Athens Celebrates Elephant Six

The city of Athens, Ga., is accustomed to keeping a strong connection with its musical heritage, defined by artists like R.E.M., Lady Antebellum and the B-52s. This year, Athenians can experience a special tributary celebration of a prominent group in the formation of the local music scene with "Athens Celebrates Elephant Six," a series of exhibitions that spotlight the famous collective. Six cultural venues around town, including the Georgia Museum of Art, will be working together in a citywide effort to document different pieces of the Elephant 6 (E6) collective's influence locally and around the art world.

"Carnival Part I" was shown at the University of North Georgia, Oconee Campus until Sept. 24. The exhibition culled a number of paintings from individuals associated with the founders of E6, from classmates to fellow performers. "Carnival Part II" opened at the same location on Sept. 30 and runs for a month through Oct. 30. This exhibition will show a second group of these paintings.

Jill Carnes. Interstellar Rooster.  University of North Georgia, Oconee Campus.

"Reverberations" is on show at the Lyndon House Arts Center until Oct. 11. Visitors can see posters, album covers and their inspirations, photography, stop motion animation, props, costumes, paintings and other works by the musicians involved in E6.

William Cullen Hart, Painted Transistor Radio. On display at Lyndon House Arts Center.

At the Athens Institute of Contemporary Art (ATHICA), "Advice from the Oceans" highlights the alternative nature of Elephant 6. The exhibition incorporates interactive elements, such as "Ocean Telephones" by one of E6's founders Rob Schneider, that allow observers to become participants.

Sculpture by Robert Schneider. ATHICA.

"n[]cturne" is Hotel Indigo's contribution to the E6 theme. On view until Dec. 31 in Indigo's outdoor art area, the installation features a texture-centric collection of various items displayed in a segmented cube. Dana Jo Cooley, the artist behind the installation, has worked on stage and prop designs for bands.

Here at the Georgia Museum of Art, "The ... of E6" will be shown from Oct. 4, 2014 until Jan. 4, 2015. The exhibition includes artwork for album covers and others examples of visual art important to Elephant Six. Information about the museum's related events and more about the exhibition itself can be found on the Georgia Museum of Art's exhibition webpage.

William Cullen Hart,  Black Foliage. 1971. Georgia Museum of Art.

On Oct. 13, Ciné will have a screening of a portion of A Place We Have Been To, a documentary tracing the history of E6. The film, by Chad Stockfleth and Dan Efram, includes behind-the-scenes footage, performances, and interviews. Ciné will also screen a short film entitled Major Organ and the Adding Machine by Joey Foreman and have live performances by Circulatory System and Robert Schneider.

Movie poster for A Place We Have Been To

For more information on Athens Celebrates E6 and the specific events occurring, visit Flagpole's article Athens Celebrates E6 by Jessica Smith and the Athens Celebrates E6 website.

Art Around Athens (and Beyond)

Mark your calendars for this coming Monday (December 6), at Ciné in downtown Athens, where Neil Rosenbaum, son of the artist Art Rosenbaum, will be at a special screening of his new feature documentary, "Sing My Troubles: Visits with Georgia Women Carrying Musical Traditions into the 21st Century." Art is also featured in the documentary, visiting these musical artists and talking with them about their memories and life experiences. The film will show at 5 and 7:30 p.m., with a live musical performance (including some of the folks featured in the movie) at 6:30 p.m., and a Q&A with Art and Neil following the later screening. Admission is $12. GMOA patrons may remember that Neil also made a documentary about his father that accompanied his exhibition at the museum in 2006-7 and is included with the exhibition catalogue, "Weaving His Art on Golden Looms: Paintings and Drawings by Art Rosenbaum."

Art Around Athens (and Beyond)

A few art events are taking place today (Thursday, April 29).

The Commercial Bank (at 1000 Moore's Grove Rd., in Winterville) is having a free reception and auction of art by local middle and high school students at 6 p.m. We believe this is the bank's annual Art Makes Cents program but haven't been able to confirm.

Phi Beata Heata, the jewelry and metals student organization at the Lamar Dodd School of Art, is having one of its semiannual jewelry sales, which began yesterday and will continue today on the second floor of the Miller Learning Center from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Over at ATHICA, from 7 to 8 p.m., curator/director Lizzie Zucker Saltz is leading a free informal talk about the gallery's spring exhibition, "Deluge," which explores climate change and the politics of land management.

And at Ciné Barcafé, there's an opening reception from 7 to 9 p.m. for "Frisky Box," Michael Lachowski's new project, which features, according to Flagpole, "large, standing images on display and a screening of a short film starring a box, a boy and five gold balloons."

Art Around Athens (and Beyond)

Tonight (Friday, April 16) from 6 to 8 p.m., the Madison-Morgan Cultural Center will host a free opening reception for the exhibition "New Works by Gary Hudson." The exhibition was planned before Hudson passed away in December and will serve as a memorial to him and a retrospective on his work. It will run through July 9.

Also tonight, from 7 to 9 p.m., the BFA students at the Lamar Dodd School of Art in photography, printmaking and jewelry/metals will have an opening reception for their exit show. Students featured include Elizabeth Gaby, Brian Hilley, Eric Lotzer, Danielle Tobin, Gabriel Bratton, Britt Gantner, Steven Hall, Susan Kent, Goodloe Yancey, Brittany Dowdell, Lulu Gyoury, Ashley Hall, Michelle Hall, Kristen Mapes, Emily Mayo, Kaylyn Mitchell, Cynthia Nist, Travis Oneal and Lauren Smith.

On Saturday, somewhat coincident with our own The Art of: Preservation but starting earlier (it runs from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.), so you could very well get both in, is a less traditional arts event, the annual Fluke mini-comics fest, which has moved to Ciné this year. Five bucks will get you in whether you're a consumer or a producer, and many artists set up tables and sell original art and sketches.

Art Around Athens

At 5 p.m. today at the Lamar Dodd School of Art in room S150, Katherine Smith will deliver the next Visual Culture Colloquium (VCC) lecture, "Learning from Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, or Representing 'The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form.'"

In 1972 Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, with Steven Izenour, published Learning from Las Vegas, a seminal study of architectural symbolism, specifically in the context of the contemporary suburban landscape. This publication embraces numerous representational strategies and methodological approaches, drawing widely from social discourse and visual culture, and the architects acknowledge significant influences, including those from contemporary art.

The influence of Pop art on Venturi and Scott Brown’s architecture has been a primary focus of my research, but my current project explores the reverse, looking at the ways that Venturi and Scott Brown’s architecture has paralleled and informed the works of select contemporary artists, including Claes Oldenburg and Dan Graham.

Katherine Smith is a graduate of the University of Georgia (A.B., art history, 1994) and an Assistant Professor of Art History at Agnes Scott College, where her approach to teaching draws directly on the interdisciplinary nature of her research, which focuses on thinking across media. Her scholarship addresses intersections in American art and architecture from the 1960s to the present. Her recent publications include essays in "Relearning from Las Vegas" (The University of Minnesota Press, 2008) and in Archives of American Art Journal (summer 2009).

At the same time, Ciné Barcafé is hosting a free opening reception for the exhibition "Ectoplasmic Residue," which features Ghostbusters-inspired works from Ghostbusters-inspired artists Mike Groves, Keith Rein and Joe Havasy.

Just a little bit later, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., as you can see by clicking on the scanned postcard above, there's a reception at Aurum Studios, Ltd., for an exhibition of paintings by former GMOA director Bill Paul. It's a busy Thursday evening, and we'll have more events for you tomorrow.

Art Around Athens

It's a good thing we were checking our Twitter feed or we might have forgotten about tonight's 6x6 event at Ciné from 7 to 8 p.m. The theme this time out is play, and Didi Dunphy has selected the performances etc.

Art Around Athens (and Beyond)

Even though it's a Thursday night, there are at least three art events taking place in Athens and a bit farther away.

From 4 to 7 p.m. at the Madison-Morgan Cultural Center is a free reception for the exhibition "AFLAT: A Funky Little Art Thing," featuring original artwork by Morgan County students.

From 5 to 7 p.m., in the Lamar Dodd School of Art Bridge Gallery, is a free reception for the exhibition "Books & Works on Paper by Eileen Wallace" (above), which runs until April 6. Wallace's works can be seen on her Web site.

And from 6 to 8 p.m., at Ciné, is a free reception for the exhibitions "Threads: Stitching Urbanism, Ecology and Community Together in Athens, Georgia" and "Athens Above," both presented in conjunction with the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation's symposium on local urban re-development.

René Shoemaker exhibits her one-of-a-kind textile paintings of "Athens Above," a unique view of the skyline of Athens, Ga in hand-painted silks. René’s interest in urban development stems from her roots, having been born and raised in New York, as well has her work as the director of the Owens Library & Circle Gallery at the College of Environment & Design at UGA. Her intention through her artwork is to help people open their eyes to the every-day physical and spiritual essence of the environment. She found that looking up at the rooflines one notices the stark geometric forms of the buildings against the exquisite blue sky of Athens in the fall and the spring seasons.

Kevan Williams has curated the group show "Threads: Stitching Urbanism, Ecology and Community Together in Athens, Georgia" featuring the works of sevent designers (landscape, interior, graphic), and one comedian: Thomas Brown, Cat Dunleavy, Agustina Hein, Lizzy Hinrichs, Mary Alston Killen, Will Kiser, and Taylor Rassel

More to come tomorrow!

Art Around Athens

At 6 p.m. today, Dr. Scott Richardson, associate dean of curriculum at the MCG/UGA Initiative Medical School, will speak on the benefits and relationship of art and medicine, as well as advances in medical school education, in Gallery 307 of the Lamar Dodd School of Art, in conjunction with the exhibition of work by scientific and medical illustration students on display there (through March 8).



Then, from 7 to 8 p.m. at Ciné, Michael Lachowski presents the first 6x6 event, focusing on fashion. Lachowski selected six new media-arts productions, each no longer than six minutes, to be screened, the format that all six of these events (there are five more upcoming, for which entries are still being accepted; next up is "Play" on April 7, with Didi Dunphy as curator) will follow.

Found Footage Festival at Ciné

This Friday, February 5, the Found Footage Festival will be at Ciné. The festival showcases such odd (and very funny) videos as infomercials, training videos and cable access shows found at garage sales, thrift stores, warehouses and even in dumpsters.

Comedians Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher host the show and tour all over the country. Pickett and Prueher started collecting videotapes in the early 1990s after finding “Inside and Outside Custodial Duties,” a custodial training video, in a McDonald’s break room in Wisconsin. In 2004, the men watched all the videos they had found. After three months and more than 1,000 hours of footage, Pickett and Prueher “found 90 minutes of needles in a thousand haystacks.”

Pickett and Prueher have two simple guidelines for choosing footage:

1)   Footage must be found on physical format. No YouTube.

2)   It has to be unintentionally funny. Whatever it’s trying to do, it has to fail miserably at that.

Four volumes and hundreds of shows later, Joe and Nick are coming to Athens for one night only. The Found Footage Festival will be at Ciné this Friday with two shows, 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. Tickets are $10 in advance.

If you can’t make it to Ciné on Friday, at least check out the Found Footage Web site and watch some of the hilarious video clips. You can also buy DVDs and other merchandise online.

Art Around Athens (and Beyond)

If you haven't had a chance yet to see "Tutorial," the exhibition at the Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation (OCAF) consisting of works by its instructors, today (Friday, January 22) is a perfect opportunity, as there's a free reception from 6 to 9 p.m. Visual artists showcased are Maria Dondero, Monica Jones, Leah Mantini, Walker Montogomery, Peggy Pitts and Dave Smiley, and the exhibition is up until the following week (it closes January 28).



At the very same time and place, OCAF is celebrating the opening of "Heart & Soul,” an exhibition that showcases the work of eight black artists: Gwen Patterson, Harold Rittenberry, John Ahee, Margo Candelario, Margaret Warfield, Sammie Nicely, Warren Fletcher and Yvonne Studevan.



Tomorrow (Saturday, January 23), the Lamar Dodd School of Art will hold a closing reception at 3 p.m. for its exhibition of work created as part of the UGA Studies Abroad, Cortona, Italy, program in 2008. The exhibition is on the third floor of the building, and a a reunion of students and faculty who participated in the programs will take place at the same time on the ground floor of the building. The work covers the studio areas of painting, drawing, watercolor, printmaking, photography, sculpture, ceramics, jewelry/metals, book arts, graphic design, interior design and landscape architecture. Art history, art education, Italian language and creative writing students are also involved in the programs.



Sunday, January 24, from 2 to 4 p.m., as mentioned earlier here, Ciné will hold a free reception for the silent auction of works donated by local artists for the annual Mental Health Benefit. The actual auction takes place next week, Sunday, January 31, from 6 to 9 p.m., also at Ciné, but this is a chance to browse and think about what might look good on your walls. The images of art donated this year are posted online as well.

Finally, note that the undergraduate Art History Society at UGA has started a Tumblr, which you might want to follow.

Terry Rowlett at Ciné

Terry Rowlett’s latest vivid portrayals of Renaissance and Baroque settings surrounding a contemporary image, are on view at Ciné from now until October 19. The exhibition, Moments and Times, is a "a historical look at the human occupation of the planet as seen in the paintings of Terry Rowlett, a late era artist (circa 21st century)," according to the Ciné Web site.

Terry Rowlett is a native of rural Arkansas, who was stationed as a patrol guard in West Germany and came to Athens after edifying trips to Europe and a religiously inspired expedition to Israel. He a cool world view equipped with remnants of bygone religious convictions and pessimistic outlooks on a sinful modern world. His earlier paintings depict “Christian characters inserted into decidedly American landscapes littered with the detritus of modern existence," says local arts writer Melissa Link on the artist's web site. His more recent paintings, however, have changed in theme but not in style. They are now infused with “a newfound joie de [vivre] which the artist has renounced his guilty past and celebrates life for all its song, dance, and debauchery. Such images still borrow upon the familiar themes and compositions of the Old Masters, but the paintings now serve as allegories of playful reality rather than sermons on God’s word.The work offers the artist’s ultimate statement on the true teachings of love and understanding that exist in the Christianity which he once embraced and the heartbreak that has ensued as the violence, hypocrisy, and heresy of American imperialism prevail to open up countless oozing wounds around the world.”

For an interview with Terry Rowlett about one of his pieces that ended up on local musician Elf Power's album cover, click here

Here is a glimpse at the Rowlett exhibition at Ciné on Flickr