Culture Surfing - This is Jack Walsh

Co-producer, photographer, editor of ‘This Is Atlanta’

Jack Walsh is the co-producer, photographer and editor of PBA30’s “This Is Atlanta with Alicia Steele” (cable 16), a Telly Award-winning and Emmy-nominated magazine program spotlighting cultural and offbeat happenings around the city. The hour-long summer episode of “This Is Atlanta” features aerial dance, wheelchair football, kinetic sculpture, the Seed and Feed Marching Abominable, and the Atlanta Downhill Challenge soapbox derby. You can catch the next showings on Sunday, Aug. 10, at 9 p.m.; Saturday, Aug. 16, at 8 p.m.; and Thursday, Aug. 21, at 11 p.m.

The Gallery at East Atlanta Tattoo: “We’re doing a segment on local tattoo artists that features Dirk Hays, the owner. I’d never been to any of his art openings before, but they’re great! Go for the colorful, whimsical, lowbrow art; stay for the corndogs, beer and foxy rocker girls.”

The Goon by Eric Powell: “At the moment, this is my favorite comic, the saga of a Depression-era mob enforcer taking on a rival gang that just happens to be zombies. Powell’s probably the best illustrator in the business and does creepy atmosphere as well as Mike Mignola did when he actually still bothered to draw Hellboy.”

Live-action role playing: “When ‘This Is Atlanta’ is no longer on the air, this is what I want it to be remembered for: bringing images of people wearing homemade chain mail and beating on each other with rubber swords into the homes of local public-television viewers. You’re welcome, Atlanta!”

Pandra Williams: “I met Pandra when we did a segment on the B Complex, and I thought her ceramic sculptures were really compelling. And by compelling, I mean kinda terrifying. She does these tentacled, fanged, slithery forms, disembodied organs, and microscopic critters amplified in scale to nightmarish proportions. Never have I seen sculpture that looks so squishy, yet so menacing.”

Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart: “I trade books back and forth a lot with Gordon Ray, ‘This is Atlanta’s’ co-producer. Or, rather, I pass books to Gordon, who reads them immediately, and he lends books to me and they sit around on shelves and never make it back to him (look for them in my yard sale soon!). This hilarious, bawdy novel about the corpulent, spoiled son of a Russian oligarch running amok in a former Soviet republic may be the last one that we both actually read.”

The Booth Western Art Museum: “We get a lot of our ideas on ‘This Is Atlanta’ by Web-searching for ‘Atlanta’ and whatever we’re kind of into at the moment. I was looking for an excuse to use some spaghetti Western music, and found this place. It’s a fantastic collection of Western art in a massive building up in Cartersville. You’ll wander the halls whistling Ennio Morricone tunes for hours.”