Artist Lonnie Holley on view in NYC thru 4/28

Lifting Me Over, image courtesy the artist and Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York

Jeff Bailey Gallery in Chelsea is exhibiting the work of Alabama artist Lonnie Holley again, this time in a group show entitled Pitch, with two other artists, Fabienne Lasserre and Halsey Rodman. Mr. Bailey was gracious enough to speak with Southernist via email about Mr. Holley's work and the place of Southern artists in our city.

How did you first become familiar with Mr. Holley’s work?

I have known of Lonnie's work since the 1990s. I am originally from Birmingham, AL, where Lonnie is from.  His work is part of the Birmingham Museum of Art's collection, and he is well known in the Birmingham community. His work is also part of the Folk Art Museum's collection here in New York and other museums throughout the country.

What about his work made you want to represent him?

The work is both original and compelling. Lonnie transforms found materials into assemblages and sculptures that evoke everyday life.

Where does Mr. Holley’s work fit in with current offerings in contemporary art?

Many artists make assemblages and sculpture. What is important is to make work that is unique.

In what ways does the work of each of the three artists in the current show relate to each other (if at all)?

Each artist combines disparate materials in innovative ways, resulting in works that hover between painting, drawing and sculpture. 

How has Mr. Holley’s work (both in this show and his solo show in 2010) been received by the New York art audience?

It has been very well received, both critically and commercially.  Time Out New York and The New Yorker reviewed his solo show [in 2010] and the work has been acquired by both contemporary and folk art/outsider art collectors and by the The Progressive Art Collection.

What, if any, challenges are there in representing a Southern artist in New York City?

I don't think the challenges are any different in representing a Southern artist or one that is from any other part of the country. 

My impression is that Southern writers have reached a level of respect/acceptance beyond the region faster than other types of arts and culture being produced. What is your response to that?

That might be explained by the larger audiences that literature and music inherently have, compared to the visual arts. 

Has art made by Southerners had a harder time being seen as being beyond folk, craft or outsider? 

I would say no.  There are and have been many successful non outsider artists from the South, although the older ones usually left in early adulthood, like Robert Rauschenberg, and moved to New York.  The photographer William Eggleston has had great success and I believe he still lives in Tennessee. I show two other artists from the South, Amy Pleasant (Birmingham) and Jim Richard (New Orleans) and they have strong careers, although they are not yet well known. It's not as important for an artist to move to New York as it used to be. 


Pitch is on view at Jeff Bailey Gallery through April 28.

  

ART: Lonnie Holley

On exhibit thru August 6 at Jeff Bailey Gallery in Chelsea:

Lonnie Holley: Assemblages and Drawings.

Holley, a self-taught artist, is a sixty year old native Alabamian whose work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States. This is Holley’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, and his first in New York in sixteen years.

Holley’s unique combinations of found materials and everyday detritus result in mysterious and powerful objects. They reference spirituality, African American art forms and history, nature, and family relationships. Simultaneously, the visual impact of Holley’s work invites comparisons to the work of other contemporary artists, and therefore continues to break down the distinctions often made between self-taught artists and those with an art education background.

Holley’s assemblages can be simple or complex in their composition. Along the Rails combines old wire, iron, wood, colored paper, cardboard, plastic and other materials. Assembled with both delicacy and verve, its title suggests a journey, escape or hardship. Molting Lonnie is composed of three parts: found concrete with a rebar that serves as the vertical support for a piece of molten iron. The top of the concrete base is splashed with red paint, dripping down the sides. The materials and their deft organization evoke a raw and formal beauty, while the title of the work suggests impending growth, a recurring theme in Holley’s art.

Featured prominently in Holley’s work is a facial profile, found in drawings, wire sculptures and carved sandstone pieces. Small or large, single or in layers, the profiles have open and expressive eyes. In the drawing I in the Teacher’s Chair, profiles face left and right, while one large eye dominates the center. A kneeling figure cradles a child, watched from above. It is a family or community of sorts, observing and caring for one another.

These faces and figures function as characters in an ongoing story. Indeed, Holley’s vivid descriptions of his art stress the interconnectedness of all people and things, both past and present.

Lonnie Holley was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and is the seventh of twenty-seven children. Against significant obstacles he has been a working artist for over thirty years. In Birmingham, he created a unique outdoor installation of his art on the acre of property where he lived, until a forced relocation seventeen years later. Holley lives and works in Harpersville, Alabama.

Holley’s work is included in numerous public collections: American Folk Art Museum, New York; Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Milwaukee Museum of Art, Wisconsin; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; New Orleans Museum of Art, Louisiana; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., among others.

(source)

ART: Hipsters, Hustlers and Handball Players

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art thru Oct 17, a retrospective of photos by famed street photographer (and West VA native) Leon Levinstein (d. 1988). From the Met:

Leon Levinstein (American, 1910–1988), an unheralded master of street photography, is best known for his candid and unsentimental black-and-white figure studies made in New York City neighborhoods from Times Square and the Lower East Side to Coney Island. This exhibition, drawn exclusively from the Metropolitan's collection, will feature some forty photographs that reflect the artist's fearless approach to the medium. Levinstein's graphic virtuosity—seen in raw, expressive gestures and seemingly monumental bodies—is balanced by his unusual compassion for his offbeat subjects from the demimonde.

Born in West Virginia in 1910, Levinstein moved to New York in 1946 and spent the next thirty-five years obsessively photographing strangers on the streets of his adopted home. (source) <---click there to read more

ART: Paul Chan - Waiting For Godot in New Orleans Talk tonight @ MOMA

In November 2007 in New Orleans, artist Paul Chan worked with New York's Classical Theatre of Harlem and the public arts group Creative Time to present five free site-specific performances of Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot in two neighborhoods destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. But the project involved much more than the play. In this program Chan—whose work will be on view in the upcoming reinstallation of MoMA's Contemporary Galleries (June 2010–Summer 2011)—and some of his key collaborators discuss the project and all the different components that made it possible. Participants include Robert Lynn Green, New Orleans resident and "neighborhood ambassador" for the Godot project; Greta Gladney, Executive Director of The Renaissance Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life in New Orleans; and Christopher McElroen, Co-founder of the Classical Theatre of Harlem. The program is moderated by Kathy Halbreich, Associate Director, MoMA. (source)

Tonight - Wednesday, June 30, 2010, 6:30 p.m.

TONIGHT IN NYC: FOOD & FAIREY

Shepard Fairey, Fab 5 Freddy and Jeffrey Deitch on Keith Haring

Artist (and SC native) Shepard Fairey discusses the book Keith Haring Journals. Mr. Fairey will sign copies of that book, as well as Art for Obama, E Pluribus Venom and Supply and Demand (no other books or memorabilia). Call the store for details.

Monday May 03, 2010 7:00 PM @ Barnes & Noble Tribeca
97 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007, 212-587-5389

ALSO: Part two of James Beard Foundation Awards.

Some of tonight's nominees and inductees include:

OUTSTANDING RESTAURANT DESIGN

For the best restaurant design or renovation in North America since January 1, 2007

Design Firm: Project M
Designer: John Bielenberg
Project: PieLab, Greensboro, AL

M.F.K. FISHER DISTINGUISHED WRITING AWARD

John T. Edge
The Oxford American
“In Through the Back Door”

OUTSTANDING RESTAURANT AWARD

A restaurant in the United States that serves as a national standard-bearer for consistent quality and excellence in food, atmosphere, and service. Candidates must have been in operation for at least 10 or more consecutive years.

Highlands Bar & Grill
Birmingham, AL
Chef/Owner: Frank Stitt
Owner: Pardis Stitt

OUTSTANDING WINE AND SPIRITS PROFESSIONAL AWARD

Presented by Southern Wine & Spirits
A winemaker, brewer, or spirits professional who has had a significant impact on the wine and spirits industry nationwide. Candidates must have been in the profession for at least 5 years.

Julian P. Van Winkle, III
Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery
Louisville, KY

OUTSTANDING WINE SERVICE AWARD

A restaurant that displays and encourages excellence in wine service through a well-presented wine list, a knowledgeable staff, and efforts to educate customers about wine. Candidates must have been in operation for at least 5 years.

Blackberry Farm
Walland, TN
Wine Director: Andy Chabot

RISING STAR CHEF OF THE YEAR AWARD

Presented by Food Network NYC Wine & Food Festival and Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival
A chef age 30 or younger who displays an impressive talent and who is likely to have a significant impact on the industry in years to come.

Sue Zemanick
Gautreau’s
New Orleans

BEST CHEFS IN AMERICA

Presented by Visa Signature®
Chefs who have set new or consistent standards of excellence in their respective regions. Each candidate may be employed by any kind of dining establishment and must have been a working chef for at least the past 5 years. The 3 most recent years must have been spent in the region where the chef is presently working.

Cathal Armstrong
Restaurant Eve
Alexandria, VA (VA falls under mid-Atlantic)

Best Chef: South (AL, AR, FL, LA, MS)

Zach Bell
Café Boulud at the Brazilian Court
Palm Beach, FL

Scott Boswell
Stella!
New Orleans

John Harris
Lilette
New Orleans

Christopher Hastings
Hot and Hot Fish Club
Birmingham, AL

Michael Schwartz
Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink
Miami

Best Chef: Southeast (GA, KY, NC, SC, TN, WV)

Hugh Acheson
Five and Ten
Athens, GA

Sean Brock
McCrady’s
Charleston, SC

Linton Hopkins
Restaurant Eugene
Atlanta

Andrea Reusing
Lantern
Chapel Hill, NC

Bill Smith
Crook’s Corner
Chapel Hill, NC

Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America Inductees

Leah Chase -Chef/Owner, Dooky Chase Restaurant, New Orleans

Leah Chase has lived in Louisiana her entire life, moving to New Orleans when she was 14 years old. Her first job out of school was at the Oriental Laundry in the French Quarter. A week later, Chase was hired by the Colonial Restaurant on Chartres Street and she has been in the restaurant industry ever since. Chase married a musician whose family owned the Dooky Chase Restaurant. Once her children were old enough to attend school, Chase began to work at the restaurant three days a week. She started out as a hostess, but she was soon redecorating the restaurant and working as its chef. She eventually revamped the menu to reflect her Creole background. After Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of Dooky Chase’s 5th Ward location in 2005, the restaurant community got together to host a benefit in 82-year-old Chase’s honor. The guests raised $40,000, and Dooky Chase reopened in 2007 mostly for take-out food and special events. Chase is also a cooking show host and cookbook author.

Paul C. P. McIlhenny
President and CEO, McIlhenny Company, Avery Island, LA

Paul C. P. McIlhenny is the fourth generation of McIlhennys to produce Tabasco® pepper sauce, an American staple found in countless kitchens and restaurants throughout the United States and abroad. As were his forebears, he is directly involved in overseeing and maintaining the high quality of all products under the 142-year-old Tabasco® brand. McIlhenny grew up in New Orleans and has lived and cooked on Avery Island for more than 40 years. He is an accomplished fish and wild game cook and counts as friends such food-world luminaries as Emeril Lagasse, Jacques Pépin, Ella Brennan, Pierre Franey, Paul Prudhomme, Mimi Sheraton, William Rice, and the late R.W. Apple, Jr. McIlhenny is the co-author of The 125th Anniversary Tabasco® Cookbook and a contributor to Eula Mae’s Cajun Kitchen and Tabasco®: An Illustrated History. He is also a member of the Société des Escargots Orléanais of New Orleans and the New Orleans Chapitre of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, and serves on the Louisiana Governor’s Advisory Commission on Coastal Protection, Restoration and Conservation, as well as on the board of the America's WETLAND Foundation.

Susan Spicer
Chef/Owner, Bayona, New Orleans

Susan Spicer began her cooking career at the Louis XVI Restaurant in New Orleans in 1979. After a four-month stint at the restaurant, Spicer lived in Paris and California, but eventually came back to New Orleans, where she opened Bistro at Maison deVille at the Hotel Maison deVille in 1986. In the spring of 1990, Spicer and Regina Keever opened Bayona in a 200-year-old cottage in the French Quarter. From 1997 to 1999, Spicer owned and operated Spice, Inc, a specialty market with take-out food, cooking classes, and a bakery. In 2000, Spicer and three partners opened Herbsaint, a casual restaurant in the Warehouse district of New Orleans. She is a recipient of numerous awards, including the 1993 James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Southeast. Spicer is also a cookbook author and an occasional judge on Iron Chef America.

America’s Classics Awards

Presented by The Coca-Cola Company

Restaurants with timeless appeal, beloved in their regions for quality food that reflects the character of their community. Establishments must have been in existence at least 10 years and be locally owned.

he Bright Star

304 19th St. North, Bessemer, AL
Owners: Jimmy Koikos and Nicky Koikos

A clump of feta, tucked in a salad of iceberg and cucumbers. A stipple of oregano on a broiled snapper fillet. At the Bright Star in Bessemer, Alabama, an old steel town southwest of Birmingham, the vestiges of Greece are few.

Greek immigrants built the Bright Star, a vintage dining hall of intricately patterned tile floors, nicotine-patinaed woodwork, WPA-era murals of the old country, and brass chandeliers.

The Bright Star opened in 1907. Descendants of Bright Star founding fathers—Tom Bonduris and his cousin Bill Koikos, natives of the farming village of Peleta in the mountainous Peloponnesus region —still work the floor. Jimmy Koikos, a septuagenarian, and brother Nicky, seven years his junior, are in charge now.

The menu is an honest—and very old—fusion, Greek meets Southern, as interpreted by African American cooks: fried red snapper throats, house-cut from whole Gulf fish, are on the menu. Okra in a cornmeal crust, too. And field peas with snaps.

In the Birmingham area, many of the best barbecue and meat-and-three restaurants are Greek owned. And the Bright Star is the oldest and most storied of the bunch.

—John T. Edge, Director, Southern Foodways Alliance

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.

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.

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

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.

ART: William Christenberry "House and Car and"

Now thru 2/6 @ Pace MacGill midtown:

William Christenberry: House and Car and,” a selection of photographs, encaustic paintings, drawings, sculpture and found signs. The exhibition illuminates Christenberry’s multimedia approach to capturing the spirit of his

native South as reflected by the culture, natural landscape, and vernacular architecture of rural Alabama.

William Christenberry returns to his home in Hale County, Alabama annually. Like Walker Evans, his images of the region’s architectural sites and material culture provide a window into the rural South by offering prolonged studies of a place over time. For example, Christenberry’s sequence of 20 photographs, House and Car, near Akron, Alabama (1978-2005), chronicles the physical transformation of a

single building over the course of 27 years. A related sculpture gives three-dimensional form to the photographed building, however,it is not intended to be seen as a replica. Rather, the sculpture is a hybrid of both the actual image and Christenberry’s own memory of it. Christenberry elaborates: “[t]hey are not models. They are re-creations. Imaginative re-creations, like dreams.” The powerful combination of memory and imagination is particularly evident in Christenberry’s abstract drawings of gourd trees that reference the regional tradition of hanging hollow gourds to attract nesting birds and generate new life.

The iconography of the rural American South is intrinsic to Christenberry’s oeuvre. His found signs are literal records of place, while his images of egg crate crosses on graves and gourd trees allude to deeper cultural legacies. Perhaps the most potent symbol is an elongated, conical shape suggesting Ku Klux Klan members’ hoods. Christenberry translates this symbol into a more gestural, inverted “V” in a variety of his pieces, including the painted triptych, K House (1998).

William Christenberry was born in 1936 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

(text from exhibition press release - issued by Pace MacGill)

Just something I like and feel like sharing

Jasper Johns

Map

1962

In 1960, artist Robert Rauschenberg gave Jasper Johns mimeographed maps of the United States that inspired Johns to begin working with the motif; he ultimately made three large Map paintings in addition to smaller paintings, prints, and drawings, sometimes rendered directly on the mimeographed sheets. During this time, Johns was beginning to employ monochromatic gray or blue palettes and, in 1962, he rendered Map almost entirely in shades of gray. Of his work of this period, he insisted: “My primary concern is visual form. The visual meaning may be discovered afterward—by those who look at it.”

Jasper Johns (b. 1930, Augusta, Georgia; lives and works in New York)
Map, 1962
Encaustic and collage on canvas
60 x 93 in.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Gift of Marcia Simon Wiseman

ART: William Eggleston @ Cheim & Read (1/7 - 2/13)

An exhibit of new Eggleston photos opens today @ the Cheim & Read gallery thru 2/13!

From the C&R site: William Eggleston, born in 1939 in Memphis, Tennessee, is widely credited with having elevated the medium of color photography to the status of serious art. In the 1960s and 70s color photography was most commonly associated with such middle-brow phenomena as commercial advertising and the family snapshot, and only the black and white photograph was
deemed acceptable for display in a museum or gallery setting.

Indeed, Eggleston’s first one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1976, organized by John Szarkowski, marks the moment in the history of photography when color
photographs were first admitted for exhibition to the ranks of a major museum.

Eggleston’s most recent photographs, exhibited at Cheim & Read, give themselves over almost entirely to problems of composition, color, and texture; and yet they do so – remarkably – only within the confines of what could have been seen by the casual observer, whose distracted glance would normally pass-over the surfaces of the world and retain virtually nothing of it.

For instance, Eggleston’s photograph of bags of ice in a frosted-over freezer (the sort one finds at a gas station or convenience store on the outskirts of town) initially reads as a study in the subtle gradations of color and texture in the freezer’s whitish blue-green interior, thickly coated in tiny ice crystals, which form horizontal ridges that run from edge to edge of the vertically-oriented picture. Only when we make-out the red lettering on the clear plastic bags of “party ice,” are we able to orient ourselves with respect to what the photograph is a photograph of: a freezer of ice.

Eggleston’s photographs of the American south, for which he is best known, are highly regarded for the candor with which they document the ordinary barrenness of the rural and suburban southern landscape. But it is a mistake to regard Eggleston’s project as essentially documentary in nature. The artist’s painstaking attention to formal concerns such as color saturation and
pictorial composition in the images he captures gives his photographs a particular strikingness that stuns the viewer, compelling him or her to fixate his or her concentrated attention on the photographic image. Eggleston himself has explained his approach to photography as follows: “Essentially what I was doing was applying intelligent painting theory to color photography.” Perhaps we do best to understand Eggleston’s photographic practice in terms of the artist’s visual acuity, his gift for being able first to discern, then to isolate, those exceedingly rare moments when the banal materials of the everyday world are aligned just so to make that perfect, momentary image which transcends its own fleetingness through its coincidental engagement with artistic convention.

GIFT IDEA: 20x200 Limited Edition Art Prints

ART FOR EVERYONE! Launched in September 2007, 20x200 uses the power of the Internet to bring the value and joy of collecting art to a wider audience than has ever been possible. Named for its signature $20 prints, which are released in editions of 200, the site offers photographs and works on paper in a variety of sizes, ranging in price from $20 to $5000. Curated and personally introduced by founder Jen Bekman in twice weekly newsletters, 20x200's exhibition-quality prints are delivered with artist-signed certificates of authenticity. Collectors clamor for original works from our artists and our editions frequently sell out. They are passionate about art and the Internet at 20x200 and they are excited about creating a place where any art lover can be an art collector.

The prints below were created in the South. You can view the work of artists from the South here.

think-make-think (second edition) by Clifton Burt

Hank Williams' Bed, Georgiana, Alabama by Scott Eiden

Penguin, Memphis, TN by Geoffrey Ellis

Hint: That "Penguin" is my fave!

ART: R.I.P. Jake McCord

Photo: Mike's Art Truck

Jake (JT) McCord passed away September 1 at the age of 64. Funeral services were held at Zion Baptist Church near Lincolnton, Georgia. A native of Lincoln County, where he picked cotton as a child, McCord moved to Thomson as a young man and worked for the city for over 40 years.

Jake will be missed by many. He was a soft-spoken gental soul, despite his tragic and abusive childhood. Jake became famous for his paintings on plywood, which he would nail to the walls of his porch. He called this his gallery and said he put them on his porch, so the town children could come by and see his art.

His paintings were usually children playing with their pets, cats, dogs and animals from the farm. He had a unique vision using bold strokes and bright enamel paint. The McDuffe Museum will reconstruct the front porch of Jake's home and display his art as he did for years.

One of his paintings of his home church rested against his casket, during his funeral service. Henry Drake, a longtime friend of Jake, said during the service "I was always glad to see J.T coming to see me. Sleep on my friend J.T. and save a seat for me."

(courtesy of Ted Oliver, Oliver’s Folk Art. REPOSTED FROM DETOUR ART TRAVELS)

DOO-2! Oct 31 in Seale AL

Round 2 of the Doo-Nanny scheduled for Halloween Weekend in Seale AL!

From the MySpace: Dreams and the Supernatural: It was bound to happen........as we build out the infrastructure of the doo-nanny site, the site begins to come to life, take on a life, and ask to be used more than once a year.....so...Doo-2 is coming......Oct 28 - 31......mark your calendars.......come early for the real deal, and to do your part, and the parts of all those who don't yet get that coming early is 100 times better than staying home treading whatever personal rat race you've created....in case you haven't heard, the rats won.......race over.......we are creating the Himalayan Bow-Legged Curly-Haired Transvestite Possum Race that will take its place, so get in on the ground floor.......start tying stuff to your roof now.......

The fall Doo will have many of the same features you are familiar with, but with more of a "harvest-time" flavor....pies, jellies, jams, jerky, etc, and, of course....appropriate costumery.......there will be an emphasis on the already rich trade/swapping that naturally goes on among our family of art friends, with an official Barter Fair.......we also hope to have the new sauna, hot showers, and wood-fired pizza oven ready.....yeahhhh......

Butch laid out a ton of dollars to make the spring Doo-Nanny happen, with little return...let's make the fall event the time to bring the harvest home for that priceless gift. Bring what you have, give what you can......and yes, in case you forget, giving is even more important when you have little........time, junk, art, homemade food, wine, rugs, old beds, rope, solar lights, firewood, time, homemade M O V I E S, etc, etc. , even homemade money(don't copy dollars, make new money), as well as gifts of regular money, are all currency to us........bring it....doo it......love on it......

this is brand new, so more later..........

Read about past Doo-Nannys here and here.

ART: Cy Twombly @ Gagosian thru 10/31

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new bronze sculptures by Cy Twombly.

Since 1946 Twombly has fashioned sculptures from everyday materials and objects, usually painted with white gesso. In 1979 he began casting some of them in bronze, thus unifying, preserving, and transforming them into cohesive wholes, independent from the original bricolages. The surface and patina of these cast bronzes evoke weathered artifacts that have been exhumed from the earth, an effect that is heightened in those that have been coated in white oil paint.

Born in 1928 in Lexington, VA, Cy Twombly studied art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1947–49); the Art Students League, New York (1950–51); and Black Mountain College, NC (1951–52). In the mid 1950s, following travels in Europe and Africa, he emerged as a prominent figure among a group of artists working in New York that included Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. In 1959, Twombly settled permanently in Italy. In 1968, the Milwaukee Art Center mounted his first retrospective. This was followed by major retrospectives at the Kunsthaus Zürich (1987) travelling to Madrid, London and Paris; the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1994) (travelling to Houston, Los Angeles, and Berlin) and the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich (2006). In 1995, the Cy Twombly Gallery opened at The Menil Collection, Houston, exhibiting works made by the artist since 1954. The European retrospective "Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons" opened at the Tate Modern, London in June 2008, with subsequent versions at the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Museum of Modern Art in Rome in 2009.

Twombly lives in Lexington, VA, and Italy.