February 9 Metro Arts

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is a beloved channel for fans of classic films. It has a dedicated team in Atlanta that works hard to create a rich cinematic experience. TCM has faced challenges, such as corporate mergers and the loss of key staff, but its loyal fan base and support from famous directors like Martin Scorsese have helped it overcome. The Atlanta team is passionate about film and takes pride in their work. They organize events like the TCM Classic Film Festival and run a podcast featuring interviews with film figures. TCM's dedication to preserving and promoting classic films has made it a cherished brand. In another article, the life and work of artist Jack Whitten are explored. Whitten's art is focused on the materiality of paint and has evolved over time to reflect his complex relationship with the South. Despite initially pursuing a career in medicine, Whitten ultimately followed his passion for art. This program is intended for a print-impaired audience and is brought to you by the Georgia Radio Reading Service, GARS. Welcome to Metro Arts for Friday, February 9th. I am Kristen Moody for the Georgia Radio Reading Service. Metro Arts is brought to you by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. For our first article, we go to the Atlanta Magazine publication online for Why We'll Always Need Turner Classic Movies, plus host Ben Mankiewicz's Top TCM Movies by Felicia Feaster. Like other creative enterprises that get national exposure but can be overlooked in their hometowns, Turner Classic Movies is a lodestar for fans of classic film that is sometimes taken for granted in Atlanta. The network's film purist canon of uncut, commercial-free movies piped into American homes like cinematic catnip 24 hours a day has made it a beloved binge watch for top directors like Nancy Meyers, Alexander Payne, and Martin Scorsese. TCM debuted in 1994 with Gone with the Wind and this year turns 30, having weathered a whirlwind of corporate mergers, the death of its iconic host, Robert Osborne, and the dismissal of much of its leadership in 2023. Working out of Turner's Techwood campus, a key group of Atlanta-based talent has been programming films for the network, creating documentaries and short films to support the TCM mission, running a TCM podcast, and orchestrating Hollywood's TCM Classic Film Festival, which will mark its 15th anniversary this year on April 18-21. The Peabody award-winning network boasts an Atlanta staff of long-timers fiercely loyal to the brand. It really is like a family, says the TCM Classic Film Festival's director, Genevieve McGillicutty, who has been with TCM since 2004. TCM's Atlanta team tends to geek out hard over classic film. The senior director of original productions, Scott McGee, has been with the network for 24 years. With a master's degree in film from Emory, he has seen his dreams come true, interacting with the kind of silver screen figures who defined his pre-VCR childhood. He recounts how he was once scolded by How Green Was My Valley star Maureen O'Hara for never having been to Ireland, despite his Emerald Isle ancestry. As a kid growing up in Peachtree City, he was obsessed with Tarzan films and would mark up the family TV guide with his movie picks for the coming week. I felt a kinship to these movies. I felt like they were speaking to me, says McGee. Like McGee, McGillicutty attended Emory's graduate film program, studying Japanese film. In her 19 years at TCM, she's shared meals and tête-à-têtes with stars like Peter O'Toole and Jean-Paul Belmondo. McGee, too, is mad for movies. She remembers years ago overhearing a conversation at the TCM Classic Film Festival headquarters, the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles, in which fans were discussing the merits of 30s and 40s character actor Franklin Pangborn. Her heart sang. I thought, yes, these are my people. Being able to be a part of creating that experience and giving these films a platform to be discovered and to be enjoyed by people is deeply satisfying, says McGillicutty, who longs to someday bring Julie Christie to the annual TCM Festival. Growing up in Erie, Pennsylvania, TCM director of podcast programming Angela Carone had a father who was a classic film fan, known for his impersonations of stars like Jimmy Stewart and Marlon Brando. At age seven, Carone was doing Mae West to her father's W.C. Fields. This January, Carone and TCM host Ben Mankiewicz debuted a new podcast, Talking Pictures, which features film figures like Mel Brooks, Emerald Fennell, and Errol Morris talking about the films that helped shape their lives. The love of film is so strong. There is such a bonding force between everybody on that staff, and everyone is so mission-driven that it's not easy to find in the working world, says Carone. This small group serves as the brain trust for a film brand so beloved that fans regularly pay upwards of $2,000 for TCM classic cruises to places like Cabo San Lucas and Disney's Castaway Cay, where they have rubbed shoulders with the likes of director Roger Corman and Richard Dreyfuss. With the corporate merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia in 2022 came the layoff of core TCM staff, like McGillicuddy and LA-based senior VP of programming and content strategy Charles Tabish, who had been at the network for 26 years. After 25 years at TCM, general manager Paula Chang-Yong opted to leave Warner Bros. Discovery as layoffs loomed. That TCM gutting became a cinematic cause celeb, inspiring long-time TCM fans Martin Scorsese, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Steven Spielberg to meet with Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav. The directors advocated for rehiring the TCM staff, and Tabish and McGillicuddy went back to work. Stars weighed in on social media, with Ryan Reynolds tweeting that TCM is a holy corner of film history and a living, breathing library for an entire art form. Please don't fuck with TCM. We've had this very clear statement to the world about how valued we are, says Mankiewicz, of the upside of the merger's very public fric-a-fuffle. But that post-merger hot mess chronicled in The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, and The Wrap has in many ways overshowered the ongoing grit of this local team of TCM film nuts working behind the scenes for decades to shape TCM into the film juggernaut that it is today. Mankiewicz, who travels to Atlanta every month for TV tapings, finds the unpretentious, unapologetic film love of Atlanta's TCM crew a delightful break from LA's company-town ethos. It's easier to become jaded about this business in Los Angeles, says Mankiewicz, whose own family of film world luminaries, screenwriters, producers, directors, have lived in the City of Angels for generations. When you're in Atlanta, nobody says, let's do lunch. Host Ben Mankiewicz's Top TCM Movies Sweet Smell of Success, 1957. I love journalists and journalism movies, says Mankiewicz. It is gross and dirty and scummy, and I love every second of this movie. Paths of Glory, 1957. Along with Saving Private Ryan, Paths of Glory sits atop the list of the greatest war pictures ever made, says Mankiewicz. It's a treatise on the madness of war told through the numbing madness of World War I, the dumbest war ever fought, which is saying something. Twelve Angry Men, 1957. A tense, claustrophobic look at the biases we all carry, consciously or not, as well as our innate self-interest. It's also a compelling story, beautifully told, led by an actor who projected humility and decency as well as anyone, Henry Fonda. Saving Private Ryan, 1998. I saw Saving Private Ryan in 1998 when I was working as a reporter in Miami. I saw it with a Vietnam veteran and a World War II vet. They both came out of the film wiping away tears, clearly moved by what they'd just experienced. The Narrow Margin, 1952. I've recently renewed my love affair with this 1952 Richard Fleischer film. It's one part Charles McGraw, the cop, who slowly worked his way up to leading noir roles, one part Marie Windsor, the mob widow set to testify against the outfit, who's as cold and steely as a femme fatale can get, and one part the dialogue. Charles McGraw describes Marie Windsor to his partner as a 60-cent special, cheap, flashy, strictly poison under the gravy. Jurassic Park, 1993. It's on the list because it's as perfect a movie theater experience as I've ever had. I saw it with a girlfriend in D.C. on opening weekend in 1993. Uptown theater, midnight show, packed house. It was a madhouse. Notting Hill, 1999. I loathe the term rom-com because I believe it has subliminally taught us that romantic comedies are trivial cliches unworthy of top ten lists. Nonsense, to which I'll add I'm just a boy standing in front of a movie screen asking to love it. Midnight Run, 1988. This is, I've now determined, the funniest movie I've ever seen. De Niro is perfect. His work here is as good as he is in The Godfather Part II, Taxi Driver, and The King of Comedy. Out of Sight, 1998. This was another seminally important viewing experience. In Miami, opening weekend in 1998, I fell in love with Jennifer Lopez, with George Clooney, with Don Cheadle, with Steve Zahn, with Ving Rhames, with Catherine Keener, with Dennis Farina, with Albert Brooks. Mostly, though, I fell hard for Steven Soderbergh, the director, who told this story based on an Elmore Leonard novel in such a creative, nonlinear way. I walked out of the theater after Out of Sight exhilarated, buzzing with excitement. It remains the best feeling I've ever had after seeing a movie. Three Days of the Condor, 1975. Robert Redford has never been more handsome than in Condor, except in The Thing, and Jeremiah Johnson, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He looks pretty good in All the President's Men, too, which should be on this list. What's wrong with me? Casablanca, 1942. It's the best studio movie ever made, period. Might be the best movie ever made, too. Romance, check. International intrigue, check. Danger, check. Emotional heft, I guarantee everyone with a soul cries at least twice. That was Why We'll Always Need Turner Classic Movies by Felicia Feaster from Atlanta Magazine. Next, we move to the Burnaway publication for Jack Whitten, An Artist's Life by Burnaway Staff, February 2nd, 2024. Growing up in segregated Bessemer, Alabama, the late Jack Whitten notes, I can build anything I want to build. I'm not a narrative painter. I don't do the idea or the painting being the illustration of an idea. I don't do that. It's all about the materiality of the paint. Known for his painting as gesture slab canvases and black monolith series, Whitten's work has evolved over five decades in order to speak to his conflicted relationship with the South. Although Whitten always made art as a kid, when he went to the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, he followed the socially acceptable plans to become a doctor in the U.S. Air Force. The absence of an arts program motivated the artist to transfer to Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he began to study visual art. Transferring in 1960, Whitten landed there in the throes of the civil rights era, ultimately participating in demonstrations. Disgusted by the violence that met the marches, Whitten was driven out of the South to New York City, where he studied and graduated from Cooper Union with a bachelor's in fine arts in 1964. He resided there until his passing in 2018 at the age of 78. Whitten's invention of the developer, the 12-foot long tool that moved acrylic paint in singular motions across the surface of a canvas, revealed the artist's ingenuity and his dexterity with found materials. The weight of aging shifted his work onto applied tesserae, or acrylic tiles, onto canvas, and then allowing the reflected light to speak for itself. One of Whitten's most well-known projects, the black monolith series, memorializes great figures in black history. Addressing individuals from Barbara Jordan to Jacob Lawrence, reverence permeates the depictions. In material and subject, Whitten's legacy continues to speak to young artists today. Jack Whitten at the Met Brewer in New York. African sculpture was not merely a formal influence on Whitten. He took the symbolic power of its traditional materials and purposes seriously. Whitten's sculptures often suggest protective and empowering functions similar to those associated with Congo power figures from Central Africa, an example of which is on display in the exhibition. The sculpture, the Guardian III for Jack, overlaps abstracted mulberry wood forms reminiscent of a blade and sheath, which are partially wrapped in blue nylon fishing line. Whitten was, among other things, an avid fisherman. The artist also made similar sculptures for his wife and daughter, Mary and Marcenie. Like traditional African power figures, each contains a secret object in its core. Kept in the home, these three works underline the fundamentally vivid nature of Whitten's sculpture practice. Supernatural America at the Speed Museum, Louisville. Within view of Dyle's monument is work by another artist with ties to Bessemer, Jack Whitten. Head One and Form, Third Set One, represent Whitten's ghost paintings made through a special process of applying then removing paint. It wasn't until after the fact, according to the exhibition's curator, Robert Cozzolino, that Whitten made a connection to the haunting feelings of these pieces. With their fuzzy and ethereal qualities, the paintings reminded Whitten of the legend of Henry Wells. In 1878, Wells, a black freedman, was arrested for arson. While Wells was inside the Pickens County Courthouse in Carrollton, Alabama, a white lynch mob formed outside. A bolt of lightning struck the window Wells was looking out of, and his face remained etched into the glass. Wells' waiter lynched, and his legacy affects the town still. That was Jack Whitten, An Artist's Life, by Burnaway Staff. Next, we move to the Arts ATL publication for Q&A. Fahamu Piku, African Diaspora Art Museum founder, celebrates New Home by Angela Oliver. The African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta, Adama, enjoyed a banner year in 2023, says Dr. Fahamu Piku, artist, scholar, and founder of the museum. The Diaspora Museum started as a museum without walls that took art experiences into other spaces. It has now found a home in Pittsburgh Yards. The Pittsburgh neighborhood in southwest Atlanta was founded by formerly enslaved people and holds a lot of history. It was an early location for Clark College, now Clark Atlanta University, and a once-flourishing black business district. That inspired Piku to seek it out from the beginning. Such divine alignment, Piku says, has led to packed house exhibits and artists' talk, a successful bridge residency program that connects Atlanta to artists from throughout the diaspora, participation in Atlanta Art Week, and the momentum for making its dreams of a permanent home a reality. The village, the concept driving the museum and its leadership, is revving up for its first exhibition of 2024, which features the work of esteemed artist and Spelman College professor, Dr. Arturo Lindsay and Kelly Taylor Mitchell, an artist and educator, whose work centers on oral history and ancestral memory. The artists are recipients of Adama's 30,000 and 20,000 Nellie Mae Rowe Awards, respectively. With a new exhibit scheduled each quarter in 2024, including the works of South African artist, Zana Masumaka, and Damon and Kimberly Fisher Collection, Piku reflects on the Diaspora Museum's first five years, its commitment to the neighborhood, and its plans for the future. Arts ATL, tell me about the gallery space in Pittsburgh Yards. Fahamu Piku Pittsburgh was the original location idea when we first started planning Adama in 2018. I had always seen it as an opportunity to activate that side of the city with art and culture. It's intentional for us to elevate and activate art spaces in historically black communities. Pittsburgh is one of the oldest and one of the first free settlements of black people in the city. Knowing that history and thinking about the impact that an institution like Adama could have, it was really exciting to envision it there. Very early on, when Pittsburgh Yards was still in the planning phases, we met with the development team. They showed us the plans for the space that we now occupy as our gallery. Arts ATL, community is a cornerstone of all that you do. What does it mean to be in the Pittsburgh community? It's been really exciting to be there and bring this kind of programming to a part of the city that has been overlooked. It's important to be able to put a flag in the ground for black culture, both historically and contemporaneously. As the landscape changes, as the neighborhood changes, as the city expands, we don't want to lose what this community has been. We don't want that history and memory to be erased. The response certainly demonstrates that what we're building has value to the community. Arts ATL, what could Adama's presence mean for the future of Pittsburgh in the artscape? PICU, as Atlanta grows, institutional diversity becomes even more critical, not only in terms of representation, but also location. There could be an arts district in Pittsburgh or West End or Alpharetta or whatever. Atlanta is big enough, and more than one arts district just makes the city more dynamic. Right now, the concentration of arts and culture lives in a very small radius within Midtown, and that assumes that people will have access. By locating and building art-based community spaces throughout the city, we can engage all the communities and treat them with the same level of compassion and humanity. Arts ATL, how does the museum maintain its founding concept of boundlessness, since it now has four walls? PICU, the idea of being wall-less gave us expansive and challenging ways to think about how museums can present themselves. As for our long-term goals for physical space, we think about how it can be a destination, a village, a collection of connected spaces, its own art city with restaurants and cafes, green spaces where people can hang out, and event spaces for a concert or outdoor performance. We would love to be a place where even if you're not going to an exhibition, you still want to be there because you know culture lives there, art lives there, people and community live there. Arts ATL, you've defined ADAMA as a collector of experiences rather than art. What does that mean for the museum long-term? PICU, we're trying to challenge our notion of what a collection is. So what does it mean to be a collector of and presenter of experiences? How do we create a space that's as dynamic as the culture that we are representing? As a diasporic community, we experience culture and art as a full-body thing. It's not that you just walk in and look at this thing on the wall. Everything that we do has purpose. It's intended to move you in a certain way. Arts ATL, the museum was lifted to a new level in 2023. How will you continue that growth this year? PICU, our big mission this year is fundraising. I keep joking around with the board that we're in the tween phase, that awkward phase where we've shown that there's a hunger and a desire for our programming and people are really interested and excited. Now we're trying to meet our capacity goals by hiring staff and then focusing on a capital campaign to support a permanent home, which we plan will still be in Pittsburgh. We've celebrated our five-year anniversary and it's eye-opening to see how much we've grown in a very short time. The more we do, the more gets asked of us and it's really affirming. The year 2023 showed us that we have something special. That was Q&A. Fahamu PICU, African Diaspora Art Museum founder, celebrates new home by Angela Oliver. Next, what to see, do, and hear, Tinsley Ellis, Chanel, Pillow Talk, Handel, and more by Arts ATL staff. Film and TV. To celebrate Black History Month, Out on Film is presenting a Black Power Showcase double feature on Sunday at Out on Film Theater. The Dancer is a documentary about Gerard Alexander, who performed around the world but ended up homeless in Atlanta. Beyond the Aggressives, 25 years later, revisits four of the original subjects from Daniel Petal's groundbreaking 2005 film The Aggressives, a documentary about masculine presenting people of color assigned female of birth. 6.30 p.m., free. The 1978 film I Want to Hold Your Hand screens at the Plaza Theater on Friday. The plot involves a group of teenagers who travel to New York City to meet the Beatles before the band's historic appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. The date for the event marks 60 years to the day that Beatlemania entered America's living room through that legendary appearance on February 9, 1964. Tickets are $15, with discounts available. 7 p.m. Theater. The 2024 winning play for the Alliance Theater Candida National Graduate Playwriting Competition is Furlough's Paradise, running through March 4 on the Hertz stage. Written by A.K. Payne, the play focuses on former best friends and cousins Sade, Kai Heese, and Mina, Asha Basha Danae, who grow apart after middle school and reunite at Sade's mother's funeral. Saturday's staging includes a post-show gathering with cast members. Jim Farmer wrote about the play for Arts ATL. Tickets start at $60, with discounts available. Remember This, the lesson of Jan Karski, is on stage at Theatrical Outfit, a one-man show performed by Andrew Benetor. Remember This is based on the story of Karski, a Polish diplomat who was tempted to spread the news of the Holocaust during World War II. In his recent review, Arts ATL writer Benjamin Carr praises Benetor's work as a storyteller as well as his impressive range and emotional depth as Karski. Carr adds that the script by Clark Young and Derek Goldman is layered and verbose. Tickets start at $50, with discounts available. Music. On February 15th and February 16th, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra will present the choirs from Morehouse and Spelman Colleges for a program titled Carlos Simon Curates. The program features Atlanta-based composers, including Simon, a Grammy-nominated composer whose work explores contemporary life in Black America. Symphony Hall, 8 p.m. Tickets are $38 and up. The Baroque Splendor Concert at First Presbyterian Church on Friday will feature the Georgia State University Choir and Atlanta Baroque Orchestra and George Frederick Handel's Dixit Dominus. The choral work uses the Latin text of Psalm 110, which begins with the words Dixit Dominus. The work was completed on April 17th while Handel was living in Italy. $7.30 p.m. free. Atlanta-based blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter Tinsley Ellis says his new solo acoustic album Naked Truth is both a departure and an arrival. Ellis has been recording and traveling the world for more than four decades and is known for his blistering electric blues rock. This album and his show at Eddie's Attic on Friday, the first stop on his international tour to promote the album, features a change of tune, acoustic folk blues. Shannon Marie Tovey interviews Ellis for Arts ATL. 7 p.m. tickets start at $46.17. A special candlelight musical experience celebrating the life and legacy of Dexter Scott King, son of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mrs. Coretta Scott King, will take place Saturday evening at Ebenezer Baptist Church. The event will be broadcast live on Fox 5 Atlanta and online. $6.30 p.m. free. Art and Design. The group exhibit Bone of My Bone, Flesh of My Flesh, Heart of My Heart, The Figure in Contemporary Art, opens Thursday at Day and Night Projects Gallery. Featured artists are Henry Andrews II, George F. Baker III, Jamie Bull, Ariel Danielle, Danae Antoine, Trey Dowell, Sean Fahey, Kyle Ford, Jill Frank, Luanelle Havet, Michael Jones, Maria Coral, Shaina Worldwide, Tim Short, Skylar Simpson, Tori Tinsley, and Jasmine Nicole Williams. Opening reception 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Viewing hours Fridays and Saturdays noon to 5 or by appointment through March 9. NAA HBCU Living the Legacy, Celebrating 25 Years, is a group exhibition of the National Alliance of Artists from Historically Black Colleges and Universities. It's at the Chastain Art Center Gallery through March 9, curated by Christine M. Perry-Espinosa. Atlanta museums and galleries are showing a lot of textile exhibits this season, among them Atlanta Contemporary, where Coulter Fussell is showing her newest body of work, Pillow Talk. Here she elaborates on personal narrative through the process of quilting and piecework. Fussell finds her material strictly from donations to her studio, from shower curtains to t-shirts, through May 19. Dance. Lyric London is a director, choreographer, cinematographer, and musician who creates visual narratives and soundscapes about love, connection, strength, and the experiences of the Black LGBTQ plus community. London's new evening length show, Wonderland, a dance musical, reimagines the beloved classic, Alice in Wonderland, in a contemporary gender-bending way. Seven stages, Sunday at 245 p.m. and 645 p.m. General admission is $35. VIP tickets are also $35. Atlanta Ballet will present the American premiere of Coco Chanel, The Life of a Fashion Icon, on Friday at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center. Choreographed by Annabelle Ochoa, the full-length ballet about the world renowned designer features sets and costumes by Jerome Kaplan and the Atlanta Ballet Orchestra playing Peter Salem's original score. Michaela Taylor will portray Chanel on opening night. Arts ATL dance writer Jillian Ann Renault explored the creation of the costumes in her story this week, Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., also on February 16th and 17th at 8 p.m. Tickets start at $26. Books. On Monday, Acapella Books and Georgia Center for the Book will host award-winning investigative journalists Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klademan, authors of Find Me the Votes, a hard-charging Georgia prosecutor, a rogue president, and the plot to steal an American election. They will be in conversation with Greg Blustein, a state politics reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. First Baptist Church of Decatur, 7 p.m. Registration is recommended. This event is free. That was What to See, Do, and Hear, Tinsley, Ellis, Chanel, Pelotok, Handel, and More by Arts ATL staff. Next up, Cullum's Notebook, Diverse Group Exhibits Explore the South's Many Identities by Jerry Cullum. This year has started with shows exploring the South's many ethnic identities, its historical and environmental issues, and the personal identities of the individuals who live in the region. There are also shows that allow close study of purely formalistic aesthetic topics. The formalist explorations begin with a show that also illuminates personal identities, although this aspect is distinctly oblique. I, We, and the Space Between at the J.C. L.R.C. Gallery at Palermo College through February 29th features an 18-foot-long collaborative scroll plus solo works by six well-known Atlanta artists, Lisa Allenbeck, Ellis Crean, Erin Dixon, Stephanie Colpe, Deborah Santini, and Stephanie Smith. These artists are friends whose styles are extraordinarily diverse but unified by subtle shared points of sensibility. The diversity of individual styles and preferred media makes the extraordinary achievement of the single collective artwork all the more remarkable. At Echo Contemporary Art through February 17th, Jacob O'Kelly has curated Interconnect, subtly related work by Zinnia Ames, Amanda Banks, Eliza Bentz, Leslie Drennan, Cheyenne Hendrickson, Seema Hossain, Casey Mae McGuire, and Raymond Pedrone, positioned to articulate nuanced dialogues about our relationships with nature, society, and the spaces we inhabit. This ambitious exploration only appears formalist because of its proximity to collective telling, as well as Southern-rooted perspectives on place, history, and emergence. Curators Heather Byrd Harris and Jennifer Williams adjacent exhibition, Delving into Ethnic Identities and Environmental Activism, also through February 17th. The exhibit features an extraordinary collection of 19 Southern-born or Southern-rooted artists. By curatorial design, most of them are based in or have roots in New Orleans and Atlanta. These artists find visually engaging ways to explore diverse topics from Shana M. Griffin's previously untold stories of Black women displaced from housing in New Orleans, and Hannah Shalhoub's recycled component works on paper, symbolic of environmental issues surrounding the Crescent City, to Jeffrey Deisenberg's poems written in the Indigenous language of Ishikoi. The exhibit also features Indigenous artworks from Johnny Diacon, an Oklahoma artist descended from the Muscogee Creek people deported on the 19th century's Trail of Tears. The remainder of the show contains far more topics and artworks than can be covered here. For example, there is a mixed-media series by Alabama artist Jenny Fine, regarding the ways in which Southern cooking was and is regarded in middle-class households as women's work. Most of the art is for sale. One that is freely given away is Hannah Palmer's Department of Urban Springs brochure, a convincing but fictional informational guide to the long-concealed natural springs in metro Atlanta that were restored, her guide tells us, to renewed glory in 2024 and 2025 as Georgia State Parks. On February 17th, Palmer will lead a walking tour of the sites of these still very much covered over water resources. Other events associated with collective telling are Anne Hill Bond's upcoming conversation with Kiyomi Rollins, February 15th, with a performance portraying 1906 Atlanta race massacre victim George Union Wilder, and a closing reception on February 17th, including artist talks by Kai Lumumba, Barrow, and Griffin. Also deserving of attention are the interpretations of meaning, memory, and mark making by the four artists Esteban Patino, Shannon Davis, Aaron Dixon, and Susan Lenz in Meaning Making at Spalding-Nick's Fine Art through March 15th. Patino extends his well-known mixture of self-created alphabet and allusions to the visual art of ancient Americas and affirmation of his personal heritage in Riddle. It's a large canvas that outstrips his more familiar works in the rest of the gallery. Dixon continues subtle mixes of memory-oriented figuration. Lenz uses small vintage objects, bottle caps, Viewmaster reels, to create evocative mandalas, and Davis contributes surrealist photographs that reveal the alien qualities of Southerness as she was expected to learn it years ago as a newly arrived Northerner. Davis's controlled burn is also summed up in a matchbox-shaped and sized artist's book that has been collected by museums. At Thomas Dean Fine Art, Linda Mitchell's Secrets through February 17th extends her thematic explorations of consciously anthropomorphized animal nature in paintings on canvas and works on paper. They contain the results of a year of personal meanderings on paper. These meanderings also resulted in remarkable prose poems written inconspicuously on the works themselves or on the wall labels that accompany them. They form the text of an accompanying artist's book that elegantly transcends the genre of exhibition catalog. That was Callum's notebook, Diverse Group Exhibits Explore the South's Many Identities by Jerry Cullum. Next up, Review. Music, dance, tell doomed love story in Atlanta Baroque's Dido and Anais by Pierre Roux. In theater as in life, you can often point to a moment when a love story turns tragic, of words misunderstood or promises broken. In the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra's production of Henry Purcell's opera Dido and Anais, their romance starts to unravel after a goth drag queen sings a fate-sealing line, the queen of Carthage whom we hate In a deliciously over-the-top scene, our Morticia Adams-like sorceress and her evil witches plot against the legendary Dido in her doomed affair with Anais, our hero of Troy. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, the ABO partnered with the contemporary dancers of stave dance and the Georgia State University's singers for a delightful production of Dido and Anais. The ABO billed the show as the period instrument ensemble's most ambitious project to date and performed it twice over the weekend at Emory's Glenn Memorial Chapel, repeating this evening at Spivey Hall. The late 17th century opera is lean and lasts about an hour. Its origins and intended audience, the king, a girl's school, are murky. There are just a few characters and it can be effective with minimal staging and decor. In the ABO production, with stave dance founder George Stabe as stage director and co-choreographer, the action unfolded smoothly and with smart attention to detail. In casting and attitude, the show zipped along with youthful vigor, fresh, energetic, and fun. Nathan Tate's libretto tells a poignant variation of an eternal story. A woman is loved and abandoned by a foreign military man who prizes duty over honor. From Ariadne and Theseus in Greek mythology to Puccini's Madame Butterfly in the 20th century. Whatever his true motives, the guy is invariably a selfish cad and the woman, now stripped of virtue, has no life worth living. That's where Purcell's Queen Dido begins the opera. A sad woman, already tormented by her fate, soprano Hannah DePriest, making her debut in the role, offered an endearing broken Dido, even before she actually yielded to Aeneas' advances. DePriest's voice is supple, focused, and lovely in her middle range, where most of the role sits. Noble in character and voice, she connected the opera's beginning with its end. In her final lament, When I am laid in earth, one of the most famous arias in the history of opera, she articulated Dido's plea, Remember me, but forget my fate, with tender pathos. DePriest's lyrically crisp enunciation, especially the T consonant in the word fate, somehow made her suffering all the more vivid. Across the evening, Glenn Chapel's acoustic made it difficult to catch all the words, but DePriest's articulation cut through the sonic reverberance. Michael Galvin with a booming bass voice effectively stole the show as the jumbo-sized drag queen sorceress. Wearing a comically vulgar black skin suit with a long black wig and stiletto heels, he towered over everyone in height and sang with a voice twice as large. Galvin is a fast-rising opera singer on traditional stages, and as a club persona, performs as the burlesque character Donatella Fermata. Here, for the first time, he combined both sides of his art in one unforgettable character. When Galvin was on stage, you thought it would surely be impossible to hear or see it done better. John Merritt and Sherry Latham designed the memorable costumes, often with surprising fashion combinations and imagery drawn from many eras, from antiquity to the go-go 60s to today's pop culture. But the opera's real villain isn't the sorceress and her trickery, but our hero Aeneas. Brian Giebler, with a bright tenor voice, strutted onstage as a bad boy, a sort of Mad Max motorcycle punk with a face tattoo, sneering and callous. As he seduced Dido, you sensed his insincerity, even as the scene was charmingly presented. As the lovers sat together, Daniel Swenberg, playing a Baroque guitar, walked across the stage to serenade them. Still, Giebler's manner and singing suggested that Dido would not be his last conquest. In George Stabe and Sarah Helmer's choreography, the six members of Stabe Dance, some of them talented students, danced an elegant combination of Baroque, ballet, and athletic, free-flowing contemporary styles. They were often at their most compelling when expressing the characters' emotions and psychological states. The standouts were Bailey Jo Harbaugh and the troupe's two young men, Zach Pritz and Henry Koskoff, who were the most crisp and graceful in movement, as well as most attuned to the music. The orchestra was led by ABO Artistic Director Julie Andreschi, a violinist who's also a noted Baroque dancer. The ensemble's casual virtuosity and tight rhythmic sense gave the music a springy dance-like physicality. Across the performance, everything felt organic and flowing. Another key element of the evening's success came from the smaller singing parts. Dido's attendant, Belinda, gets many of the opera's most hummable tunes, and soprano Andrea Walker sang them beautifully with clarity and poise. The two witches, Wanda Yang-Temko and Morgan Watts, snarled and cackled with malicious delight. The 12-voice chorus prepared by Deanna Joseph was superb in look and sound. Dressed in velvety black and allurged to the stage deacon, they'd sway to the music and react to the drama, turning their heads to watch the dancers in motion or gawking in shock as Aeneas led the stage. A young soprano, Juliana Bolaño, stepped out of the choir to sing the spirit, one of the many evening's enchanting moments. That was Review, Music, Dance, Tell Doomed Love Story in Atlanta Baroque's Dido and Aeneas by Pierre Roux. Next up, French designer Jerome Kaplan creates magic for Atlanta Ballet's Coco Chanel by Gillian Ann Renaud. When Paris-based designer Jerome Kaplan was commissioned to create the costumes for Coco Chanel, the life of a fashion icon, the new full-length ballet based on the life of Gabrielle Coco Chanel, he procrastinated. Walking in Chanel's footsteps was extremely intimidating for me, almost paralyzing, he told ArtsATL via email recently. Doing Chanel on stage is clearly impossible, but Kaplan made it possible. His experience as a designer for choreographers such as Alexei Ratmansky and ballet companies across the globe gave him a strong foundation, and he was delighted when Coco's choreographer, the acclaimed Annabelle Ochoa, approved of his ideas. Ochoa is very familiar with portraying famous women with distinctive sartorial styles. Among the dozens of ballets she has choreographed are one about Eva Peron and another about Frida Kahlo. Coco will have its American premiere February 9th through February 17th, when Atlanta Ballet performs it at Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center. The full-length work is a three-way co-production, the first of its kind for Atlanta Ballet. It had its world premiere in March 2023 when the Hong Kong Ballet will enter the repertoire of Australia's Queensland Ballet in 2025. The ballet tells the story of Chanel's controversial life, from a child born into poverty in France in 1883 to a savvy, opportunistic businesswoman with wealth and international success. She had affairs with powerful men, among them the Duke of Westminster, Igor Stravinsky, and during World War II, a high-ranking Nazi intelligence officer. She was also a Nazi spy. In an era when women had little power, Chanel did what she had to do to free herself from her past and free women from the long skirts, bulky sleeves, and corsets of the fin de cecile period. Her best-known silhouettes are simple, straight, and sleek. Chanel liberated women's movements, Ochoa says. Designing costumes for a historical figure, particularly a fashion icon like Chanel, requires a unique kind of vision. Kaplan didn't replicate her designs, but instead created a strong visual impression of them. Hot couture dresses, he explained, feature well-made finishes and details designed to be seen close up, but a stage costume must have a strong impact that can be seen from the back of the theater. We have to exaggerate the details, Kaplan stated. Also, we must flatter the dancer's bodies as much as possible. We sometimes cheat so that the dancer appears thinner, with longer legs, a slimmer waist. A hot couture dress embodies the truth of a garment, Kaplan wrote. A stage costume succeeds when it gives an impression of that garment from afar. That's the artifice. Artifice also plays a role in the scene where the actress Gabrielle Dorziat walks into Chanel's shop wearing a heavy corseted ball gown with a long train. Emily Carrico, one of the dancers who portrays the designer, describes what happens next. We deconstruct it, says Carrico. We pull off the sleeves and the skirt so she is left wearing just a straight dress. Annabelle was very specific about the way we do this. She wants the audience to see how pivotal Chanel's fashion was. Colleen McGonigal, Atlanta Ballet's costume director, says Kaplan took these very straight silhouettes and made them dancer-friendly. The shapes are very different from what our dancers are used to wearing, but they are very danceable, even though on the hanger they don't appear to be, she says. They are all very non-traditional compared with our other ballet costumes. The seamstresses' dresses hew to the same sleek aesthetic of Kaplan's overall vision, even though they are not Chanel designs. McGonigal says Kaplan inserted a large kick pleat in the back of their skirts so the dancers can move easily. Perhaps Chanel's most memorable contribution to women's fashion was a little black dress. The original design, McGonigal says, had long sleeves made of solid black fabric. Kaplan used black mesh for the sleeves instead, so the dancers' arms and port de bras, such an important part of ballet technique and dramatic expression, can be seen clearly. Most of the costumes feature fluidity and lightness, simple lines and a limited color palette, starting with white and black, the colors of the Chanel No. 5 perfume box. Kaplan designed striking black and white unitards for the dancers, who together form the shape of the famous Chanel logo, two intertwined C's. And his set design, with its dramatic staircases, has a similar palette of cream and black. So when the dancer portraying Pierre Werthmeyer, one of Chanel's financial backers, comes on stage in a bold red double-breasted suit, it makes a statement. When Coco premiered in Hong Kong, the reviewer for the South China Morning Post wrote, Kaplan's costumes are ravishing, not only in their beauty and subtle homage to Chanel, but in the way they express character, mood, and period. Atlanta Ballet will perform Coco Chanel, the Life of a Fashion Icon, the weekend of February 9-11, and again on February 16-17. That was French designer Jérôme Kaplan Creates Magic for Atlanta Ballet's Coco Chanel, by Gillian Anne Reneau. Next, Alliance's week-long Candida Fest gives playwrights a stage for ideas, by Luke Evans. Each year, the Alliance Theatre Candida Festival invites graduate school playwrights from across the country to submit for a week-long showcase, where one play will be chosen for a world premiere. This year's winner is Furlough's Paradise, by A.K. Payne, on stage through March 3rd. In addition to the winner, four finalists are chosen to receive a staged reading of their work, which takes place across a single week with moderated feedback sessions after each reading. The week also serves as an opportunity for the playwrights to connect with each other and with other artists in the Atlanta area, while also actively developing their work. This year's featured Candida plays include stories about addiction, people of color struggling with the American dream, humanity in the face of crisis, and the overwhelming power of denial. The Reservoir, by Juilliard playwright Jake Brash, will be read on February 5th. The play follows a man named Josh, who is on medical leave from a university. In his struggles to stay sober, he ends up dragging his four grandparents into a variety of zany activities. The reading will be directed by Matt Turney on February 5th. Little Boy, Little Man, by Yale playwright Rudy Goblin, explores the relationship between two Nicaraguan brothers as their differing ambitions begin to drive a wedge in their relationship. The script incorporates music, poetry, and rhythmic storytelling. The reading is directed by Adey Moon on February 6th. Save the Whales, etc., by Boston University playwright David L. Caruso, sees an American mother and her daughter travel to Canada to see the last remaining glacier right after the United States officially declares a climate apocalypse. Described as a comedy, the play will be read on February 8th and will be directed by Amber McGinnis. Finally, The Agency, by Juilliard playwright Leah Romeo, will be read on February 9th. Inspired by a true story, The Agency follows an actress named Annie, who accepts a job at an agency where people can rent out actors to pretend to be their friends and or loved ones. This final reading will be directed by Lauren Morris. Each of the Candida plays was chosen from a batch of 65 submissions and put through several rounds of adjudication before being selected. Once the winner and finalists are selected, associate producer Amanda Watkins meets with playwrights ahead of rehearsals to discuss their goals for the festival. Whether they are confident with their play as is and are looking for a showcase opportunity, or their work is still very much in progress, the rehearsal process is built around their individual goals. Watkins also strives to find opportunities for the playwrights to meet with local Atlanta artists. I'm really into hosting these writers. I love creating opportunities for them to meet other artistic directors in town so they can get to know Atlanta and maybe move here, and then we can have one more writer in Atlanta. Gobelin has voiced appreciation for this opportunity to engage with the Atlanta art scene. I have always appreciated the audiences, the communities, the food, and the vibrant culture in Atlanta. Gobelin has lived in the city before and is eager for the chance to reconnect with those roots. Romeo, on the other hand, is a New York writer who, despite not being able to present for the actual readings, loves the idea of getting to commune with artists she might not have otherwise met. Community is why we're all doing this. Obviously, we're not doing it for the money, so I really appreciate any experience that emphasizes that, she said. That's all the time we have for this article, which was entitled, Alliance's Week-Long Candida Fest Gives Playwrights a Stage for Ideas, by Luke Evans. That concludes today's MetroArts program, which is brought to you by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners. This has been Kristen Moody for GARS, the Georgia Radio Reading Service. Thank you for listening to GARS.