What’s on Atlanta’s Mind? I Found the Answer in a Local Art Gallery

Because art sustains my life, I sometimes go see it just to show my solidarity with it.

And, of course, because art gallery pictures make for an excellent social media scroll. What’s more, visiting places like these makes me look and sound like a thoughtful person, someone capable of seeing beauty in everyday moments.

So, I went to an art gallery in Southeast Atlanta, and boy, did I spend an hour in wonder.

How else does one get inside what’s on Atlanta’s mind than by seeing it through the lens of an artist?

Inside, people had made art with acrylic, resin, paper, cloth, and even carved birch. MARTA, the Peach Drop, and Georgia on My Mind appeared again and again as recurring themes among local artists, as well as artists from across the United States and around the world, from France, Greece, Spain, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Argentina, Australia, and Ireland, to name a few.

Peaches, unsurprisingly, take the cake for the most mused upon subject.

And then there were dinosaurs, which makes perfect sense given Atlanta’s partnership with the Fernbank Museum.

Broly Su drew a cat, “Aiko from Druid Hills,” on a paper bag that he must have picked up while visiting Figures of Speech, the traveling exhibition celebrating the work of the late designer Virgil Abloh.

Creatives have a way of bending your mind.

I saw an animal-owned-and-operated mortuary. Sometimes I do wonder what it feels like to see the world from my dog’s shoes. Ha!

I saw the “eye of the tiger”, a symbol of mental toughness, on a butterfly. A tender butterfly with an unshakeable drive. I would like to be one someday.

Of course, everything inside a gallery like this can be interpreted in its own special way. But two things stayed with me.

1. The lady who could not be contained by a canvas.

There was something about the way her body, her presence, seemed to spill beyond the boundaries of the frame. The canvas can’t contain her spirit.

2. The silk velvet wall piece sprinkled with dye.

It carried words that felt almost like a physical sensation. “The heart’s electromagnetic field can be felt from across the room.” Truly, that’s what a snug tug at the heart might feel like.

I walked out of the ABV Gallery and into the parking lot. And suddenly, the dilapidated drive-through fast-food restaurant across the way looked like an essential part of the exhibition.

And so did everything else I spotted on my way to the car.

And there, art was teaching me that there everything around me is an essential part of my existence, whether I acknowledge it or not.

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“Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has known.” ~ Oscar Wilde in his essay, The Soul of Man under Socialism

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