Remembering Artist Drew Galloway
Brett Levine writes in memory of his childhood friend who passed away last month.
Alabama (9)
Dashboard Show Focuses on Artists with Alabama Ties at Historic Kress Building in Montgomery
Driving into Montgomery for my first visit since moving away from Alabama over a decade ago, I was struck by how wide and empty the streets were, the number of buildings with peeling paint and For Rent signs browning in the window, and the plethora of ornate plaques marking pivotal moments in our nation’s Civil Rights history. I parked around the bend from my destination, 39 Dexter Avenue, right at the spot where Rosa Parks boarded a bus that fateful night in December 1955.
Masud Olufani Responds to Montgomery's National Memorial for Peace and Justice
We asked Atlanta artist Masud Olufani to talk about his experience of and emotional response to the new National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montogmery, Alabama.
Montgomery Memorial to Lynching Is a Long Overdue Reckoning with Our Brutal History
Between 1877 and 1950 in the U.S., more than 4,400 black people were lynched in America. The majority of these—4,084—took place in 12 Southern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. These deaths are the subject of the newly opened National Memorial for Peace and Justice and its attendant Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, which opened on April 26. Together, they unflinchingly recount the history of racial terror in the South.
Erase Reverse: Felix Becker at Maus Contemporary in Birmingham
The German artist does not totally eschew the ideas of the figurative or perspective in gestural abstractions that get more at the idea of illusion.
“She Ain’t Gone Nowher”: Tia-Simone Gardner at Ground Floor Contemporary in Birmingham
In her mixed-media drawings and sculptures, Tia-Simone Gardner draws on black feminist writing and activism to explore relationships between race, geography, history, space, and place in the American South.
Time Transformed: Willie Cole at AEIVA in Birmingham
Willie Cole is no stranger to Birmingham audiences. His work was the subject of a 2007 touring retrospective and a 2013 solo exhibition at beta pictoris gallery, so one might wonder what revelations could possibly appear in “Willie Cole: Transformations” at the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts.
Lauren Alyssa Howard’s Down-home Wasteland, at Fieldwork Projects, Auburn
Viewing Lauren Alyssa Howard’s show “How Did I Not See This Coming” is like being caught in a redneck remake of the Wizard of Oz meets Twister with a healthy dose of Coal Miner’s Daughter thrown in. More simply, Howard combines elements of fantasy, tragedy, family history, and ol’ time religion to construct a personal history that is archetypally Southern and rooted equally in the past and the present.
Taravat Talepasand Toys With Our Fears, at beta pictoris in Birmingham
If there were only two things that might strike terror in the hearts of the average American, they would likely be Iran and drugs. So, Taravat Talepasand’s exhibition “Not an Arab Spring” begins from a place of wry wit and dry humor that may escape many viewers. For other viewers, the challenge may be greater given the fact that the one ubiquitous image of Ayatollah Khomeini is not necessarily as iconic to a younger generation of US viewers, but for Talepasand this is not an issue.
