Dec 072022
 

For the months of November and December, Brenda McMahon Gallery is focusing on Fiber Arts, and Marlene Glickman is one of the artists included. Her fabric collages are made with hand dyed and found fabrics that she then embellishes with thread drawings.

Another one of her projects is using instant setting dyes to create silk scarves. She teaches workshops on the process and also sells kits to do it on your own. She recently gave demonstrations at the Dunedin Fine Art Center (as part of their Open House) and at Art in the Park! in Clearwater, where the scarves pictured below are from.

Glickman’s artist statement from her website

Art, for me, is the act of expressing ideas regardless of the medium and sharing them with others. I see things and am compelled to create with them. I also love to encourage viewers to interact with my art and put their imprint on the work. Creating 3D sculptural forms and textile “paintings” using new and found materials is a passion.

 

Dec 062022
 

Work by Bobbi Pratte

Work by Bobbi Pratte

This past weekend (12/3/22) was the 6th Annual edition of ArtJones in Gulfport, Florida. The self-guided tour takes you to several locations around Gulfport and is a great way to see what local artists are creating, and sometimes get a look at their process.

Bobbi Pratte just moved to the area from Washington D.C. and had numerous colorful paintings on view.

Work by Brenda McMahon

Work by Brenda McMahon

Brenda McMahon is one of the co-founders of this event. Her ceramic tiles can often be seen outside houses around town. She also created a large piece for the Gulfport Senior Center. Her local gallery shows a variety of regional work and has a featured artist every month.

Work by Nancy Poucher

Work by Nancy Poucher

Nancy Poucher was showing her lovely pastel work, seen above.

Other artists included in the show- Deserie Valloreo (who just opened her own local gallery), Kitty Zehnder, Curtis Whitwam, Charles Bahringer, Judith Villavisanis, Anna Ayres, Marius Wiget, Cynthia Dugat, Doug D’souza, Amy Howell, Denny Howard, Patricia Burrows, Margaret Foy Meinhart, Don Stafford, Pitzen Studios, Kiersty Long, Paula Roy, Ray Domingo (also a founder of the event), Herlys Perez, Dorian Angello, Joyce Burkholder, Janet Folsom, Eric Folsom, and Jessica Ryan (this year’s Larry Enlow Emerging Artist winner).

For more information on the individual artists, check out their links and the ArtJones site, which has little bios as well.

Dec 032022
 

Study for Milltown Icon, 2003

Dunedin Fine Art Center is currently showing three exhibitions based on the theme of Architecture. The images above are from Rust to Rust: Janos Enyedi and the Architecture of Industry. The work combines painting, photography, and sculpture. Parts of his work appear to be metal but are actually constructed using illustration board. His creations are an impressive exploration of the fading industrial landscape of America’s Rust and Steel Belts.

Janos Enyedi’s discussion of his work in 2009 (from the gallery’s wall information)-

“While I have a special affection for industrial landscapes, it is not industry itself that captures my imagination. What draws my attention is the simplicity and directness of the industrial architecture and the elements that support it.

Nowhere else is the Modernist tenet “form follows function” as explicit. The realm of industry is filled with large iconic shapes- water towers, smokestacks, complex steel structures, monitor roofs, images that we all know.

Most people, if they bother to look at industry at all, see large, dirty hulks. I see other things. There is an old saying, “The Devil is in the details”.

When it comes to industry, I see “Angels” in the details. I see I-beams and angle iron and the shadows they cast on corrugation: torch-cut edges, the staccato of rivets, the patterns of safety plate and rust- always the rich, amazing and beautiful patina of rust.”

The exhibition also includes works that allow you to see a bit of his creative process, including some of his sketches.

Also on view is We Built This City, a multi-media exhibition of work that “investigates the connection between Architecture and Music- conceptually, loosely, physically-poetically”.

Paula Scher– You Me

Vanessa Diaz– Decadent Ledge

The third exhibition Carol Sackman and Blake White: The Mosaic House of Dunedin, includes bright and colorful mosaic work borrowed from their famous home.

All these exhibitions are on view until 12/23/22.

Dec 022022
 

The Divided Cell (paravent), 2015, by William Monk, part of his exhibition, The Cloud is Growing in the Trees at Kohn Gallery in 2015. This was the artist’s first exhibition in California.

From the Kohn Gallery’s press release-

…This exhibition is the culmination of Monk’s practice over the last few years during which time he has created universes within his paintings that reflect on the relationship of the object and spectator.

In Monk’s paintings a sense of repetition breaks down the figuration, creating visual mantras in which the human scale of the work increases this subtlety rather than amplifying the model. This rhythm happens throughout Monk’s work, surrendering figurative logic to arrive at something stranger and more powerful. Beautifully atmospheric and energetic, these paintings invite a more direct physical connection, drawing in the space between our inner and outer realms of experience.

The artist’s unique relationship to image and paint lead him to enigmatic subject matter such as forests, galaxies, and the open road. The Cloud is Growing in the Trees underscores this mysterious, almost psychedelic relationship that invites the viewer in as an active participant.

Monk is now represented by Pace Gallery and will be part of their booth at Art Basel in Miami. You can find more of his work, including what is at Art Basel, on Instagram.

 

Nov 292022
 

Taos Buffalo,1991, by John Nieto can currently be seen at The James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art, in St. Petersburg, Florida.

From the museum’s information plaque-

With vivid fields of color and strong lines, Nieto paints familiar imagery and expresses it the way he sees it. He spent most of his life in New Mexico, inspired by the light, land, and rich history of the region.

“The colors I work with are a reflection of the way I feel. Sometimes I literally see these colors up in the sky, and it is unbelievable for people who don’t live in this area (near Santa Fe). When I am painting, I feel a certain way, and I feel it in terms of a certain color. So I put it down, then that suggests another color.” -John Nieto

 

Nov 252022
 

For 2015’s Monument Art Festival, a dozen international artists painted murals around the South Bronx and East Harlem.

This mural, Freedom and Emancipation of the Natural World, by SEGO was painted on the wall of P.S. 171 Patrick Henry, East Harlem, near Museum of the City of New York and El Museo del Barrio.

 

Nov 212022
 

Florida CraftArt Festival 2022 was this weekend in St. Pete and there were many great artists showing their work. One of these is ceramic artist William Kidd.

From his website about his work-

Inspired by the beauty found in the natural world, my work is not an imitation of any real living thing, but rather life forms that might exist in some other worldly place. Microorganisms, fungi, seeds, cacti, and sea life have been observed in great detail which have inspired me to create these “organic possibilities”.

Using a potter’s wheel and various hand-building techniques, my work is produced solely by myself in my studio. My clay of choice is a low-fire red earthenware clay which is then finished using oxide stains, underglazes, and my signature crawl glaze to create a rich textural, colorful surface that is unique to my work.

I have a sincere passion to create objects with clay and this energy radiates from within me into the work I produce.

Along with his website, you can also see Kidd’s work on his Instagram.

If you are in the St. Pete area, Florida CraftArt is a great place to find and purchase unique work created by artists from Florida.

Nov 172022
 

Verve Supreme by Neverne Covington

The Blue Book of Love & Longing by Neverne Covington

The Blue Book of Love & Longing by Neverne Covington (closer)

The Book of Remembering and Forgetting by Neverne Covington

The Book of Remembering and Forgetting by Neverne Covington

Currently at the Creative Pinellas Gallery is Arts Annual 2022. Creative Pinellas invited past Professional and Emerging Artist Grantees to participate in the show, which celebrates the work of local artists. Many of the works from the show are also available for sale.

For more on artist Neverne Covington, whose work is above, here is a bit more information.

This year the following artists are included in the show-

This exhibition is on view from November 11th through December 31st, 2022. It’s a great way to see some of the best artwork being made by local artists in Pinellas County.

A selection of some of the work on view is on the pages below, but all of the work is definitely worth checking out.

Nov 112022
 

Bosco Sodi’s outdoor sculpture installation, Perfect Bodies, presented by Pioneer Works, was on view in Redhook, Brooklyn from October 2020 until December 2020.

From Pioneer Works’ press release-

Sited on a once teeming commercial concrete parking lot two blocks south of Pioneer Works, Perfect Bodies speaks to, in artist Bosco Sodi’s words, “silence, contemplation and the passing of time—the small things in life and our relationship with the earth.” The installation consists of large-scale clay spheres and cubes made from local clay fired in the artist’s studio in Oaxaca, Mexico, which made the long journey by road across the Mexico-US border to Red Hook. A longtime resident of the neighborhood—itself named after the tone of its own clay soil—Sodi is known for his use of raw and organic materials to create textured paintings and objects.

Sodi’s ongoing dialogue with nature and landscape, shaped by his interests in Japanese aesthetics and Abstract Expression, puts himself in the lineage of both Arte Povera and Land Art—two post-war movements which emphasized, respectively, radically simple materials and an integral relationship between art and earth. As Spanish author Juan Manuel Bonet remarked in the artist’s 2020 eponymous monograph, his three dimensional works reconcile an interest in minimalism with the practices of Mexican heritage. On this topic, curator Dakin Hart further writes: “At his place in Oaxaca, Sodi hand forms large geometric sculptures from clay and fires them in a makeshift kiln on the beach. Cuboids in different formats recall the scale and how-did-they-do-that-craft of cyclopean architecture across the ancient world. While spheroids, each formed by eye in a landscape of unbelievable things, might be the petrified remnants—or organic vanguard—of a Jurassic invasion. The past seeding itself into the present, a starting point for nature’s revenge.”

Currently, as part of Art Biennale 2022, Fondazione dell’Albero d’Oro is showing What Goes Around Comes Around at Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, in Venice, Italy, until November 27th, 2022.  The art installation will include his paintings as well as recent sculptures.