Review of Emerging Artists 2011 in AJC

An Pham, Unkreisen, 2010, Crochet Rubber Bands

An excerpt from Lucha Rodriguez at Swan Coach House Gallery; "Emerging Artists 2011″ at Spruill Gallery by Cathy Fox

An Pham, a recent graduate of University of Georgia's Master of Fine Arts program, is the break-out artist of Spruill Gallery's “Emerging Artists 2011.”

The artist works with a wide palette of materials, from handmade paper and old books to plastic strips, scotch tape and – most wondrously in this exhibit -- rubber bands. Pham crochets, plaits, knots, coils and otherwise manipulates this mundane item into mysterious sculptures, which she presents like the gifts they are in hand-made boxes.

It's a good thing that Pham wants you to touch them because they are irresistibly tactile. They also give off that rubber-band smell and, more profoundly, the feeling of intensity that comes from the hours of repetition and minute manipulations that making these works require. She manipulates books and their pages with similar inventiveness. I'm watching her.

Click here to read the full review, including words on Lucha Rodriguez's exhibition Fluoressence at Swan Coach House Gallery

Catherine Fox Reviews SITE UNSEEN

"Site Unseen" at Spruill Gallery
By Catherine Fox
for AJC

Spruill Gallery’s “Site Unseen” is, on one level, about what might have been. Plans, models and renderings detail stillborn architectural projects for Spruill Gallery, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center and residential clients. Also on view are entries for competitions that others won or, as in the case of Lord, Aeck and Sargent’s concept for One Museum Place, for a project that will never be. (Its empty lot and unsightly fence just across from the High Museum is an anti-monument to the cratered economy.)

Yet, these unbuilt projects by nine Atlanta firms are very much alive with ideas, creativity and insight into the architectural process. The exhibit reveals the considerable effort devoted to research and development. Particularly evident is the careful consideration of the relationship of a building to its site and the varied ways architects approach such issues as topography, trees and the behavior of sunlight. It’s almost always an iterative process of experiment and refinement, evolving from sketches and computer simulation to three-dimensional massing studies and models.

Check out the entire review on Access Atlanta and look for the article to appear in print in this Friday's AJC.