The social arbiter’s reference to an 18th century palace outside St. Petersburg, Russia, is lost on the new-money Bertha, but the point was made: The HBO Max series has brought alive America’s post-Civil War renaissance and New York City’s cultural awakening in all its Beaux Arts glory.

Grand Central Terminal in New York on April 29, 2020. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
The term, which translates simply as “fine arts,” was anything but simple in the hands of the city’s wealthiest figures of the time — names like Astor, Carnegie, Frick, Morgan, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and more. Thanks to this powerful ruling class and their architects, the period roughly spanning the 1870s to the 1930s produced some of New York’s finest structures.

Beaux Arts at its best includes buildings like The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Morgan Library & Museum, the Woolworth Building, Grand Central Terminal, Pennsylvania Station, the main branch of the New York Public Library, The Frick Collection, Grant’s Tomb and select mausoleums in Woodlawn Cemetery, where some of the players rest.

The structures, or pieces of them, survived the advent of Art Nouveau, Art Deco and the modernist movement as the country radically transformed.

“Architecture is always a clear guide to how individuals or whole societies think of themselves,” the HBO show’s creator, Julian Fellowes, told The Associated Press about why he needed to get the details right. “The princes of the American renaissance were no different. They saw themselves as giants, no longer inferior to the products of older cultures across the sea, but kings of the world.”

Just as Fellowes began work on “The Gilded Age” several years ago after his hit “Downton Abbey,” the architect, author and educator Phillip James Dodd began his passion project about the same era. His “An American Renaissance: Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York City” (Images Publishing) is a massive, meticulous book delving into the homes, monuments and public buildings that robber barons and industrialists ordered up in an over-the-top vein as the city gained its cultural footing.

The Beaux Arts style, characterized by classical forms, massive proportions and lavish, usually symmetrical, detailing, sprouted from the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. Some of the most sought-after American architects trained there before joining the gold rush for commissions amid New York’s sea of brownstones.

Their clients, the titans of banking, railroads and mining, were looking to flaunt their fortunes and better their social standing, and that of New York in the process. As they amassed art and antiquities in Europe, their architects, sculptors and muralists drew on a wide range of influences, including the ancient Greeks and Romans, along with the Renaissance and Baroque styles from Italy and France. Often, all at the same time.

While the Beaux Arts style in France was grand, in America it was “on steroids,” Dodd told the AP.

“They wanted to create cities that could rival the great cities. They needed monuments,” he said.

Dodd’s book was released just four months before “The Gilded Age” series premiered. Fellowes wrote the foreword.

One of the top architectural firms of the day, McKim, Mead and White, makes an appearance on the show. Its ginger-haired and mustachioed partner Stanford White is hired by Bertha and her railroad magnate husband, George Russell, to create their lavish home (a fictionalized mansion on Fifth Avenue’s Millionaires Row).

The prolific White, designer of homes, college buildings and the marble arch at Washington Square, also made real-life headlines in 1906 for being fatally shot on the roof of Madison Square Garden. His murderer: enraged Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Thaw, who was married to one of the architect’s past teen paramours, Evelyn Nesbit.

When J.P. Morgan decided to build a new repository for his impressive book and art collections, he had passed over the flamboyant White and turned to his more proper partner, Charles Follen McKim. McKim, however, was already committed to overseeing a remodeling of the White House for President Theodore Roosevelt Jr. The Morgan and Roosevelt families were feuding at the time, and Morgan bribed McKim by offering lifetime funding of a pet project in Rome, Dodd writes. McKim continued his work for Roosevelt as well.

The four-room Morgan Library (now merged with other Morgan buildings) was far from McKim’s largest commission, but dealing with the mighty Wall Streeter brought on a nervous breakdown for the overwhelmed architect, according to Dodd.

It was just one example of the era’s titans using their buildings as weapons against each other.

Dutch-born Joseph Raphael De Lamar, a mining magnate, purchased a double lot on the corner of Madison Avenue and 37th Street in 1902, a surprising move for a newcomer looking to make his way into high society since most of the wealthy had decamped north to a stretch of Fifth Avenue between 59th and 96th streets.

The draw for De Lamar? His lots were opposite Morgan’s brownstone, and Morgan had regularly rebuffed the newcomer in business. De Lamar hired architect C.P.H. Gilbert to make his the largest home in the neighborhood and one of the most spectacular in the city but, most importantly, it must literally cast a shadow over Morgan’s home, Dodd writes.

And it still does today, though De Lamar was never accepted into New York society, partly because his young wife was said to be too pretty to be tolerated by other married women, according to the book.

So what led to the Gilded Age’s decline? Many factors changed the mood, including the introduction of an income tax, World War I, a stock market plunge in 1893 and the antitrust bent of Theodore Roosevelt.

“The unparalleled joy was gone,” Dodd said. “In some ways, the elite who basically ruled the country were all of a sudden obsolete.”

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Old money, new money: Beaux Arts style gets attention on HBO

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A contemporary approach to Neo-Expressionism is evident in Lavera’s vibrant, monumental works.

A Miami-based contemporary artist, originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, she discovered her fascination for art, sketching, and painting through her aunt. Her aunt gave her brushes, canvas, encouragement, and purpose at a crucial time in her artistic development.

As her vision expanded and grew, she began to utilize the images of murals, graffiti, and street art she saw every day on public walls. She also incorporated the spirit of this visual life surrounding her neighborhood, and the bold colors, symbolism, and inspiration that a cosmopolitan city can offer– Buenos Aires has a wealth of street art, with the world’s largest collection of outdoor murals, as well as a steady stream of first-class artists. Lavera’s style is also akin to graffiti abstraction, a genre first explored by Jean Michel Basquiat in the 70s and 80s.

The Manolis Projects exhibit is comprised of 30 original paintings that have already been collected by billionaire political commentator, David Rubin, and legendary music producer, Clive Davis. They both attended the opening in early March.

“When I saw Lavera’s work in Buenos Aires in 2016, I immediately felt her enormous talent… a second-generation neo-expressionist with a very special feminine twist, Lavera is the real deal. I love her art ….a second-generation neo-expressionist, with a feminine Latin twist, who could pick up where Basquiat left off and take it higher, maybe much higher. I love the stories behind her work!” Davis says.

An in-depth exhibition essay by WPB Magazine‘s legendary art critic, artist, and art historian, Bruce Helander highlights Fernanda with rave reviews of the recently opened exhibition.

According to Helander, “Most successful artists evolved from their hometown surroundings and personal ambitions. Some were fortunate enough to be born into a creative environment, while others intuitively knew to gravitate to a metropolis. Fernanda Lavera is a gifted artist who fits like a glove into a historical context where the validation and potent vibrancy of one’s hometown or an adoptive city is often what gives a vital professional component for achievement.”

“A hometown girl is making her way into fame and critical acclaim, for which she credits personal motivation and her invigorating surroundings. Buenos Aires has a powerful, proactive arts community and a remarkably energetic street art environment, from murals to graffiti, which has been an artistic blessing for Lavera.”

Fernanda Lavera is following a long tradition of artists who generated excitement and discovery with the aid of urban momentum and municipal innovation.

Lavera explains that she likes to let things happen intuitively, without a clear intent. She is fascinated by the effects of color, the play of light and shade that allow her to explore her moods freely.

“I looked at my canvas and asked, can I be free like him? So I let my feelings inspire me, my emotions, and the colors and the shapes that dance in my own being. It gave me the courage to let me be me, who I was, and who I am. Here and now,” Lavera says.

In her winter exhibition at Manolis Projects, Lavera delivers a smartly curated selection of paintings, polished with sophistication, and highlighted with street art smart wit. The selected works on view are packed with colorful creative energy, strong brushwork, unconventionality, and imaginative intellectual figures and shapes.

Fernanda Lavera knows that “every picture tells a story”, so she imbues every canvas with an energetic narrative that plays to contemporary themes.

On exhibit through March 26 at Manolis Projects, 335 NE 59th St, Miami, 33137.
Online at www.laverart.com

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Fernanda Lavera’s winter exhibition at Manolis Projects

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Based on the 1958 novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the opera premieres March 5 and 6 at the South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center in Cutler Bay, which is south of Miami. The music was written by Michael Dellaira with the libretto by J. D. McClatchy. The show is being performed by students and faculty members from the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami.

“Opera is a complicated medium, with lots of moving parts, all delicately interconnected, and for the characters to come to life on the stage requires an extraordinary coordination of talent and experience from a great number of people,” Dellaira said. “Lucky for me all that talent and experience is right here at the Frost School.”

Performing with the University of Miami students are faculty members that include baritone Kim Josephson, mezzo-soprano Robynne Redmon, tenor Frank Ragsdale and bass-baritone Kevin Short.

“I am thrilled to be a part of this world premiere and excited to be performing with the extraordinary students of the Frost Opera Theater and Maestro Gerard Schwarz and the Frost Symphony Orchestra,” Josephson said.

The production is being led by music director Alan Johnson and stage director Jeffrey Buchman.

“The Leopard,” or “Il Gattopardo” in Italian, is set in Sicily in 1860. The story follows Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, who is also known as the Leopard. Corbera, a member of an impoverished, nearly obsolete Sicilian aristocracy, faces a society in upheaval. He is forced to choose between decay and progress, as well as between the downfall of the nobility and the future of his family.

The novel set sales records in Italy after its release and won the Strega Prize, which is Italy’s highest award for fiction. Director Luchino Visconti adapted the book into a 1963 film starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon.

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Opera based on Italian novel ‘The Leopard’ debuts in South Florida

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She is the official poster artist for the 60^th Annual Delray Affair. She won out in the open artists call for her unusual painting of the city’s landmark arts district. Rendered in a brushy pink, coral, and turquoise palette, the image is of the Pineapple Grove sign – from the back.

Huang says “Delray Beach is one of the fastest-growing cultural centers in South Florida. Everywhere you look, a fusion of the arts and business is evident. In this image, I wanted to capture an iconic piece of Downtown Delray and show a different perspective of Pineapple Grove of someone exiting through the archway. A painting merged with the sky symbolizes someone leaving Pineapple Grove and daydreaming about the art they experienced in Delray’s local galleries. This design aimed to highlight how the arts are an essential part of the city’s culture through the Pineapple Grove archway leading to the Arts District. It also highlighted how the Delray Affair celebrates this aspect of the city’s culture, fusing arts and business through the Delray Affair each year.”

She was recommended by the Arts Garage to submit because she used to work there. The presentation to the committee was entirely based on an image and statement without any names attached.

What she submitted was very rough. She submitted a design that looks very similar to what the final design came out to be because the committee liked that it had kind of a rough unfinished look of the sign in reverse.

“I looked at some previous years’ designs and I was like, what’s Pineapple Grove to me, what’s Delray beach to me. I love that it always incorporates the arts into every facet of business,” says Huang. “So, you have business and art. And what’s more iconic than dancing pineapples? I love it. I mean, that mural is a backdrop to so many locals and tourists in the area. However, I wanted to capture someone leaving the area and thinking like, wow, Delray Beach is becoming this cultural hub. I just wanted to do something a bit different.”

As a bonus, she will have a booth at the event with copies of the poster for sale as well as some of her other artwork. This will be her first art festival where she is the featured artist.

“I’ve never been in one! I was telling the chamber I’ve never done an art festival before, so this is crazy. I also found out months ago but had to keep it quiet which was really challenging. I was just waiting for the announcement; it kept me on the edge of my seat. I was like, “Oh man, when can I announce it?”

Huang had been working out of her home and in arts administration. Her exhibitions include 1310 Gallery – Sailboat Bend, Ali Cultural Arts, The Pompano Beach Cultural Center, Coral Springs Museum of Art, Arts Garage, The Cultural Council for Palm Beach County, Arts Warehouse, and more. Last October she got the space in the Arts Warehouse and has been expanding her work into various mediums.

A striking carnal series depicts black-and-white cuts of meat.

About this newly created artwork, she says: “The Aging & Maturing series is a reflection on identity and connection captured through gesturally drawn carcasses on vellum with powdered graphite. Food is a significant part of my family’s culture and equally a significant part of my identity. I remember loving nothing more than taking those trips to the supermarket with my family. I’d gaze in wonder at the roasted Peking duck floating in the window or how the butcher expertly prepares the meat for sale.

As someone who is biracial, food is my connection to my heritage and Taiwanese culture, and meat is at the forefront of that connection. I draw meat because of how anyone can relate to its form – a contemporary take on genre art. The process of drawing is familiar and comforting, and my paintbrush allows me to draw broadly and loosely, imbuing my physicality with each stroke. This is where I capture flesh, form, light, and shadow through my meaty subjects.”

In contrast, a drawing series became paintings that became sculptural, blooming and snaking off the walls.

“I only had a couple of weeks to put this together, but they are drawing on Mylar–just synthetic paper. It’s like drafting film and it’s made with graphite and acrylic paint. It never quite takes the same shape or form, which is kind of how I intended it to be. This is because it’s comprised of various drawings that I had done over many weeks. And I kind of curated it and picked out which one stood out to me the most. So, this was one of my first forays into the more sculptural format.”

The work will be at Art Serve in Ft Lauderdale for a show called “Sui Generis.”

“For a long time, I was working full time doing arts administration and operations and not really digging my heels into something where I could really explore. So, when I moved here at the beginning of October, I sat down and I was like, well, what do you truly enjoy about your work? I put this up and it started to get the wheels turning and I was like, all right, what’s the next step? Let’s stay in the three-dimensional realm for a little bit and have fun in that exploration mode.”

Huang says this is formative for her and where her mind is heading about her current work now.

“One of my goals in coming back to the three-dimensional format is to envelop a room somewhere and engulf people with these sprawling drawings because I truly have the most fun when I’m playing with the drawings and trying something different. I get a lot of interesting comments. It is like a light fixture or something that is bowed from the ceiling, just coming off the wall. Yeah, it’s very organic, right? So that’s what excites me about that piece.”

Huang grew up drawing and painting became more of a second step for her. She paints animals and people in a bright, illustrative way.

Drawing is familiar to her. It’s comforting.

I really embraced just using graphite at the moment. On my drawings for my installation, it was really a return to my roots.”

The 60^th Annual Delray Affair is on Friday, April 8, 2022, through Sunday, April 10, 2022. For more information on the artists, check facebook.com/sarahehuang or follow her on Instagram @Sarahehuang 

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Called the ReefLine, these works feature environmentally safe artworks by major international artists and designers. After the free public exhibitions, the work will be placed off the coast starting in Spring / Summer 2022.

The 9-mile underwater public sculpture park, snorkel trail, and artificial reef will be located off Miami Beach’s shoreline.

The stunning site of concrete cars on the beach in 2019, and this year’s giant inflatable iceberg, are just the beginning.

Conceived by BlueLab’s Chair Ximena Caminos, Vice-Chair Kate Fleming, and Coral Morphologic, in close consultation with a team of expert marine biologists, researchers, architects, and coastal engineers, the ReefLine will begin at the fourth street on South Beach and run north, providing a habitat for endangered reef organisms, promoting biodiversity, and enhancing coastal resilience. Coral will grow and give a home to turtles, fish, and other marine life.

“This series of artist-designed and scientist-informed artificial reefs will demonstrate to the world how tourism, artistic expression, and the creation of critical habitat can be aligned,” says Ximena Caminos, Founder and Artistic Director. ‘The Reefline is a singular investment in civic infrastructure, public art, and environmental protection that will pay dividends over the coming decades and attract ecologically-minded tourists and art lovers.”

New to the board of directors is architect/artist Alberto Latorre, a longtime South Beach resident who works to coordinate and facilitate the enormous and complicated works of art.

“I’m the part of the team of directors for the ReefLine now, that invite came through Ximena Caminos, she is the founder, and we work through the foundation, that is very interested in coastal resiliency, restoring everything that has to do with the ocean and using art as a way to mitigate. I have worked originally with Ximena in other projects throughout many, many years, and we did one very successful project for Design Miami. I was the co-curator and producer of a project called Roots, a project that talked about sustainability at the time when the Amazons were burning and sea levels rising.”

What attracted him also was the way they were going to go about producing large-scale projects.

“She said, we’re not going to be selling any kind of product, we’re going to be giving an experience and educating people,” Latorre says.

The first project they did was a structure that looked like a large root system where viewers could lie underneath it and have a kind of sonic sound bath experience. He pulled it all off in 2 months and got Delta airlines as a sponsor.

He did another on sacred plants, his first “that I actually worked using architecture and art as a platform to advocate for something special in this case, sustainability, and the environment.”

So, three years ago, Caminos called Latorre and asked if he could step in as she needed somebody with a level of expertise to liaise between the artists, the fabricators, the engineers on a project about legacy. A project that deals with the environment, for today and the future. And something to leave behind.

She had been looking out at the ocean and said “I need to put together a team that can help me make this a reality. When we looked at our coast, there’s not much there. There’s not much life, just a clear, beautiful beach that has been smothered through time and through development and dredging.”

While there have been small-scale projects that sunk art sculptures to create new reefs, they are not large, such as the Mermaid Project in Ft. Lauderdale and the religious statue in Key Largo. This was to be something much more grandiose.

One project he is involved in developing for the reef is Leandro Erlich’s Order of Importance, a lineup of concrete cars on the beach that will now be modified to create Concrete Coral.

“My involvement with Leandro’s design has been specifically for The Reefline.  It has included some coordination of engineering design, cost evaluation, and fabrication analysis using the precast concrete.  We have not fabricated it yet, but the message behind it is talking about water rising levels. So now we’re going to submerge your cars and we’re still talking about water rising in the actual water.”

“For example, when the floor was surveyed for the first permit, between 3rd street and 5th street, our coastal engineers, they saw just a few patches of grass. And lucky enough, the City of Miami Beach has become a partner to the project, endorsing and believing in this idea. We’re talking about miles and miles of segmented reefs; they will be tight in one way or another with structures. How beautiful it would be to just go and try to discover, whether snorkeling and scuba diving and see what art is being placed out there.”

Reefline predicts this will create space for a different type of eco-tourism, a great opportunity for the city as it is real art along with the attraction of the deco architecture, and the beach.

Latorre explains his passion for this unique project.

“I am involved with the Reefline in part due to the passion I developed as a kid growing up in Puerto Rico between a beach town neighborhood and a weekend home in the mountains of Orocovix.  As an architect, I am committed to creating works using architecture, design, and art as a vehicle to blend the lines between art and our relationship to nature. I have always been intrigued by that concept and the Reefline provides this opportunity.

I have been collaborating with artist Carlos Betancourt since 2000 in multiple site-specific arts in public places and corporate commissions of enormous scales many times located on very complicated sites or environments.  I have vast knowledge and experience working with engineers, fabricators, and installers translating artistic ideas into the tangible. As an adult, I now own land with waterfalls in the El Yunque rainforest.  So far, this land is untouched by development and perhaps I am just a jungle keeper,” he laughs.

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Online at www.thereefline.org

Can art save the seas? ReefLine says yes

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The annual event, which was canceled last year during the pandemic, is an extension of the prestigious art show in Switzerland. But over the years, Miami has put its own spin on the affair, which has become a magnet for celebrities. Everyone from Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, and Joe Jonas were spotted around town.

The highlight of the week was Louis Vuitton’s first-ever U.S. fashion show Tuesday. But the lavish affair, where guests were ferried to an island by private yacht, turned into an emotional tribute after legendary 41-year-old designer Virgil Abloh died suddenly just days before the show. Kid Cudi and Erykah Badu performed at an after-party where dozens of dancing red drones blazed the skyline to write “Virgil was here.”

Fashion brand Burberry and W magazine hosted a party attended by models Karlie Kloss and Candice Swanepoel, along with Camila Coelho, A$AP Ferg, and Meadow Walker.

Rosalia gave a surprise performance Friday night to celebrate Chanel’s iconic fragrance. The French fashion house partnered with artist Es Devlin for a multisensory sculptural installation that included a forest of over 1,000 plants and trees. Before the show, Chanel hosted a private dinner attended by Pharrell Maluma, Leon Bridges, Joe Jonas, and songstress sister trio HAIM.

The fashion brand’s Five Echoes installation is free and open to the public until Dec. 21.

Cardi B performed Saturday night to launch her new line of vodka-infused whipped cream. The rapper sprayed Whipshots into the mouth of fans at The Goodtime Hotel. Offset, Mary J. Blige and Timbaland were among the guests. After the event, Cardi B and hubby Offset made their way to Hyde Beach at SLS South Beach for the MAXIM party where the couple danced as 112 performed its old-school hit “Peaches and Cream.” Karrueche, Austin Mahone, and Taye Diggs were also in the crowd.

After hours, over 500 fans lined up around the block to get into rapper Meek Mill’s sold-out show at E11EVEN. He didn’t take the stage until 3:30 a.m. Cardi B, Leonardo DiCaprio, Nina Agdal, Karrueche, Migos, and Marshmello stayed for the late-night performance.

The official Art Basel fair attracted 60,000 visitors this year, according to a statement, but thousands more attended various art shows all week. At Art Miami, a $4 million Banksy sale, a 10-year-old phenom painter, and an 18-carat gold bagel avocado toast on sale for $2.9 million at Galerie Rother generated buzz.

The ultra-futuristic Paramount Miami Worldcenter even partnered with artist Mr. Glue to host a scavenger hunt for street trash transformed into valuable artworks.

And in a week where art often borders on the absurd — remember the infamous $120,000 banana duct tape pieces — Miami’s DJ Khaled dropped “bling wings” topped with 24-karat gold dust and edible diamonds to promote his restaurant.

Swizz Beatz partnered with American Express to bring back “Women in Art,” commissioning a live installation by artist Tanda Francis at an event Saturday night. The credit card company also hosted a private performance by Lizzo at The Miami Beach Edition.

Dr. Deepak Chopra partnered with “Game of Thrones” star Emilia Clarke for an intimate morning meditation launching his Metaverse For Good platform and NFT drop. At night, Alicia Keys also led a guided meditation where mechanical flowers hanging from the ceiling opened and closed like inhales and exhales. Wearing a neon yellow gown and thigh-high boots at Superblue, Miami’s experiential art center, the Grammy winner played songs from her new album dropping next week.

DiCaprio, Marc Anthony, Soleil Moon Frye, and Alicia Machado helped pal Sean Penn raise $1.6 million at a fundraiser Thursday night benefiting Penn’s CORE Foundation (Community Organized Relief Effort), specifically its crisis response programs across Latin America, including Haiti and Brazil.

DiCaprio also showed up at art collector Wayne Boich’s annual bash, along with Venus and Serena Williams and Latin boy band CNCO. Kravitz took the stage for a 75-minute concert. Rapper T.I. closed out the party.

Even Playboy got in on the action to promote its new lifestyle brand BIG BUNNY. Guests Cardi B, Lizzo, and Charlie XCX attended a surrealist ball, centered around the idea that pleasure is a fundamental human right. The new collection pays homage to artist Salvador Dal who was commissioned for the magazine in 1973 and 1974.

Across town, actress Eva Longoria played the role of mixologist at a party Friday night to promote her new brand Casa Del Sol tequila, pouring drinks for attendees including longtime friend Serena Williams.

Rapper Young Thug headlined an NFT party on Saturday night with Von Dutch in the hip Wynwood District.

Other celebrity spotting included Maroon Five’s Adam Levine and wife Victoria’s Secret Angel Behati Prinsloo sitting with friend Marc Anthony at David Grutman and Pharrell’s restaurant Swan. Rauw Alejandro and Rosalia also enjoyed a date night there.

Longtime Basel fixture Vera Wang, who wore custom grey, silk Vera dress, also dined at the restaurant with fellow fashion designer Donna Karen, and Giancarlo Stanton. Record producer and DJ Diplo visited the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science with a group of family and friends.

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Rosalia, Lizzo, Cardi B wrap up over the top Miami art week

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The most comprehensive exhibition of the Nobel laureate’s visual art to be held in the U.S. goes on display on Tuesday in Miami at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum. Forty new pieces by the 80-year-old songwriter will be showcased for the first time.

The exhibition with more than 180 acrylics, watercolors, drawings, and ironwork sculptures will kick off the same week as Art Basel Miami Beach and will run through April 17 with no future stops announced yet. Tickets are $16 and are booked by hourly slots.

“Retrospectrum” includes some of Dylan’s works from the 1960s, starting with pencil sketches he made of his songs such as “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Like a Rolling Stone.” His pieces, loaned from private collections around the world, also include abstract sketches from the 1970s, and covers six large rooms. But the vast majority was created in the past 15 years.

“He was recognized in every possible way as a writer, as a composer, as a singer, as a performer, and so on. It is now that the audience sees also the last element,” said Shai Baitel, who conceived the show as the artistic director of the Modern Art Museum Shanghai, where it debuted. “Dylan is able to express himself in so many ways.”

A breathtaking giant canvas of a sunset in Monument Valley on the Utah-Arizona line serves as an introduction to Dylan’s newest works. He has mentioned his admiration of Western movie director John Ford, who used that same iconic landscape in many of his films.

Past the wall with the painting of the reddish buttes is a room with the new series called “Deep Focus,” named after a technique in cinematography where nothing is blurred out.

“All these images come from films. They try to highlight the different predicaments that people find themselves in,” Dylan is quoted as saying in one of the walls. “The dreams and schemes are the same — life as it’s coming at you in all its forms and shapes.

Dylan offers a lot of city life the way Ashcan School artists advocated when they depicted realistic images of people’s hardships at the turn of the 20th century.

A jazz band plays in a colorful club in one of the paintings; a gray-haired man counts wads of cash in another. He depicts two men fighting in a boxing match and portrays a woman sitting alone at a bar drinking and smoking with an intriguing look on her face.

Linking the images of Dylan’s latest works to specific movies will take some internet sleuthing.

Richard F. Thomas is a Harvard University classicist who has studied and written about Dylan. He said in an essay for the exhibit that he found online references tying one of the paintings showing a man in a black leather jacket pouring sugar on his coffee to a scene at a diner in the 1981 film “The Loveless,” where actor Willem Dafoe embodies a biker.

Thomas found a scene from the 1971 movie ”Shaft” with actor Richard Roundtree ordering street food in Times Square. Other new works show cowboys, men in undershirts, and barber’s poles, another recurring object used by Dylan.

“Just like the scenes he has been creating in songs for all these years, the scenes of ‘Deep Focus’ will keep Dylan scholars busy in the years to come,” Thomas wrote.

Besides the works in his new series, other works that will be shown in Miami have been previously exhibited in places such as the Halcyon Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Previous paintings reflect images of America from the point of view of a road traveler. Realistic depictions of diners, motels, marquees, gas stations, and railway tracks appear frequently throughout his artwork.

“It’s almost like looking at a pamphlet of his memories,” Baitel, the artistic director, said.

Dylan has also experimented with perspective, seemingly imitating the work of Vincent Van Gogh in “The Bedroom” to paint corners of a New York City apartment. And he has done variations by drawing the same characters changing the color of the backdrops and their clothing, or just depicting them at a different time of the day, like Claude Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series.

The exhibit has some interactive displays for music fans. The 64 cards with words from the lyrics of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” that he flipped through in one of the earliest music videos ever made were framed and lined up in eight columns by eight rows, while the clip is played on loop.

It’s not yet clear whether Dylan, who is currently on tour for his 39th album “Rough and Rowdy Ways” will pay a visit.

Jordana Pomeroy, director of the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, said it will be its first ticketed event since the museum first opened in 2008. The Florida International University will be holding a symposium on Dylan inviting scholars to discuss the songwriter’s entire body of work.

“That’s the treatment we are going to give Bob Dylan,” Pomeroy said.

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Bob Dylan artwork show opens in Miami, new cinema paintings

The post Bob Dylan artwork show opens in Miami, new cinema paintings appeared first on The Florida Daily Post.

What Florencia does have is a pilot’s license, and worked for British Airways for years before leaving the field after the terror of 9/11. After a few more years of working in the design industry, she walked away from all of it to be an artist.

Living and working in Fort Lauderdale since 2004, she was inspired to paint the big faces after seeing a wall of large portraits at a hotel in Nairobi.

“They made such an impression,” she recalls. “Just this big wall of faces, it stayed with me for years. Now I’m a self-taught mixed media artist, whose mission is to empower and inspire through positive and meaningful artwork. My artistic adventure began in late 2014 when I quit my full-time job in interior design to pursue my real passion: painting. Because I didn’t receive any formal art training, I have developed a style without rules, which gives me great freedom. I combine my love of the classic masters with contemporary design flair to produce mixed media paintings.”

Her style and media have evolved over the years as she continuously explores surfaces and materials. The rug paintings came about after first adding fabric to paintings, then painting on the fabric, then finally painting on rugs  – a brilliant move that uses the elaborate design of the rug pattern to frame the face.

“Initially, I set out to paint on canvas and incorporated up-cycled and repurposed materials that would otherwise be disposed of, such as discontinued fabric and paper samples, to create backgrounds and “dress” my subjects,” she says. “Three years into my adventure, I discovered I could paint directly on upholstery fabric and area rugs and have fallen in love with the effect I’m able to achieve in this new medium. The patterns become intertwined with the image and add yet another dimension to it. I find these layers are a metaphor for us to look deeper than what meets the eye.

My latest series is entitled “Guardians of Sacred Space” and is composed of my largest pieces yet, ranging between 6’x4’ and 10’x8’, painted on area rugs. They are powerful portraits that command attention and infuse a sense of protection and calm to the space they are in.”

She gets the rugs online, from friends, or in resale stores. The trick is that there can be no overpainting if she makes a mistake, so she starts with light outlines and builds up layers. The rug pattern becomes a tattoo or third eye or inspiration for the color scheme. They are tribal, ethnic, nomads.

“We are all on the same plane,” she says. “I believe portraying a variety of ethnicities is the best way to promote inclusion. It is important to me that everyone feels represented in my artwork as a mirror of society. My artwork is very much a reflection of my life and, therefore, I am in some way, in every one of my paintings.  Painting is my therapy, and, so, as I heal myself, I also hope that others can recognize themselves in my work and that it may ease their pain as well.”

At the heart of her artwork is the desire to “portray strong and confident, soul-aligned men and women. I want to celebrate who we are and everything that makes us unique, perfectly imperfect beings, by bringing out our strengths and our beauty; as a reminder of who we really are and to say “I see you and honor you.”

She has a home studio but has joined the co-op group at the New River Museum in downtown Ft. Lauderdale. On the third floor are six artist studios open to the public, the bottom two floors house the museum with photos, artifacts, dioramas, and recreated period rooms.

Her studio is set up as a gallery, with works both large and small, prints, and vintage Spanish dolls that remind her of her heritage. She has exhibited in the mansions of Art Ft. Lauderdale and has upcoming shows at various art festivals.

She says she is constantly striving to give form to her own feelings and visions, as well as others’. She takes commissions and feels that at the end of the day, there is nothing more satisfying than a happy collector whose expectations are not only met, but surpassed.

Connect with the artists on Facebook and Instagram page @ArtbyFlorencia. Online at www.artbyflorencia.com

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Florencia Clement de Grandprey makes haunting art on intricate rugs

The post Florencia Clement de Grandprey makes haunting art on intricate rugs appeared first on The Florida Daily Post.

It’s a real hidden gem, a museum that celebrates the fired arts of ceramics and glass along with some metal art and community connection. Dania used to be known as a small-town stop on the way to Ft. Lauderdale, US 1 loaded with small antique shops. A recent building boom finds hotels, upscale restaurants, and now a revamped museum that features thousands of works from the world’s most renowned ceramic and glass artists.

A vast collection of 19th and 20th-century British pottery and porcelain from Wedgwood and Royal Doulton, the Wiener Museum also displays works by contemporary ceramic artists. A spectacular collection of Dale Chihuly’s work, glowing like sea creatures, is exhibited in the Hot Glass gallery along with other great glass artists in the Art on Fire exhibit, including William Morris and Toots Zynsky.

A new show highlights the four classical elements of EARTH, AIR, FIRE, and WATER that are the fundamental building blocks of nature. EARTH in the form of sand merges with FIRE and AIR in furnaces to create glass art. Dale Chihuly, the well-known pioneer of American studio glass, blew his first bubble of glass in 1965 and tap here, along with giant Ikebana flower arrangements, and his sensational Seaforms, which conjure up WATER. A Macchia garden bursts into bloom. A Persian wall is accompanied by Chihuly’s paintings. Chihuly’s luminous Baskets vie for attention with his flamboyant Venetians. A Chihuly Venetian was once described as a vase that has had an affair with a chandelier.

Chihuly is also fascinated with Native American artifacts, which can be seen in his glass art, together with his love of the Pacific Northwest, where his studio is based. The Baskets, one of his first glass series in 1977, was inspired by the slumped forms of woven native baskets and he incorporated colored threads of glass in patterns derived from the Native wool blankets which he collects. His Seaforms were inspired by his love of the ocean and the colors in his Macchia designs evoke memories of his mother’s flower garden. Arthur Wiener’s impressive Macchia collection was the centerpiece of the Smithsonian National Building Museum in Washington to honor Chihuly when he received the 2016 Visionary Award from the Smithsonian Craft Show.

The largest Chihuly installation at WMODA is a magnificent Persian wall designed originally for Wolfgang Puck’s Postrio restaurant in San Francisco, together with two dramatic paintings.

“Ever since Chihuly’s accidents in the mid-1970s,” says museum director Louise Irvine, “which prevented him from blowing glass himself, painting has been an important form of creative expression and a way to communicate the concepts he wants to explore in glass to his studio assistants. He directs his gaffers and glass blowers, more like a choreographer than a dancer, more like a director than an actor.”

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A new generation of Florida glass artists finds inspiration in the four elements. Rob Stern conveys the power of the wind in his iconic Windstars, symbolizes the earth with his leaves of glass, and represents water with his giant Conch shells and corals in his installation Constellations, is a dazzling display. These starfish/octopus hybrids whirl and glitter in space.

Josh Fradis creates Coral Caverns and surging Waves with crests of seafoam that represent the ebb and flow of the tides. Chelsea Rousso creates wearable glass fashions inspired by the wonders of the deep.

The WMODA exhibition continues through September 30.

On display is a mermaid tail ripe for selfies to represent the 1000 Mermaids Project, a sculpture group that sinks concrete mermaids to restore Florida’s coral reefs with the City of Dania Beach. The museum’s proximity to the sea has inspired several exhibitions over the years, including Splash! and Dive into WMODA.

Over the summer, the Ocean Rescue Alliance and the 1000 Mermaids Project started installing Broward’s first underwater sculpture garden to help restore the coral reef near Dania Beach. Another new mermaid selfie tail is now located near the Quarterdeck restaurant at the Dania Beach Fishing Pier: 1000 Mermaids Artificial Reef Project.

Hollywood artist Lloyd Goradesky, who has a large kinetic weathervane in Boynton Beach, has some of the smaller versions on display and for sale at the Museum. Let Love Guide Your Way is the name of the original functioning weathervane, 16 feet tall, that was made for the International Kinetic Art Exhibit and Symposium in Boynton Beach where art, nature, and technology collided. Since its debut in 2018, Lloyd has expanded Let Love Guide Your Way into a community interactive art project to spread the much-needed message of universal love.

In Lloyd’s words, “A weathervane is a device used to measure wind direction.  A ‘weathervane’ is also a metaphoric expression to describe people who change their views frequently.  In a chaotic world, when faced with a dilemma, let love guide your way.”

His garden sculpture, 4 feet tall, was exhibited at this year’s Art Fair on the Water in Fort Lauderdale. One is at WMODA standing on a heart-shaped granite base.

A new selling exhibition opens on August 28 with a selection of animals created by the glass maestros of Murano. The pop-up show traces the evolution of glass animal sculptures in Venice from the 1930s to the present day with Mid-Century Modern designs alongside contemporary interpretations of the animal kingdom in glass.

The Museum is a worthy stop in Dania, followed up by a visit to top local eateries like Tarks Seafood and Jaxson’s Ice Cream Parlor, then a cruise over to the Dania Beach Pier to watch surfers and sunsets.

https://www.wmoda.com/

Unusual exhibits at hidden gem museum in Dania Beach

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Artist Dana Donaty had recently moved to the area and ran into arts advocate Gene Fisher, who connected her with the Pineapple Grove Board. On the board was the owner of the Camera Shop who had a lot of wall space on a one-story building he wanted filled with art.

Dana drew up a proposal for a large wraparound scene she called ‘Observations’ depicting a man in the Everglades with binoculars and a camera seeking out birds, critters, flora, and fauna. Painted on 10‘ x 4 Dibond panels with acrylic, ‘Observations’ was inspired by a visit Donaty made to Author R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge and was one long panoramic connected scene with lush colors and clever detail. Possums hung from branches, herons stalked the sawgrass, bright pink flamingos burst into the humid air.

She got the job and painted the mural in a warehouse, installing it within months.

The mural became something of a landmark through the years, brightening up an otherwise drab stucco business. It was front-page news in 2007 in the Palm Beach Post, and the Delray Forum newspaper touted that it was the first installation in the Pineapple Grove Artscape Program. She was given an award for Excellence in Artistic Building Design by the Delray Appearance Board in 2008.

Flash forward to 2020 and the Camera Shop was sold. The murals were removed and seemed to disappear for a while. As calls and emails went around, it was finally determined the murals had been put into storage and were in reasonably good shape considering they had been in the merciless Florida sun for 14 years.

“The DDA and the CRA got involved and proposed that I restore the murals so they could be installed on the Camera Shop’s new location,” Donaty says in the Arts Warehouse studio she has been working out of. “I’m glad that the county has recognized this as something worth saving and preserving, it’s a piece of art history here.”

This is a 4-month project, as all the panels need to be deep cleaned and repainted. Using soft soap and sponges and brushes, Donaty sits up on a scaffold zooming in on each detail, pointing out areas that need more work than others. Her rescue dog Cash scampers around the studio.

“I am adding in some new details here also,” she points out. “A few birds, a fish in the Egret’s mouth, just enough to make it a bit fresher. This is harder than I thought it might be, going back into a style I did so many years ago. It’s a lot of color saturation too as it has faded from the sun.”

Part of the deal is that the studio space she has been given to work out of is open to the public to view at The Arts Warehouse along with community programming, “In-Studio Interactions” Drop-in Kids Sketching, open studio hours, First Friday Art Walk events and “Workshops” Exploring the Artist Process in August.

Below, some details of Donaty’s ‘Observations’ mural (click on the photos to enlarge them):

Her working hours vary but she is there at least 3 or 4 days a week; the studio is number 14 on the second floor. Once the mural is restored it will be rehomed at the Camera Shop’s new location Delray Camera at 217 NE 4th Ave, Delray Beach. A grand unveiling ceremony is planned for the fall when the residency is finished.

Donaty has been documenting the painting and restoration process online through her social media, with fast-forward videos and lots of photos.

The restoration and relocation project was made possible by generous support and funding from Pineapple Grove Main Street Inc, Delray Beach CRA, the Arts Warehouse, The Delray Beach Downtown Development Authority, Chris Reich, and the Pineapple Grove Main Street Board Members.

She has other projects ongoing as well, including a collaboration with toy giant FAO Schwartz, who are creating plush animals from some of her imaginary creature creations.

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Camera Shop mural restoration clicks in Delray Beach

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