Dispatch: From A Loft in Castleberry Hill

 

Sam Wagstaff, self-portrait.

Iwas sitting over a coffee on Peters Street in Castleberry Hill. I realized that I needed to finish that biography of Sam Wagstaff to complete my summer reading list. I have not opened the book for a week. I am struggling to maintain interest. Wagstaff's life story should be more interesting, maybe it is the writing? 

Sam Wagstaff & Robert Mapplethorpe

 

He was the lover and sugar daddy of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, had his own career in the fine art world as a curator and there are his sexual excursions in the 70s and 80s through the New York gay underground. He was friends with Warhol and was the first to hang his work, the Campbell's Soup can, in a museum in 1962. His life should be fascinating, it was in the 2007 documentary Black White + Gray, but it is not in this book. 

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I see that anarchists marched down Ponce this morning and attacked a Starbucks. The interior was destroyed and customers were injured. It was mayhem as anarchists are want to do. There is a sizeable contingent of them here associated with the ominous sounding The Black Cross. Two were arrested. Here is the Reddit thread about it.

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George Plimpton

The Falcons start their season tomorrow and that excites me. Yes, it is okay to like football. You do not have to be a cretin to like the game, even George Plimpton liked football and he was not exactly a dullard.

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And now I sit on Peters Street in Castleberry Hill, where in the late 90s I was introduced to Massive Attack in another loft. A guy opened my mind to trip hop. My coffee cools years later, I am still in this neighborhood and he is not. We were too different, but we both liked ETBTG and when I hear this I think of him. Life almost imitates art.

Nobody

Photo by me, November 2013

Of all the murals I've seen this year the Nobody mural in Castleberry Hill by Axel Void is my favorite. From looking through his other works he seems to do mostly a dark theme or style in his imagery. Nobody seems to go along with the darkness too, from his choice of colors to having the boy missing an eye. The boy could have his eye closed I suppose but for me it appears to be entirely missing. The mural was commissioned by Living Walls in 2013.

Flux Night 2013

Micah + Whitney Stansell: An Inversion (with sky and land) - my favorite installation of the night. Photo by me, October 2013

I

had been eagerly awaiting Flux Night this year, maybe too much, and so when it came time I invited a friend along and we met up at seven that evening in Castleberry Hill.

 

He was a novice to Flux Night and I had described the event to him as a fantastic night. As it turned out, we were both let down and I felt I had oversold Flux Night to him. It was not bad, but it was not as good as the previous year. It was supposed be a night of the arts and I kept asking myself where was the art was. It was not that we could not find it for the most part (though the SCAD projection installation was poorly marked and we would have totally missed it if someone at the door had not invited us in) as I had a guide and the iPhone app - it was a case of too few installations and performances for the number of streets on which it was taking place.

Photo by me, October 2013

Flux Night had its moments, but they were too few and far between and the crowd of 30,000 grew to a drunken sloppy street party by the time it ended at midnight. I was left to walk alone to the Garnett Street Marta Station and was hassled by a man wanting money to buy a '40.' The man who complained of bad knees that was not much older than I am was one final street performance in a night lacking those. I would have hated to have seen the streets of Castleberry Hill the next morning as they were probably covered in a snowfall of trash. A highlight for me is just being in Castleberry Hill because I love that neighborhood of old brick warehouses converted to galleries, residences, restaurants, bars and other businesses. Walking around and looking at the buildings, going in them and even finding a rooftop view satisfies a part of me so I tried to keep my expectations in check regarding the art. I would not want Flux Night to leave Castleberry Hill, without that neighborhood it would lose some of the appeal for me. So thank you to the residents of that neighborhood that host Flux Night.

Rhoda Weppler + Tevor Mahovsky: Late Night Convenience installation - Highly popular that night. Photo by me, October 2013

This was the high demand exhibit of the night. A long line queued to enter. As we walked past a woman in her early twenties in line demanded of me to know what I was doing. I said walking by, not cutting the line as if she owned the street. People these days are strange and possessive of things that do not belong to them.  I thought the precious person was going scream murder over some perceived infraction.

 

I noticed more digital art this year in the form of projections and video displays. At times I felt as though I was in a nightclub more so than out in the streets. Digital art is not that interesting to me and difficult to engage. The wall projections did make for some interesting juxtapositions with the crowds ignoring them.

 

Wandering and wondering crowds. Where's the art? Damned if I knew either.

This captures the night the best. The crowd seemed more raucous this year, less interested or wowed by the art offerings and more into partying, socializing and lining up for the increased presence of the latest fashion in foods - the food truck. Perhaps they were like me and wondering why the lack of art this year and filled their time as best they could?

 

It seemed that Flux Night was bordering on becoming just another street festival with beer and food trucks. I hope next year there is more emphasis on art again. Though I liked that Flux Night encompassed more of the neighborhood with additional streets so it felt like there was more to explore there needed to be more installations and performances. At times, there were long stretches of nothing but crowds and blank walls. Hopefully a new curator will look at the negatives from this year (and there were many critics of this year's Flux Night) and put more art out there in 2014. I await next year and will hope for better.

Then it was a carnival or like a night at the North Georgia Fair without the rides and corn-dogs. There was a horse drawn piano accompanied by a man on a guitar and the horse had its own bouncer.

The sad clown Puddles came by and I grabbed him for blurry photos.

This quilted mountain rang a bell and shouted at the crowd. It was the right amount of absurdity and I enjoyed that.

Whatever you are thinking is probably correct.

I did not find this art installation listed in my guide.

Other scenes of the art, performers and people.

I thought it was the most visually potent installation of the night. For something as simple as what appear to be sheets of paper strung along cables between two buildings it captured my imagination and the crowd's attention.

 

 

Eventually I plonked down at Bradberry and Haynes Streets with a final beer. The impromptu art scavenger hunt neared an end and as my friend took a photo of me, a passing woman greeted me. The night was a success in terms of my friend and I having a great time, but that was due to our conversations, a few beers and our willingness to hunt down the art or having tried to do that.

Flux Night 2012

Perhaps one of the best events I attended in 2012 was Flux Night on October 6th in Castleberry Hill. Flux Night is modeled after Nuit Blanche in Toronto. It had live performance art and sound and visual installations in the street and in a couple of the galleries in the neighborhood.

The weather was perfect as a cold front plowed through just as the event was getting underway and it became blustery and chilly. It was the first wave of Fall weather we had had up until that point. I was still recovering from surgery, but was strong enough to get out and walk but I did get tired at times and was a little paranoid about getting bumped in the stomach. I ended up taking breaks leaning against walls and sitting on a sidewalk behind a food vendor eating a hot dog. It was just great to be out among people, on the street, in the chilly weather and taking in the art.

Castleberry Hill is one of my favorite Atlanta neighborhoods, it is a place I came to like back in the late
1990s when living there was certainly more an attempt at urban pioneering than chic living. The neighborhood is a gem with the old warehouses converted into authentic loft spaces. It is located directly south of the Georgia Dome and Philips Arena.

In some ways the night was more of a night time street fair than an arts event. I hadn't expected the large number of food trucks selling a little bit of everything, I was expecting more art installations and open galleries. Given the huge attendance I suppose it was good there were so many food and beer vendors but I was beginning to think as I left that by the end of the night with all of the college students and the beer that it might become more of a drunken beer festival frat party crowd.

Ceiling of Blackbirds, this was my favorite installation. The two live performers are cutting out black and white paper birds.

Crowd estimates were in the 12,000 to 13,000 range. I thought it was great that many people came out to celebrate the arts and walk the streets of Castleberry Hill that night. Yet, some in the arts community thought that maybe this wasn't the best Flux Night and were unhappy with some of the changes and still others thought it was the best one ever. It was my first time attending and I had a great time. Sure if there had been more installations or performances or more galleries open that night it would have been even better. I came away happy that night and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, crowds and all, which means I look forward to Flux Night 2013.

Planning is already underway for Flux Night 2013 as submissions from artists are already being accepted as of earlier this month.

More IPhone photos from the night that you can click to enlarge:

It had been less than a month since I was released from the hospital after nearly dying and I sat to rest on a curb to watch the crowd. It did not take me long to realize where I was and my personal history across the street. How Castleberry Hill had changed since 1999 when I was dating a designer with a loft before me. So many nights spent sleeping there, doing odd things, listening to Portishead and Massive Attack, enlightening conversations and the concerns I had about parking my car on the street overnight. I learned and found much of myself there.

gloATL dancers performing.

This installation was designed to light up and place musical notes as people interacted with it however it wasn't working mostly.

Provocative. Seeing "queer" projected to the mixed crowd before I walked off into the dimly night bothered me. I did not know the origin or the intent of whoever was using queer and what that might spark in someone that might find someone gay like me an easy target walking down a dark street. It put me on edge as someone that had been attacked for being gay before. It seemed careless  by whomever was behind it.

I have seen this referred to as The Troll. It would flash provocative messages at the crowds.