Press

Arts: Feature

Out in the shanty
A humble shed becomes a tool for artist exposure
BY FELICIA FEASTER
Published 08.19.00

While some would have you believe it's all about the art on the walls, more cynical types know that in the culture racket, it's as much showbiz as raw talent. Thus the headline-making importance of design in recent art-world spaces such as Richard Meier's Getty Center, Frank Gehry's Bilboa and Yoshio Taniguchi's expansion and renovation of New York's Museum of Modern Art. The politics and aesthetics of space are of equal concern to smaller venues where the difference between art hung on exposed brick walls and pristine white ones signals the difference between grass-roots exposure and upwardly mobile sales.
That subtext of space is being given an amusing spin by local writer-cum-art entrepreneur Joey Orr, an imaginative Atlanta native who's chosen an unlikely venue for a series of art exhibits: the humble, utilitarian shed. Formerly home to brown recluse spiders and dad's aborted home-repair projects, the shed is the outdoor version of the attic, a realm of denial where the overflow of American accumulation finds a country home. If the gallery space is all about fetishizing setting (and thus, the work that hangs there), the shed is the inverse -- the kind of forgotten space you put things you'd rather just went away.

ShedSpace, Orr's reinstallment of the shed to center stage, has the energy of the lemonade stand or puppet shows staged in summertime backyards as a kid -- the kind of anarchical lark far from the self-serious pretensions of the art world.

Throughout August, the ShedSpace exhibitions will feature a host of artists displaying their work for one day only in four sheds in East Atlanta, Decatur, Reynolds-town and East Lake. Shed owners chose the artists they wanted to present in their own sheds, though Orr says that in the case of the last shed, owned by Todd Johnson and Anne Palmer, "they didn't really have any connection to the art scene at all, so I hooked them up with Ballroom Studios."

The debut ShedSpace is in Orr's own Decatur backyard and features works by 27-year-old Georgia State graduate Alli Royce Soble. Soble's work has been featured in the 1999 Nexus Biennial and Hairdos and Tractor Pulls at Trinity Gallery. This is, thus far, her first "outbuilding show." Soble, who realizes the importance of venue says she wisely looked at the shed before deciding to do the show. As young artists quickly learn while pursuing their BFA's, the wrong shed could break an artist's career.

The idea for ShedSpace came to Orr after a visit several years ago to San Antonio where he was inspired by Blue Star Arts, an industrial space revamped into an art complex. Of particular interest to Orr was a small room housed behind the complex in which artist Ethel Shipton allowed a rotating cadre of emerging artists to exhibit for a week. It is, says Orr, "the same concept as the shed -- where they have three days to move in and do whatever they want to do, the middle day to exhibit, then three days to return the room to the condition they found it." In other words, a nightmare of disarray and rusting tools. Each ShedSpace project can be seen by the public for only one evening, on the Saturday of the opening.

Soble has taken the shed theme and run with it, offering a pun-oriented spin on the utility shed in works melding digital photography, painting and collage, all in an homage to that classically macho accessory: the tool. In one digital image, "Screwed," a woman's head vibrates violently on the head of a screw, while in another, a confused young man wears a wheelbarrow for a hat. Soble's installation blends the overt tools of her trade such as brushes, greasepaint and charcoal (displayed on a small table at the center of the shed) with more covert, technological tools like the printers, computers and cameras that allow her to translate idea to canvas. Like characters from her images come to life, Soble also displays a selection of the hammers, screws, screwdrivers and knives that make up the handyman's repertoire.

"There were a lot of things we wanted to accomplish with the show," says Orr. One of the things was to support the arts community by having a place for them to show and a cool project for them to be a part of. Curious backyard dabblers can spend every Saturday in August finding out just what lies behind the shed mystique. There are two remaining ShedSpace exhibits on view this August. Artists Charlotte and Tom Wegrzynowski will show their moody oil paintings with the Concept Union on Aug. 19, and photographer Todd Carroll, writer/performer Jason Wagner, painter Jeremy Dost and other Ballroom Studios participants will have work on display Aug. 26.

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Arts: Visual Arts

The Year in Arts
Local artists' works foretell 9-11's far-reaching effects on the cultural landscape
BY FELICIA FEASTER
Published 12.26.01


As Watergate, Vietnam or the assassination of John F. Kennedy were to previous generations, Sept. 11 was our own paradigm shift. While its impact on our culture won't be fully understood for a long time, its effect was immediately apparent among visual artists who struggled to deal with the tragedy in their artwork.
Joe Peragine was just one of a host of local artists who confronted this history-altering event in his own artwork. He created a video called simply "9/11" for the group show What's So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding organized by artists Mia Merlin and Ann-Marie M. Downs at Art Spot in the wake of the attacks.

Peragine says Sept. 11 will inevitably alter his own work.

"It's impossible not to. I feel like my work is really tuned into what's happening in my life, so I can't imagine it not."

Artists like Craig Dongoski used their art-making as a public forum for treating the many emotions and contradictions inspired by Sept. 11. His audio work "War Worlds," which blends Orson Welles' infamous 1938 radio broadcast "The War of the Worlds" with a CNN broadcast of the WTC attack, appeared beside work made by some of his own graduate students in What's So Funny ... .

For Dongoski, the television coverage of the WTC attack only crystallized larger problems with the media. "I felt the coverage that day began a campaign of fear. Fear, simplification of issues and squelching alternative/opposing viewpoints is what breeds nationalism, and I feel nationalism is a very dangerous thing."

As to whether the events have changed his art, Dongoski, like every local artist asked, is unequivocal. "My interest in the artist as collective was reinforced infinitely that day. Myself, my work, are forever changed," he says.

While some artists used the terrorist attacks to bring political activism and a need for discussion to the fore, others set out to honor those who died in the attacks as part of a new, community-minded art-making.

Atlanta curator/artist Cecelia Kane, along with a small group of like-minded artists, organized "Project Nine Eleven," a memorial displayed at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center composed of 5,000 red, white and blue ribbons inscribed with the names of the victims of the attacks. The installation of the public memorial coincided, ironically, with the Nov. 16 opening of the violence-themed show Rear Window.

Perhaps the local artist with the most direct relation to the events of Sept. 11 was Alli Royce Soble, a painter and photographer who was vacationing in Manhattan on the day of the attacks. Soble managed to capture an array of images of the aftermath as New Yorkers held candlelight vigils in Union Square or illuminated Times Square signboards showed images of firefighters responding to the tragedy. Soble exhibited the work for the first time Oct. 25 at the Showcase School.

"My work has been affected greatly," says Soble. "I have taken old paintings and have painted over them in white to create something new. I pull [off] papers that were once on the canvas to reveal what was once underneath. It is a process of change within me and how I am changing my work."

Says Soble, "Everything has changed in my life since that time in NYC."

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BIRDI'S on Decatur Square

The Hudspeth Dining Report
March 2002

Over the past couple of years, Decatur has experienced a downtown resurgence, attracting many new restaurants and retailers to the area. Birdi's is one of those restaurant establishments, which recently opened on the square on March 12, 2002.

The three partners, Dewayne Mullis, Doug Sheffield and Sherri Dupree, along with consultant, Deena Keeler have converted the former 10-year-old restaurant, The Food Business, operated by Keeler, into a hip, funky causal dining arena, with an extensive Martini list. Birdi's offers seafood, pasta, a large selection of salads and sandwiches all within a three level loft-like interior.

"We wanted to create an environment which was fun, creative, and cozy," said partner Dewayne Mullis. The choice of having dinner at a conventional table or seated on a sofa is part of the comfort factor. The main level has four military navy colored sofas, two love seats and two ottomans. Large coffee tables surround each sofa area, making it easy to balance meal and conversation. There is seating on all three levels, with a large bar on the main level, which seats up to 35.

The color blocked interior is jazzed up with jalapeno green, sunny yellow, fire engine red, violet and khaki sun and set off by vibrant artwork by local artist Alli Royce Soble. The main level bar area is tiled in terra-cotta colored flooring. On the mezzanine level, the floor turns to an all-black tile intermingled with red and yellow tiles, giving it a very artsy, deco effect.

 

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WHY YOU SHOULD LIVE IN EAST POINT, GEORGIA???

East Point is southwest of the neighborhoods of Atlanta in Fulton County, Georgia, United States. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 39,595. The city is named for being at the opposite end of the former Atlanta & West Point Railroad from West Point, Georgia.

East Point is home to R&B and hip hop groups such as TLC, OutKast, Coolbreeze, Organized Noize, and Goodie Mob. It is also the home of Teddy Geiger and author and film critic Alonso Duralde. A growing fine arts community includes artists: Bjay Allen, Marc Villanueva, Su Abbott, and Alli Royce Soble.