Paradise Garden // 2009
The American Folk Art Museum is putting together a trip to Atlanta April 22–26, 2020. Among the activities are visits to Pasaquan, Paradise Garden, the Slotin Folk Art Auction, and the High. If you’re thinking of saving the airfare and live close enough to drive to the home base hotel (the Artmore, where four nights of lodging is included), the rate — including meals, travel, activities — is $2200pp/double, $2400pp/single.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art put out a press release on 1/28 that they purchased a rare stoneware storage jar by poet and potter David Drake:
“David Drake was the only literate enslaved African American potter with a known body of work in this country. This remarkable jar, which bears a date, signature, and an original 4-line verse by Drake…”
…”this jar is to Mr Segler who keeps the bar in orangeburg / for Mr Edwards a Gentle man — who formly kept / Mr thos bacons horses / April 21 1858″ [on opposite shoulder] “when you fill this Jar with pork or beef / Scot will be there; to get a peace, – / Dave” [and 25 slashes]
some of my face jugs
The online Slotin Auction: Pottery, Quilts, Folk Art, Americana is February 8 and begins at 10a EST. Heavy, heavy on the face jugs.
Atari is getting in on the hotel business, and they’re building one in Austin.
The Rosenbaum House, designed by FLW // from a visit in 2002
Listening to: Texas Monthly’s podcast, Boom Town
Reading: Plagued by Fire: The Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright and I just finished Peggy Wallace Kennedy’s The Broken Road: George Wallace and a Daughter’s Journey to Reconciliation
There’s just worlds more substantive, deep, important information in Peggy Wallace Kennedy’s book — and I won’t go into that here — but there are little zany bits included too (a little bit of a respite), like the year Cornelia hosted “Christmas a l’Orange” at the governor’s mansion: after sipping orange juice in the First Lady’s Room, they had a supper of “duck a l’orange, creamed sweet potato orange cups, orange-glazed squash, orange bread pudding, and ambrosia” — George asked one of the servers if he couldn’t just be brought some barbecue instead. Also: an instance where a local tv reporter was instructed to go to a Montgomery grocery store where beneath a pile of bell peppers would be found a copy of Cornelia’s divorce petition.
And I’m in the middle of the FLW book, where the author believes that the man who set the fire and committed murder at Taliesin was from Alabama, though it was long believed that he was from Barbados, as that’s where he’d claimed.
The newest installment of Kentucky Route Zero is out, and in describing it, Hyperallergic mentions “magical realism, Southern Gothic, Tennessee Williams” and the game site describes it as “a magical realist adventure game about a secret highway running through the caves beneath Kentucky, and the mysterious folks who travel it.”
Bryant-Denny // 2018
Seen at the NYT T Magazine piece, from the John Paul Gautier spring 2020 couture show, RTR y’alllllll.
Biloxi // July 2005
In thanks for John Grisham mentioning Mary Mahoney’s in two of his books (The Runaway Journey and Partner), the restaurant has for 20+ years shipped to him a cooler loaded with “shrimp and house specialties like crawfish etouffee and oyster stew, and always with the restaurant’s famed gumbo” at Christmas.
Part of the BBC America doc, “Seven Worlds, One Planet” was filmed in Hinds County, Mississippi to record synchronous lightning bugs.
antique store cameras, incl Polaroid 230 // 2020
I missed this earlier, but last spring, William Eggleston: Polaroid SX-70 was published, including 56 of his photographs taken with the camera.
The MIT Museum currently has on exhibit The Polaroid Project: At the Intersection of Art and Technology:
…over 250 original works by 175 artists, including Ansel Adams, Chuck Close, Barbara Crane, Harold Edgerton, Walker Evans, Hans Hansen, David Hockney, Dennis Hopper, Gyorgy Kepes, Robert Mapplethorpe, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and William Wegman. The exhibition also showcases more than 75 artifacts–including cameras, prototypes, experimental films and other technical materials–from the MIT Museum’s own historic Polaroid collection.
BTW, Polaroid still sells the SX-70.
original glazed // 2017
Krispy Kreme’s upcoming Times Square location: “From the mixing of raw ingredients to the iconic glaze waterfall, the shop will showcase the end‑to‑end doughnut making process… And guests can take that first bite while sitting in the world’s largest Krispy Kreme doughnut box with stadium‑style seating, offering the perfect view of the doughnut theater across the shop.”
cotton field in Louisiana // 2006
From Barron’s: when a North Carolina denim mill closed in 2017 after 112 years, their remaining selvedge was in high demand. Dan Feibus of Vidalia Mills bought 46 of the looms from the plant, and started to remake things there in Louisiana. That’s bringing 600 jobs; product will be shipping Q2 this year.
Imogene + Willie in Nashville will be using it. And the supply chain? Well, the cotton is already there in the area, so:
“If you look at the typical supply chain in Asia, there’s about an 18,000-mile round trip. The carbon footprint of that is at a scary level,” says Vidalia Mills Senior Advisor Robert Antoshak, who works closely with Feibus. “Our supply chain is about 100 feet.”
… the cotton enters one side of the facility as raw material and begins a limited-resource process to be turned into yarn. The yarn then goes to the other side of the building, which is the cut-and-sew side of the business, turning textile into clothing…
Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, San Antonio TX // from a visit in 2016
Texas Public Radio with How Jesse Treviño Created So Much Of San Antonio’s Public Art
Anyway, thinking of sunny weather. Have a great weekend! xoxo!