This past friday evening I saw Dr. Kakali Bandyopadhyay on sitar and Anjaneya Sastry on tabla at the Schwartz Center. Both are fantastic musicians and it was a free program. Bandyopadhyay, who has been playing for twenty years, teaches sitar and North Indian classical music at Emory. Her training included classes with Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan. Sastry has trained with the world-renowned Ustaad Zakir Hussein and regularly performs traditional tabla solo concerts. For a more in depth review of a previous concert by the duo, see this article from 2009.
The Schwartz Center is a gem of a building, with no bad seats to be had in Emerson’s state of the art hall. All performances are open to the public and many are free.
Saturday I headed down to the Marcia Wood gallery near Castleberry (a block away from Pillowtex) for an artist’s talk by Kate Javens and to check out the space. Even though it’s just a few steps away from the other arts district, it’s a bit lonely on the block but has a wonderful terrace out back.
Terry Kearns conducted a 2010 gallery-palooza, visiting 35Â spaces in a 12 hr marathon. Here’s his photo of Wood in front of the entrance to her gallery. I took no photos, sorry.
Javens lives in NYC and uses theatrical muslin for her canvases of animals. She works from ‘fresh kill’ bodies and has studied how to wire them for positions and how to best protect herself from pathogens. I was reminded of a modern Audubon, albeit one using monochromatic color. Photo courtesy gallery.
Afterwards I hit the High Museum for their current blockbuster on loan from MOMA, Picasso to Warhol. No photographs allowed except with cell phones. Here are a few highlights and a recent review on Burnaway.
Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror, and Henri Matisse’s Dance. (Photo: AP)
Henri Matisse, Male Model. Paris, c 1900. Photo MOMA.
I’m not fond of viewing paintings in the mad crush of people running through museum galleries with headphones on, so I’ll have to return. The Matisses are stand outs, as were some early Picassos. Louise Bourgeois was represented with a few small sculptures and several drawings/etchings, but she’s the only woman in the entire exhibit.
Louise Bourgeois, Untitled, 1994. Intaglio, edition of 65. Photo Barbara Krakow gallery.
I sat through the first part of a lecture in Robinson atrium at the High, comparing Van Gogh and Pollock, given by co-authors of the books, Van Gogh, The Life and the 1990Â Jackson Pollock: An American Saga. That book was the basis for the film made about the artist, starring Ed Harris in 2000.
The authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith propose that Van Gogh was a voracious reader while Pollock read only one book in his lifetime; Melville’s Moby Dick. An early New York Times review refutes some of the authors’ sketchy claims. And Henry Adams, one of the leading scholars on Pollock, has a more realistic and informed view of the artist’s intellectual life.
Sunday was the opening and juror’s talk at the Douglasville Cultural Arts Center, a historic late Victorian built in 1901, managed by Executive Director Laura Lieberman. Lieberman was one of the original editors of Art Papers, a local arts publication founded in 1979 by Dan Talley, and still in print. Several reviews of my past exhibits in Atlanta were featured in the magazine during the 1980s.
Angela Nichols of the Hudgens Center, curated the show. The crowd enjoyed a spread provided by the Douglasville Art Guild.  Two of my paintings were featured.
43 artists were accepted into the 25th National Juried Exhibition. My favorite pieces in the show were a couple of the woodcuts and this Deruta style ceramic skateboard. These outlying cultural centers around Atlanta seem to get quite a response to their exhibits.