Weekend Arts Agenda: Two days, two birthdays September 18 2014

Don’t forget to bring a present.

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Isn’t it fun to grow older? Or at least: two of the city’s arts groups are celebrating anniversaries this weekend. The oldest is the Arts Exchange, which turns 30 on Sunday with a Galabration (get it?) from 2-9 p.m., at the Paul Robeson Theatre. The whole affair is actually a benefit party, concert, poetry reading, and dance recital. Lots of media there crisscrossing, co-mingling, and otherwise exemplifying the exchange’s multidisciplinary mission. The studio doors will be flung wide for an open house that afternoon, from 2-6 p.m.; the celebration begins officially after that. With performances by the SaNa Band, Tommy Bottoms, Abyss Graham, and more. Admission for two people is a $30 donation (get it?). Buy tickets here.

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SATURDAY

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  • Courtesy Marcia Wood
  • Benjamin Britton, “Burns to breathe (gotta have a better attitude),” 2014, oil on canvas over panel, 40x38.5 in.



California native and UGA professor Benjamin Britton opens Your Apprehension is Noted with a reception Saturday night at Marcia Wood. The gallery will also celebrate its 20th anniversary with cocktails, et al. If you’re coming for the art remember this, in Britton’s own words: any one of his pieces may read “like a dense and colorful abstract painting.” They contain “representations of nameable things and illusionistic spaces.” Doubling this entendre are Britton’s titles, such as “Throw me the idol, I’ll give you the whip” and “Burns to breathe (gotta have a better attitude).” His style can scrape opulence or, as easily, a kind of post-figurative trance. It’s like, Go on, take a look. From 7-10 p.m.

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Leaves of Grass opens at {Poem88}. So of course the show is about nature. Artists Steven L. Anderson and Susan Hable Smith express their relationships with the natural world differently, as a matter of aesthetics but also scale: Anderson’s “profound engagement with place,” as the gallery describes it, and Smith’s chronicling of her backyard garden. Anderson’s drawings and installations produce artifacts; Smith folds in a lifetime of natural elements, compiled from her travels and from her family. It’s the world in many forms, through two pairs of eyes. With an opening reception from 7-9:30 p.m.