2006 Index of Winners

With an important public art commission for the City Court of Atlanta this year, an ongoing installation at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport’s baggage claim, and a screening of his animated antiwar film “Pass the Ammunition” at Get This! Gallery, JOSEPH PERAGINE is a much admired Georgia State University professor and working artist. He manages to keep making accessible and smart work that appeals to the young’uns as much as to the art establishment.
www.solomonprojects.com/.

How can we miss her when she won’t go away? Coriolis Dance Project artistic director Elizabeth Dishman recently moved to New York, but she keeps coming back to create new work. Lucky for us, she’s stuck on Atlanta. In FLYPAPER DANCES, she used Velcro, ropes, bullying bodies and flypaper to investigate sticky attachments in all the ways they hold us and, sometimes just as disconcerting, let us go.
404-931-0212. www.coriolisdance.org.

OK, maybe reconstituted thrift-store clothes and witty handbags don’t exactly jibe with the traditional macho, street-art, culture-jamming definition of “guerrilla.” But with the second annual INDIE CRAFT EXPERIENCE in Atlanta rating a mention in the New York Times Magazine, the ladies-and-lads who craft proved creativity isn’t just limited to galleries. And they upped the profile on nontraditional art-making in the city.
www.ice-atlanta.com.

Arc the Finger Records once again brought the “true school” to The Loft for the A3C INDEPENDENT HIP-HOP FESTIVAL, the indie alternative to the big-name bling-and-bass hip-hop orthodoxy. MCs, DJs, graffiti artists and breakdancers performed, competed and discussed the craft and its politics. Smart and lots of fun.
www.arcthefinger.com.

In a town that has been fighting to get its fair share of public art, the Atlanta Botanical Garden has been quietly shaking things up with its own large-scale temporary exhibitions, first with the impressive, record-breaking Chihuly in the Garden exhibit. But NIKI IN THE GARDEN, with its joyously interactive sculptures and ebullient charm, has gone Chihuly one better and proven that there is a mainstream audience for imaginative art in Atlanta.

.