Month: November 2024

Be Still
Arrow Sign
Oneonta AL, 2020.

Since I mentioned our stay last year at the Graduate Hotel in Columbia SC, here are some pics from my visit at the Columbia Museum of Art then. My main focus there was the excellent-excellent Lee Alexander McQueen & Ann Ray: Rendez-Vous exhibit , which I got to see again this year at the Frist in Nashville. It’s at the Grand Rapids Art Museum now through January 12, 2025 .

A few of the pieces at the Columbia Museum of Art to share:

Antonio Salviati, Chandelier, c1880-90

Ed Ruscha, Ghost Station — and if you’re thinking “oh that’s really an inkless Ruscha Standard Station, Amarillo TX” — yes (no longer in stock, but Gagosian had a print of the Ghost Station available previously). I saw the color version below at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 2021.

Harry Bertoia’s untitled sculpture (Bush form)

…Andy Warhol’s Mao, 1972

The Columbia Museum of Art will be hosting Keith Haring: Radiant Vision from September 27, 2025 – February 15, 2026

I missed posting the Graduate Hotel in Columbia, South Carolina last year — when I posted the Graduate in Auburn recently, it reminded me. We had a great stay here and would book it again, definitely.

It’s South Carolina, so peaches and football motif in the carpet

In May, I got to see Kate Medley‘s Thank You, Please Come Again at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, and just saw it again at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Arts in Auburn. It just opened and will be up through May 25, 2025. The JCSM writes about it:

Photojournalist Kate Medley covers national news in the American South, focused on storytelling and environmental portraiture. In this exhibition, Medley invites viewers to see the people and culinary art of service stations, convenience stores and quick stops located across the South, shining a light on the unexpected community, generosity and creativity found in hidden corners of the U.S.

The MMA wrote:

Thank You Please Come Again features twenty-two photographs that document photojournalist Kate Medley’s ten-year journey through the heart of the American South. Medley’s images focus on roadside service stations and convenience stores that double as eateries—or, in the words of Mississippi-born writer Kiese Laymon, “restaurants that serve gas.” Through everyday interactions at these uniquely Southern institutions—which often function as both grocery stores and community hubs in rural areas—Medley captures the region’s local color and evolving cultures.

The exhibition book was published by Bitter Southerner and turned out to be my Mother’s Day gift, picked up at Square Books.

Lemuria Posted with pics:

 

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In Jackson:

In Auburn:

This is Papa & Mama
Oak Hill Cemetery, Attalla AL 2011.

Big Hearted Smitty’s
No credit no problem, probably
Chattanooga TN, 2010.