Old studio gets rolling as art gallery, showroom
A Rolling Stone Press sign hangs on the clapboard building at the corner of Calhoun and Hirsch streets, even though the lithography atelier closed when its founder, Wayne Kline, died in 2005. Here's why: Starting Saturday, the old print studio will serve as a gallery for a rotating show of Rolling Stone prints.
Matt Hoots, the building's new owner, is working with Kline's son Andrew and daughter-in-law Heather. They all will host an open house Saturday for the gallery and the Hoots Group, a green contracting business. The gallery will double as a showroom for organic furniture.
Kline worked with many national and local artists during the 20 years he ran his press. Andrew estimates that he inherited 1,500 prints by such artists Beverly Buchanan, Ruth Laxson and Genevieve Arnold.
He plans to hold on to a complete set, but hopes to sell some of the work. The young Klines will donate a percentage of Saturday's sales to the Atlanta Printmakers Studio.
By the way, that sign for the press is a reproduction. The original fell down shortly after Kline's death. Hoots, who had lived two doors down and knew Kline, had the new one made as part of his loving restoration of the 1915 structure.
Open house: 1-5 p.m. Saturday. 432 Calhoun St. Andrew Kline: 704-472-8662. The Hoots Group: 404-474-7379. www.rollingstonepress.org.
The return of Taboo
The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia inaugurates the Project Ramp Gallery in its Education/Resource Center with a walk down memory lane.
"Taboo Remembered" chronicles the exploits of the cheeky and proudly gay artist collective that enlivened Atlanta between 1988 and 1999.
During that period, the ringleaders —- Larry Jens Anderson, King Thackston, David Fraley and Michael Venezia —- mounted a series of exhibitions designed to ruffle Atlanta's overly demure feathers.
Anderson, the only surviving member, curated the show from the Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia's archives. A sculpture of conservative Sen. Jesse Helms as a lawn jockey —- from the 1996 "Gone With the Wind: The Fabrication and Denial of Southern Identity" —- is his aptly wicked opening shot.
A video montage and a clip from the evening news brings back "Johnny Detroit's Brunch," Taboo's 1989 send-up of Judy Chicago's "Dinner Party."
Her feminist proclamation had honored individual women with plates often decorated with vaginalike shapes. In Taboo's version, men from Buddha to Tarzan got their own, sometimes pointedly phallic, table settings.
Beneath their humor and deliberate provocations, the artists brokered serious issues, and gave lots of other artists a forum for work that would not otherwise have reached an audience.
Through Sept. 20. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. Suite M-1, Tula Arts Center. 72 Bennett St. 404 367-4542, www.mocaga.org.
