Above: Ling Zhang opening at Whitespace Gallery.
Last Friday night, February 26, Mrs. AT invited her girl buds over. You know I love them but they gave me the urge to ramble.
So off I went alone with one destination in mind. Then I just followed my nose. I had a delightful evening - Music, Astronomy, Architecture, Galleries, Art, Nice Folks. This is exactly what the architecture tourist enjoys most: Enjoying what is right in front of me for the moment. Even the obvious can deliver the unexpected and un-looked-for pleasures.
Did you know that Agnes Scott College is home to the 30-inch Lewis H. Beck telescope and the Delafield Planetarium?
On Friday the delightful Atlanta composer, musician, performer known as Klemchak played his music in the planetarium. Christopher G. De Pree Director, Bradley Observatory and Professor of astronomy provided visuals on the dome via the insect shaped planetarium projector. Here is Klemchak before the show chatting it up among the galaxies and nebulae at Bradley Observatory.
Klemchak is cool but doesn't actually glow in the dark.
Lisa Alembik, director of the Dalton Gallery at Agnes Scott College invited the audience to the Gallery. That's an architecture tourist 2-for. Dalton Gallery is in the Dana Fine Arts Building by John Portman (1965), completed 2 years before iconic Hyatt Regency.
The Dana is a great building with Portman's trademark atria and courtyards. It's alive inside and out: gallery, theater, classrooms, studios - wonderful. Outside it's post-modern Gothic in brick. Inside it's sleek, warm and inviting. It begs visitors to explore right and left, up and down. Enfilades, balconies, and stairs beg me to look around the next corner.
The show is "Limitless" Skateboards and seesaws and polka dots, oh my...
The thing with the blue balloons is a musical instrument Klemchak invented, composed for and played at the Center for Puppetry Arts.
I was perfectly happy but it was only 9 o'clock. Why not head to Whitespace Gallery in Inman Park? Whitespace featured the 3 Zhang sisters from China. Is't a busy gellery but I'd never been.
Dreams of a Butterfly...
Treasures...
Culture and Nature...
Three Graces...
I went to Whitespace for art and architecture broke out.
The gallery is in an outbuilding behind a grand Inman Park Victorian: "the three-room brick carriage house dates from 1893."
You walk in from the street crunching on a gravel drive. The Victorian is on the right, a colosssus. I had no idea how grand the Victorian was though I've driven by hundreds of time. The outdoor space is beyond my ability to photograph or describe. It's breathtaking. The carriage house renovation won an award for Atlanta architects Brian Bell and David Yocum.
We want to party at Whitespace!
It was time to head home, north on Highland. What do you know? Just past the Highland Inn Vacation Gallery was having a show too. I'm sure I'm the only person who didn't know that there was such a thing as Vacation Gallery.
The show featured Clarence. That's all the name I got. Witty, charming, a bit crude in places, Clarence has the talent. He's actually normally colored. My photos were blurry so I art'ed them up.
At first I couldn't read the writing on the glass.
There was a good crowd, a bit younger, more tattooed and flanneled than the other galleries'. The zig-zag floor would be a migraine trigger on a bad night.
I enjoyed it had an improvised message on corrugated cardboard.
I'd been lucky on my unplanned music/art/architecture crawl. It was late. I joined the Mrs's and company chez Kearns.
Thanks,
Terry
Here are more pictures from the evening.