The reception for FALL SOLOS 2008 is tomorrow night--Friday, October 17, from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm. Come by and see nine galleries full of contemporary art, partake of free food and drink, peek into our resident artists' open studios, and witness artist Virginia Warwick's transformation into a demented, combative sea turtle in her live performance, Underwater Adventure.

See installation shots below:

Photos by Robin Dana, whose work explores the barren, alien-looking landscapes created by kaolin mining in central Georgia.

Ben Pranger's drawings and wooden sculptures all use language, taken from literature and translated into morse code or braille. Every decision he makes in his work is determined through some sort of byzantine system, the gist of which you can get in a binder available in the gallery, containing copies of some of the artist's sketchbook pages.

The Bride Adorned is Pranger's large, roughly 10' X 6' X 8' piece that is composed of a passage from the Book of Revelation--each word of which has been transformed by Pranger into a sort of braille tinkertoy. As for the title: Gee, I wonder if Ben likes Duchamp.

Andrea Chung's work explores colonialism, her own personal history, and images of the exotic Other. Above: A portrait of her grandmother painted in brown sugar and paste.

These photos document Chung's project in which she pasted up her own parodic, troubling advertisements for travel to Jamaica.

The large sculpture shown here is probably the most fragrant piece of art we've had here--each palette has ingredients and spices from a traditional recipe attached to it. (Please: Don't lick the turmeric.)

Andrea's May Day series, w/excised figures.

Katie Creyts uses glass to create damaged fairy tales, filled with odd transformations and dark sublimated desires.

Carriage, 2007

Real Blown Boy, 2008. No, kids, that's not a second nose.

Parmatella Passes Through Midnight, 2007.

What if the helpful little birds in the story of Cinderella made her dress out of the stuff that they found most useful in their own lives?

In the hallway, it's Robin Dana's photographs of spoiled landscapes; in the Tiffany Gallery, it's Morgan Craig's large oil paintings of rotting cityscapes.

It's nice to have Craig's pieces next to the Tiffany windows--it's as if he's painting the ruined shells of buildings from that era. Okay, his structures were probably built more recently than I'm imagining...but, still, I like to think of Craig as a sort of post-apocalyptic Charles Sheeler.

This is the setting for Virginia's Underwater Adventure: giant synthetic kelp fronds, made of plastic, wire, and floral tape. The unearthly soundtrack playing in the space, Through the Kelp Forest, was composed with Dan Breen, and sounds like a mix of cymbal-scraping, feedback, and weird underwater rumbling. After Friday, video of the performance will be running on a monitor in the space.

The view into Lily Cox-Richard's space from Virginia's.

Lily's installation, SPARK GAP, inludes lightning rods, bright copper tape, cast plastic, and a handmade linen rug simulating the pattern that lightning leaves when it strikes an open field. The room feels a bit like an aging natural history museum display.

Also on view:

Upstairs in the Wyatt Gallery, it's AAC resident artist Paula Bryan, with textile work inspired by natural forms...

...and in the community gallery, it's our annual Day of the Dead celebration. Come back Saturday, November 1 for a proper party in this room.