A conversation with Georgia artist Gogo Ferguson
Three decades ago at her downtown Atlanta loft, Georgia artist Janet "Gogo" Ferguson first unveiled the nature-inspired pieces for what would become an internationally acclaimed, multi-million dollar jewelry business. As a descendant of Thomas Carnegie who bought Georgia's Cumberland Island in the late 19th century, the granddaughter of Lucy Ferguson spent much of her childhood growing up on coastal Georgia. Today as a year-round resident on Cumberland, Ferguson operates her Gogo Jewelry business and an artist studio there.
Watching the Warhol of Walmart
Tucker native Brendan O’Connell has been painting scenes at Walmarts around the country for a decade now, and in the last year they've actually made him pretty good money ($1,500 for small paintings, $40,000 for larger ones). This week, at the company's invitation, he spent a two-day residency at a store just a few miles from his boyhood home.
Artist of the Year: HENSE
Alex Brewer, the artist better known by his tag HENSE, had a breakout year. But he’s certainly no breakout artist, having long straddled the worlds of illicit street graffiti and commissioned public art.
Dalí and rockers
In his native Barcelona, Martin Frias was an integral part of the arts and culture scene from the 1970s through the 1990s, mostly photographing rock musicians but also striking up a friendship with Salvador Dali.
MASS Collective combines science with art for creative results
Expect surprises when you elevate something to an art and get it down to a science at the same time. The creative collective MASS—an acronym of Music, Art, Science, and Social—unites two demographics who usually do not sit together in the school cafeteria: number-crunching geeks and dreamy-eyed bohemians.
Vermeer’s masterwork hangs out at the High
On her current world tour, she travels incognito, with only her closest handlers aware of her true identity. In Japan last year, she attracted more than a million fans. In San Francisco this spring, she demanded strategically placed soft lighting befitting an icon of a certain age.
Will a mural transform the scary Boulevard Tunnel?
When I moved to Cabbagetown a couple of years ago, I quickly learned what it means to be “on the other side of the tracks.” Literally. For those of us who live south of the CSX and MARTA rail lines that slice through the heart of intown Atlanta, getting around can be problematic.
Radcliffe Bailey comes home
Artist Radcliffe Bailey, forty-two, is as close to a celebrity as the Atlanta art scene gets, with his iconic dandyish fedoras and glamorous it-coupledom with writer and TV soap star wife, Victoria Rowell. Even the High Museum—not known for consistently exhibiting local talent—is acknowledging his achievements, staging a major survey of his work, Memory as Medicine (through September 11).
An artist’s unlikely inspiration: Walmart
Brendan O’Connell is painting bananas. Not particularly impressive specimens, either. They sit bunched and bruised beside his twelve-by-sixteen-inch canvas, which is balanced on a shopping cart at the front of a Walmart store in Tucker.
Sexy, stylish Bodies as a Work of Art set to strike a pose Sept. 29
The city's charitable fundraising king/coiffure creator Carey Carter is back as co-chair this year for the 3rd annual Bodies as a Work of Art benefit for the Chelko Foundation, set for Sept. 29 at The Pilot's Country Club. And this year, the Carter-Barnes Hair Artisans curling iron C.E.O. has some able assistance in the form of Sara Wolf Mixon, a dear friend of the late Debbie and Paul Chelko.
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