ART+DESIGN
Throughout this month, Raymond McCrea Jones has been photographing the citizens of Palmetto, Georgia, in his Palmetto Portrait Project. A traditional agricultural town on the outskirts of Atlanta, Palmetto is perhaps the perfect cipher for America at a crossroads of ideologies, parties and histories. Only two more weekends remain for any citizen to stop by Jones’ studio for a free portrait, which he plans to assemble into a photographic record of a moment in time in one American town. Free.
Through Sunday, May 26.
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Sam Middleton, “Newport,” 1992.
Sam Middleton was a worldly artist in a way not afforded to many artists, much less to most African American artists of the 1960s. But Middleton took full advantage of his U.S. Merchant Marine status to see the world from Mexico to Sweden and beyond. The results of Middleton’s cosmopolitan outlook will be on view in Rhythm and Resilience at Hammonds House starting this Friday and running through August 18. Entry $10; student and senior discounts available.
Friday and ongoing.
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Flux Projects has been investigating our relationship with water through the eyes of artists since 2022. The latest venture, Atlanta to the Atlantic: Connecting Communities to the South River, will launch on Friday as artists Rachel Parish and Sarah Cameron Sunde will set out by kayak on the South River from Atlanta to the Atlantic Ocean. After documenting the five-month journey, the artists will return to Atlanta to construct temporary installations in three neighborhoods. Launch event takes place at Browns Mill Golf Course. Free with registration
Friday only.
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THEATER
Preparing for “The Red Nose of Courage.”
Clown Corp LLC, with support from Theater Emory, will push the art of clowning further than you ever thought it could go. For one night only, the trio takes on war, violence, imperialism and the military-industrial complex, all with “high-precision silliness” in The Red Nose of Courage. Check out our coverage of the outfit here. The experimental theater presentation will take place at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts. Not for kids. Free (waiting list only).
Friday only.
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Many of the best comedians of all time have turned their life’s painful moments into laughs. Think Whoopi Goldberg, Tig Notaro and Dave Chappelle. Comedian Kevin Gillese throws his hat in the ring with 7 Minutes in Kevin, an intensely personal solo comedy show at Dad’s Garage on Saturdays starting May 18. The show includes a blend of stand-up, personal stories, one-liners and original songs. ArtsATL’s Benjamin Carr spoke to Gillese here. The show may be unpredictable, but it promises to be predictably funny. Tickets: $20.
Saturday and ongoing.
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The most exciting part about South Fulton Arts’ reading of Tiny Beautiful Things, adapted by Nia Vardalos, may be what happens after the show is over. That’s when audiences have a chance to talk back to the cast as part of the agency’s Connect: A Playreading Series, under the Courageous Conversations umbrella of programs. This play dramatizes what we do when we have questions that seem to have no good answers. Others in the series will deal with race relations, the limits of personal tolerance and the status of the American Dream. Locations vary. Free.
Friday and Saturday.
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MUSIC
The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky is arguably conductor Robert Spano’s career-defining orchestral work. It is unarguably a favorite of the former Atlanta Symphony Orchestra musical director. Spano will reprise the signature work this Saturday along with Jonathan Leshnoff’s The Sacrifice of Isaac. Prepare for high levels of feverish sound and fireworks, no doubt demonstrating why The Rite was so controversial at its 1913 premiere. Tickets start at $35.
Saturday only.
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FILM+TV
After spending decades making art, guided only by her own self-taught intuitions, Nellie Mae Rowe famously got “discovered” by the contemporary art world in her 70s. A full creative life soon came to light. This World Is Not My Own re-imagines Rowe’s life in a creatively fictive documentary showing through next Thursday, May 23, at The Tara. “Chewing gum sculptures, a wealthy gallerist, a notorious murder case and the segregated South” all are brought to light. Prices vary by show time.
Friday through Thursday, May 23.
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DANCE
Jimmy Joyner in “Red Tethers.”
Red Tethers commemorates the lives of queer Atlantans lost to HIV/AIDS through dance, movement and temporary fabric installation. Performed this weekend in Woodruff Park downtown, artist Jimmy Joyner will “enact a ritual of aliveness that tethers a past to a more robust queer future for all Atlantans.” Inspired by disco balls, lasers and, of course, red ribbons, Joyner meditates on sickness, death and the afterlife. Free.
Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
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Four dancers, including ArtsATL writer Kathleen Wessel, will come together for Humblabad 3, an evening of three “solos and duets that include exploration, introspection and risk taking” in Decatur. The four dancers — also including Corian Ellisor, Helen Hale and Amelia Reiser — have been making cutting-edge dance in Atlanta for decades. Check venue for prices.
Sunday only.
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If the percussive sound of heels on hardwood is really your thing, you might enjoy Entre Mundos — Between Worlds, an exploration of the crossroads where flamenco dance meets Spanish classical piano. The dance is presented by La Candela Flamenco, and the program includes works by Isaac Albéniz (best known for his Iberia suite celebrating various regions of Spain), Manuel de Falla and others. Tickets: $30, $75 VIP.
Sunday only.
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7 Stage Theatre’s new Curious Encounters installment asks audiences to unplug from senseless noise and plug in to their neighbors.
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In our current era of unbroken media coverage, when we are constantly bombarded with images and sounds of violence, it’s easy for us to become disconnected from our senses. That sensory overload becomes a tool of oppression, keeping us disconnected from the horror of what is happening. Our ability to respond to the needs of others is destroyed as we strive for self-preservation. This week, 7 Stages invites audiences to explore their senses and respond to the community in Curious Sensory Encounters, an experience inspired by poet Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic. The encounter will run May 17 through May 20 at 7 Stages Theatre. 
The Curious Encounters series started in 2014 as a fellowship with 7 Stages collaborator Michael Haverty. Since then, it has grown into a semiannual program aiming to promote new work and bring artists of different disciplines under one roof. Each year, a book is chosen as the centerpiece for the showcase. According to curator Heidi S Howard, the theme of the exhibition is usually chosen to dovetail with that season’s programming. 
“Year-round, we work with a chosen book to create artistic responses to the literature in schools with various partners in our community and artists. This is not to adapt the book to the stage but to connect the artistic process to the lives of all participants.” 
Destiny Renee, left, and Gabi Collard in “Sheds of the Six Senses,” one of the many artistic works in Curious Sensory Encounters.
This year’s book choice, Deaf Republic, is a volume of narrative poetry published in 2019 and tells about the citizens of a war-torn country who are coping with unspeakable violence. After occupying police try to break up a public gathering and end up killing a young deaf boy, the entire country collectively goes deaf as a form of protest. Kaminsky himself is hard of hearing, and he wrote Deaf Republic as a way of turning deafness into a form of resistance. Once the civilians are unable to hear the barking orders of soldiers, they are free to pay attention to each other’s needs and form a more united community.
Inspired by Kaminsky’s work, Howard worked with co-curators Destiny Renee and Aileen Loy to explore how sensory experiences can affect collective protests. Artists were encouraged to create pieces that focus on one sense and either augment or strip it away to discover how it impacts engagement. However, these pieces are not direct adaptations of the book — rather, the artists used the text as a jumping off point.
For example, Light/Shadow Sensorial Playfuls — organized by Charne Furcron, Dana Lupton, Celeste Miller and Deisha Oliver — involves a series of interactive, guided movement meditations using light and shadow to explore the body’s experience of light and promote playful interaction with others. The Tuba Thieves, an interactive film by hard-of-hearing filmmaker Alison O’Daniel, is based on a series of tuba thefts in Los Angeles high schools. It features several d/Deaf people playing a modified version of a telephone as an examination of the nature of sound.
Left to right: shady Radical, Windy Oya Radical and Lauren Neefe constructing F(L)IGHT, a Curious Sensory Encounters exhibit.
While some of the works invite audiences to connect with one another through shared sensory experiences, others highlight how divergent sensory experiences can impact our understanding of community and resistance. What they all share is a focus on the body.
Like other Curious Encounter events, Curious Sensory Encounters is an entirely self-guided experience, with all of the exhibits being run concurrently at different locations within the theater. Visitors are given a map upon entry and explore the exhibits in whatever order they choose. Only one of these exhibits takes place in the traditional theater space, while the rest are held in the lobby, hallways, dressing rooms, backstage and other spaces. 
Deaf Republic explores what happens when we become deaf to everything except our community, and Curious Sensory Encounters explores how reconnecting people to their senses restores capacity for connection. In a society that commodifies our bodies and overwhelms our senses in an effort to dull our reactions to tragedy, simply existing in a space with one another and honoring our bodies becomes an intrinsically transgressive act.
The body longs to be in community with other bodies, even when oppressive systems of power seek to keep us isolated. By bringing our focus back to our senses, Curious Sensory Encounters encourages us to be present with each other — and reclaim what war endeavors to steal.
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Luke Evans is an Atlanta-based writer, critic and dramaturg. He covers theater for ArtsATL and Broadway World Atlanta and has worked with theaters such as the Alliance, Actor’s Express, Out Front Theatre and Woodstock Arts. He’s a graduate of Oglethorpe University, where he earned his bachelor’s degree, and the University of Houston, where he earned his master’s.

In his new solo show at Dad’s, comedian Kevin Gillese shares true stories from his life and career. Laughter ensues.
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Actually, 7 Minutes in Kevin, the new solo show from comedian Kevin Gillese, running Saturdays at Dad’s Garage through June 8, has a runtime of over an hour.
“I thought it would be funny,” the seasoned improviser and filmmaker said in a recent interview. “The pun title is a well-ridden tradition.”
Despite the title, the night of solo comedy does not take the audience on a tour inside Gillese’s physical body, though he does hold the show — featuring big laughs and autobiographical stories about his past — close to his heart.
“I didn’t know that this is where my artistic heart would be drawn,” he said. “But now that I’ve done it, I don’t care if I make money off this. From where I’m sitting right now, I want to keep doing this kind of work. It feels good to me.”
The show, directed by Alison Rae Clark and featuring live accompaniment by musician Matt Hobbs, will be pretty special, Gillese promises. He spent two years developing the script, which includes hilarious anecdotes of wacky moments about his Canadian upbringing and his career in comedy, which began at age 19.
Writer, filmmaker and performer Kevin Gillese.
“I drop in some stories that are older, that date back to the 1990s and moments from my career that are just hilarious,” he said. “But the emotional core of what we’re really discussing is over the last three years.”
During the pandemic, Gillese said he went through some struggles and sought to connect again with others. This show emerged from that experience.
“On this show, I can say that going through the pandemic and emerging from it, I started to feel a deep sense of isolation, alienation and loneliness,” he said. “I felt like the world had gone crazy, and I didn’t know my place in it anymore. And I didn’t know if anybody else was thinking or feeling the same way I was feeling.”
Afterward, he found that others could relate to what he was facing.
“Talking to people, I realized they did,” Gillese continued. “And I thought, if I can channel everything that’s been going on with me for the past few years into a show that’s funny and digestible, I can give people a fun night out, but I can also reach out in a way to people who are feeling like that and make them not feel so alone.”
Theater gives people an opportunity to reconnect, open themselves up and laugh together. Gillese compared the tone of the show to the works of comedian Mike Birbiglia, who uses comedy as a means to explore some deeper perspectives that might resonate with the audience.
“There’s definitely a higher degree of intimacy in this show,” Gillese said. “I talk about stuff that’s pretty personal, but it’s purposeful and intentional. I’m lucky to have my director. She’s given me such a good outside perspective. I don’t think that I’d be able to do this show without her. It’s so vulnerable, and it’s important that it’s vulnerable. But without outside guidance, I don’t know that I would’ve been able to shape it. Thank God Alison and I connected on this project.”
Gillese said that fans of his improv work will find the show funny and surprising. But for audiences who’ve seen his movie How to Ruin the Holidays — which starred his wife, Amber Nash, and veteran comedian Colin Mochrie in a deep and deeply funny story about a family coping with its problems — the tone of 7 Minutes in Kevin will be rewarding.
“Come to have laughs,” he said. “There are lots of them.”
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Benjamin Carr is an ArtsATL editor-at-large who has contributed to the publication since 2019 and a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, the Dramatists Guild, the Atlanta Press Club and the Horror Writers Association. His writing has been featured in podcasts for iHeartMedia, onstage as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival and online in The Guardian. His debut novel, Impacted, was published by The Story Plant.

Anne Truitt, “Purple Rectangle,”1971.
Way back in 1998, British artist Tracey Emin presented the work My Bed at the Tate Gallery in London. Literally, it was her bed which she had been languishing in for days in a depression. Emin schlepped the bed to the gallery, complete with dirty sheets, used condoms and menstrual stains. She won the prestigious Turner Prize for this piece, and My Bed eventually sold for $2.5 million.
My Bed, as with much contemporary art, can feel like it is laughing at the viewer  –like we are not part of the in crowd. And, in turn, when everyday museum patrons say “I don’t get it” to these types of concept pieces, they can feel derided by the artists for being simple minded.
The Magic of Modern Art: How to Love Modern & Contemporary Art, currently on view at the Marietta Cobb Museum of Art, is perfect for families with children who are interested in modern or contemporary art but are unsure of where to start when it comes to learning about what makes contemporary art special. The exhibition, open through June 16, aims to make contemporary art accessible and interesting for a wide audience. While the show may seem a bit plebeian for seasoned art connoisseurs, it provides an excellent introduction to art for anybody who has ever thought, “What makes this special.”
Lawrence Oliverson, “Untitled,” 2019.
Shows like The Magic of Modern Art are an important opportunity to re-engage with viewers and bring them back to museums with art that meets audiences where they are. Madeline Beck, curator at the Marietta Cobb Museum of Art, worked with artist Robyn Jamison to bring the show to life. Jamison treated the subject in her book The Magic of Modern Art: How to Love Modern & Contemporary Art, and these works all relate to her exhaustive list of misconceptions about modern art. These include ideas like “Good art should be technically challenging to make,” or “Good art should be pretty.” The works compiled by Jamison shatter these false ideas about what makes good art, but –importantly — there’s none of that dreadful schlock where the concept takes precedence over the quality of the work.
The works in this show feature a full gamut of contemporary art mediums, including paintings, sculpture, photography, video installation and mixed media. And, generally, everything is a joy to look at — not that this is a prerequisite for something to be considered “good art,” which the exhibition points out. But it certainly helps that there are no purposefully ugly artworks on display. No bloodstained bed sheets or rotting sharks in formaldehyde here.
“But what’s so special about this painting that has cardboard glued to it,” some viewers might say when they see the painting Pill the Pill (2022) by Craig Drennen. And, indeed, the mixed media painting does appear to have nothing more than circles of cardboard attached to the canvas. However, on closer inspection, we see that the cardboard is actually painted on the canvas photorealistically. Drennen used an extremely fine-haired paintbrush to capture the individual grain markings of corrugated cardboard. This work literally demonstrates how contemporary art can play with the viewer’s sense of reality and do so with a bit of humor.
Elsewhere in the show are works that could evoke the classic argument of “My kid could have painted that!” A print by Anne Truitt features just a field of purple paint on paper. It brings to mind the work of Mark Rothko — the floating blobs of color on canvas which he called “miraculous” — who to this day is derided by some for being too technically simplistic. Technical difficulty aside, the work by Truitt is objectively beautiful. It is calming, yet it still grabs the eye from across the room. Also, the work might in fact inspire someone’s kid to paint something like it — at least I hope it does.
Lawrence Oliverson, “Untitled,” 2022.
A handful of photographs in the show give a nod to what is perhaps the most widely popular medium. The photo works of Lawrence Oliverson are just barely figurative, and look more like abstract paintings. In one of his works, Untitled (2019), the photo is of an empty gray room with a singular window looking out into a blue sky. The shapes and the color gradation look more like an Ellsworth Kelly painting than a photograph. This gives the viewer a chance to ask “What makes a photograph art?” Maybe the fact that the photos by Oliverson prompt such questions in our mind is what makes them art.
It’s worth pointing out why I labeled this show as “perfect for families with children” — there’s nothing too shocking or embarrassing on display in the show. There’s nothing like Tracey Emin’s My Bed. The Magic of Modern Art features no nudity or anything that engages prurient interests. A video installation by Jamison does cover some issues related to feminism that may be more appropriate for teenagers and older; however, this is not the kind of show that parents would need to shield their child’s eyes from. The pieces in the show can be comfortably discussed between parent and child, and the educational materials on the walls will prompt thoughtful conversations about what defines modern and contemporary art. Art should be for everyone and not just the in crowd. Marietta Cobb Museum of Art has done an excellent job of leaning into this ideal.
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Matthew Terrell is an assistant professor of media and entertainment in the School of Communications at Kennesaw State University.