RATTLESNAKES, PINEY WOODS AND A BIG FIRE...how will I choose??

It's time for the The 14th Annual Doo-nanny!!

10am - 4pm Daily -41 Poorhouse Road, Seale, Alabama

Lo-Fi Festival

March 26 -28, 2010

Outsider Folk Art Show

March 27 -28, 2010

A truly unique experience!....a casserole of southern folk art, home cookin, homemade movies, camping, foot-stompin music, experimental architecture, guessing, oddities, unusual characters, a movie festival, surprises, cracker ingenuity, experiential transomism, and much more!... Folks coming in from NY, TX, CA, and beyond beyond...

Doo-Nanny

Begun as a roadside folk art show in 1996, the Doo-Nanny is now located on a beautiful 80 acre farm in Seale, AL, near Columbus, Ga, and includes a wacky "lo-fi" film festival, fun food, and and eclectic assortment of music and activities.

......start tying stuff to your roof now.......

Come all ye inventors, movie makers, ballerinas, bikers, morticians, bakers, artists, conspiracy theorists, scientists, foodies, eco-whatevers, moonshiners, comedians, fire-spinners, yodelers, he-shes, animal-trainers, pickle-makers, party girls, sock monkeys, stackers, jugglers, musicians, whittlers, spankers, fisherpersons, beggers, wanderers, and map-makers.......

Highlights include: Alabama Studio Style Book Signing & Stitching Circle and a big fire!

ALSO HAPPENING THIS WEEKEND in SE Ala PRETTY NEARBY: The infamous OPP, AL Rattlesnake Rodeo and the exponentially less deadly Piney Woods Arts Fest in Enterprise, AL (home of the great Bingo debacle - but more on that another time). Let's be careful out there.

RIP: Barry Hannah

The Alabama Writer's Forum remembers Barry Hannah: In Memoriam: Barry Hannah

Barry Hannah Author and educator Barry Hannah died at his home in Oxford, Miss., on March 1. He was 67. Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Mississippi, he published eight novels and four short story collections. His novels include Yonder Stands Your Orphan, High Lonesome, Bats Out of Hell, and Never Die. His novel Ray was written and set in Tuscaloosa, where Hannah helped bring the University of Alabama Creative Writing Program to national prominence during his tenure there. Hannah was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in fiction for his short story collection High Lonesome. His first novel, Geronimo Rex, won the William Faulkner Prize and was nominated for the National Book Award. Airships, his collection of short stories about the Vietnam War, the Civil War, and the modern South, won the Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award. Hannah also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Robert Penn Warren Lifetime Achievement Award, a PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction, and a prestigious Award in Literature from the American Institute of Arts and Letters. "He was the rarest of things: He truly was an original," writer Brad Watson told the Tuscaloosa News. "Whatever his many influences, he had entirely digested them; they came out Barry Hannah." Watson studied creative writing with Hannah at the University of Alabama. The Alabama Writers' Forum, a partnership program of the Alabama State Council on the Arts, promotes writers and writing in Alabama, with an emphasis on arts education programs for young writers. If you're planning to be in or near Montgomery on 4/17, the AWF produced Alabama Book Festival takes place from 10 a.m-4 p.m downtown at Old Alabama Town. More than fifty authors, storytellers, publishers, illustrators, and performers will gather to celebrate reading, writing, and literature.

SCENE: World's Shortest St. Patrick's Day Parade

The gold at the end of the rainbow is found in Hot Springs, Arkansas, along with celebrity Grand Marshal Bo Derek, green fireworks, Irish belly dancers, floats, Irish Order of Elvi (a group of Elvis look-alikes), marchers, Irish Wolfhounds, and let's not forget the Pub-Crawl. Great fun for everyone!

The World's Shortest St. Patrick's Day Parade is always held on March 17th on historic Bridge Street in downtown Hot Springs. Bridge Street became famous in the 1940's when Ripley's Believe It or Not designated it "The Shortest Street in the World." Having earned this distinction, the Hot Springs Convention & Visitors Bureau deemed Bridge Street the most logical location for this novel parade.(source)

SCREEN: God's Architects

Synopsis:

God's Architects is a documentary that tells the stories of five divinely inspired artist-architects and their enigmatic creations.The film details how and why these oft-marginalized creators, with neither funding nor blueprints, construct their self-made environments.

Backstory:

In the spring of 2005, Emilie Taylor, then a graduate student at the Tulane School of Architecture, received a travel grant to research and document self-taught and visionary builders around the south. After visiting and documenting a number of builders, most of whom professed some degree of divine inspiration, Emilie shared her findings with filmmaker Zachary Godshall. Immediately attracted by Taylor's stories, drawings, and photographs, Godshall decided to visit the builders himself.

And so in November 2005, Godshall set out from south Louisiana with a camera, tripod, and microphone to interview and document the work of Floyd Banks Jr., a divinely inspired castle builder living in the east Tennessee hill country.

Three years later, Godshall completed a feature-length film that both examines and celebrates the work of Banks along with four other solitary builders who have constructed similar monuments. Beyond the builders and their work, the film functions as a personal essay that explores the nature of inspiration and one's dedication to a creative project, no matter how absurd or mysterious the circumstances may seem. (source)

God's Architects tours the South beginning tomorrow (3/16):

Date	Venue	City
Tuesday, March 16, 2010	Western Kentucky University	Bowling Green, KY
Thursday, March 18, 2010	Vanderbilt University	Nashville, TN
Friday, March 19, 2010	Arts Council of Central Louisiana	Alexandria, LA
Sunday, March 21, 2010	Mobile Arts Council	Mobile, AL
Monday, March 22, 2010	Capri Theatre	Montgomery, AL
Tuesday, March 23, 2010	Millsaps College	Jackson, MS
Wednesday, March 24, 2010	Clemson University	Clemson, SC
Thursday, March 25, 2010	Western Carolina University	Cullowhee, NC
Friday, March 26, 2010	Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University	Durham, NC

BOOK: Alabama Studio Style

In Alabama Studio Style, Natalie Chanin, founder and creative director of the acclaimed fashion and lifestyle company Alabama Chanin, takes readers on a compelling journey of creativity, technique, and inspiration. Picking up where the celebrated Alabama Stitch Book left off, Alabama Studio Style is a craft and lifestyle book all in one.

Here Chanin shares many more of her stitching, stenciling, and beading methods and applies them to twenty extraordinary clothing and home décor projects, each made with organic or recycled materials and designed with “haute homespun” flair. Along with the company’s celebrated camisole and tank dresses, the featured projects include skirts, scarves, pillows, woven chair seats, and a stenciled scrap-wood table. Rounding out the book are recipes for three delicious party menus. Alabama Studio Style shows us that true style encompasses not only what we wear, how we decorate, and what we eat, but also how we care for our environment.

About the Author

Natalie Chanin is the author of Alabama Stitch Book (STC) and founder and head designer of Alabama Chanin, a fashion/lifestyle company that promotes sustainable style and design. She has been recognized for her work by the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, Alabama Council of the Arts, and Aid to Artisans. (source)