Arts & Events
How to have a fun—yet safe—Halloween in Atlanta this year
Halloween doesn't have to be entirely cancelled, as long as you take certain safety measures and celebrate responsibly. Here are a few tips and suggestions from health experts and local parents.
The AIDS Memorial Quilt remains a powerful symbol
Friends, family, lovers, and strangers stitched colorful, personal, and heartfelt tribute panels measuring three feet by six feet—the approximate measurements of a grave, Jones says—that when stitched together create a 1.3 million square foot symbol as iconic as the red ribbon worn to raise awareness about the disease.
Wussy’s Jon Dean on Atlanta’s queer arts scene and the importance of representation
Today, in addition to covering local and national queer art and culture, Wussy hosts events across the city, like drag shows, dance parties, and movie screenings—and founder Jon Dean doesn’t plan to stop there.
A new GPB podcast about the 1970 Augusta Riot has a message for today
Shots in the Back: Exhuming the 1970 Augusta Riot has been years in the making for Sea Stachura, but the content of the podcast is as timely and relevant as ever.
Art Beats is a virtual front-row ticket to the city’s new shows
Perhaps Art Beats—Atlanta’s new portal for online performances and exhibitions—is so user friendly because the idea started with an arts fan.
Out on Film launches a “virtual theater” for this year’s LGBTQ+ film festival
Now an independent entity, Out on Film is one of the nation’s oldest LGBTQ+ festivals, one of the 10 largest of its kind in the U.S., and one of only three Oscar-qualifying LGBTQ+ fests.
Loupe aims to be the Spotify of visual art
Loupe features work from more than 200 living artists. Users can stream channels curated by theme, color, or artist, and, if they come across something they like, can order original works and prints with just a click.
Poet Natasha Trethewey on her new memoir and her bittersweet relationship with Atlanta
The Pulitzer-prize winner has written poems about her mother, but to tell a fuller story of her mother’s life and death, Trethewey penned a heart-wrenching, elegiac memoir called Memorial Drive.
20 Atlanta podcasts to add to your queue
From politics and hip-hop to soccer in the Dirty South, here are 20 podcasts to offer some respite from COVID news and quarantine—all recorded and/or produced in Atlanta and described by their hosts
Things to do
How to have a fun—yet safe—Halloween in Atlanta this year
Halloween doesn't have to be entirely cancelled, as long as you take certain safety measures and celebrate responsibly. Here are a few tips and suggestions from health experts and local parents.
Our Favorite Things: 99 of our top spots in the South
Since Southbound debuted in 2013, our staff and contributors have logged thousands of miles, consumed millions of calories, and taken countless notes and photos to showcase the very best destinations around the region. Although every place we’ve covered is special, some left a particularly powerful impression. Here, we give you the best of the very best, our favorite spots in the South.
Out on Film launches a “virtual theater” for this year’s LGBTQ+ film festival
Now an independent entity, Out on Film is one of the nation’s oldest LGBTQ+ festivals, one of the 10 largest of its kind in the U.S., and one of only three Oscar-qualifying LGBTQ+ fests.
Theater
After 25 years of leading Theatrical Outfit, director Tom Key takes a final bow
Tom Key planned to exit on a note of fanfare this spring, ending his 25-year run as artistic director of Theatrical Outfit, one of Atlanta’s oldest professional theater companies. COVID-19 intervened, but Key’s vision for producing theater that enlightens and uplifts eventually will prevail under the direction of his replacement, Matt Torney.
True Colors’ production of School Girls sparks conversation about colorism and pretty privilege
Director Tinashe Kajese-Bolden will bring Jocelyn Bioh’s School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play to life at True Colors Theatre Company, February 11 to March 8, as part of its She Griots season, in which black women star in or have written all shows.
The Bakery—an inclusive, experimental arts center—is but a moment in time. And that’s okay.
In October 2017, Willow Goldstein and her mother Olive Hagemeier opened the doors of the Bakery, what would become a constantly churning complex of spaces popular with young, queer, and creative Atlantans that have hosted large-scale puppet shows, space-rock operas, escape rooms, and so much more.
Visual Arts
Loupe aims to be the Spotify of visual art
Loupe features work from more than 200 living artists. Users can stream channels curated by theme, color, or artist, and, if they come across something they like, can order original works and prints with just a click.
Delicacy and strength coalesce in Atlanta artist Niki Zarrabi’s floral paintings
Painter Niki Zarrabi is not the first artist to draw inspiration from the femininity, fertility, and mortality of flowers, but her surrealist series on the subject, Femme Petale, feels fresh and modern.
How Living Walls continues to inspire during the pandemic
Monica Campana, who launched Living Walls in the wake of the Great Recession with only $4,000—kickstarting a mural movement in the city that eventually would attract international artists—has witnessed the power of public art in trying times.
Music
What Lil Jon has been up to in 2020
We chatted with the underground king-turned-global phenomenon on what it takes to put his popular Saturday DJ sets, what he’s been up to during the pandemic, and the exciting new music he’s producing with his son, a recent NYU grad.
Q&A: KP The Great on his path from artist to executive, protest music, and more
Kawan “KP The Great” Prather’s multi-hyphenated career in the music business all started with him simply asking questions. The Vine City native hopped on the phone to chat about his storied career in the music business, making protest music, and his next ventures.
Remembering Little Richard, the Macon-born “architect of rock ‘n’ roll”
“He shaped musicians like Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and Prince, and influenced how people dress and how they define themselves today,” says David Kirby, author of Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll. “He dreamed up a world that nobody thought possible.”
Film
Out on Film launches a “virtual theater” for this year’s LGBTQ+ film festival
Now an independent entity, Out on Film is one of the nation’s oldest LGBTQ+ festivals, one of the 10 largest of its kind in the U.S., and one of only three Oscar-qualifying LGBTQ+ fests.
Us Kids, a documentary about the Parkland school shooting survivors, plays tonight in Atlanta
Us Kids, directed by Kim A. Snyder, makes a stop on its nine-city tour at the Plaza Theatre Drive-In at 8:30 p.m. Thursday, August 27. Samantha Fuentes and Alex Dworet, who both survived the Parkland, Florida, shooting, will be at the Plaza for a Q&A, along with a virtual appearance from Snyder.
Making of a legend: A new John Lewis documentary explores his many heroic stands
Because the documentary explores John Lewis’s life, it is also, by necessity, a contemplation of heroism and sacrifice, by people like him who came from the humblest of origins.
