Burnaway

[cont.]

The black plastic stayed up on the windows to control the light for the installation in the main gallery, “In Memory of…” by Criss Mills. In the press release, the work was described as a beach scene, or possibly a concentration camp. It went on to say that, “Mills is an Atlanta artist who has executed two noteworthy site sculptures for the Arts Festival of Atlanta, Dynamite Dirt Works, and gallery exhibitions. Born in 1949 in Northwest Atlanta, Mills has done everything, including founding the now defunct “First Church of the Future” in 1978 and operating as a mail order entrepreneur. He currently lives in a Brookhaven garage.”
Criss built a ¾-life-sized lighthouse, a life guard chair, and three body-outlined “pools” (I think filled with Crisco). He covered the entire floor with black plastic, then filled the entire space with 3-6 inches of sand. The top of the lighthouse rotated. Reading my notebooks, I recalled that Criss let me operate the hoist that lowered the machinery onto the top of the tower while he secured it into place, possibly not the safest of activities! I was impressed with the scope of the effort, and began to think about installations and my own work. It snowed on the day of his opening reception, a real letdown after his monumental effort. So, we had a closing reception, too. At most opening receptions and Nexus events, there would be 150-300 people; during the weekdays, visitors were often few and far between, like most arts centers off the beaten path.

Also memorable were five simultaneous exhibitions presented March 25-April 23, 1983, including Presswork, featuring books published by Nexus Press, beginning in 1977. David Horton premiered his Nexus Press book In Celebration of the Discovery of the Abandoned Star Factory which combined moveable, hand-constructed collages along with photographs and drawings. Scott Belville had a solo show of his paintings in the Square Gallery. Also shown were sculpture on the grounds — a work by Scott Gilliam suspended on the front of the building, and a large bronze commission by Curtis Patterson, shown in the studio before being shipped for installation in Louisiana.
What Artists Think About Nuclear War (May 13-June 12, 1983) was the first huge art show with a political edge that I helped gallery staff to implement. In those days, Nexus Press designed and produced all the invitations, catalogues, and flyers, i.e., lots of ephemera. We’d stack the printed invitations up, peel off the Avery labels, apply them one-by-one, and sort them for bulk mailing (and pray they would be delivered before the opening reception!) Amy wrote the copy for the call-to-artists, and the same design was used for the mailed invitation. The goals of the show were “two-fold”:
“To represent the ways in which nuclear threat has affected contemporary art, and with the belief that fine artwork has the ability to move and inspire the viewer, to contribute to the growing public awareness of the horrible realities of nuclear holocaust”.

Once again, renowned national artists were shown alongside Atlanta and Southeastern artists. Amy also organized a temporary sidewalk billboard exhibition and invited Atlanta artists to create works on 4-by-8 sheets of plywood.
My first intern project was to compose and distribute PSAs (public service announcements) to the radio stations. I contacted all the stations I could think of, found out that they preferred them to be prewritten, in 20-, 30- and 60-second versions, and typed in script caps, double-spaced. We Xeroxed and mailed these along with press releases, which we also composed ourselves. As the daughter of a journalist and TV-news director, I delighted in hearing the WRAS or WABE DJ read my script about the current exhibition at Nexus Gallery as I was driving around in my Toyota Celica.
Louise Shaw became Nexus Inc.’s intrepid and savvy executive director in early 1983. Amy left the curator position to return to painting. Thankfully, Louise hired me to oversee the gallery program for the summer of 1983 while they searched for a new curator, and to assist her as she organized the first Art Party for the fall. I was both thrilled and terrified by the responsibility, but Amy assured me, “You’re smart. You’ll figure it out.” Words to live by.
During that summer, I oversaw the Roger Brown exhibition that Amy had curated. During the installation, tornadoes hit Atlanta. Other staff members kept trying to get me to go downstairs to an inner hallway. The power had failed, and all the lights were out. One of the roof covers blew off, and as I peered into the darkened gallery, I could see a shaft of daylight and rain streaming in, inches from a wall on which one of Brown’s paintings was hanging. I scrambled up the gallery office steps, then the ladder, and pulled the cover back on, feeling like a character in the Perils of Pauline, later noting that the painting (with its seemingly prophetic stylized brooding clouds) was valued at roughly twice my annual salary! No harm done. The Nexus buildings were unscathed, but a tree fell through Elizabeth Lide and Paul Kayhardt’s Decatur house that afternoon.