Downtown

(text reads "Second Amendment"



(text reads "#1 in Sex Traffic," the scraps at the top read something like "Atlanta, GA")

Daniel Duford at The Contemporary

A few close ups of the Atlanta Contemporary Art Centers most recent main gallery exhibit. In addition to paneled comics on paper, Duford showed wall murals and sculpture, also part of the larger comic.

Speaking of paneling, Duford makes some pretty interesting choices in that department - along the lines of what you'd see in most good indie-comics, but with a more unified overall feel. If you're ignoring the images Duford uses, and only seeing the layout of his panels, you can still get a pretty good idea of his comics narrative path. The boxes swell and overwhelm each other on some pages, become rigid boxes within boxes on others, and, very occasionally, a box expands to fill the equivalent of a double page. Still, Duford is relatively rigid in his use of traditional comic panels - you never see an image without a black border around it, and each page of his comic is surrounded by a larger border.

If you don't get a chance to see the exhibit before it closes August 31, you can still check out Daniel Duford's webpage, which has extensive samples of Naked Boy and his other work.

Frisky Friday

Noot d'Noot's album release party tonight. It's a decent album, but nowhere near their live show. Check them out at The Earl tonight, or, if you can't make it, they play a show at Lenny's with Judi Chicago every Friday this summer. And they're playing at Whirlyball with Dark Meat this Saturday.

Here's Fire King, from the new album.
A lot of local bicyclists are getting together to hold a "Courteous Mass" at 6 pm tonight. The mass is an alternative to Atlanta's monthly Critical Mass; it follows a planned route and obeys all traffic laws. The pace should be slow enough for even the most novice cyclist, so try and stop by after work. We're meeting in Woodruff Park downtown, leaving at 6:30, and will be riding a total distance of 12 miles.

If you can't make it to the park in time, we'll probably be riding until around 8:30ish along this route.

Also, there's an interesting discussion about the Mass here.



There are a few promising visual arts exhibitions connected to the National Black Arts Festival opening this weekend. Dave McKenzie will be showing some video work at The Contemporary tonight (through August 30th). I couldn't find any of his videos online, but The Contemporary offers this description:

Dave McKenzie is best known for a performance documented on video in which he walks the streets of Harlem in NYC, wearing a Bill Clinton mask, shaking hands with area residents. Performed after the former President located his offices to the area but rarely was seen there, McKenzie became a surrogate, hiding in public but also being available. As an artist of color, he was clearly toying with the concept of Clinton as “the first Black President.”

Using materials including newspapers, cut metal signs, day planners, and basketballs, the artist will present variously interactive objects and events that continue his exploration of daily rituals, time, communication, and identity.

If you're reading this blog, there's a good chance you started salivating when you read the words "exploration of daily rituals."

The opening is from 7 to 9 tonight.

A Paradise For Couples Only at Beep Beep Gallery (Preview)

This is freaking me out:


I'm not sure why. But I am tremendously excited about seeing it in person this Saturday.

Rain On Our Parade

Not so much going on in Atlanta art this week.

There's the cool sculpture exhibit at Youngblood... but that's the only opening over this last week and the coming weekend, right?

Oh, and New Street Gallery's 4th Annual Vinyl show Saturday the 12th:


I'm looking forward to it - a big handful of artists I recognize and like, another even bigger handful I can't wait to see for the first time.

Speaking of vinyl...

I ran into this guy leafing through a box of records outside Star Bar last night, and asked him what was up. He told me that Wax n' Fact's owner tossed a box of records out every few nights. The records all play fine, they just don't happen to be selling.

(This is how the guy selling records in Little Five Point's concrete park finds his merchandise.)

We looked through the records for a bit, and I wished I still had a record player.

And, speaking of music...

Kiki Blood and Shana Robbins are playing the Masquerade Tuesday night. Check it out.

I Use Google News to Track World Beer Prices

All images by Tom Long. Grabbed from his interview on Fecal Face.

With little useful agricultural land, Japan can only produce around 40 percent of the food that its 128 million people consume every year—the lowest among industrialized nations.

That means the country is especially hard hit by fuel costs, which make importing a larger burden than in other developed nations.

In the past year, the cost of instant noodles has risen 17 percent, spaghetti is up 13 percent, and mayonnaise 10 percent. In April, butter practically disappeared from supermarket shelves as surging global grain prices made it impossible for Japan's dairy farmers to import enough feed to increase milk production.

"Japan's Thirst for Beer Quashed By High Price of Imports," National Geographic, June 3 2008



These last two might convince you to find a bigger monitor.

Corndogorama - Lost in the Funhouse

Phoebe Cates, leader singer of Attractive Eighties Women, performing at Corndogorama last Thursday night. (More coverage here.)

Lester Bangs writes:

...you're goddam right Iggy Stooge is a damn fool. He does a lot better job of making a fool of himself on stage and vinyl than almost any other performer I've ever seen. That is one of his genius's central facets.

What we need are more rock "stars" willing to make fools of themselves, absolutely jump off the deep end and make the audience embarrassed for them if necessary, so long as they have not one shred of dignity or mythic corona left. Because then the whole damn pompous edifice of this supremely ridiculous rock 'n' roll industry, set up to grab bucks by conning youth and encouraging fantasies of a puissant "youth culture," would collapse, and with it would collapse the careers of the hyped talentless nonentities who breed off of it. Can you imagine Led Zeppelin without Robert Plant conning the audience: "I'm gonna give you every inch of my love" - he really gives them nothing, not even a good-natured grinful "howdy-do" - or Jimmy Page's arch scowl of supermusician ennui?

From Of Pop and Pies and Fun: A Program for Mass Liberation in the Form of a Stooges Review, or, Who's the Fool? written for Creem in 1970, reprinted in Bangs' Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung.

R. Land - Summerland

This was R. Land's first exhibit in 5 years. He's responsible for a lot of the things that make your Atlanta commute fun: loss cat, pray for ATL, those fake real estate signs ("lofty lofts"!!!!)... there's probably some other public art installations/pranks that I'm forgetting.



Most of the exhibit seemed devoted to reproductions of his already well known works. There was a Loss Cat skateboard, and I would have taken a picture of it, but you know how I feel about encouraging that sort of thing.


The bunny's apparently a figure Land uses a lot. I don't think I've seen it before.


Gateway to the non-exhibit room. To the left, a merch booth. To the right, a bbq table (complete with vegan "ribs"). There was a DJ and disco ball in back.



I vaguely remember this being called "Woman On a Stool." Reminds me of Duchamps "Bicycle Wheel," about which Duchamp said, "I enjoyed looking at it, just as I enjoy looking at flames dancing in the fireplace."

I could say the same thing about Summerland.

Squanto - "A Shrine To Nothing"

I'm looking through the 60 or so pictures that I took of Squanto's "Shrine To Nothing," and having a hard time finding a photograph that does the piece/collection/shrine justice.


The problem is in the nature of the things presentation: about a dozen of the several hundred items which make up Squanto's shrine are for sale (the three framed pictures in the photo above).

The other items range from found objects; magazine and newspaper cutouts (I consider these separate from found objects, in the same way that a small photograph cropped from an original photograph is an entirely different type of work [insert Walter Benjamin babble as needed here]); and found objects or cutouts which have been altered with Squanto's writing, paint, or glitter. Squanto points out that the items' placement choices are a mix of inspiration and deliberation - a clash of two very contrary artistic philosophies, each of which has historically tended to insist that the other does not/should not exist.


This makes the piece a bit hard to take in (but a lot of fun to attempt).

A side note: I just realized that there were a lot of xylophones in the shrine, and thought "what do xylophones and Native Americans have in common? (Actually, the word I used in my head was "Indians"). Then I started thinking about those bone shirts that some Native Americans were supposed to wear. If you think about it, those look a lot like xylophones, right?

So Squanto's piece(s) are a pretty awesome. And she's just one of the artists presented in MINT Gallery's Employee Picks show, which includes: Grace Bellury, Christina Bowman, Dane, Stephanie Dowda & John Paul Floyd (Click Clique), Kathryn Forrester, Ben Goldman, Gutterpop, Matthew Manning, Joy Phrasavath, Caroline Powers, Scott Raffield, Brian Westberry and Mack Williams.

With all those artists together, the show's pretty fantastic - the second really inspiring MINT gallery show I've seen in just two months.

Picking Fights

That Squanto post is coming - I'm trying to tie it with a few other recent shows... which might take some time. Hopefully, I'll have something up before her Thanksgiving show at MINT.

(the following photos are courtesy of Ghostmap Microwave, who got them from Youngblood Gallery)

In his post on Samuel Parker's show, Jeremy describes a detail from Preemptive Strike:

Parker made an interesting choice here: the quotation is given by a fighter pilot. The plane, which certainly appears American, is decorated with Nazi swastikas and armed with the latest in weapons technology: arrows. Yes - as in "Squanto shoots arrows at the white man" sort of arrows.

Jeremy goes on to speculate that the aircraft may be an homage to Roy Lichtenstein's Whaam!:


As I've frequently pointed out, Jeremy is a nigh-illiterate cretin with minimal understandings of aircraft design, the artistic process, the history of comic art, or personal hygiene. Lichtenstein's plane was obviously modeled after the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, while Parker's plane was modeled after the F-14 Tomcat (retired from the US airforce in 2006, the plane is Iran's primary fighter jet).

Of course, the F-14 was most famously depicted in Bill Watterson's January 1, 1995 comic strip:


This strip (the first after Watterson's second, final, sabbatical) was a return to Watterson's trademark style - space hungry, vividly colored boxes with minimal text - the sort of thing comics-page editors hated, and comics-page readers loved.

For more of that sort of thing, check out Samuel Parker's "The Road to Excess," sometime between now and its closing this Saturday.

Also, Derek Weisberg and Crystal Morey have posted a few photos from their upcoming Youngblood exhibit:


View the full flickr set here.

Emily K - Have You Seen This Van?

(all photos courtesy of Emily)

Emily K, Beep Beep intern and driver of THAT VAN, held her first show last Friday at the Virginia-Highlands Aurora Coffee.

She had some good, promising pieces up:



This second one's a lot of fun - I think that white grid is the no-slip material you put under keyboards and furniture on wood surfaces.

In the first, she used papyrus on what looks like an easel.


"EATTISE?" (I'm just trying to match these to a letter chart; maybe each symbol stands for a word? Or each letter stands for a sentence? Also, it's possible this was written in French.)

Anyway, I'm not sure how long this'll all be up, but you've probably got another few weeks to check it out.

(In the FUTURE: Mint, Squanto)

From "Withnail and I"

(wiki link)

They cut off one of my favorite lines: "No need to insult me, man. I was leaving anyway. Have either of you got shoes?"

Got Any Vacation Plans?

This sounds FANTASTIC. Do not miss the opportunity of a LIFETIME:

Movie in production is actively seeking 500 background
extras for film that is currently being in shot in New
Orleans. Carmen Electra stars in "Mardi Gras," a movie
about a group of college kids who sow their oats in New
Orleans. Directed by Phil Dornfeld, who also worked on
"Scary Movie" and produced by Beau Marks, the scenes
calling for 500 extras will be shot in the French
Quarter next week, 16-19 June. For more info, you can
search "Mardi Gras" at www.imdb.com

Chartered buses will drive you from ATL to New Orleans
on Sunday, the 15th, and return you on Friday, the
20th. If there is a lot of interest in destinations
between ATL and New Orleans, we will make also stop to
pick you up!!! Times and places TBD. Lodging
accommodations, food, and alcohol are all provided but
there is NO PAY. So round up your friends and party in
New Orleans for a week as if it were the real Mardi
Gras!

Description of Background Extras: 18-35 year old males
and females, all ethnicities but predominantly white
caucasianShooting Dates: 16-19 June, Mon-Thurs,
3pm-3amScenes: Mardi Gras party scenes on the streets
of the French Quarter SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY. Email
Kim at promosmodel@yahoo.com for further info or
questions.

Photographs from Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston, SC

Magnolia Cemetery is:

The oldest public cemetery in Charleston, founded 1849 on the banks of the Cooper River, and currently listed on National Register of Historic Places. It is the final resting place for generations of Southern leaders that include governors Thomas Bennett, Langdon Cheves, Horace L. Hunley and Robert Barnwell Rhett. The hundreds of Confederate soldiers buried here include five generals - Micah Jenkins, Arthur Manigault, Roswell Ripley, James Conner and C.H. Stevens.

Shots were taken at speeds of between 3 and 7 miles per hour, from the back of a bike.




I've been here (in the city, not the graveyard) since Thursday. It's a fantastic place - they're in the middle of the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, a month long celebration of the city's various artists, and a few others, including Laurie Anderson (!).

There's another simultaneous festival, called Spoleto Fringe, which carries art aimed closer to my demographic - punk shows in alleyways lined with full scale body sculptures made by local high school students, record stores carrying BeepBeep-ish art (and playing DJ Shadow's "Six Days"), and an art show to help the local bike co-op outfit its new permanent space.

Both festivals are ending this weekend, but, if you've got some free time next May/June, it's definitely worth coming up here for a long weekend.