Art Around Athens (and Beyond)

This is one busy Thursday!

Beginning at 12:30 p.m. today and running until 8:30 p.m. tonight, plus tomorrow (Friday, January 29) from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., artists can submit up to three works in any media for a fee of $20 to be potentially included in the Lyndon House Arts Center's 35th Juried Art Exhibition. You can download a pdf of guidelines for submission here. The exhibition itself, which always presents a varied array of works, many of which are available for purchase, will run February 21 (with an opening reception from 2 to 4 p.m. that day) through May 8. This year's juror is Ron Platt, Hugh Caul Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Birmingham Museum.


At 5 p.m. the Lamar Dodd School of Art's series of Visual Culture Colloquium (VCC) lectures continues in Room 150 of the Dodd with Dr. John Decker, whose talk is entitled "‘Practical Devotion.’ Apotropaism and the Protection of the Soul." Here's Dr. Decker's description of his lecture:

In this paper, I investigate Petrus Christus’s "Portrait of a Female Donor" [above] in order to gain insight into a type of religious practice that differs from the more speculative form of devotion that scholars normally discuss. Modern scholarship on devotional images and devotional practices tends to privilege the more abstract and spiritually difficult aspects of preparing the soul for salvation. Rather than focusing on these subjects, I turn my attention to what I term "practical devotion." I define practical devotion as the activation and employment of images, objects, and practices dedicated to keeping body and soul safe and secure as the individual struggled along the demanding path toward salvation and redemption. Throughout the paper, I focus my discussion on one of practical devotion’s constituent elements, the concept of apotropaism, in order to understand this practice better.

Decker is assistant professor of art history at the Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

From 7 to 8 p.m. at ATHICA, guest essayist Mary Jessica Hammes and curator/ATHICA director Lizzie Zucker Saltz will lead a tour and discussion of the current exhibition "Nurture," which features work by Amy Jenkins and explores societal attitudes about breast-feeding and non-sexual nudity. All ages are welcome.


Also at 7 p.m., Flicker Bar, in downtown Athens, will hold a closing reception for an exhibition of paintings by Andrew Cayce (see above), which was very positively reviewed in Flagpole. A live performance by the band DQE will follow the reception.


Finally, if you happen to be in Atlanta, local artist Didi Dunphy has work in the exhibition "Limitless" at Agnes Scott College, which will hold an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m.

“Limitless” is inspired by the 400th anniversary of the invention of the telescope by Galileo Galilei. As Galileo embodied a pure spirit of the liberal arts with his holistic approach to discovery through creativity and imagination, the artists in “Limitless” ‘reveal hidden worlds’ by taking wide-ranging approaches to art making while using an expansive scope to view the universe. Blasting off through conservative lines of boundary, their inventiveness takes them beyond tradition. In “Limitless,” modes of play, listening and looking—and a general draw on the senses—are primary.

Don't wear yourself out, though. The Green Symposium starts tomorrow!