicle that will get all of us where we need to go, I repeat my appeal to y’all to go buy a little work of art, or as big a work of art as you can afford, from the gallery that you would most like to have stay in business.
And I promise that I will at least TRY to get my head round issues of abstraction and representation that lie behind so many local aesthetics, but I get distracted with things like the two thousand words or so regarding Florida’s place in the American imagination, to be found over on http://joculum.livejournal.com, which I http because people always reflexively add “www” when they type the URL, which gets them absolutely nowhere.
But just as there is never time for a proper debate about the relative merits of, say, Badiou versus Rabinow (who have little enough to do with each other—which is the point), there is never time to write about all the personal aesthetics that are of tremendous importance to artists’ careers, and to audience understanding. Exhibitions come and go without more than mysterious passing references, and often not even that.
I’ve weighed in twice on the issue of Whitney Wood because her accomplishment in something like one year has been prodigious, and her studio at Tula will guarantee her continued visibility. (Kudos to Mary Stanley, however, for an exhibition gloriously presented in the space once occupied by galleries from Kiang, which survives and thrives today in Midtown West, to Momus, which doesn’t.)
MB Andrews, on the other hand, gets little enough visibility in her Little Five Points Community Center studio, and when I consider the sheer number of artists for whom a three of four week exhibition is the one chance to have a significant number of people see their work, I am pained anew at the lack of a single reliable information source, where audiences of all types could find the insight they need to know what they ought to be seeing. Thoughtmarker, as I’ve said, covers the alt-scene nicely in that department when linked to all the blogs that deal with that set of aesthetics. The folks at burnaway.org are stretching their own aesthetics considerably and looking for ways to stretch them still further. I keep hearing rumors out of artrelish.com regarding new moves and modes.
But the situation is dire, and until someone comes up with a single vehicle that will get all of us where we need to go, I repeat my appeal to y’all to go buy a little work of art, or as big a work of art as you can afford, from the gallery that you would most like to have stay in business.
And I promise that I will at least TRY to get my head round issues of abstraction and representation that lie behind so many local aesthetics, but I get distracted with things like the two thousand words or so regarding Florida’s place in the American imagination, to be found over on http://joculum.livejournal.com, which I http because people always reflexively add “www” when they type the URL, which gets them absolutely nowhere.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
more
I've tried now twice and can't get there from here vis-a-vis where my worldview diverges from Robert's and why. It has to do more with which thinkers either of us accepts as most fruitful for constructing an epistemology and an anthropology, I'll say that much. And my sense that much of the received body of knowledge with which we grew to maturity was in fact in now-evident error, as we suspected at the time. But we differ on the nature and implications of that error.
And our respective aesthetics derive from those divergent epistemologies and social anthropologies.
I hope we would agree on something like the worth of Whitney Wood's abstractions, which allow for biomorphic projections more than they present them (except on a subconscious level on the part of their maker as well as their viewer...but then that is the case with all art, even the most self-consciously representational).
Interesting to compare them with MB Andrews' works at House of Colors...not that I am going to post any images to allow readers to do so at this point.
The economics of time and energy...if I don't set out now I'll never get to the galleries I intend before rush hour starts, and it is only the flextime of my current schedule that allows me to get to galleries at this hour at all.
Most art writers of my acquaintance are still on 9 to 5 weekday schedules that force them into the Saturday-only schedule I lived with when still writing freelance for the AJC. And of course most viewers are in a similar condition, a reason for the creation of an art-reviewing venue that allows different types of audiences to make informed judgments about where to see the kind of art they most want to see on their one day when they can go see it.
And our respective aesthetics derive from those divergent epistemologies and social anthropologies.
I hope we would agree on something like the worth of Whitney Wood's abstractions, which allow for biomorphic projections more than they present them (except on a subconscious level on the part of their maker as well as their viewer...but then that is the case with all art, even the most self-consciously representational).
Interesting to compare them with MB Andrews' works at House of Colors...not that I am going to post any images to allow readers to do so at this point.
The economics of time and energy...if I don't set out now I'll never get to the galleries I intend before rush hour starts, and it is only the flextime of my current schedule that allows me to get to galleries at this hour at all.
Most art writers of my acquaintance are still on 9 to 5 weekday schedules that force them into the Saturday-only schedule I lived with when still writing freelance for the AJC. And of course most viewers are in a similar condition, a reason for the creation of an art-reviewing venue that allows different types of audiences to make informed judgments about where to see the kind of art they most want to see on their one day when they can go see it.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
les neiges d'antan
I have suppressed for the moment, and perhaps permanently, a rambling post for which I shall substitute another rambling post. It's better than continuing a debate with Rob Cheatham over positions that we have developed painstakingly over decades and altered according to changing conditions of knowledge, me on the joculum blog and he in many different online locations.
Whitney Wood's excellent SCAD MFA paintings show that you can no longer see at Tula (but watch this space for developments) reminded me of the various fates of herself and others from Auburn whom I shall not discuss at this particular point, but eventually. (I've lost touch with Heather Hartman and Ann Stewart's grad school careers.)
An enigmatic Facebook comment sent me back to Kate Kretz's blog http://katekretz.blogspot.com/ where I found a new drawing from her friend and mine Sarah Petruziello, which reminded me of the disparate fates of so many artists I've known and championed over the years. This is the resoundingly titled allegory This Little Princess Has Built Her House of Cards Upon a Quagmire:
I tried to bring Kate Kretz's globally recognized painting Blessed Art Thou to Atlanta as part of a projected exhibition, but this seems to have become ever less likely as the world economic crisis progresses or devolves, whichever way you choose to describe it.
Whitney Wood's excellent SCAD MFA paintings show that you can no longer see at Tula (but watch this space for developments) reminded me of the various fates of herself and others from Auburn whom I shall not discuss at this particular point, but eventually. (I've lost touch with Heather Hartman and Ann Stewart's grad school careers.)
An enigmatic Facebook comment sent me back to Kate Kretz's blog http://katekretz.blogspot.com/ where I found a new drawing from her friend and mine Sarah Petruziello, which reminded me of the disparate fates of so many artists I've known and championed over the years. This is the resoundingly titled allegory This Little Princess Has Built Her House of Cards Upon a Quagmire:
I tried to bring Kate Kretz's globally recognized painting Blessed Art Thou to Atlanta as part of a projected exhibition, but this seems to have become ever less likely as the world economic crisis progresses or devolves, whichever way you choose to describe it.
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