Best Art Event

One neighborhood, two days, and 36 local artists wildin’ out on Wylie Street. This was the sixth year of collaborative mural event FORWARD WARRIOR. The Cabbagetown festival, organized each year by Peter Ferrari, featured a proper range of artists, including Brandon Sadler, Cousin Dan, Jessica Caldas, Fabian Williams, Catlanta, Molly Rose Freeman, Michi Meko, Sister Louisa, Pash Lima, and so many more. FRKO’s ode to Gucci Mane alone was better than any government clone conspiracy. Forward Warrior is a true mural party. What else would you call a two-day fest that invites Atlanta to come out and mingle with the artists while taking in the actual process of creation? Between watching some of the city’s best sling spray cans and mingling with the creative community, patrons this year could witness the likes of Bankroll Fresh’s nephew Bankroll PJ taking in the sidewalk party. Interactive, you ask? Hell yeah. What better company while dialoguing over how to push the city forward than a bunch of like-minded warriors? www.instagram.com/peterferrariart. less...

Craft fairs of yore conjure images of hot-glue-and-shell art. And Christmas ornaments made of Popsicle sticks and yarn. And those toilet paper cover things that form crocheted half-ladies in antebellum garb. The Indie Craft Experience - ICE for short - is not that kind of craft fair. Like, not at all. Two weekends a year - one in fall/winter, one in the spring/summer - dozens of indie crafters, jewelry makers, artists, and knitters gather at the gorgeous Ambient Plus Studio in Southwest Atlanta to sell their wares. Organizers and crafters Christy Petterson and Shannon Mulkey also organize an equally awesome bridal show called Wedding Day Hooray, a vintage show called Salvage, and an annual holiday pop-up shop (last year it was at Criminal Records, the year before Woodruff Art Center). Get to the next ICE event early - like, really early - to score a canvas tote designed by a local artist and stuffed with swag. And if there ever happens to be a vendor selling Popsicle stick art, we bet it will actually be pretty cool. www.ice-atlanta.com. less...

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...

What do Horace Burgess, the Biltmore House, Southern women and a $10 bill have in common? Beats the hell out of us. But if you can answer that question, you’ll be a lot closer to solving the “10 Stories High” mystery than we are. In April, a series of numbered envelopes declaring “Follow Your Narrative Urge!” and holding a variety of enigmatic, seemingly random clues began popping up around Atlanta. They were found dangling from trees, nestled between volumes in local bookstores and in the mail piles of local reporters. The public and local media instantly became captivated with the peculiar art project and committed en masse to solving the mystery. One ambitious code-cracker even created a wiki-style page to catalogue all of the clues. Two of us here at CL set out to solve the case, and ended up on a wild goose chase that took us all over the city. Which got us thinking, was the “10 Stories High” project about the proverbial journey and not the destination? When we wondered as much aloud in a blog post, the man/woman behind the curtain spoke up, commenting that, yes, such a notion was “at the heart of” the project. But, ‘My story needs an ending,” the mysterious wordsmith conceded. “10 Stories High” is spreading westward across the nation, with a new wave of envelopes recently arriving in Chicago, Minneapolis and Denver, among other cities. So, how does this frustrating, thrilling, engrossing, obsession-inducing story end? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. less...

We were blown away by the chutzpah of Denise Lira-Ratinoff’s AT FIRST SIGHT II – a series of light boxes and videos displayed not in a pristine white-walled commercial space, or some too-hip-for-words underground grotto, but in a loading dock off 16th Street in Midtown. The one-night affair was appropriately chilly for Lira-Ratinoff’s photographs depicting the vanishing glaciers of the far, far south – Patagonia, to be exact – in stunning, ephemeral beauty. Engulfing darkness and a haunting soundscape completed the mood. Chances are you missed it; most did. But we wish others would follow Lira-Ratinoff’s lead and create small pockets of magic here, there and everywhere. www.openmade.com. less...

Under executive director Anne Dennington’s tutelage (which will sadly end this year when she relocates with her husband) ATLANTA CELEBRATES PHOTOGRAPHY has grown into one of the city’s most anticipated events. Founded in 1999 by a group of photo historians and artists, the annual October series of exhibitions and lectures and an increasingly interesting public art component have made a case for photography’s centrality on the Atlanta art scene. Each year the crowds grow, and the lecturers get better. This fall look for talks by 2004 Whitney Biennial vet Alec Soth, London-based Turner Prize nominee Sam Taylor-Wood and New York Times magazine deputy photo editor Kira Pollack.

www.acpinfo.org

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Under executive director Anne Dennington’s tutelage (which will sadly end this year when she relocates with her husband) ATLANTA CELEBRATES PHOTOGRAPHY has grown into one of the city’s most anticipated events. Founded in 1999 by a group of photo historians and artists, the annual October series of exhibitions and lectures and an increasingly interesting public art component have made a case for photography’s centrality on the Atlanta art scene. Each year the crowds grow, and the lecturers get better. This fall look for talks by 2004 Whitney Biennial vet Alec Soth, London-based Turner Prize nominee Sam Taylor-Wood and New York Times magazine deputy photo editor Kira Pollack. www.acpinfo.org less...

Word. As part of the College Night at the High series, ART, BEATS & LYRICS brought together some of the city’s most promising young street artists (MICHI, UrbanMedium, Dubelyoo, Dosa and Fuze Green), breakdancers and DJs (Klever, Jamad and Spider). The event proved that if you cater to a hip, young, multiethnic crowd, they will come. The High had to turn people away when local event organizer Jabari Graham’s one-night-only spectacular exceeded all expectations. But don’t worry if you missed out on the fun. Graham hosts another Art, Beats & Lyrics event called Cold Busted Art Exhibition on Nov. 18 at the Defoor Centre.
www.artbeatslyrics.com.

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