Mar 162023
 

Eric “ESH” Hornsby, “Living Daylights 1″and “Living Daylights 2”

Adam Christopher Reed, “The Judge”

Nikita Rosalind, “Peace in the Wild Waves”

The Werk Gallery is an exciting new space in St. Pete that hosts monthly exhibitions in one half and the owners’ curated mix of vintage and modern items in the other. The photos above are from Shiny & New, the first gallery’s first show.

Artists from this exhibition pictured above- Adam Christopher Reed, Nikita Rosalind, and Eric “ESH” Hornsby

Currently the gallery is showing Rite of Spring, featuring artists Kenny Jensen, Nathan Beard, Samson Huang, Laura Spencer (Miss Crit), John Gascot, and Leafmore Studios (Becca McCoy and Justin Groom).

The gallery is open Thursday- Sunday from 12-5 pm.

Mar 022023
 

Artist Miguel Luciano– Vinyl banner from the public art project “Mapping Resistance: The Young Lords in El Barrio”, 2019 Image: Young Lords Member with Pallante Newspaper (1970)” by Hiram Maristany and “The People’s Pulpit” (2022), a repurposed vintage pulpit from the First Spanish Methodist Church in East Harlem.

Miguel Luciano- Vinyl banner from the public art project “Mapping Resistance: The Young Lords in El Barrio”, 2019 Image: Young Lords Member with Pallante Newspaper (1970)” by Hiram Maristany

 

Poor People’s Art: A (Short) Visual History of Poverty in the United States at USF Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa uses installations and artworks to tell the story of, and expand perspectives on, The Poor People’s Campaign- from its origins in the late 1960s to the present day form, as well as comment on poverty and other social issues. Both educational and engaging, it shows that despite long struggles and some progress, we are still very far from much needed social change, especially in regards to poverty.

The museum also produced a free full color, 48 page workbook that you can pick up there or download as a PDF that can be downloaded from their website.

From the gallery’s website-

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is well known for his “I Have a Dream” speech, yet much less emphasis is placed on his campaign to seek justice for America’s poor, “The Poor People’s Campaign.” This was a multi-cultural, multi-faith, multi-racial movement aimed at uniting poor people and their allies to demand an end to poverty and inequality. Fifty-three years after Dr. King’s death, the Reverend William Barber II launched a contemporary push to fulfill MLK’s ambitious brief — one that calls for a “revolution of values” that unites poor and impacted communities across the country. The exhibition Poor People’s Art: A (Short) Visual History of Poverty in the United States represents a visual response to Dr. King’s “last great dream” as well as Reverend Barber’s recent “National Call for Moral Revival.”

With artworks spanning more than 50 years, the exhibition is divided into two parts: Resurrection (1968-1994) and Revival (1995-2022). Resurrection includes photographs, paintings, prints, videos, sculptures, books, and ephemera made by a radically inclusive company of American artists, from Jill Freedman’s photographs of Resurrection City, the tent enclave that King’s followers erected on the National Mall in 1968, to John Ahearns’ plaster cast sculpture Luis Fuentes, South Bronx (1979). Revival offers contemporary engagement across a range of approaches, materials, and points of view. Conceived in a declared opposition to poverty, racism, militarism, environmental destruction, health inequities, and other interlocking injustices, this exhibition shows how artists in the US have visualized poverty and its myriad knock-on effects since 1968. Participating artists include John Ahearn, Nina Berman, Martha De la Cruz, Jill Freedman, Rico Gatson, Mark Thomas Gibson, Corita Kent, Jason Lazarus, Miguel Luciano, Hiram Maristany, Narsiso Martinez, Adrian Piper, Robert Rauschenberg, Rodrigo Valenzuela, William Villalongo & Shraddha Ramani, and Marie Watt.

Below are some images from the show and the descriptions from the museum.

About the two works above from the museum’s walls-

A multimedia visual artist whose work explores themes of history, popular culture, and social justice, Miguel Luciano revisits the history of the Young Lords, a revolutionary group of young Puerto Rican activists who organized for social justice in their communities beginning in the late 1960s. Luciano’s first contribution to Poor People’s Art is a vinyl banner from the public art project Mapping Resistance: The Young Lords in El Barrio (2019), a collaboration with artist Hiram Maristany. It features the photograph “Young Lords Member with Pa’lante Newspaper (1970)” by Maristany, who was the official photographer of the Young Lords and a founding member of the New York chapter. This banner, along with nine other enlarged Maristany photographs, were installed throughout East Harlem at the same locations where their history occurred 50 years prior.

Luciano’s second contribution to Poor People’s Art is the sculpture The People’s Pulpit (2022), a repurposed vintage pulpit from the First Spanish Methodist Church in East Harlem. The Young Lords famously took over the church in 1969 and renamed it “The People’s Church”; they hosted free breakfast programs, clothing drives, health screenings, and other community services there. In this exhibition, The People’s Pulpit features an historic recording of Nuyorican poet Pedro Pietri reciting the celebrated poem Puerto Rican Obituary during the Young Lord’s takeover of The People’s Church.

Placards created by USF Contemporary Art Museum students, faculty and staff

Martha De La Cruz, “Techo de Sin (Roof of Without)”, 2021, made from stolen, scavenged and donated materials found in Southwest Florida.

About the above work from the wall plaque-

Afro-Taino artist Martha De la Cruz fashioned her sculptural installation Techo de sin (Roof of Without), 2021, from stolen, scavenged and donated materials found in Southwest Florida. According to the artist, “Florida is home to a large population of Latin American migrants who have ended up in the US largely due to economic pressures, exploitation and veins of power etched by Europe and the US.” Her powerful work deals with the results of this disjunction and the “symptoms thereabouts (e.g. houselessness, fugitiv-ity, government corruption, and income disparity, etc.).” According to De la Cruz, the word “sin” is a common Dominican mispronunciation for the word “zinc.” The sculpture is animated by a single light bulb that turns on for just ten minutes a day.

Narsiso Martinez “Hollywood & Vine”, 2022

Jason Lazarus “Resurrection City /Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival / A Third Reconstruction”, 2023, plywood, utility fabric, blankets, sleeping cot, paint, lamp, plastic, research library, historical ephemera

From the wall plaque about the Lazarus installation-

Jason Lazarus’s sculptural installation Resurrection City/Poor People’s Campaign: A National call for Moral Revival/A Third Reconstruction (2023) is anchored in the artist’s historical research and several key photographs of Resurrection City. A tent-like shelter inspired by the temporary residences that populated the 1968 mass protest, the interactive sculpture contains simple sleeping quarters and a curated library filled with physical literature and ephemera centered on both the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign and the 2018 Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, co-led by Rev. Dr.William Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis. The library allows for audiences to trace, listen, and talk about the history of advocating for the poor, from 1865 to the present. Additionally, the artist provides a custom transcription (and a QR hyperlink) to Barber’s 49-minute address on the syndicated radio show “The Breakfast Club” in which he carefully outlines his powerful vision for how we might address poverty going forward.

Inside the Jason Lazarus installation

A book and magazine from Jason Lazarus’ installation floor

Mark Thomas Gibson, “Town Crier July 23rd”, 2021

Rico Gatson, “Audre #2”, 2021

Jill Freedman, “Poor People’s Campaign, Resurrection City” 1968

About Jill Freedman’s photograph-

In the spring of 1968, the talented young street photographer Jill Freedman quit her day job as a copywriter in New York City to join the Poor People’s March on Washington. Freedman lived in Resurrection City for the entire six weeks of the encampment’s existence, photographing its residents as they rallied, made speeches, protested in front of government buildings, confronted police, built makeshift kitchens, organized clothing swaps, and dealt with flooding, petty crime, and illness. One of the most important postwar documentarians, and one of the few women photographers of the era, Freedman captured it all. Freedman’s 2017 book, Resurrection City, 1968-from which this exhibition draws a dozen powerful images-showcases the photographs that she made as a participant in the original Poor People’s Campaign. In multiple ways, Freedman’s images are the sympathetic perch upon much of which much of the present exhibition loosely hangs.

This exhibition closes 3/4/23.

Feb 252023
 

Christopher Skura, “Keep the Dream from Ending”, 2022

Christopher Skura, “Keep the Dream from Ending”, 2022 (detail)

Christopher Skura “Sketchbook Drawings”

Christopher Skura, “The Turnaround”, 2021; “Sketchbook Drawings”; “Head Cult”, 2022

 

Christopher Skura, “Story Bored (Cast of Characters)”, 2021

Christopher Skura, “Gob Stopper”, 2018

Christopher Skura’s exhibition The Beginner’s Mind (starting over after Covid) at Dunedin Fine Art Center is an interesting selection of his drawings, paintings and sculpture.

The artist’s statement on his work from the gallery wall-

Working in my Woodstock, NY studio during the 2020 Covid pandemic influenced my creative process by making my working method more direct and immediate. I have begun a routine of drawing everyday in sketchbooks. Out of these small drawings have come many sculptural ideas. Each imagined form serves as a kind of placeholder and represents someone we have lost. Drawing quickly with paint marker, my natural, hardwired shapes have become more pronounced. The goal is to work with a “beginner’s mind” and utilize the flow-state to achieve a direct expression.

All of my work comes out of extensive sketching and drawing. Very rarely do I recreate exact drawings as sculpture but I use them as a spring board to begin experimenting. Most of these drawings are small and done very quickly. By hesitating less, I have focused on completing an artwork in one or two sessions as opposed to laboring over it. The surfaces on the new works have become less concerned with refinement and I feel this has created a warmer and more active surface.

The style of my most recent artworks is influenced by the “street” art that blanketed my New York City neighborhood during lockdown. The images reference psychology, structural systems, emergence theory and the architecture of the human body. Improvisation and freehand drawing are emphasized for phenomenological effect and I try to capture the speed of living in Lower Manhattan. Some of my forms are organic and plant-like but others suggest the machinery of a man-made environment. This duality reflects my visual experiences growing up in the lush Florida landscape and my current life living in New York City.

The forms speak to the effects of time on the human body and the natural world. Each work imagined is a small psychological portrait of something struggling to survive or already gone.

 

Feb 242023
 

Micaela Amateau Amato, “Yoran Por Aire (contes brevas)”

Photographs by Amadia Shadow Rabbit

Film still from Kiara Mohammed Amin’s “Black Presence”

Film still from Kiara Mohammed Amin’s “Black Presence”

Soonoqo: We Become Body in Waves of Light and Sound at Dunedin Fine Art Center is a multimedia exhibition of 18 artists from around the world who “share a common desire for healing, communal growth and interdependence with nature” curated by S. Toxosi.

S. Toxosi’s statement about the exhibition (from the gallery wall)-

I do not possess the language to truly describe the be-holdings within Soonoqo. As a term within the Somali language, it would be difficult to translate into contemporary English. It considers a pluralistic worldview that allows ‘becoming and returning’ to bear witness of itself, within oneself while conjoining through space and time. Soonoqo, basks in the universal soul. Its otherness is imbued as the ‘physical cosmos’ and all its avatars and manifestations.

To speak in metaphor or in a sense of ‘poetic meditation’, one would engulf whirling vortexes, volcanoes and maelstroms that end up in other universes from which bring new revelations or images, The senses are engaged as viewed in Bruno Ferreira Abdala’s video art When Mother Breathes. It is here we can see a pluralist’s sensibility where the cohorts of Soonoqo ‘become and return’ with offerings that contend with the mythical genesis through the acknowledgement and practices of ancestral wisdom, queering mores, spirituality and love. Thus creating fission through initiating and remembering. There is a subtlety of conjuration, ritual, humility, vulnerability in K. Tauches’s Q.A.L. video-making that unfolds and reveals the sentience of a Nature that provides true sustainability.

Soonoqo is a web of interconnected lights in continuous synchrony. It enables manifestations from varied domains of areas of perceptibility through human inner weavings of life experiences and becomes a variety of communicative prowess that encompasses video arts, film, photography, the written word and sonic compositions. These forms all ultimately resonate with and point toward healing where one/all is purified, catalyzed and cleansed through cooperation with nature, technology, shadow matter, dark matter and invisible matter. As can be seen in the film Womb not Tomb by Dea, where she investigates and yields to the teaching of the four elements or in Kiara Mohammed Amin’s Black Presence, a short film of talismanic energy and transformation.

Artists included in the exhibition- Brandy Eve Allen, Viveka Krumm, Harry Wilson Kapatika, Cara Judea Alhadeff, Sadie Sheldon, Chelsea Rowe, Micaela Amateau Amato, Saudade Toxosi, Jennifer Pyron, Amadia Shadow Rabbit, K.Tauches, Javier T. Dones, Bruno Ferreira Abdala, Sall Lam Toro, Kiara Mohamed Amin, Nayetesi, Dea

For more information on this exhibition check out @soono.qo and this conversation with S. Toxosi and DFAC Curators Catherine Bergmann and Nathan Beard which is very informative.

Feb 222023
 

Currently at Carter G. Woodson Museum is Touch in the Spirit of Love, an exhibition of work by professor and artist Dr. Gary L. Lemons.

From the artist about his work (via the museum’s website)-

“I am a Black abstract painter. Conceptually, my paintings are rooted in Africentric colors and patterns. I believe art should inspire all people to connect to the liberating power of communal love. Touch in the Spirit of Love is a series of paintings that graphically illustrate the value of love for all humanity. In an imaginary, spiritually enriched context—this series calls all people together to see each other reaching out to one another through the touching of their hands. The hands in my paintings connect people together to express hope for the life-saving power of love committed to community-building. As envisioned by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., hope for a “beloved community” can be realized when people actively join together to show love for social justice. Overall, the paintings in this series visually challenge people to see the need for loving wholeness in mind, body, heart, and soul. Hands of different colors touching each other in this painting series artistically demonstrate the power of love rooted in freedom for all people who have been historically oppressed.”

 

Feb 042023
 

Le’Andra LeSeur, “In Reverence (An Honoring)”, 2019

Le’Andra LeSeur, “There are other hues of blue”, 2019-2022 (ongoing)

Le’Andra LeSeur, “There are other hues of blue”, 2019-2022 (ongoing)

Le’Andra LeSeur, “The CD Man”, 2017

Le’Andra LeSeur, “Superwoman”, 2018

Spirit, Rhythm, BluesLe’Andra LeSeur’s exhibition at Gallery221@HCC Dale Mabry Campus is a multimedia exploration of life, death, and rebirth- all bathed in blue.

From the Gallery 221 website-

LeSeur’s body of work—a celebration of Blackness, queerness, and femininity—seeks to dismantle systems of power and achieve transcendence and liberation through perseverance. In “Spirit, Rhythm, Blues” at Gallery221@HCC, LeSeur’s installation encourages viewers to contemplate themes such as identity, family, grief and joy, the experience of invisibility, and the power of language.

From the Gallery 221 press release description of Superwoman

This video is a documentation of a self-baptism that took place in the summer of 2018. The work speaks to the cyclical process of the emotional “waves”- highs and lows- experienced in life. As LeSeur conducts the baptism Donny Hathaway’s rendition of Superwoman plays over the visual, and the words “Where were you when I needed you last winter” repeat as the video proceeds then visually plays out in reverse. The words in the song symbolize the internal struggle present when asking how we show up for ourselves during moments of transition and change. Instead of putting pressure on ourselves to be better or do better, those words bring us back to a place of understanding the importance of self-love in how we overcome and get back to a place of grounding and balance in our lives.

It is a moving piece and works well as a balance to the other video works that reference the police killings of Akai Gurley and Alton Sterling (The CD Man, 2017, pictured above).

This exhibition is on view until 3/2/23.

 

Jan 312023
 

Emily Stehle’s studio

John Gascot’s studio

Tricia Lynn’s studio

Pictured above are three of the artists who have studios at The Studios @5663 in Pinellas Park, Florida. Emily Stehle and John Gascot were part of the recent Arts Annual 2022 exhibition at Creative Pinellas. Tricia Lynn is a wildlife oil painter and teacher.

On the fourth Saturday of the month Pinellas Arts Village hosts a block party with vendors, open galleries and studios, crafts, live music, and food. It’s a fun event that offers the opportunity to check out the neighborhood and see what local artists are working on.

Dec 222022
 

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!”

Dec 202022
 

“Call Me Mrs. Mary E. Pleasant: The Midas Touch” by L’Merchie Frazier

Pictured above is a portrait of entrepreneur, civil rights activist and benefactor, Mary Ellen Pleasant who made a name and a fortune for herself in Gold Rush era San Francisco. Her timeline from 1814 to 1904 begins in racial slavery as an indentured servant girl with no formal education. She ascended to a self-made millionaire, amassing a fortune in her lifetime of over $30 million, ($900 million today).

Organized by historian, artist, and curator Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi, “Black Pioneers: Legacy in the American West” at The James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art, consists of 50 pictorial quilts created by members of Women of Color Quilters Network, a group founded by Mazloomi in 1985.

Mazloomi’s statement at the exhibition entrance-

American history is incomplete without the stories of African American men and women, from our enslaved ancestors to our societal challenges. The role of African Americans in the movement toward westward expansion has been largely overlooked. This exhibition of original pictorial quilts brings into focus the rich and diverse stories and achievements of Blacks in American western history. The timeline begins with Esteban’s 1528 arrival in the West and continues through the Civil Rights Movement.

At the end of Reconstruction in the South, discrimination and segregation caused African Americans to seek opportunities where there was less prejudice. In the 1800s, they moved by the thousands to the American West. Some went West as slaves, while free African American men joined the United States Army or became ranch hands, fur traders, cowboys, or miners.

Why quilts? Quilts and quilt making are important to American, and Black culture in particular. The art form was historically one of the few mediums accessible to marginalized groups to tell their own story, to provide warmth for their families, and to empower them with a voice through cloth. Using quilts to tell these stories accentuates the intersections of African Americans in the Western frontier while at once informing about the art form and its role in Black history. It is this often unknown and underappreciated shared reality that must be voiced if we are ever to truly value the unique contributions diverse groups make to the fabric of our nation.

Two more selections from the exhibition are below, although it was very hard to choose which quilts to highlight- there are so many great ones to choose from.

“A Good Soldier: Thomas C. Fleming, America’s Longest Serving Black Journalist” by Rosy Petri

At the time of his retirement in 1997, California journalist Thomas C. Fleming was the nation’s oldest Black journalist with the longest consecutive period of publication.

Information from the Museum’s wall plaque on Stagecoach Mary

Mary Fields- also known as Stagecoach Mary, Black Mary and White Crow-became a Wild West legend because she was the second woman and the first African American woman star route mail carrier in the United States.

Born into slavery and freed after the Civil War, she worked as a servant and laundress for families on riverboats before moving to Montana in 1885. A decade later she became a star route carrier, delivering mail using a stagecoach. She drove the 15-mile route from Cascade to Saint Peter’s Mission, Montana, from 1895 to 1903. Nicknamed Stagecoach Mary, she was known for her reliability and speed.

The six-foot-tall Fields was a quick-shooting and hard drinking mail carrier who wore men’s clothing and flaunted a revolver and a rifle. Locals praised her kindness and generosity, and schools in the town of Cascade were closed each year to celebrate her birthday.  Cascade’s mayor granted her an exemption to enter saloons after Montana passed a law forbidding women from entering these establishments.

The impressive quilts on view educate viewers with stories of individuals and events in African American history that may not have previously been familiar, and present new perspectives on those that are. It’s a wonderful way to utilize a visual medium to captivate, inform, and often inspire.

This exhibition closes on 1/8/2023.

Dec 162022
 

Themes for a Left-Handed Pitcher”, 2021: “Still Life with Left-Handed Pitcher (04-06)”, 2021. serigraphy, pochoir, collage, acrylic ink, gouache on paper; “Left-Handed Pitcher Still Life (II)”, 2021. particle board, acrylic ink, concrete, polymer clay; “Perfect Games (Theme for a Left-Handed Pitcher)”, 2021. projected sound from single speaker. 9:00 min. (infinite loop)

While at Dunedin Fine Art Center to hear Ry McCullough’s talk, I was reminded of seeing this work at the USF Contemporary Art Museum last year as part of Skyway 20/21: A Contemporary Collaboration. The discussion was great and touched on a lot of interesting topics, especially around his use of collage.

From the gallery’s wall plaque about Themes for a Left-Handed Pitcher

Inspired by the perfect game Los Angeles Dodgers’ pitcher Sandy Koufax threw against the Chicago Cubs in 1965, Themes for a Left Handed Pitcher engages compositional fielding of the domestic pitcher and black and white balls in a callback and comparative dialogue between sculptural objects and works on paper. Inviting playful and participatory discovery, the project includes an amplified palindromic sound score and a zine, which are both available to download. Interspersed with abstracted baseball references, the project evokes a change-up between the fabricated and found forms, the known and the unknown.

On McCullough’s website you can find the downloadable zine and the audio file mentioned in the description above and its a chance to check out more of his impressive collage pieces. For his most recent work, also check out his Instagram.

In addition to his independent practice, he is part of the collaborative project, small_bars, with artist Nick Satinover.

From the small_bars information page about the project-

Within their collaborative practice they explore the structural authority of their band name moniker, small_bars. This ambiguous name serves as an all-encompassing banner which simultaneously referencing pixels on a screen, lines of type of a letter press, halftone processes, and the physical clubs and venues their former bands played. As small_bars, McCullough and Satinover are able to generate a collection of collateral materials such as audio recordings, videos, printed ephemera, performative events, and structural arrangements, all of which support and expand the notion of what the moniker suggests. This collaborative effort seeks to use the form of a band-like entity to create a space where the acts of publishing, printing and performance co-exist.