by Guest Contributors | Mar 6, 2010
At their best, jazz festivals gather a roster of international talent for a weekend of musicmaking, creating a crucible for collaborations among musicians who don't normally play together.
In this spirit, the Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech hosted mainstays from California's Monterey Jazz Festival on Saturday night. As a touring group, they last stopped in Atlanta two years ago (at Symphony Hall) with a sextet featuring pianist Benny Green and saxophonist James Moody. It was a celebration of Monterey's 50th anniversary. The artists created a festival experience by breaking out into different configurations, creating multiple concerts within the main event. ...
by Guest Contributors | Feb 24, 2010
By REBECCA DIMLING COCHRAN
Art lovers who had considered traveling to New Orleans this November for Prospect.2 -- the second installment of the hugely successful international contemporary biennial -- will have to postpone their plans.
Due in large part to the current economic conditions and decreases in funding for the arts nationally, U.S. Biennial Inc., the organization that produces Prospect New Orleans, announced today that it has elected to postpone Prospect.2 by one year. The biennial is now scheduled to be on view November 5, 2011, through February 3, 2012.
According to Dan Cameron, founding director for U.S. Biennial and artistic director for Prospect ...
by Guest Contributors | Feb 23, 2010
By JERRY CULLUM
Ron Hughes has maintained a varied photo exhibition program at his Composition Gallery through four exceptionally challenging years. That fact alone would be worthy of commendation.
Based on a nationwide call for entries, Hughes' anniversary show (through March 7) is worth commending for another reason. Call-for-entries shows are, by definition, based on random submissions. Selecting from what was received, Hughes has assembled a geographically and stylistically diverse exhibition that feels distinctly coherent.
Philadelphia-based photographer Brittany Binler’s mysteriously lit nightscapes make the everyday trees and byways of suburbia seem science-fiction-like or sinister. Gregory Crewdson requires whole teams of lighting and production ...
by Guest Contributors | Feb 22, 2010
By REBECCA DIMLING COCHRAN
With thoughtful programming, Julian Cox, the High Museum of Art's curator of photography, has shown visitors over the last few years the ever-widening spectrum of the photographic medium. “Harry Callahan: Eleanor” gave us an intimate look at one of the masters of 20th-century black-and-white photography. We saw some of the best of contemporary fashion photography in the traveling exhibition “Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life.” Cox’s own tour de force, “Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1968,” highlighted photojournalism during that movement. With “Richard Misrach: On the Beach” and “Alec Soth: Black Line of Woods,” ...
by Guest Contributors | Feb 22, 2010
By JERRY CULLUM
In Elyse Defoor’s “Via Dorso: Sonnets to Unguarded Moments,” at Wm Turner Gallery through March 13, classicism becomes contemporary. The more than life-size classical poses of a nude male viewed from the back are photographs by Defoor. The Atlanta artist's gestural drawings that overlay them, however classical their precedents may be, are as contemporary as the Mylar on which they are executed. The brocaded cloth the model manipulates is another classical touch, but its classic elegance appears in unframed black-and-white images that curl sinuously from the wall onto the floor.
The combination of tradition and innovation is mesmerizing. Defoor has ...
by Guest Contributors | Feb 19, 2010
By JERRY CULLUM
Steven Sachs’ 30-year retrospective at Barbara Archer Gallery marks the emergence of a wide-ranging artistic talent.
Until now, many people thought the well-known owner of Artifacts just put frames on other people’s art. Sachs, in fact, has made considerable use of the tools of his trade in creating a number of his sculptures. Picture frames are reused in ways by turns funky, elegant or both.
Sachs, whose formal training in art is limited to a few classes in drawing and ceramics, plus more recent study in welding, shows again just how much self-taught artists can teach themselves. Some of his ...
