Poets, Artists & Madmen

Under executive director Anne Dennington’s tutelage (which will sadly end this year when she relocates with her husband) ATLANTA CELEBRATES PHOTOGRAPHY has grown into one of the city’s most anticipated events. Founded in 1999 by a group of photo historians and artists, the annual October series of exhibitions and lectures and an increasingly interesting public art component have made a case for photography’s centrality on the Atlanta art scene. Each year the crowds grow, and the lecturers get better. This fall look for talks by 2004 Whitney Biennial vet Alec Soth, London-based Turner Prize nominee Sam Taylor-Wood and New York Times magazine deputy photo editor Kira Pollack.

www.acpinfo.org

Providing a welcome infusion of humor into the city’s art scene, FAHAMU PECOU was one of the standout artists in this year’s eclectic Talent Show at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. With the humor of a comedian and the peacock attitude of a hip-hop star, Pecou produced a “60 Minutes”-styled mockumentary that helped create his own cult of personality. Pecou’s wry commentaries on the artist-as-celebrity also showed up this summer at Vaknin Gallery. We’re hoping this is just the beginning. The Contemporary demonstrated an interest in new blood and a fresh vision by welcoming Pecou to its board of directors.

www.fahamupecouart.com

TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES’ “FUNDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES” is hosted by Tom Kenny, the voice of “SpongeBob SquarePants,” who delivers an engaging lineup of G-rated classic film for kids. But it also gives the next generation a lesson in Film Appreciation 101. Kenny sets up goofy introductions with a cast of real-life kiddies that evokes those creaky, locally produced TV movie nights. Tentative titles for next summer include National Velvet and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. The only downside is explaining to your 4-year-old that SpongeBob is actually a lanky white guy in nerd glasses.

www.tcm.com

With her work regularly featured on the cover of the New York Times magazine, Decatur photographer SUELLEN PARKER has an innovative style that melds sculpture and computer-manipulated imagery. Parker’s photographs of humanoid creatures offer eerie commentary on topics that range from our perverse culture of beauty to human loneliness. With disquieting content and technique to burn, she’s one of the city’s most visible — and most interesting — artists.

www.suellenparker.com

We’re crazy about JACK PENDARVIS. We aspire to write stories and humor pieces as clever, fresh and seemingly effortless as his Pushcart Prize-winning work. We’re thoroughly amused by his first short-story collection, The Mysterious Secret of the Valuable Treasure and this year’s follow-up, Your Body Is Changing, particularly the title novella. We get a kick out of his blog, and can’t wait for his first novel, Awesome, to come out next year. We also think he’s a nice guy.

jackpendarvis.blogspot.com

Art insiders have known for years that ART PAPERS is a local institution worth celebration for the depth of its coverage of the local scene and beyond. But the mainstream profile of the 31-year-old bimonthly art magazine has risen significantly since the arrival of Editor-in-Chief Sylvie Fortin in 2004. And this year, the prestigious Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts awarded Art Papers a substantial $100,000 grant.
www.artpapers.org

Sometimes the Center for Puppetry Arts feels less like a playhouse than a haunted house. Spooky stuff seems to get the puppeteers’ creative juices flowing, notably with last year’s delightful Halloween show The Ghastly Dreadfuls’ Compendium of Graveyard Tales and Other Curiosities (to be remounted this year). Even more impressive, though, was Bobby Box’s macabre tour through the work of one of America’s most famous writers in TALES OF EDGAR ALLEN POE. Staged in January, the production captured the rolling cadences of Poe’s verse and the grisly punch lines of his most notorious stories, while the sets and puppet designs offered gothic splendors like you’ve never seen. The play ended with a pair of blood-drenched hands, brought together to represent the fiendish fowl from “The Raven,” in a macabre image that was the stuff of nightmares.

www.puppet.org