For Art’s Sake - Concerted effort

Art activist shares the love

Atlanta must be seriously off the national art radar. In my last column, I reported on an artist who took it upon himself to install a piece of anti-Bush art in the Permanent Gallery of the High Museum on June 2. The painting was described by police as a caricature of Bush in place of Washington’s head on the dollar bill and was accompanied by text that read, “bang Bush.” In addition to Atlanta police officers, members of Homeland Security were called to the scene to investigate.

Later that week, the Associated Press and other news sources reported that similar artworks were discovered on June 5 at the Guggenheim and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Still more turned up at museums in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and at Yale and Princeton University galleries. The artworks reportedly featured paintings of Bush and former President Clinton against a background of shredded dollar bills. They were accompanied by wall text listing “artist’s semen” as a component of the work. None of those reports mentioned the incident at the High.

Atlanta police have not made an arrest in the case.

New Yorkers, as the popular cliche goes, are supposedly some of the most sophisticated art consumers in the world.

But you wouldn’t know it from Atlanta artist Grant Henry’s (aka Sister Louisa) recent experience with Soho’s Anthem Gallery, which also shows the work of Atlanta artists Cedric Smith, Steve Penley, Robert Sherer and Jonathan Fenske.

Henry’s highly ironic mixed-media works are often founded on verboten cocktail party topics — sex, religion and politics — executed in a campy style using found objects like paint-by-numbers paintings, plastic bugs, crack lighters and other cultural ephemera. Henry’s artwork (on view through the end of June) appeared at Anthem to coincide with his friend (and Creative Loafing columnist) Hollis Gillespie’s book signing party.

Henry shipped 33 works to the gallery, including several featuring images of Jesus voicing opinions like “Impeach Bush” and “War is Terrorism Too,” but when he got there, he discovered only 15 were actually installed. A representative from Anthem Gallery wouldn’t comment on why they refused to install the other 18 pieces, but Henry says the gallery owners were concerned that some of the religious, sexual and political content might offend their clientele.

Henry made the best of a bad situation at the opening by selling his work as a “Heaven and Hell” show and personally escorting viewers interested in the dark side downstairs to the gallery basement housing his personal salon des refuses.Look more Former basketball star Darrell Walker (and his wife Lisa Walker) shows his clear preference for color and energy in the collection of works on paper, sculpture, paintings and photographs on view in the Hammonds House Galleries. The exhibition Images of America: African-American Voices, which runs through June 30, surveys some key figures in African-American art including Jacob Lawrence, Atlanta’s Radcliffe Bailey and Sam Gilliam.

If George Bush ends up with another term in office, the antediluvian bomb shelters pictured in the __Waiting for the End of the World (Princeton Architectural Press) might need to be resurrected. The book features shots of scary-tranquil nuclear-age bunkers and bomb shelters designed to usher a small sampling of the human race through the apocalypse.

Photographer Richard Ross’ stunning images from the U.S. to China to Russia and even Switzerland are loopy and horrifying, showing the bureaucratic law of the jungle that can arise in planning for the world’s end, including a bunker built to house the entire U.S. Congress.

Most of us have humble goals aimed at personal improvements to our lives: getting through college, buying a house, finding a good job.

Not Johnny D’Farmer, a fixture on the Atlanta art scene who pops up at public art meetings and gallery openings.

When Johnny dreams, he dreams big. Real big.

John Naugle was born in Texas, but Johnny D’Farmer came into existence in 1988, first as a clown with the persona of an aw-shucks Southern farmer to entertain at kiddie birthday parties and corporate events.

But in recent years, D’Farmer has morphed into a more conceptual project (www.Get-Courage.com), stumping for a bizarre range of issues ranging from peace and personal courage to a campaign centered on renaming Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport after three peace activists: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Jimmy Carter.

Performance artist? Visionary? Nut? Though Johnny sees his roots in all-American icons like Uncle Sam and Johnny Appleseed, his peculiar, mind-bending form of consciousness-raising and publicity stunt could be located within a tradition of artists who have made their lives into a form of protest and social commentary. In 2001 artist Keith Obadike offered his “Blackness” up for sale on eBay with an initial bid of $10. Johnny has also gone the eBay route, offering his own “mixed-media” clown self up for adoption in February 2003 with a starting bid of $7,500.

Felicia.feaster@creativeloafing.com__