Author Archive
This week hundreds of galleries and thousands of artists swarmed the southern tip of Florida for this Year’s Art Basel Miami Beach show. Amongst those in attendance was Atlanta’s own Charlie Owens – returning for his second year in a row. Born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, Owens moved to Atlanta when he was seventeen to attend the Art Institute. After eight years of freelance design-work and a brief stint creating phonebook ads Owens began working at Turner Studios, providing graphics for TNT, TBS, and Cartoon Network. But like so many others who have known interstate love, Owens was beckoned north by his now-wife who owned a vintage retail store in Chicago at the time.
Now, one would think that a town – nay – City, like Chicago would be the ideal place for a burgeoning artist to start a career. Owens landed a job with Upshot – an award winning marketing agency boasting HBO, Corona, VISA, and Wild Turkey amongst many others, as their clients. Still, after only a few years Owens found himself missing Atlanta. “I missed the climate, the slower pace of life – the South…” Owens recalls, “and wanting more space to grow as a family, buy a house. It just felt right.” Furthermore, while the retail business prospered in a city laden with foot traffic, Owens wasn’t the only artist trying to make a name for himself in the Windy City. But, then: why Atlanta? “I saw great things starting to happen in Atlanta,” Owens explains, “galleries were starting to pop up here and there and the scene was still budding, whereas in Chicago I was one amongst thousands of others, all trying to do the same damn thing.”
Having kept in touch with his boss at Turner, Owens had no trouble finding a job to return to. Upon his arrival in Atlanta, Owens and his wife settled into a new home in East Atlanta, where he transformed his basement into a working studio-slash-headquarters. Amidst black velvet jesus paintings hang antlers and skulls of varied size and species. A gas mask or two dangle alongside a sizable American flag hanging over a table stacked with older work, prints, and unpainted canvases. An ipod dock murmurs rock music while a mid-80’s television set blinks in and out of static-snow. On easels, in corners, and upon tabletops sit stacks of sorted prints waiting to be sold and shipped, older paintings by Owens, and pieces of screens freckled with the ink-remnants of a day’s work.
Not so much hanging, but covering the wall was Owens’ latest piece, in preparation for the Art Basel showing. The painting is massive – though not his largest (Owens created a mural for Turner Studios that runs some two-hundred feet in length and reaches eighteen feet at its tallest point). The painting here is a woman’s face, pitched back and entranced in what looks like a blend of pain and ecstasy. Her eyes are barren – all white, and the only life about her seems to be the wind-cast locks of red hair flowing about her head. In it’s current state the work has already been through multiple levels and stages of progression – from pencil drawing to vector, and now the amalgam of mediums that stands before us. Stating influences such as skateboard- and street art, Owens’ own work takes on a size and texture not unlike that of alley walls and construction sites, littered with layers of decomposing wheat paste posters and the general urban detritus that collects at said locations. Set on adjoining wooden square panels, the painting breaks into a section of negative space, activated only by the texture of paint, varnish, stain, and a group of skateboards donning Owens’ illustrations. Screened on the far right of the mural are the words: “this could be the end,” in bold, serifed typography. Ironic, considering in many ways this is very much the beginning.
With a painting career spanning more than a decade Owens seems to be finding his voice. More importantly, the painter of zombie-eyed vixens and gun toting belles lends that voice to the still growing chorus of artists in Atlanta, which Owens explains is out there for those willing to seek it: “a lot of people think there’s not much going on here in Atlanta. It definitely seems that way, if you’re not looking.”
For now, Owens is just glad to be doing what he loves, in a city where he feels appreciated. “The fact that people are noticing and buying my work,” Owens grins, “- allowing me to continue doing something I love – it’s really flattering.” And the road doesn’t end in Miami. Aside from the tattoo conventions where Owens can be found selling his skateboards and art prints (all available on his website, www.charlieowens.com), Owens has a couple of group shows lined up (Cannibal Flowers in L.A. with Thinkspace) along with an upcoming solo show in May at Washington DC’s Art Whino gallery – the group that hosted the artist in Miami as part of their TAKEOVER exhibit for this year’s Art Basel.
With artists like Owens moving back to Atlanta to pursue an arts career and events such as the Living Walls mural project – that drew both artists and attention onto our Southeastern metropolis – is there hope for Atlanta to join cities like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles in the roster of art scene heavy hitters? Well one thing is certain: there is a plethora of galleries, shows, and individuals abound in our city for those willing to find them. From gallery walks in Castleberry Hill to the increasing clout of work featured at our very own HIGH museum, and the more obscure network of artists who make honest (or not-so honest) livings by day and pursue their given-talents and passions by night – there is a wind blowing through our City in the Forest. And while most might flock to the more well known “Art Meccas” for the time being, that only leaves more room to grow for those, like Charlie Owens, who choose to call The A their home.
Photo Credit: Tim Song
The closest thing I’ve known to god was a falcon
adrift in a wind’s hammock, high
above the power lines
Singular, beautiful, ever majestic – even in its playful grace
it circled a crown of buildings
holy in its apathy
And I, no less than a prophet
there among all the unaware, moving aimlessly
listless, about
Upon returning to that site, each time
I curl my eyes skywards
hands clasped in childlike anticipation
hoping
This falcon was no god as told by those who seek him
but rather served as a reminder; a message
a new epicenter for all the world’s pressures
in a universe that all too often seems to press against
me
-Anonymous
ATLANTA – The story of Alan Colussy begins some thirty-five years ago in the Atlanta neighborhood now known as Morningside. Originally inhabited by the Creek Indian Nation, the area was surrendered to Georgia settlers in 1821. The network of fields, farms and mills that once studded the banks of the rivers and streams is now a quiet neighborhood shaded by wise old oaks and laced with winding streets that loosely drape about the hills above Piedmont Park.
Heading north on Monroe Drive, the scattered businesses and latticed power lines make way for arboreal promenades that beckon motorists to turn off and onto any of the tree-columned side streets. Amidst craftsman bungalows, tudors dripping with ivy and English-style cottages built by wealthy Atlantans of yesteryear sits a rusted camper-trailer beneath the fuchsia bouquets of a braided crape myrtle. But this is no ordinary trailer – this is a mews, or birdhouse for raptors. The door swings and slams shut with a rusty squeak, and out comes Colussy. No stranger to the Atlanta heat, Colussy is soaked to the bone in sweat and in a singular motion waves and invites Tim Song and me to escape the sun while he changes out of his chore attire. Now, I must admit – I half expected to enter a home, warm with wood paneled walls, striped with fingers of light swimming with dust particles and the sort of air reserved for trophy rooms and old smoke parlors. Instead we entered a home brightly lit with some floral upholstery, family photos framed on end tables, a breakfast nook, screened in three season room with patio furniture and an old Springer spaniel – Tobey – whom Colussy affectionately refers to as Wonder Dog. Colussy offers us both a drink and then retreats to change, calling out from a back room: “you guys can wait in the guest room if you want to have a look at the birds.”
One of my favorite things about living in Atlanta is the proximity and presence of nature. Besides the abundance of trees and nearby lakes and rivers, there is a feeling… a sense that wilderness has not yet let slide her foothold on the turf within our city limits. Born and raised in New York City, I still get a kick out of seeing a possum run across a Cabbagetown alley or finding an Eastern Garter snake in my yard. But there is perhaps nothing that thrills me more than the sight of raptors soaring overhead, perched upon a lamp post, or best of all, the shrill kree-eee-ar that sends the squirrels on my street racing to their treetop nests in a frenzied panic.
Song and I practically push past each other towards the white lace-curtained window and gingerly part the drapery. Remember that scene in the opening of A Christmas Story – all the kids gape in awe through the storefront window as the tinker toys parade before them? I imagine we looked something like that only more elated and visibly stunned. Standing some forty feet before us were four feathered sentinels perched upon their blocks. Bombay – the newbie amongst the quartet – rears up and stretches his wings as if to assure us that he is in fact real. We stand unconvinced. At this point it’s all we can do to tear ourselves away from the window in the hopes that we may soon be standing out there. We do our best to assume an air of professionalism in order to commence our interview and suppress our childlike glee.
We sit down in what used to be Colussy’s bedroom as he describes to us the changes he has made to his childhood home over the years. Like many of the Atlantans who grew up in the neighborhood, Colussy attended Grady High School and spent afternoons in Piedmont park across the street. But while most kids scrambled on playgrounds, kicked balls or threw frisbees, Colussy could be found donning his gauntlet, his neck craned skywards and eyes squinted to surveil the cerulean fields above. “I guess it all started for me when I read My Side of the Mountain,” Colussy recalls. The Jean Craighead George novel tells the tale of a young man who sets off into the Catskill Mountains. After hand-rearing a Peregrine eyass (the term applied to young raptors taken from their nest), the boy lives amongst the flora and fauna in the stump of an old Hemlock tree. “This could never have worked,” Colussy assures us, “I mean they both would have been dead within a matter of days.” Nevertheless, from that point on Colussy read everything he could get his hands on that related to raptors and falconry, thus spawning the beginning of a lifelong passion. At the age of fourteen, Colussy passed the US Federal Falconry exam and soon thereafter trapped and began training his first Red Tail Hawk. “I would drive to school with my hawk in the back of my station wagon, and during lunch I would fly him across the street in the park. Sometimes I would make it back to school after lunch,” he quips. We can only assume that for the young falconer, hawking took precedent over home economics and afternoon math.
While flying hawks may seem an odd pastime for a city-borne teen, this was the whole point for Colussy. “My older sister and I attended all the same schools,” he explains, “and she was an amazing student. I guess you could say I was living in her shadow… so that no matter how well I did in school, I was constantly compared to how incredibly she had done.” Rather than resent his sister – whom he is close to even today – Colussy decided instead to pursue, in his own words “as much other crazy shit as I could possibly get into.” So naturally, when Colussy’s grandmother insisted he join the army, he instead enlisted in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces playing the bagpipe for the 78th Fraser Highland Regiment, right here in Atlanta.
The list of titles and affiliations Colussy claims read like the resume of a modern-day polymath. Aside from being a Master-Falconer, Akbar started a chapter of SHARP (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice) in Asheville, NC in 1993, earned a degree in Anthropology from Georgia State University in 1999, bred Springer Spaniels, lived in Pakistan for three years, and is currently a Master Mason and member of Gate City Lodge No. 2 with the local Free & Accepted Masons. Of his time in Pakistan, Colussy explains, “Pakistan is to Falconry what Scotland is to golf.”
Sierra & Jerry Lee
Upon his return from the East, Colussy started the Frugal Falconer: a DIY pamphlet which he describes as, “showing people how they could make many of the things they’d need” for training and housing a raptor. Given the relative obscurity of the sport at the time, suppliers were far and few and charged an arm-and-a-leg for items that most people could improvise or make themselves. Today, however, the art is gaining in popularity. According to Colussy, “In 1990 there were twenty-seven falconry licenses active in Georgia… today there are roughly a hundred and eighty.”
In 2003, Akbar returned from Pakistan and began work at the McGuire AF Base. To this day the New Jersey-based airfield and others like it work in tandem with the World Bird Sanctuary to conduct bird abatement – the hiring of falconers to clear air ports, Air Force bases, and landfills of excessive or potentially hazardous bird populations. “I have the best job in the world,” Colussy exclaims as his smile lifts the curled ends of his rusty handlebar mustache, “I basically do drive-by’s on birds all day.” The process is not quite as gangster as it sounds. Colussy has serviced landfills in northern California, civilian airports in Pennsylvania, as well as March Air Force base in Riverside, California. While clearing runways of geese is fun, it’s only when he begins to describe his abatement work on landfills that Colussy’s eyes light up.
Bombay & Hamza
“The landfills are really cool!” Now, not many people would describe a landfill, let alone a day at work, as “really cool.” It’s only when he begins detailing the actual process that we start to understand Colussy’s apparent enthusiasm: “First of all there isn’t the politics and security issues you deal with working a military base… but really the landfill is a vast range of hills and valleys.” These conditions are ideal for falcons on the hunt and allow them to perform the aerial acrobatics they are so well-known and sought-after for. Colussy continues, “the wind currents in those big hills of garbage allow the falcons to do some really cool stuff.” Cool stuff like dwindling a population of some eighty-thousand seagulls on a ten square mile landfill down to a manageable two-thousand. “When I started there was literally a sea – an undulating mass – of seagulls that made everything look like it was moving,” Colussy recalls. “Besides the bacteria these gulls would take back on the beach each night on their feet, you run the risk of machinery operators getting vertigo and losing control of vehicles or running over the workers on foot.”
The falcons, however, do not work alone. Much like the art of falconry, Colussy’s work at the landfill is done in tandem with the birds. “Usually I start by flying kites, letting off pyro and fireworks, I get my butane cannon going, maybe shoot some lasers and paintballs, and then I’ll get the falcon up in the air.” The self-described “circus act” serves as a warning to the resident sea gulls. If the dogs, lasers, and pyrotechnics don’t do the trick, the falcon is the all-too-final warning for some of the birds. Once the gulls get the point, all that’s left to be done is to fly a kite and the gulls recognize the warning sign of impending feathered-doom.
But flying raptors is not all fun and games. Those considering the lifestyle – which it most certainly is – must pass exams, seek state and federal licensure and build or purchase all the necessary accoutrement before going out to catch their first Red Tail and beginning their two year apprenticeship. Owning a bird of prey is not a way to own an exotic bird, nor is it for the faint of heart. These birds are hunters and must fly and hunt daily to maintain soundness of mind and overall health. Training requires daily attention, and the bird’s well-being is paramount. For those people who are interested, there are plenty of books and local clubs and organizations available for perusal.
For Colussy falconry is a lifelong passion – a passion woven into a means to provide and exist in this world. Not all are so lucky to boast their job as the best in the world. But perhaps for us, the many, it is enough to know that while our day-to-day winds through this cementitious labyrinth of streets, alleys and highways – above and all around us a Wild permeates. Its breath hovers high above the smog blanket and din of the traffic. Its fingers reach upward and out in the whips of kudzu and umbrella-like canopies of mimosa that crack the endless gray. It is alive in the spirits of men like Alan Colussy – the hidden urbanites all around us who long for the simpler time – those who romanticize the vintage and glorify the antique.
Perhaps things will develop to a point where they can develop no further. The initiation of a retrograde… a return to a time when heirlooms were tangible, and work was more a labor of survival then a turn of the gears. This is maybe the greatest thing about living in a city like Atlanta: that even in a metropolis such as ours the natural and serene is within reach. It permeates and manifests in the lives of the falconer, the outdoorsman, the hobby-farmer, the backyard gardener, and those who stop from time to time and look up, close their eyes and breathe deep the jasmine carried on a cool spring breeze. It is by these so-called “little things” that we may hope to remember that beyond the iron and glass fence of the skyline there is a place and world still feral, heralded by the soaring hawk who remains in spite of his wilderness-turned-civil.
Photo Credit: Tim Song
-3-
Within weeks of moving to Atlanta, back in 2006, I began hearing talk of the one they called “Blondie.” I had seen the Clermont Lounge while driving down Ponce countless times and was certainly intrigued by the seemingly antiquated signage over the parking lot and the mysterious allure of the back-alley entrance. But no amount of buzz or folklore could have prepared me for my first encounter with the blonde bombshell.
We were just going in for a drink or two. It was a friday night and the place was still relatively empty. A couple of men and an older lady sat around the horseshoe-bar and I took them for regulars – given their causal register and lack of interest in the show taking place right before them. But as the night went on the place filled up, and with each gust of winter’s night-air another motley gathering would stroll in, each more different and unexpected than the last. By the time midnight neared we were surrounded by couples in their fifties, college kids, a bachelorette party complete with veil of penises, some fashionista twenty-somethings, one or two thugs, and post-hay day biker dudes who were either patrons or security.
I remember that the music was amazing – and as DJ Quasi transitioned form Prince to Michael to SWV – I locked eyes with an entity making her way through the hoards on the dance floor. Her acrylic blonde hairs were illuminated like bulb filaments by the disco lights that swirled about her. She seemed – not so much to float – but gyrate towards us in a slinking motion that complimented her Jessica Rabbit get-up perfectly.
“That’s her,” nudged my wife, “that’s Blondie.”
She walked up to us as though she knew we were talking about her and seemed to feed off the awe in our star-struck eyes. “Whass happening honeh?” she rasped.
I was speechless.
Granted I had been watching middle-aged women dance nude and roll beads of pearls up and down their asses for the last hour or so, but this was a creature unlike any I had ever encountered. Before I could clear the knot from my throat to utter a “howdoyoudo” my friend leaned over her shoulder with a fraternal familiarity and laughed out “it’s his birthday today.” Before I could deny the claim Blondie had me by my hand and was pulling me across the dance floor to a table in the back of the bar with my crowd of friends-turned-spectators in tow. I desperately looked back at my accuser as if to plead “what’s happening?” But it was too late. Blondie whirled me around her into a chair and began doing what she does and has been doing best for thirty-five years.
“Mmmmmmm you like that shit?”
I was hysterical. Laughing, screaming with delight and occasionally gasping for air as I surfaced form the clutches of her glittery bosom. Each time I raised my beer to my lips she would snatch it from my hands, swig a lion’s share and promptly turn her ass to me hollering out “slap my ass white-boy! Yeah! Harder, you white mothafucka!”
I was in love.
This was entertainment on a level and scale of which was unbeknownst to me. I had seen strippers before, but never could I have dreamt up an act like this. Just then, when I thought this roller coaster of awesome could whip me around no longer, the cars on the Blondie-coaster clicked to the apex before the final drop and we held our breath in exhilarated anticipation. Blondie grabbed my near-empty beer can and downed the remnants with an ease and grace that rivaled that of a frat-boy winning Flip Cup. She then placed the can between her breasts and proceeded to mash the funbags together – crinkling at first – and then fully compacting the can. My jaw dropped. As I inhaled to shout out “THAT WAS FUCKING AMAZI-” she grabbed the back of my head and pulled me in again. This time cold drops of Miller Lite glistened off of her breast as she held my face with her left hand and began to wind up her right tit in a Muhammed Ali-like fashion. Beer whirled off her skin as she rattled off a string of profanity and racial slurs before PLOP! I was struck in the face with a beer-drop studded boob. “Take that you cracka mothafucka!” PLOP! Three, four, maybe five times she slapped my face before promptly “turning off,” shoving our twenty dollars down her bra and giving me a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks hon” she winked as she walked away, stuffing her chest back into her dress before changing costumes to make her way to the stage.
Illustration: Rob Bunda
-2-
Blondie, or Anita, or Strange is as enigmatic as she is revealing. I ask if I can take her picture and she goes into a flip book-style progression of poses. “You know I love the camera, honeh.” Even after I’ve stopped shooting and am readying my pen and pad, Strange continues to strike poses, seemingly unaffected by the conclusion of our impromptu photo shoot. Before I can ask my first question, Strange places a soft hand on my knee, much in the same way a mother might before breaking bad news, and begins to unload . She talks about her more recent struggles and ongoing obstacles in her life as I feverishly scribble away, trying to simultaneously acknowledge her while clawing at tidbits of interview-gold like a boy in a flurry of dollar bills. Then she stops and looks nervously at my notebook “don’t use that,” she gurgles with a mix between wince and smile, “this is off the record.” With epic defeat I tear out the sheet and make a show of crumpling the page to cast it aside.
What she allows for public consumption is more or less a rant, ranging from her accomplishments as a black stripper in a white bar, to her role in a couple of short films (Basically Frightened, and Vampires Anonymous – “it was a Dan Veshar film in which I played a sexy vampire!”), to her comic-book superhero alter ego in The Adventures of Blondie Strange.
“I used to write for SideShow… put that in there: side… show… where I met Jon Waterhouse and Buddy Finn…Phinni… Finnify – im not sure how you spell it.” The name is actually Buddy Finethy – the artist better known for his work in Mellow Mushroom. Strange continues: “they conspired to give me a comic book, and these, (*grabs breasts*) these were my superpowers,” she announces, while lifting her breasts in a pugilistic display: “Wham! Bam!”
Again and again Strange goes back to her writing. What many, including Watts, are not initially aware of is Strange, or Blondie’s affinity for poetry. This – according to Watts – is a large part of the film and has earned her some publicity apart from her Clermont antics.
“I have a poem in the National Library of Congress,” she brags, “which is going to be auctioned tonight – well, a laminated copy at least.” She goes on to tell me about her work being published in a book titled Late Night Review. “Dancing Naked in the Material World was the title – you can find it on the internet.” Lo, I could not find it on the internet. Nor would I be able to verify whether or not she attended Emory, as she claims. “A gentleman paid for me to take night classes,” she clarifies. “From 1989 to ’93. I took some creative writing classes, journalism – oh yeah, and in ’89 I took a clogging class.”
The self-described “regular joe” goes on to tell me about her ideas for pamphlets of jokes and limericks, onto her appearance at the premier of Orgazmo at Phipps Plaza, and gripes about the ever-increasing lack of respect that patrons extend to her and her colleagues, namely Portia. “You mean Peach Cobbler?” I interrupt.
“Yes,” she laughs, “put that in there. Peach Cobbler.”
I ask her how she feels about being the star of a movie after nearly a decade of local notoriety and she corrects me: “two decades, hon.” Strange embraces the popularity and fame that her dancing has brought her. “When we started doing research,” Watts recalls “ other girls at almost every club we visited in Atlanta – Pink Pony, etc. – all knew her and regarded her as a mother-figure.” After being run down by a car in 1995, Strange describes the many people who came to see her in the hospital, all thanks to the fame she earned crushing cans on the stage of the Clermont, and starring in cult-horror films and comic books. Then, in the midst of explaining to me how she’d like to become an advocate for “Women of Color in the adult entertainment industry right here in Atlanta” we’re interrupted by the bearded man again. “This is WAY more than five fucking minutes!” he crows.
Blondie calms the comically-irritated man down and goes back to finishing her self-indulgent aspiration. “Don’t worry about Rodney,” she assures me. I start to write his name and she stops my pen with her hand. “No, hon, not Rodney… ROT… KNEE, with a K.” Realizing my time is up I quickly spit out the question I’ve been dying to ask her all night.
I tell her all about our first encounter (“I thought you looked familiar” she quips) and explain to her how my brother still has his signed and crushed PBR can on display in his Manhattan apartment and she smiles abashed. Blondie leans back in her chair and remarks staring off into the overhead light with a Barbara Streisand-air about her: “I wanna be remembered – but not just for crushing cans or dancing. I want to be remembered for my poetry. That’s what I love more than anything. When I walk up to somebody at the club and offer them a dance and they say: ‘No Blondie. I don’t want no dance. Hit me with some of that poetry a’ yours.’”
With that Blondie extends her hand for me to assist her with all the grace and regal-air of Princess Di, and I accommodatingly help her out of her chair. We hug and kiss before she is whisked away by Rotknee, and I take my place amongst the onlookers awaiting eagerly some of the poetry I’ve been hearing Strange, and Watts, and everyone else wax on and on about.
Finally it’s time. As Blondie takes the stage a silence falls over the crowd – which has grown considerably in the last few hours and stands as true and diverse as the many who fill the smoke-soaked walls of the Clermont each night. I pull out my notebook like a good little writer and wait for her to overwhelm me with quotes and sound bites as she lifts the mic to her glistening lips. A disco ball wrapped in fishnets, perched precariously atop slip on heels and crowned in a magnificent mane of Goldilocks curls. “If Mattel ever heard this poem -” she begins, shooting loose red feathers from her fingers with each flick of her wrist “they would probably sue me. This poem… is called Barbie. Barbie – The Doll That Had it All.” There was a brief pause, during which she closed her eyes and took in one last deep breath. Then she started in again: “There once was a girl named Barbie… wait. There once was a girl… no. Shit. There once was a girl named Barbie.” There were a few chuckles in the crowd but for the most part we shared her embarrassment. Someone hollered out: “See what happens when you perform sober!?” It was true. Moments before our interview ended she boasted about her recent sobriety – and then explained to me how nervous she had been about all the recent attention and how she’d taken the edge off with a beer at dinner. I opted out of pointing out the contradiction to her. “There once was a girl named Barbie…” she tried again. “Shit. I cant believe I’m forgetting this one – it’s been so long and all. Oh well. I’ll come up with something else.”
And come up with something else she did. Blondie went on to recite a poem in completion, about a sultry dancer who puts on a smile and show, knowing “outside that door lies a dismal reality.” By the end of the poem she is in tears and the crowd has once again enveloped her in arms of applause and praise. She goes on to thank everyone, to thank women like Coretta Scott King, Ellen Degeneres (“She’s a hero”), Sandra Bullock (“I’m just sayin’ – I admire her”), and her greatest influence and hero: Tina Turner. “I don’t know how she did it – I’d a killed the man and then written the book,” she boasts.
According to Strange the book is forthcoming. Until then we have AKA Blondie.
“This will get it out there for now,” she assures me, “until the book is written, that is.”
Photo Credit: Rob Bunda Walker
-1-
ATLANTA – On a night cooled by an afternoon of downpours I pull up to the Eyedrum gallery, with the Corey smokestack silhouetted against the rainbow sherbet sky of a spring sunset. Tonight is the AKA Blondie Benefit. A concert fundraiser being held to raise money for the production of the documentary celebrating the “Infamous Atlanta dancer, poet, and icon” that is Blondie. The event is set to start at 8:00 pm but the parking lot is uncharacteristically empty for a Friday night event such as this. One or two smokers stand outside with a bearded man in a bow tie and tux nervously conversing with a police officer. I briskly push past them hoping to avoid any requests for entry-fees or credential presentations, and make my way towards the back room. In the main space there is a book sale of some sort set up on tables surrounded by random and seemingly unrelated works of art on display.
I’m greeted by Emily Halvey, one of the producers of the film, who raises a brow over kind eyes to allow me the opportunity to introduce myself. After some small talk about who I am and why I’m not on the Press list, Halvey steps aside and graciously allows me to go on about my “official journalistic business.” Much like the opening of the gates to Oz, she moves to reveal a glowing vision. There, before a makeshift bar, laden with Christmas lights tracing the outlines of stars, there stands a twinkling diva, laughing wholeheartedly with the self-assured air of stardom and a dash of aristocracy. I begin to move towards her – timid – but eager to spend some time one-on-one with the guest of honor. I stand there awkwardly waiting for her to end her conversation – like a school boy gathering the nerve to ask out his high school alpha-bitch – when Halvey walks over with a boyish-faced lad in tortoiseshell frames. “This is Jon,” she announces, “the director.”
“Oh, awesome. Thanks,” I reply – glad to have been spared the trouble of asking around for him later but feeling a bit torn after being so close to getting Blondie all to myself.
She’ll have to wait.
After some brisk failed attempts at familiarity (“Do you know my friend? She makes the videos like you” – or something equally vague and pointless) I lead him to a quiet corner by the sound booth and begin to dig.
“So you’re Jon Watts, right?” I had done my research.
Watts begins to describe the events that lead him to start this film. He recants his tale with the warmth and nostalgia reserved for wedding proposals and first kisses. “It was my twenty-fifth birthday and I was there with my girlfriend. Blondie was offering me a lap dance when my girlfriend walked over claiming me as ‘her man.’” But Blondie wasn’t about to give up that easy. After a playful argument over Watts, Blondie went about her usual routine as Watts’ newfound intrigue blossomed into healthy-obsession.
Before long Watts and his girlfriend were visiting the Clermont two times a week. Soon thereafter he proposed the idea for a film about Blondie to a mutual friend.
“She was a bit standoffish at first,” Watts recalls, “that is until she found out the movie was going to be about her.”
But according to Watts, it’s all for her. It’s always been about her. The film – with a projected release date in Summer, 2011 – explores the dancer, now fifty-three, on her travels from a small start in Ohio onto a brief stint in Tennessee, and finally her arrival in the then recently-desegregated Atlanta. Watts describes Blondie as “an open book…” In talking with her, “once you strike a chord she’ll let it all out.” And there’s lots to be let out. Between her career as an adult entertainer, recent health problems, battles with alcohol and substance-abuse, and local cult-stardom Blondie lost a brother to AIDS, endured flagrant misogyny, and rose to her current prominence as a lady of color in what was then and remains today a predominantly white industry and venue. “Even my mom – in talking about Blondie – expressed a respect for her as a woman – living her life, making a living, and enduring her struggles,” Watts recalls. “I really wanted to relate her to everyday people,” Watts continued, “the woman outside the club.” Hence the title of the film: AKA Blondie.
Blondie’s real name (according to her, of course) is Anita Strange. By the time I finish talking with Watts the crowds of admirers grow around the red-feather boa’d damsel and I know the time to strike is now. I make an authoritative b-line for Strange (aka Blondie) and rest my hand on her arm. She smiles warmly at me under what seems like four layers of fake lashes and enough mascara for a night of Blue Man Group. “Hey sugah,” she grins. I explain to her why I’ve interrupted her shower of pleasantries and ask for a few minutes of her time. Before I can finish the question the same tuxedoed man who was working the door before approaches us barking nervously about time constraints and arrivals and other official sounding business which Blondie is theatrically concerned by. I explain to him that I’d like to speak to her and he magically grants me five minutes “Five! No more!”
Photo Credit: Rob Bunda Walker