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VILLAGE PEOPLE
Spaceship = Friendship: Jill Carnes is a well-
known member of the local music scene as
part of the Elephant 6 collective and the band
Thimble Circus. Carnes is also a visual artist,
and her newest paintings and drawings are
on view now at Flicker Theatre & Bar. Carnes
has been making art for over three decades.
Painted with deep blues, pinks and thick black
outline, her current subjects include owls,
cats and people. She finds kindred spirits in
the work of other masters of expressive color
and visionary composition, like Marc Chagall
and Vincent van Gogh. Though she describes
herself as shy, her paintings definitely are
not wallflowers. Full of vibrancy and a quirky
humor, they are expressive of a warmth of
spirit that makes them instantly appealing.
Carnes' drawings seem almost musical in
their interplay of pattern and color across
the surface of the canvas, and as a musi
cian, this makes a lot of sense. I asked her
what she listens to when she paints, and her
eclectic list of auditory inspiration includes
Nino Rota, Mahalia Jackson, Kate Bush, David
Bowie, Patti Smith, XTC, J.S. Bach, Klezmer,
The Carter Family and Nick Drake. As a citizen
of Athens for 28 years, Carnes finds much of
her inspiration right in her own backyard.
She counts local artists as part of her list of
muses: "I love quite a lot of local artists just
as much [as Chagall and van Gogh], and I
consider many of them to be very inspiring
with both spirit and talent."
Her paintings are on view at Flicker
through December.
It Takes a Village: Though they haven't called
Athens home for quite as long as Carnes, the
students of Athens-Clarke County schools
are already essential members of our com
munity. Viewing our town through their
eyes is the subject of the current exhibition
"Community" at the Lyndon House, where
students from kindergarten through high
school have created paintings, prints, sculp
ture and photographs reflecting on the people
and places of their hometown. In addition to
serving as a showcase for the young artists,
the exhibition also highlights the creative and
intelligent projects devised by their art teach
ers. Many of the projects are group efforts,
further emphasizing how individuals work
together to make something beautiful.
Entering the exhibition, one sees
the larger-than-life-sized "People in Our
Community" by students at Barnett Shoals
Elementary. These are standing, cut-out fig
ures which have been painted by the students
to depict police officers, doctors, teachers,
artists, et al. Their teacher, Leonard Piha,
asked the students to work together and each
add their own touch to the finished work. The
huge, colorful quilt ("Community Quilt with
Houses") he led his kindergarten through
fifth-grade students in
sewing is also a testament
to working together, and
an impressive and touch
ing example of a symbol of
home and comfort.
Krista Dean, who
teaches art at Chase Street
Elementary, has a few par
ticularly innovative projects
on display. "Zooming in on
Our Community," for exam
ple, (which was directed
by Dean's student teacher,
Jordan Perry) involved a
second-grade class in exam
ining Google Maps shots
of familiar places to get
a bird's-eye view of their
neighborhoods. Then, after
looking at the 3-D assem
blage sculpture of Louise
Nevelson, the students
built up layers to create a
topographical view of the
buildings, trees and other
structures that make up
their communities.
Steven Milsap's stu
dents at Cedar Shoals High
School also collaborated
to create a quilt-like grid
of self-portraits. Local photographer Phillip
Fuqua assisted in the digital manipulation
of the students' headshots to help them pull
together their vision, creating a reflection of
their community. Milsap says, "The students
felt that by drawing themselves they would
represent Athens and its many different peo
ple, and that the viewer would have a different
understanding of the place where they live."
The exhibition succeeds in presenting the
point of view of a variety of individuals who
have worked together to create a kaleido
scopic representation of a place we all think
we know so well. On view throughout the
Lyndon House galleries through December.
Wait a Minute, Mr. Postman: An exhibition of
19th-century prints at the Georgia Museum
of Art presents color lithographs by more
than 40 artists, including Henri de Toulouse-
Lautrec, Odilon Redon, James McNeill Whistler,
Camille Pissarro and Paul Gauguin. Titled
"Originality by Subscription," the prints are
from the museum's permanent collection and
were first published in the French quarterly
magazine I'Estampe Originale. On view through
Dec. 31. Check the museum's website for visit
ing hours at www.georgiamuseum.org.
Caroline Barratt arls@flagpole.com
Jill Carnes' paintings and drawings are on display at Flicker Theatre & Bar
through December.
NEWS OF ATHENS’ CINEMA SCENE
A Passing Rage in Hollywood: In the wake of
Spike Lee's success in the late 1980s, there
was a brief period when African-American
directors were given the opportunity to make
commercial films with Hollywood budgets
that were serious reflections on black life
in America. (One could argue that Tyler Perry
is doing that now, but that's a story best
saved for another column.) Some of them
were young upstarts like John Singleton,
Ernest Dickerson and the Hughes brothers,
whose first films—Boyz n the Hood (1991),
Juice (1992) and Menace II Society (1993),
respectively—all explored the gritty reali
ties of contemporary inner-city youth gang
culture. Some filmmaking veterans reached
new levels of exposure, too. The magnifi
cent Charles Burnett, whose legendary and
then almost impossible-to-see independent
films—especially Killer of Sheep (1977)—had
already established him with in-
the-know cinephiles as a major
underground talent, got to make
his masterpiece, To Sleep with
Anger (1990), with Danny Glover
producing and starring. Carl
Franklin, like Burnett a California
film school-trained baby boomer,
parlayed the surprise critical
success of his gripping, violent,
low-budget One False Move (1992)
into 1994's Devil in a Blue Dress, a
terrific adaptation of the African-
American writer Walter Mosely's
noir novel set in postwar L.A. that
starred Denzel Washington.
And Bill Duke, a veteran
screen actor who had been direct
ing series TV since the early '80s,
got to make A Rage in Harlem,
which I saw for the first time in
years last week. The film is liber
ally adapted from a 1957 book
by Chester Himes that was part
of the author's cycle of crime
novels set among the cops and
hustlers of Manhattan's black vil
lage, another of which, Cotton
Comes to Harlem, had been made
into a 1970 film directed by Ossie
Davis. The cast is pretty amaz
ing: Forest Whitaker, Glover, the
great Gregory Hines and a ruthlessly deployed
Robin Givens—as a femme fatale entirely
worth dying for—are all right on the money,
delivering performances that acknowledge the
knowing humor in Himes' material while keep
ing the integrity of their characters, with all
their cynicism and pathos, scrupulously intact.
And Duke dwells lovingly on the details of the
vibrant, marvelously stylized period setting, as
in a nightclub sequence that features the most
entertaining striptease act I have ever seen.
Most of these directors pretty quickly
blended into the Hollywood assembly
line—were they all supposed to keep making
interesting films that plumbed their cultural
niche forever?—and Duke wasn't an exception.
After making the very good contemporary cop
thriller Deep Cover with Laurence Fishburne
and Jeff Goldblum, Duke was re-absorbed by
the system, directing The Cemetery Club, a
comedy-drama about a bunch of old white
ladies, and Sister Act 2 before returning to
TV (with a quick break in the mundanity for
1997's interesting Hoodlum). But A Rage in
Harlem (which you can get on DVD or stream
ing from Netflix) remains a valuable relic of a
I moment when the possibilities for mainstream
African-American cinema seemed wide open
and auspiciously unprescribed.
Changes in the Air: By the time the next Film
Notebook comes out in early 2012, Athens'
local art house theater will have begun
operating as a nonprofit. The Athens Film
Arts Institute, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organiza
tion that was formed for this specific purpose,
will officially begin running Cine on Jan. 1.
As readers of this column (and those familiar
with the contemporary cinema scene in gen
eral) are well aware, this is a challenging time
for small film exhibitors, with big changes
coming hard and fast. Cine's transition to
nonprofit status is a great development that
clearly defines it as the community resource
most of us have already seen it as, and it also
means that we can begin supporting it in new
ways that will help it to serve Athens better.
I'm talking about money, of course. If
you're not already a member of Cine, you
should be, and whether you are or not, you
can also make tax-deductible contributions
to AFAI that will support Cine as it supports
our local film culture. Go to www.athenscine.
com to find out about membership packages
(including $1 parking!), donations and all
kinds of other good stuff.
A The Other Good Stuff: There's not much
going on film-wise in Athens over the holi
days, except, of course, you-know-where. My
Week With Marilyn opens this Friday, Dec.
23; I'm pretty much game for watching any
thing Michelle Williams does these days, and
that includes impersonating Marilyn Monroe.
Carnage, A Dangerous Method, Le Havre and
Like Crazy are all exciting things slated for
early 2012, as is the Classic Film Noir Series.
But the biggest news of all is that the peren
nial Christmas classic Die Hard will be the
featured late show this coming week. I know!
Once again, check out www.athenscine.com
for everything else you need to know.
Dave Marr film@flagpole.com
Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe in My Week With Marilyn,
opening Dec. 23 at Cine.
DECEMBER 21,2011 ■ FLAGPOLE.COM 7
