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2012 Index of Winners

Best Film Festival BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Atlanta Jewish Film Festival

Best Film Series BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
WonderRoot

Best Gallery BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Alan Avery Art Company

Best Gallery BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Beep Beep Gallery

Best Improv Group BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Dad’s Garage Theatre

Best indie crafter BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Catlanta

Best Art Blog BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
BurnAway

Best Local Author BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Mikel K

Best Local Comedian BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Angela Miller

Best Female Actor BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
AC Smallwood

Best Male Actor BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
TIE: Dan Triandiflou and Topher Payne

Best Local Playwright BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Topher Payne

Best Poet BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Critics Pick
Natasha Trethewey
Decatur’s reputation as a bastion of literature precedes it. The seven-year-old Decatur Book Festival proudly holds the title of largest independent book festival in the country. Dozens of writers such as Joshilyn Jackson, Kevin Young, Josh Russell, and Terra Elan McVoy (DBF program director) callmore...
Decatur’s reputation as a bastion of literature precedes it. The seven-year-old Decatur Book Festival proudly holds the title of largest independent book festival in the country. Dozens of writers such as Joshilyn Jackson, Kevin Young, Josh Russell, and Terra Elan McVoy (DBF program director) call the mini-city home. But in 2012, the bookish enclave’s cachet was secured in the history books when local author and Emory professor Natasha Trethewey was named the 2012-13 U.S. Poet Laureate. Trethewey, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for her poetry collection Native Guard, is only the second Southerner and African-American ever honored with the award. (Robert Penn Warren was the original laureate in 1986 and Rita Dove received the title in 1993.) Trethewey’s poems and prose are meditations on family, race, memory, identity, and place inspired by her experience growing up biracial in the South. She began writing poetry after her mother was murdered by her stepfather “to make sense of what had happened,” she told the Associated Press this year. In August, Trethewey launched her fourth collection of poems, Thrall, with the keynote address at the Decatur Book Festival. www.poets.org/ntret. less...

Best Poet BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Mikel K

Best Spoken Word Artist BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Mikel K

Best Art Exhibit BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Critics Pick
Immersive art exhibits
A subconscious tendency emerged among a handful of artists, gallerists, and curators this year for producing immersive art exhibits. In particular, shows at Get This! and Beep Beep galleries, and another by Dashboard Co-op in a vacant Summerhill bungalow, looked to installations to transform familiarmore...
A subconscious tendency emerged among a handful of artists, gallerists, and curators this year for producing immersive art exhibits. In particular, shows at Get This! and Beep Beep galleries, and another by Dashboard Co-op in a vacant Summerhill bungalow, looked to installations to transform familiar spaces into moody set pieces. Ben Roosevelt’s The Blue Flame, a physical manifestation of a dream Roosevelt had about Iggy Pop, Samuel Coleridge, Dante, and conceptual artist Joseph Beuys, converted Get This! Gallery into a faux dive bar reminiscent of the one in “Twin Peaks,” complete with wood paneling and live karaoke. At Beep Beep Gallery, Jason Kofke and Chris Chambers collaborated on The Ends, an ode to the analog, the transience of technology, and the fear mongering that pervades our collective modern psyche. An ’80s-era Pontiac Fiero was wedged into the small gallery space and surrounded with digital ephemera (old MacBooks, a video yearbook) and references to 1986’s Challenger shuttle disaster. Dashboard Co-op curated Nathan Sharratt’s Come. Inside Me., a compelling performance-based installation about family, home, sense memory, and the circle of life. In all three cases, the risk-taking paid off to create some of the year’s most spectacular and transportive experiences. less...

Best Museum BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
High Museum of Art

Best Neighborhood Festival BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Castleberry Hill

Best Neighborhood for the Arts BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Old Fourth Ward

Best Trend BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Free Art Friday

Best Performance Venue BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Critics Pick
Atlanta Symphony Hall

Best Play BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Critics Pick
Lucia Di Lammermoor
Gorgeous voices, awesome sets, amazing music, outrageous drama. The Atlanta Opera brought the famous story of emotionally fragile Scottish lass Lucia and her doomed love for a man from a rival clan to the stage for its November 2011 production of Lucia Di Lammermoor, and gave Atlanta one of its mostmore...
Gorgeous voices, awesome sets, amazing music, outrageous drama. The Atlanta Opera brought the famous story of emotionally fragile Scottish lass Lucia and her doomed love for a man from a rival clan to the stage for its November 2011 production of Lucia Di Lammermoor, and gave Atlanta one of its most romantic and exciting nights at the theater in ages. Soprano Georgia Jarman showed off some impressive vocal gymnastics in the role of Lucia, and the cast, chorus, and Atlanta Opera orchestra sounded polished and lively. Between-scene projections of Sir Walter Scott’s source text made us feel all post-modern and fuzzy inside, while Erhard Rom’s set designs had a wonderful cinematic flare: There was something distinctly Southern in the decaying mansions, moss-covered forests, and crumbling tombstones. The evening was capped off with gallons of stage blood and a beautiful bel canto aria. less...

Best Opening BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
The Glass Ceiling Shattered

Best Performance Venue BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
The Goat Farm Arts Center

Best Photographer BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Shawn Evans

Best Place to See a Movie BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Landmark’s Midtown Art Cinema

Best Place to See a Movie BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Landmark’s Midtown Art Cinema

Best Arts Center BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Critics Pick
The Goat Farm Arts Center
In just three years, the Goat Farm Arts Center has gone from well-kept secret to Atlanta art institution. The rustic 12-acre compound first began to draw artists in the 1980s when sculptors, musicians, painters, and photographers flocked to the studio spaces in the Victorian-era former cotton gin. Anthonymore...
In just three years, the Goat Farm Arts Center has gone from well-kept secret to Atlanta art institution. The rustic 12-acre compound first began to draw artists in the 1980s when sculptors, musicians, painters, and photographers flocked to the studio spaces in the Victorian-era former cotton gin. Anthony Harper and Chris Melhouse of Hallister Development gained control of the property in 2008 with an eye toward creating a mixed-use development of condos, boutiques, and galleries. The economic downturn stifled those plans, and the partners turned the property into a center for the arts. The Goat Farm is now the permanent home of dance company gloATL, theater troupes the Collective Project and Saiah, and arts publication BurnAway.org. The number of events hosted there has exploded in the past two years, including concerts, performances, fundraisers, benefits, readings, screenings, meetings, parties, conferences, and more. In August, gloATL announced the collaborative series Tanz Farm, a full performance season of international contemporary dance. We’d never heard of this place a few years ago; now it seems like we’re there every week. less...

Best Play BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
The Goat Farm Arts Center

Best Public Art Event BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Flux

Best Public Art/Artwork BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Living Walls

Best Dance Performance BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Critics Pick
Threshold
Even creating the sparest of shows in the humblest of venues can be a financial and logistical challenge for many Atlanta dance companies, so it was especially impressive to see the Lucky Penny produce Threshold in August. Blake Beckham’s ambitious vision included a performance for three dancers inmore...
Even creating the sparest of shows in the humblest of venues can be a financial and logistical challenge for many Atlanta dance companies, so it was especially impressive to see the Lucky Penny produce Threshold in August. Blake Beckham’s ambitious vision included a performance for three dancers in a structurally sound two-story house made entirely of cardboard. The innovative dream team of architects Mack Scogin and Merrill Elam designed the house, and more than 100 visual artists, designers, and volunteers helped realize the project with more than 50,000 square feet of paper products. The cardboard architecture provided a fascinating, dreamlike setting for Beckham’s primal and visceral contemplation of interior and exterior spaces. The show unequivocally raised the bar for what’s possible for independent dance in Atlanta. www.theluckypennyatl.blogspot.com. less...

Best Reading Series BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Critics Pick
PushPush Arts
Reading is a quiet, solitary pursuit, generally reserved for moments of peace, reflection - of not yelling, as it were. And yet, there exists Write Club, a bombastic crew of yellers, hooters, and hollerers that gathers the second Wednesday of every month at the Red Room in Decatur to wage literarymore...
Reading is a quiet, solitary pursuit, generally reserved for moments of peace, reflection - of not yelling, as it were. And yet, there exists Write Club, a bombastic crew of yellers, hooters, and hollerers that gathers the second Wednesday of every month at the Red Room in Decatur to wage literary warfare at a piercing decibel. Consigliere Myke Johns and Viceroy Nicholas Tecosky helm the rowdy bunch, which comes to witness three wordy bouts, each a face-off between two different readers. The readers prepare original works based on opposing themes - lost vs. found, sink vs. swim - and have seven minutes to perform. Combatants battle for honor and charity, with a blue ribbon panel deciding the winners based on the precise science of listening to audience applause. It’s fun, it’s loud, and the stories are damn good. $10-$25 donation. 627 E. College Ave., Decatur. www.writeclubatlanta.com. less...

Best Theater Company BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Critics Pick
For a new company to produce a distinguished season at a time of crisis for Atlanta theater is an especially impressive feat. As established theaters are struggling financially or shuttering, Fabrefaction Theatre has managed to become a formidable presence. In its third season, the small theater in Westmore...
For a new company to produce a distinguished season at a time of crisis for Atlanta theater is an especially impressive feat. As established theaters are struggling financially or shuttering, Fabrefaction Theatre has managed to become a formidable presence. In its third season, the small theater in West Midtown, founded by Christina and Evelyn Hoff, showed its range in the 2011-2012 season with a bloody and creepy Sweeney Todd, a Christmas-themed Rocky Horror Show, a smart, witty, in-the-round Tartuffe, and a musical Titanic. Cool shows, snazzy lobby, educational programs, productions for kids, a great theater space, and a black box to boot. The whole package helped the theater solidify a faithful core audience while reaching out to new ones. less...

Best Advocate for the Arts BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Critics Pick
In March, the board of directors of Theatre in the Square voted to close the cash-strapped playhouse against the wishes of its founder and producing director Palmer Wells. Even in less acrimonious circumstances, the loss of the Marietta-based playhouse would have been a painful blow. In 1982, Wells andmore...
In March, the board of directors of Theatre in the Square voted to close the cash-strapped playhouse against the wishes of its founder and producing director Palmer Wells. Even in less acrimonious circumstances, the loss of the Marietta-based playhouse would have been a painful blow. In 1982, Wells and partner Michael Horne launched the theater, which quickly seemed to find the ideal balance between audience-pleasing chestnuts like the oft-remounted musical Smoke on the Mountain and provocative new works, including Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane and Richard Greenburg’s Take Me Out. Despite a 1993 dispute with the Cobb County Commission, which withdrew its funding for all arts over the theater’s production of the gay-themed Lips Together, Teeth Apart, Theatre in the Square was clearly a home away from home for its subscribers and long-time model for small local theaters. less...

Best Movie Studio Shooting Flicks in Atlanta BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
“The Walking Dead”

Best Contribution to Atlanta’s Urban Design BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Critics Pick
Dance on the Beltline
The streetcar isn’t quite here yet, but dance on the Beltline certainly sparked our imagination about the potential for new movement in the city. In the last year, dancer/choreographer Helen Hale, with local arts organization Dashboard Co-op, hosted the abundant dance feast Anti-Manners; gloATL exploredmore...
The streetcar isn’t quite here yet, but dance on the Beltline certainly sparked our imagination about the potential for new movement in the city. In the last year, dancer/choreographer Helen Hale, with local arts organization Dashboard Co-op, hosted the abundant dance feast Anti-Manners; gloATL explored a sewer overflow facility in Float; the dancers of Crossover Movement Arts dressed as steampunk time-travelers and grooved to the improvisational jazz of the Zentropy ensemble; and Beacon Dance explored the element of earth as part of its Elemental Project. All of them got us ready to get moving, too. www.beltline.org. less...

Best Local Stage Director BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Marium Khalid

Best Street Art/Graffiti BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Living Walls

Best Theater Company BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Critics Pick
Theatrical Outfit
Downtown Atlanta’s Theatrical Outfit enters its 35th anniversary season on a roll, having staged one of the best plays in its recent history with Red. Artistic director Tom Key, normally the sunniest of actors, gave a moody, impassioned performance as painter Mark Rothko, with Jimi Kocina keeping upmore...
Downtown Atlanta’s Theatrical Outfit enters its 35th anniversary season on a roll, having staged one of the best plays in its recent history with Red. Artistic director Tom Key, normally the sunniest of actors, gave a moody, impassioned performance as painter Mark Rothko, with Jimi Kocina keeping up as a hungry young apprentice eager to learn and to challenge the celebrity artist’s ideas about creativity and integrity. On the other the side of the coin, the terrific family show A Wrinkle in Time offered a fusion of whimsical characters, imaginative design, and a potentially disturbing theme about the power of totalitarianism. Even such lesser shows as Freud’s Last Session and the world premiere of The Green Book featured impeccable acting and a willingness to engage audiences with potent, heady ideas. The Outfit’s home at the Balzer Theater gives theater fans the best reason to visit downtown. less...

Best Theater Company BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Dad’s Garage Theatre

Best Touring Play BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Readers Pick
Wicked

Best Art Event BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Poets, Artists, & Madmen » Critics Pick
Alliance Theatre
The Tony Award-winning Alliance Theatre won another feather for its cap when novelist Stephen King and roots rocker John Mellencamp chose the Atlanta playhouse for the world premiere of their new musical, Ghost Brothers of Darkland County. When Ghost Brothers made its long-awaited debut in April, themore...
The Tony Award-winning Alliance Theatre won another feather for its cap when novelist Stephen King and roots rocker John Mellencamp chose the Atlanta playhouse for the world premiere of their new musical, Ghost Brothers of Darkland County. When Ghost Brothers made its long-awaited debut in April, the show’s MVP proved to be T Bone Burnett as music director. Thanks to the legendary music producer and his sound design team, Ghost Brothers’ tale of intergenerational family secrets sounded like a dream, with possibly the richest instrumentation and most crystalline audio clarity the Alliance Theatre has ever delivered. Burnett ensured that Ghost Brothers became a kind of sonic spectacle, from its hammering, world-shaking blues numbers to rollicking country-and-Western tunes to its supernatural sound effects. Now how can we get him back? less...

Best Doggie Day Care BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Consumer Culture » Readers Pick
Barking Hound Village Inn
And other metro Atlanta locations.

Best Doggie Day Care BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Consumer Culture » Readers Pick
And other metro Atlanta locations.

Best Doggie Day Care BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Consumer Culture » Readers Pick
Barking Hound Village Buckhead
And other metro Atlanta locations.

Best Doggie Day Care BOA Award Winner

Year » 2012
Section » Print Features » Special Issue » Best of Atlanta » 2012 » Consumer Culture » Readers Pick
And other metro Atlanta locations.


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