Oct 022024
 

Kathleen Strukoff, “Turquoise Bird”, Mixed Media, Kee Gallery

Backstreet Art District in Palm Springs consists of several art galleries and studios and hosts a monthly event on the first Wednesday of every month. For additional information and a list of all of the galleries and their current showings, head to their website.

Below are a few selections from this past summer.

Work by Ernesto Ramirez

Work by Erich Meager

Kee Gallery is owned and operated by artists Kathleen Strukoff, Ernesto Ramirez, and Erich Meager.

Work by Aurora Lucia-Levey at Tom Ross Gallery

Work by Rae Harrell from her gallery

Paintings by Martin Prew at Kevin Goddess’s gallery

Paintings by Kevin Goddess

The studio in the back of Stephen Baumbach Gallery

Stephen Baumbach Gallery hosts numerous photography exhibitions throughout the year and houses a fine art printing business.

 

Work by Gary Wexler

The studio at Gary Wexler Design

 

 

Mar 282024
 

Jazzalyn Palma, “21st st”, Oil on canvas, 2023

Rachel Augustson, “Gaze”, Ink on Paper, 2023

Ashton Burton, “…”, Oil on canvas, 2023

Cleveland Institute of Art’s 78th Student Independent Exhibition is currently on view in their Reinberger Gallery. The juried show is organized by the students and includes work from all mediums.

There are so many great pieces in this show, above and below are just a few selections.

This exhibition closes 4/7/24.

James Schaffer, “Bound”, Oil on canvas, 2023

James Schaffer, “Bound”, Oil on canvas, 2023 (detail)

Gwen Putz, “Viv!”, Monoprint, 2023

Tristen Kovacs, “897”, Spray paint and acrylic on canvas, 2023

Emily Fontana, “Untitled”, Acrylic and spackle on fabric, 2024

Emily Fontana, “Untitled”, Acrylic and spackle on fabric, 2024 (detail)

Dec 072023
 

V.J. Hagenbuckle, “On Mars”, 2020, Oil on canvas

Paintings by V.J. Hagenbuckle

There are many incredible artists living and working in the Tampa Bay area and quite a few of them also teach. Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art in Tarpon Springs is currently showing work by faculty from the Visual Arts department at St. Petersburg College. In addition to a statement about their work, each faculty member also contributed their teaching philosophy.

Artists included in the exhibition- Jonathan Barnes, Nathan Beard, Ragan Brown, Mason Gehring, Barton Gilmore, Kevin Grass, Marjorie Greene Graff, Jennifer Guest, Jim Hagenbuckle, Elizabeth Indianos, Kim Kirchman, Michaela Oberlaender, Krishna Sadasivam, and McKenzie Smith.

Tonight, 12/7, Jim Hagenbuckle will be giving a talk at the museum at 6pm.

This exhibition is on view until 12/17/23.

Michaela Oberleander, “Bleed Out”, 2010, Acrylic on canvas

Kim Kirchman, “Cultivating What Might Be Lost”, 2022, Terra cotta with slip transfer

Work from Nathan Beard’s “LIFE LINES”

Nathan Beard’s description of this recent personal and intriguing project (pictured above)-

The Memory Map works on view here are my very newest attempt at understanding the role that fallible memory plays in the shaping of culture and self. These small watercolor studies are Phase II of LIFE LINES, a grand 3-part project in which I am examining my family’s memory of themselves and making artwork that tells their story. I plan to collect all of these studies into a singular book that can be handed down through the generations, or perhaps even preserved in a museum for everyone to see.

To create Memory Maps, I have created a survey for each family member. I ask them some general genealogy questions, since this survey will also function as a historical record, including their three favorite colors. I then ask them to try to remember each year of their life, from birth til now, and assign a rank between 0 and 5 for a) how clear their memory of the year is; b) how important that year was for them; c) how “good” or “bad” the year was. I add these columns together to get an “Accumulative” data set that I use to create a skeleton composed of alternating pentagons and hexagons that rotate as they expand. This part is important since it incorporates movement through time and space as we grow outward. Using the fact that our life’s journey always wavers, I then connect the points and end up with a “map” that resembles the cross-section of a tree, and contains all the metaphors associated with tree rings and natural growth cycles.

The most important visual development presented itself with Cate Clark, where I allowed myself the freedom to incorporate representational imagery. I asked my wife about her favorite place ever, and she surprised me with the family trip we took to Letchworth State Park in upstate NY. I found a picture from that trip with our daughter Vera standing at the edge of wood, and proceeded to paint that memory in resemblance of an antique plate. I also allowed myself the freedom to stray away from the tree ring aspect, while still using the data skeleton to place the bursts of color.

For more information, his artist talk is available here.

Work by Jonathan Barnes

Sculpture by Jonathan Barnes

Sculpture by Jonathan Barnes

Soda/Salt Fired stoneware by McKenzie Smith

Acrylic on canvas paintings by Mason C. Gehring

Relief and silkscreen by Marjorie Greene Graff

 

Artists continue on page 2.

Oct 282023
 

Installation by Edgar Sanchez Cumbas

The Ybor City Arts Tour was last week and was a great way to check out the many spaces currently in the Ybor City area. The Kress Contemporary building with its multiple galleries, artist studios, performance space (The Fringe Theatre), and microcinema, was definitely a highlight.

The above images are of sculptural work by Edgar Sanchez Cumbas (he was also in the Department of Contemporary Art group show in the same building). It is just one of the rotating works you can find while walking around the space.

Below are some selections from the event.

Kim Radatz opened her space, currently showing an installation focused on the “C” word.

Screen Door: An Ybor City Microcinema is always showing interesting films from a variety of genres. Pictured are the seating area and the movie posters lining the hallway outside of the film viewing area. For the art tour they were showing past Flex Fest short films.

On the third floor are a large group of artist studios with several walls hanging work by many of the artists.

Work by Jon Pannier

Sculpture by Eileen Goldenberg

Polaroid work by Brian Pannier

Lots of great work by the three very different artists that make up the Y3K Collective- Jon Pannier, Eileen Goldenberg, and Brian Pannier, seen above.

Work by Juan Espinosa (left) and Ashley Cantero (right) of Dluance

Inside Dluance

Creative space Dluance is run by visual artist Ashley Cantero and music producer/ graphic designer Juan Espinosa.

Paintings by Marilyn Binder Silverman

Paintings by Eilzabeth Fontaine-Barr

The work above is from the painters Marilyn Binder Silverman and Elizabeth Fontaine-Barr who share their studio space.

Painting by Karol Batansky

Self taught painter Karol Batansky just moved in to her new studio from the Ybor Art Colony which is closed while currently being renovated.

Mixed media artist Chase Parker makes a variety of work, including the unique sculptures pictured above.

Ron Watson creates highly detailed drawings at his Shades of Gray Studio.

Below is one of the common spaces filled with work by a selection of artists. It’s always worth a trip up from the 2nd floor galleries even if most of the artists are not in their studios to see what’s new.

Work by Jenal Dolson (left) and Michael Jones (collage, right)

The next post will focus on three spaces outside of Kress Contemporary that were also part of the tour.

Oct 052023
 

Above are images from Olimpia Zagnoli’s 2018 exhibition Cuore di Panna at HVW8 Gallery in Los Angeles. She is currently showing her work, along with her talented family at Antonio Colombo Gallery in Milan, Italy. That exhibition, ZaLiZaZa. Inventario di famiglia will be on view until 11/19/23.

The press release from the gallery-

Galleria Antonio Colombo is pleased to present the exhibition ZaLiZaZa. Inventario di famiglia, curated by Francesca Pellicciari, featuring a group of artists belonging to the same family: the photographer Miro Zagnoli (Za), the artist Emi Ligabue (Li) and their two daughters: the illustrator Olimpia Zagnoli (Za), already connected with the gallery, and the costume designer Emilia Zagnoli (Za).

The members of ZaLiZaZa are a very modern family, but also one of days gone by: were they not engaged in making their own various artifacts, we could imagine them operating in a family workshop in the Renaissance or Baroque spirit, experimenting with new painting techniques, revolutionizing styles or using them as examples to make their own; creating majestic theatrical wings, garbed in their style which is simultaneously classic and eccentric.

After all, this image is not so far from what ZaLiZaZa are doing today, in the 21st century, each in his or her own field – contiguous and often overlapping ambits – constantly coming to grips with their own research and experimentation, relying on a shared language, a true family lexicon.

The exhibition pathway is an inventory of works of all kinds – drawings and photographs, wooden books, collages, object/sculptures, fabrics, screens and magic boxes – in an intense dialogue of correspondences, where the four voices alternate and take turns, without a chronological order; a dialogue accompanied by a selection of items (sketches, notes, postcards, family photos) that document a methodology, while at the same time emphasizing the constant presence of art in the private life of ZaLiZaZa.

Thus it is no coincidence that many subjects are similar in the work of ZaLiZaZa.

While for decades design has pervaded the still analog settings and photographs of Miro (Za), it is also a recurring theme in the works of Emi (Li), from the Cicognino of Albini to the life and work of Charlotte Perriand, or anonymous design found for sale online: “I have no taboos, no type of respect or norm.” Similar use of anonymous and unconventional materials is found in the “Souvenir” clothing series by Emilia (Za), made from touristy dishtowels with the map of Italy, just as certain archetypes return in the thousands of stripes traced by Olimpia (Za), always in pursuit of the perfect synthesis between the idea and its representation.

Beyond this, beyond design, mountains, figures, bodies, portraits, chiaroscuro effects, balconies, there is the continuing echo – in the various generations of ZaLiZaZa of what Matisse said one day to Picasso, as Emi (Li) reminds us: “In the end, Picasso, we don’t have to try to be so smart. You and I are alike: what we try to rediscover in art is the atmosphere of our First Communion.” To always observe the world with the eyes of children, with the gaze of ZaLiZaZa.

If Olimpia Zagnoli’s work looks familiar, she also designed The New Yorker’s August 28th issue, seen below.

Jun 182023
 

This work, by artist Cyla Costa, was part of the Ladies Who Paint all female mural festival in San Diego.

The subject of the mural is the Portuguese word “saudade“. It has no direct translation but she defines it as “a tangle of emotions both happy and sad about missing someone or something” (as seen in the second image).

 

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.

May 282018
 

Currently at Palm Springs Museum of Art is Andy Warhol: Prints from the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation. Taking up the majority of the first floor of the museum, the exhibition includes many of his well known prints as well as several of his illustrations from his early graphic design career, a few of his Screen Tests (including Edie Sedgwick’s), his album covers, and a short documentary created for the museum with local residents who knew the artist.

This exhibition closes 5/28/18.