✦ aKAZI ATL ✦Southern Surf StompFest ✦ GULCH ✦ “Nature Embroidered” ✦ Raphael Saadiq

✦ But first, one of the special things about the Atlanta art scene is the small and intimate art galleries that focus on a particular artistic style. City Lights Collective member Katina Pappas-DeLuca sat down with Anja and Jumbe Sebunya, the founders and curators of aKAZI ATL, to learn more about their gallery of contemporary African art and their upcoming exhibition titled "Peace, Reconciliation, and the Potential for Transformation."

✦ This Saturday, September 27, the Avondale Estates Town Green will transform into a surf rock haven, featuring a lineup of local and national bands serving up a full day of reverb-drenched, beach-ready tunes. With DJs, vendors, and free admission, it's an all-ages celebration of the classic surf rock sound. City Lights Collective producer Josh Thane caught up with festival organizer Richard Hawes to dive into what makes this year's Southern Surf StompFest a must.

✦ City Lights Collective members Jasmine Hentschel and EC Flamming, the creatives behind Atlanta's visual art print magazine, "GULCH", want you to get out and engage with the city's art scene. They've been joining us weekly since the show launched, spotlighting five standout happenings. Today, they'll cover Atlanta Art Fair's return to Pullman Yards for its second year in operation, an immersive indoor/outdoor art festival at Goat Farm's sprawling 12-acre campus and kick off the fall season at Atlanta Contemporary with a roster of exhibition openings.

✦ Nature's natural patterns often look like stitched-together works of art. Whenever you look at the underside of a leaf or up close at the petals of a flower, symmetrical patterns and lines are on display. In Myrtie Cope's solo exhibition "Nature Embroidered," she photographs nature and landscapes, then hand embroiders them with cotton or silk thread...enhancing nature's patterns with texture. Her work is on display at Blue Heron Nature Preserve's indoor gallery through October 22. WABE arts reporter Summer Evans spoke with Cope about her exhibit.

✦When you start your career in music backing Shelia E and Prince in Tokyo when you're eighteen, and your most recent accomplishment, three decades later, is writing songs for Beyonce's Cowboy Carter, the Grammy award-winning album of the year, you might ask, what else could you possibly want to do? Well, Soul and R&B legend Raphael Saadiq has an answer for you. Mr. Saddiq spoke with City Lights Collective Co-host Jon Goode about his latest project, "The No Bandwidth Tour: One Man, One Night, Three Decades of Hits." It's part music, part storytelling, and all Raphael Saadiq.

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