From major shows all over the metro area to small solo shows in ground-level basements, the diverse qualities of the Atlanta art world are on full display this month. This is a quick survey of four exhibitions, each of which is significant for its own singular reason.
The late Eula Mab Rodgers Ginsburg was best known for her quirky, deliberately comic juxtapositions of animal and human figures, in etchings and watercolors seen in any number of exhibitions over the years, but the retrospective at Asa’s Alley Art Studio reveals a range of other approaches to figuration that will come as a revelation to most viewers. The show will run through early August at the studio, which is housed in the rear of a onetime Candler mansion now converted into St. John Chrysostom Melkite Catholic Church.
At Spruill Gallery through June 25, co-curators Marinelly Piñango and Jennifer Price present Matri-ARC: Women as creators within the arc of time, a show of 10 women artists “at progressive junctures in their careers.”
The works by Lauren Betty, Alice Stone Collins, Maggie Davis, Lauren Merceron, Linda Mitchell, Marinelly Piñango, Corrina Sephora, Susan Ker-Seymer, Morgan Auten Smith and Jessica Valderrama are intentionally diverse in style and subject, career arc and life experience.
The exhibition was organized as part of #takingupspace2022, an international initiative growing out of the Artist/Mother Podcast community whose goal is to create greater visibility for female-identifying artists globally. Recognizing this point of origin, the show includes a majority of artists who are balancing the life of artmaking with that of motherhood.
Some of the artists here acknowledge the arc of time in a different way. Sephora, for example, contemplates her life as a sculptor at the age of 50 in Celebration de Cinquante.
Organized in response to the original call in a matter of a few months, this collaborative venture by Piñango and gallery director Price, initiated by Piñango, has succeeded brilliantly. A panel discussion with selected artists will take place at the gallery on June 11 at 2 p.m.
Flowering Time is an exhibition of oil paintings and watercolors by InKyoung Chun at Hi-Lo Press’ temporary gallery in a residence on Atlanta’s Southside. It provides a different perspective on an artist best known for her sculpture and installation work. As an insightful exhibition essay by Yoon Nam reveals, these scenes from Chun’s life contain considerable cultural detail. For example, Napping With Matisse portrays a dog sleeping on top of a pile of books. The pile includes not only a book about Matisse but one about Kim Jom-son, described by Yoon Nam as “a Korean painter well known for her playful and jaunty depictions of trees, flowers, children, and animals.” Through June 15.
Another near-retrospective of a well-known metro Atlanta painter is at The WADDI, where the 66 works in Ruth Franklin: Old and New Dreams are on view through July 2. Ranging from charcoal drawings to acrylic on canvas, wood or cardstock from 2008 to 2022, the show demonstrates Franklin’s astonishing productivity as well as her versatility.
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Dr. Jerry Cullum’s reviews and essays have appeared in Art Papers magazine, Raw Vision, Art in America, ARTnews, International Journal of African-American Art and many other popular and scholarly journals. In 2020 he was awarded the Rabkin Prize for his outstanding contribution to arts journalism.
