Creative Loafing Atlanta

2 months ago | creativeloafing.com

Join us for the BOOK LAUNCH of Jo Schulte's exciting new novel THE WHISPERWOOD LEGACY! Come celebrate and join the discussion with Julian Winters at Summit Coffee Emory Village. Get your copy signed, enjoy some coffee, and immerse yourself in the world of THE WHISPERWOOD LEGACY. Don't miss this chance to meet the authors and experience the magic of a new book coming to life! "Atmospheric and delightfully eerie with monstrous fairy tales and toothy secrets."--CG Drews, New York Times bestselling author of Don't Let the Forest In Knives Out meets The Hazel Wood in this twisty contemporary fantasy about an amusement park shrouded in dark secrets--and the family desperate to inherit it at any cost. Welcome to Whisperwood, a sprawling theme park nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, where thrilling rides and picture-perfect scenery bring cult-classic fairy tales to life. Or at least they did until eighteen months ago, when the family matriarch, Virginia Strauss, suddenly shut Whisperwood's gates and the beloved park was left to wither away along with the family's dwindling fortune. For seventeen-year-old Frankie Strauss, Whisperwood's closure has been a blessing in disguise. After seeing three generations of wealth's corrupting influence, she is more than ready to shed the Strauss-family's gilded handcuffs. But when Virginia goes missing, Frankie realizes that her family might be guilty of something much worse than mere dysfunction. With the help of the mysterious and handsome groundskeeper, Jem, Frankie sifts through a web of near truths and outright lies, uncovering a reality where nothing is as it seems and fairy tales aren't just real--they're deadly.

Mar 28, 2025 | creativeloafing.com

!!ECHOES March 14 - May 9, 2025 Spalding Nix Fine Art is pleased to present ECHOES, four solo shows by Caroline Bullock, Sachi Rome, Lizzy Storm and Blair Hobbs. An echo reflects and reverberates from a source. It repeats, but is only reminiscent of the original, not an exact copy. It is transient, changing and intangible. The Artists in this show have created distinct bodies of work exploring themes akin to an echo. Inspired by the 13th century poet Rumi, Caroline Bullock’s “This Place is a Dream” ruminates on the transient and illusory nature of the physical world, creating imagined landscapes using cyanotypes, plants from her garden, paint, and paper. Exploring the layered histories of the South, Sachi Rome’s “Liminal Space,” is a series of abstract works that imagine in-between spaces as sites of possibility, inviting viewers to meditate on the thresholds between the tangible and intangible. Referencing images etched and painted on stone from the Paleolithic Era, Lizzy Storm’s series of earth pigment works on paper titled “lithomancy,” reflects on the traces of human intervention in the environment and our place in the worlds of Nature. Blair Hobbs’ latest series of narrative mixed media collages, “Birthday Cake For Flannery,” is a celebration of the life and writings of the renowned Georgia author, Flannery O’Connor, as well as a reckoning with Flannery’s complicated characters and Blair’s own journey. Opening Receptions: Friday, March 14, 6 - 8 p.m. and Saturday, March 15, 12 - 4 p.m.

Feb 21, 2025 | creativeloafing.com

!!Spittin' Image Jimmy O'Neal 21 February 2025 - 29 March 2025 Johnson Lowe Gallery is pleased to present Spittin' Image, an exhibition of new paintings, drawings and installations by Atlanta-born, Savannah-based artist Jimmy O'Neal, on Friday, February 21, from 6:00 - 8:00 PM. This exhibition marks O’Neal’s first presentation with Johnson Lowe Gallery. The origins of the idiom “spitting image” or “spitten image” have long sparked debate, with theories ranging from “spit and image,” possibly referencing divine creation, to “splitting image” or even “spirit and image.” While these threads point to the idea of likeness, they fail to grasp the complexities of representation in a hyperreal age, where the boundaries between image and reality blur into simulacra. It is here that the concept of hyperreality, as defined by Jean Baudrillard in his philosophical treatise, Simulacra and Simulation, offers an illuminating lens. Hyperreality suggests that the boundary between the real and the simulated has dissolved so thoroughly that what we now perceive as “real” is a simulation in itself. In this world, AI, media, and technology begin to not only mimic reality but to reshape it altogether. This notion of the blurred lines between the real and the simulated is cheekily in conversation throughout Jimmy O'Neal's exhibition. The artist’s practice has, since the 1990’s, explored AI and other cutting-edge technologies as a mirror of the society that created it, a reflection of our collective consciousness and beliefs. This reflection often stretches across the digital, dreamlike, and physical realms—creating a space where our perception of reality is in constant flux. exhibition page here !!Made in Space: Paintings from 1992 -2001 Herbert Creecy 21 February 2025 - 29 March 2025 Johnson Lowe Gallery is pleased to present Made in Space: Paintings from 1992 -2001, a solo exhibition of never-before-exhibited works by Herbert Creecy. On view from February 21, 2025 – March 29, 2025, the exhibition highlights a selection of paintings from 1992–1997, a period in which Creecy pushed his process into new conceptual and material territory. Made in Space offers a rare look at the artist’s late explorations with polyurethane transfers and air compressors, revealing a body of work where spatial fragmentation, levitation, and architectural form converge. For half a century, Herbert Creecy worked at the edges of recognition, a prolific and restless painter who stayed in the South while the center of critical discourse remained elsewhere. His canvases—layered, scraped, collaged, and often monumental in scale—were never fixed things. They were built up, broken down, and reassembled in a process that felt equal parts instinct and strategy. If his early works, with their fingerpaint-like squiggles, were collected by the Whitney, the Corcoran, and the High Museum, it was because they slotted neatly into the wider history of American postwar abstraction. But Creecy was never interested in slotting in. From the Shakin’ Shanties of the ’80s to the cannibalistic, self-consuming collages of the ’90s, each series fed off the last, absorbing and repurposing past gestures until the work, and the artist, collapsed under the weight of constant reinvention. He produced over 3000 paintings, but for all their ambition, they remained largely underexamined. The research simply never caught up to the work. exhibition page here

Apr 4, 2024 | creativeloafing.com | Jill Melancon

The 411 on Atlanta beers and breweries

Oct 22, 2023 | creativeloafing.com

The Hebrew Order of David announces the return of the “2023 Atlanta Kosher BBQ Festival” to Brook Run Park, 4770 North Peachtree Road, Dunwoody, GA, on Sunday, Oct. 22, 2023, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Our Festival is centered around a Kosher BBQ competition where 21 teams will compete in KOSHER brisket, beef Ribs, chicken, and chili categories. We have a large Vendor Village, children’s activities, music, a silent auction, and of course, BBQ. Admission is free. BBQ Taste Tickets are $1.25 each and can be bought in advance online or onsite. Approximately 4,000 BBQ lovers and community supporters attended last year’s festival. Because we are fully compliant with the Atlanta Kashruth Commission’s Kosher food handling requirements, all spectrums of the Jewish community can participate, plus, because it is BBQ, the entire Atlanta community joins us as well. This ultimately makes us the most diverse attended food event in Georgia. You can support us by bidding on the fantastic items in our silent auction. Learn more about this unique BBQ Festival by viewing “No Pork on the Fork: A Kosher BBQ Story”. Proceeds from the Atlanta Kosher BBQ Festival over the past several years have benefited the following organizations: Jewish Education Loan Fund (JELF), Backpack Buddies, I Care Atlanta, Atlanta Israel Coalition (AIC), Cobb County Police K-9 Unit, Cobb County Sheriff’s Department and the Greater Atlanta Jewish Community.