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.
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).
Pearl Cleage wrote a poem to memorialize the Orly crash
On June 3, we remembered the fiftieth anniversary of the famed Orly crash, which killed nearly all of Atlanta's most influential arts patrons at a time when the city needed their guidance most. The Woodruff Arts Center eventually rose like a phoenix from the proverbial wreckage, so it's fitting that the Alliance Theatre thought it appropriate to immortalize the tragedy in poetry.
The Clermont Lounge becomes a coffee table book
The first time Atlanta writer Dana Hazels Seith attempted to interview Blondie for the new Clermont Lounge coffee table book, No Cameras, the legendary dancer threw her out of her Ponce de Leon Avenue dressing room. For good measure, Blondie also tossed Seith on her second and third attempts to talk to her.
New John Lewis mural
There's a big new mural of Rep. John Lewis on Auburn Avenue at Jesse Hill Jr. Drive. He has a campaign office on the same block.
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.
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.
Bolo ties, hay bales, and Ted Turner
The High Museum Go West! exhibition traces the history of Western expansion with works from 1830 to 1930, in sections focusing on explorers, Native American objects and art, landscapes by Hudson River School artists like Thomas Moran, the significance of the buffalo, the romanticizing of cowboys and Indians alike, sportsmen, conservation, and the reservation era.
What are you doing this weekend? October 18-20
This is a great weekend to be a patron of the arts—and party while doing so. From the newly renovated Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center to installations in downtown Atlanta to an exhibit by upcoming talents, there’s plenty to pick from.
Now Playing: On the downtown connector?!
Congested downtown commuters now have a new reason to look up from their texting as they idle to work on I-75/I-85 South — the downtown W hotel’s groundbreaking new film series, PIXEL, currently playing on a continuous loop on a 100-foot by 35-foot digital billboard in front of the hotel. The film by director Felipe Barral, now running its second 10-second episode, is already generating plenty of questions from commuters who don’t quite know what to make of the images. The first episode contained visuals of lush greenery and the second episode currently playing is merely a black and white silhouette, followed by an ominous man reaching out for something (or someone!) and a quick cut to a beautiful blond reacting in horror to something she’s just seen on her laptop. Spoiler Alert: it’s her dead father!
NEWSLETTERS
