Downtown Art ELEVATE returns with public art festival Oct. 13-21

The theme of this year’s ELEVATE public art festival, set for Oct. 13 - 21, is “Microcosm.” Artists will explore how a community reflects the larger world around it.

Four curators have assembled more than 200 artists to create contemporary art and cultural events in order to spark dialogue around how a community deals with social, racial and economic issues ranging from inequity to gentrification.

ELEVATE “Microcosm” will take place in Downtown, primarily on Broad Street. All events are free and open to the public.

“Festival attendees will be able to engage with artists, historians and area residents,” said Camille Russell Love, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs. “We hope people who live and work in Atlanta will participate. We also invite anyone who enjoys contemporary art and is interested in exploring ideas around community. Our events will be lively, interesting and provocative. We’ll have a fabulous block party, interactive art installations, dance performances, large-scale murals, panel discussions, and historic bike and walking tours. Make plans to join us.”

Some of this year’s highlights will include:

• The creation of large-scale mural by painter and visual storyteller Yoyo Ferro on the side of the Atlanta Eye Care with help from members of the community.

• Freestyle hip-hop lyricists Soul Food Cypher will bring their interactive wordplay to the streets of Downtown and invite people to participate in a conversation in rhyme.

• Meptik will make an interactive light installation on Broad Street, utilizing metal awnings built during the 1996 Olympics.

• Innovative French dancer and choreographer Noé Soulier will perform his latest creation, “Removing.”

For more information, visit: ocaatlanta.com.

Greg Wohead

October 13-15, Times Vary

Greg Wohead is a London-based writer and performer, originally from Texas.

Hurtling

Remember a previous version of yourself, imagine a future version, and wonder who that makes you now.

The

Backseat of My Car

(and other safe places)

A gently interactive storytelling one-to-one performance that takes place in a parked car.

The Second City: Free Speech (While Supplies Last)

Saturday, October 22, 2016 8:00pm

The comedy spotlight falls on America’s electoral insanity with Chicago’s famous sketch and improv comedy troupe. Fresh, fast, and always spectacularly funny. Look for Georgia Tech’s improv group Let’s Try This to join the troupe on stage!

Shadowland by Pilobolus

Thursday, October 27, 2016 7:30pm

Back for an amazing display of shadow theater, dance, and circus, the show incorporates multiple moving screens that merge projected images and live choreography.

Call

By Isadora Pennington

The pale, drab walls of the DeKalb Avenue underpass on Moreland Avenue in Little Five Points is set to become a lot more colorful, thanks to the work of two women and the collaboration of 22 others.

Artist Lauren Stumberg and art-lover Carly Berg are the driving force behind the Moreland Mural Project, which seeks to commission a large and complex mural featuring work by 22 female artists on the walls of the underpass.

With its close proximity to edgy Little Five Points, the underpass is a perfect canvas for a new project, and it was a conscious effort from the outset to actively seek out unfamiliar or underrepresented voices for this project, most notably women. “There is not a lot of gender equality in street art,” explained Stumberg.

Save for one international artist, all of the participating artists are local and nearly half are women of color. Many of these artists are also more likely to show in a gallery than on a wall, and for some this would be their first mural ever, a fact that does not deter Stumberg from her enthusiasm for the project. “I like the idea of blurring that line between gallery and street art.”

Stumberg’s own murals can be seen at a few spots around town, most notably the dancer across from Estoria, and the mural of legs just down the way in Cabbagetown. Common themes for Stumberg include symbols and portraits, plus an affinity for magpies. They often show up, abstracted, as little stick figure birds in her work, and represent positive omens or change.

Berg, on the other hand, is perhaps more focused on the community-building elements of this endeavor. Having grown up in Atlanta, Berg remembers clearly a Little Five Points that was a little rougher around the edges than the one that we know today. “This is where you go to do sketchy things,” Berg said with a laugh, noting that she even got her fake ID there back in the day.

In the years since, the area has managed to retain plenty of its counter-cultural roots, but there are some notable differences if you look closely enough. Though some of the area’s original standbys like Junkman’s Daughter remain, the encroaching influx of popular chains like Starbucks and American Apparel have at times threatened the sanctity of the existing independent shops and culture.

Fortunately for the area, and also for Berg who calls Candler Park home, the community in Little Five Points is a vocal and loyal one. By upholding zoning standards established years ago, the neighbors have effectively maintained a no-box-store haven in a city that is quickly being taken over by mixed-use shopping complexes. As an example, the always bustling Edgewood Shopping Center sits just on the other side of the underpass, and Stumberg theorizes that socially engaged art in the area could also serve to unite the nearby communities.