Weekend reading: August 20 edition

Around Columbus

• Sunday afternoon, The Randys will be swinging outdoors at Secret Studio.
• Fiber artist Char Norman and photographer Helen Hoffelt have collaborated on the exhibition Frayed: The World in Peril at Ohio Dominican’s Wehrle Gallery. The opening reception is Sunday afternoon, as well.
• Hopkins Hall Gallery welcomes students back next week with the second-year MFA group exhibition 8 Layer Casserole.
• Greater Columbus Arts Council announced the latest recipients of its professional support and Big Ideas grants. The list includes familiar names such as Sam Corlett and Keith Hanlon, collaborators on our current Otherworld Performance Lab series; Norah Zuniga Shaw, also recipient of a 2021–22 Wex Artist Residency Award; Donte Woods-Spikes, whose work streamed via the Wex in February; Learning & Public Practice collaborator Claudia Owusu; and Mary Barczak, photo contributor to our racial equality resources page. Congrats to all!
• Former GCAC president Bryan Knicely is returning to Ohio to run Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park and Museum, located just outside Cincinnati.
• There’s a new mural on East Main Street featuring amazing local talent Hanif Abdurraqib—created by another, Bryan Christopher Moss.
• Downtown’s MadLab Theatre is also awash in colorful murals.
• Thursday, CCAD’s Beeler Gallery opens A Bridge to Uncertainty, featuring new and existing works by Jonathan Payne.
• Also Thursday, comic artist Gabby Metzler is having a book launch for The Fat Girl Love Club at Two Dollar Radio.
• And next weekend, the animation showcase Malt Adult goes back to presenting in-person Friday at CCAD, but also offers a virtual screening Saturday.

Around the globe

• On Thursday, August 26, Variety and Showtime are hosting Truth Seekers Summit, a free virtual gathering on nonfiction storytelling with a lineup featuring Yamiche Alcindor, Joe Berlinger, Errol Morris, Sam Pollard, and many more.
• Video essayist and Rock Hudson’s Home Movies creator Mark Rappaport wrote about the joy of cinematic collage.
• Vanity Fair has launched a classic Hollywood podcast focused on a real-life scandal in the life of film noir favorite Joan Bennett, with Zooey Deschanel as Bennett and Jon Hamm as her husband, producer Walter Wanger.
• For those still missing video stores, Seattle’s brick-and-mortar Scarecrow Video is aiming to make their business national.
• Afghan artists and writers are pleading with US officials to keep the American embassy in Kabul open after the US withdrawal.
• New York museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art are following Broadway’s lead and requiring proof of vaccination for visitors and staff.
• The CDC has issued a guide for state and local health departments to partner with artists on vaccination drives. Here are some downloadable examples of what artists have created so far.
• Now that the NCAA will allow college athletes to earn money for their work, some are tapping into their creative side. 
• Theater artist Joshua William Gelb did a pandemic pivot to performing livestreamed work in his closet. With theaters starting to reopen, what’s next?
• Next Friday, you can stream a performance by Ballet Hispánico happening in New York’s Bryant Park.
• The Smithsonian has acquired a collection of photographs from the earliest African American portrait studios.
• The American Folk Art Museum received a gift of works by 40 self-taught artists including Bill Traylor and Mary F. Whitfield.
• Undeniably influential and controversial painter Chuck Close shed the moral coil this week. He was 80.
• Multidisciplinary L.A. artist Kaari Upson passed away from cancer at 51.
• Singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith left us at the age of 68.
• The great martial artist Sonny Chiba succumbed to COVID complications. He was 82.
• And lastly, a new collaborative project from artist Cara Levine has resulted in a seven-foot hole in Malibu, California, dug to hold the grief generated from the past 18 months. We’re gonna need a bigger hole.