Akihiro Kasuya, The Art of Ichiyo Ikebana, 2010, exhibition view. Photo by Susan Sanders; courtesy the Museum of Design Atlanta.

The Museum of Design Atlanta’s newest exhibition, The Art of Ichiyo Ikebana, brings an ancient personal art form into a formal modern setting. The work of Akihiro Kasuya, who has served as headmaster of Atlanta’s Ichiyo School of Ikebana since 1983, explores the spiritual art of flower arranging as a site-specific installation, broadening the genre’s effect and relationship to its viewers. While ikebana is a practice still immersed in centuries of tradition, Kasuya’s Ichiyo School seeks to update the form and stress the arranger’s ability to express emotions or ideas. The difference is subtle but lends itself perfectly to a contemporary art environment.

Photo by Susan Sanders; courtesy the Museum of Design Atlanta.

The exhibit spans two different galleries. Kasuya fills one entire space with a number of massive arrangements that he, his son, and his students were actively creating throughout the opening reception on Sunday. An adjacent gallery features work by the Atlanta chapter of the Ichiyo School that explores a shared theme of water. The students’ works are primarily displayed on pedestals and, due to their smaller scale in relation to Kasuya’s works, many seem ready to take home and display on a dining table rather than be interpreted as site-specific installations.

Kasuya and his son Naohiro traveled from their hometown of Tokyo to Atlanta four days prior to the exhibit to begin collecting materials for their installations. I was impressed by the amount and quality of the flora, but Naohiro assured me that all of their materials were collected from local flower shops around Atlanta. Although many of the materials selected seemed outside the realm of local plants, Kasuya and his students do an excellent job of harmonizing their supplies with the surroundings. The clash of verdure is not at all distracting.

Naohiro Kasuya arranges ikebana during a live demonstration on opening night. Photo by Susan Sanders; courtesy the Museum of Design Atlanta.

While classical ikebana is often practiced in complete silence, the buzzing opening was anything but quiet or still. Visitors could hear the slightest pings of what may have been traditional music, barely audible over the festive chatting and sounds of tinking drink glasses. Kasuya’s larger-than-life arrangements are overwhelming with their vast variety of vegetation, awe-inspiring bamboo, and cleverly constructed containers. The array of textures and fragrances proved to be perhaps too tempting to some viewers, as I noted several who reached out to touch the arrangements, more than once to detrimental effects.

Since the smaller arrangements each demand at least a moment of the viewer’s time, managing traffic flow between so many displayed in one gallery causes some difficulty. Ikebana is known for its minimalist qualities; the crowded space was somewhat distracting. The jovial atmosphere and busy vibe, however, also enhanced Kasuya’s intention of bringing modernity to tradition.

Due to the ephemeral nature of such a display, Ichiyo students will create new arrangements for each week of the three-week exhibition run. The dynamism of this exhibit is sure to provide Atlanta’s gallery addicts welcome opportunity to consider an aged practice anew.

Akihiro Kasuya, The Art of Ichiyo Ikebana, 2010, detail. Photo by Susan Sanders; courtesy the Museum of Design Atlanta.

The Art of Ichiyo Ikebana will be on display at the Museum of Design Atlanta through September 18.

Instructors from the Ichiyo School will host introductory workshops Tuesday, September 7, through Saturday, September 11. The workshops will meet mornings, from 10AM-12Noon, and afternoons, from 1:30-3:30PM.

Atlanta artists and poets will present their work at the Decatur Book Festival this weekend during the inaugural Experimental Writers Asylum. Flyer courtesy Eyedrum and OpenFaceSandwich.org.

Our To Do List can now be accessed from our homepage by clicking the permanent link above, “TO DO LIST: EVENTS THIS WEEK.”

See below for arts events beginning Thursday, September 2.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2

Metaphysical Materiality / Group show
Ernest G. Welch Gallery, Georgia State University / 5-8PM

Alien Encounters: The Evolution of Black Science Fiction Writers
Hammonds House Museum / 6:30-8:30PM

Mission Accomplished / Gallery talk
Athens Institute for Contemporary Art / 7-8PM

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3

Alien Encounters: Black Science Fiction of the Diaspora
Auburn Avenue Research Library / 6:30-9PM

Dirty Sunshine / Johnny Waggener
Cornbred Gallery / 7-8PM

Mystic Mountains / Stenvic Mostrom & Jason Kelly
Aurora Coffee L5P / 7-10PM

Decatur Book Festival: Experimental Writers Asylum / Jessica Blinkhorn (adults only)
Seen Gallery / 10-11PM

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4

Decatur Book Festival: Experimental Writers Asylum
Seen Gallery / Various events below

Showcase of local independent publishers
Seen Gallery / 3-5PM

Performance by James Sanders
Seen Gallery / 5-6PM

Angel of History presentation by John Otte
Seen Gallery / 6-7PM

Publication party for The Open Face Sandwich, Volume 2
Seen Gallery / 8-11PM

Alien Encounters: Africana Culture in Comic Books, Graphic Novel & Animation
Auburn Avenue Research Library / 4-6PM

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 5

Decatur Book Festival: Experimental Writers Asylum
Seen Gallery / Various events below

Reading by Blake Butler
Seen Gallery / 1-2PM

Reading by Michael Martone
Seen Gallery / 2-3PM

Alien Encounters: Black Masculinity in Comic Books
Auburn Avenue Research Library / 4-6PM

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7

New: Half-price tickets every weekday from 11AM-2PM
High Museum of Art / Walk-up visitors only

Photo by Sandy Hooper.

Robert Gill, a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design-Atlanta, just completed a grueling nine-month thesis project titled Before or After Yourself that tried his body, mind, and skill in photography and digital media. Many thought he was crazy for enduring physical pain for the project, but now, with his newly svelte body, this 28-year-old is living the dream: Gill is bringing his work to the hordes, earning press including a recent article in Esquire Russia and securing a spot at this year’s Art Basel.

Gill recently traveled through Atlanta to retrace his artistic origins before jetting off to begin his new position as a teacher’s assistant at Harvard University. We managed to nab Gill for a luxurious chat in a Kirkwood living room to talk about his latest project.

BURNAWAY: There has always been speculation on whether photography is a legitimate art form. What do you think makes a photograph art?

Robert Gill: Right, what’s a photograph nowadays anyway? What makes it good?

First you have to figure out if you’re making art or commerce. If you’re making something to sell for the intent of selling, that can be photography too, and you can have great photographs, but it’s another thing to make an art photograph.

I guess what I look for is something honest from people. I think I’ve always had a good alarm [for] knowing if something is fake or contrived. You develop that and you fine tune that through school. So, I think sincerity is the best thing; making something that’s actually a part of you that you’re actually interested in.

What subjects are you most interested in photographing?

It’s interesting. Living in New York and growing up in Pennsylvania, I’m interested in blue-collar things or more rural things. [When I lived in New York City] I thought, there is nothing here I want to photograph even though it’s a photographer’s playground.

So why did you move to New York City? Because it’s the “thing to do?”

Yeah, it was. I got two associate degrees when I was in my early 20s and went straight to New York and thought I’d do great. I was working at a modeling agency doing their in-house stuff. It was terrible; I was really fighting for my paychecks. I lived there for six years, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back.

During Robert Gill's MFA thesis project, Before or After Yourself, the artist lost 40 pounds in nine months. Exercise was conducted outdoors without the use of a gym. Photos by Robert Gill.

What do you think has been your most successful project?

I go back and forth between things I can control and things I can’t. I do documentary work and journalism where it’s something I can’t control; the story will guide itself and I’m just there to watch it carry on. And then there’s these other projects I have that everything is hand-tailored by me. I get bored if I do one thing more than the other. I think the most recent work, Before or After Yourself, is my favorite.

Why did you decide to do Before or After Yourself?

That goes back to doing something that’s honest and a part of you. Wanting to make something a lot of people could relate to, in this case physical appearance.

[When I was] growing up, I was a larger kid and got made fun of a lot, and even now maybe there are lingering issues. [But] I didn’t want to necessarily make the project about that. I don’t think people look at it and think “this guy has an image complex.” [Or] maybe they do; that would be interesting.

I was inspired by other forms of media, before and after images. They’re used in advertising—the comparison image—and there is no space in the middle. It’s just a before and after, and it’s kind of a magical transformation that takes place and you don’t know how or why. I wanted to give the viewer more information in making the videos.

What made it so difficult?

The transformation? It was almost impossible; what I put myself through in the past nine months was insane. If I didn’t get my body to a certain point where I thought it was good enough to be a striking transformation, then the project wouldn’t be a success. It’s a lot of pressure: You don’t know if your genetics will even do it.

How did you decide the project was over?

It was a duration performance. I knew I had to have this done in nine months and inside of that container you can put whatever you want in that nine months. I like thinking of time as a container.

Photo by Sandy Hooper.

Do you still keep up with the same regimen?

I was exhausted, honestly. I’ve taken the summer to run and keep active and play sports here and there, but I don’t think I’ll ever go back to the same regimen. It was 6AM, wake up and run, two or three workouts a day, not going to the gym ever. It was important to me to keep it outside and keep it interesting. Running on treadmills doesn’t make sense to me.

Were there ever days when you stayed in bed and ate chocolate cereal?

A lot of it was a liquid diet of protein shakes and things like that. There were five months out of the nine that I’d fast for ten days in a row. There were definitely days I didn’t have time but it was such a big thing and so much was riding on the nine months that I had to be really hard on myself and be mad at myself if I didn’t make time for it. I’m pretty good at sticking with something.

We hear you’re in Art Basel this year.

I got picked up by a gallery for Before or After Yourself which is always fun because it’s packed down there, and there is limited space so I have to reconfigure the installation. It was in a pretty large space the first time it was shown. I’m running into a problem with it because every time I show it, it has to be in a different format.

Ideally there would be multiple screens. It’s going to show in New York on an 80-x-120-foot screen in public, and I have to figure that out because the photos can’t be there. Maybe the photos will flash before and after the films.

Some people have told me the pictures don’t need to be there at all, or the videos. Everyone has their own ideas about this project. I think it works so well to have them there side by side because the before and after creates a kind of anxiety, and the videos are kind of a comic relief and [provide the viewer] answers.

What’s your spirit animal?

I’d say I don’t really have one which is kind of a cop-out to the question. I’d have to say if there’s something my spirit is attached to, it’s wind. It’s my spirit weather force. I’m a sailor and I want to make art about wind. [After that] I’d say maybe a bird. I think I’ve wasted every birthday wish I’ve had on wanting to fly.

What are some photographers you’re inspired by?

I guess in history I really enjoy Andre Kertesz. I love Alec Soth but I’d say a lot of people will say that. Andy Goldsworthy isn’t a photographer [but I like his work]. One person who has seen my project so far related it to [Goldsworthy], and I didn’t think the connection was there for other people to see. That was just the best compliment.

Photo by Sandy Hooper.

After living in New York City, Atlanta, and now Boston, what do you think is important for emerging artists to grow and work?

I think in an art community the best thing to have around is [diversity]. My grad school program was only photography and only MFA; the undergrads were on a different floor, and we never saw or talked to them.

Here in Atlanta, at SCAD, all my best friends were painters and print makers and a few photographers. Just having an interdisciplinary approach to learning art is definitely a lot more powerful than sticking to one thing.

What’s your favorite thing about Atlanta?

I guess the sense of community. I was really lucky to make great friends. There are tons of artists here, some of my favorite artists.

Atlanta Art Crush is an interview series brought to you by Susannah Darrow, Laura Hennighausen, and photographer Sandy Hooper. Look for profiles of our latest heartthrobs on the last Friday of each month.

MODA's new exhibition, The Art of Ichiyo Ikebana, opens to the public this Sunday. Flyer courtesy the Museum of Design-Atlanta.

Our To Do List can now be accessed from our homepage by clicking the permanent link above, “TO DO LIST: EVENTS THIS WEEK.”

See below for arts events beginning Wednesday, August 25.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 25

Artist presentations featuring six MOCA GA artists
Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia / Reception 6:30PM / Talk 7-8:30PM

THURSDAY, AUGUST 26

Oraien Catledge / Book signing
Lumière Gallery / 6-7:30PM

Extraordinary Machine Two / Corinne Stevie and Kendrick Daye
Wm Turner Gallery / 7-10PM

FRIDAY, AUGUST 27

Atlanta Underground Film Festival
Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery / $8 door (weekend passes also available) / 6:30PM-12Midnight

Homegrown Nightmares to Haunt the Old 4th Ward / Dreamer Boy Dan collective
MINT Gallery / 7-11PM

Laserbeam Kitty / Featuring Lucha Rodriquez and Metatron Meson
Highland Ballroom / 9PM-3AM

Best of Animation Attack
The Goat Farm, 1200 Foster Street / $5 / 9:30-11PM

SATURDAY, AUGUST 28

Last day to view Summer Salon / Group show
Saltworks Gallery / 12Noon-5PM

Dwayne Bass / Artist talk
Emerging Art Scene, 321 Nelson Street / 2-4PM

Animation Draw 15 / ASIFA-Atlanta
WonderRoot Community Art Center / 3-7PM

Atlanta Underground Film Festival
Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery / $8 door (weekend passes also available) / 3PM-12Midnight

MJ: In Blue Terms / Amalia Amaki / Reception and birthday celebration
Sandler Hudson Gallery / 4-7PM

Less Pin-up, More Pin-down / Jenn Alexander / Book release party
Lucky Starr Boutique, 5 Powder Springs Street, Marietta / 5-8PM

Glitter and Ghouls / Sean Abrahams and Erin McCammant / Closing reception
Kibbee Gallery / 6-9PM

Dali’s American Friends / Skeleton Dance and Duck Soup / Film screenings
High Museum of Art, Rich Theater / 8-10PM

SUNDAY, AUGUST 29

Last day to view European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century
High Museum of Art / 12Noon-5PM regular hours

Atlanta Underground Film Festival
Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery / $8 door (weekend passes also available) / 4-11PM

The Art of Ichiyo Ikebana: Japanese Floral Design
Museum of Design Atlanta / $10 suggested donation / 5-7PM

Greased Lighting and Ben Spivey / Book release
Beep Beep Gallery / 7-9PM

TUESDAY, AUGUST 31

Half-price tickets for Salvador Dali: The Late Work
High Museum of Art / $9 for adults / 10AM-5PM regular hours

The Sartorialist
Hagedorn Foundation Gallery / 10AM-5PM regular hours

Rock and Roll: Lynne Goldsmith
Hagedorn Foundation Gallery / 10AM-5PM regular hours

Linda Armstrong, Beach, 1992/2010, site-specific installation of the artist's work in the museum's permanent collection. Photo courtesy the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia.

Nightmares of dolphins and sea turtles choking on oil loomed over our collective sleep this summer as the BP oil spill bled endlessly into the crystal waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Most of us were dependent on the media for images instead of seeing it for ourselves. The experience was rather surreal. Linda Armstrong’s “re-installation” of Beach at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA) uses a moiré patterning that abstracts and mutes the artist’s hard-hitting message about water pollution. Though the artwork originally was created in 1992, its warning is contemporary.

18 years ago artist Linda Armstrong had a startling experience that forever changed the focus of her art. While walking peacefully on a remote beach of Cumberland Island—an unspoiled wilderness on Georgia’s coast—the carcass of a dolphin washed ashore. Armstrong accompanied Carol Ruckdeschel, the resident naturalist at the Cumberland Island Museum, to the lab to ascertain the cause of death. Lesions were present in the mouth that indicated an immune deficiency; man-made pollution was the likely cause. This was no surprise to the naturalist, as the birds and mammals she found on the beach always had a thin coating of oil.

Armstrong’s re-installation uses a clever spatial trick. The high contrast “stripped markers” cause an optical effect, making the small space of MOCA’s project ramp seem more voluminous. (An artist that uses this effect well is Esther Stocker.) The adjoining prints—most of which are ambient black textures on metal—seem to float in space. The overall feeling is watery and chaotic: a choppy checkerboard.

The viewer must look at all of the prints, however, to fully appreciate the artwork’s significance. At first they seem to be identical, employing a prominent horizon line and stains that look like continents and islands on a foggy map.

But two of the images, though tastefully unclear, are rather horrific. In one, the severed head of a dolphin lay on the ground at the feet of a booted man, whose head is cropped out of the picture.

Armstrong, a professor at Emory University’s Visual Arts Department, consistently makes work about environmental issues. Her installation, provided as a gift of David S. Golden and the artist, presents an interesting background story.

These days we see a lot of greenwashing in art and advertising that appeal to our guilt about how we treat the earth. Car advertisements with kelly-green backgrounds, nostalgic paintings of flowery landscapes, clean coal, and nuclear power campaigns cajole us to consume without changing the way we think or act.

For Armstrong protecting nature is clearly not just an act of popularity. She means it through and through.

Linda Armstrong’s Beach continues at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia through September 18. The artist will give a talk Wednesday, September 8, during a reception beginning at 6:30PM.

Chakaia Booker, Like, 2009, rubber and mixed media. Photo courtesy the ACA Gallery of SCAD.

The reviews below represent two opposing views. The first praises Chakaia Booker’s Sustain at the ACA Gallery of SCAD while the second criticizes the exhibition.

Santiago Junca

Chakaia Booker slices, bends, and reshapes tires to form beautiful intricate sculptures. Her abstract formations vary from organic blob-like creatures with tendrils to mirror-like frames and spinal structures that reach for the ceiling. I was drawn in by the swirling details I found throughout her works. Some of the tendrils mimic thick hair, potentially dreadlocks, which I interpret as embracing the qualities of African American hair.

Booker’s largest piece commanded attention as it sprawled in every direction across a wall. It’s clear that the artist is a master at sculpting rubber.

On a wall opposite her huge relief sculpture, Booker displays her photogravures titled Foundling Warrior Quest. These black-and-white self-portraits give an insight into her search for materials, inspiration, and resolution. They show her in a larger-than-life hair wrap walking over trash, seeing her own reflection in a puddle of collected water, and rummaging for tire scraps. She wore a similar hair wrap for her reception as she waded through her many flocking fans. The wrap apparently never leaves her head; it is clearly a part of Booker’s persona.

In her interviews and panel discussions, Booker typically speaks with a metaphorical and loosely story-telling sensibility. Her words flow in a stream of consciousness. She continues the conversation through the titles she uses for her art. In the title for her largest piece, Color of Hope, she revisits a theme from a work she completed in 2007 titled Fatality of Hope. It’s as if she had once pronounced her hope dead but revived it by acknowledging its color: black.

Booker’s work has been known for having Afro-centric themes and perspectives. Despite her possible allusion to a love for “natural hair,” this work appeals to a broader audience than just black viewers. Her quest through the junkyard shows a woman wrestling with her thoughts about her wasteful, inefficient world. Her use of tires reflects her desire for society to reuse and recycle.

For the past 15 years, give or take, Booker has developed a style and technique completely her own. The tires she pulled from burning wreckage in the ’80s in New Jersey and New York sparked her continued interest in the use of this material which she carves into the exquisite forms shown at the ACA Gallery. The undulating, sensuous curves ending with spiky, threatening follicles put the duality of her personal energy on display.

Chakaia Booker, Sustain, 2010, exhibition view. Photo courtesy the ACA Gallery of SCAD.

Kristin Juárez

The formal qualities of Chakaia Booker’s are so intricate, complex, and compelling that they could speak for themselves. This however is not the point in the ACA Gallery’s exhibition, Sustain, which attempts to pique our interest with hot topics like identity and environmental sustainability.

The hubris of the show was the heavy-handed curatorial decisions that diminished Booker’s voice in favor of emphasizing a list of catchall themes. These are meant to suggest her work as a metaphor for contemporary dilemmas.

The supporting material that accompanies the exhibition includes a postcard with an image of Booker in a dump, wearing a head wrap and holding a tire. On the other side, it says that her work is about identity, struggle, and sustainability, revealing the thinly veiled decision to market Booker as a persona instead of foregrounding her work.

The image of Booker comes from a series of SCAD-commissioned photogravures titled Foundling Warrior Quest that captures her as she “ceremoniously forages the industrial landscape” (their words, not mine). The problem with this rare glimpse into her process is that it’s largely inaccurate.

As the ACA Gallery informed me by email on Monday, various distributors who know about her practice donate many of the tires she uses in her work. At this stage in her career, I doubt she finds herself dumpster-diving for tires very often.

The creation of these images superimposes the gallery’s desire to push the themes of sustainability and some kind of Afro-spiritual persona over the reality of a practice that, given its scale and detail, must be largely studio-based. Why photos of the dump when there could be photos of Booker’s studio? Those are the pictures I’d like to see.

The inclusion of the Warrior Quest series with her sculptures encourages the viewer to project meanings of race and eco-consciousness onto her deliberately abstract and formally driven sculptures. And while Booker was originally drawn to the medium for conceptual reasons, her contemporary work is determined by her familiarity with the material. What results is that Booker’s work is not properly contextualized and the viewer is not responsible for making intimate (as opposed to cultural) connections with her work.

The presentation suggests that we cannot acknowledge that a black artist can do anything but “black art.” The charged ideas of racial identity and sustainability will ultimately fall short when analyzed critically.

Of course, it has to be acknowledged that Booker ultimately agreed to and posed for the photographs in the show. I guess it’s not selling out; it’s buying in.

The exhibition Sustain continues at the ACA Gallery of SCAD through August 29.

Joe Remillard, Secret Falls, 2005, 30 x 58 inches. Photo courtesy the artist and Swan Coach House Gallery.

The Southern landscape, renowned in literature as a backdrop for social relationships, comes to the fore in a new exhibition titled Through a Window of Paint: A Sampling of Southern Realistic Landscape Painters at Swan Coach House Gallery. The show concentrates on highly realistic paintings while including a variety of styles. With 28 works by 17 artists who live in Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, and Tennessee, the exhibit offers scenes ranging from an expansive estuary to a hallucinogenic tree.

Joe Remillard’s Secret Falls could be mistaken for a photograph if you stood far enough away from the large-scale oil-on-canvas painting. The Kennesaw State University art professor uses meticulous realism to depict a theatrical arena of rocks in a riverbed, with a boulder-strewn foreground and an algae-streaked cliff across the water. Variations in the rocks and a quiet drama—a hiker leaving the scene, a swimmer, and a black dog watching the hiker—provide shifting focal points.

North Carolina artist Rebecca Fagg’s painting Black Balsam stands out for its masterful treatment of light. Rain-laden clouds move across mountains covered with scrubby vegetation and sparse evergreens, discretely illuminating some patches of earth while shading others. The changing weather and transient light recall Thomas Cole’s panorama The Oxbow, which contrasts the wildness of nature with the pastoral environment created by man. Fagg’s painting is named for Black Balsam Bald, an area in the Pisgah National Forest which underwent extensive clear-cutting. Like Remillard’s Secret Falls, the scene could pass as a Western landscape, raising the question of what distinguishes a Southern setting.

Peggy Everett, Interlude on St. Simons, 2010, oil on canvas, 36 x 36 inches. Photo courtesy the artist and Swan Coach House Gallery.

Peggy Everett comes close to conveying the sublime in Interlude on St. Simons while using loose brushwork that calls attention to the paint. The oil on canvas, just completed in July 2010 from plein-air studies, is almost a nocturne, depicting a brooding coastal area during a break in a storm. For her dramatic cloudscapes, the St. Simons artist cites Russian landscape painter Fyodor Vasilyev as an influence. Another romantic work by Everett, Light Up My World, is tucked away in an office at the gallery.

By contrast Atlanta artist Silas Durant’s psychologically charged Into the Wilderness portrays wilderness as a wintry entanglement. Reflections of skeletal birch trees merge and overlap in a web-like pattern in a creek while the background is an impenetrable thicket shrouded in fog. Subdued colors enhance the melancholic mood of this closely cropped work.

Tennessee painter Edward Kellogg’s Tellico Creek is the most abstract work in the group, with phosphorescent greens, yellows, pinks, and blues that suggest the liveliness in nature. The colors recall Fauvism while the work retains the conventions of traditional landscape painting.

Although Through a Window of Paint offers nothing new, it is a worthy overview of a genre and can sharpen our take on the natural environment.

Through a Window of Paint: A Sampling of Southern Realistic Landscape Painters runs through October 2 at the Swan Coach House Gallery. The gallery will host an artists’ reception on Thursday, September 9, from 6-8PM.

Eyedrum is merely one of many sites where visiting artists left their mark. Photo by Jenna Duffy.

One remarkable detail of the symposium portion of Living Walls occurred to me as I stood outside the auditorium. As I skulked about the courtyard of Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture building last Friday, I eavesdropped on several conversations that were delightfully bilingual. Too bad my ears aren’t at all attuned to the rolling nuances of Spanish, or Portuguese or French for that matter.

Conference attendees not only included familiar faces, but also an inspiring number of artists and professionals visiting from outside Atlanta. BURNAWAY surveyed five individuals to hear their reactions to either Friday’s symposium or Saturday’s art opening at Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery.

Read below for contributions by Daniel Clay, Joe Tsambiras, Mike Germon, Cheree Franco, and Beth Malone.

The exhibition continues in an adjacent warehouse where conditions match the raw terrain where many street artists work on a regular basis. Photo by Jenna Duffy.

Proud to live and work in Atlanta

For me, the energy surrounding Living Walls has been palpably electric. Support the event received from local publications, organizations, and artists has been a testament to Atlanta’s want for more public art. I appreciated the lecture series at [Georgia] Tech as juxtaposed with Eyedrum’s spray-paint fumes and the city’s mural-ed walls. The dichotomy was a clever approach by conference organizers to combat negativity that has surrounded graffiti and street art in many ATL communities.

We’ve all been whispering about energetic change taking place in the city’s arts community. The international attention received by Living Walls, as well as the sweaty HORDES of people who showed up at Eyedrum to cheer on erratic Pecha Kucha presentations and gape at wall murals, has helped solidify these suppositions. Congrats and thanks to Blacki and Monica, and everyone else who made Living Walls happen. I’m damn proud to live and work among this collective fire.
—Beth Malone is a writer and cofounder of Dashboard Co-op.

Inspiring because it’s not Brooklyn

It was like working a low-budget movie—the kind where someone’s aunt provides craft services from her own kitchen, sleep schedules are ridiculously shrunken, and, by the end of the first week, you have a dozen new best friends. Cross that with anarchist transgression (squatting, vandalism, rail-hopping, and pin-and-ink tattooing) and the whiff of officiality—goodie bags, conference coffee—and you’ll get something akin to the experience of Living Walls.

This event could have happened in Brooklyn—actually it does happen in Brooklyn, every weekend. But that’s because New York has effective mass transport, because engaging participants requires a mere note in a listserver, and because there’s always someone who’s done it before. Monica Campana and Blacki Migliozzi pulled off Living Walls in a scattered Bible Belt city with artists from three continents, a slew of first-time volunteers and sponsors, and a heap of blind faith. The resulting exhibit is authentic, inspiring, educational, well executed and, because it’s not Brooklyn, extremely important.

I loved the gallery but for me … I couldn’t stay out of the garage, with its reflective puddles, unpredictable lighting, dramatic shadows, and the chemical assault of spray paint. Didn’t I see something like that at Deitch? Or shouldn’t I have?
—Cheree Franco is a journalist and perpetual explorer. chereefranco.wordpress.com

The mural by Doodles above (in progress) is among at least 12 new works created as a result of Living Walls. Photo by Mike Germon; click the image to view more on Flickr.

Thought provoking

I attended the Living Walls lecture series at Georgia Tech and was lucky to hear a talk by Daniel Lobo from Washington D.C. who considers himself a project manager, researcher, and artist. His presentation was thought provoking and intelligent. Of particular interest to me was his approach to creating urban interventions within a specific environment, exploring the theoretical framework for them, and furthering that exploration by re-categorizing or incorporating them elsewhere.

I also attended the exhibition at Eyedrum. It seemed the artists made good use of the space, and obviously enjoyed working within it. I liked the way the artwork spilled out into the exterior of the building into the adjacent unused (at least to me) warehouse. There was an immense amount of work, some drew my attention [but] others I passed by without much care …. I particularly was drawn to the work of Gaia and Miso.
—Joe Tsambiras is an artist, teacher, and friend-to-cats living and working in Decatur, Georgia. tsambiras.blogspot.com

They were all there to make art

What most people saw of the Living Walls conference was the opening this past weekend at Eyedrum, an exhibition of local and visiting street artists. Large in both scale and attendance, the show was impressive as artwork covered nearly every surface of the enormous space and adjacent warehouse, inside and out. I was fortunate enough to have the time and permission to visit artists throughout the week at Eyedrum and legal walls around the city. While the artists ranged wildly in talent, background and discipline, they were all there to make art and did so with great passion leading up to the conference. The thing that excited me most was the ever-present energy and opportunity surrounding the event. At any given time there was an artist working or another wall being painted. After one day of traveling from wall to wall, meeting artists and snapping photos, I was hooked. The rest of my week was eaten alive by spray paint, projectors, wheat paste, and anticipation.
—Mike Germon is an artist and gallery manager of MINT Gallery. thoughtmarker.net

A previous work by OX demonstrates one possibility within public-intervention practice. Photo courtesy LivingWallsConference.com.

Public space is elevated to objet d’art

The work of French artist OX illuminates, by way of contrast, a salient element of the great majority of street art from Atlanta and elsewhere exhibited in Living Walls: The potential to speak deeply to the public is stunted for many street artists because they are conceptually shackled to the realm of murals and tagging and to the egotism that is that realm’s currency. OX moves beyond the common practice of simply appropriating public space for the proliferation of personally meaningful marks or imagery by incorporating aesthetic elements of a piece’s environment into the language of the piece itself. The result is work in a place that is also about that place and therefore about anyone who is in that place to see it. The status of the commandeered public space is elevated from that of mere canvas to objet d’art—the viewer graduates from witness to participant, completing the work by observing it. The work thus encourages an eminently personal experience of itself and oneself in a way that no mural or tag can.
—Daniel Clay writes and performs music, creates sound installations, and carves wooden spoons. danielclaymusic.com

Crowds at Eyedrum's exhibition opening filled the main building, parking lot, studios, and warehouse next door. Cars lined the street all the way to Oakland Cemetery. Photo by Jenna Duffy.

Jenna Duffy is a commercial portrait and street fashion photographer. jennaduffy.com

Denton Crawford's exhibition opening Saturday at Twin Kittens gallery is one of several events during the Westside Art Walk, held this month in conjunction with Atlanta Gallery Association's Citywide Gallery Opening. Flyer courtesy Twin Kittens

Our To Do List can now be accessed from our homepage by clicking the permanent link above, “TO DO LIST: EVENTS THIS WEEK.”

See below for arts events beginning Wednesday, August 18.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18

Couples / Karen Shacham
Dewberry Gallery of SCAD / 6-8PM

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19

[Just added] ALL FOLK / Group show
Barbara Archer Gallery / 11AM-6PM

Video Screening and Commentary: On William Pope. L.
The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center / 6:30-7:30PM

FRIDAY, AUGUST 20

[Just added] ALL FOLK / Group show
Barbara Archer Gallery / 11AM-6PM

Slotin Folk Fest
North Atlanta Trade Center / 5-10PM

Friday Jazz / Mace Hibbard
High Musuem of Art / Free with museum admission / 5-10PM

A MiniArtVideo Festival / Presented by YEAH
Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery / 5PM-12Midnight

Short Stacks / David Hale and Kim
Achor Gallery, Athens / 6-10PM

A Lapse of Memory / Morgan Alexander / Closing reception
Archetype Gallery / 6-10:30PM

New group show featuring Steven Poster, Lucinda Bunnen, Oliver Smith, Kevin Sipp & more
Mason Murer Fine Art / 7-10PM

SATURDAY, AUGUST 21

Atlanta Gallery Association’s Citywide Gallery Opening
Various places and events / 10AM-10PM

Slotin Folk Fest
North Atlanta Trade Center / 10AM-7PM

[Just added] ALL FOLK / Group show
Barbara Archer Gallery / 11AM-5PM

Westside Arts District 3rd Saturday Art Walk
Various places and events / 11AM-5PM

Curator Talk / Stuart Horodner
The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center / 11AM-12PM

MJ: In Blue Terms / Amalia Amaki / Artist talk
Sandler Hudson Gallery / 2PM

This is a Momentary Spectacle / Denton Crawford
Twin Kittens / 7-10PM

Not Biodegradable / Curator talk / Leslie Kneisel
Whitespace / 3PM

Mission Accomplished / Cecelia Kane, Jim Buonaccorsi & Blaine Whisenhunt
Athens Institute for Contemporary Art / 7-9PM

No Limits: Celebrating Georgia Artists with Disabilities
Mason Murer Fine Art / 7-10PM

[Just added] Doctor Photography / Four physician photographers
Jennifer Schwartz Gallery / 7-10PM

Sirens of the South / Burlesque anniversary show
Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery / $15 / 7PM-12Midnight

Dalí: The Filmmaker / Talk and screening with Elliott King
High Museum of Art / 8-10PM

SUNDAY, AUGUST 22

Slotin Folk Fest
North Atlanta Trade Center / 10AM-5PM

Show and Tell / Portfolio review by Eyedrum’s art committee
Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery / 1-6PM

Donna Rosser, July 13, 2010. Photo courtesy the artist and SlowExposures.

SlowExposures, the photography celebration in Pike County that focuses on images of the rural South, will offer its first photography portfolio review next month with an impressive panel including two luminaries from The New Yorker. Elizabeth Biondi, visuals editor at The New Yorker and the former director of photography at Vanity Fair, and Sylvia Plachy, a contributing photographer at The New Yorker and a former staff photographer for The Village Voice, will be among five esteemed reviewers evaluating portfolios on September 18 in Concord.

For $325 participants will have 20 minutes each with Biondi, Plachy, and three others sharing a wealth of insight and experience: New York curator and collector John Bennette; Elizabeth Turk, professor of photography at Savannah College of Art and Design; and Brett Levine, director of the Visual Arts Gallery at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

The review session is open to all levels of photographers, from beginners seeking direction with their work to advanced photographers looking for placement in galleries, museums, or publications, said Nancy McCrary, co-director of the eighth annual SlowExposures.

“To participate in the review process, you have to be prepared to be vulnerable,” cautions Julian Cox, curator of photography at the High Museum of Art and a SlowExposures advisory board member. “The response could be very positive, it could be middle of the road, or it could be very negative. You have to be prepared for that reality. But it’s an accumulative thing. You’re getting a variety of perspectives.”

Cox, originally slated for the review panel, was replaced by Biondi after he announced plans last month to become founding curator of photography for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and chief curator of the de Young Museum.

Limited to 10 participants, the review session is more than halfway full, so register quickly on the SlowExposures website if you’re interested. Part of a weekend of exhibitions and events, the portfolio review will take place in the R.F. Strickland Building in Concord, a former mercantile building listed on the National Register of Historic Places. For tips on preparing for the review, see the SlowExposures blog.

The SlowExposures photography portfolio review session will be held on Saturday, September 18, from 10AM to 4PM at the R.F. Strickland Building, at Railroad and McLendon streets in Concord.