Lisa Iglesias, Para Siempre, 2010, scavenged cardboard. Photo courtesy Spruill Gallery.

The artists included in Spruill Gallery’s current exhibition, LATinGA, are nominally bound by their Latin American identity. Not all the art, however, showcases that identity. Since the work is diverse in style and content, LATinGA is closer to a musical playlist arranged by iPod shuffle than a mix tape. But the effect is not one of total randomness. It’s more like choosing a genre (let’s say Nueva canción) and then shuffling within it. In what follows, I randomly sample four of the artists in the show. The resulting list is a kind of critical experiment—a method for searching for connections when they feel more natural than forced.

Esteban Patino, Possible Structure for a New Language, 2009, acrylic on wood, 48 x 48 inches. Photo courtesy Spruill Gallery.

1. Esteban Patino’s Possible Structure for a New Language (Red) and Possible Structure for a New Language (White) are sneaky. The composition of the paintings follows a 5-x-5-inch grid with a different form placed in each square. The schematic layout means that the forms read as characters in an alphabet. While the characters progress in the same order in both paintings, every now and then Patino rotates a character on its side or upside down.

I made a chart that mapped out the placement of the wayward letters in hopes that Patino was trying to send me a secret message, but I couldn’t find one. Its characters are familiar—their rounded edges and structural arrangement are reminiscent of Mayan hieroglyphs—but are nonetheless unidentifiable. Secret message or not, my chart is a testament to the work’s invitation to decipher or read it.

2. Lisa Iglesias’s Para Siempre is testy. When I showed the image to my boss, a young black man who doesn’t particularly care about art, he said, “Oh, I have like nine of dems,” then clicked his tongue, rolled his eyes, and walked away. His comment reflects the negative association between people of color and the nouveau riche. Iglesias’s work reflects that association, too; the cardboard is cheap and flimsy, and the scale is overstated.

3. Maria Raquel Cochez employs a variety of media, but all of her works address a specific theme: abusive relationships with food. Her Fantasies paintings, for example, depict closely-cropped portraits of gleeful women and girls with junk food. In Lilith with Doughnuts, a young woman with half-closed eyes bites into a doughnut, absorbed in a moment of private delight. Meanwhile, doughnuts float around Lilith’s head like balloons. The paintings are escapist, isolating the bliss of indulgence and concealing its nasty consequences. While Fantasies offer viewers a sense of temporary relief by picturing a “happy space,” that space is neither particularly useful nor interesting. What if Cochez worked though the nasty consequences, involving viewers in problem solving and setting the stage for long-term relief?

Myrtha Vega, Eyedrum, Atlanta, 2009, ink on paper, 11 x 14 inches. Photo courtesy Spruill Gallery.

4. Myrtha Vega’s drawings perform the impossible feat of extracting elegance from our vehicle-dependent culture. The artist composed many of the drawings as she sat in the passenger seat during her morning commute. Appropriating the collage technique of cutting and pasting, Vega incorporates fleeting glimpses of various facades and landscapes into one drawing. The drawings, however, have none of the discontinuity of collage. While it’s clear that her point of view is not singular but multiple, her simple and clean lines thread everything together. Thank you, Myrtha Vega, for being something other than the signs flashing past on the highway.

My critical experiment, it seems, hasn’t revealed very many connections. But my sample of artists hardly represents the sample of Latin American artists on display at LATinGA. Had I included all nine, the reader would have noticed the following casual connections: an interest in abstraction, an interest in Latin American history and cultural icons, a preoccupation with grids, a preoccupation with political content, and a taste for bright colors.

But I wouldn’t say that my critical experiment has failed—the very casualness of the connections means that we shouldn’t make too much of them. After all, it would be preposterous to leave the exhibition thinking that “Latin American artists in Georgia use bright colors.” If the show had staged such consistent and tidy connections, it would have risked presenting a homogenous picture of a group of artists whose ancestry is diverse. Instead, the show gives its artists freedom and room to breath.

The downside, however, is that by refusing tidy connections we lose a sense of community amongst Latin Americans. Such community is essential in certain contexts—in the context of the blatantly racist Arizona immigration bill passed this spring, for example. Neither my freewheeling compositional method of list making nor the curatorial tactic of genre sampling are sufficient antidotes for today’s crappy political climate.

As a corrective measure, then, I refer back to my discontinuous list in order to draw out an intentional connection. Myrtha Vega’s drawings suggest a model for creating cohesiveness out of diversity. She recognizes the overwhelming insanity of contemporary visual experience, but still mobilizes the continuity of line to create a unified image. By analogy, a catalog or video might help condense the exhibition; asking artists to work collaboratively might lead to connections that result from authentic dialog. Group shows need a curatorial method that has the same effect as Vega’s drawings.

Vega’s drawings remind me of driving on the Downtown Connector for the first time. It was an atomistic experience—everyone was an ant, a dot, an item on a list—but everyone was moving together.

LATinGA: Contemporary Latin Artists in Georgia is up through June 17th, 2010 at Spruill Gallery.

Neil Jones, Welcome to the Army. Photo courtesy Spruill Gallery.

In civilian speak, an “about face” can mean a sudden change in attitude or principle. But the term originated as a military command for directing soldiers to turn 180 degrees from the point of attention, causing a literal change in viewpoint. About Face, the current exhibition at Spruill Gallery, presents alternative perspectives on war, challenging viewers to consider an opinion different from their own. The best works in the show are able to personalize the stories of those who fight for our country and those who have become victims of wars at home and abroad.

Neil Jones’s Welcome to the Army is a collection of photographs of United States Army recruits at basic training after their first haircut. The boys are presumably standing in the about face position. Photographed from the back, the soldiers’ facial features are out of view, but their identities still shine through the nuances of tattoos, skin color, or bumps and lumps on their heads. These traits remind viewers that soldiers are individuals, not a robotic mass as they are sometimes presented. In many ways Jones’s work epitomizes the curatorial statement by Hope Cohn stating that the exhibition’s goal is to consider ideas from an alternative perspective.

Sandy Hooper, Kathleen Eidson. Photo courtesy Spruill Gallery.

Sandy Hooper’s video Women on the Home Front turns our attention to the legacy of the women who entered the workforce during WWII. Still images fill the screen as four women speak of the sacrifices they made and the pride they felt in participating in the war effort. One was a so-called “Rosie the Riveter,” working as a production illustrator for B-29 bomber planes. Another became the first female town clerk and treasurer of her town. The video serves to continue their legacy. Hooper, who is from a military family, feels that this is her way of giving back; the video makes us consider what we can do to help in these times of war.

Bryan Meltz, Khadija and Baby. Photo courtesy Spruill Gallery.

The most striking works, however, are the photographs by Bryan Meltz depicting refugees in Clarkston, Georgia. From the carefree nature of a little girl standing on a chair to the sadness in the eyes of many, Meltz captures an individual spirit found in these women who survived civil conflict, war, trauma, rape, and/or genocide. Her 4×5 camera creates an intimate setting: The end results are honest yet beautiful black and white portraits. Her large prints without frames mirror the honesty found in the faces captured.

The series started when Meltz befriended a Somali refugee, Arbai Barre Abdi, and began documenting her family and others that live in the same apartment complex. Clarkston has become the “Ellis Island of the South,” and it is estimated that among residents every one in three is an immigrant. In the context of About Face, these women serve as a testament to the bravery of individuals, as well as a reminder of the everyday freedoms we take for granted in this country.

The photographs of non-violent protests by Jason Francisco, the photojournalism of the Iraq war by Kael Alford, the portraits on military buckles by Wes Airgood, the fictional post-apocalyptic urban landscape of Matt Haffner, and the photographs of University of Georgia ROTC members by Chandler Leathers round out the show. Each artist has a distinct opinion, but the ones that I remember best are the ones that give a face and name to those who fight.

About Face continues at Spruill Gallery through May 1.

Run for Cover, installation view. Photo courtesy Spruill Gallery.

For over half a century after recorded music began to be marketed, music was simply delivered on a labeled disk in a blank paper sleeve. It wasn’t much to look at, but it sounded (relatively) good.

Then in 1939 designer Alex Steinweiss developed a cardboard sleeve with a picture on it called an “album cover,” and for the next half century or more, art and music went together.

Spruill Gallery director Hope Cohn tracked down Steinweiss in Sarasota, Florida, for a phone interview that helped shape one of her wall texts. Nevertheless, her Run for Cover exhibition (up through March 6) is more an homage to the medium of album covers than a detailed history of their evolution.

The exhibition makes only an incipient effort to separate the design masterworks from the guilty-pleasure dreck, because that’s not how the audiences for these album covers originally experienced them.

The covers at Spruill were formative early art experiences during several very consequential decades, from the years immediately pre-Beatles through ’60s psychedelia to the decade of classic punk and a few years beyond. If album covers taught graphic design by osmosis, they communicated so many contradictory lessons that some people never got it. Others may have been launched on careers as artists, or as art critics, and the guilty pleasures may have been as important as the major treasures.

Run for Cover, installation view. Photo courtesy Spruill Gallery.

The album covers on Spruill’s walls are on loan from a number of unacknowledged owners, many of whom are not necessarily vinyl enthusiasts. A good many covers show the hard use they received once upon a time.

Overall, Run for Cover is a light-hearted introduction to an aspect of American visual culture that has now mostly passed into history, and one that could use a more intensively scholarly closeup in the future, especially on the somewhat neglected local level. Cohn’s show has one section devoted to a selection of musician-designed covers (a reminder of how many rockers started out as art students). It also singles out the career of Atlanta artist Flournoy Holmes as a creator of album covers, but much more could be done. There is a history of Atlanta artists’ contributions to cover design that continues through the CD era and to the present day, and Flournoy Holmes, however well known and deserving, is only one such artist.

Despite the show’s deliberately impressionistic take, much historical insight can be gleaned from a little informed browsing. As the floor-to-ceiling display in the hallway gallery shows beyond question, the album cover began life as a simple piece of eye candy. Then it morphed into an art medium, complete with interactive features propelled by big production budgets.

Run for Cover, installation view. Photo courtesy Spruill Gallery.

Some covers alluded to then-contemporary strategies in art: A case in point is Warhol’s grid of slide photos viewed through a matching grid of holes cut out of the outer album cover. Such devices as Warhol’s “Peel slowly and see” yellow banana skin covering a suggestively pinkish banana (an image reduced to unpeelable modesty on later pressings of The Velvet Underground & Nico), or the actual zipper on the trousers of the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, brought an air of experimentation and naughtiness if not outright transgression to the world’s record bins.

For the cognoscenti, one highlight of this show is Robert Mapplethorpe’s cover photo of Patti Smith on her debut album Horses. As with the Warhols, you’ll have to know what you’re looking for, but most people who know Mapplethorpe also know the Smith photograph. (For the record—sorry, but the bad pun is intended—Smith has just published an elegantly poetic memoir of her years as Mapplethorpe’s partner—it was long, long ago, when they hadn’t yet figured out their respective history-making gender-bending sexual orientations.)

The covers cited above are from the generally acknowledged glory years of the album cover as such. As the years went by, record company budgets shrank, punk contributed a tighter visual grittiness, and a dozen different aesthetics contended for audience attention. Then the smaller format of the CD left a smaller playing field for the visual games of designers.

Today the sheer range of multimedia software and the ease of digital downloads mean that almost all the moments of the history of art’s interaction with recorded sound are being reprised—except for the tactile pleasure of handling that book-like album cover.

Spruill Gallery’s Run for Cover continues through March 6.

A well-known critic, poet, and ART PAPERS staff member, Dr. Jerry Cullum has been a keen observer of the metro Atlanta scene for decades.

Note: We are now publishing our weekly To Do Lists every Thursday. Now you have an extra day to plan ahead!

See below for visual arts events beginning Thursday, January 14. Please feel free to contact us about any corrections, updates, and new events to include in our lists!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 14

Run for Cover (album cover exhibit)
Spruill Gallery / 6-9PM

The Birds and Some Bees (group show)
Swan Coach House Gallery / 6-8PM

SCAD-Atlanta Gallery Hop
Savannah College of Art and Design / 5:30-8:30PM

Erick Swenson / Caught Captive
Trois Gallery / 6-8PM

Cao Fei and Map Office / No Lab on Tour
ACA Gallery / 6-8PM

Thornton Dial / Recent Works
Tanner Hill Gallery / 6-9PM

Susannah Sayler, Edward Morris, and Paul Hagedorn / Earth Works
Hagedorn Foundation Gallery / 6-8PM

Hoang Van Bui's Homefronts III: Born-Again opens Friday at Kiang Gallery.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 15

Disobedience: Art as Agent of Change / Symposium
Rialto Center for the Arts, Georgia State University / 1-5PM

Disobedience: Art as Agent of Change / Exhibition
Welch Gallery, Georgia State University / 5-7PM

Tommy Taylor / Tangent
Whitespace Gallery / 7-10PM

Hoang Van Bui / Homefronts III: Born-Again
Kiang Gallery / 6-8PM

Susan Robert presents an artist talk Saturday at Sandler Hudson Gallery as part of the Westside Art Walk.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 16

Westside 3rd Saturday Art Walk
Westside Arts District / 11-5PM

Richard Flood / Guest lecture
Atlanta Contemporary Art Center / 11AM-12PM

Start with Art / Interior design discussion
Bobbe Gillis Gallery / 12:30-1PM

Susan Robert / Reductions (artist talk)
Sandler Hudson Gallery / 1PM

Hoang Van Bui / Homefronts III: Born Again (artist talk)
Kiang Gallery / 2-3PM

Sarah Hobbs / Emotional Management (artist talk)
Solomon Projects / 2PM

[NEW] Living the Vision / panel discussion on architecture & design
High Museum of Art, Hill Auditorium / 2PM

Not You: Self Portrait Show
MINT Gallery / 8-10PM

MONDAY, JANUARY 18

Art Mondays / Community Figure Drawing
Apache Café / 7PM

WonderRoot brand 1000 Faces Coffee $10; Cecelia Kane hankerchief; Heather McPherson Georgia t-shirt

SATURDAY: Fahamu Pecou's Whirl Trade exhibit will debut a new series of "NEOPOP paintings inspired by his travels abroad and specifically in Africa" alongside musical guest DJ Sol Messiah. Photo courtesy Get This! Gallery.

[UPDATED] Between a series of drawings at Saltworks Gallery loosely themed after Kung Fu training manuals and the Avant Garden discussion panel on journalism and blogging at the Contemporary, there’s plenty of variety in the week ahead. Atlanta Celebrates Photography may be winding to a close, but life continues for the visual arts in Atlanta.

FRIDAY: The Southern Photographers juried show, one of the last events in this year's ACP festival. Above: Lee Whittle, Untitled No. 1; photo courtesy Atlanta Photography Group.

FRIDAY: The historic Rail Yard spotlights a local graffiti writer. Click flyer to enlarge.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13

Second Friday Art Stroll
Castleberry Hill Arts District / 7-10PM

Reverse Collecting: Collectors Make More Room for Art
Krause Gallery / 7-10PM

Ani Dillon Birds, Butts, and other Blessings
Niche (256 Walker Street) / 7-10PM

John Tindel, Michi, and Alex Feliciano The Consent to Dreams
Art Department Gallery / 7-11PM

HENSE Surface Strength
The Rail Yard (448 Ralph David Abernathy Blvd) / 7PM-Midnight

Southern Photographers juried show
Atlanta Photography Group Gallery / 7:30-10PM

SATURDAY: Alex Kvares' mysterious new works imagine "cautionary memorials" of "collapsed ideals, dilapidated utopias, and various ruined promises." Flyer courtesy Beep Beep Gallery.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14

Annual Atlanta Artists Holiday Studio Tour
The Mattress Factory Loft Studios / 10AM-5PM

West End Remembers public art mural dedication
1070 White Street / 1-2:30PM

See Through Souls Window Art Show
Picaflor Studios / 3PM-late / $2 donation before 9PM

Fehamu Pecou Whirl Trade
Get This! Gallery / 7-11PM

Dawolu Jabari Anderson Ten Tigers of Kwangtung
Saltworks Gallery / 7-10PM

Alex Kvares Oh So Fail
Beep Beep Gallery / 8PM

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15

Annual Atlanta Artists Holiday Studio Tour
Little Five Points Community Center, Studio 106 / 10AM-5PM

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18

[CORRECTION] Annual Holiday Artist Market preview night
Spruill Gallery / 6-9PM

Reading the Water film screening
Dalton Gallery, Agnes Scott University / 7PM

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19

[NEW] Sarah Hobbs Emotional Management
Solomon Projects / 6-8PM

Little Things Mean a Lot (over 100 Georgia artists)
Swan Coach House Gallery / 6-8PM

Avant Garden monthly art & film mixer
Atlanta Contemporary Art Center / discussion panel at 6PM

Oraien Catledge Cabbagetown
Opal Gallery / 7-9PM

WEDNESDAY: Beth Lilly discusses Gifted, her ACP 11 Public Art Project that involves giving fine art prints to complete strangers on the street. Photo courtesy MOCA GA.

Don’t worry. If you’re not interested in seeing more photography, there’s still plenty of artwork in other media on view this weekend. (Take for instance the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit.) But if you are one of those camera-obsessed maniacs, prepare yourself for a total system shock.

FRIDAY: Sally Heller's solo, In the Thicket of It. Photo courtesy Whitespace Gallery.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16

Corey Daniels & Susan Harbage Page artist talk
Hagedorn Foundation Gallery / 7-8:30PM

Traci Browning & Julie Maritek Greenshot
The Stacks / 7-9PM

FRIDAY & SATURDAY: Jerry Siegel reception and lecture. Photo courtesy Barbara Archer Gallery.

Steve McCurry & Parish Kohanim lecture
Besharat Gallery / 7-9PM

Sally Heller In the Thicket of It
Whitespace Gallery / 7-10PM

Jerry Siegel artist reception
Barbara Archer Gallery / 7-10PM

Sarah Hinckley Color Logic
Emily Amy Gallery / 7-10PM

Susan Rosmarin Making Strides
Seen Gallery / 7-10PM

SATURDAY: Group photography opening at MINT Gallery. Flyer courtesy Mike Germon.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17

FREE! Darkroom Workshop
Photography Center of Atlanta / 1-5PM

Photo Book Fair
Piedmont Park Community Center / 9AM-1PM

Jerry Siegel artist talk
Barbara Archer Gallery / 11AM-12PM

Westside Arts District Art Walk
Various events, including:

Prospect.1 curator Dan Cameron lecture
Atlanta Contemporary Art Center / 11AM-12PM

Chi Peng, Five Elements Mountain. Photo courtesy Kiang Gallery.

Sarah Hinckley Color Logic artist talk
Emily Amy Gallery / 12PM-1PM

Chi Peng Journey to the West artist talk
Kiang Gallery / 2PM-3PM

Harrison Haynes LRLL RLRR
Saltworks Gallery / 3PM-5PM

Hollis Hildebrand-Mills Collage: Projected, Moving & Still
Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery / 6-8PM

Group show Society of Photographic Education Crossroads Conference
Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia / 6-9PM

Group show SCAD-Atlanta Photo Exhibition
Atlantic Station / 6-10PM / one night only

Group show & found photos Communion
Composition Gallery / 7-10PM

Group Photography Show
MINT Gallery / 8PM

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18

Mary Virginia Swanson Marketing Your Photographs workshop
SCAD-Atlanta / 10:30-12:30AM

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21

Beth Lilly Gifted: A Public Art Project lecture
Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia / 6:30-8:30PM

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22

Jorge Colombo lecture
Emory University Visual Arts Building / 1:30 PM
(In conjunction with Spruill Gallery)

On the Flip Side artist reception
Spruill Gallery / 6-9PM

Monica Cook Seeded and Soiled
Marcia Wood Gallery / 7-9PM

Lucha Rodríguez Pink Seductions
Gallery Stokes / 7-9PM

Michael and his adorable fiancee, Alyson, laughing at all the ladies who can't have him. Photo courtesy of John Schneider.

Not surprisingly, there’s a lot you don’t know about Michael David Murphy. The enigmatic persona he has maintained since arriving in Atlanta is undoubtedly a major reason he has quickly become the city’s #1 art crush. When I sat down with Michael and his lovely fiancée, Alyson, after the opening of his exhibit on the flip side at Spruill Gallery, he was stunned by the realization that the ladies of Atlanta love the MDM.

Now settled in Atlanta and slated to be married on 10/10/2010 (Michael and Alyson met on 5/5/2005), Michael is slammed. When not working with Atlanta Celebrates Photography, he maintains several blogs and numerous ongoing projects. Of his current obsession he tells me,

I keep a list of artists who were once athletes, and vice versa. It’s a terribly short list. One of the things I am most interested in is the relationship between art and athletics. Specifically, because there aren’t a lot of kids in high school who are jocks and athletes who are also making art. I’m really interested about artists who play sports and what the aesthetic of sports is. I’ve been spending a lot of time on that lately, especially cycling and golf.

I’m a cyclist and I play golf. Here’s the deal: I started making videos about golf this spring and hadn’t played in 20 years. Now I play golf all the time. I used to break into golf courses when I was in high school and play for free. This summer I got a free set of golf clubs, so I’ve been breaking into golf courses and paying for free. These things are feeding back onto each other. I’ll be showing some of that stuff at Le Flash.

The funny thing is, I feel like everything I do and enjoy are things I didn’t enjoy 15 years ago. I took a photography class in high school, and then left photography, and then came back. I brewed beer in high school, took a break, and then came back.”

So what steps should one take to reach this level of acclaim in the hearts and loins of ladies all over the South? Michael offers a word of advice as he points at his immaculately styled trouser/button-down vest ensemble: “Not picking out my own clothes helps.” But really, outside of aesthetics, why has MDM won our hearts? After our talk, Michael sent me a list of random facts about his formative years, as there were too many to remember and list in one go. Prepare to be wooed:

1. I took a year off from college to work as a dog handler for a sled-dog musher in Alaska. My left toe got frostbite, and I still can’t feel the end of it. I ate a lot of moose that year.

2. I witnessed first-hand the secret relocation of the capital of Burma from Rangoon to Naypidaw. I watched armed trucks leaving the city filled with office furniture and ferns.

3. Seeing the Northern Lights every night never gets old, especially when they’re green and red.

4. I raced bicycles as a kid, and as an adult, I spent a few months training and rode a few of the mountain stages of the 2001 Tour de France.  The Alps were steep and difficult, and the Pyrenees were unbelievable.

5. The last time I hitchhiked I was picked up by a traveling knife salesman in Salem, Oregon.

6. I lived in a lighthouse off the coast of Maine for a summer while working on a poetry manuscript for my application to graduate school. I’m a writer and I have an MFA in Poetry from the University of Washington. I guess this is not going to sound right, but I got into photography because it’s a hell of a lot easier than getting into writing. (I don’t think I can say that, though.)

7. I used to play mandolin in an old-time country music trio. We had a weekly gig at a Turkish restaurant that served French crepes in a Chinese neighborhood of San Francisco.

8. Best lunches: Saint Sixtus Trappist Abbey in Westvletern, Belgium. Monks brew the best beer. “Joe’s Special” from Molinari’s Delicatessen on Columbus in San Francisco. Fresh fish w/ peppers at the headwaters of the Nile, in dusty Bahir Dar, Ethiopia. My favorite beer right now is from Bamberg, Germany, and it’s called Schlenkerla—it’s a Rauschbeir and it’s smoky. I love it. I also really like Curieaux from Alagash, Maine. We went to the brewery this summer, and it was great.

9. I wrote and recorded a song and music video that aired once, in Los Angeles, on PBS. It was a Schoolhouse Rock-type segment in which the songs explained particular ballot measures. Mine was “Yes on 67″, and I’m glad no one saw it!

10. If you ever catch a bus from Dire Dawa to Harar, Ethiopia, don’t let the chat smugglers stash their plants beneath your seat. It makes for a stressful ride.

Michael David Murphy maintains the photography blogs While Seated, 2point8, and Unphotographable. His photos will be on view in on the flip side at Spruill Gallery through November 7.

Atlanta Art Crush is an interview series brought to you by Susannah Darrow. Now look for profiles of our latest heartthrobs on the last Friday of each month.

Bill Daniels presents photographs from 20 years of work this Friday at Get This! Gallery.

BurnAway.org returns from hiatus on Monday with full reviews, artist interviews, and studio visits. Until then, enjoy a busy weekend of art!

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18

Group Show: Sculpture, Photography, Mixed Media, and Painting
Mason Murer Fine Art / 7-10PM

Bill Daniel: Ground Score
Get This! Gallery / 7-11PM

Everything In-Between
Saltworks Gallery / 6-8PM (continues through October 2)

A New Slant On the South
Callanwolde Fine Arts Center / 7-9PM

Christian West presents a new iteration of his cell phone photography project at Cherrylion Gallery this Saturday.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19

What’s Happening Now: a Cellphone Photography Project
Cherrylion Gallery / 5-10PM

Westside Artwalk
Various Locations / 11AM-5PM

THURSDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER

On the Flip Side
Spruill Gallery / 6-9PM

Meg Aubrey, Cul de Sac. All photographs courtesy of Spruill Gallery.

Spruill Gallery’s Emerging Artists 2009: Artists on the Up and Up features the art of Susan Ryles, Erin McIntosh, Jonathan Bouknight, Ting Ying Han, Rylan Steele, Rory Golden, Meg Aubrey, Jason Kofke, and Danny Paulete. Below are some of the works that caught my eye.

Meg Aubrey’s series I Just Live Here shows the life of a 40-something female figure searching for purpose in life. Aubrey says the figure is the stereotype of the upper-middle class housewife. Her paintings are representations of typical suburban neighborhoods, minus the houses and cars. I am intrigued by them although they make me feel uncomfortable. The noticeable voids in works such as Cul de Sac generate psychological tension. Aubrey’s ability to create an intense atmosphere leaves me wanting to see more from this young artist.

Rylan Steele, Office.

Rylan Steele’s photographs of office interiors remind me of German conceptual photographers like Bernd and Hilla Becher. Steele photographs mundane places to highlight the overlooked details of everyday life. His use of line, as seen in Office, helps convey order and monotony. Steele captures scenes on film that many of us walk by without noticing. Although Steele has potential, his photographs continue the documentary tradition without challenging it.

Susan Ryles, Steel-etto.

Susan Ryles’ fun and witty sculptures address contemporary gender issues. Ryles depicts traditional feminine items such as shoes, bras, and larger than life egg beaters. All the objects are made using stainless steel or bronze—traditionally masculine materials (think Donald Judd, Tony Smith, etc.). By making feminine objects out of masculine materials, Ryles does not succumb to expected stereotypes; instead, she challenges our perceptions of gender identity.

Jason Kofke, Everything Will Be OK.

Jason Kofke’s saying “Everything Will Be OK” often has been seen around town over the past year. Spruill Gallery displays a variety of objects with this message on them, from an illustrated condom dispenser to leather bound journals to a giant outdoor mural. According to Kofke, the saying relates to past events and simultaneously expresses hope for the future. Particularly intriguing is Kofke’s pursuit to devise new ways to explore the saying, and also how the message’s meaning varies slightly with each object.

Ting Ying Han, Missing.

I was most impressed with Missing by Ting Ying Han. Han was born in Taiwan but has been living in the United States for the past six years. Her work attempts to achieve a balance between past and present. Like many artists living outside their homeland, she incorporates stereotypes imposed on her culture—in this case, rice. The table and stools are covered with rice, and instantly I appreciated the sheer amount of time the artist spent on Missing. But beyond the work’s physical construction lie deeper issues that address identity and the struggle to reconcile past and present.

Emerging Artists 2009 includes a variety of media and subject matter. The show is installed such that each artist’s work is self-contained. I would have liked to see pairings of certain works, for example Erin McIntosh’s meditative paintings with Han’s installation since they share a contemplative quality. Also, if Steele and Aubrey’s works were displayed within the same room, this would encourage an excellent discussion about gender roles in contemporary society. Despite the flow of the exhibition, however, Spruill Gallery presents Atlanta with an excellent group of artists to keep our eyes on as their art matures.

Emerging Artists 2009: Artists on the Up and Up will be on view at Spruill Gallery through Sat. Aug. 1.