back   next  Rise Above Below, Backdrop Gallery, © 1997 Tom Ferguson  Backdrop Gallery was a great space, an attempt to create a gathering place for the arts community which worked for awhile but of course it encountered the usualy obstacles... money, money, money... and ego clashes... and money... right on Peachtree across from Crawford Long Hospital. One of the big problems in creating such a space is that the arts community, like everything else in Atlanta, sprawls.... so how do you create a center for sprawl? And parking, did I mention parking?
    They usually showed photography upstairs at street level & the funky basement bar/coffee house was for everything else.

I performed solo at the closing reception, accompanied by the sequencing i'd gotten seduced by: vocals with drums, bass, keyboards etc; laid down simple around which I could play & sing. For the opening Whatley Fenlon, Nevin Lash & Cyndia Hunnicutt joined me on guitar/vocals, keyboards & drums. I'm always amazed by how some performers can capture an audience & some can't. I often find my contributions being ignored even in small groups. A forceful personality I am not. So I looked up in surprise when I got applause for a song, people at the bar turning from their conversations for a moment. And I noticed the song was the same one that had gotten applause in a similar situation in Michigan, a bluesy number called Button Pusher. Oh, i'm mixing up two stories. The opening reception is accurate. The Button Pusher story really happened later when they'd added a stage & bar & invited me to do another show... don't even remember which paintings. Anyway, here are the paintings for this one, 10 views in two pages.
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