This is quite the season for art fair panels on art collecting!
I am blogging on Friday night this weekend. That's earlier than I usually post my weekly blog entry because tomorrow morning my husband Eric and I are heading out for Naples from Miami. We are taking our canoe with us--it will be a long weekend for us with boating AND art!
I am taking part in a program for Art Naples Saturday afternoon, March 19. It's called "Passion of Collecting." I'll interview Naples art collector Robert Edwards on ways to begin collecting and what a seasoned collector looks for in possible additions to his collection.
There's quite a range of programs lined up for this fair this weekend, with talks on Latin American art and the upcoming Miami Biennale. I'm impressed by the variety and the quality of Miami people who are participating! For more info, check www.artfairnaples.com/program.html
In Miami next weekend at the Arteamericas art fair, there are more panels of interest to novice and seasoned art collectors. I'm especially hoping to catch "Private Collectors and Public Collections" on Sunday, March 27 at 3 pm in Hall D at Miami Beach Convention Center.
It will be moderated by my talented friend, Julia P. Herzberg, Ph. D., adjunct curator for the Frost Museum of Florida International University. Here are the panelists:
Dr. Marvin Sackner, of the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, who'll address the Latin American presence in concrete and visual poetry.
Howard Farber, of the Fundacion Cuba Avant-Garde, speaking on Cuban contemporary art.
Ricardo Viera, who'll speak about selections from the Lehigh University Teaching Collection.
Jose Luis Falcon, who will discuss "Selections from the Latin American Collection, Art Forum, Harvard University."
Knowing that Howard Farber will participate in this panel brings to mind the time I interviewed Howard in his Miami Beach apartment for The Miami Herald. We had such a wonderful conversation! As I was ready to leave, he gave me an autographed copy of "Cuba Avant-Garde: Contemporary Cuban Art from the Farber Collection."
So I thought that tonight I would revisit that afternoon by posting my Herald profile of him, from June 2007.
Actually, what I'm posting here is the story I filed for the Herald, not the one that was actually published. A few interesting details were cut in the published version, as happens so often in newspapers. Now I no longer have to roll my eyes when I see what finally makes it to the printed page of the Herald!
THE EYE OF THE COLLECTOR
The first and last time Cuban contemporary art collector Howard Farber set foot in Cuba was 2001. It was an odd introduction to the island.
While stepping off the plane in Havana, he and his wife Patricia lugged shopping bags full of foot powder from a Walgreens in Manhattan. Patricia, a New York City patron of the ballet, had picked out much-needed supplies for the foot-sore ballet dancers of Cuba.
Although since the 1960s Farber has first collected American modernist art and then contemporary art from China, he insisted to Patricia: "No art. I am not buying any art. I am totally involved in Chinese art."
For good measure, he added, "My brain can't handle another collection."
His brain changed. [Um, do I know about how changes in the brain can change your life!!]
Farber is a hard-core art collector and a natural-born raconteur. As he tells this story, he's sitting at the dining table in his Miami Beach apartment, where he and Patricia live part-time.
He's looking through the bilingual catalogue for "Cuba Avante-Garde: Contemporary Cuban Art from the Farber Collection," which is now at the Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida in Gainesville. It's there until September, and then it travels to more museums.
The adventurous art he found on the island has sparked the curiosity of many a hard-core collector. Farber wondered how this contemporary art came not only to exist but thrive. It was attracting droves of art collectors from the Americas and Europe.
The Farbers went to Havana for a tour of Cuban art and architecture organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. They toured the art school Instituto Superior de Arte, known as ISA. A mantra at the time was that ISA students have no materials; ISA students are turning out amazing art.
Six months after his visit to Cuba, a museum professional in Cuba e-mailed him to ask about his contemporary Chinese art collection.
"I was fascinated because it was the first time I've ever received an e-mail from Havana," he recalls. Through that person, whose name he says he can't divulge, Farber's quest to collect Cuban art began.
"In another life I must have been either an art critic or an art historian because to me, the history of art is as important as the artwork itself," Farber confesses. A trim man of medium height, he says he hates public speaking, but in the quiet of his Miami Beach apartment, furnished with a stylish simplicity that looks almost Asian, he enthusiastically talks on and on about art.
With each of his collections of American, Chinese, and Cuban art, he notes, "I feel like I have an eye for art but I have had a lot of help. Someone has to train you."
In each case, he found advisors. To learn more about Cuban art, he trolled the Internet, consulted people in Havana, and lunched with Holly Block, who wrote the book Art Cuba: The New Generation. It came out the year that Farber took his only trip to Havana.
Another critical book in his quest to collect Cuban art is New Art of Cuba that Luis Camnitzer wrote in 1994. Farber calls it his bible. He keeps copies of the Camnitzer book at home in Miami Beach and New York.
"I go on vacation and I take it with me," he insists. "I could read it fifty times."
Farber used a strategy that served him well in his American and Chinese collections: identify the group show that captured a pivotal moment in the art he pursued. For Cuban contemporary art, it was "Volumen I," which opened January 14, 1981 in the Centro de Arte Internacional in Havana.
Camnitzer writes in his book that this show "has come to symbolize the emergence of the new art in Cuba for artists and critics alike," and he asserts that the show had a historical impact on Cuban art in the 20th Century.
Its impact seems to continue in the 21st Century. Five of the artists in that historical show are now in the Farber show at University of Florida. They include three who frequently exhibit in South Florida: Jose Bedia, Tomas Sanchez, and Ruben Torres Llorca.
A second strategy Farber used was to seek out the artists themselves. Some were in Cuba. Others were in Miami, Canada, Spain, France, and Australia. He contacted them to ask where he could find the artwork that they thought was the best example of their art.
He was inspired by what Ry Cooder did to bring attention to Cuban musicians of the Buena Vista Social Club.
"What he did was amazing," Farber says. "What I did was try to find the artists, find their great works, try to collect them, and put them in a show to have these works seen for the first time in many cases." Through what he calls "nefarious" methods, one painting after another reached him in New York.
"It was usually rolled up and dirty because it had been sitting for years either in a basement or attic," he recalls. After he had it cleaned and stretched, he recalls, "there before me was a miraculous work."
Carlos Estevez, now in Miami, was in Paris when Farber e-mailed him. He gained from one of Farber's artistic search-and-rescue missions. In the catalogue (but not in the show) is "Across the Universe" by Estevez. It's a large sculpture that weighs over 200 pounds and shows a Christ-like man with a candle and huge wings.
"He saved that work," says Estevez. When he saw it again, he became emotional. Estevez had not seen the sculpture since leaving Cuba in 2003. In Havana, he put it in his studio window so that people walking on the street could see it. It made such a strong impression that sometimes they screamed at it.
Farber is impressed by the deep friendships among Cuban artists.
"I never met a group of artists so dedicated to other artists," he says. In Miami, as he saw in February at the opening reception for Carlos Gonzalez at Chelsea Galleria in Wynwood, "they are all out for support," he marvels.
"Some are more successful than others. But they all have a history together. The original dirt on their feet is from Cuba."
Tina Spiro of Chelsea Galleria remembers Farber from that night. He was observant, charming, and curious. Farber doesn't strike her as a collector who likes art as a status symbol. Says Spiro, "He has a personality that is in synch with art. He's in touch with what he's looking at."
She's also witnessed the support network among Cuban artists. Jose Bedia, Gory, and Gustavo Acosta showed up to get Gonzalez's sculpture ready for the show.
"That's a pretty heavy duty installation crew," Spiro notes. "They've been friends for many years. It wasn't an easy road for any of them."
Those intense ties to each other and to making art strike a resonnant chord with Farber.
His collecting, he insists, is "only about the art. I know that in Florida people really get bent out of shape with the history of Cuban art." His voice rises.
"People have to realize that not everybody that has the ability to collect Cuban art is involved in politics! It has to be said, and I'm not afraid to say it."
Friday, March 18, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Miami Artist Blossoms at Venice Biennale
As our art community ponders the wealth of growing artistic talent distinguishing Miami, I want to remind my readers of contributions that Eugenia Vargas Pereira made to our burgeoning art scene when we were so lucky to have her living and working here in Miami.
I was especially touched that Eugenia made a comment on my post last week of 3/6, "Miami Art Space Feeds the Soul." I'm assuming that she commented from her native Chile, where she moved after she left Miami.
Not only did Eugenia represent Chile, while she was living in Miami, at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, but beginning in 1999 she staged a series of remarkable "Home Shows," by allowing artists intermittently to take over her one-story home near Miami Shores. She gave them free rein to convert nearly every room into an impromptu gallery for showing all kinds of work, including sculpture, photography, installation art, video, and painting.
You can read more about that inspiring initiative on page 14 of my foreword to the book Miami Contemporary Artists by Paul Clemence and Julie Davidow. Also in that book, look on pages 232-233 to see more about Eugenia herself.
She eloquently reminds us,"Miami is unique because the city is constantly redefining itself, reinventing itself, and growing. Being an artist in Miami has allowed me to be part of that growth and those changes."
I count myself fortunate to have covered Eugenia's exhibit in Venice for The Miami Herald, at a time when print journalism as we used to know it still mattered.
When I read the lively discussion that Dennis Scholl began last week on 3/4 on the Knight Arts Blog (you'll find a link to that blog on my blog) about our many exceptional artistic talents, I know of course that not every artist's name could be mentioned, but I do think it is important to pay homage to the contributions that Eugenia made when she was here, and to recognize her significant accomplishments.
So here's the story I wrote in June 2003 for the Herald when Eugenia brought her art to the Biennale.
SLICE OF LATIN AMERICAN SPIRIT SPICES UP JADED VENICE CROWD
For one sultry week this month, a little bit of old Santiago, Chile, met up with a bit of old Venice. This unlikely date transpired within a new performance piece by Miami-based Eugenia Vargas. Nostalgia mingled with a poignant take on the cutting-edge, and an almost childish glee cut through jaded looks from crowds inspecting Vargas' work and others by Latin American artists during the crush of opening events at the 50th Venice Biennale.
Vargas' performance piece--and her compelling suite of related photographs about toy dolls and horses--are part of "An Archipelago of Images," a series of solo shows by artists from nine Latin American countries, organized by the Italian-Latin American Institute in Rome and overseen by curator Irma Arestizabal.
The exhibits are presented in the renovated Convent of Santi Cosma and Damiano on the Venetian island of Giudecce, about a twenty-minute boat trip from the heart of Venice in San Marco Piazza.
The artist's performance unfolded in the convent's courtyard, on a lawn that's slightly gone to seed. She'd arranged for Chilean street photographer Luis Maldonado to come to Venice with his prized 19th Century European pinhole camera and his photographer's prop of a quaintly crafted wooden horse on which his subjects--traditionally children with their families--playfully mount.
As he has done for years in Santiago's main plaza, Maldonado snapped pictures of smiling subjects sitting on the toy horse. This time, however, their backdrop was not a real cityscape. It was a large banner reproducing a turn-of-the-century painting of strollers along a picturesque Venetian waterfront; the painting was by Chilean artist Juan Molina, who was trained by a conservative Italian painter transplanted to Chile.
The setting drew "100 percent" more curiosity and excitement than Maldonado receives in Santiago, he says, where he's usually ignored by city residents and only tourists ask for portraits.
PRADA POSING
"Brilliant!" laughed one young British woman in Venice as she posed provocatively on horseback. For the photo she was surrounded by a bevy of fashionista girlfriends, a group clad in flirty lace dresses and red chiffon scarves who called themselves the "Prada-Meinhoff Gang."
The spectacle intrigued observers like Mirta Demare, a Rotterdam art dealer who grew up in Argentina. Photographers like Maldonado, she said, are part of Latin America's cultural iconography.
"When I was a girl there were photographers like him in our parks, but now they are gone," she says. She liked the way his work intersected with Vargas' photographs inside, with their tension between the real and the fake, between the sense of sweetness and loss that informs their carefully staged versions of childhood memories.
The work is "a very funny kind of fake," she says. "It's a fairy tale in a modern box."
Other pieces in the show ranged in quality, with bland paintings by Rosella Matamoros from Costa Rica, but among the strong works was a starkly landscaped video by Charly Nijensohn of Argentina and a room of floating webs of starfish by Maria Fernanda Cardoso of Colombia, another beautiful example of her work's focus on mortality.
PROTESTS
Despite the strength of some of the works in "Archipelago of Images," they remain part of a troubling aspect for the representation of Latin American art in the Biennale. At the Biennale in 2001, artists chosen for exhibits organized by the Italian-Latin American Institute staged a protest at the opening, vociferously complaining that their shows were too far away--at least an hour away in Treviso--for anyone to see.
This time around, Venezuelan artist Pedro Morales was shut out of his country's pavilion in the Biennale's main venue of the Giardini, a hilly park on the eastern tip of Venice--when the Venezuelan government censored his work at the last minute because they felt it criticized the current regime. Morales came to Venice anyway and staged a protest as well.
Although she says it's a "sin" for Venezuela to squander such resources, Arestizabal says the protests don't cast a shadow on the representation of Latin American art and points to the diversity of work by artists from the region showcased throughout the Biennale.
Still, the protests are "emblematic of the enmeshment of art and politics in Latin America," says Victor Zamudio-Taylor, a curator who focuses on Latin American art and is involved with the newly established exhibition space Miami Art Central. "As long as art institutions are linked to political regimes they are not going to have an autonomous status."
The protests are part of larger problems for some who would like to see changes in the way this region is represented. They argue that grouping such diverse artists as the institute does is counter-productive. "Asia isn't treated as a lump sum of countries, so why should Latin America be treated this way?" says curator Silvia Karman Cubina, who moved to Miami last year from Puerto Rico and directs the Moore Space in the Design District.
"If you look at the artists [the institute] has featured over a period of time, 90 percent would not have been considered established or up-and-coming," says Zamudio-Taylor, who thinks an emphasis on national representation may be obsolete. "I think if you have a show on contemporary Latin American art, put together with maybe three curators and with a theme, it would have more impact."
I was especially touched that Eugenia made a comment on my post last week of 3/6, "Miami Art Space Feeds the Soul." I'm assuming that she commented from her native Chile, where she moved after she left Miami.
Not only did Eugenia represent Chile, while she was living in Miami, at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, but beginning in 1999 she staged a series of remarkable "Home Shows," by allowing artists intermittently to take over her one-story home near Miami Shores. She gave them free rein to convert nearly every room into an impromptu gallery for showing all kinds of work, including sculpture, photography, installation art, video, and painting.
You can read more about that inspiring initiative on page 14 of my foreword to the book Miami Contemporary Artists by Paul Clemence and Julie Davidow. Also in that book, look on pages 232-233 to see more about Eugenia herself.
She eloquently reminds us,"Miami is unique because the city is constantly redefining itself, reinventing itself, and growing. Being an artist in Miami has allowed me to be part of that growth and those changes."
I count myself fortunate to have covered Eugenia's exhibit in Venice for The Miami Herald, at a time when print journalism as we used to know it still mattered.
When I read the lively discussion that Dennis Scholl began last week on 3/4 on the Knight Arts Blog (you'll find a link to that blog on my blog) about our many exceptional artistic talents, I know of course that not every artist's name could be mentioned, but I do think it is important to pay homage to the contributions that Eugenia made when she was here, and to recognize her significant accomplishments.
So here's the story I wrote in June 2003 for the Herald when Eugenia brought her art to the Biennale.
SLICE OF LATIN AMERICAN SPIRIT SPICES UP JADED VENICE CROWD
For one sultry week this month, a little bit of old Santiago, Chile, met up with a bit of old Venice. This unlikely date transpired within a new performance piece by Miami-based Eugenia Vargas. Nostalgia mingled with a poignant take on the cutting-edge, and an almost childish glee cut through jaded looks from crowds inspecting Vargas' work and others by Latin American artists during the crush of opening events at the 50th Venice Biennale.
Vargas' performance piece--and her compelling suite of related photographs about toy dolls and horses--are part of "An Archipelago of Images," a series of solo shows by artists from nine Latin American countries, organized by the Italian-Latin American Institute in Rome and overseen by curator Irma Arestizabal.
The exhibits are presented in the renovated Convent of Santi Cosma and Damiano on the Venetian island of Giudecce, about a twenty-minute boat trip from the heart of Venice in San Marco Piazza.
The artist's performance unfolded in the convent's courtyard, on a lawn that's slightly gone to seed. She'd arranged for Chilean street photographer Luis Maldonado to come to Venice with his prized 19th Century European pinhole camera and his photographer's prop of a quaintly crafted wooden horse on which his subjects--traditionally children with their families--playfully mount.
As he has done for years in Santiago's main plaza, Maldonado snapped pictures of smiling subjects sitting on the toy horse. This time, however, their backdrop was not a real cityscape. It was a large banner reproducing a turn-of-the-century painting of strollers along a picturesque Venetian waterfront; the painting was by Chilean artist Juan Molina, who was trained by a conservative Italian painter transplanted to Chile.
The setting drew "100 percent" more curiosity and excitement than Maldonado receives in Santiago, he says, where he's usually ignored by city residents and only tourists ask for portraits.
PRADA POSING
"Brilliant!" laughed one young British woman in Venice as she posed provocatively on horseback. For the photo she was surrounded by a bevy of fashionista girlfriends, a group clad in flirty lace dresses and red chiffon scarves who called themselves the "Prada-Meinhoff Gang."
The spectacle intrigued observers like Mirta Demare, a Rotterdam art dealer who grew up in Argentina. Photographers like Maldonado, she said, are part of Latin America's cultural iconography.
"When I was a girl there were photographers like him in our parks, but now they are gone," she says. She liked the way his work intersected with Vargas' photographs inside, with their tension between the real and the fake, between the sense of sweetness and loss that informs their carefully staged versions of childhood memories.
The work is "a very funny kind of fake," she says. "It's a fairy tale in a modern box."
Other pieces in the show ranged in quality, with bland paintings by Rosella Matamoros from Costa Rica, but among the strong works was a starkly landscaped video by Charly Nijensohn of Argentina and a room of floating webs of starfish by Maria Fernanda Cardoso of Colombia, another beautiful example of her work's focus on mortality.
PROTESTS
Despite the strength of some of the works in "Archipelago of Images," they remain part of a troubling aspect for the representation of Latin American art in the Biennale. At the Biennale in 2001, artists chosen for exhibits organized by the Italian-Latin American Institute staged a protest at the opening, vociferously complaining that their shows were too far away--at least an hour away in Treviso--for anyone to see.
This time around, Venezuelan artist Pedro Morales was shut out of his country's pavilion in the Biennale's main venue of the Giardini, a hilly park on the eastern tip of Venice--when the Venezuelan government censored his work at the last minute because they felt it criticized the current regime. Morales came to Venice anyway and staged a protest as well.
Although she says it's a "sin" for Venezuela to squander such resources, Arestizabal says the protests don't cast a shadow on the representation of Latin American art and points to the diversity of work by artists from the region showcased throughout the Biennale.
Still, the protests are "emblematic of the enmeshment of art and politics in Latin America," says Victor Zamudio-Taylor, a curator who focuses on Latin American art and is involved with the newly established exhibition space Miami Art Central. "As long as art institutions are linked to political regimes they are not going to have an autonomous status."
The protests are part of larger problems for some who would like to see changes in the way this region is represented. They argue that grouping such diverse artists as the institute does is counter-productive. "Asia isn't treated as a lump sum of countries, so why should Latin America be treated this way?" says curator Silvia Karman Cubina, who moved to Miami last year from Puerto Rico and directs the Moore Space in the Design District.
"If you look at the artists [the institute] has featured over a period of time, 90 percent would not have been considered established or up-and-coming," says Zamudio-Taylor, who thinks an emphasis on national representation may be obsolete. "I think if you have a show on contemporary Latin American art, put together with maybe three curators and with a theme, it would have more impact."
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Miami Art Space Feeds the Soul
Such a fun and heartfelt evening we had in Miami this past Friday night! It was really a night to satisfy my artcentric soul!
First my husband and I went to the opening for "Everything" by Hugo Michel Hernandez at Farside Gallery, 1305 Galloway Road (87 Ave.), and then it was back to Coral Gables for supper and music al fresco in the courtyard at Books & Books.
There we met some of my very dear artcentric buddies: Elizabeth Cerejido, Howard Farber, Glexis Novoa, and Liana Perez. They had gathered at Books & Books to hear about a new book by Rachel Weiss, professor of School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It was terrific to meet Rachel at long last, because her contact info has been in my address book for ages! I told Rachel how Fernando G at the Herald had first mentioned her name to me.
The highlight of this artfully soul-satisfying evening, however, was experiencing the richness of the art community gathered at Farside Gallery and at the Art @ Work space next door in the always remarkable orthodontist office of Dr. Arturo Mosquera.
You may recall that I blogged about him last week. What is happening there is so special that I'm blogging about it again this morning.
Friday night's opening reception was an eye-opening chance chance for me to see many artworks by artists I have known for years and by artists I met for the first time. They included Hugo Michel Hernandez--we discovered that we are colleagues at Miami Dade College!--and Robert McKnight, whose studio is at the Bakehouse Art Complex, where I have been volunteering in efforts to broaden the reach of programs and exhibitions. Then I saw striking artworks by George Sanchez Calderon, Gean Moreno, Vickie Pierre, Jen Stark, and Sara Stites, to name just a few.
I also picked up a touching edition of Arturo's Star Smiles News, from the fall of 2009. The cover story was about his wife Liza and son Arturo, written by Anne Tschida--another artcentric buddy who covers the visual arts for the Knight Arts Blog--with photographs by Elizabeth Cerejido.
In Anne's profile of Liza, which described how Liza came to Miami and how her life has changed dramatically since she has been doing so much to help her son Arturo heal from his brain injury, I was moved by the opening sentences: "Life's path, as most of us know, is never straight, and never predictable. As much as we try to diligently and optimistically plot the future, it always seems to throw a wrench in all the best laid plans."
Yet Friday night was a vibrant and memorable evening. I could see how happy Arturo was to tell visitors about the art in his office and at Farside Gallery, my husband and I both commented on how well we thought his son Arturo was healing, and Liza spoke to me about her plans to become more involved in the work of the office again.
And, in a way, suffusing this entire evening, was the soulfully generous spirit of Miami artist Miralda, whose photographs of diverse tongues are the focus of the current Art @ Work exhibit. It was a truly nourishing evening. In honor of that experience, I thought I would share with readers a story I wrote about Miralda and his ongoing fascination with tongues for The Miami Herald in July 2006.
TASTY EXHIBIT A DELIGHTFUL MIX OF FOOD, CULTURE
This dinner party spans 13 cities. So far, with their current stops in Miami and Coral Gables, Antoni Miralda and his collaborators are almost halfway through the cosmopolitan progressive dinner that is "Tastes & Tongues/Sabores y Lenguas." Miami is the sixth stop on a tour that began in Caracas and will probably wind up in Barcelona, Miralda's hometown.
"I am behind the project as artistic director and artist, but it is a project made with all the different people. It is a collective project," says Miralda. The show was preceded by his 1998 exhibit at the Miami Art Museum, "New Work Miralda: Grandma's Recipes," a warm-up for the more ambitious "Tastes/Sabores."
He sighs, when asked to explain the art of the exhibit. "It's always difficult, because there is not a product that people can take home as a piece of art. So they take home more a memory, and an image, or an experience." For him, art happens at the nexus of food, history, and anthropology. He prefers poking around supermarkets in Paris to galleries in the Louvre.
'CROSSING BARRIERS'
In some ways, at 64, this longime Miami resident, who wears his thinning salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a short ponytail, remains a child of the irreverent 1960s. He's not really interested in art with a capital A, secured behind velvet ropes.
"I always feel an artist needs to be crossing barriers," he says. Artists "need to go through the refrigerators. They need to walk with people."
He spins artistic metaphors about cultural identity from humble contents of refrigerators and busy street markets. In Miami's Collins Building in the Design District, he laughs as he looks at the photographic portrait that "Tastes/Sabores" produced of Mexico City. Images of corn and huevos rancheros make bold splashes of red, green, and gold.
Growing up in the lean years of Franco's Spain, Miralda came of age as an artist in 1960s Paris, soaking up the revolutionary tides of the times, the populist spirit of Pop art, and the street culture of happenings from that freewheeling era. He made an international name for himself by staging baroque festivals that combined the three P's: public art, Pop art, and performance. They had almost nothing to do with the art market.
In 1977, he took part in the international art festival of Documenta in Kassel, Germany, planning a parade and feast inspired by that city's statue of the mythic figure of Leda. In 1992, there was the notable "Honeymoon" project he staged around the metaphoric marriage of New York's Statue of Liberty and Barcelona's statue of Columbus.
Such art projects are seasoned with stories layering food, culture, and myth. They sparkle with puckish fun. His works have provided grand reasons to turn a traditional festival on its head, or to make an old one new again.
Miralda's current project brings a latter-day Pop and performance-art twist to his ongoing culinary diary of cities. He says the project offers an "urban culinary topography" deeply rooted in daily life. In each city, "Tastes/Sabores" becomes part festival, part imaginary dinner party, with giant tongue-shaped photo collages, a video, and dozens of unique objects created by inhabitants of that city. They document daily examples, mostly humble but disarming, of how food and creativity mesh.
In the project's video about Miami, on view at the Collins Building, you see a saucy sign, painted on a fish restaurant in Little Haiti, in which a leaping sailfish sports a chef's cap. In the photo collage about Miami, you see a dish of frothy Key lime pie, Publix sushi, take-out packages from Joe's Stone Crab, fried frog legs, a lavish dessert from Cacao in Coral Gables, smoked sausage from Jackson's in Overtown, ropa vieja from Versailles.
Before coming to Miami, "Tastes/Sabores" made stops in Caracas, Lima, Bogota, Mexico City, and Havana. Next it will go to Managua, Santo Domingo, San Juan, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, and Barcelona.
In each city, Miralda and his assistants photograph the remarkable range of places where food is consumed or sold: markets, grocery stores, restaurants and bars, street corners, banquet halls, and tables in private homes. Miralda and his team have asked about 200 people in each city, many of them artists, to decorate a simple white plate in a way that somehow reflects the cultural taste of their city.
At the Collins Building, white plates are laid out on a floor to create a dazzling mosaic in a giant, tongue-shaped design. Not all plates are playful; some are left empty. They might be emblems of want in this city of haves and have nots. In that vein, artist Duane Brant has sculpted on his plate a misshapen baby out of Wonder Bread toast. It's his riff on the scathing satire about cooking infants for poor families in Jonathan Swift's classic essay, "A Modest Proposal."
On his plate, artist Pablo Cano has created a rippling tower of merengue, looking like an armless Michelin Man, in homage to the merenguita his Cuban grandmother used to make. Father and daughter team Tom and Claire Austin painted a pinkish-orange wedge of pie crawling with large black ants.
Each previous venue has included a wall, like the one in the Collins Building here, painted with chalkboard paint. Sticks of chalk abound for folks to scribble their thoughts about food and art or whatever. An example here: "Say yes to life, yum!" There's a video that flickers with photographs shot of Miami scenes, like signs for Mary's Soul Food or one for Chef Creole, the chef-capped sailfish.
VIDEOS, LATIN SONGS
At Centro Cultural Espanol in Coral Gables, you'll see videos playing photos from the cities "Tastes/Sabores" has already visited. In Lima, butchers hack into fleshy, raw sides of meat; in Havana, a bartender mixes mojitos leafy with mint; in Mexico City street vendors hawk juicy oranges and pink cotton candy.
The videos flicker with always-changing images; just as you have absorbed most of the detail in a particular image, it fades away and is replaced by yet another image packed with nearly as much color as a child's exploded pinata.
As the videos play, you hear a soundtrack of Latin songs about food, some dating back to the 1940s. They're songs that Miralda collects as part of the several thousand items in the archive that he and Montse Guillin, the talented chef who is his partner, are obsessively assembling in their Little Haiti warehouse, TransEAT/FoodCulture Archive. Some food-related items, gathered from local collectors, are on display there now: wooden mortars and pestles from Haiti, children's lunch boxes, vintage shirts printed with coconut palms.
At the Centro Cultural Espanol, one regrets the lack of contextual information about the food. Without an insider's knowledge of the food common in each city, the video for each city reads as a juicy travelogue of an unknown destination, raising more questions than it answers. Maybe that's the point--to open a dialogue, even a dinner conversation, about what really makes each city unique.
Not all the links between food and culture have been savory. Blackboard comments in Havana railed against Cubans' meager diet. The comments were not censored, Miralda thinks, because officials were too busy running the biennial. In Caracas, he said he was censored. Officials asked him to remove items from his museum exhibit, products like pasta and milk bearing pro-Chavez slogans.
"I showed some of the official products of Chavez. And they thought we were making a joke of that," Miralda says. He agreed to remove the products, but they'll be in the catalog for the complete "Tastes/Sabores."
First my husband and I went to the opening for "Everything" by Hugo Michel Hernandez at Farside Gallery, 1305 Galloway Road (87 Ave.), and then it was back to Coral Gables for supper and music al fresco in the courtyard at Books & Books.
There we met some of my very dear artcentric buddies: Elizabeth Cerejido, Howard Farber, Glexis Novoa, and Liana Perez. They had gathered at Books & Books to hear about a new book by Rachel Weiss, professor of School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It was terrific to meet Rachel at long last, because her contact info has been in my address book for ages! I told Rachel how Fernando G at the Herald had first mentioned her name to me.
The highlight of this artfully soul-satisfying evening, however, was experiencing the richness of the art community gathered at Farside Gallery and at the Art @ Work space next door in the always remarkable orthodontist office of Dr. Arturo Mosquera.
You may recall that I blogged about him last week. What is happening there is so special that I'm blogging about it again this morning.
Friday night's opening reception was an eye-opening chance chance for me to see many artworks by artists I have known for years and by artists I met for the first time. They included Hugo Michel Hernandez--we discovered that we are colleagues at Miami Dade College!--and Robert McKnight, whose studio is at the Bakehouse Art Complex, where I have been volunteering in efforts to broaden the reach of programs and exhibitions. Then I saw striking artworks by George Sanchez Calderon, Gean Moreno, Vickie Pierre, Jen Stark, and Sara Stites, to name just a few.
I also picked up a touching edition of Arturo's Star Smiles News, from the fall of 2009. The cover story was about his wife Liza and son Arturo, written by Anne Tschida--another artcentric buddy who covers the visual arts for the Knight Arts Blog--with photographs by Elizabeth Cerejido.
In Anne's profile of Liza, which described how Liza came to Miami and how her life has changed dramatically since she has been doing so much to help her son Arturo heal from his brain injury, I was moved by the opening sentences: "Life's path, as most of us know, is never straight, and never predictable. As much as we try to diligently and optimistically plot the future, it always seems to throw a wrench in all the best laid plans."
Yet Friday night was a vibrant and memorable evening. I could see how happy Arturo was to tell visitors about the art in his office and at Farside Gallery, my husband and I both commented on how well we thought his son Arturo was healing, and Liza spoke to me about her plans to become more involved in the work of the office again.
And, in a way, suffusing this entire evening, was the soulfully generous spirit of Miami artist Miralda, whose photographs of diverse tongues are the focus of the current Art @ Work exhibit. It was a truly nourishing evening. In honor of that experience, I thought I would share with readers a story I wrote about Miralda and his ongoing fascination with tongues for The Miami Herald in July 2006.
TASTY EXHIBIT A DELIGHTFUL MIX OF FOOD, CULTURE
This dinner party spans 13 cities. So far, with their current stops in Miami and Coral Gables, Antoni Miralda and his collaborators are almost halfway through the cosmopolitan progressive dinner that is "Tastes & Tongues/Sabores y Lenguas." Miami is the sixth stop on a tour that began in Caracas and will probably wind up in Barcelona, Miralda's hometown.
"I am behind the project as artistic director and artist, but it is a project made with all the different people. It is a collective project," says Miralda. The show was preceded by his 1998 exhibit at the Miami Art Museum, "New Work Miralda: Grandma's Recipes," a warm-up for the more ambitious "Tastes/Sabores."
He sighs, when asked to explain the art of the exhibit. "It's always difficult, because there is not a product that people can take home as a piece of art. So they take home more a memory, and an image, or an experience." For him, art happens at the nexus of food, history, and anthropology. He prefers poking around supermarkets in Paris to galleries in the Louvre.
'CROSSING BARRIERS'
In some ways, at 64, this longime Miami resident, who wears his thinning salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a short ponytail, remains a child of the irreverent 1960s. He's not really interested in art with a capital A, secured behind velvet ropes.
"I always feel an artist needs to be crossing barriers," he says. Artists "need to go through the refrigerators. They need to walk with people."
He spins artistic metaphors about cultural identity from humble contents of refrigerators and busy street markets. In Miami's Collins Building in the Design District, he laughs as he looks at the photographic portrait that "Tastes/Sabores" produced of Mexico City. Images of corn and huevos rancheros make bold splashes of red, green, and gold.
Growing up in the lean years of Franco's Spain, Miralda came of age as an artist in 1960s Paris, soaking up the revolutionary tides of the times, the populist spirit of Pop art, and the street culture of happenings from that freewheeling era. He made an international name for himself by staging baroque festivals that combined the three P's: public art, Pop art, and performance. They had almost nothing to do with the art market.
In 1977, he took part in the international art festival of Documenta in Kassel, Germany, planning a parade and feast inspired by that city's statue of the mythic figure of Leda. In 1992, there was the notable "Honeymoon" project he staged around the metaphoric marriage of New York's Statue of Liberty and Barcelona's statue of Columbus.
Such art projects are seasoned with stories layering food, culture, and myth. They sparkle with puckish fun. His works have provided grand reasons to turn a traditional festival on its head, or to make an old one new again.
Miralda's current project brings a latter-day Pop and performance-art twist to his ongoing culinary diary of cities. He says the project offers an "urban culinary topography" deeply rooted in daily life. In each city, "Tastes/Sabores" becomes part festival, part imaginary dinner party, with giant tongue-shaped photo collages, a video, and dozens of unique objects created by inhabitants of that city. They document daily examples, mostly humble but disarming, of how food and creativity mesh.
In the project's video about Miami, on view at the Collins Building, you see a saucy sign, painted on a fish restaurant in Little Haiti, in which a leaping sailfish sports a chef's cap. In the photo collage about Miami, you see a dish of frothy Key lime pie, Publix sushi, take-out packages from Joe's Stone Crab, fried frog legs, a lavish dessert from Cacao in Coral Gables, smoked sausage from Jackson's in Overtown, ropa vieja from Versailles.
Before coming to Miami, "Tastes/Sabores" made stops in Caracas, Lima, Bogota, Mexico City, and Havana. Next it will go to Managua, Santo Domingo, San Juan, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, and Barcelona.
In each city, Miralda and his assistants photograph the remarkable range of places where food is consumed or sold: markets, grocery stores, restaurants and bars, street corners, banquet halls, and tables in private homes. Miralda and his team have asked about 200 people in each city, many of them artists, to decorate a simple white plate in a way that somehow reflects the cultural taste of their city.
At the Collins Building, white plates are laid out on a floor to create a dazzling mosaic in a giant, tongue-shaped design. Not all plates are playful; some are left empty. They might be emblems of want in this city of haves and have nots. In that vein, artist Duane Brant has sculpted on his plate a misshapen baby out of Wonder Bread toast. It's his riff on the scathing satire about cooking infants for poor families in Jonathan Swift's classic essay, "A Modest Proposal."
On his plate, artist Pablo Cano has created a rippling tower of merengue, looking like an armless Michelin Man, in homage to the merenguita his Cuban grandmother used to make. Father and daughter team Tom and Claire Austin painted a pinkish-orange wedge of pie crawling with large black ants.
Each previous venue has included a wall, like the one in the Collins Building here, painted with chalkboard paint. Sticks of chalk abound for folks to scribble their thoughts about food and art or whatever. An example here: "Say yes to life, yum!" There's a video that flickers with photographs shot of Miami scenes, like signs for Mary's Soul Food or one for Chef Creole, the chef-capped sailfish.
VIDEOS, LATIN SONGS
At Centro Cultural Espanol in Coral Gables, you'll see videos playing photos from the cities "Tastes/Sabores" has already visited. In Lima, butchers hack into fleshy, raw sides of meat; in Havana, a bartender mixes mojitos leafy with mint; in Mexico City street vendors hawk juicy oranges and pink cotton candy.
The videos flicker with always-changing images; just as you have absorbed most of the detail in a particular image, it fades away and is replaced by yet another image packed with nearly as much color as a child's exploded pinata.
As the videos play, you hear a soundtrack of Latin songs about food, some dating back to the 1940s. They're songs that Miralda collects as part of the several thousand items in the archive that he and Montse Guillin, the talented chef who is his partner, are obsessively assembling in their Little Haiti warehouse, TransEAT/FoodCulture Archive. Some food-related items, gathered from local collectors, are on display there now: wooden mortars and pestles from Haiti, children's lunch boxes, vintage shirts printed with coconut palms.
At the Centro Cultural Espanol, one regrets the lack of contextual information about the food. Without an insider's knowledge of the food common in each city, the video for each city reads as a juicy travelogue of an unknown destination, raising more questions than it answers. Maybe that's the point--to open a dialogue, even a dinner conversation, about what really makes each city unique.
Not all the links between food and culture have been savory. Blackboard comments in Havana railed against Cubans' meager diet. The comments were not censored, Miralda thinks, because officials were too busy running the biennial. In Caracas, he said he was censored. Officials asked him to remove items from his museum exhibit, products like pasta and milk bearing pro-Chavez slogans.
"I showed some of the official products of Chavez. And they thought we were making a joke of that," Miralda says. He agreed to remove the products, but they'll be in the catalog for the complete "Tastes/Sabores."
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Miami Art Bites in Orthodontist Office
Only in Miami can you find art by an internationally admired artist in an absolutely exceptional orthodonist office! That office, of course, would belong to the absolutely exceptional art collector Dr. Arturo Mosquera.
Mark your calendar for the third opening reception of "Lingua," an exhibit by Miralda, who lives in Miami and Barcelona, and whose gastronomically adventurous art was celebrated by a recent museum retrospective in Madrid. This free, special event takes place 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, March 4 at the Art @ Work Gallery, 1245 Galloway Road (87th Avenue) in Miami. For more info, call 305-264-3120. It's sponsored by Centro Cultural Espanol and FoodCulturaMuseum and is open to the public; the exhibit is on view through April 24, weekdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
If you have not been to an Art @ Work opening reception, you are in for a memorable treat. If you have, then you know what friendly, engaging, and lively events these openings are. I always meet treasured artcentric friends when I go!
Arturo Mosquera, as I learned when I wrote about him for The Miami Herald in June 2003, believes he was born with a passion to collect.
Here is more of what I learned then about this remarkable man, who with his wife Liza continues to play a pivotal role in Miami's expanding cultural community:
Growing up in the western province of Pinar del Rio in Cuba, Mosquera amassed stacks of Marvel Comics and baseball cards. In Coral Gables, his collection of Latin American art extends to every corner of his family's home--from floor to ceiling.
A commanding portrait by Arnaldo Roche Rabell, as densely textured as a rain forest, dominates the wall of a small study, while the hip-hop flavored sculpture of Luis Gispert graces the living room. Cardboard cut-outs by Pedro Vizcaino dart like bloodied planes in battle across the ceiling of yet another room.
The Mosqueras' modern, 1960s Gables home--with sleek touches Frank Lloyd Wright might admire--generously mirrors some of the most interesting art that's been made by artists with ties to South Florida in the past decade or so. At least, that is, when some of the 400 paintings, sculpture, video, and drawings are not on loan to South Florida museums or to institutions in Venezuela and Brazil.
Art is a passion for Mosquera, who arrived in Miami in 1962 when he was 9. But few collectors have chosen to live and work with works of art in the way that he and his wife Liza Mosquera have done.
Their art blurs links between home and office, and this has nothing to do with telecommuting.
For the past two and a half years, Arturo has invited South Florida artists to make a changing series of installations and exhibits in the Miami office where he practices orthodontics and where Liza has worked as office manager. In the modestly-scaled waiting room, patients can alternate from flipping through well-worn Sports Illusrated magazines to taking in a novel series of contemporary art.
Many of the concise exhibits are by artists with works in the Mosqueras' expansive collection at home, which ranges from sculpture by Maria Brito and Florencio Gelabert, intricately constructed with reflections on exile, to poetic drawings by Jorge Pantoja and glistening Caribbean altar pieces by Charo Oquet.
Currently at the office there's a video documenting Carolina Sardi as she welds an ambitious group of painted steel reliefs fashioned to suggest suitases and natural treasures on sandy beaches. The works are part of her Miami-Dade Art in Public Places commission for terminals at the Port of Miami, called "The Journey: Water Project and Suitcase Project." There's also a group of several related, brightly-colored metallic forms by Sardi hanging on the office walls.
"It's wonderful," Arturo says about the changing shows in his office. "You get to see all the kids asking the most marvelous questions about the works. Some of the parents come by and ask questions, too."
FAMILY INSPIRATION
The impetus to work with art, he says, goes back to pleasures he recalls as a kid watching his uncle, an artist in Cuba, paint tropical landscapes. This pleasure is something Arturo has always wanted to share with his patients.
Leaning back in the slimmed-down arm chairs common to orthodontists' offices, with mouths gaping as braces and retainers are fitted, patients don't have to close their eyes or stare at bland walls and posters as they wait for the work to end. Instead, they can follow the intriguing choreography of lines in the black-and-white, mixed-media composition by Odalis Valdivieso, in which a woman's body gently levitates above a sharp-edged fray.
Arturo is not merely hoping to take his patients' minds off their mouths, but also to turn this uniquely captive audience on to a vivid range of art.
His patients have been able to contemplate, for instance, delicately shaded drawings of imaginary architecture and instruments by Glexis Novoa.
Yet some paintings have turned out to be too aggressive for parents of young children, says Liza, remembering their concerned responses to Ana Albertina Delgado's sensual imagery of female figures, which often balance attributes of angel and streetwalker.
"They found it disturbing," she explains.
But as Greg Gordillo, a 22-year-old student at the Kendall campus of Miami Dade College, lifted himself out of an examining chair after his appointment ended, he turned around to see more paintings that he hadn't been able to view from his chair.
Says Gordillo, "I don't think there's art that you can't like. It's all art. It's just not your taste."
While recent conversations with patients and parents don't suggest that the exhibits here have prompted more folks to sample the offerings at South Florida museums and galleries--which the Mosqueras themselves frequent--mixing art and orthodontics has proven to be an eye-opening experience for both audience and artist.
"I like art. For me it's always interesting when he brings in a new artist--it's not the usual paintings of flower arrangements or portraits," says Lourdes Montejo, who works in her family's construction business and has been bringing her children to the office for the past five years.
Her daughter Natalie, 14, draws and paints in school and likes to discuss the changing exhibits, says Montejo, though son Matthew, 10, is less attracted to the art than to the flashing video game that's also a fixture of Mosquera's waiting room.
"But you know," continues Montejo, "if you want to get them interested in art, you have to start young."
One project she remembers in particular went on view last July. This was "Absence," a series of photographs and video by Elizabeth Cerejido, which was inspired by the recent death of the artist's father and by her mother's decline into the dementia of Alzheimer's.
Cerejido's exhibit also fascinated Roni Feinstein, a South Florida-based writer for the magazine Art in America, who's not a patient but is invited to receptions Mosquera holds for artists when a new show goes on view.
"I thought this piece was extraordinary. It worked well in such an intimate space," Feinstein says.
For Cerejido, Arturo's studio visit before her show prompted her to embark on a whole new body of intensely personal work, which she'll present next March at Bernice Steinbaum Gallery along with work by more widely-exhibited Cuban photographers Magdalena Campos Pons and Carlos Garaicoa.
NEW DIRECTION
The new direction transpired after Cerejido saw the collector's enthusiasm for a video she'd never intended to exhibit: It showed her mother sitting in a chair only to stand up in confusion a few seconds later in a motion she repeated restlessly after Cerejido's father died.
"I realized that I have some material here that I should be tapping. It's really been an eye-opener for me.
"For me, the show was very rewarding," the artist adds. "He treats it seriously. He really is reaching out to a whole group of people who might not be exposed to art that is remotely challenging. It's a perfect set-up because they are waiting and looking at something that's not Monet posters or nice little seascapes."
Mark your calendar for the third opening reception of "Lingua," an exhibit by Miralda, who lives in Miami and Barcelona, and whose gastronomically adventurous art was celebrated by a recent museum retrospective in Madrid. This free, special event takes place 7 to 9 p.m. Friday, March 4 at the Art @ Work Gallery, 1245 Galloway Road (87th Avenue) in Miami. For more info, call 305-264-3120. It's sponsored by Centro Cultural Espanol and FoodCulturaMuseum and is open to the public; the exhibit is on view through April 24, weekdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
If you have not been to an Art @ Work opening reception, you are in for a memorable treat. If you have, then you know what friendly, engaging, and lively events these openings are. I always meet treasured artcentric friends when I go!
Arturo Mosquera, as I learned when I wrote about him for The Miami Herald in June 2003, believes he was born with a passion to collect.
Here is more of what I learned then about this remarkable man, who with his wife Liza continues to play a pivotal role in Miami's expanding cultural community:
Growing up in the western province of Pinar del Rio in Cuba, Mosquera amassed stacks of Marvel Comics and baseball cards. In Coral Gables, his collection of Latin American art extends to every corner of his family's home--from floor to ceiling.
A commanding portrait by Arnaldo Roche Rabell, as densely textured as a rain forest, dominates the wall of a small study, while the hip-hop flavored sculpture of Luis Gispert graces the living room. Cardboard cut-outs by Pedro Vizcaino dart like bloodied planes in battle across the ceiling of yet another room.
The Mosqueras' modern, 1960s Gables home--with sleek touches Frank Lloyd Wright might admire--generously mirrors some of the most interesting art that's been made by artists with ties to South Florida in the past decade or so. At least, that is, when some of the 400 paintings, sculpture, video, and drawings are not on loan to South Florida museums or to institutions in Venezuela and Brazil.
Art is a passion for Mosquera, who arrived in Miami in 1962 when he was 9. But few collectors have chosen to live and work with works of art in the way that he and his wife Liza Mosquera have done.
Their art blurs links between home and office, and this has nothing to do with telecommuting.
For the past two and a half years, Arturo has invited South Florida artists to make a changing series of installations and exhibits in the Miami office where he practices orthodontics and where Liza has worked as office manager. In the modestly-scaled waiting room, patients can alternate from flipping through well-worn Sports Illusrated magazines to taking in a novel series of contemporary art.
Many of the concise exhibits are by artists with works in the Mosqueras' expansive collection at home, which ranges from sculpture by Maria Brito and Florencio Gelabert, intricately constructed with reflections on exile, to poetic drawings by Jorge Pantoja and glistening Caribbean altar pieces by Charo Oquet.
Currently at the office there's a video documenting Carolina Sardi as she welds an ambitious group of painted steel reliefs fashioned to suggest suitases and natural treasures on sandy beaches. The works are part of her Miami-Dade Art in Public Places commission for terminals at the Port of Miami, called "The Journey: Water Project and Suitcase Project." There's also a group of several related, brightly-colored metallic forms by Sardi hanging on the office walls.
"It's wonderful," Arturo says about the changing shows in his office. "You get to see all the kids asking the most marvelous questions about the works. Some of the parents come by and ask questions, too."
FAMILY INSPIRATION
The impetus to work with art, he says, goes back to pleasures he recalls as a kid watching his uncle, an artist in Cuba, paint tropical landscapes. This pleasure is something Arturo has always wanted to share with his patients.
Leaning back in the slimmed-down arm chairs common to orthodontists' offices, with mouths gaping as braces and retainers are fitted, patients don't have to close their eyes or stare at bland walls and posters as they wait for the work to end. Instead, they can follow the intriguing choreography of lines in the black-and-white, mixed-media composition by Odalis Valdivieso, in which a woman's body gently levitates above a sharp-edged fray.
Arturo is not merely hoping to take his patients' minds off their mouths, but also to turn this uniquely captive audience on to a vivid range of art.
His patients have been able to contemplate, for instance, delicately shaded drawings of imaginary architecture and instruments by Glexis Novoa.
Yet some paintings have turned out to be too aggressive for parents of young children, says Liza, remembering their concerned responses to Ana Albertina Delgado's sensual imagery of female figures, which often balance attributes of angel and streetwalker.
"They found it disturbing," she explains.
But as Greg Gordillo, a 22-year-old student at the Kendall campus of Miami Dade College, lifted himself out of an examining chair after his appointment ended, he turned around to see more paintings that he hadn't been able to view from his chair.
Says Gordillo, "I don't think there's art that you can't like. It's all art. It's just not your taste."
While recent conversations with patients and parents don't suggest that the exhibits here have prompted more folks to sample the offerings at South Florida museums and galleries--which the Mosqueras themselves frequent--mixing art and orthodontics has proven to be an eye-opening experience for both audience and artist.
"I like art. For me it's always interesting when he brings in a new artist--it's not the usual paintings of flower arrangements or portraits," says Lourdes Montejo, who works in her family's construction business and has been bringing her children to the office for the past five years.
Her daughter Natalie, 14, draws and paints in school and likes to discuss the changing exhibits, says Montejo, though son Matthew, 10, is less attracted to the art than to the flashing video game that's also a fixture of Mosquera's waiting room.
"But you know," continues Montejo, "if you want to get them interested in art, you have to start young."
One project she remembers in particular went on view last July. This was "Absence," a series of photographs and video by Elizabeth Cerejido, which was inspired by the recent death of the artist's father and by her mother's decline into the dementia of Alzheimer's.
Cerejido's exhibit also fascinated Roni Feinstein, a South Florida-based writer for the magazine Art in America, who's not a patient but is invited to receptions Mosquera holds for artists when a new show goes on view.
"I thought this piece was extraordinary. It worked well in such an intimate space," Feinstein says.
For Cerejido, Arturo's studio visit before her show prompted her to embark on a whole new body of intensely personal work, which she'll present next March at Bernice Steinbaum Gallery along with work by more widely-exhibited Cuban photographers Magdalena Campos Pons and Carlos Garaicoa.
NEW DIRECTION
The new direction transpired after Cerejido saw the collector's enthusiasm for a video she'd never intended to exhibit: It showed her mother sitting in a chair only to stand up in confusion a few seconds later in a motion she repeated restlessly after Cerejido's father died.
"I realized that I have some material here that I should be tapping. It's really been an eye-opener for me.
"For me, the show was very rewarding," the artist adds. "He treats it seriously. He really is reaching out to a whole group of people who might not be exposed to art that is remotely challenging. It's a perfect set-up because they are waiting and looking at something that's not Monet posters or nice little seascapes."
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Miami Art Collectors Cricket and Marty Taplin Support Culture at Sagamore Hotel
What would Miami be like without collectors who take risks to support the city's creative talent? I don't even want to think about how lackluster Miami would be--all sun 'n' fun, and no culture. Those folks from Basel would have never wanted to come here!
Cricket and Marty Taplin are among the dynamic collectors who make this city tick. During this past Art Basel Miami Beach, they hosted yet another fab brunch at the Sagamore Hotel on South Beach with spectacular art to see, as well as an absolutely exquisite dance performance. I recall how I have seen art there by Pablo Cano, Robert Chambers, and Jen Stark, to name just a few artists. Now I understand they are hosting an art talk for Francie Bishop Good, whose exhibit at David Castillo Gallery in Wynwood is one of several I have included for my February Critic's Choice on the cool website http://www.artcircuits.com/
Here's what I wrote about this dynamic duo for The Miami Herald in July 2002...
ROOM SERVICE
They agonized over the lobby most of all. Not a single artwork collectors Marty and Cricket Taplin hung next to the registration desk at the Sagamore, their recently renovated South Beach hotel, looked right.
When they taped up photocopies of a dozen implacable portraits by one of Germany's brightest art stars, the construction workers putting finishing touches on the lobby complained that the pictures resembled mug shots.
"It was great work," Marty says, but, continues Cricket, "It had no punch." In the end, finding the right punch turned out to be a picnic--or more accurately, a few hundred picnickers lounging on velvet green stretches of a crisply landscaped park in Paris. The Taplins eventually decided this picnic en masse, captured in four large panels by Italian photojournalist-turned-artist Massimo Vitali, was the piece that should hang next to the registration desk.
In fact, as soon as the couple saw Vitali's picnic while strolling the aisles of last year's Art Basel fair in Switzerland, they knew it was a must-have photograph. And buying it became a pivotal moment in their thinking about the Sagamore, which they've furnished with stunning examples of contemporary art.
"That was the zinger," remembers Cricket. It brought their choices for the hotel, she explains, "to another level. We could only go up, not down, after that."
Though Vitali's subjects are caught unposed and not always from flattering angles, his large-scale works captivate with radiant, painterly streams of color and fascinating, sometimes strange, voyeuristic glimpses. Certainly his wide-roaming eye for unguarded leisure suits a place such as South Beach, where the goal is to see and be seen.
Open since February to guests as well as people off the street just curious about art, the 93-suite Sagamore, at 1671 Collins Ave., actually made its debut in December, hosting a bevy of international collectors, dealers, museum professionals, and artists at a Sunday brunch. The event, staged by the Taplins, collector Martin Z. Margulies, and several Miami-Dade County museums, was one of several events that took place in lieu of the postponed Art Basel Miami Beach.
ANXIOUS MOMENTS
Seven months later, on a July morning more cloudy than clear, the Taplins, who have a habit of finishing each other's sentences, are speaking about their collecting over coffee in the casual, high-end comfort of the Sagamore's library.
There were risks to this venture, they say, and anxious moments. And there were concerns about protecting the valuable art, now bolted into place. But accidents still happen, such as when an installer recently dropped the monitor for Jason Rhoades' video installation.
Dressed in a summery linen shirt and sky-blue pants, Marty is not shy about confessing that his taste in art is more mainstream than his wife's. As a real estate developer and attorney running his first hotel, he says that "in the back of my mind I was thinking that maybe we were overshooting the market, that this was a little bit too sophisticated, because this is cutting edge."
That's why he looked for some unvarnished feedback.
"I was hanging out in the lobby looking at people's expressions and [rap mogul] P. Diddy checked in with a group of his people," he offers. "I said to them, 'I just want to be honest with you--tell me the truth, is this too much?'
"P. Diddy's reply, " he says, "was, 'Man, this hotel is in a zone by its own.'"
'AN ART HOTEL'
Andrew Mark, a New York engineer, was also taken with the Sagamore's collection and its library. He collects photography, and though he says, "no one will ever accuse me of knowing much of anything about art, it is an art hotel, one that, to my taste, provides as much beauty as the hotel provides wonderfully warm, exciting accommodations."
The raves are comforting, the Taplins says, because the idea of turning their hotel into an exhibition space almost didn't happen.
"We never really knew until the white tile was down that we were going to have an art gallery [in the hotel]," explains Cricket, who curates the Sagamore collection. "But you know, it evolved."
In that evolution, guided in part by historical architect Alan T. Shulman and conceptual designer Patrick Kennedy, the library's humble origins as a galley kitchen have been completely submerged by its chic, minimalist decor. A series of brooding, moss-shrouded landscape photos by Olafur Eliasson occupy one corner. Wicker chairs are pushed up next to a marble table nearly as long as a fashion show's runway and dozens of art books are stacked invitingly on shelves nearby.
There are tomes on Andy Warhol, Walker Evans, and Graciela Iturbide, publications on Miami artists, and a paperback with the guaranteed-not-to-intimidate title of Instant Art History from Cave Art to Pop Art.
ROOM TO READ
And in another novel touch, the library is larger than the bar.
"I love how they've left a lot of material around for people to read," says Dahlia Morgan, director of the Art Museum at Florida International University. "A lot of the general public doesn't go to museums, and I think this would be a very encouraging way for people to live with art.
"When people walk in the door they know they're in a very different public space. [The Taplins] could have just gone the way of buying knock-offs, but they worked very hard to buy serious work by a lot of younger artists."
Presiding over the phone booth on the first floor, for example, is a miniature wardrobe of frilly frocks and broad-shouldered suits. With the precision of a couture seamstress and more than a dash of feminist irony, sculptor Donna Rosenthal has created these party duds from the pages of romance novels, now all yellowed and crisp from layers of shellac.
The title each outfit bears--not to mention the romance writers' breathless phrases that float in and out of your consciousness as you place a phone call--might be lifted from hotel trysts or bar chatter.
"He said he'd always hug me," says one dress. "She said she'd never cheat on me," says one suit.
BUILT IN 1948
The Sagamore was built in 1948 by Albert Anis, and though its angular modern lines seem less playful than the nearby Art Deco hotels, the artfully renovated building embraces the legacy of those earlier architectural landmarks, says William Cary, design and preservation director at Miami Beach's planning department.
"Many Art Deco hotels had beautiful murals and a high attention to art," he says. "When Marty and Cricket had the fire in their heart to bring their own personal art collection to the Sagamore, it added a wonderful layer of richness to what Miami Beach has to offer. It's truly a unique historic hotel and a special gift to the public and hotel guests."
The Taplins' art collecting goes back to 1988 and their days as newlyweds, when they asked Margulies to help them choose art for their home. Like many novice collectors, they took notes from a seasoned veteran of the international art circuits--in this case, Margulies.
"You spend time with someone who knows so much, and he really brings you along," says Cricket, who made the rounds of 30 New York galleries with Margulies in a single day.
"It's exhausting," she laughs. "I just listen and absorb. He's my mentor."
Now, it seems, part of Cricket's task as the Sagamore's curator is to bring her husband along. Toward that end, she gave him an extremely red-lipped self-portrait by Israeli photographer Hilla Lulu Lin, who ominously masked the rest of her face in tight white cotton.
"I wanted to put it in our house," she says of the anniversary gift, "and he didn't want it."
"You know what that's like?" he asks, over her laughter. "It's like a cowboy buying his wife a saddle for his wedding."
So Lin's riveting photograph, commissioned by Israel's major art journal, now hangs in the Sagamore lobby above a table of delectable green apples. The combination is tempting and a bit terrifying.
"But it works in South Beach," says Cricket. "It's got that sex appeal. It's a little edgy."
WORK IN PROGRESS
The Sagamore is still a work in progress nearly six months after opening, and more changes and artworks are on the way. Till Freiwald's lifelike watercolor portraits will be moved from the bar to face a haunting corridor of sculptural heads by Christine Borland, small pieces that provoke big questions about links between art and science.
In December, the hotel plans to show vintage photographs by Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Walker Evans, and perhaps sooner a spicy new piece by Tracey Rose, who took part in last year's Venice Biennial.
Marty hasn't seen Rose's new photograph, so Cricket hands him a photocopy of it, showing a young woman astride a red fire engine.
"I'm a more conservative person," he sighs. "She's a lot of steps ahead."
"He's not as rigid as he used to be," counters his wife. "And now that we have the hotel, he sees that there are many personalities, younger people, and he can get with it quicker. I suppose I was always interested in art, but I didn't know how to express it. Could I sit and draw? No, but I always admire people that do. So this is my canvas."
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Miami Artist Maria Brito Honored by Frost Art Museum
February is the shortest month of the year, but this February is truly a bonanza month for artcentric folks in Miami!
Not only have we had a fab ArtTable meeting at Books & Books on February 8, but for the first time we can look forward to a second such gathering in one month.
ArtTable members and guests, mark your calendars for this event: 11 a.m. Saturday, February 19 at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum of Florida International University.
It's on the occasion of a wonderful show there by Maria Brito, as well as the publication of an award-winning book about her by FIU professor Juan Martinez. Juan and Maria will discuss her exhibit, "As of 24/03/07," at the Frost on February 19, during this 11 a.m. gathering for ArtTable members and guests. Light refreshments will be served. There'll also be a book signing of the book Maria Brito. To RSVP or get more information, call 305-348-2890 or visit www.thefrostfiu.edu
Carol Damian, the Frost's dynamic director and chief curator, agreed to make this ArtTable event happen. I'm not surprised by her energy and resourcefulness. Tonight I'm going to see "A Visual Journey Through Art & Music," performed by the Miami Symphony Orchestra, and based on a text by Carol Damian. It will be at the acclaimed New World Center on Miami Beach, so I think my husband and I are in for an outstanding evening! (For more information about Miami Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Eduardo Marturet, see www.themiso.org)
Renowned FIU Alumna Maria Brito at the Frost
I was so lucky to write about Maria Brito for the FIU Magazine that I want to share much of what I wrote with readers of my blog this morning. She is one of the many extraordinary people I got to know so well through my work on the visual arts beat for The Miami Herald.
Your first encounter with Maria Brito's show at the Frost Art Museum could be confusing. You may even wonder why it's there. If so, you'll please Brito, a rebel at heart who likes controversy. Celebrated Miami artist and FIU alumna, Brito traces her rebellious spirit to the long ago moment she concealed gold jewelry in clothes she wore on a Pedro Pan flight from Havana to Miami. Everyone knew that doing this risked terrible consequences, she recalls, but she couldn't leave the jewelry, a small bracelet still in her possession, behind.
Her longstanding aversion to doing what's predictable, as well as considerable talent, has led to "As of 24/03/07," Brito's mixed-media installation at the Frost. A small shrine--dedicated to a mysterious figure and recalling saints' altars--is an ominous part of this work. In ways not amenable to conventional religion, this shrine recalls Brito's conservative Catholic upbringing, especially for girls, in the Cuban community transplanted to Miami in the early 1960s.
Brito endows simple, familiar objects with disturbing symbolism: this installation evokes a modest scientific laboratory where human forms are created in a clandestine manner. "It has to do with social, ethical issues related to the manufacturing of human life," says Brito, intrigued by news reports about biological experimentation.
This will be the first solo exhibit at the Frost Art Museum for the FIU graduate, although her art has been in group shows at the previous museum space. The Frost also has sculpture by Brito in its permanent collection.
Brito's art has been shown in every major exhibition of Cuban American artists and in venues around the world: the Second Iberoamerican Biennial of Lima, Peru; the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seoul, South Korea; "Cuba Twentieth Century: Modernism and Syncretism" at the Centre d'Art Santa Monica in Barcelona, Spain; and in "The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s," in New York City at various venues, including Studio Museum in Harlem. Her art was part of the traveling exhibit, "Arte Latino: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum."
Frost Art Museum director and chief curator Carol Damian has known Brito for more than 20 years. As a professor, Damian includes Brito in her art history courses, especially given her own interest in women artists. Brito is "an artist of great complexity that can be inspirational to my students," said Damian, "especially in South Florida with all her references to growing up here as a child of exile."
"Maria has long represented herself and her life experiences in multi-media works that combine ceramics, painting, sculpture, and installation in constructions that embody issues of loss, femininity, women's roles, and identity," Damian explains. "She has never wavered from her commitment to create works that are dense with serious personal symbolism and yet can be quite humorous."
In 2009, FIU art history professor Juan Martinez wrote the book Maria Brito, published by UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press of Los Angeles. A year later, at Book Expo America in New York City, his book was awarded "Best Arts Book--English" by Latino Book Awards.
This exquisitely illustrated volume about Brito belongs to the series "A Ver: Revisioning Art History," which explores contributions Latina and Latino artists have made to American and world art history. It highlights Brito's signature installations--mixed-media interior spaces imbued with symbolism and emotion--as well as her paintings and sculptures. "As Brito and her art have broken cultural, social and artistic barriers," Martinez writes, "they have made a notable contribution to the diversity and dynamism of contemporary art."
His book looks at Brito's artistic career in the context of recent Miami history, touching on how interest in Latin American culture increased significantly in the 1980s in the United States. This cultural shift, along with growing opportunities for women, coincided with her hard-working life as an art teacher, mother, and artist.
"For me, getting married and having a family was what I was supposed to do," Brito said. Still, she says, her father emphasized the importance of being educated so that she could support herself. "If you have a good education, no one can ever take that away from you," she recalls that her father would tell her. This was indeed a mantra for the close-knit Cuban-born family transplanted to Miami.
"I didn't know about the educational system here, but I knew that after finishing high school I could go to community college," she says, explaining that she attended what is now the north campus of Miami Dade College to study art. She eventually earned four degrees: a bachelor's in education from the University of Miami in 1969, a master's degree in education from FIU in 1976, a bachelor's of fine arts from FIU in 1977 and an MFA from UM in 1979.
"I had my children, but I just kept going to school," she said. "Honestly, I never thought I would be creative enough to become an artist."
Martinez notes how Cuban culture has transformed Miami since the early 1960s, when she came to the city along with thousands of other Cuban exiles. Miami was much smaller, with fewer opportunities for artists than exist today. Early on, Brito gained attention as a member of "The Miami Generation," several Cuban American artists featured at the Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture in Miami. She was the only woman included.
Brito's breathrough came in the 1980s, Martinez writes, "in the context of multiculturalism and the growing recognition of women artists."
Brito and some Cuban American artists of her generation are inspired by Renaissance and Baroque painting, Martinez said. Perhaps this is because Catholic imagery in this art is so familiar to these artists. "They were raised Cuban Catholic in a time that was very intense," he said. "But notice her relationship to Catholicism is complex. If you look at some of the mixed-media that deal with Catholicism, Catholicism is seen as kind of oppressive and overpowering."
These complex themes are present in Brito's installation at the Frost Art Museum. But don't look to Brito for interpretations of her shrine-as-laboratory. As viewers enter her single-room installation, she says, "I hope to leave them with more questions than answers, which is what I love to do with my work. I want to get people to think."
Not only have we had a fab ArtTable meeting at Books & Books on February 8, but for the first time we can look forward to a second such gathering in one month.
ArtTable members and guests, mark your calendars for this event: 11 a.m. Saturday, February 19 at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum of Florida International University.
It's on the occasion of a wonderful show there by Maria Brito, as well as the publication of an award-winning book about her by FIU professor Juan Martinez. Juan and Maria will discuss her exhibit, "As of 24/03/07," at the Frost on February 19, during this 11 a.m. gathering for ArtTable members and guests. Light refreshments will be served. There'll also be a book signing of the book Maria Brito. To RSVP or get more information, call 305-348-2890 or visit www.thefrostfiu.edu
Carol Damian, the Frost's dynamic director and chief curator, agreed to make this ArtTable event happen. I'm not surprised by her energy and resourcefulness. Tonight I'm going to see "A Visual Journey Through Art & Music," performed by the Miami Symphony Orchestra, and based on a text by Carol Damian. It will be at the acclaimed New World Center on Miami Beach, so I think my husband and I are in for an outstanding evening! (For more information about Miami Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Eduardo Marturet, see www.themiso.org)
Renowned FIU Alumna Maria Brito at the Frost
I was so lucky to write about Maria Brito for the FIU Magazine that I want to share much of what I wrote with readers of my blog this morning. She is one of the many extraordinary people I got to know so well through my work on the visual arts beat for The Miami Herald.
Your first encounter with Maria Brito's show at the Frost Art Museum could be confusing. You may even wonder why it's there. If so, you'll please Brito, a rebel at heart who likes controversy. Celebrated Miami artist and FIU alumna, Brito traces her rebellious spirit to the long ago moment she concealed gold jewelry in clothes she wore on a Pedro Pan flight from Havana to Miami. Everyone knew that doing this risked terrible consequences, she recalls, but she couldn't leave the jewelry, a small bracelet still in her possession, behind.
Her longstanding aversion to doing what's predictable, as well as considerable talent, has led to "As of 24/03/07," Brito's mixed-media installation at the Frost. A small shrine--dedicated to a mysterious figure and recalling saints' altars--is an ominous part of this work. In ways not amenable to conventional religion, this shrine recalls Brito's conservative Catholic upbringing, especially for girls, in the Cuban community transplanted to Miami in the early 1960s.
Brito endows simple, familiar objects with disturbing symbolism: this installation evokes a modest scientific laboratory where human forms are created in a clandestine manner. "It has to do with social, ethical issues related to the manufacturing of human life," says Brito, intrigued by news reports about biological experimentation.
This will be the first solo exhibit at the Frost Art Museum for the FIU graduate, although her art has been in group shows at the previous museum space. The Frost also has sculpture by Brito in its permanent collection.
Brito's art has been shown in every major exhibition of Cuban American artists and in venues around the world: the Second Iberoamerican Biennial of Lima, Peru; the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seoul, South Korea; "Cuba Twentieth Century: Modernism and Syncretism" at the Centre d'Art Santa Monica in Barcelona, Spain; and in "The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980s," in New York City at various venues, including Studio Museum in Harlem. Her art was part of the traveling exhibit, "Arte Latino: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum."
Frost Art Museum director and chief curator Carol Damian has known Brito for more than 20 years. As a professor, Damian includes Brito in her art history courses, especially given her own interest in women artists. Brito is "an artist of great complexity that can be inspirational to my students," said Damian, "especially in South Florida with all her references to growing up here as a child of exile."
"Maria has long represented herself and her life experiences in multi-media works that combine ceramics, painting, sculpture, and installation in constructions that embody issues of loss, femininity, women's roles, and identity," Damian explains. "She has never wavered from her commitment to create works that are dense with serious personal symbolism and yet can be quite humorous."
In 2009, FIU art history professor Juan Martinez wrote the book Maria Brito, published by UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press of Los Angeles. A year later, at Book Expo America in New York City, his book was awarded "Best Arts Book--English" by Latino Book Awards.
This exquisitely illustrated volume about Brito belongs to the series "A Ver: Revisioning Art History," which explores contributions Latina and Latino artists have made to American and world art history. It highlights Brito's signature installations--mixed-media interior spaces imbued with symbolism and emotion--as well as her paintings and sculptures. "As Brito and her art have broken cultural, social and artistic barriers," Martinez writes, "they have made a notable contribution to the diversity and dynamism of contemporary art."
His book looks at Brito's artistic career in the context of recent Miami history, touching on how interest in Latin American culture increased significantly in the 1980s in the United States. This cultural shift, along with growing opportunities for women, coincided with her hard-working life as an art teacher, mother, and artist.
"For me, getting married and having a family was what I was supposed to do," Brito said. Still, she says, her father emphasized the importance of being educated so that she could support herself. "If you have a good education, no one can ever take that away from you," she recalls that her father would tell her. This was indeed a mantra for the close-knit Cuban-born family transplanted to Miami.
"I didn't know about the educational system here, but I knew that after finishing high school I could go to community college," she says, explaining that she attended what is now the north campus of Miami Dade College to study art. She eventually earned four degrees: a bachelor's in education from the University of Miami in 1969, a master's degree in education from FIU in 1976, a bachelor's of fine arts from FIU in 1977 and an MFA from UM in 1979.
"I had my children, but I just kept going to school," she said. "Honestly, I never thought I would be creative enough to become an artist."
Martinez notes how Cuban culture has transformed Miami since the early 1960s, when she came to the city along with thousands of other Cuban exiles. Miami was much smaller, with fewer opportunities for artists than exist today. Early on, Brito gained attention as a member of "The Miami Generation," several Cuban American artists featured at the Cuban Museum of Arts and Culture in Miami. She was the only woman included.
Brito's breathrough came in the 1980s, Martinez writes, "in the context of multiculturalism and the growing recognition of women artists."
Brito and some Cuban American artists of her generation are inspired by Renaissance and Baroque painting, Martinez said. Perhaps this is because Catholic imagery in this art is so familiar to these artists. "They were raised Cuban Catholic in a time that was very intense," he said. "But notice her relationship to Catholicism is complex. If you look at some of the mixed-media that deal with Catholicism, Catholicism is seen as kind of oppressive and overpowering."
These complex themes are present in Brito's installation at the Frost Art Museum. But don't look to Brito for interpretations of her shrine-as-laboratory. As viewers enter her single-room installation, she says, "I hope to leave them with more questions than answers, which is what I love to do with my work. I want to get people to think."
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Miami ArtTable Members & Guests Meet February 8 at Books & Books
I am probably going to miss this wonderful ArtTable meeting--it will be the first I have missed since we started doing these in June 2009, thanks to the support of Miami's totally fab independent bookseller Mitchell Kaplan.
This meeting will be held February 8 at Books & Books, 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables. As usual, we will have networking from 5:45 to 6:30 pm. Meeting starts at 6:30 pm. Panel discussion starts at 7 pm. Our events are free and open to the public. Books & Books is so kind to offer a 10% discount on food and drink to those who attend.
Today I am going to blog about all the great info that moderator Sandi-Jo Gordon shared with me. Her title for this panel:
"Artists' Books - Discovering Another World."
This is how she describes the panel:
"Artists' books as a distinct artform is relatively unknown to the general art-viewing public. The wide range of books and book-like objects encompass scrolls, fold-outs and loose items enclosed in a box, as well as 'pages' bound by sewing or gluing, to name only a few. Every medium imaginable has been used to create them. The one common denomiator is the hand of the artist, whether created as an an edition or a 'unique.'
The three women on our panel, all represented in such major collections as the Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, will show and discuss their individual and varied approaches to creating artists' books.
Panelists:
Rosemarie Chiarlone has been receiving grants, awards and fellowships since 1982, exhibiting widely for the last three decades. Her 'books' are often an outgrowth of the development of her installation and video work.
Claire Jeanine Satin is a book artist, sculptor and designer of public art installations. With five works in the Library of Congress, Claire is most known for her ongoing series of conceptual 'books' entitled 'Pentimento.'
Carol Todaro, recognized as both an artist and a poet, combines the two activities in her 'books' and her teaching. 'Floating World,' her solo installation of large-scale book works, was presented at the Miami Book Fair International.
Moderator is Sandi-Jo Gordon, creator, admirer and collector of artists' books."
Why why would I even dream of missing this remarkable meeting? I've signed up for a course in writing a memoir that the Florida Center for the Literary Arts at Miami Dade College, part of the college's School of Community Education, is offering on Tuesday nights.
I am hoping that anyone who attends this meeting this meeting, including of course the moderator and panelists, will want to post comments about it.
This meeting will be held February 8 at Books & Books, 265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables. As usual, we will have networking from 5:45 to 6:30 pm. Meeting starts at 6:30 pm. Panel discussion starts at 7 pm. Our events are free and open to the public. Books & Books is so kind to offer a 10% discount on food and drink to those who attend.
Today I am going to blog about all the great info that moderator Sandi-Jo Gordon shared with me. Her title for this panel:
"Artists' Books - Discovering Another World."
This is how she describes the panel:
"Artists' books as a distinct artform is relatively unknown to the general art-viewing public. The wide range of books and book-like objects encompass scrolls, fold-outs and loose items enclosed in a box, as well as 'pages' bound by sewing or gluing, to name only a few. Every medium imaginable has been used to create them. The one common denomiator is the hand of the artist, whether created as an an edition or a 'unique.'
The three women on our panel, all represented in such major collections as the Jaffe Center for Book Arts at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, will show and discuss their individual and varied approaches to creating artists' books.
Panelists:
Rosemarie Chiarlone has been receiving grants, awards and fellowships since 1982, exhibiting widely for the last three decades. Her 'books' are often an outgrowth of the development of her installation and video work.
Claire Jeanine Satin is a book artist, sculptor and designer of public art installations. With five works in the Library of Congress, Claire is most known for her ongoing series of conceptual 'books' entitled 'Pentimento.'
Carol Todaro, recognized as both an artist and a poet, combines the two activities in her 'books' and her teaching. 'Floating World,' her solo installation of large-scale book works, was presented at the Miami Book Fair International.
Moderator is Sandi-Jo Gordon, creator, admirer and collector of artists' books."
Why why would I even dream of missing this remarkable meeting? I've signed up for a course in writing a memoir that the Florida Center for the Literary Arts at Miami Dade College, part of the college's School of Community Education, is offering on Tuesday nights.
I am hoping that anyone who attends this meeting this meeting, including of course the moderator and panelists, will want to post comments about it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)