Arts & Literature

Emmy Award-Winning Filmmaker Calls Peachtree Corners Home

Published

2 years ago

August 24, 2022

Karen Huppertz

Kevin & Jaclyn Allison at the 2022 Emmys. (Photos courtesy of the Allison family)

Unlikely bond between a Braves player and Mets fan earns local filmmaker an Emmy.

As the 20-year anniversary of 9/11 approached last year, Kevin Allison and Bally Sports South/Southeast Braves knew the best way to mark the solemn occasion was to look back on the singular importance one baseball game made toward the first steps of healing. When the Atlanta Braves and New York Mets took to the field for the first sporting event after the September 11 attacks, it was about much more than winning or losing.

The 7½ minute short documentary, More Than A Game — Braves at Mets — 9/11 Remembrance, recently won a Southeast Regional Emmy Award from the Southeast chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Peachtree Corners resident Kevin Allison edited and produced the film, along with chief photographer Gregg Therieau.

"The moment was obviously bigger than the game."

That unforgettable September night at Shea Stadium.

When @Braves and @Mets players took the field for the first sporting event in New York City after the September 11 attacks, the game meant more than winning or losing. pic.twitter.com/rMb2gg2U8N
— Bally Sports: Braves (@BravesOnBally) September 11, 2021

Healing through sports

“During the pandemic in 2020, there were a lot of discussions about missing sports and how sports help in the healing process,” said Kevin. “We were doing a lot of historical content at the beginning of the pandemic. A lot of former players — Chipper Jones, Brian Jordan, Tom Glavine, a lot of those guys — would refer back to their time during September 11 and how sports helped people process the tragedy.”

Knowing that a year later was going to be the 20th anniversary of those tragic events, Kevin began doing a lot of research, looking at old photos and raw footage from the Braves versus Mets game that took place just 10 days after the historic terrorist attacks. He kept coming across photos of Brian Jordan with a Mets family whose hero father/husband had perished during the World Trade Center attacks.

With one iconic image of Jordan embracing the overcome-with-emotion widow, Carol Gies, Kevin knew he had found the storytelling connection he needed.

“Come to find out, they had stayed in touch a little bit through the years,” said Kevin. “During the making of the feature, we actually reconnected the two of them as well.” Gies remembers the night and the painful memories surrounding those early post-9/11 days, but credits Jordan with helping her family tremendously by coming over and saying the kind words that he did.

Connecting stories to the human element

Piecing together a story and finding the personal connection is what Kevin seems to enjoy most about his work. From the time he began filming interviews for the feature film to editing those 7½ minutes took about a month of work. Before beginning interviews, from the time research began, was closer to a year.

Most Braves fans will remember a Mets homerun sealed the game for the home team that night. Most fans also accept that Mets win as how the game needed to end.

When asked about his approach to documentary filmmaking, Kevin stated, “For me, it has always been: what’s the connection and how do I connect the storytelling to get the human element? Especially when it comes to sports, you can be fans of the team, but how do you find the human interest for an individual?”

Kevin’s wife, Jaclyn Allison, is often the first audience to judge that emotional connection. As Director Marketing, Communications and Events at Partnership Gwinnett, Jaclyn understands the subtleties of good communication and, for her job, how to create events that will draw on an individual’s or group’s desire to engage.

Jaclyn’s work with Partnership Gwinnett

Partnership Gwinnett is a public/private initiative designed to drive “economic prosperity by attracting, expanding and retaining quality businesses; aligning and developing diverse talent; and contributing to the exceptional quality of life in Gwinnett County.”

“We have three different goal areas,” explained Jaclyn. “We focus on business development, recruiting and retaining business in our community, talent development — so we work with the university and school systems to build up our talent pool, and then our community development — working a lot with entrepreneur development and small business culture.

Within our goal one, business development, we focus on five target sectors: manufacturing, supply chain, technology solutions, health sciences and services and then corporate and professional services. Anything that falls within those sectors we focus on and work with our community to bring here.”

Jaclyn works on a number of events that target those sectors. She’s currently working to bring The State of Technology Summit to Peachtree Corners November 10 at Atlanta Tech Park. It will bring together keynotes and speakers to talk about trends and best practices in the technology sector.

She’s also very proud of her husband’s work and was the first to share that his latest Emmy is not his first. In fact, this is his eighth Southeast Regional Emmy Award.

Kevin’s dream career and life

It all comes from an honest place. Kevin Allison has been a huge sports fan his whole life and he readily admits he just enjoys TV. Combining those passions into a career is the dream.
For “More Than A Game – Braves at Mets – 9/11 Remembrance,” he took a lot of care. “For something that impacted so many people, even if it was 20 years ago — and out of respect for Carol who was still willing to tell this story 20 years later — for me the goal was what’s the most respectful way to tell this story,” Kevin stated.

Kevin was proud and happy this film was recognized, not so much for the personal accolades, but because of the story and the people involved. “I work with Brian Jordan every day and he is one of the best people to work with and one of the kindest people in this community,” said Kevin. Being able to share Carol and Brian’s story meant being able to recognize two of many special individuals who made a difference in those very challenging days post 9/11.

Introducing you to Kevin and Jaclyn would not be complete without sharing that their Peachtree Corners family is currently a busy one, with three young children ages one, three and four. The little ones haven’t been to see the Braves play yet, but it’s inevitable. We anticipate you’ll also be seeing each of those young ones on the ballfields in and around Peachtree Corners soon.

Allow yourself seven and a half minutes, grab a tissue and be inspired by More Than A Game – Braves at Mets – 9/11 Remembrance.

Kevin Allison’s 9 Emmy Awards

■ 2022, Southeast Regional Emmy Award: Outstanding Achievement, Sports Story — News, More Than A Game — Braves at Mets — 9/11 Remembrance | Bally Sports South/Southeast (formerly Fox Sports South/Southeast)
■ 2021, Southeast Regional Emmy Award: Outstanding Achievement, Sports Program — Live — Series, Community Heroes Week | Fox Sports South/Southeast
■ 2016, Southeast Regional Emmy Award: Outstanding Achievement, Documentary: Topical — Driven: Michael Waltrip Racing — Life in the Pits | Fox Sports South/Southeast
■ 2014, Southeast Regional Emmy Award: Outstanding Achievement, Television News and Program Specialty Excellence Category: Sports Program Series — DRIVEN: THE CHIPPER JONES STORY | Fox Sports South/Southeast
■ 2013, Southeast Regional Emmy Award: Outstanding Achievement, Television News and Program Specialty Excellence Category: Sports Program Series — DRIVEN: Tougher. Faster. Stronger. The 2013 Bobcats Draft | Fox Sports South/Southeast
■ 2013, College Sports Media Award: Outstanding Achievement, Regional/Local Networks: Program Series — Under The Lights: Southern Miss Baseball | Fox Sports South/Southeast
■ 2013, Southeast Regional Emmy Award: Outstanding Achievement, Television News and Program Specialty Excellence Category: Sports Program Series — Under the Lights: Southern Miss Baseball | Fox Sports South/Southeast
■ 2009, Southeast Regional Emmy Award: Outstanding Achievement, Television Programming Excellence Category: Interview/Discussion — In My Own Words: Charles Barkley | Fox Sports South/Southeast
■ 2007, Southeast Regional Emmy Award: Outstanding Achievement, Television News & Program Specialty Excellence Category: Sports News Program — University of Tennessee Hoops Preview | Fox Sports South/Southeast

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Karen Huppertz

Karen Huppertz is a freelance journalist, content writer and passionate volunteer with the International Dyslexia Association. She has worked with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for the past 10 years primarily covering city and county government action. Her endlessly inquisitive nature about a wide range of topics, desire to understand the big picture and an impassioned aspiration to provide accurate facts shape her work. Originally from South Carolina, Karen has lived in Gwinnett for nearly 30 years. She is happily married and mother to two great young adults. Her professional career includes a marketing and advertising background while her volunteer career has focused on dyslexia, a learning difference making it challenging for about 10-20% of the population to learn to read. She is proud to have played a small part in Georgia’s recent legislation calling for teacher training in how to recognize and help dyslexic students. When not posting images from her nearby garden on social media or writing to meet a deadline, she can be found advocating to make literacy available to everyone.

Around Atlanta

The High Museum to Showcase “Thinking Eye, Seeing Mind”

Published

1 week ago

December 12, 2024

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

Oil on paper artwork by Terry Winters. A large red circle with smaller blue circles on top of it and gold/yellow accents. All of it on a dark brown background.

The special exhibition of the Medford and Loraine Johnston Collection will run January 17 through May 25, 2025

In the mid-1970s, artist and Georgia State University professor Medford Johnston, along with his wife and collaborator Loraine, began collecting works by artists who were in the vanguard of contemporary art. Today, they hold one of the finest collections of postwar American drawings and related objects of its kind, now numbering more than 85 works.

In 2025, the High Museum of Art will present Thinking Eye, Seeing Mind: The Medford and Loraine Johnston Collection, featuring their collected works, which is a promised gift to the museum. Featuring artists such as Sol LeWitt, Brice Marden, Elizabeth Murray, Martin Puryear, Ed Ruscha, Al Taylor, Anne Truitt, Stanley Whitney and Terry Winters, among others, the exhibition will demonstrate how establishing the parameters of an art collection requires infinite patience, focus, discipline and a keen eye.

“The Johnstons have been friends of the High for a very long time. They’ve also built an impressive collection featuring works by many of the 20th century’s most significant abstract artists,” said the High’s Director Rand Suffolk. “We are honored that they have promised to leave their collection to the Museum where it will be preserved for future generations — and we are delighted that they are sharing it with our audiences now, hopefully inspiring the next generation of art collectors and supporters.”

A curated collection

The Johnstons’ story is a testament to, in the words of the High’s Wieland Family Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Michael Rooks, “knowing the difference between what is right and what is almost right” when building a collection.

Although the Johnstons acquired several paintings and objects when they first began collecting in 1972, they quickly narrowed their focus to drawing, primarily by artists working on the frontlines of abstraction in the mid-1960s during a time of great innovation and experimentation.

Ink drawing by Anne Truitt, rectangular lines and shapes made with black ink on off-white background — Anne Truitt (American, born 1921), *Ink Drawing ’59 [11]*, 1959, ink on paper, The Johnston Collection. © Estate of Anne Truitt / The Bridgeman Art Library / Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.

Rooks added, “Med and Loraine’s collection struck me at once by its single-minded focus on a specific moment in time, which was essentially the time of their contemporaries. The artists in their collection are like close friends to the Johnstons — in fact many are or were. What is equally astonishing about the collection is the Johnstons’ dogged pursuit of quality. Their in-depth knowledge of each artist’s practice combined with their understanding of specific qualities to look for — or more appropriately, to hold out for — will be a revelation to emerging collectors.”

The Johnstons have built their collection with the High in mind as the benefactor of their passion and discernment. For them, their collection “is a labor of love, pursued over more than 50 years, and we are delighted to be able to help the High Museum document and celebrate these important artists working during the same decades as our lives.”

About the exhibit

Thinking Eye, Seeing Mind: The Medford and Loraine Johnston Collection will be presented in the Special Exhibition Galleries on the second level of the High’s Stent Family Wing.

The exhibit is organized by the High Museum of Art and made possible through the generosity of sponsors:

Premier Exhibition Series Sponsor Delta Air Lines, Inc.
Premier Exhibition Series Supporters Mr. Joseph H. Boland, Jr., The Fay S. and W. Barrett Howell Family Foundation, Harry Norman Realtors and wish Foundation
Benefactor Exhibition Series Supporters Robin and Hilton Howell
Ambassador Exhibition Series Supporters Loomis Charitable Foundation and Mrs. Harriet H. Warren
Contributing Exhibition Series Supporters Farideh and Al Azadi, Mary and Neil Johnson, Mr. and Mrs. Baxter Jones, Megan and Garrett Langley, Margot and Danny McCaul, Wade A. Rakes II and Nicholas Miller and Belinda Stanley-Majors and Dwayne Majors.

Support has also been provided by the Alfred and Adele Davis Exhibition Endowment Fund, Anne Cox Chambers Exhibition Fund, Barbara Stewart Exhibition Fund, Dorothy Smith Hopkins Exhibition Endowment Fund, Eleanor McDonald Storza Exhibition Endowment Fund, The Fay and Barrett Howell Exhibition Fund, Forward Arts Foundation Exhibition Endowment Fund, Helen S. Lanier Endowment Fund, John H. and Wilhelmina D. Harland Exhibition Endowment Fund, Katherine Murphy Riley Special Exhibition Endowment Fund, Margaretta Taylor Exhibition Fund, RJR Nabisco Exhibition Endowment Fund and USI Insurance Services.

About the High Museum of Art

Located in the heart of Atlanta, the High Museum of Art connects with audiences from across the Southeast and around the world through its distinguished collection, dynamic schedule of special exhibitions and engaging community-focused programs.

Housed within facilities designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects Richard Meier and Renzo Piano, the High features a collection of more than 19,000 works of art, including an extensive anthology of 19th- and 20th-century American fine and decorative arts; major holdings of photography and folk and self-taught work, especially that of artists from the American South; burgeoning collections of modern and contemporary art, including paintings, sculpture, new media and design; a growing collection of African art, with work dating from prehistory through the present; and significant holdings of European paintings and works on paper.

The High is dedicated to reflecting the diversity of its communities and offering a variety of exhibitions and educational programs that engage visitors with the world of art, the lives of artists and the creative process.

For more information about the High or to purchase tickets, visit high.org.

Top image: (from the collection) Terry Winters (American, born 1949), Orb, 2020, oil on paper, The Johnston Collection. © Terry Winters, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.

Around Atlanta

City Springs Theatre Company Presents the Hit Musical Jersey Boys

Published

6 months ago

July 3, 2024

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

The megahit musical Jersey Boys is making its regional premiere with the City Springs Theatre Company in a five-week run.

The megahit musical Jersey Boys makes its regional premiere in City Springs Theatre Company’s (CSTC) first-ever, five-week run at the Byers Theatre in Sandy Springs.

Directed by Atlanta’s-own Shane DeLancey, and choreographed by Meg Gillentine, Jersey Boys tells the rags-to-riches story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. The show details their remarkable journey from the streets to the top of the charts, to their 1990 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Leading the cast of Jersey Boys is Haden Rider as Frankie Valli. Rider is a City Springs Theatre Company veteran, with recent roles in both Legally Blonde (Emmett) and Fiddler on the Roof (Perchik).

Presented by Resurgens Spine Center, Jersey Boys runs from July 12 through August 11, and shines a special spotlight on home-grown talent, as the show’s four leading men are all Atlanta-area residents.

With phenomenal music, memorable characters and great storytelling, Jersey Boys follows the fascinating evolution of four blue-collar kids who became one of the greatest successes in pop-music history.

“City Springs Theatre Company is very proud to be the first in the southeast region to present Jersey Boys,” said CSTC Artistic Director and Tony Award-winner Shuler Hensley. “Our audiences have been asking for this particular show since we opened. The production is truly stacked with talent onstage and off, and we’re pulling out all the stops to bring audiences an experience that will rival any previous version of the show.”

Jersey Boys premiered at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2005, prior to its 13-year Broadway run, from 2005 to 2017. There have been productions of the show in Las Vegas, UK/Ireland, Toronto, Melbourne, Singapore, South Africa, the Netherlands, Japan, Dubai and China.

Jersey Boys features a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, with music by Bob Gaudio, and lyrics by Bob Crewe.

Individual tickets to see Jersey Boys are on sale now ($42 – $108), with discounts for seniors, students, groups and active and retired military personnel.

CSTC’s Box Office is open Monday through Friday from 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Call 404-477-4365 or visit CitySpringsTheatre.com for more information.

This production contains adult language and is recommended for mature audiences.

Performance schedule:

Arts & Literature

Local Students Show Off Their Artistic Creations

Published

7 months ago

June 2, 2024

Peachtree Corners Magazine staff

Courtney Escorza, Colleen Nikopour, Laura Hwang, Jennifer Jackson, Norcross. Laura ELizabeth Martin, Payton Hirschmann, Paul Duke HS

From May 11 through May 18, the Norcross Gallery & Studios kicked off a fantastic exhibition, Reflections at Rectory, which showcased the works of 36 rising stars: AP and IB art students from our local high schools.

The opening reception celebrated their creativity and dedication. Gallery director Anne Hall presented a dozen awards generously sponsored by the community, a testament to the local support for these young artists.

One prestigious award, the Terri Enfield Memorial Award, holds special significance.

Established by Terri’s daughters, it recognizes not just artistic excellence, but also leadership, work ethic and the spirit of collaboration. Last year’s winner, Aidan Ventimiglia, even played a part in selecting this year’s recipient Jasmine Rodriguez.