ART IMITATES LIFE: Despite all the tabloid-TV...

ART IMITATES LIFE: Despite all the tabloid-TV furor during the past six months, Elvis is still missing. He hasn’t returned to the Burger King in Kalamazoo or picked up that mystery one-way ticket to Las Vegas. But Georgia artist Joni Mabe is bringing the next best thing to L.A.: Elvis’ toenails . . . the official Elvis prayer rug . . . and the Elvis Memorial Suitcase. It’s all part of “Joni Mabe’s World Famous Traveling Elvis Museum,” an oddball art exhibit of Elvis artifacts, which opens Saturday night at the Zero One Gallery. An admitted Elvis obsessive (one of her previous exhibitions was titled “I Wanted to Have Elvis’ Baby but Jesus Said It Was a Sin”), Mabe said her archives also offers plaster Elvis busts, Elvis Sweat, six Elvis music box whiskey decanters and Sacred Dirt from the Meditation Gardens.

“I really first got fascinated with Elvis after he died,” she explained by phone. “He started coming to me in my dreams. I’d dream I was on his movie sets and he’d come over to talk to me between takes and apologize for having to wear those awful outfits. After that, I really started getting wrapped up in him. I go to Graceland every year for the candlelight services and the Elvis death watch. I couldn’t afford to buy all the memorabilia at Graceland, so I started going out, finding my own and making personal art pieces out of everything. “You can find Elvis objects everywhere in the South. It’s like a religious thing--in fact, you usually find Jesus stuff right next to his stuff. Maybe what makes Elvis so fascinating that he’s so full of opposites--especially when it comes to sex and religion.”

Mabe’s exhibit opened in New York earlier this year--to rave reviews. The biggest hit, by far, was Elvis’ toenail (which Mabe coyly dubs the “Maybe Elvis Toenail”). “After word got around, people would just come in, ask ‘Where’s the toenail,’ take a look and leave,” she said with a bemused laugh. “People are weird in New York.”