BlackCatTips

BlackCatTips is painting at the corner of street art and folk art

“I don’t think I’ve ever done an interview while sitting on a bucket,” Kyle Brooks, also known as the artist BlackCatTips, muses while sitting on a blue plastic painter’s bucket. It’s a sunny afternoon in Virginia-Highland, and Brooks has begun painting a mural outside Ash Coffee. The cafe-meets-knickknack-shop opened just a few days ago and is already bustling. On the concrete wall outside, Brooks has completed a large white circle, where the cafe’s red logo will go. Next, he’ll add an abundance of whimsical, colorful characters: some mountains, some mushrooms, some faces of fanciful and unknown origin.
Attorneys speak out about obstacles facing immigrants to Georgia

Attorneys speak out about obstacles facing immigrants to Georgia

On any given day, Serene Hawasli Kashlan is responding to the legal needs of some 88 clients. They represent more than 36 different countries, she says, but they all share a common goal, to make the United States their permanent home. As managing asylum attorney at the Georgia Asylum and Immigration Network (GAIN), she’s among a relatively small group of metro Atlanta professionals providing a service that’s in high demand: pro bono representation for those who are seeking asylum.
A love letter to Zoo Atlanta's pandas

A love letter to Zoo Atlanta’s pandas

In August 2016, my oldest daughter, Vivien, started kindergarten at Parkside Elementary School in Grant Park, just a few blocks down the street from Zoo Atlanta. The school—which opened in 2001, shortly after the arrival of the zoo’s first giant pandas, Lun Lun and Yang Yang, in 1999—adopted the iconic creature as a mascot. Since then, seven pandas have been born at the zoo, with the youngest, a pair of twins, born just a month after Vivien started school.
Why we'll always need TCM

Why we’ll always need Turner Classic Movies

Like other creative enterprises that get national exposure but can be overlooked in their hometowns, Turner Classic Movies is a lodestar for fans of classic film that is sometimes taken for granted in Atlanta. The network’s film-purist canon of uncut, commercial-free movies, piped into American homes like cinematic catnip 24 hours a day, has made it a beloved binge-watch for top directors like Nancy Meyers, Alexander Payne, and Martin Scorsese.
Najee Dorsey

Najee Dorsey creates a home for Black artists

Black Art in America, a 4,000-square-foot art gallery–artists studio–gift shop and 8,000-square-foot sculpture garden in East Point, is intended, says CEO and founder Najee Dorsey, as “a space to document, preserve, and promote African American visual culture.” Dorsey, who is also a self-taught artist represented by Arnika Dawkins Gallery, has made that focus his life’s goal—ever since he opened a gallery in the corner of an Arkansas beauty salon in 1998.
Breaking down Atlanta’s newfound passion for mahjong

Breaking down Atlanta’s newfound passion for mahjong

Brookhaven resident Melissa Cott remembers the click-click-click of her mom and her friends playing mahjong. She loved the nights when it was her mom’s turn to host and recalls sneaking out of bed to...
Atlanta's Project Street Vet bring pet care to the unhoused

Project Street Vet bring pet care to Atlanta’s unhoused

On a Sunday in October, members of the unhoused community gather in the Big House Guitars parking lot on the corner of Cheshire Bridge and Lavista Roads. There, the Elizabeth Foundation, a nonprofit service organization, lays out two spreads—one with food, the other with warm clothes for the upcoming cold and wet winter. Veterinarian Dr. Kristen Schmidt is also there to help. Through the nonprofit Project Street Vet, Schmidt provides free veterinary care to pets of unhoused individuals in Atlanta.
An Atlanta entrepreneur founded a company that will deliver you a petite citrus tree

An Atlanta entrepreneur founded a company that will deliver you a petite citrus tree

Danny Trejo grew up on an 80-acre Florida nursery and grove, where citrus was all he knew. He also knew it wasn’t what he wanted to do with his life. Instead, he went into insurance and moved to New York City. But, one day in 2015, he was walking along a sidewalk in the Flower District and spotted citrus plants from his father’s farm. “I couldn’t believe the markup!” he says.
Atlanta's vanishing accent

Is the Atlanta accent vanishing? Not exactly.

It is easy to spot, the old Atlanta accent. Bird becomes bud in a drawl as unhurried as Sunday brunch at the Colonnade. Because of several factors here—the Olympics, the tech boom, the rise of the entertainment industry—Atlanta’s population has exploded, bringing a heady mix of other languages and dialects to the civic conversation. Has this influx, by process of dilution, killed that identifiable accent? Not yet. Here's why.
Atlanta Ballet begins to diversify

How the Atlanta Ballet is working to become more diverse

Seven months into his tenure as executive director of Atlanta Ballet, Tom West saw a line item on the pay scale that didn’t seem right. Dancers entering the company under its apprentice program were paid less than $500 a week. Company leaders noted that apprenticeships are standard practice in the field. But the low-paying program was one of several barriers faced by young dancers from historically underrepresented communities—the very dancers Atlanta Ballet has struggled to attract. Atlanta’s population is close to 50 percent Black, and until recently, Atlanta Ballet’s roster had only a token few Black artists.

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