Chair Search: George Johnston

chair candidate: michael obrien

i45_ convergent frequencies [till Sunday]

Flowing along irwin street the last few days has been a real pleasure lately, as i have seen part of the atlanta art community come together a stone’s throw away from me.

Tonight was no different except… //

candidate # 2- lynnette widder

A fascinating candidate is descending tomorrow from Providence, RI. Lynnette Widder comes to us by way of RISD, where she is on sabbatical form her current position of chair.

Her built works, and her teaching/administration makes her a provocative candidate. Join us tomorrow as professor Widder tells us how she may be ableinfuse design education at a place like RISD into our SoA.

chair

signing_off [ Passing the torch ] _ leeland mchpahil

leeland mcphail passes the torch to a new group of thinkers/makers with an open question having to do with our visuality.

a night’s walk from graymatters on Vimeo.

The image is taken from a piece leeland made in the class visual practice with senior instructor- fred pearsall.  Click on: “Read more” to see complete video installation.

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faces voices | Alan Balfour

Alan Balfour sitting in front of the Steel Wall

In this installment of Faces | voices, Dean Alan Balfour is interviewed with regard to the Imaginations Symposium, the search for the new Chair of the soA, Enrique Miralles, and Office dA’s renovation of the Hinman building.  His numerous “faces” are posted along with the actual video: just click the more button just below. //

Museum Symposium Friday April 9th

Museum Symposium April 9th

Associate Professor Laura Hollengreen, a new member of the faculty as of this year, has organized a symposium around her Museums Elective. The event is open to all student and faculty.

“The symposium will feature speakers from Georgia Tech and a keynote lecture by a friend and former colleague of mine, John Folan, who practiced with HOK in Washington before joining the faculty at the University of Arizona.  John is a fascinating person and a great teacher; he did several major federal projects while at HOK and was the director of interns in the big Washington office; later, he spearheaded the “Critical Practice” part of the curriculum at the UA, including implementation of BIM instruction, and worked on award-winning design-build projects; he now runs an urban design build program at Carnegie Mellon and just won a “Collaborative Practice” award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture for his work there.  I think virtually any student would find much to ponder and be inspired by in his talk.”

- Laura H. Hollengreen, Associate Professor, School of Architecture

showing_seeing Gerhard Richter at the High

7-panes Gerhard Richter 2007

Arguably created by Barbara Stafford, Showing Seeing is a way of presenting a visual artifact from the world.  Usually under multiple lenses, this exercise dissects our visual understanding in this world in the context of the thing itself. In this version Gerhard Richter’s work at the High Museum is examined. What makes his work communicate on so many wavelengths and so many levels of understanding? “Look Dad, I’m 3d,” a 4 year old exclaimed while looking through the eleven paned installation. What have you said?

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faces | voices 2: gernot riether

in this edition, architect and assistant professor gernot riether is questioned about digital design, bernard tschumi’s paperless studio at columbia’s gsaap, global architecture, and his time with powerhouse architecture studio- reiser and umemoto.

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official Inaugural volume- Monday Feb 8

image by gvain johns

faces | voices | merica may

voice heard here | http://www.vimeo.com/graymatters

merica may | ballet dancer 2007

merica may in seattle 2009

painting by jenny saville

section of a lotus seed pod, variation and repitition

analog animations

visual art and the hands have taken a back seat lately; from Bilbao, to Berlin our art world has become digital.  Watch how the images evoke emotion.  Do we lose something in the “Maya’s” of the world?

questions of urbanity

an open letter to the next mnayor of atlanta

[as written on july 22nd 2009]

Dear Mayor to be named later,

I write this in the Philadelphia International Airport, serving a five-hour layover back to Atlanta from a study abroad in Barcelona; I guess you don’t have to go through Hartsfield-Jackson to get to Heaven or Hell after all.  This is an open letter to the next mayor of Atlanta, the call of a professor for reflection on understanding the fabric of a city from a multivalent perspective.  Where might this “open-letter” be opened?  Is the AJC or Creative Loafing still open for business, or could this letter just find its way to Atlanta’s new public space- the blogosphere?  Facebook is out; I don’t belong.  What about actual physical space with real humans?

That idea is rather disconcerting.  Where might one voice their opinion or pose a public question in the Mayoral race?  In Barcelona, as in San Francisco and other major cities, one (or many) might be able to voice a public political opinion in spaces like Placa St Jaume or Washington Square.  These places are for a politically aware public.  I wonder if this is what Churchill meant when he said “We shape our dwellings and afterward our dwellings shape us.”  I think that could be applied to public spaces as well.

I can just imagine marching with a group to the mayor’s office with a policy concern, and finding out that there is not enough room to stand on Trinity Avenue because of the narrow sidewalks, and then being turned away. I could hear them saying something like, “Could you kindly go to the STATE CAPITOL building over there on Capital Avenue; they have all the power and would be happy to help you.  Oh and could you stand across the street in the Atlanta’s monumental space.  What is it called…?”  Oh yeah, a parking lot.
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