Writers Ray C. Anderson, Margaret Atwood, Augusten Burroughs, Joel Cohen and Colson Whitehead will all visit Atlanta for the Savannah College of Art and Design’s Ivy Hall Writers Series.The talks are free, public and followed by a book signing.

Here’s the lineup, announced earlier this month:

Oct. 22: Colson Whitehead, MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize finalist author of “Sag Harbor,” “The Intuitionist” and “John Henry Days.”
Oct. 26: Ray C. Anderson, writer of the upcoming “Confessions of a Radical Industrialist,” former co-chairman of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development for President Clinton, recent co-chairman of the Presidential Climate Action Project, founder of Interface, a modular carpet manufacturer.
Nov. 4: Augusten Burroughs, author of “Running with Scissors,” “A Wolf at the Table,” and the forthcoming book, “You Better Not Cry.”
Feb. 23: Margaret Atwood, Booker Prize-winning author of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “The Blind Assassin,” “Oryx and Crake” and …

Continue reading Ivy Hall Writers Series draws big names: New York Times bestsellers, a Booker Prize winner and ‘Simpsons’ writer »

Fifty art makers, 24 hours, one community space. Oh, boy.

Reynoldstown-based community arts center WonderRoot is going to try it out at its first Art Lock-in from 8 p.m. Sept. 5 to 8 p.m. Sept. 6. They’re looking for painters, illustrators, filmmakers, ceramicists, photographers, musicians and writers of all skill levels and art interests to work together, so long as they’ll do it for 24 hours. Materials will be provided, although participants are welcome to bring their own.

The idea came from the non-profit art center’s interns, who must have seen some late-night possibilities for the dark room, pottery studio, recording studio, computer labs and gallery spaces there.

“I don’t know what to expect,” WonderRoot Executive Director Chris Appleton said. “Forty or 50 people locked into WonderRoot together sounds a little bit dangerous.”

Dangerous, maybe, but productive, too — all 24 hours will be documented on photo and video, and all the lock-in artwork will go on display on …

Continue reading WonderRoot to host 24-hour art-making lock-in, exhibition »

For families: Gorilla feeding, 2 p.m., Zoo Atlanta, Atlanta.

For kids: Clayton County Library Storytime, 5-8 p.m., Chick-fil-A Dwarf House, Jonesboro. FREE.

Not for kids: Hop City summer grab bag wine tasting, 6:30 p.m., Tiny Bistro, Atlanta.

Music: Mama’s Love performs, 6 p.m., Ashford Manor, Watkinsville.

Visual art: “Mug*Shots” exhibition continues, noon-8 p.m., MudFire Clayworks and Gallery, Decatur. FREE.

Got an event, venue, restaurant or performance in and around Atlanta? Add it to the AccessAtlanta.com calendar.

For instant updates, follow @insideaccess on Twitter.

Continue reading To do list: August 24 »

Water balloon fight at the Masquerade on Aug. 22. AJC/Jamie Gumbrecht

Did Saturday’s water balloon fight at the Masquerade break the Guinness World Record? No official count yet, and there probably won’t be for a day or so. Organizers say it’s not likely.

Post-balloon-fight mud wash. AJC/Jamie Gumbrecht.

However, for a view of how wet and muddy everything got, here’s a water balloon fight photo gallery, from the fill-your-own-balloon station to the hose-yourself-off area.

I’m not sure that breaking the record really matters (at least until someone tries this again next year.) Camp Twin Lakes had a sack of $5 admission fees to take home and for a crowd that spent hours in the August Georgia sun, they were in good spirits. A burst of cold water will do it, especially considering I heard more than one person warn that balloons this big could cause a concussion.

Looking for more? Here’s a video of the first couple minutes of the fight, into the early stages of mud-diving.

For …

Continue reading PHOTOS: Aug. 22 Water balloon fight at the Masquerade »

Were you among the thousands trying to beat the record for world’s largest water balloon fight at Masquerade Music Park on Saturday?

No official word on how many people or balloons attended the event — it was a benefit for Camp Twin Lakes in Rutledge — but as you can see from the video I shot, nobody went home dry. (Except me. I hung out on stage. Someone had to staff the camera!)

Looking for photos? Got those, too!

For instant updates, follow @insideaccess on Twitter!

Continue reading VIDEO: Atlanta’s try for world’s largest water balloon fight »

WATER BALLOON FIGHT!

*splash*

That’s how these things are supposed to start, right?

Especially when 99X and other partners come togehter Saturday at Masquerade Music Park to try to break the Guinness record for the world’s largest water balloon fight. It’s an all-ages event, but there will be a games, a DJ and a full bar.

They’ll need some 3,000 people to break the record, and they’re turning it into a fund-raiser — $5 admission fees will go to Camp Twin Lakes in Rutledge.

This seems to be the kind of record that everyone wants to break, but as far as I can tell, it currently belongs to Microsoft, which gathered 2,849 people and 51,400 water balloons for a fight.

What does such a thing look like? Here’s a video from my beloved former workplace, the Lexington Herald-Leader. A photographer there shot a water balloon fight at University of Kentucky in 2008 that fell 100-some people short of the record, but still got pretty wet.

Want to go? Masquerade Music Park, 695 North Ave. …

Continue reading What would the world’s largest water balloon fight look like? Atlanta will try to find out at the Masquerade on August 22. »

Chief Prepartor Cayse Cheatham looks over the 42-foot "Reflections of Clouds on the Water Lily Pond" by Claude Monet. The High Museum exhibition closes Aug. 23. AJC file photo.

We’ve reached the final weekend for “Monet Water Lillies” and “Misrach: On the Beach” exhibition at the High Museum of Art.

Since the exhibitions opened in June, some 79,000 people have seen the four famous impressionist paintings from the Museum of Modern Art, and the contemporary aerial photographs shot on a Hawaiian beach. Here’s what critic Catherine Fox had to say about the Monets — but there’s more to it.

From a June AJC story, “A roar from the beaches”:

Photo from "Misrach: On the Beach" at the High.

“Monet Water Lilies” and “Richard Misrach: On the Beach” seem to share a serene, sun-kissed vibe, leaving viewers visually swimming in saturated blues and other hot-weather hues.

The High encourages this complementary notion by mounting Misrach’s monumental photographs in a gallery …

Continue reading High Museum’s Monet and Misrach exhibitions end Aug. 23 »

The title of an exhibition to open at Fernbank Musem of Natural History next month pretty much says it all: “Gold.”

What will you see when it debuts Sept. 26? Ancient jewelry, doubloons from sunken Spanish galleons, Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, oh my! Indeed, lots and lots of gold.

A crystallized gold specimen found in Leadville, Colorado. Denis Finnin/American Museum of Natural History

Fernbank’s announcement said the exhibition is split into seven sections that cover mineralogy and geology, mining, gold in culture, art and fashion, treasure, world economies, symbols of success. There’s a section on Georgia’s local connection, too, from the Dahlonega Gold Rush to the gold dome at the State Capitol.

The exhibition also will include a photography exhibition, “Georgia’s Heart of Gold,” with work by student photographers from the Portfolio Center.

This is a touring exhibition organized by the American Museum of Natural History, in cooperation with The Houston Museum of Natural …

Continue reading ‘Gold’ exhibition to open at Fernbank Museum on Sept. 26 »

Access Points: It's the Wright Flyer at Tellus Northwest Georgia Science Museum. AJC/Jamie Gumbrecht

As many of you guessed, it’s a Wright Flyer replica. This one is located at Tellus Northwest Georgia Science Museum in Cartersville. Lots of good guesses, some surprising guesses — roof at the Georgia Dome? — but the first to get it right was commenter Mark! Woohoo!

The Wright brothers' first flight on Dec. 17, 1903. AP file photo.

The story behind this plane is quite famous: Orville Wright at the controls, Wilbur on the ground, a beach in Kitty Hawk, N.C. in 1903, when the brothers from Dayton had the first successful, powered, piloted flight for all of 12 seconds.

But the story behind this replica is far more recent history.

Tellus opened in January after years of construction that allowed it to expand from the 9,000-square foot Weinman Mineral Museum to a 120,000-square …

Continue reading Access Points 4: Wright Flyer at Tellus science museum »

Best ofs, Top Tens, Hot Lists for this or that — every media outlet does them, and rarely are they definitive, matching, or all that helpful.

But the list of Atlanta-area winners and nominees on Nick Parents’ Pick offers some solid suggestions for how to have fun with kids around here.

Here are a few of them:

• Field Trips with Sue, a local blog I’d put on the must-read list for parents, was the top pick for local blogs. (I noticed this list because Sue pointed it out.) The nominees list is full of more handy resources, too, like Atlanta on the Cheap and LocalKidFun, which focuses on Coweta, Fayette and Henry counties.
• Under the category for best theaters, the Center for Puppetry Arts came out on top, but the list of nominees stretches into Roswell, Marietta and Lawrenceville.
• So helpful: indoor play spaces and playgrounds. Always appreciative of the place that can tire the kiddies out.

For instant updates, follow @insideaccess on Twitter.

Continue reading Nickelodeon’s TV-free ideas for Atlanta-area fun with kids »