The Slotin Folk Art Auction is this weekend (lots 1-824 on Sat, balance on Sunday). The catalog can be viewed here. Online bidding is easy, easy — I’ve done it. Will the Bill Traylor Black Dog go for its auction estimate of $35-45k? I still miss not getting (and not having the $ to) that Eli Whitney cotton gin they auctioned last year.
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The Ogden has a new director, William Pittman Andrews, and he’s from Starkville (has been Director of the University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses before now). And of course half of the ‘historic houses’ part of that title comes from Faulkner’s Rowan Oak. WPA also happens to be an artist himself.
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I should have mentioned this before, but since he passed away, the B’ham Museum of Art has put together an exhibit of Chris Clark’s works, called Celebrate Life: The Art of Chris Clark. It will be up through March 4, 2012.
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Pecan Festival this weekend in Harahan.
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As the Decatur Daily put it, “What do you do if you are a book lover and your number of volumes exceeds the space in your house? Larry Brown resolved that predicament by building a library next door to his double-wide on Depreast Road in the Rock Springs community, about seven miles west of Hartselle.” Love it when people do their own things.
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Another thing catching up on: the owner of Famous Joe’s Pizza in Madison AL, Joe Carlucci, is someone I’ve seen on Food Network and other places — he’s the world’s fastest pizza maker (seriously) as this summer he won the competition in Naples. For the third time. And he has a Guinness record for highest pizza toss. Pretty mixed reviews on Yelp, though.
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The Chicago Tribune wrote yesterday about an exhibit of Howard Finter’s works called the Howard Finster Vision House Touring Exhibit that’s made up of over 200 works, organized by David Leonardis who has worked on restoring Howard’s art environment in Georgia. David Leonardis says that Howard’s widow told him to buy the ‘vision house‘ at a tax sale, which he got for $1479 (and now says he has over $100k in it). The touring exhibit, which the Tribune wrote about, includes “more than 200 paintings, drawings and pieces of paraphernalia.”
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The International Quilt Study Center and Museum is in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the paper there just did a piece about Yvonne Wells and her story quilts, which are on exhibit there until February 26.
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Thanks very much to Jonathan for sending me a link to the piece in London’s Daily Mail entitled, ‘Life in hard times: Dreamy images document misery and merriment during the Great Depression in the South‘ about the ‘Signs of Life; Photographs of Peter Sekaer‘ exhibit at the International Center of Photography that is on through January 8, 2012. *Wonderful* that the paper ran so many of the images, too. From the press release:
The Danish documentary photographer Peter Sekaer (1901–1950) was one of the key contributors to U.S. government photographic projects during the Great Depression. Sekaer photographed alongside Walker Evans in the American South during the Farm Security Administration years, and photographs by the two are sometimes indistinguishable. But Sekaer, who was a painter and who made a living as a sign painter, was an accomplished and prolific photographer who combined a strong sense of advocacy with a highly attuned graphic eye.
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Floyd Shaman sale of art and personal effects last night and weekend. I did not realize that his wife passed away last year. We have one piece of his here in our home (bought it for $50 seven or eight years ago from someone who had no idea and didn’t care who Floyd Shaman was); I first learned of him in Southern Living when they did a feature on their B&B in Cleveland MS and I fell in love with the watermelon bed. Pics of some of his other art here.
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Do you know what a murmuration is? It’s something wonderful.
Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.
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The documentary about Amos Kennedy Jr., Proceed and Be Bold! is today’s Prescreen selection. Yes, yes, yes.