This Saturday, March 15, was the annual Rail Arts District Studio Cruise (RAD) in my neighborhood of Avondale Estates. Held mostly in artists’ studios on Franklin Street, an industrial warehouse space that Marghe and Bob Means of Little Tree Art Studios began renovating years ago, it attracts people from all over metro Atlanta.
This year, the cities of Avondale and Decatur got in on the act. Avondale’s mayor Ed Rieker bought the old Academy Theatre building on Center Street and has great plans for what he’s calling Tudor Square. His new community manager, Deborah Revzin, coordinated an artists’ market in the space that included Root City Market and local artisans and artists, of which I was one.
Simply Seoul was making kimchi, beef and pork buns all day long and sold out early.
Andover Trask makes handcrafted bags from American canvas and leather.
I didn’t get the name, but this man had beautiful knives and leather bound journals.
More canvas and leather bags, must be a trend.
Lovely ceramic work.
Macaroons!
A decoupaged whale.
My friend Arthur (Theo) Matthews is making ceramic gnomes and creations. He also displayed some of his small acrylic paintings.
I set up a booth after we realized we couldn’t hang paintings on the walls. Met a lot of nice folks and some neighbors and old friends dropped by.
I didn’t get a chance to hop on the trolley to the Franklin Street studios, or head over to studios in Decatur. Next year.
One day after work at One Midtown Plaza, I took the elevator down to the Mezzanine to check out Dashboard Co-op’s exciting show, COSMS, 12 installations by twelve artists. I had to miss Martha Whittington’s talk, but at least got to meet her and lie on one of her cots and listen to dreams. Dreams, the stuff of an artist’s life.
Artists below, in order of images:
Martha Whittington, Elizabeth Riley, Paper Frank, Lindsey Wolkowicz, George Long, Chris Chambers, Dave Greber, Kevin Byrd, Jason Peters, Andre Keichian. I didn’t get a shot of Dustin Chamber’s wonderful video installation of friends and neighbors afflicted with Alzheimers and Zopi Kristjanson’s container of moss was not marked. Credit to David Batterman for some shots that I couldn’t get in the fading light.
There is a review by Jerry Cullum of the show on ArtsATL.