Proud to be associated with Frank Reiss and his amazingly resilient bookstore A Cappella, as well as being included in this collection of short essays about books and bookstores.
On Friday, December 5th, at 6PM, A Cappella Books will celebrate its 25th anniversary at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, where the newly published book will be released.
See a little highlight video... or the whole shebang (writers talking about books, bookstores, and Frank).
I've been wanting to do a video about the artwork of my friend John Leon for a long time. We met in 1985 at a Greek festival in Atlanta. He was a sculptor from Cincinnati driving around to festivals with his wife, Sarah. My wife and I were at the festival soaking up Greek culture because we were planning to quit our jobs at a graphic design shop, sell everything and move to Greece. It turns out that the place we had picked out to live from our "Lonely Planet" guidebook, the Greek "Gilbraltar" of Monemvasia, was only a few hours by car from the village of John's family, where they intended to visit around the same time. Flash forward about nine months and several postcards later. An all-night wine drinking session outside our spartan little house in a village down the road from Monemvasia. Then a few days of driving around in their rental car. We've been friends ever since.
This fall I've started production on a documentary (with the help of photographer Joe Boris) about a woman who was way ahead of her time in many respects, especially as a homesteading entrepreneur. Mary Crovatt Hambidge, born in Brunswick, Ga., in 1885, went to New York to become a performing artist in her 20s and became part of a close-knit artists' circle in the 1920s led by art theorist and illustrator Jay Hambidge (whose name she took). In the 1930s and '40s she gained a national reputation as a designer/weaver/entrepreneur responsible for the Weavers of Rabun (Rabun County, Georgia) and Rabun Studios (New York). Towards the end of her life, she was a tireless proponent of a back-to-nature utopian artist community in the north Georgia mountains that would follow the principles of ancient Greece and dynamic symmetry. After her death in 1973, an artist residency program was born from her vision--and her 600 acres--that is now the excellent Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences.
During our last visit to Hambidge, we were fortunate to meet a contemporary weaver, Jessica Green, who's running her own weaving operation outside of Asheville. While doing a fellowship at Hambidge, Jessica put Mary's old loom back to work. It's amazing when things fall into place like that.
Check back for more details as things unfold.
Mary at the loom in her cabin in the north Georgia mountains.
Jessica Green at Mary's loom in October 2014.