Articles in Orbit Exhibition opens at Atlanta Contemporary Saturday, June 22, 2024
Lenscratch: ACP WEEK: MARY STANLEY’S ONES TO WATCH EXHIBITION
Today is Day Two of Atlanta Celebrates Photography Week. I am highlighting the annual group exhibition, Ones to Watch, that is curated by Atlanta-based independent curator Mary Stanley. Every ACP, Stanley selects a group of Atlanta locals and national artists that represent up-and-coming photographers that are bringing a fresh voice and perspective to the contemporary photographic landscape. This year is no different, focusing on the personal and narrative as we continue to emerge from the pandemic.
Stand out work by Jasmine Clarke populates the right corner of the space. Four luminous prints with an internal glow and a deep sense of intimacy. There is something magical about her sense of composing narrative that is diaristic but doesn’t forget to feel universal. The images are rooted in the everyday, a curtain, a bed, a window, filtered through her keen, almost surreal eye.
In the center of the exhibition, Kristen Joy Emack’s portraits arrive somewhere between family photographs and mythic painting in their compositions and thin gold frames, elevating the love between family and the representation of young black girls.
I got a chance to speak with newcomer Pierre Solomon about his abstract portraits during the opening. Inspired by the fragmentation of Francis Bacon paintings, his work fragments and overlays portraits of his loved ones to comment on the complex nature of relationships and the different dimensions of the self. The photographs become about the relationship–and distance–between photographer and subject.
Credit: Brandon McClain
“Good Trouble” exhibit at Mint Gallery features young photographers consumed by our troubling times
By Felicia Feaster
Oct 14, 2020
It cannot be easy being young today. The world is in turmoil, the bad news cycle escalates daily and so much youthful joie de vivre has been tamped down by the pandemic.
You feel the weight of all of this in the exceptional work by Georgia State University BFA grad Alexis Childress whose collages unite vivid color, punchy graphics and photography — and have the stark, propagandistic look of Soviet Constructivism yet deal with the circumstance of being Black in America. Both elegantly wrought and quietly devastating, Childress’ work, such as “Generational Wealth,” neatly illustrates the trickling of lucre out of Black hands, hands encircled by white lines like handcuffs. In “Walk to Juvie” a female figure is shackled, and her jailer carries a baton leaking a terrifying pink fluid. Violence is a constant in this powerful work that tells stories of oppression and censorship in an absolutely captivating way.
Credit: Alexis Childres
Local curator Mary Stanley has been featuring emerging artists as part of the annual photo festival Atlanta Celebrates Photography since 2010. Her regular “Ones to Watch” picks highlight artists from across the country. This year’s crop of “ACP 2020 Ones to Watch” sticks closer to home, with the majority of artists locally sourced. And the exhibition, to its credit, expresses the changed perspective of an art scene coming to terms with its omissions, with a large share of the artists of color this year.
Credit: Genevieve Gaignard
Borrowing a phrase from Georgia Congressman John Lewis, “Good Trouble” featuring the “ACP 2020 Ones to Watch” doesn’t necessarily always deliver on the promise of political protest that title implies. But several of the artists do specifically address current politics like Oakland, California-based Marissa Leshnov whose powerful documentary images of protests around social injustice have been featured in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Her immediate, urgent images of marching protesters crystallize the sense of grievance so many young Americans are feeling.
Credit: Marissa Leshnov / Special to the SFGATE
Not all of the work is heavy. The polar opposite to Childress and Leshnov’s work may be artist Savana Ogburn whose nutty, color-saturated photographs are salutes to camp, performance artist Jack Smith-style decadence, B-movies, gay love and nightlife.
Credit: Rosie Brock
But ennui rather than merriment is the stronger emotion in “Good Trouble.” Many of these young artists give the impression they are articulating a state of mind or interior pathos in their work. That’s nowhere truer than in the droll, cartoon-terse photos by Brandon McClain. His silly “Art” of a banana peel on a milk jug references the famous Maurizio Cattelan banana duct taped to an art fair wall but also conveys a general feeling of deflation and disappointment seen throughout the work. In the ballad of a wage slave “Employee,” a black clad figure hunches despondently in a shopping cart like a depressed mime. McClain’s visuals are gut-punch abbreviated and clever, and like many other works by these young artists, display a sense of melancholy, of hunched shoulders braced against a crushing wind also seen in the blighted Americana of Rosie Brock, whose images of smashed car windows and a despondent teen in “Florida Boy” are delicately heartbreaking.
For those still reluctant to visit in person a gallery or museum, September Gray Fine Art Gallery is hosting a virtual reality you-are-there exhibition of three artists exploring Black identity, Asiko, Paul S. Briggs and Okeeba Jubalo. The virtual exhibition allows viewers to navigate a gallery space entirely from the September Gray website that’s similar to a highbrow video game. Voice-over narration enhances the slight theme park quality. Indeed, gallerists are coming up with novel ways to deal with the ongoing tribulations of the pandemic and bringing art with some social relevance to people safely.
MINT’s Exhibition ‘Good Trouble’ Highlights Emerging Artists
RYAN MCFADIN • NOV 16, 2020
“Good Trouble” is the latest exhibition from Atlanta’s MINT Gallery. The exhibition is a collection of video, still photography and installation art taken from the ACP 2020 “Ones to Watch” artists.
The exhibit is curated by Mary Stanley and features works centered around race, gender, identity, and social equity. The exhibition features nine emerging artists, all of whom use that work as a way to let their voices be heard.
One such artist is Rosie Brock, a photographer from Athens, Georgia. Her work focuses on the culture and mythology of the American South. “Good Trouble” will feature “Teen Cowboy,” taken by Brock in 2017.
Stanley and Jessica Helfrecht, interim executive director and program director at MINT, joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes for a conversation about “Good Trouble” and the different talented artists it features.
The exhibit will be on view at the MINT Gallery through Nov. 28.
Interview Highlights:
Jessica on why “Good Trouble” is important to Atlanta’s art community:
“There is so much talent in Atlanta and so many artists of all mediums here. So MINT really acts as that access point to get your feet in the art community. That’s also what Mary’s [Stanley] doing with the ‘Ones to Watch’ emerging artists. It’s just a way for artists to come and show their work that might be experimental might not be something that would totally be in a retail gallery, and introduce audiences to new faces and new talent. I think the emerging artists are so important to the ecology. It’s the beginning of somebody’s career and to have a couple of places in Atlanta where that’s welcome.”
About the work of artist Patrick di Rito:
“I think he uses upbeat colors and juxtaposes them with some very difficult and demanding subject material to sort of ease the viewer into the dialogue that he’s trying to create. A lot of the work in his Queer Color series that is presented is very dark, and it has a lot of angles to it. I think the color is a vehicle that he uses. He’s an architect and a designer. “
Holly Andres - One of Six Women Artists Furthering Cindy Sherman’s Vision
Out of all of Cindy Sherman’s cinematic influences, it’s Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) that she recalls most vividly from childhood. As curator Paul Moorhouse points out in the exhibition catalogue for Sherman’s retrospective at London’s National Portrait Gallery, running from June 27th to September 15th, the artist shares striking similarities with the film’s protagonist, who observes strangers from afar and imagines the intimate details of their lives.
For four decades, Sherman has cast herself as new characters based on what she sees. In her beloved “Untitled Film Stills” (1977–80), she played leading roles in imaginary films, but with familiar archetypes—women who are vulnerable, distraught, longing, or on the run; the object of her fear or desire just beyond the frame.
Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #21, 1978. Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures, New York.
As time passed, Sherman’s quiet subversions of femininity blossomed into more pointed, caustic, or grotesque takes. She became famous art-historical subjects with fleshy prosthetic breasts; depicted herself as dead or monstrous in the sylvan world of fairy tales; and assumed the identities of childhood-nightmare-inducing clowns. This decade, she has been preoccupied with concepts of social status, aging, and the commodification of beauty on the internet. Her Instagram account is a work of art in itself. In an age when people are Facetuning their visages into uncanny-valley likenesses, Sherman, too, digitally stretches, nips, and tucks her features to show the artifice of online personas.
Since her rise to prominence in the 1980s, younger artists have been influenced by the alternate plane where Sherman’s personas reside. As Moorhouse has pointed out, Sherman does not impersonate specific people—“Instead, her invented characters occupy a private world: one whose cultural sources are readily recognisable, but which is nevertheless self-contained.”
Below, six early and mid-career artists speak to the resounding impact of Sherman’s work. Each of them first encountered her photographs in high school or in undergraduate programs. Some took direct inspiration from Sherman’s images, while others simply see a kindred spirit in how they construct their narratives—but all of them have created their own conceptions of reality that can be traced back to Sherman’s pioneering, radical world.
Holly Andres
Holly Andres, Afterlight, Belmont House, 2015
There’s an eeriness to Holly Andres’s cinematic images, which often delve into girlhood, and are drawn from the filmstrip of Andres’s own adolescent memories.
The Portland, Oregon–based photographer uses protagonists who “reflect stereotypes of innocence and girlish femininity,” but the underlying themes in her work are intentionally unsettling, she explained.
Her 2015 series “The Fallen Fawn” looks like a Nancy Drew mystery, with two young girls discovering a lost suitcase in the woods. The narrative was based on Andres’s older sisters, who told her several years ago that they found such an item as children, not far from their home. Her sisters stashed it under their bed, regularly dressing up in the women’s clothing they found inside. It didn’t occur to them that the owner of the contents may have been in danger.
Holly Andres River Road, Milepost 39 , 2015
“My two sisters, then just two curious and naive girls, could have unearthed a treasure trove containing a sinister secret,” Andres said.
Though Andres doesn’t work in self-portraiture, her fine-art work is self-referential. And while she said it’s a “rite of passage” for many young female photographers to emulate Sherman’s work during their school years—herself included—Andres continues to find new appreciation for Sherman as an adult. Andres brings cinematic flair that references Sherman, Gregory Crewdson, and Jeff Wall to her editorial stories and ad campaigns. While on a fashion assignment for New York magazine in 2017, she found herself tapping into Sherman’s “Untitled Film Stills” to help conjure her own implied narratives.
Sherman’s versatility is best appreciated when seen all together, Andres said, reflecting on visiting her MoMA retrospective in 2012. “Sherman’s motif of transforming herself into vastly different characters is compelling in and of itself,” she mused, “but to see the repetition and the evolution of this practice created something bigger.”
Read more:
Atlanta 500: Our City's Most Powerful Leaders
THE POWER OF 500
There are advantages and disadvantages to selecting 500 of our city’s top leaders. Yes, it’s a large enough universe to cast a wide net, so we have defined power and influence very broadly—including not just corporate CEOs, but also the people who shape what we eat, the music we listen to, and the causes we embrace. However, having such a long list made us itch to be comprehensive. And if there’s anything I’ve learned in compiling this book, it’s that Atlanta’s leadership bench is deep and wide. We’ve only skimmed the surface of some industries. I’m pretty sure we could compile a list of 500 superstars in health care alone.
In selecting our list, we didn’t so much have rules as guidelines. If you’re new to your job or were appointed by the outgoing governor, you might be on hold for next year. And, yes, CEOs of our city’s largest corporations or firms’ top producers were likely candidates; but we also looked to see if those achievers were plugged into the city—serving on nonprofit boards, spearheading programs for their communities, and creating opportunities for their employees. In fact, some of our picks came from the second or even third tiers of management if they struck us as particularly visionary.
You’ll notice that each sector also includes a list of Legends. These honorees are the indisputable forces who’ve shaped our city. Though many of them are indeed retired, this category was not determined by age—at least one is not yet 50. It is for the acknowledged pioneers in their respective fields, whose names really need no introduction.
To compile our list, we spent months consulting experts across different sectors, and we sought nominations from the public through social media. In the end, our editorial staff and writers spent a lot of time arguing for our choices. And we tried to spread the love, though some organizations could’ve easily produced a dozen candidates.
In the end, such a list is always subjective. We look forward to debating with you about the people we inevitably forgot—or deliberately omitted. And I hope that next year you nominate your favorites. —Betsy Riley
OPEN CALL to Georgia Artists for Gathered IV - MOCA GA
The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia is calling all Georgia artists for its 4th installment of the biennial exhibition Gathered IV: Georgia Artists Selecting Georgia Artists.
2019 esteemed jurors Kevin Cole, Mario Petrirena, and Lisa Tuttle are committed to offering not only the breadth of talent across the state of Georgia, but also the depth. The exhibition has steadily evolved over the last thirteen years from its original incarnation: Within State Lines, which took place in 2006 and 2009, to Georgia Artists Selecting Georgia Artists, 2013 and 2015, and finally, to Gathered: Georgia Artists Selecting Georgia Artists. The MOCA GA mission is fully realized within this project as artists are involved in all phases of the exhibition, including selection and review.
In the 2017 incarnation of Gathered, jurors further developed the preceding selection process and criteria in their decision to select fewer participants than in previous years, while exhibiting multiple works by individual artists. As a result, a rich group exhibition celebrating the aptitude and scope of close to 40 Georgia artists was unveiled. This year, the jurors have decided to continue in this vein and broaden the scope of artwork by inviting applicants to submit any and all media works ranging from small scale (a few inches) up 10’ in height (150 lb limit for wall-hung works, and 300 lb limit for sculpture).
Introducing: 2018 ACP Ones To Watch Artists
The ACP Ones to Watch is a selection of emerging and established artists who are very collectible, still affordable and on a positive trajectory in their careers curated by Mary Stanley for the 2018 Atlanta Celebrates Photography Festival. Nine of the artists will be joining us for brunch to talk about their photography. Let me introducing you the following 10 talented visual artists:
Anderson Scott
Church Camp Light Bursting Through Walls, Lightbox, 30” x 40”.
Dale Niles
The Reunion, archival pigment print, 20” x 30”, edition 1 of 15, 2016.
Greg Kahn
Malecón, archival pigment print, 30” x 40”, edition 3 of 4, 2015.
Inbal Abergil
GOETZ, digital c-print, 15.3” x 20”, edition 2 of 5, 2016
John Opera
Diamond with Dots (pink), cyanotype & acrylic on canvas in lacquered artist frame, 21” x 17”, 2018.
Kelli Connell
Hers and Hers, archival pigment print, 30” x 40”, edition 1 of 6, 2015.
Kristen Hatgi Sink
Bianca, Lamb, Citrus, Flowers, Milk, archival pigment print, 20” x 16”, edition 3 of 20, 2018.
Raymond McCrae Jones
This Life, digital giclée print, edition 2 of 10, 2013.
Book of Faith, photogram, archival pigment print, 45” x 38”, edition 2 of 3, 2017.
Tatum Shaw
Untitled(Yellow Car), digital c-print, 16” x 24”, edition 1 of 15, 2014.
At Home with: Mary Stanley
When we arrived at Mary Stanley's house, she was returning from lunch with friends, and between last-minute errands for a trip to Paris. She was gregarious, a little behind schedule, frank, and charming – characteristics familiar to those who know her. We chatted while she cut and arranged flowers from the garden, showed us some favorite pieces, and had her portraits charmingly photo-bombed by her dog, Princess Patti Smith.
Source: https://withal.com/stories/at-home-with-mary-stanley
Stefan Thomas' Trilon stands on a busy street corner in Midtown Atlanta. An under-the-radar museum near Madison, Georgia, is devoted to showing the wide range of work by the Atlanta artist. (Photo by Mark Gresham)
Georgia museum shows the many sides of artist Steffen Thomas
Not far from the Woodruff Arts Center, where Peachtree Street intersects with 15th Street, stands a large, striking bronze sculpture in the middle of a fountain, a prism-shaped edifice in which the artist’s use of negative space plays a vital role in its portrayal of human form. Its name is Trilon, and it is the work of Steffen Thomas (1906–1990), a German-American artist who settled in Midtown Atlanta and is best known for his public art.
Read more: https://artsatl.com/steffen-thomas-museum-shows-sides-atlanta-artist
Idea Capital / ArtsATL Kindle Award for Innovative Practice
ArtsATL is presenting the second annual Luminary Awards. For the Kindle Award for Innovative Practice, ArtsATL's selection panel will honor Idea Capital for its innovative funding method for emerging artists in the Atlanta area. The organization, which started in 2008, has expanded from one to 11 grants, funding writers, musicians, art collectives, dancers, filmmakers and curators.
Picturing Justice 2017: Atlanta Legal Aid Society
A photography and video exhibition presented by the Atlanta Legal Aid Society in conjunction with Mary Stanley Studio and Atlanta Celebrates Photography. Five documentary photographers explore diverse notions of home and community, with attention to key focus areas for the work of Atlanta Legal Aid. Photographers include: Carlos Javier Ortiz (Oakland, CA), Beate Sass (Decatur, GA), Greg Kahn (Washington, DC), and Maura Friedman (Atlanta, GA). These artists will tell stories of place and cultural identity. Their imagery and personal narratives will provide a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by vulnerable populations in Atlanta and throughout the nation, highlighting the important work done by Legal Aid on their behalf. Each Thursday during the exhibition a selected artist will present an artist talk at lunchtime. Register for these sessions at www.picturingjustice.org.
Featuring work by: Maura Friedman, Greg Kahn, Michael David Murphy, Carlos Javier Ortiz, Beate Sass
Mary Stanley: On Living With Art | Interviewed by Barbara Griffin
Mary Stanley is a whirlwind of energy and enthusiasm on the Atlanta cultural art scene. She is the passionate independent curator, art consultant, and arts advocate behind the Young Collector’s Club and Mary Stanley Studio. A veritable doyenne of photography, Mary is happiest when connecting collectors and artists, and believes in the joy we receive from living with great art. -Barbara Griffin
Time Rolls On: Bill Yates at Hathaway Contemporary →
Artist-funded grants seed creative ideas in 2017 by Andrew Alexander (AJC)
Article published on AJC.com January 07, 2017.
From a comic book about sports idolatry and a musical instrument carved from a wooden casket to an animated opera about rising bread dough and a dance duet focusing on the racial divisions inherent in the Southern country club tradition, a broad range of Atlanta artists’ most creative ideas will have an easier time coming to fruition this year thanks to the work of Idea Capital.
Since 2008, the nonprofit arts organization has sought to support the work of Atlanta artists by awarding small grants of about $500-1500 each to fund individual art projects. The recently announced list of Idea Capital’s 2017 grantees contains, as it does each year, a diverse lineup of artists working in many different disciplines.
“There’s a lot of creativity in Atlanta, and a lot of interesting ideas,” says co-founder Louise Shaw, who works as curator at the David J. Sencer CDC Museum. Shaw and several other arts administrators and supporters were motivated to take action eight years ago during what she describes as a “low point” in the Atlanta arts scene.
“A lot of funding had gone away,” she recalls. “We were just in the doldrums and couldn’t get out of it. The idea was to gather a few people together to give money to give grants to artists to stimulate the arts.”
Led by arts entrepreneur Stuart Keeler, the five original members each gave $100 and ended up awarding their first grant to Atlanta performance artist Allison Rentz. Through the years, the fundraising efforts of Idea Capital have increased, and the organization has grown to become a nonprofit that has now awarded nearly 70 grants for projects by Atlanta artists.
The funding model draws on small donations from members of the arts community, often artists themselves, that is then redistributed to fund specific projects. In keeping with the organization’s “from the community, for the community” philosophy, there are no levels of giving as there are in many nonprofits; all donors receive the same recognition regardless of the size of their donation. And each year, a donor is chosen at random to sit on the selection committee that chooses the awarded artists from the pool of applicants.
“What’s really amazing is that since 2008 the arts landscape in Atlanta has really improved,” says Shaw. “We finally got out of that horrible time we were in, and things are more energetic. We like to think that Idea Capital was one of the catalysts because we were directly supporting artists. To this day, that’s what we do.”
A look at Idea Capital’s 2017 projects follows.
• Fashion designer Charity Harris will stage a conceptual fashion show called “Southernoids II” using textiles to create “wearable sculptures” intended to evoke the South’s difficult history with nature, race, gender and religion.
• For his piece “Sphere of Influence,” performer Joseph Bigley will use woodworking techniques to create a musical instrument crafted from a casket on which he’ll perform an array of hymns, anthems and commercial jingles.
• Artist Bella Dorado’s multimedia show and installation “Gallery de Latinidad” will examine the American Latino experience through performance, a salon, bookstore and gallery.
• Artist Chris Chambers will create a comic book, “Super Duper Sportsball Follies of Man,” based on the conventionalized narratives of aspiration, failure and celebration found in sports films.
• Animator Steve Morrison will create an animated short, “Air (Opera for Yeast in One Act),” in which rising bread dough will convey the rhythms of breath.
• Multimedia artist Adam Forrester’s work, “Devil Town,” will be part media archive, part traveling exhibition and part printed tabloid through which he’ll consider the history of his hometown, Phenix City, Ala., where a notorious criminal network of drugs, gambling and prostitution once flourished, leading to the city’s nickname as the “Wickedest City in America.”
• Curator Kirstie Tepper’s organization Selvage will create an installation, “The Mystery of Stark Alley,” set in the alley behind author Carson McCullers’ childhood home in Columbus to convey the literal and figurative dividing lines of race, class and public and private in the South.
• Puppeteers Raymond Carr and Raymond Wade Tilton will create a multimedia performance, “Raymond Vs. Raymond: The Black and White Show,” to address the theme of race.
• In her project “Just Camping,” photographer Olga Sidilkovskaya will use black-and-white silver gelatin photographs to document the landscape and architecture of the Federal Emergency Management Agency camps used to house immigrants and others in Georgia.
• In “Manifesto,” her first foray into video work after working primarily as a photographer, Sarah Hobbs will take her interest in representing extreme psychological states into the new medium, with a performer acting out an intense psychological experience in a short film.
• Choreographer and dancer Melissa Word’s “Country Club,” a duet for white female dancers featuring an original composition, will be a meditation on race, power and privilege in the American South.