Monthly Archives: August 2010

Atlanta’s Young Blood Gallery, part 2

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This is the second part of my interview with owners of Atlanta’s Young Blood Gallery, Kelly Teasley and Maggie White. With backgrounds in art and social work, they began Young Blood as a D.I.Y. gallery in their living room in 1997. Following media hype (Lucky magazine and the Handmade Nation documentary, among others) and much community support, Young Blood Gallery and it’s complementary, all-handmade boutique now nestles among a bike shop, a bakery and an all-vegan restaurant in one of Atlanta’s hippest neighborhoods. Part 1 of this interview lives here, and I’ll post part 3, the final portion of the interview, soon.

Jolene, the three-legged Young Blood mascot

Keep reading at Juxtapoz.

Hurricane Katrina and the Pakistan Floods

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This weekend, as my home state of Mississippi prepares to memorialize the five-year anniversary of America’s worst natural disaster, Pakistan will mark a month since the start of the floods.

Because of this post-Katrina milestone and my upcoming travels to Karachi, I’ve been considering the scope and response to both of these catastrophes. The two floods have superficial similarities, despite the fact that Hurricane Katrina was a smaller event in a better-equipped country.

This means that on the fifth anniversary of Pakistan’s worst natural disaster, things will probably look even less rosy than they do now in New Orleans.

Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas on August 23, 2005, clipping the southern tip of Florida before making a second landfall on August 29, seventy miles southeast of New Orleans—Louisiana’s biggest city, with a pre-storm population of 454,863. With winds of 205 kph, the hurricane was strong enough to breach levees surrounding the city.

New Orleans was submerged and 1,464 of its residents, dead. Not long after, the Mississippi coast sustained a direct hit, wiping out entire towns and taking the lives of an estimated 300 people. Altogether a million people lost their homes, damages totalled over $100 b and five years later, key infrastructures such as public education remain in disarray. New Orleans still has thousands of uninhabitable houses and has regained only 80 per cent of its pre-Katrina population. Thousands of displaced residents continue to live in temporary shelters. None of this bodes well for Pakistan, which one blogger has termed “Katrina on steroids.”

Keep reading at Pakistani paper The Express Tribune. For more of my post-Katrina photos, go here.

Atlanta’s Young Blood Gallery

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On one of my recent trips to Atlanta, I had a frank conversation with Kelly Teasley and Maggie White, the co-proprietors of (the charming, fantastic, fairy-dust magical) Young Blood Gallery and Boutique, as featured in the book and doc Handmade Nation. Highlights include how to be a good neighbor, how to found a punk rock gallery and the conflict that comes with transforming that space into a financially sustainable entity, the awkwardness of becoming a recruiting grounds for Urban Outfitters, and the true-life rags-to-riches story of Jolene, the three-legged-cat.

The interview is kind of mammoth, but these ladies were so forthcoming and informative that I want to post it all. So I’m splitting it into three parts. Check back for the rest soon! For now, head over to Juxtapoz to read Part 1.

Living Walls Conference: Debate Continues

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In the comments section of the Burnaway article…

There’s this, from MTM:

“My disappointment with the City is not in the lack of public work or ’street art’ but in the lack of discourse about it especially after this very egocentric grand stand of self professed street art is largely over.

I’m not sure if the conference or Pecha Kucha presentations approached any of the important questions about the act of graffiti and it’s place in art history because I didn’t attend. But from a outsiders critical and curatorial perspective, I think the project lacked some grounding and rigor. There were questions that occurred to me over the course of the thing and I wish there was more discourse about it here. Instead all I hear is “what a great party that was!” So if nothing else, yeah, it was a great gathering. Continue reading →