Tag: visual arts

Although he died at just 27 of a heroin overdose in 1988, artist Jean-Michel Basquiat made an outsized impact. The self-taught graffitist and painter was one of the first black artists to dominate the mainstream art world in the 1980s, according to Michael Rooks, managing curator of the High Museum’s current exhibition.

We asked passersby what they think Belle, the new sculpture outside John Portman's newly remodeled 230 Peachtree, looks like.

Many of Lafitte’s incredibly detailed works depict New Orleans’s celebrated high school marching bands, which all but disappeared in the years after the storm. His Atlanta Contemporary show features 30 18-by-24-inch drawings, which fit together to present one massive band, with smaller pieces below and above.

This month renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly takes over the Atlanta Botanical Garden for the second time with 21 large-scale installations, including two custom-designed pieces.

Everywhere Jason Smith turned, it seemed death surrounded him. As a medic in the smoldering battlegrounds of Iraq, he performed CPR on fatally wounded Marines. Back home he was involved in a car wreck that left him with a traumatic brain injury and killed a friend. Before long he began hallucinating.

Jewelry artist Judie Raiford’s multidisciplinary gallery has been a Roswell institution since 1996. She talked with us about how she began making jewelry and whether the DIY movement has helped or hurt galleries.

Born more than two decades apart, Atlanta artists Steve Penley and Hutton Snellings are teaming up for Collide, a joint exhibition in the gallery above Onward Reserve in Buckhead.

“Who knows?” says Charles Gandy with a laugh, when asked what inspires his ideas for fantastical knitted socks. With witty names like Dancing with the Stars, DreadSox, and Eyes of March, his creations are meant to inspire wonder, not to warm feet.

This month up to 200 quilts cover Roswell’s Bulloch Hall for the 34th Great American Cover-Up Quilt Show. Draped over beds and hung on walls, the blankets are made by artists from all over the Southeast, including Bulloch Hall Quilt Guild member Diane Knott, whose quilts are featured in a special exhibition.

Vik Muniz gathered hundreds of pieces of trash from the largest landfill in Rio de Janeiro to create an enormous sculpture—a portrait—made from soda cans, broken computer monitors and toys, bike parts, even an old cash register.