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.

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.

Sep 112022
 

Ofer Wolberger’s photo of Spencer Finch’s installation Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on that September Morning, 2014, located at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.

From the museum’s webpage about the work-

At the heart of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum’s mission is the promise to commemorate the 2,983 killed as a result of the 9/11 and February 26, 1993 attacks. The Memorial and the Museum fulfills this sacred responsibility in many ways—through memorialization, through education and, in some cases, through artistic expression.

One of the Museum’s most recognizable installations is a piece by artist Spencer Finch titled “Trying to Remember the Color of the Sky on That September Morning.” This work runs prominently through Memorial Hall, or the space that connects the two main exhibitions at bedrock in the Museum. This larger-than-life installation is part of the Memorial Museum’s permanent collection and was commissioned in 2014 before the Museum opened its doors to the public.

The piece is comprised of 2,983 individual watercolor squares—each representing a victim of the 2001 and 1993 attacks—and symbolizes the idea of memory. Many remember the beauty of the clear blue sky on the morning of 9/11. But, our own perception of the color blue might not be the same as that of another person. However, just like our perception of color, our memories share a common point of reference.

Within the larger art installation is the quote “No Day Shall Erase You From the Memory of Time” from Book IX of The Aeneid by Roman poet Virgil. Each letter was forged from recovered World Trade Center steel by New Mexico artist Tom Joyce. This quote suggests the transformative potential of remembrance and succinctly reinforces the 9/11 Memorial & Museum’s mission. Today, while the Memorial and the Museum are temporarily closed, these words remain as true as ever.

The image of the work shown above was included in Mint Museum’s 2021 exhibition, W|ALLS: Defend, Divide, and the Divine.

 

Jul 292022
 

Buoyant, by Canadian artist Vicki Smith, from a 2018 exhibition at Bau-Xi Gallery in Vancouver. Smith is currently in the two person show Swimmers with photographer Joshua Jensen-Nagle at Pendulum Gallery.

Jun 252022
 

This work is currently on view at The Broad in Los Angeles.

Information from the museum’s website about this artwork-

Barbara Kruger addresses media and politics in their native tongue: tabloid, sensational, authoritative, and direct. Kruger’s words and images merge the commercial and art worlds; their critical resonance eviscerates cultural hierarchies — everyone and everything is for sale. The year 1989 was marked by numerous demonstrations protesting a new wave of antiabortion laws chipping away at the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. Untitled (Your body is a battleground) was produced by Kruger for the Women’s March on Washington in support of reproductive freedom. The woman’s face, disembodied, split in positive and negative exposures, and obscured by text, marks a stark divide. This image is simultaneously art and protest. Though its origin is tied to a specific moment, the power of the work lies in the timelessness of its declaration.

 

Feb 172022
 

A Surreal Presence for Every Possible State, 2018 by Kenturah Davis from her 2019 exhibition, Blur in the Interest of Precision at Matthew Brown Los Angeles. The four panel work was created using oil paint applied with rubber stamp letters and graphite grid on embossed Mohachi paper.

From the press release-

Blur in the Interest of Precision is a search for parallel conditions between the poetics of our visual experience and the strangeness of our relationship to language. We often use language to carve out distinctions between one thing and another. Davis’ objective—to complicate ideas about meaning, representation and perception—have found refuge in blur and doubling. The new drawings are rendered with arrangements of text, but the words are virtually illegible. Many of the portraits pursue ideas the artist is working through via the writings of Fred Moten and Toni Morrison’s essay, Sites of Memory.

Davis’ work oscillates between various facets of portraiture and design. Using text as a point of departure, the artist explores the fundamental role that language has in shaping how we understand ourselves and the world around us. This manifests in a variety of forms including drawings, photographs and performances.

Recently Davis was commissioned by LA Metro to create work for the future Inglewood Station, slated to open in November of 2022. The work, Sonder, depicts community members photographed at gatherings at the artist’s Inglewood art studio and made into large porcelain enamel steel panels.

From Metro’s site–

The photographs were hand painted with stamps incorporating letters that form the words defining the term “sonder.”

Davis was drawn to the term which alludes to the realization that every person has a unique and significant story. She hopes that the portraits inspire connections between strangers, even if only for a passing moment while waiting for the train.

(images below via LA Metro’s site)

For more images, information about the station, and a video of the artist discussing the work, check out Metro’s website.

 

Oct 052021
 

Kim Anderson, “Alone Together”, 2021

Stereoscope for viewing the above painting

Skyway 20/21: A Contemporary Collaboration, is the second iteration of a joint exhibition across four institutions that highlights contemporary art created in the Central Florida region. Artists selected by a jury are from five counties- Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Manatee, and Sarasota. The exhibitions are an excellent sampling of the work being made in the Tampa Bay area.

The works shown in this post are from the exhibition at the Tampa Museum of Art. The museum has a video playlist on YouTube that includes all of the artists in the exhibition discussing their work. The links below are to the artists’ websites or those videos.

Selina Román “XS” 2019

For Selina Román’s XS series, she created abstract self portraits that examine standards of beauty in relation to expectations of weight and body. The title XS references an extra small size and alludes to the word excess.

This exhibition closes 10/10/21.

 

Aug 132021
 

Dolores Coe “Perimeter”, 2019

Dolores Coe, “Borderland”, 2020

Dolores Coe, “Borderland”, 2020 (detail)

Skyway 20/21: A Contemporary Collaboration, is the second iteration of a joint exhibition across four institutions that highlights contemporary art created in the Central Florida region. Artists selected by a jury are from five counties- Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Manatee, and Sarasota. The exhibitions are an excellent sampling of the work being made in the Tampa Bay area.

The works shown in this post are from the exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. I’ve included links for these artists as well as those not pictured.

Gabriel Ramos, “Mi Isla”, 2021

Gabriel Ramos, “Mi Isla”, 2021 (detail)

Savannah Magnolia, “Chemical Inhalation”, 2019

Savannah Magnolia “In Big Pharma We Trust”, 2019

Savannah Magnolia “In Big Pharma We Trust”, 2019 (detail)

Savannah Magnolia “In Big Pharma We Trust”, 2019 (detail)

Keith Crowley, “Rain Season”, 2019

Keith Crowley, “Nocturne”, 2020

Bassmi Ibrahim, “Awareness 41”

Bassmi Ibrahim, “Isness 158”

Bassmi Ibrahim, “Isness 158” (detail)

The exhibition at this location closes 8/22/21.