Burnaway

[cont.]

Nexus became my gateway to other arts happening in Atlanta. That spring, of 1983, Fay Gold Gallery showed photographs by Cindy Sherman and paintings by Robert Beauchamp; Emory University hosted California ecological artists Helen and Newton Harrison as part of a Human Rights Symposium wherein they were developing a project to address “Fortress Atlanta.” Critic Hilton Kramer and sculptor Charles Simonds gave lectures at the High Museum; Gudmund Vigtel was the director, Peter Morrin, the contemporary curator, and they were building the new High Museum, the Richard Meier building. Eve Mannes, Judith Alexander, David Heath, Tom Drum, Robin Sandler and Debbie Hudson, and Crystal Britton were among the gallerists. Genevieve Arnold was to become the first director of Atlanta College of Art Gallery. Other nonprofits included Chastain Gallery, GSU, and Arts Festival of Atlanta. There was an exhibition space in Colony Square. Laura Lieberman was the editor of Art Papers, and Catherine Fox wrote for the AJC.
At Nexus, I went on to work for a year-and-a-half as assistant curator with the brilliant, mercurial Alan Sondheim, including on his brainchild the first Atlanta Biennale, the Political Show (where I showed a piece on the staircase under a pseudonym), the Photo Salon,and In the Dark, among other exhibitions; and then, when Alan left, I was Nexus Gallery director for another year.
The ambitious but eclectic juxtaposition of artists from many backgrounds – emerging to established – that I learned in part at Nexus Gallery was to have an continuing influence on me throughout my own curatorial projects and arts administration “gigs.” Through this internship, I experienced, first-hand, installations and site-specific sculptures and non-traditional art approaches alongside traditional, professional practices of fine art photography that I was studying at school. Painters, photographers, writers, performance artists, sculptors, video, installation and everything in-between came through the Nexus doors. Through Nexus Press, I came to love artist books and the idea of multiples. And the experimental, interdisciplinary mix of gallery, studios, theater and press fed an early love of blurring creative boundaries. Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way calls this an opportunity to be a “shadow artist.” I have said to students many times, at that point in my career, it was a somewhat of a mystery to me how artwork made the journey from storage under the bed to the walls of a gallery or a museum. Nexus Gallery helped me begin to de-mystify that process, and I remain a fierce supporter of the value of internships to this day.
I went on to a varied and adventurous career as a curator, exhibition organizer and arts administrator, all the while, maintaining my own art practice. Many of the personal and professional relationships I established with artists, friends and colleagues then have sustained me over the years and remain important to me now. But those, dear reader, and many others, are stories for another day.
Lisa Tuttle is an artist and Public Art Administrator at Fulton County Arts & Culture. 
 

This project is supported by the Georgia Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities and through appropriations from the Georgia General Assembly.