Metro Arts June 6

David Gilbert's exhibition "Flutter" at the North Carolina Museum of Art is described as charming and taunting, with photographs that capture fleeting gestures and queer ingenuity. The details in Gilbert's works are engrossing and reward scrutiny. The curator notes that Gilbert's practice is difficult to categorize, but it resonates with the tradition of queer artists creating sanctuary in domestic and studio spaces. Jace's Lemonade, a lemonade stand started by a seven-year-old during the pandemic, has grown into a successful business. They will soon open their first brick-and-mortar location, offering 20 flavors of lemonade with candy toppings and grilled cheese sandwiches. The Georgia Music Hall of Fame, which closed after 15 years, is described as a missed opportunity with infighting, lack of financial support, and a poor location. 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, June 7th. 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 Burnway publication online for David Gilbert, Flutter at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Winston-Salem, by Robert Alan Grand. Flutter is flirty. David Gilbert's works, photographic documents of slapdash sculptures and painterly interventions and often dramatic natural light, are charming and engrossing, but they're also taunting. At first glance, it's easy to want more, to want to see the sculptures in the round, to want to interact with the colorful detritus depicted, or to simply explore Gilbert's studio where many of these scenes are arranged. It must have such fantastic windows. But the impertinence and distance his photographs provide are precisely the strength of his overarching project, a testament to fleeting gestures, facetious sensibilities, and queer ingenuity. Gilbert's poetic works saunter and serve together in Flutter, the artist's first institutional show and widest presentation of his au voir to date. Take Center Stage 2020, a photo printed on matte paper, slightly larger than life-sized, in a simple white frame. The focal point is the backdrop, a painting of a paltry Charlie Brown-style thin leafless tree standing tall against a pastel pink and robin's blague blue background. Closer to the lens, a kelly green limb sticks out of a matching aluminum can. It's out of focus, but commands attention with its branches spread like arms wide open, its twigs mimicking jazz hands. White chairs and a tall bamboo stake crowd the edge of the frame, along with paper cut out of flowers, a motif repeated throughout the exhibition, and crumpled lace or netting, a translucent curtain framing the tableau. Given the work's title and the layered setup, it's easy to see this scene as a drama, the twigs and poles as actors suspended forever in a moment of apprehension, of missed cues delivered with shining confidence. Showing Gilbert's photographs in person allows you to scrutinize the details. In Center Stage 2020, I kept coming back to the brush strokes gliding onto the floral bedspread. I focused on the four illustrations of ballet dancers in the bottom right, covered in cellophane, insinuating they were ripped from a book of temporary tattoos. Couldn't help but notice the peak of crown molding in the top left corner. Trying to find all the slippages, hints, and reveals becomes engrossing and rewarding. Much like the machinations of desire, the more time you spend with this work, the more you've grown to realize it was everything you wanted all along. In the introductory wall text, curator Jared Ledesma writes that Gilbert's artistic practice is difficult to categorize, noting that Gilbert is at once a painter, sculptor, and photographer. Viewing Gilbert's practice in conversation with generations of queer artists who utilize domestic and studio spaces as a unique third place, hiding from the world by creating a sanctuary of freedom, exploration, and camaraderie is where his works, however you want to classify them, feel most potent. Pieces by Rauschenberg, Catherine Opie, and Paul Macbie-Sapoje come to mind, of course, but so do the vernacular photos from Casa Susana and countless others hidden in nightstands, boxes, storage units, and landfills. However, unlike those photographs, Gilbert's work merely suggests the figure. Pink Lady, 2012, and Grand Dame, 2019, depict swaths of fabric wrapped around thin armatures, possibly broomsticks or painted boxes, to hint at glamorous entities from decades past. There are subtle plays with gender too, as Pink Lady's protruding toothbrush makes clear. Self-Portrait, 2011, the earliest work in the exhibition and displayed almost at drugstore print size, shows the artist from behind, painting while shrouded in shadow. It reminds us that Gilbert's practice is solitary, and tinges subsequent works with a sense of longing. But it also relies on campy resourcefulness. Like early seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race and the underground ball culture that heavily inspired it, these photographs delight in using what you've got to deliver, a convincing enough illusion. Gone Girl, 2018, is absurdist but elegiac, with its subject of a hardware store stepstool covered with a lump of bridal white tulle and topped with a long braided Elsa wig. The image radiates queer joy in its subversion of expectations and effuses wit by communicating in coded speech. It's the type of photo that's hard to imagine artificial intelligence or an image generator ever dreaming of, or delivering in such a potent and transformative way. David Gilbert Flutter is on view at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Winston-Salem, through August 18, 2024. That was David Gilbert Flutter at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Winston-Salem, by Robert Alan Grand. Next, we move to the Atlanta Magazine publication online for 10-year-old lemonade stand goes big time with an outpost at Terminal South. Jace's Lemonade will offer 20 flavors with candy toppings plus grilled cheese sandwiches by Carly Cooper. As the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. It was deep into the COVID-19 pandemic, and then seven-year-old Jace Kurtz was in virtual school, driving his parents a bit crazy. His dad, Jarell Kurtz, decided to give him a project to keep busy. He asked him to start a business. I love trying lemonades and juices, so I wanted to add fruit to lemonade, Jace says. We tried so many different recipes. Sometimes it was just too sweet or too sour, but now we have the perfect one that's just right. His mom found an event for child entrepreneurs, and the family set up a stand. They sold out. We thought it was something Jace would do for a weekend, but it's been going ever since, Jarell says. In 2021, Jace's Lemonade was officially in business, selling original strawberry and kiwi lemonade at pop-ups and festivals. The next year, they purchased a trailer and made weekly appearances at a Decatur food truck park. There, they expanded their flavors, and Jace was inspired by another truck to add candy toppings to his lemonade. Come fall, Jace's Lemonades will open its first brick-and-mortar location in a shipping container at the Terminal South Development in Peoples Town. There, the Kurtzes will sell 20 customizable flavors of lemonade, available as a juice or slushy, plus a selection of grilled cheese sandwiches. Blue raspberry sour apple is the most popular slushy, but mango pineapple is Jace's favorite. Options include mint, matcha, guava, peach, mango, cherry, blueberry, raspberry, lavender, blood orange, watermelon, piña colada, and passion fruit. Toppings range from sour worms and gummy bears to nerds and pop rocks. Each drink is available in a 20-ounce or 32-ounce cup, a souvenir cup, and a 40-ounce fishbowl, popular with college students. Grilled cheese was chosen for its ease to make, since Jace is just a kid. Sandwiches will be made with fresh sourdough and different combinations of cheeses served with kettle chips. It's a kid's business, so we wanted more kid's food, Jace says. I love cheese. I eat everything with cheese. Since he'll start middle school in the fall, his mom plans to work at the shipping container during the day. He'll join her on afternoons and weekends. Both of his parents have launched businesses in the past, Kurtz Logistics Group Shipping Company and Unicorn Universe Makeup, so they're familiar with the entrepreneurial lifestyle. Jarell says he hopes to open additional Jace's Lemonade locations in food halls around Atlanta. He also plans to sell the bottle beverage in 15 local stores by the end of the year. Right now, it's available at seven, including Black Coffee, Cereal Lab, Dolo's Pizza, and Icy Chicks. As for Jace, the straight-A student will continue to push his business forward when he's not at school or playing video games. That was 10-Year-Old Lemonade Stand Goes Big Time with an Outpost at Terminal South by Carly Cooper. Next, Editor's Journal. What Happened to the Georgia Music Hall of Fame is Shameful. The museum closed its doors after 15 years due to infighting, a lack of financial support from the state, and a really, really poor location by Scott Freeman. A year before the Georgia Music Hall of Fame opened in 1996, I did a signing in Macon for my book, Midnight Riders, the Story of the Allman Brothers Band. One of the people in line asked if we could speak privately. He had something he wanted to give me. He waited around for an hour until I was finished. Then we were led into a back room at the bookstore. He earnestly told me he had worked at the local coroner's office in his youth and was there when Dwayne Allman died from a motorcycle crash in 1971 at the tender age of 24. He pulled out a yellowed and battered official Office of the Coroner envelope. I've had this for years and didn't know what to do with it, he said as he handed it to me. I think you're the person who should have it. I opened the envelope. It contained items that left no doubt about the authenticity of the story. Among them was a worn Gibson heavy gauge guitar pick. It was in Dwayne's pocket when he died, the man said. I reverently held the pick in my hands. For me, it was a holy artifact. It was worn and covered with scratch marks from plucking against guitar strings. It seems a safe assumption that Dwayne had used it when the band recorded tracks for the Eat a Peach album in the weeks before his death. When I got home, I made sure to play each of my guitars with that pick in the hopes that some of its mojo would rub off. Then I gave it to Hewell Cenk Middleton, who was close friends with Dwayne and Quag Allman and seemed the appropriate person to possess it. When I went to the Hall of Fame Museum for the first time, I walked up to the Allman Brothers display and half gasped. There it was, Dwayne's guitar pick, a plaque noted that Cenk had loaned it to the Hall of Fame. And I thought, yes, what better home for it, except it no longer has a home, as detailed in Jerry Grillo's engrossing story published in our May 2024 issue. The museum closed its doors after 15 years due to infighting, a lack of financial support from the state and a really, really poor location. Every time I stopped by the museum, it was a ghost town. As Grillo reports, state and city officials decided to build the Hall of Fame on the I-16 side of Macon, a highway that leads to Savannah and is one of the loneliest stretches of interstate I've ever traveled. The museum hoped to lure in tourists driving on I-75 to and from Florida, but I-75 passes through the other side of Macon and few people ventured off their chosen path. There were also political tugs of war with folks in Atlanta who hadn't wanted the museum to be in Macon in the first place. And as Grillo details, the Hall of Fame, shockingly, had nothing to do with the selection of its inductees. That was determined in part by politicians on a state legislative committee. Seriously, can you imagine the inductees of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland being determined by members of the Ohio State Legislature? Stupid is as stupid does. It's shameful that the Georgia Music Hall of Fame was allowed to have such an ignominious death. It was a beautiful facility, thoughtfully designed, and smartly executed. The exhibits were breathtaking with iconic items that had belonged to Little Richard, James Brown, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, the Allman Brothers, Chet Atkins, Brenda Lee, Jerry Reed, and so many others. To go there was to be awestruck by the breadth of this state's deep and rich musical history. It's inexcusable that the Hall of Fame hasn't been reestablished somewhere else, like Atlanta or Athens. All of those glorious and holy artifacts are now hidden away in cardboard boxes in storage at UGA, rather than being on public display with the regal splendor they deserve. I suppose Dwayne Allman's guitar pick is now stashed away in one of those boxes, if it's not lost, which tends to happen with guitar picks. Hey guys, can I have that back? That was Editor's Journal, What Happened to the Georgia Music Hall of Fame is Shameful by Scott Freeman. Next, two fringe festivals bring organized chaos to Atlanta theater this June. A set of competing Lavender Fest and the Atlanta Fringe Festival have promoted one another to make June Atlanta's season of Fringe by Xavier Stevens. One of Ty Autry's first encounters with fringe theater was as a performer on the international stage. He traveled to the 2019 International Dublin Gay Theater Festival to debut a one-person show based on his life, a southern fairy tale, the story of a gay Christian growing up in the Deep South. The performance, limited to one hour, took the Dublin audience on a magical journey through Georgia, with Autry's protagonist thwarting a wizard who wields the power of conversion therapy and a dragon that breathes the fire of fear. I was so nervous to step up in front of that audience, but they were so giving and wanted my story, Autry, a native of Thomasville, says. Fringe theater is performed without production or weeks of rehearsal and mostly lives as a single festival run. The idea began with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1947, created as an alternative showcase for nontraditional acts passed over by the city's premier theater festival. The one-off nature creates a theatrical pressure cooker with an audience there for organic, weird, and wonderful performances that typically last just an hour. Five years after Dublin, Autry debuts as the director of a new fringe festival in Atlanta. Lavender Fest will showcase nine performances by queer artists from June 19 to June 23 at Out Front Theater, where Autry is a member of the Artistic Advisory Council. I wanted a space that can support queer works and also educate a southern audience, he says. The fringe format is perfect because there aren't full productions, which brings forth stories you would never hear before and you'll likely never hear again. Lavender Fest joins a busy June schedule for Fringe in Atlanta. The Atlanta Fringe Festival runs June 3 to 9 with 20 different shows at seven venues. Instead of competing, the Fringe Festivals have promoted one another to make June Atlanta's season of Fringe. It feels like we're getting a best friend, says Diana Brown, co-founder of the Atlanta Fringe Festival, which began in 2012. Lavender Fest has this amazing platform to bring queer artists to the stage, and I can't wait to go. Brown started the Atlanta Fringe Festival without having seen a Fringe Festival herself. She had heard about the concept from friends, and they were able to set up performances in small theaters around Atlanta. The first Fringe show she saw was her opening night. A group called Performance Gallery did scat poetry to show how syllables come together to make language. The show, titled Frickative, guided the audience through otherworldly settings, such as aliens meeting to decipher words like table. It was so bizarre that I actually cried in my seat, Brown says. The show was exactly the weird stuff I wanted. Nowhere else in Atlanta had something like this. Every year, Brown pulls names of applicants from a hat to fill the lineup. The result is a wide variety of shows, from clowns and puppetry to tragic comedies and dramatic storytelling. This year, the festival will use theaters like Seven Stages and Limelight, in addition to unique spaces such as Wrecking Bar Brew Pub and East Atlanta Kids Club. For Lavender Fest, Out Front will host four nights of four shows each. Autry chose performances to represent each facet of the queer community, with comedies, musicals, drag, and more. There's a slice of the rainbow for everyone, Autry says. I know Lavender will be a deeply personal space because that's what Fringe is, the artist trusting the audience with their story and the audience trusting the artist to tell a story that will range the expanse of the human experience. That was Two Fringe Festivals Bring Organized Chaos to Atlanta Theater this June by Xavier Stevens. Next we move to the Arts ATL publication for Jackie Hinkson's Crash Test Reflects Society at a Boiling Point by Jillian Ann Renaud. Choreographer Jackie Hinkson's new dance work, Crash Test, at Windmill Arts Center on Saturday seemed predictable at first. Six dancers stood in three rows of two, as if in a large family SUV. The two at the back pushed the two in the middle, causing them to lurch forward and smash into the front row. The phrase was repeated several times, a slightly different outcome each time. Dancers fell. Of course, we thought, this is the crash test dummy exercise. The vehicle stops, passengers are thrown forward, damage and injury ensue. But wait, there's one anxious-looking dancer walking from side to side, across the front of the stage, talking to us. We are sitting. She said more, which was drowned out by the sound score. Two of the crashing dancers rush forward and lift her by the legs. She stops talking. They run back to the formation. Repeat. What evolved from that opening was anything but predictable. The six women and one man, members of Hinkson's company, Excavate Body, launched into a fast-moving dynamic hour, populated with innovative choreography that illustrated crashing, regrouping, and risk-taking in numerous and fascinating ways. It was an adrenaline-pumping ride. Individual dancers threw themselves one by one against a side wall. A dancer rushed in from offstage and leaped into the group of six, who cushioned her fall. Repeat. When the three couples waltzed together in affected ballroom holds, another dancer, Andy Knudson, barged in and tried to wrench them apart. Eggs, yes, real uncooked eggs, were thrown one by one against the wall. At one point, a dancer stuck a piece of white paper on the white Marley floor with red tape, shouting something about perhaps blood in the belly. Unfortunately, Zubin Isaac's driving sound score drowned out many of the spoken and shouted phrases. Words such as buckling came through, however, encouraging the viewer to wonder, are we buckling under or buckling up or both? But much was lost. What was clear was the intensity with which those words were spoken, as if they were being hurled at the audience. Even without words, the movement language created a tense, violent environment. What kind of world do people slap themselves in the face? What kind of world do they smash a raw egg onto their forehead, not for laughs? Crash Test was clearly about more than car crash dummies. There was tension and aggression, much anxious, suspicious eye contact between the dancers. Even when standing close behind one another in a line, each dancer then ducking gently under the arm of the person in first, they projected more suspicion than camaraderie. At one point, Henry Koskoff, alone on stage, spoke of peace and quiet, but he was quickly interrupted and overwhelmed by the other dancers reentering with another intense rush of movement. The floor work tropes that many contemporary choreographers rely on were tweaked in new original ways. I found myself holding my breath, riveted to the daring, unexpected phrases and the dancers' confidence in executing them. Even the intentionally quieter moments, for instance when Knudsen sat to drink a glass of red wine, quivered with potential danger. The dancers sustained a compelling and driving insistence throughout, with only one unison section in the middle seemingly losing focus. Hinkson designed the backdrop projection and was also one of the performers, along with Koskoff, Knudsen, Charlotte Angermeyer, Leah Bem, Madison Lee, and Mercy Matthews. Crash Test ended with strobe lights flashing from above and red lights flashing from light strips at the side of the space. The dancers stopped and looked around, scared, vulnerable, bewildered, before sitting back down against the back wall facing the audience. It wasn't hard to see metaphors for today's political climate in the work. Is the United States on a crash course? The dancers wore bright red t-shirts and shorts. Purplish blobs of color slid and oozed on the white backdrop, like a dismembered lava lamp. Yes, purple, like those battleground, razor-thin margin states. The mood was one of dis-ease, imminent danger, lack of true connection, about taking a leap of faith in a world that seems close to a boiling point. Depending upon where you are on the political spectrum, this felt frighteningly familiar. Whatever meaning viewers choose to draw from Crash Test, one thing is clear. Everyone is a choreographer to watch. That was Jackie Hinkson's Crash Test Reflects Society at a Boiling Point by Jillian Ann Renaud. Next up, review. Sister Act is a chorus of mainly positive notes by Jim Farmer. No one is ever going to mistake the musical Sister Act for a groundbreaking production, but in the right hands, it can be a lot of fun. As the final offering of Aurora Theatre's 28th season, it's crowd-pleasing entertainment that does exactly what it sets out to do. Running through June 23rd at the Lawrenceville Art Center, Sister Act benefits tremendously from director Justin Anderson, Aurora's former associate artistic director, and some ringers in the cast. The musical is based on the 1992 Whoopi Goldberg film, where Dolores Van Cartier, Jasmine Renée Ellis, is a nightclub singer who works in a Philadelphia bar operated by her gangster boyfriend Curtis, Marcus Hopkins Turner. When she learns that Curtis will not be connecting her to a record producer as she hoped, she decides to dump him. Heading to his office, she accidentally witnesses a murder committed by Curtis's crew. Soon, the cops want to put her in a witness protection program, but she instead winds up in the holy order of the Little Sisters of Our Mother of Perpetual Faith, who, dereoletically, no one will ever find out where she is. At least that's the plan. Inside the convent, Dolores pretends to be a nun, but has a hard time getting used to the life. She and the Mother Superior, Shelley McCook, don't see eye to eye, but as Dolores starts to bond with the other women, the Mother Superior agrees to let her lead the choir, which is not known for the beautiful music it creates. Sister Act ran at the Alliance Theater in early 2007, with a cast that included Dawn Lewis and a pre-Fun Home Beth Malone, for its second staging, before getting a revamp, heading to London's West End, and then landing on Broadway in 2011. It was played on the West End this year as well. The book by Sherry and Bill Statenkeller, which gives some tweaks by Douglas Carter Bean, is not radically different from the film, which may please many. There are few new dimensions, and some supporting characters are a bit thin. Some jokes, too, have cobwebs on them. And I could have done without the vigilante nun's kick-ass closing moments, as the sisters protect themselves from Curtis's crew. Yet, despite its silliness, the music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Glenn Slater are a big plus. The score has a solid mixture of disco, gospel, and Motown songs, and several numbers are energetically staged. Raise Your Voice is probably the show's signature number, initially following the trials and tribulations of the chorus as Dolores struggles to turn them into a unit, and later serving as a rowdy, strobe-lighted finale. Dolores's Take Me to Heaven and Curtis's When I Find My Baby also are standouts. Ellis makes a captivating center. The actress is initially a little forced, but settles into a groove as Dolores, and her voice is exceptionally suited to the material. McCook, not seen as often as she needs to be on local stages, is a grandmother superior, a little jealous of the bond the women form with Dolores. She balances her patented comical flair with her own numbers, including the solo I Haven't Got a Prayer. The rest of the convent sisters include Breanne Knights, Charlene Hong White, Jill Hames, and Kathy Cuxa, and they are collectively a joyous, in-sync ensemble. The scene-stealer here is Issa Martinez as Sister Mary Robert. Her The Life I Never Led is a knockout, poignant number, where Mary laments the barriers she has put on herself, and that she never went after she wants. It's beautiful work. The choreography by Pytron Parker and music direction by Ann Carol Pence are also noteworthy. Yet this wouldn't work without a strong director. For a while, Anderson directed all over town, staging both dramas and musicals, then took a break. Now he is back, and he's in his comfort zone here. His take of Sister Act has an energy and likability that overcomes its too-familiar moments and weaker elements. I saw this production the afternoon after seeing the Alliance Theater's The Preacher's Wife, and I enjoyed it a lot more. I also couldn't help but notice the similarities, history at the Alliance, spirituality angles, and both being based on popular films. But while The Preacher's Wife is brand-spanking-new in its journey, Sister Act has had the luxury of some tweaks here and there, and is now leaner and more confident than I remember 17 years ago. It's not a musical that is done with much regularity these days, but I'm glad it has not disappeared altogether. This version closes Aurora's season on a positive note. That was Review. Sister Act is a chorus of mainly positive notes by Jim Farmer. Next up, How a Facelift Made 54 Columns Easy to Love by Arthur Rudick. 54 Columns, Sol LeWitt's often-maligned public sculpture in Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward, has been misunderstood from the day it was installed. A neighborhood and a family sought to change that. The children who attended the recent rededication of 54 Columns, Sol LeWitt's minimalist public art installation in Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward, did what children always do with new environments. They turned it into a game. With its erratically spaced cinderblock towers, 54 Columns begs to host some version of a peekaboo or hide-and-seek for small bodies, naturally to kids obliged. I found myself in a crowd of about 200 public art fans who had assembled to take in the site's total transmutation on a Saturday in mid-May. New landscaping, entrance paths, seating, signage, and lighting have now transformed the corner of North Highland Avenue and Glen Iris Drive from an unadorned, fenced-in lot to the kind of crisp, pleasant green space that often signals rapidly revitalizing or gentrifying neighborhoods. 54 Columns Park, as it is now called, is the result of two years of work by the Old Fourth Ward Neighborhood Association, with funding from Fulton County, Park Pride, Perennial Properties, and others, according to the website Urbanize Atlanta. Funding from the Mark Taylor family, who initiated the project, and members of which spoke at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, was also key. Remarks by various other dignitaries from the New Stoneblock Stage, followed by songs from the Midtown High School Chorus, provided the sense that 54 Columns is a valuable art asset for Atlanta that is now embraced by the community. But it was not always like that. I lived in Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward in 2017 and 2018, and I often drove past what looked like an overgrown, abandoned construction site. I was not alone in thinking this, and some people unaware of the current redesign might be surprised to see it today. Instagram user, atlionist, told me, yo, when I was a young adult, I bought weed in the apartments next door, and I always thought that was where someone just stopped building a house. It's art? The site has been contentious, perhaps misunderstood from its installation, and I, too, was surprised when I learned it was intended as art. But years later, my mind was changed in an instant. The large-scale public artwork by minimalist and conceptual art pioneer, Sol LeWitt, was installed in 1999. As the name implies, it consists of 54 square columns ranging from 10 to 20 feet in height and in a regular grid arranged roughly in a triangle measuring 112 by 176 feet. The columns are constructed of concrete masonry units, CMUs, also known as common concrete blocks. The sculpture was a gift to the people of Fulton County by the Taylor family with help from the High Museum of Art. LeWitt had been a pioneer of minimalist sculpture using industrial materials beginning in the early 1960s. Much of his work derived from the shape of the cube, and over the decades, LeWitt sought to strip away all forms of expressiveness to make art as a pure concept rather than a mere object. In 1990, he began stacking concrete blocks in various public sculptures, including two installations in Miami's Design District. All of these works were conceived as variations on the same theme. Starting in the mid-1980s, Fulton County spent 12 years developing and approving a public arts plan and another three years implementing the plan. At the time, property developer Chuck Taylor was the founding chair of the Fulton County Public Art Program. Wouldn't it be fun for the first major piece of art in Fulton County to be something on dad's land that he had wanted to do a project with, Taylor asked in an interview recalling his family's spearheading of the project. LeWitt was a friend of Taylor's parents, Mark and Judith Taylor, who had worked with LeWitt to do Wall Drawing No. 729, Irregular Color Bands, currently installed at the High Museum of Art. Sol said, I'll do it, said Taylor. Sol, in fact, waived his hefty fee as a favor to my father. LeWitt's first design resembled a huge pyramid split apart at an angle, but not cleanly, then turned on its side. Fearing that the split might provide a path for kids to climb the sculpture and potentially plummet 40 feet to the ground, Fulton County rejected the first design. LeWitt's second design was accepted. The pillars were intended to loosely mirror the Atlanta skyline, which was originally visible from the site before trees grew to obscure the view. LeWitt often combined aspects of art and architecture into his work, and 54 Columns is a prime example. The year after its installation, it was rated as one of the top 24 public art projects by Art in America. Public pushback began almost immediately. At a time when Old Fourth Ward was suffering from the effects of decades of neglect, white flight and redlining, the surrounding community voiced several fears that the sculpture would harbor drug use and prostitution. There was a crack house two laps away, that it represented gentrification forced onto the neighborhood from the outside, and that the unfinished appearance of the concrete blocks was unattractive. George Turk, artist and Fulton County public art coordinator at the time, relayed how LeWitt addressed the last concern. A request was made by a community panel to have LeWitt paint the columns like his in colorful interior wall painting at the High Museum. He refused. The panel came back asking him to at least paint the columns a solid color. He acquiesced by agreeing to stain the columns. He selected a gray stain that matched the color of the concrete. In 2003, disgruntled neighbors planted dogwood trees among the columns to hide them. The city ruled that the trees spoiled the sanctity of LeWitt's installation and they were taken out. Over the years, pranksters have painted columns pink and decorated them for various holidays. But for as much confusion and outrage as the work has occasioned, it has also been a source of inspiration and delight. Instagram user at Grinstame said, found it randomly when I was younger and I thought I was cool for knowing about it. And at Cavell added cheekily, number 42 is my favorite column. 54 Columns has also been chosen as a site for several art events, for example, a performance by Sonic Generator and Glow ATL in 2016. My own transformative moment came in 2022 when I attended a Celebration of Life event for the late artist Alex Dreher at 54 Columns. Alex's father, Joe Dreher, was also an Atlanta artist, chose 54 Columns as the site for his son's remembrance because that's where Alex and his friends used to go to relax and to reflect. Flowers, fruit, photos of the departed and bowls of his favorite treats were placed at the bases of the uprights. I was overwhelmed by the surreal beauty and serenity of the idyllic site. Form transcended material as the soaring columns drew my eyes up toward the sky like pillars inside a European cathedral. I became such a fan of LeWitt's masterwork that I was inspired to write the Wikipedia entry for 54 Columns. And as a final piece of connective tissue, Joe Dreher was one of the artists who reinstalled LeWitt's wall painting at the High Museum of Art in 2018. This was all before the recent renovation, when there was no denying that the plot of land hosting 54 Columns was otherwise little more than a vacant lot. In 2021, as part of a wider plan to beautify the neighborhood, President of Fourth Ward neighbors Tom Boyle and Vice President Hollis Wise had only a sketch of the proposed improvements to the property. According to Boyle, we didn't really know the cost at the time. Nevertheless, they stood at the site and made a pitch for $100,000 to refurbish the park to chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, Rob Pitts, who responded, if I can't get $100,000 for a worthwhile project, then I don't deserve to be here. The upgrade was approved in 2022 and was completed this year, 2024, turning a nearly vacant lot into a beautiful park with 54 Columns as its crown jewel. My personal 54 Columns story was a multi-year journey of discovery, ending with my beloved artwork receiving the setting it deserves. In the words of Atlanta City Councilman Amir Farroki, the renovation has transformed this site from a question mark to an exclamation point. That was How a Facelift Has Made 54 Columns Easy to Love by Arthur Rudick. Next, review. Blues is a powder keg of a period piece by Benjamin Carr. Telling a story that feels modern, savvy and urgent, but set during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, the new production of Atlanta playwright Pearl Cleage's Blues for an Alabama Sky is solid entertainment. Running through June 23rd at Actors Express, the story is a one-of-a-kind story about a Running through June 23rd at Actors Express, the play features an incredible ensemble and a well-told, satisfying story full of humor, passion and suspense. Centered around five friends in neighboring New York apartments, the show takes place over several months as the struggling fictional characters rub shoulders offstage with cultural luminaries such as poet Langston Hughes, singer Josephine Paker and birth control activist Margaret Sanger. This touch in the script is particularly effective, giving the play a rooted authenticity and emotional stakes. We live in the future that these characters helped build and our progress emerged from their pain. Cleage is a wonderful writer. Her script is full of wit, warmth and dramatic tension. The characters possess hot tempers and clearly stated political opinions. Cleage understands that intelligent characters unabashedly addressing their differences of opinion is compelling to watch. And she also gives each character a heart the audience can connect with, even when stances differ. This is bold, necessary material. The characters here are rich with layers and the plotting masterfully pits them against each other in unexpected ways. As the play opens, a singer named Angel, played by Tiffany Denise Hobbs, has been jilted by her married mobster boyfriend and is out of a job. Her longtime friend Guy, Damian Lockhart, an openly gay customer who dreams of Paris, lets her crash on his shade lounge and tries to ignore how much he drinks. In the next apartment, an idealistic young woman named Delia, Kenesha Johnson, dreams of opening a clinic in Harlem that promotes women's health and family planning. And an easygoing doctor named Sam, Christopher Hampton, is intrigued by Delia's ideas and offers to help fight any opposition she might face. Desperate for someone more settled, Angel soon attracts the attention of Leland, Jontavious Johnson, a widower who recently relocated from Alabama. Leland is traditionally minded and God fearing, which clashes with the wilder liberal culture of Harlem. The reckless Angel is impulsive and self-centered, which emerges from survival instinct, and she tangles everyone's fate with hers. With so many hot button issues involved in this play, including abortion, gay rights, black women's rights and toxic masculinity, it's surprising to see the ways this powder keg of a pilot might explode. But the storytelling structure of this work is very traditional, even following age old rules set in place by Anton Chekhov. It's very satisfying. Hobbs and Lockhart are incredible in their scenes together, building the easy, playful chemistry of old friends who know all the ways to build up or wound each other. Hobbs is a powerhouse, making Angel seem smart, likable enough, yet dangerous. Alongside her transformative work earlier this year in the Alliance Theater's A Tale of Two Cities, her range may be boundless. Lockhart is terrifically funny and assured as Guy, who captures the audience's heart almost immediately. Much of the play's lightness centers upon Guy, and Lockhart does beautiful work. As Leland, John Tavius Johnson plays opposite the showy dynamics of the other performers, instead creating a shy, conservative and sympathetic man who no longer knows his place in the world. Several moments of Johnson's are heartbreaking. Hampton and Kenesha Johnson have a crackling romantic chemistry in their sweet subplot, and Delia's innate awkwardness is also very funny, particularly when Guy tries to help her dress better. Director Amanda Washington gives the show an easy, lived-in pace, allowing moments where the characters have flirty room to breathe. Most scene transitions don't occur quickly because of how the set is used. Instead, we watch characters as they walk from the sidewalk, then down the apartment hallway and settle into their flats before a scene truly begins. Yet this also has an upside. Seamus M. Bourne's set design means the audience knows what's coming before the characters do, building anticipation, suspense or dread. Among other technical elements worthy of praise are the beautiful period costumes by Ricky Greenwell, which distinguish characters such as Guy and Delia even further. Blues for an Alabama Sky is a gem of a show. That was Review. Blues is a powder keg of a period piece by Benjamin Carr. Next, Queer Dancemaker Wrangles with Isbin's Dollhouse by Robin Horton. Choreographer Megan Nivoa finds inspiration in Hedrick Ibsen's The Dollhouse for their new work, In the House, bringing their own queer, neurodivergent perspective to feminism, mental health and the power of secrets. Dancer and choreographer Megan Nivoa, they them, grew up in Noonan, Georgia, where their culturally Jewish mother and Venezuelan-Colombian-American father, both transplants from the Los Angeles area, created community by exploring their cultural roots. Neither of my parents had any close or extended family in the area, recalled Nivoa recently. They remained connected with their heritage by keeping the history, art and cuisine of the Jewish and Latinx diasporas alive in their household. At the same time, said Nivoa, I was very much situated within the Atlanta metro, seeing the work of and studying with Southern artists. So I also identify as a Southerner. Nivoa's Geyer is on program at 2024 Modern Atlanta Dance Festival, MADFest, which will run Friday and Saturday, June 7th and June 8th at Emory University's Performing Arts Studio. They will premiere a new full-length work, In This House, on Friday and Saturday, June 14th and June 15th at the Balzar Theatre at Heron's Downtown. Nivoa's cultural memory and lived experience influenced their artistic development from an early age. They trained in classical ballet with teachers in Noonan and at the American Ballet Theatre Summer Intensive. In high school, Nivoa took a break from concert dance. During the hiatus, they studied Jewish dance forms or Davidic dance at a synagogue, drawing on the vocabulary to create work for their peers. Davidic dance is related to Jewish and Middle Eastern social dances like the Hora and the Dabke, said Nivoa. Many of the motifs and choreographic forms, even the repetition of elements that recur in my work, come from that source. Nivoa sees a turn toward traditional social dance as an enrichment, not a rejection, of the foundation in neoclassical and contemporary concert dance they acquired as a student and as a professional performing with Paolo Manso de Sousa's Southern Arc Dance, City Gate Dance Theatre, Room to Move Dance, and others. For example, Nivoa fused these multiple dance traditions in Geyer, which debuted at the 2023 Fall for Fall Festival. Nivoa said the piece was inspired by choreographer Mark Morris's recollection in his memoir, Out Loud, of backpacking through Europe, learning folk dances in small towns and importing what he learned into his choreography. Dance is a ritual, a communal experience at the heart of so many of these social dances. And I wanted to bring that into a concert dance setting, said Nivoa. As its name suggests, Geyer moves in a constant spiral. The dancers use their feet and bodies to create percussive rhythms, and they alternate between facing the audience and facing one another in a circle. The oscillation draws the audience's gaze and awareness ever inward into the empty center, suggesting that emptiness is a space created and being held for the observers who participate by watching. For In This House, Nivoa deliberately chose challenging and less familiar materials as inspiration. Henrik Ibsen's iconic play, A Doll House. Nonetheless, the connection Nivoa found with Ibsen's protagonist, Nora Helmer, and Nora's historical analog, Norwegian-Danish novelist, Lara Keeler, who was a friend and protege of Ibsen and his wife, is a deeply personal one. Nivoa learned about the play from a copy of the 101 most influential people who never lived that they picked up at a thrift store. The book's description of Nora and the play itself sent Nivoa on a deep dive to discover more about a work which is often touted as among the first modern contributions to feminist literature. Nivoa learned that Ibsen, without Keeler's consent, appropriated some of the details of her story for A Doll's House, leading to a fallout between playwright and novelist. As a neurodivergent person, I felt drawn to create a piece that centered Lara's story, the issues she had with mental health and how those affected the outcome for her, said Nivoa. By telling that story, Nivoa saw a way to ground the work in their own lived experience and at the same time provide opportunities for others to locate themselves within it. In A Doll's House and Keeler's biography, the revelation of a clandestine financial transaction disrupts the seeming harmony of domestic life. As Nivoa observed, however, the real problem in both marriages was not money trouble, but secrets. Objectively, what Nora hides from her husband isn't that big of a deal, Nivoa said. In keeping the secret, though, one thing leads to another and it gets bigger and bigger in life and in her mind until the situation spirals out of her control. Nivoa said they shared a similar experience in the period leading up to their wedding, a time before coming out as non-binary, to their family and partner. That created a point of entry to bring Keeler's story and some of the themes and characters from A Doll's House to life through dance. I understand what it's like having something you want to share with someone you love, but not knowing how to go about it, Nivoa said. In the play, Nora leaves her husband. Keeler's story was different. She had a nervous breakdown after her husband demanded a divorce and tried to keep her from her children. She then spent several weeks in a mental hospital. While Keeler eventually reconciled with her spouse, she and Ibsen remained estranged for the rest of her life. Nivoa's revelation to family and friends was fortunately followed by a much happier ending. After getting married, the couple lived in Atlanta until Nivoa's spouse graduated from Emory University. Together, they moved to the Pacific Northwest, living in Portland, Oregon for several months and then Boise, Idaho, for three years before returning to Atlanta in 2022. Since returning, Nivoa has been a choreographer in residence at Atlantic Contemporary, co-sponsored by Dance Canvas, a Mellie Kay artist in residency and presented a piece, Perennial, as part of Spectra Volume One, the emerging artist project launched last year by Monica Hogan Danceworks. Nivoa's work on In This House began with support from Art on the Beltline and an earlier, shorter version debuted during the 2023 Beltline After Dark Festival. Nivoa received funding from Arts and Entertainment Atlanta, the Mayor's Office of Cultural Affairs and South Arts for the full-length premiere. With those resources, in addition to engaging six Atlanta-based dancers, Nivoa was able to commission an original score from local composer Dan Carey Bailey, costumes designed by Faye Monet and video art projection design from Sean Dahlman. Nivoa said the sound, stage and costume design for In This House were inspired by the aesthetics of Tim Burton's films and cites Kyle Abraham and Crystal Pite as choreographic influences. During a rehearsal of In This House, Arts ATL observed elements of physical theater combined with rhythmic phrase work and shared weight partnering through which the dancers move together like organic clockwork. The score was melancholy and orchestral, contributing to the cinematic effect created by Nivoa's blocking and mise-en-scene. Premiering In This House at the Balzar Theatre returns Nivoa to the stage where they first performed in Atlanta as a dancer and to where they presented an early choreographed piece, EMA, in 2018. This is a fun full-circle moment for me, Nivoa said, and having the resources to access a performance space like the Balzar for a full-length work is definitely an important milestone in my career. That was Queer Dancemaker Wrangles with Ibsen's A Doll's House by Robin Horton. Next, Sharing a Room with Arts Exchange Women Artists by Pearl McKinney. Nearly 100 years ago in her slim book, A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf argued that it is necessary to have 500 pounds and a room with a lock on the door if women are to write fiction or poetry. Dedicated space and sufficient income remain essentials in this century, particularly for women, particularly for visual artists. With this in mind, Lisa Tuttle curated A Room of Her Own, Women's Studio Artists from AXE's 40-Year History, on view at the Sinclair Gallery of the Arts Exchange in East Point through June 22nd. Retired from her full-time job as an arts administrator and consultant, work that afforded her the income to have a studio, Tuttle continues to curate shows and works daily in her studio. For the first 12 months of having that room of her own, she kept a photograph of the studio on her desk, but managed only four days in her studio. To honor the women who have had or have had studios, rooms of their own, at Art Exchange, Tuttle contacted 28 women. Not all could participate for various reasons, but 23 did. She kept a light hand in curating, encouraging current work, hoping for something that represented them well. Tuttle was delighted to discover that the connections among the women as a crossover between poets and visual artists, spoken word artists and photographers emerged. Several are social justice advocates whose art practice involves community. Many shared similar challenges in maintaining an individual studio with conflicts of teaching, children, jobs, caregiving, or spouses relocating for jobs. By bringing the artists and the work together, Tuttle learned how the women had connected during their time at Arts Exchange, that Caroline Latham-Steifel had shared a studio with Donna Pickens, that Lynn Marshall-Linnemeyer had shared her studio with ceramicist Chris Thal, that Dana Cebulski, Rebecca Namaris, and Janie Crimmins had occupied the same space at separate times. Installed chronologically for the most part, the show begins with work by Alice Lovelace-Radley, founder of the Arts Exchange. Although Beverly Buchanan died in 2015, to honor her studio time at the Arts Exchange, Tuttle included one of the artist's oil pastels. In the process of curating, Tuttle adjusted the initial parameter for the artist's selections to mount the creations of 23 women. The artist's biography labels include not only their years at the Arts Exchange, but often what they learned from one another, their various media and current work. A room of her own and the gathering of these women artists at the Artist Talk on May 5th demonstrate an understanding of the breadth of the women's work. When you have a studio, you are there to work, explains Tuttle. You might say hello and have brief conversations, but then you shut the door and go to work. Yet even while working individually, you know these other artists are there. They are allies, supporting and encouraging one another, sharing knowledge of exhibition, gallery and funding opportunities. How stunningly beautiful it all is in the end. That's what surprised me. It's a really strong show. In art, Tuttle suggests the beautiful idea is always the philosophical thing, the aspiration of an artist, the understanding, what you are communicating. Here in this show, it's the idea of bringing these women together, visibility for these women, just how strong it is, how important it is for any artist, for women to have a studio, to have a place to work, as humble or as fancy those circumstances may be. All along, I wanted to honor their collective strength, talent, seriousness and professionalism that these women artists epitomize. Having been with the Arts Exchange for over 30 years, Tuttle hopes it will continue to thrive. We need to gather old friends and new friends as well to be involved. I want women artists and their work to have as much visibility as possible for these women need to be reconnected and more connected with the organization for there to be some sort of continuity. And I want others to experience the value of having a community art space where artists can work and get a studio. That was Sharing a Room with Arts Exchange Women Artists by Pearl McKaney. That concludes today's Metro Arts 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.