Florida artist Jane Bunker’s Mandala, is one of several of her paintings of lilies on view at Soft Water Gallery in St. Pete, Florida.
Proceeds from the sales of her work will be donated to the Woodson Warriors Scholarships Fund. Administered by The Carter G. Woodson African American Museum of Florida, the fund distributes scholarships to local African American college scholars. Bunker established the fund in 2019 while she was a volunteer at the museum.
Artist Alex Katz created this mural, Bill 2, a portrait of modern dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones, in 2019 for Murals of La Jolla in San Diego. Murals of La Jolla is a project started in 2010 by The Athenaeum and the La Jolla Community Foundation. It commissions artists to create work to be displayed on buildings around La Jolla. A map of all the murals currently on view can be found here.
From the Murals of La Jolla website about the work-
Alex Katz’s mural, Bill 2, celebrates Bill T. Jones, one of the most noted and recognized modern-dance choreographers of our time. Executed in Katz’s bold and simplified signature style, Bill 2 depicts Jones’ visage, through a series of distinct expressions. The repetition of his face has a cinematic and lyrical quality, reinforcing his place in the world of dance, music and film. Portions of the face are dramatically cropped, giving the viewer only quick and gestural glimpses of Jones. Bill 2, is a striking homage to two artists, Katz and Jones, both renowned in their respective fields of visual and performing arts. The mural’s proximity to the new Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center gives a nod to the interconnected worlds of art, music, and dance.
The Guggenheim museum in NYC is currently showing Alex Katz: Gathering, a retrospective of the artist’s work from the late 1940’s until the present. The exhibition will be up until February 20, 2023.
From their website about the exhibition-
Emerging as an artist in the mid-20th century, Katz forged a mode of figurative painting that fused the energy of Abstract Expressionist canvases with the American vernaculars of the magazine, billboard, and movie screen. Throughout his practice, he has turned to his surroundings in downtown New York City and coastal Maine as his primary subject matter, documenting an evolving community of poets, artists, critics, dancers, and filmmakers who have animated the cultural avant-garde from the postwar period to the present.
Staged in the city where Katz has lived and worked his entire life, and prepared with the close collaboration of the artist, this retrospective will fill the museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda. Encompassing paintings, oil sketches, collages, drawings, prints, and freestanding “cutout” works, the exhibition will begin with the artist’s intimate sketches of riders on the New York City subway from the late 1940s and will culminate in the rapturous, immersive landscapes that have dominated his output in recent years.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company has numerous performances every year. Conceived and directed by Bill T. Jones, and choreographed by Jones with Janet Wong and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, the latest work, Curriculum II, will be performed at on March 10, 11, and 12, at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston.
Jones also hosts the series Bill Chats at NYC’s The New School. On January 30th, he will be in conversation with Bessie Award-winning theater director and performance artist, Niegel Smith and curator, producer, and director, Kamilah Forbes. For more events check out the New York Live Arts calendar.
Floating Candy Canes, 2021, from Nancy Cohen’s 2021 exhibition at Morean Arts Center, This Is How I Got So Fat.
From the Morean Arts Center website about the artist and exhibition-
Nancy Cohen is a classical oil painter in the chiaroscuro style of the Old Masters, but with a contemporary twist. She paints the things that inspire her: light filled florals, still life, and landscapes. At the top of the list recently is food, especially desserts: cakes, cupcakes, ice cream cones, and candy. She likes juxtaposing her serious masterly painting technique against such a frivolous and fun subject.
Her current series, entitled “This is How I Got So Fat,” although whimsical, underlines a serious message. Nancy believes that celebrating something that many people find shameful makes a powerful statement about acceptance of differences and the ability to be confident without having to be perfect.
About this body of work, Nancy says: “I think ‘art’ can seem serious and intimidating for many people. I hope that my work brings humor and humanity that can make art more approachable and accessible. What could be more fun than seriously executed paintings of fluffy desserts and juicy fruits with maybe even some gum balls thrown in? One thing I’ve learned as an artist – everyone loves a painting of a giant donut!”
El Templo- Find the Light by Jade Rivera is part of the 2016 SHINE Mural Festival in St. Pete, Florida.
From the St. Pete Arts Alliance website about the work-
Perched on the boy’s neck is a huge monarch butterfly almost as big as the ibis, its gold, black and orange wings spread wide, flitting against the boy’s cheek. The boy looks serenely up and away, as if unaware of the bird and the butterfly. The ibis and butterfly reflect the Florida reality surrounding the boy – the ibis is an iconic Florida bird found along the coastline or wandering through the streets. The candle represents light from the soul.
It’s a startling image for passing drivers and pedestrians – peaceful, but unsettling, with the oversized butterfly touching the boy’s face and the bird’s beak digging in his chest.
For more work by Jade Rivera, also check out his Instagram.
“Tower, Houston”, 2020
“Tower, Houston”, 2020 (closer look)
“City Square at 4 am (Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, Large Version)”, 2020
“Midtown, NYC”, 2020
The paintings above are from Daniel Rich’s 2020 exhibition at Miles McEnery Gallery in NYC.
From the gallery’s press release-
Daniel Rich’s reticulated cityscapes and slick façades appear at first glance to be quite literally superficial. Whether it is a geometric exterior pressed close to the picture plane or a cluster of multiple structures glimpsed from a distance, we experience architecture in his painting as a wholly exteriorized phenomenon— looming close up or made smaller through a bird’s-eye view.
His process-oriented paintings offer windows to different parts of the world— some figuratively, others much more literally—and can evoke a distorted experience of temporality for the viewer. Like compositions by Bernd and Hilla Becher or Andreas Gursky, Rich’s artworks offer clinical, complex architectural views onto the world that are filled with subtleties. However, Rich differs from Becher or Gursky in his painstaking, intricate process of translating found images into painting. The works also evoke early 20th century European Modernism, recalling Giorgio de Chirico’s metaphysical cityscapes and Germany’s Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) artists of the 1920s and 1930s.
Architecture, as it is commonly understood, is designed and implemented to house the human and is itself the manifestation of our constructed realities. When all signs of life are missing from buildings and spaces, as in Rich’s paintings, the result is an unsettling subversion that upends and questions what we have come to expect of both architectural spaces and the organized linearity of time. Rich probes viewers to consider what lies beyond the surface.
Rich also uses his anonymous architectural imagery to talk about history and politics. He speaks of his scenes as “failed utopias” and “changing political power structures.” In their seeming permanence, the fixed and rigid edifices that populate his work speak to a late capitalist urbanism that sees its monuments not as contingent, but as immovable and eternal.
His newest paintings are currently on view at the gallery for his exhibition Flat Earth on view until 1/28/23.
For more work by Bryan Snyder, check out his website. It has a large amount of information about the artist and his history.
During his time in Carlsbad, he has done a lot of work to create an artistic community- including founding both the Carlsbad Crawl, a website which focuses on art happenings around town; and the Carlsbad Art Wall, which rotates new art murals every two months, alternating between visiting artists and local artists.
Finally check out his Instagram for up to date content- today he posted a video segment his students made on his as a skateboarding teacher.
Orange Tree
One Line That Connects Us
Orange Tree by Angela Warren is one of several of her works currently located at the Fenway Hotel in Dunedin, Florida. Organized by Creative Pinellas, Beyond the Walls 2022 places Pinellas County artists in several different hotels in the county.
Warren is also part of Arts Annual 2022 at the Creative Pinellas Gallery. For this exhibition she created the interactive work shown above, One Line That Connects Us.
From her Instagram about the work-
Last summer I took some time to brainstorm this work. I wanted to do a piece that would engage people in the gallery and encourage others to participate in creating. My idea/the concept is that we are all literally connected with one line, there’s so much that divides people but art is a way to connect us together! 💜
One Line That Connects Us:
This is an interactive art piece.
This year was hard. The recent hurricane Ian, the pandemic, various wars…these things pushed us further and further away from each other. It’s time to come back together!
During the 2022 Arts Annual opening on November 11th, I invite friends to have their portrait drawn by me in a “blind contour” style. If guests are feeling extra brave and want to take a turn, it is highly suggested!
The two rules are, no looking at the canvas, and no lifting your marker. This allows for an intimate interaction between the drawer, and the drawee. Once there are a good “community” of drawings, we can fill in each others portraits.
The picture above is from one of the earlier days of the piece. Check out her Instagram for more updated shots or better yet, see it at the gallery.
Tomorrow, 12/15, Creative Pinellas is having a party to celebrate the exhibition, from 6-9pm. It’s a great way to experience the show and meet the artist participants.
“Thru” by Jessi Sherbet and “Remi” by Mia Makes It (sculpture on the right)
“Untitled” low fire ceramic by Mike Cannata
There were so many great artists showing work at the group of galleries in the Kress Building in Ybor City, this post needed to be split in two. For part one, on Tempus Projects’ three spaces, head here.
Quaid Gallery is an artist cooperative gallery founded by a group of Tampa artists and is focused on contemporary artists creating mixed media exhibitions. In addition to monthly curatorial projects, they are planning to host events which will include readings, drawing nights and film screenings. Liquid Snow is their current exhibition and included the artwork pictured above by Jessi Sherbet, Mia Makes It, and Mike Cannata.
Parachute Gallery is showing One and Only · يكتا , which centers around the project Green Wedding by Fort Myers, Florida-based Iranian artist, Leila Mesdaghi.
From the website’s description of the project-
In late 2021, Mesdaghi traveled to her childhood home in Tehran, Iran, to throw herself a wedding, sans partner. She writes, “As a child I had dreams about getting married and having a wedding in our house. An Iranian wedding is a heavily glamorized and festive event where the bride is treated like a princess and guests come celebrate and admire her with gold and jewelry. I decided to have a wedding for myself. I made my dress at a high-end fashion boutique, bought a beautiful gold ring with my dad’s money, hired Maryam Saeedpoor (a well-known photographer,) a hair stylist, played Persian wedding music, and had a few friends plus my aunt and uncle as my guests.”
Documentation of the ceremony—a series of six limited-edition portraits by Saeedpoor and a collaborative video piece with director Khashayar Khalilkhani and vocalist Mahboubeh Golzari, reciting a poem by Iranian poet Houshang Ebtehaj about love and longing—beautifully articulates the complex emotions behind the project.
The photos and dress are seen in the image below, along with the work of six regional and national artists whose work ties into this project thematically. These artists are Sharareh Allahyari, Jordan Blankenship, Golbanou Moghaddas, Pottery Boys – Glenn Woods and Keith Herbrand, and Rebecca Stevens.
Tampa artist and photographer Jenny Carey has opened a new space, Gratus, which is currently showing her work. She also had her book, All I See Is Your Glinting: 90 Days in the Pandemic, which she created with Gianna Russo, the inaugural Wordsmith of The City of Tampa, available for sale.
For more of Carey’s work and to see what’s next for the gallery, check out her Instagram. She also founded Creatives Exchange, a collective of professional women artists in Tampa.
Finally, Department of Contemporary Art Tampa, FL, once a week for three weeks is hosting a mystery local artist. During the event the artist of the evening was revealed as Selena Ferrer. This week on 12/15/22, the last artist will be revealed. Also check out the gallery’s Instagram for updates.
“The Great Mother Text, Papaya and Pearls” and “Frozen Conch” photographs from Cristina Molina’s “The Matriarchs” series
Painting by Eric Ondina
“Here, Together” Photograph by Amber Bernard
It was an exciting night for art this past Thursday in Ybor City, Tampa, as several spaces opened their doors in the Kress Building.
Tempus Projects now has three spaces in the building. In their main gallery was KARST GROUNDS ::QUATRO SUNISTRA, the fourth iteration of their annual open call exhibition exploring “the sinister side of the Sunshine State”. The work varied in medium, and included painting, photography, and sculpture.
From their website-
The exhibition title is a portmanteau of “sunshine” and the Latin word “sinistra”—the forebearer of the English word “sinister” which retains some of its original connotations of something that is harmful and inauspicious. The play on words reflects the often idyllic/nightmarish dichotomy Florida embodies in its natural, social, and political climates. This serves as a thematic jumping-off point for the exhibition’s applicants as the artists investigate this peculiar state through their diverse perspectives and unique approaches.
In their Tempus Volta space was Beneath the Mistletoe Screaming, a group exhibition and holiday shop with lots of great affordable art, with most pieces ranging from $5 to $500.
View inside Tempus Volta
Paintings by Alex Torres
Paintings by Lynn Manos
Drift, is Tempus Projects’ independent curator’s space (seen below). On Thursday they were showing and selling work from various artists.
All three spaces were showing strong work. Make sure to check out Tempus Projects’ Instagram for updates on the galleries.
