Between the layers
Wednesday, April 8 — An artist’s life’s work is best considered in layers – the chapters, milestones, and moments that accumulate until viewers can say, “Yes, I see the evolution. I see the intent.” No single work tells the whole story – it takes a body of work, an arc of decisions made over decades – to reveal what an artist is truly after.
This week’s Sketchbook asks you to consider such turning points: The metamorphoses an artist moves through over the course of a career. What shifts. What holds.
Nearly 50 years into her practice, abstract artist Deborah Dancy put down her paintbrushes and let gravity do the work instead. “Pivot,” opening April 10 at Marcia Wood Gallery in Buckhead, is the result. The poured-paint pieces featured in the show are the work of a creative who trusted that pushing through her own boundaries would open something new. And it did.
Morton Broffman and Jules Aarons built their bodies of work one frame at a time, over decades. Broffman captures American history. Aarons, the American mundane. Neither sought the spotlight, but both sought the moment. What they left behind is a layered record of 20th-century life – now on display at The Breman Museum – that still has things to tell us.
How are your artistic endeavors evolving?
—Sherri Daye Scott
The brush stops here
🖌️ “Pivot,” abstract painter Deborah Dancy’s new solo exhibition at Marcia Wood Gallery in Buckhead, opens April 10. With large-scale canvases shaped by gravity and chance, it is an open invitation to stay longer than you think you need to.
Sculpting Space, Shaping Experience
SPONSORED BY THE HIGH MUSEUM
🧑🎨 Step into the expansive world of Isamu Noguchi, where sculpture, design, and space converge in unexpected ways. Discover nearly two hundred works ranging from iconic furniture to unrealized visions and large-scale installations that reveal an artist redefining how we live, play, and experience form.
Plus, celebrate with a luminous community lantern parade from the High Museum of Art to Piedmont Park on April 23, featuring hands-on lantern-making workshops inspired by Noguchi’s iconic Akari lanterns with Chantelle Rytter.
Two Bronx boys, one Atlanta show
📷 Morton Broffman photographed history as it happened. Jules Aarons photographed the humanity happening around it. Together, their cameras captured a century. “Bronx Boys: Storytelling with a Lens,” now on view at The Breman in Midtown, offers a glimpse into their archives.
➡️ Delve deeper into the frames.
Art Happenings
♀️ ATL Art Gals “Embracing the Frivolous” Opening | 6-8:30 p.m., April 9 | Callanwolde Fine Arts Center.
🎞️ Filmer 8 Premiere Screening | 7 p.m., April 9 | Plaza Theatre.
🖼️ ADAMA Youth Artists Program Student Exhibition Opening Reception | 6-8 p.m., April 10 | ADAMA.
🌸 Atlanta Dogwood Festival | April 10-12 | Piedmont Park.
Post of the Week
👒 South African-born, Atlanta-based sculptor @michele_bernstein_artist merges folk art tradition with a 21st-century eye. Her hand-built hat stand is equal parts functional and face jug – a form rooted in the American South.
🖋️ Today’s Sketchbook was edited by Julie E. Bloemeke.
