Art Around Athens (and Beyond)

If you're a decorative-arts person, you will, of course, be at Robert Leath's lecture tonight (7 p.m. at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education) as part of the Henry D. Green Symposium of the Decorative Arts, especially considering that it's free and open to the public (thanks to the Georgia Humanities Council). The rest of the symposium, which runs today and tomorrow, mostly at the Georgia Center, requires registration but should be a great deal of fun, as always. If for some reason you're not planning on doing all that, here are some other arts-related events going on this weekend in the Athens area and a bit beyond.

From 5 to 7 p.m., the UGA College of Environment and Design’s Circle Gallery will hold a closing reception for its exhibition "Italia," which consists of photographs and sketches of Latium, Tuscany and Venetia by professors Brian LaHaie of UGA and Clark Lundell of Auburn University. Next up at the Circle Gallery, "Plant Communities of the Trail of Tears," a collaboration between CED professor Alfie Vick’s Maymester class and the UGA Institute of Native American Studies, which runs February 3–24.


Friday, from 6 to 8 p.m., the Madison Morgan Cultural Center will hold an opening reception for the exhibition "Myths and Legends: Works on Paper by Andy Warhol," drawn from the private collection of Wes and Missy Cochran, with a gallery talk by Wes at 7 p.m. The exhibition consists of 23 silkscreened works by Warhol depicting subjects including John Wayne, Teddy Roosevelt, Super Man, Annie Oakley, John Kennedy, Mickey Mouse, the Wicked Witch of the West and Greta Garbo and will be on display through April 2.


The Lamar Dodd School of Art is hosting two opening receptions at 7 p.m. for exhibitions in its East Campus building and an open house for the jewelry and metalwork department from 8 to 10 p.m. at the Cedar St Art Annex that will show student work from intro to graduate-level courses. Opening at the Dodd proper are "@LAST: Ceramics by Arthur Gonzalez" (through February 19; image above) and "Kathy Prescott: Translucent Fusions" (through May 7). We'll let the art school describe them to you:

Dark, somber and foreboding, Arthur Gonzalez's works encourage serious deliberation and reflection on the relationship between personal concerns and world issues. Raw in form, lacking in smoothness and rough in finish, the ceramic sculptures give glimpses of a conversation or a contemplation in progress. Gonzalez's creations of ceramic and found objects reveal visions and feelings that are not polished but ongoing processes of gyrating thoughts and churning emotions that threaten to erupt into reality and consciousness to defy the fantasy of a peaceful experience.

“Drawing with other people’s marks” is the way Kathy Prescott describes her transfer collages rendered on wood board. They display her reverence for images, whether masterpieces of Western painting, nineteenth-century photographs, examples of pastry tip patterns from Martha Stewart Living or advertisements for Victoria’s Secret lingerie and Spanish cocktail olives. Even though modern technologies might come to mind, Photoshop was never even considered here. In this era of digital manipulation of images Kathy’s work is stubbornly and programmatically manual. She produces unique objects that invite meditative contemplation and capture the sense of old photographs’ melancholy. Their varnished surface gives the impression of softly filtering the light streaming from within the images, containing luminous, superimposed, inner screens. Crisp lines suspended in white space lead one’s gaze to areas of graphic flatness or volumes modeled in shades of gentle grays. Taking away the exuberance of color is a sign of the artist’s preference for understatement and self-effacement, but it is also a way of making things more complex. These essays in white, black and gray emerge as a study of the dynamic between drawing, printmaking and photography.

On Saturday, Ciné Barcafé hosts the 20th Annual Mental Health Art Auction to raise funds for Mental Health America of NE Georgia from 6 to 9 p.m. Admission is free.

From 4 to 6 p.m., the Athens-Clarke County Library will have an opening reception in its Top of the Stairs Gallery for an exhibition featuring paintings by Mia Merlin. And at 8 p.m. Athens Community Theatre will host an Athens for Haiti Benefit. Admission is $5. Storytellers, dancers, musicians, teachers and an eclectic consortium of local artists have organized their talents for an exciting hodgepodge of entertainment to benefit a Haiti relief fund. There will be a silent auction of art, classes, books, jewelry, facials, antiques and more. A ways out of town, the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta is hosting its fourth annual print fair from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., a great opportunity to pick up some great inexpensive art.