ART: Shepard Fairey @ Deitch opens tomorrow (5/1)

From the Los Angeles Times: Jeffrey Deitch is planning to close his New York gallery with a bang. The art dealer, who was recently named the new director of Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art, said that his final exhibition will be a solo show of work by street artist (and political lightening rod) Shepard Fairey.

Speaking on the phone from New York, Deitch said the exhibition will feature "probably more than 20 works" by Fairey. The show is set to open May 1 and will run through the month at Deitch Projects' SoHo location on Wooster Street.

Deitch said the theme of the exhibition is Fairey's "vision of America" and will include portraits of some of Fairey's "American heroes." He said that the artist has been working on the project for about a year.

A spokesman for Fairey at the artist's L.A. studio said portraits in the show will primarily depict people from the fields of music, culture and art -- including Debbie Harry and Woodie Guthrie. In addition, the show will feature portraits of the Dalai Lama and political activist Aung San Suu Kyi.

Fairey is also planning on creating site-specific outdoor murals as part of the exhibition. His studio said that there will be several of these large-scale murals and that "we try to do as much outdoor as indoor work."

As part of his new job at MOCA, Deitch will cease his gallery operations to avoid conflicts of interest. Deitch started representing Fairey last summer.

MORE FROM Fairey's site:

Opening Reception on May 1st, 6-9pm
May 01, 2010 — May 29, 2010

Deitch Projects
18 Wooster Street, New York City

Deitch Projects is pleased to present May Day, an exhibition of new work by Shepard Fairey, as its final project. Titled not only in reference to the day of the exhibition’s opening, the multiple meanings of May Day resonate throughout the artist’s new body of work. Originally a celebration of spring and the rebirth it represents, May Day is also observed in many countries as International Worker’s Day or Labor Day, a day of political demonstrations and celebrations coordinated by unions and socialist groups. “Mayday” is also the distress signal used by pilots, police and firefighters in times of emergency.

BOOK: To Kill A Mockingbird 50th Anniversary

Tonight (4/28) @ 8PM at Symphony Space:

Authors and actors including Stephen Colbert, Libba Bray (award winning young-adult novelist Going Bovine, winner of 2010 Printz Award), Oskar Eustis (Artistic Director at The Public Theater), Kurt Andersen (novelist and Studio 360 Host), Jayne Anne Phillips (novelist and National Book Award finalist Lark & Termite), filmmaker Mary McDonagh Murphy (author of the upcoming book Scout, Atticus, and Boo), and others pay tribute to the Pulitzer prize-winning classic novel about racial injustice and loss of innocence in a small Southern town. One of the most taught -- and frequently challenged -- books of the last 50 years, the book was voted the best novel of the twentieth century by librarians. The evening will include readings, discussion an audience Q&A. (source)

ART: Skylar Fein's "Remember The Upstairs Lounge" opens 4/28

Remember the Upstairs Lounge by Skylar Fein

Curated by Dan Cameron & No Longer Empty

447 West 16th Street, at 10th Avenue

A New Orleans bar is coming to New York, but with a difference. This bar doesn't serve alcohol. And the regulars are long gone. No Longer Empty is pleased to present Remember the Upstairs Lounge, the recreation of a bohemian French Quarter bar that was destroyed decades ago in a mysterious fire whose story has a surprising power.

Official Opening: April 28, 6pm-8pm

Open to the Public: April 29-May 30, Wed-Sun., 12pm-7pm

The exhibition will be accompanied by programming including a panel discussion on Tuesday May 4th which will address the relationship between art and social causes. Skylar Fein will give an "artist talk"and tours of the exhibition throughout its run.

Skylar Fein is represented by Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans. The exhibition is made possible with the generous support of Taconic Investment Properties.

ART: The Road to Freedom & After 1968

The High Museum in Atlanta organized these two exhibitions currently up at the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

The Road to Freedom: During the span of twelve years, a series of events, later hailed as the Civil Rights Movement, would forever change the social and political course of America. The Bronx Museum of the Arts presents Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956–1968, an exhibitions that chronicling these pivotal moments in the nation’s history. Featuring 150 vintage photographs, Road to Freedom is the most comprehensive collection of photographic prints and related artifacts ever devoted to the subject and was organized by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination.

After 1968: As a complement to Road to Freedom, The Bronx Museum will also present AFTER 1968: Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy. This smaller exhibition includes works from seven African-American, emerging artists and collectives—all born on or after 1968—who have created new work examining the heritage of the Civil Rights Movement and its affect on the lives of this new generation. Using the movement as inspiration, context or critique, these artists address their own personal understanding of race, identity, American violence, and political activism providing new perspectives on and discourse about this critical time in the history of the United States. (source)

Both close on August 11.

FILM: @ The Tribeca Film Festival This Week

Set in the 1930s in a rural Southern town, the film follows scruffy hermit Felix Bush (played impeccably by Robert Duvall), who has lived alone on the outskirts of town for 40 years shrouded in a dark mystery. One day he emerges from isolation to plan his own living "funeral party," expecting the townsfolk who have rejected him for years to attend. Denied a proper funeral for his checkered past, Felix perseveres to set the record straight. With the help of Frank Quinn (Bill Murray), the town's broke funeral director, his quirky assistant Buddy Robinson (Lucas Black), and an old friend and widow Maddie Darrow (Sissy Spacek), he tries to retrace history and expunge his record. (source)

Casey Affleck is Lou Ford, a small-town deputy sheriff ordered to evict local prostitute Joyce Lakeland (Jessica Alba) for taking up with the son of a prominent businessman. It only takes one encounter with the seductive Joyce for Ford to get swept up in an intense sexual affair with her, and soon he's hatching a scheme to blackmail her lover so they can run away together. But behind Ford's accommodating Texan smile hides a cold-blooded killer, and when his upstanding fiancée (Kate Hudson) catches wind of the infidelity and the whole town begins asking questions, Ford's attempts to cover his tracks snowball in escalating acts of deception and violence. (source)

Lives on the Mississippi

Now thru May 1 @ The Grolier Club:

“Lives on the Mississippi: Literature and Culture along the Great River,” from the collections of the St. Louis Mercantile Library Association, explores the history, development and life of the Mississippi River as a distinct yet vast cultural region. Its traditions, lore, and heritage reverberate in literature and art over nearly 2500 miles and more than 400 years — a fertile and fluid meandering of consciousness, vision, and imagination. (source)

ART: Shepard Fairey @ BK Museum 4/25

From Flavorpill:

The Brooklyn Museum says:

One of the most influential street artists of our time, Shepard Fairey will discuss his career and work with Associate Curator of Exhibitions Sharon Matt Atkins on Sunday, April 25 at 3 p.m. at the Brooklyn Museum. A book signing of Supply and Demand and Obey: E Pluribus Venom will follow the talk.

The world's best-known street artist, the controversial and prolific Shepard Fairey, is in town for a major solo exhibition at Deitch Projects (in fact, the last exhibition Deitch has planned in his Wooster Street space, given his imminent departure for LA and his new life in the private sector). It's also the 20th anniversary, as impossible as that seems, of the publication of his seminal book Supply and Demand. This afternoon, he stops by the Brooklyn Museum for a book-signing and farther-reaching conversation on his life and career as an artist, icon, and lightning-rod. - Shana Nys Dambrot

EARTH DAY

The skies parted and....

Well, anyone who knows me knows that my absolute fave magazine is Garden & Gun. So bummed to be stuck in lower Alabama on this fine day! But, perhaps I see a collaboration in our future...

SCOOP: Scout Designs (part 2)

This week, Scout Designs partner Callie Jenschke joins us for part two of the Scout story:

Q: How long have you both been in NYC?

A: I am about to celebrate my 6th year anniversary come May. I am originally from Fredericksburg, Texas, a super quaint little town in the Texas Hill Country. Like Nicki, I thought I would be in NYC for a couple of years, but this place is like a bug that I can't get over!

Q: How has being from the south influenced your design aesthetic (assuming it has)?

A: Well, southerners are not afraid of color. We definitely love to inject pops of color into each project. Also, being nature lovers, we are huge fans of adding texture and natural elements into a space.

Q: Do you have any fave southern (owned, themed, based) shops/restaurants here in NYC?

A: Nicki called it! We love Hill Country BBQ. I grew up eating at Kreuz's in Lockhart, Texas (the inspiration for Hill Country). Whenever I get a pang of home sickness, that place feeds the soul!

Q: What’s one cool place from back home that you miss (place, thing, experience)?

A: I think people from the south have a connection to the land that most north easterners do not. I grew up on a ranch and love the outdoors. I often pine for those big Texas skies and wide open ranges.

Q: Is there anything else about being “southern in the city” that you’d like to comment on?

A: There is an undeniable attraction to other southerners here in this city. I moved here not knowing many friends. But after 6 years, I have seemed to cultivate a plethora of southerners! I just love folks from the south–especially the ones that love NYC as much as me.

For more info, please check out the Scout Designs site.

STAGE: In The Heat Of The Night (closes 4/25)

It's 1962. A hot August night lies heavy over the small town of Argo, Alabama. A dead white man is discovered and the local police arrest a black stranger named Virgil Tibbs. The police discover that their prime suspect is in fact a homicide detective from California. As it happens, Tibbs becomes the racially tense community's single hope in solving a brutal murder that is turning up no witnesses, no motives, and no clues. (source)

Now thru 4/25 at 59E59.

READING: Confessions of a Rebel Debutante tonight (4/15) at B&N

A delicious, laugh-out-loud funny Southern-fried memoir about growing up a "proper young lady"...or not. A strict regimen of Southern-belle grooming should have prepared Anna Fields for a lifetime of ladylike behavior. But it didn't. As it turned out, Anna-a smart, outspoken, bookish girl- was a dud at debbing. After being kicked out of cotillion classes, the "Rebel Deb" left North Carolina to seek her fortune. Her first stop was Brown University-right in the heart of Yankee-land-and then the crazy world of Hollywood talent agencies and celebrity-packed restaurants. After a disastrous stint as Diana Ross's personal assistant, Anna headed off to the Big Apple, where she worked for one of Bravo's Real Housewives. It's a rollicking, unlikely success story from a natural-born story­teller. Sharp, sweet, and sassy, Confessions of a Rebel Debutante proves you can take the girl out of the South, but you can't take the South out of the girl! (source)

Anna Fields reads tonight at Barnes & Noble (1972 Bway @ 66th St) at 7:30PM.

RIP: Myrtice West 1923-2010 (funeral services today 4/14)

NOTE: THIS POST IS RE-BLOGGED FROM DETOUR ART TRAVELS

We received word that Myrtice West passed away this morning at 5:10 am in her home in Centre, Alabama. Myrtice met all of life's trials with strength, energy, and joy. We know she had absolutely no fear of death, rather she welcomed it. Her faith was genuine and profound, and a tremendous source of hope and comfort to her. We hope that heaven is everything Myrtice knew it would be. Memorial info is below.

Peace, Love, Art,

Karen & Greg Mack

Mike's Art Truck

mikesarttruck@bellsouth.net

Myrtice West

(September 14, 1923 - April 12, 2010)

Funeral services will be 1:P.M. Wednesday April 14th at the Perry Funeral Home chapel with the Rev. Melvyn Salter and Dr. Jim Wright officiating, burial will follow in Hebron Cemetery. The family will receive friends Tuesday from 6- 8 P.M.

Perry Funeral Home, Inc.

1611 East Bypass

P.O. Box 57

Centre, Alabama 35960

Phone: 256-927-3222

Online guestbook:

http://www.perryfuneral.net/index.cfm

To learn more about Myrtice and her paintings, please visit Detour Art.

STAGE: The Scottsboro Boys (closes 4/18)

image

From the legendary songwriting team of KANDER & EBB (CABARET, CHICAGO, KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN), THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS is a stirring new musical that explores the infamous 1930’s ‘Scottsboro Case’, in which a group of innocent African-American teenagers are falsely accused of a terrible crime — ultimately provoking a national outrage that sparked the American Civil Rights movement. (source)

HBO's Treme premiere re-airs tonight (4/13)

In case you missed it on Sunday, the premiere episode of HBO's new NOLA series, Treme, will re-air tonight (4/13).

Read the New York Times' take here.

Alice Walker @ 92nd St Y tonight (4/13)

Georgia native Alice Walker is a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, anthologist, teacher, editor, publisher, womanist and activist. In 1983, her novel The Color Purple won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Walker the first black woman to win. Walker was also the first black woman to win the National Book Award. Her new book, Overcoming Speechlessness: A Poet Encounters "the horror" in Rwanda, Eastern Congo and Palenstine/Israel is Walker's reflection on recent trips she took to Rwanda & Eastern Congo and to Gaza. In her inimitable way, she takes on not just the politics of each place, but our necessary response and responsibility as human beings to the violence she witnessed. (source)

Booksigning for Overcoming Speechlessness to follow the event.

SCOOP: Scout Designs (part one)

I first read about the NYC-based dynamic southern design duo Nicki Clendening and Callie Jenschke of Scout Designs on Daily Candy. Southernist digs a little deeper with our 2 part Q&A with the women. First up, Nicki Clendening :

Q: How long have you both been here?

A: Almost 10 years! I thought I'd be here 2....no plans to leave but I get back to Charleston and New Orleans several times a year thankfully!

Q: How has being from the south influenced your design aesthetic (assuming it has).

A: It definitely has for me. For me, the South has a 'patina' to it that I grew up with and gravitate towards in design, in particular in New Orleans and Charleston where I lived and worked before moving to NYC. Because both places were/are important port cities, you have so many wonderful homes (and stores) filled with pieces from around the globe that help create the exotic mix of furnishings I love (antiques from Europe, furniture from Asia, African artifacts, textiles from India....) and it's the way the interiors we design our interiors. Always a mix.

A: Do you have any fave southern (owned, themed, based) shops/restaurants here in NYC?

A: Hill Country BBQ! We eat there almost every Saturday after our flea visit. I love the pulled pork BBQ of S.C. but have become a devoted Texas BBQ fan now too!

Q: What’s one cool place from back home that you miss (place, thing, experience)?

A: There are a lot of things, of course, that I do miss but two things probably most: being able to be outdoors for the vast majority of the year, and the people and ease of life. People in the South are just more 'open' than people in the North. It's a "the more the merrier mentality", come sit on the porch and have a cocktail, the door is always open, come over for Sunday supper...it's just easy and welcoming. If you asked any of my Northern friends this is what they'd say I struggle with here, still, the most. I have enough glasses in my tiny NYC kitchen to host a group of 30 for cocktails! I always want people to just drop by and sit and have a cocktail and catch up, but suffice to say that's not really a NYC way of life. We laugh, but sometimes it takes a month to get a date that works for everyone to get together for dinner.

Q: Is there anything else about being “southern in the city” that you’d like to comment on?

A: When I first moved here I was a bit self-conscious about my Southern accent...which isn't that strong but got a lot of comments like "where are you from little darlin'..."! I railed against that for a while, but I let it go shortly after having someone from Long Island who had a very strong accent pick on me for my slight Southern one.

And, most importantly, good manners, or lack thereof. Sorry NYC, but it's something men AND women need to work on. I know it's every man/woman for themselves in NYC but, really, would it kill you to hold the door, or not elbow your way into the train past others, is it really that important that you get somewhere 10 seconds faster? Now, that's a very Southern thing of me to say. ha!

Be on the lookout for part 2 with Callie Jenschke next week!

STAGE: Looped (closes 4/11)

Based on a real event, LOOPED takes place in the summer of 1965, when an inebriated Tallulah Bankhead stumbles into a sound studio to rerecord (or ‘loop’) one line of dialogue for her last movie --Die, Die, My Darling. Ms. Bankhead was known for her wild partying and convention-defying exploits that surpassed even today’s celebrity bad girls. Given her intoxicated state and inability to loop the line properly, what ensues is an uproarious showdown between an uptight film editor, Danny Miller, and the outrageous legend.

She answered her front door naked. She went out in public without panties. She drank like a fish, popped pills, smoked like a chimney, cursed like a sailor, slept indiscriminately with men and women – and was eminently and shockingly quotable. Long before today’s misbehaving celebrities, there was acclaimed star of stage and screen, Tallulah Bankhead. (source)

STAGE: The Cherry Orchard (closes 4/10)

At Wings Theater on Christopher Street. LAST PERFORMANCE: 4/10 @ 2PM

Written by Anton Chekhov, Directed by Susanne Traub

Set in 1923 in Charleston, South Carolina, The Cherry Orchard brings to light the plight of the aristocracy as they see the demise of what was once the great Plantation era. The advent of the flapper age and the introduction of the Charleston dance craze provide clues to the changing moods of the future and the impending racial tensions. Miss Lillian returns home from Paris to find her estate is soon to be sold. Against the better judgement of their upstart neighbor Vernon, Lillian and her ineffective brother George do nothing to stop the impending sale, choosing to frollic around the estate watching the staff flirt and be flirted, her daughter start up a relationship with black rebel-rousing Peter, and everyone ignoring the loyal former slave Alexander. (source)

BOOK: A Ticket To The Circus @ PowerHouse Arena

Mailer was born in a tiny Arkansas town and became a model, an actress, a painter, and writer. In the 1970s she dated a little-known, aspiring politician named Bill Clinton, then went on to marry Norman Mailer (and stayed married to him, for over 30 years). She faced down ex-wives and lovers by the dozen; she became mother, stepmother, and grandmother to an ever-growing brood.

From age three when she was crowned Little Miss Little Rock, Norris Church Mailer has gone from one wild adventure to the next, and she shares it all in her beautifully written, delving memoir A Ticket to the Circus. Reading her stories is like sitting down with an old friend: Norris holds nothing back, from showing up to dinner with Oscar de la Renta wearing only a nightgown, to serving coleslaw to Bob Dylan; from the heartbreak of first discovering her husband's affairs, to saying goodbye to Norman on his deathbed.

In a winning narrative voice that evokes her native Arkansas, Norris recounts her days as a bright, talented girl who knew her life would one day be full of adventure. With clear eyes and startling frankness, she depicts the full evolution of her marriage to Norman Mailer, from the white-hot beginning through the very rocky patches to the mournful end, offering an incredibly intimate perspective on this legendary man of letters. A Ticket to the Circus is an intelligent, bittersweet book that will enchant readers with its charm and insight into how we grow up and how we love. (source)

OA Southern Food Issue hits NYC!

OA Southern Food Issue Dinner

Featuring John T. Edge, OA writers and special guests!

Suggested tax-deductible donation: $500 a person or $1,000 a couple
Proceeds benefit The Oxford American Literary Project, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization

Tuesday, April 6, 6:30 pm

Blue Smoke
116 East 27th Street
Space is limited. For reservations call 501-320-5730 or e-mail food@oxfordamerican.org.

Beard on Books

The OA Southern Food Issue will be the subject of a panel discussion at the James Beard House with John T. Edge and contributing writers.

Wednesday, April 7, 12 pm

James Beard House
167 West 12th Street
Call 212-627-2308 for reservations or visit jamesbeard.org.