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 232022
 

This mural is by Tampa Bay artists Vanessa Parra and Juan Pablo Parra and their company CAPCo. Also check out their Instagram to see more of their work around the area.

Nov 222022
 

Brightmares was created by Alex Pardee (@alexpardee) for the 2016 SHINE Mural Festival in St. Pete, Florida.

From the St. Pete Arts Alliance website about the work-

The mural is called Brightmare, 46 feet wide and 19 feet tall. An emaciated, purple, naked figure is bowed down under a huge, sagging rainbow-colored ball where her head should be. She’s bony and hunched over, with purple skin and long grey skeletal hands, pendulous breasts and a swollen belly. The figure is on tiptoe, knees bent, one hand on the muddy floor for balance.

The sagging striped ball covers her head and neck and droops toward her belly – a red dot like a bullseye in the center of the ball, is ringed with pink, blue, green, yellow and orange. It’s like a rainbow balloon that’s leaking air, and jammed onto the figure’s head. Colors drip from the ball, and purple splashes from her body, as if the entire mural is melting in the heat.

The figure is stooped in front of a gaping black hole painted on the wall, like the opening of a cave. At her feet, bulbous blobs of white, tan and brown are spurting mud and water into the air.

On the lower left corner, the muddy blobs touch a green metal door in the side of the building. The outline of the cave crosses vertical pipes and electrical connections bolted to the wall. Two dark metal exhaust ducts frame the figure’s heavy rainbow head.

The background of the mural is the same stark industrial tan of the rest of the building, a massive structure that takes up almost an entire block.

Alex Pardee is a multi-media designer and illustrator who’s brought his unique aesthetic to music, film, animation, clothing and comics. When he painted this for the 2016 SHINE Festival, it was the largest mural he’d ever attempted. Ricky Watts, another artist on our tour, flew in from San Francisco to help with the mural’s completion. The mural is painted in aerosol, but the gaping black hole is brush painted.

To your right, in the alley facing this mural, a small window with heavy metal bars reflects the mural’s rainbow colors.

 

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 182022
 

Mundo Loco by Erin Ko spotted in NYC in 2020. For more of her work also check out her Instagram.

The mural has recently been chosen by MakersPlace to be part of Equal Bytes, a new artist accelerator program that aims to “recruit and onboard additional women creators to the NFT space and support the minting and sale of their first NFT”.

Until 11/20/22 you can vote for your favorite artwork on their site and be automatically entered to win one of six NFTs selected by MakersPlace from the exhibition. All of the pieces included are by first-time women NFT creators.  The ten artists who receive the most votes will be invited to participate in their Featured Creators Program.

 

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.