‘Day Job: Georgia' and ‘100,000 Cubicle Hours' at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center

With relatively few exceptions, a life in the arts is not the path to great riches. To the contrary, it usually requires finding an alternative way to earn a living and making art before, after and even during the work day. This existence is the predicate of “Day Job: Georgia” and “100,000 Cubicle Hours,” two absorbing exhibitions of Georgia artists at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center.

We live in a time in which we should be grateful to have a job. Still, it's natural to feel resentful when it takes you away from the work you really want to do. Nikita Gale, Andrew Hammond, Takura Masuda and Matt Sigmon -- the young artists Dashboard Co-Op founders Beth Malone and Courtney Hammond selected for “Cubicle” -- portray the day job as a life sentence in a soulless environment of the sort mocked in the cult film “Office Space” and numerous TV sitcoms.

Gale, for example, takes aim at the empty niceties that pass for conversation in an imaginary break room in which rows of cups on shelves are imprinted with a battery of cliched responses (a la Barbara Kruger) to the words, "Hey, how's it going?" posted above the water cooler.

A more complicated relationship reveals itself in “Day Job,” curated by artistic director Stuart Horodner and Nina Katchadourian. The 15 artists in this show use equipment, salvage materials, learn skills and steal time from their jobs, suggesting that even the most menial work can be useful in some way.

More profoundly, the artists have found that aspects of their day jobs seep into, and even nourish, their artistic practices. This is inevitable. Robert Frost's statement, “To be a poet is a condition, not a profession,” is applicable to all artists, who, more than most people, exist in a state of constant osmosis. Sometimes the absorption is unbidden, the way daytime experiences emerge in dreams. Sometimes it is very intentional.

Ignacio Michaud, for instance, is the human resources and internal relations manager at a grocery store, which employs immigrants from different countries with whom he maintains a cordial distance. In his studio, however, he is bent on penetrating language barriers and professional arms-length relationships in “portraits” of co-workers based on their ID tag photos. Rendered in bold, violent colors and impasto brushstrokes, these paintings are both intense and touching.

In contrast, day-job repulsion fuels the work of Lane Ketner and Christopher Chambers. Ketner skewers glad-handing, back-stabbing corporate types in hilarious caricatures, while Chambers, a home remodeler, takes aim at upper-middle-class decadence in crisp imaginative collages using the discarded materials he collects from job sites.

Ashley Anderson makes drawings on the red and white Coca Cola paper cups he drinks from during shifts as a food runner at a pizza place. Begun as an amusement for himself and co-workers, the quirky drawings -- channeling observations and doodly thoughts, not to mention R. Crumb and Richard Pettibone -- have become an intentional part of his artistic practice.

Lined up on a long shelf in the gallery, they make for a witty turn on serial minimalist art. Anderson has managed what Arnold Toynbee described as the supreme accomplishment: “to blur the line between work and play.”

Catherine Fox is chief visual art critic of ArtsCriticATL.com.