Castleberry Hill

Gallery on the move:
Marcia Wood finds her thrill on Castleberry Hill
By Felicia Feaster

Atlanta's answer to Manhattan's Chelsea art district is Castleberry Hill. Located west of downtown between I-20 and MLK, the community is poised to become the city's contemporary art hub. And it's about to get an infusion of more art-world action when Marcia Wood Gallery moves to the area in December.

The neighborhood has been, at various times, an industrial hub, a residential community and a raunchy Tenderloin district known for violence and sex trade. Now it's Atlanta's "only true loft neighborhood," Wood says, and a home to chichi restaurants, funky gardening stores and quirky boutiques.

Castleberry got an infusion of art and artists in the mid-'90s when husband and wife artists Carolyn Carr and Michael Gibson turned an 1897 horse stable into a loft and began leasing portions of the building to studio artists and indie galleries. Then came artist Diane Haus' 3TEN Haustudio and art collector Bill Bounds' Ty Stokes Gallery. Earlier this year the investment-oriented art proffered at Skot Foreman Gallery arrived in the neighborhood.

Wood will trade her narrow 1,200-square-foot gallery on Peachtree Street, where she's been for the past three years, for new digs more than double the size at 263 Walker St. The granite building that will house the reborn Marcia Wood Gallery is owned by Bounds, whose gallery and residential loft space is next door.

The increase in space will allow Wood enough room to feature two exhibitions simultaneously as well as use a posterior 500-foot terrace for installations and performances. Her Castleberry gallery's Jan. 16 opening will feature a site-specific work by Atlanta artist Danielle RoneyKim Ouellette, who sews quirky landscapes onto fragments of vintage wool blankets. and the debut of Canadian (now Atlanta-based) artist

Wood's opening coincides with the citywide ATLart[04] event, in which a wildly divergent group of 29 gallery members from Timothy Tew to Saltworks, have created a slate of coordinated art openings, talks and auctions for January. Kubatana Moderne owner Jason Wertz, whose own Peachtree gallery shares space with Wood, has also announced his intention to relocate his gallery to a former meatpacking building in Castleberry in September 2004. He is working with New York City architect Gordon Kipping of GTECTS (Frank Gehry's protege) and Atlanta architect Amy Landesberg.

Several other galleries have also been sizing up the area, suggesting Castleberry could be Atlanta's new hot art destination.

NEWS, BLOGS and REVIEWS

Main drag for art: Castleberry Hill
By Felecia Feaster for Creative Loafing

For a time, the stretch of Peachtree Street pitifully self-christened Sobo (South of Buckhead) was a contender for art main drag status. Once home to an uber-happening nexus of galleries -- Vaknin Schwartz, Gerstev, Sandler Hudson, Marcia Wood and Kubatana -- the majority of those galleries have since up and quit. The Buckhead Tula complex of galleries might be a contender if it weren't too reminiscent of the main street's chief grim reaper: the shopping mall.

No, it may be up to the downtown upstart Castleberry Hill to take on the role. From the outside, this slightly down-in-the-mouth district of warehouse spaces and soup kitchens hugging Peters Street may seem on the desolate side. But there is plenty going on if you put in the legwork.

The area's status was established when married artists Carolyn Carr and Michael Gibson moved into former "Trading Spaces" Ty Pennington's refurbished Peters Street building in 1997. Their multilevel space is now home to a street level gallery Garage Projects (www.garageprojects.com). Peters Street is also home to the exhibition space Haustudio operated by artist Diane Hause (www.haustudio.com) and the high-end Skot Foreman Fine Art Gallery (www.skotforeman.com) Around the corner on Walker Street, the art energy continues with contemporary art space Marcia Wood Gallery (marciawoodgallery.com) currently featuring artists Drew Galloway, George Long and Robert Sagerman.

Also on Walker is Ty Stokes Gallery (www.tystokes.com), offering eclectic work from primitive to conceptual as in the current show Artstar featuring Scott Ingram and Drew Conrad (through June 5).

Further down the road apiece is the West End's Candler-Smith Historic Warehouse District, a warren of artist and designer studios. The complex is also home to the arts collaborative Elevation Gallery (www.elevation gallery.com), which specializes in pop culture-inflected exhibitions with a rock 'n' roll attitude, and the City View Sculpture park where Zachary Coffin's sculptures are on permanent exhibition.

Though the Castleberry/West End main drag hardly resembles the bustling commercial downtowns of yore, this burgeoning art scene boasts a bounty of visual goods.



DailyCandy

Have Art, Will Curate

DIY projects spell disaster for you. Easy Bake Oven pot holders? A searing mess in mom’s kitchen. And that last three-armed knit job? Actually, it couldn’t have happened to just anyone.

Finally, a shot of mercy for your creative process. Garage Projects is a program run in conjunction with Castleberry Hill’s Stable 1897. They’ll evaluate artists’ submissions and short proposals (from the DIY variety on up) and consider them for display for absolutely free.

Winning submissions are invited in for a nominal fee (the flexible cost gets you an opening, press representation, and space once shared with the likes of Michel Auder and Michael Gibson). While your work is on display, feel free to sell, rotate, and market your goods for — again — absolutely nothing. Garage Projects’s explicit mission is to encourage fresh ideas and images in a community that’s known for doing just that.

But don’t even think of handing in those holders.
http://www.dailycandy.com/m/atlanta/article/25333/Have+Art+Will+Curate




Creative Loafing Atlanta Urban Explorer
Urban Explorer Info:

Temporary alternative exhibition space in the happening Castleberry Hill neighborhood features emerging artists in everything from video to installation art. Open daily, hours vary.



Jules Cozine: Concept/Conception
at Garage Projects
Review by Stacie Lindner

Garage Projects, a center hub of the Castleberry Hill Arts District art scene, has been a driving force behind the renovation that led to this area becoming an important and thriving part of the Atlanta art scene. The activity at Garage Projects is always a hotbed during the monthly Art Strolls due to its innovative performances, installations, and art exhibits of all types and media. Recent shows by Bryan Shellinger, John Otte, and Hormuz Minina have been some of the most dynamic exhibitions in town. (Location is another aspect—being next door to Slice, the hot place to meet, drink, and graze, doesn’t hurt either.)

The latest exhibition is of paintings by Jules Cozine, who shows us a very personal take on the process of becoming a mother. Concept/Conception depicts a subject not often shown, on the one hand because it is a very obviously female-oriented topic and women artists commonly make up less than 20% of exhibitions; but also because the subject of motherhood in general is often socially treated as a given or biologically-driven matter, not the valued, choice-driven matter that it is. This brings me to the male/female vs. mind/body or culture/ nature dichotomy, an age-old and outdated debate in which men are to logic and reason what women are to emotion and unreason: men think, create and run things; women feel, make babies and nurture. Cozine’s paintings are very well thought out, balanced, and beautiful pieces, and they are also personal and emotional, showing that the dichotomy can be embraced and overcome with reason and feeling, producing lovely results. Cozine’s statement clearly indicates that she is exploring the mental and physical experiences of conception, pregnancy and motherhood “after making the choice to become a mother.” This is no small matter, either personally for her or socially for the viewer. Titles like Individual Imagined, Cyesis, Complex Issue, and Turning Point help tell the story linguistically and complement the visual and visceral experience of the art itself. The work is applaudable, as is the artist for sharing this intimacy with us.

Garage Projects, a true alternative exhibition space, is a great space for this type of work, as well as the myriad installation and multi-media pieces often exhibited there. Founded by artists Carolyn Carr and Michael Gibson in 2003, it is part of Stable 1897, the live/work studio space for artists they also founded in 1997. Along with their fellow Artists Studio Program occupants, they recognized the need for new, available and affordable venues to exhibit the work of young, emerging and under-recognized mid-career artists. They encourage contemporary multi-media and experimental art and installations as well as traditional art forms.

Castleberry Hill Arts District’s Art Stroll will be this Friday, December 9, from 7-10pm. All of the galleries will be hosting opening receptions, and welcome the public to this free event. Additionally, receptions will be held the following Saturday, December 10, from 2-5pm.

Next up at Garage Projects, New Works by JF Baldwin. The artist’s multi- media pieces explore personal experience and narrative through the surreal and assemblage. The show will run December 9-29, 2005. Garage Projects: 261 Peters Street, Atlanta, GA 30313 / 404.302.9074 // www.garageprojects.com.

posted by Stacie Lindner at 9/16/2006 06:12:00 PM


WORK IN PROGRESS:
Historic Castleberry Hill could become
Atlanta's hot art gallery district
Catherine Fox - Staff


Can Castleberry Hill become Atlanta's new art district?

The downtown neighborhood --- or rather its 40-acre historic district, located near the railroad tracks southeast of Philips Arena --- has long been home to artists and other loft-lovers who found suitable living and working spaces in its old warehouses and storefronts. At present, two contemporary art galleries --- Skot Foreman Fine Art and Ty Stokes --- call Castleberry home.

But look what's stirring:

* The well-established Marcia Wood Gallery is decamping from south Buckhead and will debut its expanded space onWalker Street in January.
* Artists Carolyn Carr and Michael Gibson, who have lived in Castleberry Hill since 1997, have just opened The Garage, an alternative exhibition space in, yes, their garage, which they plan to rent out for individual and group shows. In addition to renovating that space, they are redoing the facade of their building so that it contains niches for public art.
* Wolf Fischel, a lawyer turned art dealer, is about to finalize plans to open Montage Gallery, featuring black-and-white photography, on the second floor of the Carr-Gibson property.
* Jason Wertz, the owner of Kubatana Moderne in south Buckhead, has big dreams for a multi-gallery complex in an old meatpacking facility just across the street from The Garage.

Art galleries are now scattered throughout metro Atlanta. Buckhead claims the largest number. They cluster, mostly in twos and threes, in a variety of places across its swath. One needs a car and a map to visit them all. In contrast, Castleberry's size would permit a walkable concentration of galleries similar to the warehouse district in New Orleans orChelsea in New York.

That said, previous attempts at artistic synergy elsewhere in Atlanta have failed. The Studioplex, a live-work environment in a rehabbed tire factory in the Old Fourth Ward, opened with several galleries as well as artists' studios, but most of the galleries have closed.

Like the Studioplex, Castleberry Hill is off the beaten path for gallery-goers. When Marcia Wood polled her clients, she found that many didn't even know where it is.

So what about ''location, location, location?''

A couple of Buckhead galleries queried said they consider it too remote. But Wood feels that marketing can address the problem.

"It will take work, because people have their routines," says Wood. "It's a matter of getting on people's maps."

Helpful to the cause is that the community is building up steam. Slice, a high-end pizzeria, is under construction there. The Castleberry Hill Market, set to open next month, will be an open-air affair at Walker and Fair streets, selling flowers, organic vegetables, collectibles and such. Its owners, Katrena Griggs and Keith Williams, plan to create a community theater in an adjacent building. Meanwhile, the Peters Street Market and Cafe is drawing more of the business crowd at lunch. There are a couple of hair salons and a day spa, and new loft buildings are going up on vacant land.

Despite its rawness, the area's historic character is also a plus. Castleberry grew up in the 19th century to service the nearby railroads, which meant manufacturing and trade facilities as well as saloons and brothels. It contains the largest concentration of old warehouses downtown. The police horses, stabled in Castleberry, that trot down city streets add to the ambience.

"It's about the architecture, the urban energy," Wood says. "It could be a really synergistic [situation]."

Fischel feels the same way. "I looked in Miami Circle, in Buckhead, all over," says the Detroit native, already looking at home sitting in the Peters Street Market. "I felt there was a lot of energy here. I thought it could be a really dynamic place."

Carr and Gibson, who join him at the table, clearly relish the changes going on around them.

And Kubatana's Wertz can barely contain his excitement about Castleberry's possibilities. He has his heart set on converting a former meatpacking warehouse on Peters Street into a space for three galleries, including his own. (His lease in south Buckhead is up in March.)

"I've always loved the area," Wertz says, "and I think we could create an interesting dynamic between contemporary art and the historic buildings."

Wertz has spoken to New York architect Gordon Kipping, who worked with Frank Gehry on the Issey Miyake boutique inNew York, and Atlantan Amy Landesberg, who has designed two handsome galleries for Marilyn Kiang, about plans for renovating the original structure --- now dilapidated and painted a shocking pink --- and enlarging it with a contemporary addition. Wertz estimates that it will take $1.2 million to purchase and build out, with the cost to be shared with the other galleries that become involved. Each dealer would own his own space.

Wertz, a purveyor of African and African-American art, is actively engaged in luring partner galleries to join him in his ambitious project. Kiang, who has a temporary space in Midtown, is considering it.

"It could be fantastic if everybody went there," Kiang says. "It's a bit of a leap of faith at this point, but it's one of the places I am looking at."

Wood says she would sign up if the loose ends come together.

"It comes down to critical mass," Wertz says. "We need to bring down a number of signature galleries."

Carr feels confident that the arts will gravitate to Castleberry, whether the momentum continues at its present pace or slows down.

"When you go to see art, you need to get out of your frame of reference," she says. "People who come here are surprised to find such a neighborhood in Atlanta.

"I thought that if people could only see the possibilities, they could create the reality they wanted for themselves."