WABE Arts

Artful ATL started with a simple idea: Atlanta artists deserve a professional space, real collectors, and a direct path to income — without giving up a percentage of what their work brings in. Now in its second year, the annual exhibition and sale returns Saturday, June 13 to Atlanta Contemporary with more than 30 artists selected from more than 200 submissions. On this episode of WABE Arts, Sherri Daye Scott talks with co-founders Esohe and George Galbreath about what it takes to get into the show, how they arrange artists to create the best experience for collectors and attendees, and what they hope the Atlanta art community takes from what they’ve built. Esohe Galbreath comes from finance and engineering. George Galbreath is a visual artist and educator. Together they describe Artful ATL not as a business, but as a calling. 🎨 

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When Joyce Kim immigrated to Georgia from Korea in the third grade, she couldn’t yet speak English, but she could paint and draw. Art, she says, was a familiar language in an unfamiliar place. On this episode of WABE Arts, Sherri Daye Scott talks with Kim about the body of work that earned her a Gold Medal Portfolio Award from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards,  the organization’s highest honor, awarded to just 16 students nationwide. Kim discusses her mixed-media portfolio, ‘Fear of the Unknown and the Uncontrollable Forces,’ the psychological theory behind one of its signature pieces, and what she hopes other young artists take from her work. Kim graduates from Johns Creek High School in Alpharetta this month and will study psychology and visual arts at Yale University in the fall. 🎨 

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The Amplify Decatur Music Festival has been turning live music into community support since 2010 — and a decade ago, it claimed the Decatur Square as its home. This week, the festival marks ten years outdoors with a lineup headlined by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, on a brand-new downtown stage about to host its very first concert. On this episode of WABE Arts, Sherri Daye Scott talks with co-board chair Mike Killeen about what it took to build a festival around a cause, why music and anti-poverty work belong together, and what it means to finally land an artist that's been on the wish list for years. The Amplify Decatur Music Festival runs June fourth through seventh on and around the Decatur Square. 🎵 

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For more than a year, ‘Amy Sherald: American Sublime’ packed museums in San Francisco, New York, and Baltimore. Now the exhibition — the largest of the Georgia native’s work to date — has arrived at its final stop: Atlanta’s High Museum, the city where Sherald honed her craft. On this episode of WABE Arts, Sherri Daye Scott talks with Angelica Arbelaez, assistant curator of modern and contemporary art at the High, about what visitors will find inside: the visual language Sherald developed over nearly 20 years, the new triptych created specifically for this show, and how the museum has organized an exhibition that asks you to slow down and meet the gaze of every subject in the room. 🎨 

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In 2019, producer Michael Shulman invited Gloria Estefan to score a musical he was developing based on ‘Landfill Harmonic,’  a documentary about a children’s orchestra in Paraguay that builds its instruments from recycled trash. Estefan invited her daughter Emily to write alongside her. On this episode of WABE Arts, Sherri Daye Scott talks with Gloria and Emily Estefan — during rehearsals at the Alliance Theatre ahead of the musical’s May 30 premiere — about what it takes to write original music for the stage: the panic, the process, the songs that didn’t survive, and why Atlanta audiences will help shape what ‘Basura’ becomes. 🎭

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The Atlanta Fringe Festival opens Wednesday, May 27th. Fifty-one shows. Nearly 250 performances. The lineup is selected by lottery — open to artists of all backgrounds, disciplines, and experience levels.

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🎶 Almost twenty-five years ago, singer-songwriter Donnie released “The Colored Section”,  a gospel-rooted concept album that became a touchstone of Atlanta’s indie soul scene. Then he disappeared from public life for nearly two decades. On this episode of WABE Arts, Donnie sits down with WABE Arts & Culture Editor Sherri Daye Scott ahead of his performance at the 49th Annual Atlanta Jazz Festival to talk about the communities that haped him, the long years away, and what it meant when Atlanta called him back. 🎹 

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🎧 Grammy-nominated saxophonist Kamasi Washington headlines Saturday night of the 49th Annual Atlanta Jazz Festival. Before he took to the stage, he sat down for WABE Arts' "What's Feeding You?" series. Washington, talking about where he finds inspiration, what he's reading right now (hint: Ninja Turtles), how he grounds himself, and why Atlanta has a special place in his story. He also names the next generation of jazz musicians he can't stop listening to. 🎵 

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🎭 Georgia Tech historian Matthew Hild spent years researching the woman behind the pop star — and he argues the most iconic thing Olivia Newton-John ever did wasn’t star in “Grease” or sing “Physical.” It was the cancer treatment center she fought to build in Australia, which now draws patients from around the world. Hild talks with WABE Arts and Culture Editor Sherri Daye Scott about why John Travolta compared Newton-John’s star power to Taylor Swift’s, how “Grease” erased her country music legacy, and the Atlanta ties that thread through her story. 🎵 

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🎭 Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” reimagined as a ’90s sitcom, staged outdoors in a Georgia meadow. Producer Lena deLoache had never produced live theatre outside before writer and director Erin Stegeman invited her to help bring “M.A.C.B.E.T.H.” to life at Art Farm at Serenbe in Chattahoochee Hills. The world premiere opened May 8 and runs through May 17. deLoache talks with WABE Arts and Culture Editor Sherri Daye Scott about what the show actually is and what staging a world premiere outdoors in May in Georgia demands — technically, physically, and creatively. 🎭 

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