Places to Visit Archives

Flashback- South Carolina Art Galleries- Chenoweth. Halligan Studios

Art, Art Shows by Location, Ceramic Art, Collage, Drawing, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Places to Visit, Sculptors / Sculpture, South Carolina Art Shows, Tarpon Springs

Apr 252025

Work by Roger Halligan

Work by Jan Chenoweth

While visiting Lake City, South Carolina for ArtFields one must see gallery is Chenoweth. Halligan Studios. The gallery showcases the work of artists Roger Halligan and Jan Chenoweth who relocated to the area from Chattanooga, Tennessee in 2019. In addition to being a gallery, it is also a working studio with an outdoor sculpture space.

During ArtFields and other events the gallery is open to the public, but they are also available by appointment.

Work by Roger Halligan

Work by Roger Halligan

Work by Jan Chenoweth

Apr 252025

Mural by Donald Walker

ArtFields Community Mural by Jessica Diaz, Morgan Funkhouser, Olivia Cramer, Sam Ogden

Today’s flashback is to 2021 and a trip to Lake City, South Carolina to check out ArtFields. Started in 2013, the event is a wonderful example of how the arts can revitalize local economies.

So what is ArtFields? Every year for one week local businesses and galleries host works created by artists from the Southeastern United States for a competition with prizes totaling over $145,000. There are also two People’s Choice Awards which are determined by the attendees of the festival. The other awards are chosen by a panel of art professionals. Special events take place throughout the week and ArtFields Jr. offers a chance to see work by South Carolina students.

This year the event runs from April 25th to May 3rd, 2025. Even if you can’t make it, it’s worth taking a look here at this year’s artwork as well as from past years.

Below are a few selections from 2021-

Mural by Lance Turner

“From This Moment Forward” by Herman A. Keith Jr. inspired by Gee’s Bend Quilters

Partially finished mural by Broderick Flanigan honoring Lake City educators Elouise Cooper and Derrick Faison.

“7 Red Wolves” by Joann Galarza Vega

About the work from the above by Joann Galarza Vega–

“There may be as few as only 7 red wolves remaining in the wild. These animals, like so many others, are disappearing in the shadows of our periphery. Their very existence depends on us, as did their extinction. Let us see them, acknowledge them, acknowledge that biodiversity and the balance of life matters. They are painted bright red in order to stand out and bring attention, no longer hidden away.”

Pictured above is The House on Church Street which in 2021 was used for several art installations including the two below. The first is New Histories: The Gadsden Farm Project by Michael Austin Diaz and Holly Hanessian.

About the installation-

New Histories: The Gadsden Farm Project is a socially engaged art project that explores the new history of the Gadsden County, FL. Once a thriving agriculturally center, the county is now the poorest in the state of Florida and the only county with a majority African American population. Working with a team from the State of Florida Archives, we were able to build relationships with over a dozen small farmers trying to address the area’s status as an economic and food desert. These farmers included first generation immigrants, fourth generation shade tobacco farmers, livestock farmers, and organic vegetable growers. The project is presented here through a dining table installation. Embedded speakers play a series of interviews with participating farmers, and each farmer is represented through an individually designed ceramic dinner. The table is set with live plants, seed bombs, and alfalfa hay.

The installation below, All Too Brief, was created by Gainesville, Florida artist Cindy Steiler.

From the ArtFields website about the installation-

All Too Brief was inspired by the movement of time and the unconscious process where our present moment is being continuously converted to memory. The elements comprising All Too Brief include a series of scrolls of cyanotype photographs and repurposed textiles wound on antique industrial weaving bobbins. Each scroll has a WW2-era laundry pin embossed with a number that corresponds to the written narrative of the images and textiles it holds. This piece is my attempt to document and archive people, places, and fleeting moments I hold dear. This piece became even more meaningful to me this year. My studio assistant at the time this piece was created has since passed.

Finally- while in town it’s also worth checking out the Ronald E. McNair Life History Center and Memorial Park. The Lake City-born astronaut and physicist died tragically in the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion.

Florida Artists- Edel Alvarez Galban (AGalban)- Portrait of José Martí

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Clearwater, Florida Art Shows, Florida Travel, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Pinellas County, Places to Visit, Tampa, Ybor City

Jan 282025

Marti a flor de labios (Marti on the lips) is a portrait of Cuban poet, writer, journalist, philosopher, and activist José Martí by Cuban artist Edel Alvarez Galban (AGalban). The painting was part of the 2023 exhibition El Arte: Echos of Cuba at the Clearwater Library in Florida. Galban emigrated to the United States in 1995, later moving to St. Petersburg, Florida in 2001 where he works in both the medical profession and the arts.

José Martí was born in Havana on January 28th, 1853 and died in 1895 during the Battle of Dos Rios, fighting for Cuba’s independence from Spain. He traveled to Tampa Bay’s Latin Quarter, Ybor City, on several occasions while in exile to give speeches and to raise funds to support his cause.

Parque Amigos de Jose Marti (Friends of Jose Marti Park) in Ybor City features a statue of Martí and a plaque. The land was gifted to the Republic of Cuba in 1956 and was once home to the boarding house of Afro-Cuban activist Paulina Pedroso. She was friends with Martí and he stayed with her during his visits to the area.

California Art Shows- Horace Poolaw at Agua Caliente Cultural Museum in Palm Springs

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, California Travel, Palm Springs, Photographers / Photography, Places to Visit

Oct 142024

The Agua Caliente Cultural Museum opened in 2023 in its new location in Palm Springs as part of the Agua Caliente Cultural Plaza. It consists of several exhibition areas that tell the story of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. These include an immersive digitally animated film in a theater at the entrance, scale replicas of the Indian Canyons, and videos, historical photographs and documents. The museum also includes several artifacts including those found during excavations for the plaza that are over 7,000 years old.

The museum also has a gallery for rotating exhibitions focused on traditional and contemporary Native American art. Currently on view is For a Love of His People, the black and white photography of Horace Poolaw.

From the museum–

Horace Poolaw (Kiowa, 1906-1984) was born during a time of great change for his people—one year before Oklahoma statehood and six years after the U.S. government approved an allotment policy that ended the reservation period. A rare American Indian photographer who documented Indian subjects, he began making a visual history in the mid-1920s and continued for the next 50 years.

Poolaw photographed his friends and family, and events important to them—weddings, funerals, parades, fishing, driving cars, going on dates, going to war, playing baseball. When he sold his photos at fairs and community events, he often stamped the reverse: “A Poolaw Photo, Pictures by an Indian, Horace M. Poolaw, Anadarko, Okla.” Not simply by “an Indian,” but by a Kiowa man strongly rooted in his multi-tribal community, Poolaw’s work celebrates his subjects’ place in American life and preserves an insider’s perspective on a world few outsiders are familiar with—the Native America of the Southern Plains during the mid-20th century.

Organized around the central theme of Poolaw as a man of his community and time, For a Love of His People is based on the Poolaw Photography Project, a research initiative established by Poolaw’s daughter, Linda, in 1989 at Stanford University and carried on by Native scholars Nancy Marie Mithlo (Chiricahua Apache) and Tom Jones (Ho-Chunk) of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

For a Love of His People: The Photography of Horace Poolaw is organized by the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. The exhibition was curated by Tom Jones (Ho-chunk) and Nancy Marie Mithlo (Chiricahua Apache).

Below are a few selections from the show-

California Art Shows- “Albert Frey: Inventive Modernist” at Palm Springs Art Museum’s Art and Design Center

Architecture, Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, California Travel, Palm Springs, Salton Sea

Aug 142024

Frey House I (1940) as pictured in House & Garden magazine, January 1948

More images of Frey House I

Palm Springs is famous for its mid-century modern architecture and architect Albert Frey played a large part in creating that legacy. Palm Springs Art Museum’s Architecture and Design Center’s Albert Frey: Inventive Modernist celebrates his career with a creatively curated show filled with an extensive collection of historical photographs.

From the museum-

Albert Frey (American, born Switzerland, 1903-1998) helped to establish Palm Springs as a world-recognized center for modern architecture and design. He was the first architect to design a modern International Style structure for Palm Springs and paved the way for modern architecture and the architects that followed.

Steeped in early European modernism, Frey’s adroit handling of low-cost and low-maintenance industrial materials, sublime desert color combinations, and appealing geometric compositions give him a unique and permanent place in the idiom of “desert modernism” and succinctly expressed his two greatest loves—nature and architecture.

His mark on Palm Springs is indelible and includes such recognized icons as the Palm Springs City Hall, Fire Station #1, The Palm Springs Visitors Center, The Palm Springs Aerial Tramway Valley Station, The Loewy House, and his final home, known as Frey House II, as well as hundreds of other notable projects.

“….the sun, the pure air and the simple forms of the desert create perfect conditions for architecture.”

Albert Frey in a letter to Le Corbusier, 1935 about Palm Springs

More selections from the exhibition below-

In 1937, Frey left California to join the staff of Philip Goodwin who was commissioned to design the new Museum of Modern Art in New York. The museum has included documentation, photos and a model of the building- pictured above.

Above are stills taken from North Shore Yacht Club (1958), a promotional video for the structure that Frey built when the Salton Sea was a thriving resort destination. The refurbished building is now used for community events in Mecca, California.

The Tramway Gas Station, pictured above, is now the location of the Official Palm Springs Visitor Information Center.

From the museum-

At the same location where some 23 years earlier Clark & Frey had designed the graceful stone entry gates to Palm Springs, Frey created another welcoming structure-the Tramway Gas Station, a bold and assertive monument. Architecturally speaking, its roof offers a hyperbolic paraboloid design. Its cantilever suggests a spectacular soaring bird and indicates that visitors were entering a decidedly mid-century modern, forward-thinking city. About its genesis Frey said, “When you think about what nature produces in fantastic forms, in birds and animals-that’s where creativity comes in.”

In 1996 the building was approved by the city for demolition, sparking the beginning of the mid-century preservation movement in Palm Springs. The building was saved by those who bravely stood up for and championed its daring artistry, its physical representation of a moment in time and place, and the legacy of Albert Frey.

This exhibition closes 8/18/24.

If you are a modernism fan, every year Palm Springs celebrates Modernism Week- this year with a four day event in October and next year a week long event in February.

Murals of La Jolla- Sandra Cinto

Art, Artists, California Street Art, California Travel, Conceptual Art, Painting / Painters, Places to Visit, Public Art, San Diego Street Art, San Diego Travel, Street Art

Aug 012024

Sandra Cinto created the mural above in 2018 for Murals of La Jolla, in San Diego. The Murals of La Jolla project commissions various artists to create murals around La Jolla with 16 currently on view and 48 created in total. A map of current work can be found here.

From the Murals of La Jolla website about this work–

In Sandra Cinto’s mural, Untitled, we get lost in a vortex of lines that push and pull in every direction. Inspired by the immersive relationship of the ocean as a part of La Jolla’s Landscape, Cinto “decided to create another kind of landscape and make it by drawing without colors”. The artist intends for each viewer to have a different experience with the work as it is meant to be an open landscape. For Cinto, her work reinforces a kind of philosophy that each little mark is important, since “little details, little actions can change everything.” The viewer can be absorbed in the lines and details found in her work or step back and behold an undulating and pulsating landscape.

Throwback Thursday- Randyland in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Pittsburgh, Places to Visit, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture

Jul 182024

Randyland is a free eclectic outdoor museum located on the Northside of Pittsburgh. The founder, Randy Gilson bought the property for $10,000 using a credit card. Upcycled objects, sculptures, paintings and murals began to fill the space, and the rest is history.

Included in the story of Randyland is how Gilson met and fell in love with his partner, David Paul Francis “Mac” McDermott. McDermott would go on to help Gilson build the museum. Sadly, he passed away from cancer in 2019.

The museum is open year round from 12-7pm.

NYC Art Shows- Beau Dick at Andrew Kreps Gallery

Art, Art Shows by Location, Canada, Films, New York Art Shows, Sculptors / Sculpture, Video and Film

May 142024

Kwakwaka’wakw artist and activist Chief Beau Dick’s (1955-2017) carved masks for the exhibition Walas Gwa’yam / Big, Great Whale at Andrew Kreps Gallery draw you in with their intriguing visages.

From the press release-

“Our whole culture has been shattered. It’s up to the artists now to pick up the pieces and try and put them together, back where they belong. Yeah, it does become political. It becomes beyond political; it becomes very deep and emotional.” – Beau Dick speaking in the 2017 film ‘Maker of Monsters: The Extraordinary Life of Beau Dick.’

Beau Dick’s works are deeply informed by the tradition of potlatch, a gift-giving ceremony practiced by Indigenous people of the coast of Pacific Northwest Canada, which focused on the redistribution of wealth as a tool for building solidarity. Outlawed by the Canadian Government for nearly seventy years as part of an ongoing history of forced assimilation, the seclusion of Dick’s birthplace on Kingcome Inlet (Gwa’yi) allowed his community to continue practicing customs relatively free from the gaze of colonial authorities. Trained in wood-carving by his father, grandfather, and other master carvers, and completing his education in Vancouver, Dick was acutely aware of inherent tensions between contemporary consumer culture and Kwakwaka’wakw teachings. Refuting his masks as static objects, his carvings reference supernatural figures, like Dzunuk’wa, the “wild woman of the woods,” and her counterpart, Bakwas, “wild man of the woods,” which are reanimated to combat what Dick saw as capitalism’s “ravenous” oppression. Frequently employing his works in dances and performances, in 2012 he took forty Atlakim (Forest) masks to his community in Alert Bay, where after one final ceremony, they were ritually burned, referencing the ongoing responsibility for rebirth, and recreation in the face of erased tradition.

Florida Artists and Art Spaces- Whimzeyland and SHAMc in Safety Harbor, Florida

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ceramic Art, Collage, Conceptual Art, Florida Art Shows, Glasswork, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Pinellas County, Places to Visit, Public Art, Safety Harbor, Sculptors / Sculpture

Jan 292024

Whimzeyland, the “Bowling Ball House”, is a local landmark located in Safety Harbor, Florida, created by artists Todd Ramquist and Kiaralinda.

About the house from their website–

In 1985, they purchased the beige house on Third Street in Safety Harbor, Florida. They traveled everywhere, actively seeking out inspirational and unusual places. Inspired by these travels, they began transforming their house. One of the earliest additions were the wooden triangles to the eaves of their house. The beige house became bold in color, too.

One day, they went to a flea market and saw a sign that said that anybody could take 10 free bowling balls. They took the bowling balls and began painting and placing them around the property. This is how they became known as the bowling ball house of Safety Harbor.

Todd and Kiaralinda even branched out of decorating their home, creating two different art cars, designed a restaurant, and making public sculptures, among other things. They began calling themselves the Whimzey Twinz because they work together on all of their projects.

Their travels soon included visits to folk artists and artists that they met at their shows. These friends visited them, too. Todd and Kiaralinda’s bowling balls inspired many of them. They would create bowling balls for Todd and Kiaralinda, who got so many of these works from artist friends that they started a gallery in their home. They created a “Call for Balls” which made a lot more of these art works roll into their home. Today, they have over 80 bowling balls from various artists around the world and people still bring them bowling balls as gifts.

If you are in the area, make sure to also stop by Safety Harbor Art and Music Center (SHAMc), a nonprofit they opened in 2017. It has an art gallery and shop, and hosts music events and art classes as well.