Month: April 2011

I’ve lost shoes now to two pictures.

Once, I was admiring this gorgeous magnolia when I realized (too late) that I was standing right next to a fire ant hill.  I ran like the wind (in such a rush that my flip-flops are likely still under that tree) and wound up getting only two or three good bites — the loss of my flip-flops was totally worth it, though:

(if there’s anything worth loving at the Atlanta airport, it’s that line of sculptured fire ants on the ceiling in international baggage claim)

The second was when I ran through this farm field last month, which was just sloppy wet from rains.  I got red mud up to mid-calf.  Again, it was worth it, because at the top of this hill outside Talladega:

…are the ruins of Mount Ida:

It took us forever to spot these columns in the woods.  Not exactly the Ruins of Windsor outside Port Gibson (I really need to find my pics of it, but this will give you an idea), but Mount Ida was begun around 1840.  This is how it used to look:

(Photos courtesy Historic American Buildings Survey, Alex Bush, Library of Congress Call #HABS ALA,61-SYLA.V,3-)

Fabulous, fabulous.  My Antebellum Mansions of Alabama book discusses “the magnificent veranda, edged by six superbly fluted columns topped by inverted bell-shaped capitals, a motif extremely rare among ante-bellum homes in the state.  Another rare feature of the columns is the foot-rest, a semi-circular iron bar attached to each shaft of the colonnade.  These foot-rests permitted greatly added comfort, allowing those who sat looking out over the vast expanse of farmland to rear back and  prop up their feet in luxurious comfort.  These are the only such foot-props known to exist in the entire realm of Alabama’s ante-bellum mansions.”

The book goes on to mention that the columns are of brick and plaster, and how marble was used from one of the quarries in Talladega.  Windows on the balcony could be turned into doors.  There was amethyst glass in the sidelights and transoms.  There were fourteen rooms, with two-inch thick heart pine flooring.

An artist was brought in from New York to do false grain wainscoting, and the furnishings were purchased in NYC also.  The front parlor was called ‘The Blue Room’ and was a replica of ‘The Blue Room’ at the White House.  Built in three sections, the home was completed in 1859.

Then, the War came.  Rousseau’s Raiders depleted the smokehouse and pantries, took the slaves (at one time there were over 180 reported on the plantation), and 32 mules and horses.  On another occasion, the wheat crop and two hundred bales of cotton were burned.

In the early 1950s the house was known as undergoing a great renovation, as it was purchased in 1949 by a member of the Kent family who was a ‘leading Jersey cattleman’.  Mrs. Kent ‘has tried meticulously to restore the house to its original grandeur.’

The house burned in the 1950s.  This, and something of a retaining boundary wall, are all that’s left.

Not far away is the Reynolds family cemetery:

Thanks to Susan for reminding me to put this up — Austin Art Yards tour is this weekend and my friend (sorry Scott for temporarily forgetting!) Scott Stevens is an organizer *and* one of the “yardists”:

Above: Scott in his yard with cigar-box banjo.  Nice!

A list of the art environments on the tour this weekend is here.

Also great news: you can tour the now-to-code Cathedral of Junk again!

I saw Chris Beck and his art (above just one fantastic piece) again last week in Nashville at the Temple Arts Fest.  This weekend he will be at Dogwood in Atlanta.


Wish I had my own helicopter — there are so many great things going on this weekend.  I’d do Dogwood in Atlanta, 4 Bridges in Chattanooga, the A-Day Game in Tuscaloosa, the prison rodeo in Angola, and wind up at the Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale.  What about you?


In Alabama:
Alabama Book Festival, Montgomery
A-Day Game, Tuscaloosa
Grits Festival, Childersburg
Old 280 Boogie, Waverly
Marble Festival, Sylacauga
Magnolia Festival, Gardendale
Arts & Crafts Festival, Dauphin Island
Sucarnochee Folklife Festival, Livingston
Heads -n- Tails Crawfish Boil, Huntsville
Strawberry Festival, Castleberry
Riverfest, Wetumpka
Art in the Park, Hoover

In Florida:
SeaBreeze Jazz Festival, Panama City Beach
Delray Affair, Delray Beach
Runaway Country, Melbourne
Hibiscus Festival, Vero Beach
Scratch Ankle Festival, Milton
Edible Mollusk Festival, Sanibel
Rhythm & Ribs Festival, St. Augustine
Down Home Days, Madison
Grapefruit Legacy Festival, Safety Harbor
Mainsail Arts Festival, St. Petersburg

In Georgia:
Fired Works Exhibit & Sale, Macon
Dogwood Festival, Atlanta
Wine Festival, Tybee Island
Bear on the Square, Dahlonega
Street Fest, Alpharetta
Mayhaw Festival, Colquitt
Lemonade Days, Dunwoody
ArtFest, Jasper

In Louisiana:
Catfish Festival, Washington
Jazz / R&B Festival, Natchitoches
Spring Prison Rodeo, Angola
Crawfish Festival, Lake Charles
Palm Sunday Tour of Homes, Lake Charles

In Mississippi:
Juke Joint Festival, Clarksdale
Spring Pilgrimage, Natchez
Tapestry, Pilgrimage, Vicksburg
Alcorn State University Jazz Festival, Alcorn State
Crawfish Festival, Biloxi
Rivergate Festival, Tunica
Crosstie Arts & Crafts Festival, Cleveland
Riverfest, Vicksburg
Ham Jam Arts Festival, Philadelphia

In Tennessee:
4 Bridges Art Festival, Chattanooga
Dogwood Arts Festival, Farragut
Dumplin Days, Lebanon
Rivers & Spires Festival, Clarksville

The NY Times has written about a new art project going around the country on trucks with slogans like ‘Belief + Doubt = Sanity’ and ‘Look for the Moment when Pride becomes Contempt’ and others. Sounds wonderful:

Trucks transport 70 percent of the freight in the United States, according to the Department of Transportation. And if a prominent New York artist and his friends have their way, a tiny fraction of that total — six 18-wheelers full, to be exact — will soon be a variety of cargo not usually found barreling down the interstate: art, fresh from painters’ studios; poets’, playwrights’ and songwriters’ pens; and filmmakers’ cameras.

After years of rumors about a Great American Art Trip in the works, the painter Eric Fischl has announced a privately financed program in which a truck-based roving museum and performance space will tour the country for two years to address what he sees as an identity crisis in American culture.

This is the America Now and Here website; the artists are well known — visual artists like Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman…playwrights like Edward Albee…poets…filmmakers…and musicians like Sting, Paul Simon, Lou Reed, Steve Martin, Rosanne Cash…

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(this is a pic we took of the women’s section the last time we were in Israel)
Passover is next week, and that means that all the little prayer notes everyone puts in the Wall are cleared out of the crevices to make room etc.  If you ever want to put a note/prayer in the Wall, you can go to this part of the Aish website, and one of their students will actually go out and put it in the Wall.

And that leads to the funniest thing put out for this Passover yet:

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Paveen Chunhaswasdikul (“Beer”), who lives in Gadsden and is known for his masculine pottery:

(this is his V-6 Teapot that I took a pic of at Bluff Park’s Art Festival a year or two ago)
…will be showing as one of the 120 artists at the prestigious Smithsonian Craft Show this weekend in Washington.  Wow!

There are more pics of Beer’s pottery here (he doesn’t have a website).

The Smithsonian is also doing an online auction of some of the artists’ work, going on right now.

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Now through June 12, the Mississippi Museum of Art is exhibiting ‘Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Freedom Riders‘ (of the MS riders) which has a book that also goes along with it.

—
Restaurant R’evolution is supposed to open late spring this year in the Royal Sonesta in New Orleans (a nice hotel, we’ve stayed there).  The interesting part about that is that John Folse is doing this with the idea of showing how people ate in New Orleans in the 1800s.  That will be manifested in seven different dining rooms to represent seven cuisines that influenced the taste culture back then.  There will be a market with meats, cheeses, etc. also.  The bar will specialize in pre-Prohibition cocktails.

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From March 28 – 31, John Folse worked to do a food truck to promote the new season of Swamp People on the History Channel, in NYC. The truck was called “Taste of the Bayou” and they handed out over 13,000 free servings around Grand Central Station, Bryant Park, Penn Station, the Financial District, the Port Authority, Union Square and Chelsea.

But seriously, Zagat, when you tell readers about Louisiana food (mallard duck and smoked wild boar sausage gumbo, venison jambalaya, and fricassee of swamp rabbit and wild mushrooms — yum)coming to do NYC, do you really have to mention Deliverance and advise people they don’t have to worry about banjo music?

Also last month, there was a food truck in NYC to promote HBO’s Treme, where they handed out free Hubig’s pies (yes!), pralines (yes, yes!), and king cake (wha? it’s not Mardi Gras season any more, y’all…).

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Thanks to my friend Bethanne Hill, a wonderful person and incredible artist (who did this piece for Alabama Folklife about a Sacred Harp Singing School) who talked about the kinetic wind-operated art of Theo Jansen:

Incredible.

Have to show these pics from the cemetery in Holly Springs from when we went to visit Graceland Too (yes it really is ‘Too’)…Paul asked for fifteen minutes before he was ready for the tour, so we found this…

The fantastic faux bois all around this section:

This monument to “Our Charlie” – Charlie Wells, a little boy who died on Christmas Eve 1872 at the age of four, here with his dog:

sweet little boy:

There were gorgeous monuments all around — and some of the most elaborate Woodmen of the World stones, too: