Guns Kill, in Lautenberg’s ongoing solo exhibition Lady Liberty: A Bonnie Lautenberg Retrospective, up through March 26, including Miami Art Week, uses Lady Liberty to convey the message of how easily freedom and liberty can be taken away even as the oxidized symbol lights an eternal torch.

A unique venue, located inside an ornate temple, the museum melds its architectural and cultural history with contemporary art.

She recently showed her most popular series, “Art Meets Hollywood,” at the Boca Raton Museum along with the Hollywood Backdrops. By combining pop art with classic film stills from the same year, the works compel viewers to seek out the ways in which they diverge and meet in the time-stamped view.

One image depicts actress Barbra Streisand in her film Yentl, combined with selfie queen/artist Cindy Sherman who wears a similar black suit and scowling expression. Who is playing who?

Curated by Jacqueline Goldstein, the most powerful of these timely artworks is “Tears of Roe,” as salty tears run down the Statue of Liberty’s face and the word Roe adorns her crown, lamenting the current challenges to women’s freedoms that are making headlines today.

Another brand-new work by Lautenberg is titled “Wanted,” honoring icon Harriet Tubman who led enslaved Black people to freedom in the 1800s. This diptych features one of the notorious “Wanted” posters from that era that slave owners used to try to capture Tubman. Lautenberg juxtaposes historic images of the abolitionist next to actress Cynthia Erivo who portrayed the freedom fighter in the film Harriet.

Her political stance comes direct from the source as she is the widow of the late Senator Frank Lautenberg, one of Washington’s longest-serving Senators (from 1982 to 2001, then again from 2003 until his death in 2013). She has been described as “having enough Washington insider stories to fill a book” and she is doing just that as her upcoming book will be released next year, about the life of her late husband using her photography.

In 2022, Lautenberg was appointed by the White House to the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts (PACA) which guides the Kennedy Center, the National Cultural Center of the United States.

An avid concertgoer, the museum retrospective also includes Lautenberg’s concert photos of a defiant if bedraggled Lady Gaga, Andra Day, a spitting Miley Cyrus, and dressed-up queen Katy Perry from her series Pop Rocks, alongside images from other series of works she photographed in New York, Israel, Antarctica, Cuba, Italy, California, and Asia.

“Our museum is thrilled to premiere this retrospective of Bonnie Lautenberg’s images of women shining a light on liberty,” says Susan Gladstone Pasternack, Executive Director of the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU. “In capturing the independent spark of these women through her art, Bonnie Lautenberg reminds us that we should never take our freedoms for granted.”

“I am so honored to be selected by the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU during Miami Art Week and Art Basel Miami Beach, especially at this time when women’s issues are at the forefront,” says Bonnie Lautenberg.

At the exhibit’s opening, Lautenberg gave tours of the works and a talk at the podium. A film of one of her interviews played on a screen behind her.

“The radiance of each of these women in Lautenberg’s works stands out at this moment, as the type of luminosity that can help get us through difficult times,” says Jacqueline Goldstein, the Curator of the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU. “When viewed together as a group of works, their intensity multiplies.”

Another major project looms as she is producing, with her partner Steve Leber, a prestigious Broadway musical about the life of Andy Warhol, approved by the Warhol Foundation. Slated to debut in London next year before coming to the U.S., the musical will be directed by Sir Trevor Nunn, with a book by Rupert Holmes.

Lautenberg’s work is in several private and museum collections, including the permanent collections of The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture; the Boca Raton Museum of Art; the Collection of Norman and Irma Braman; the New York Historical Society Museum; and the Broad Museum in Los Angeles.

Online at thejewishmuseum.org

Photo Gallery

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Women on stage and under fire at retrospective

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This solo exhibition on view through November 21, shows her nesting instincts in this immersive site-specific installation and works on canvas that speaks to her journey from a young female, LGBT artist tagging the rough streets of Colombia to her current position as a globally recognized muralist who has created collaborations with Disney.

One of the most prominent artists of the Latin American graffiti scene, Bogota-based Diana Ordonez is known as Ledania. This is a pseudonym she derived from the Greek mythology character Leda who was seduced by Zeus, in combination with her name Diana, the Huntress in Greek mythology.

With vivid palettes, she celebrates color and nature in scenes populated by imaginary creatures who resemble owls or sprites. Her improvised world is magic and mystical, linked to expressionism, cubism, and surrealism.

“I love to travel and explore the world so that I can create graffiti with feeling,” says Ledania.

Her characters have no race or gender, there is no political or religious syntax in her work.

“I create places that are pure happiness by changing a structure in the city, intervening in it, adding my perspective, and changing how people who walk by there every day react to the space.”

In the Wynwood show called Private Spaces, she conjures up a cozy bedroom, painting furniture, and walls, and even making stained glass – a medium you rarely see in the graffiti world. A living moss wall and succulents grow at the foot of the bed, as nature is an integral part of the room.

“I am thrilled with the exhibition,” Ledania says “as it perfectly represents the juxtaposition of private versus public spaces, which is always on my mind as a public painter in the streets who mainly leaves her work outside. The tropical colors and native plants serve as a nod to my country and its inhabitants, who are my inspiration every day.”

She even prints her art on the bed’s comforter and pillows, backed by lush midnight blue velvet. There are layers of paintings on the bed headboard, the wall behind the bed, and then a large painting hanging overhead. An armoire contains the photos she took of departed friends.

A vintage music radio player emits the sounds of birds and the metallic rattling of spray cans – the sounds she hears as she paints outdoors. A patterned rug adds yet another layer.

The themes are nature with intertwined trees, shapes that invoke feathers, and woodland creatures.

It’s a room to get lost in, and dream in color, one that intertwines the female urge to nest with her wild hair of creativity.

Her roots loom large in her art.

“For me, Colombia is happiness itself in many aspects. Take Carnival, for example, and the celebration it represents. And also our ancestors and how they explored decorative traditions in their craftsmanship, which also began incorporating European influences following colonization. I too am the product of that melting pot.”

Classically trained, Ledania earned a master’s degree in Visual and Plastic Arts at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. She is a multimedia artist who expresses her creativity through street art, photography, graphic design, advertising, and artistic makeup. She also expresses her creativity in the implementation of her themes and motifs into clothing and accessories.

Ledania’s murals are displayed worldwide across 22 countries, from Colombia to the United States, Spain to Japan. Her art has been featured in several international exhibitions.

More on the artist at www.instagram.com/ledania

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On exhibit through November 21st at The Museum of Graffiti, 276 NW 26th Street, Miami, FL 33127. Online: Instagram @museumofgraffiti

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In a new show at PAMM, yet a new figure emerges from his orbit, the Venezuelan artist Marisol, whose collaborations with Warhol and the Pop crowd are on vivid display.

The show, Marisol and Warhol Take New York, has iconic artworks and ephemera by both artists.

Exploring the artists’ parallel rises to success, and the beginning of their early artistic practices from 1960 to 1968, viewers also come to understand Marisol’s relative obscurity as a woman in the shadow of the male Pop art giants, and the male dominated gallery and museum system that kept her work on the sidelines.

The exhibition features key loans of Marisol’s work from major global collections, along with iconic works and rarely seen films and archival materials from The Warhol’s collection.

Born in Paris to Venezuelan parents, Marisol (María Sol Escobar) held a central position in the New York art scene and American Pop movement. She was written out of the white male-dominated Pop narrative when she left the states for Europe.

Dark and exotic looking, she was in his early films The Kiss (1963) and 13 Most Beautiful Girls (1964), but they never exhibited together. She made sculptures of him in her signature painted wood block, that work is at the entrance to the PAMM show. The films are screened in a large, darkened room here.

Born in Paris in 1930, she mostly lived and worked in New York City. She began drawing early in life, and it earned her artistic prizes at the various schools she attended. Marisol studied art in Paris, then returned to begin studies at the Art Students League of New York. Marisol dropped her family surname of Escobar in order to lose the patrilineal identity and to “stand out from the crowd”.

Pop art culture embraced Marisol, as she worked on three-dimensional portraits, using inspiration found in photographs or gleaned from personal memories. Found objects, such as wood blocks became her Mona Lisa sculpture, and an old couch became The Visit. She used added body parts cast from her hands, feet and face.

There are plenty of Warhol’s here, instantly recognizable prints of the Statue of Liberty, and Brillo boxes, and the Campbell soup and Coca Cola, but the fun is seeing how the two artists play off the same imagery.

One striking collaboration features Warhol’s tragic screens of Jackie Kennedy in her pillbox hats and veils lining the wall behind Marisol’s wood block family portraits of John Kennedy, Jackie in her blue hat, young Caroline in a blond bob, and JFK Jr. as a babe in Jackie’s arms.

While Warhol used newspaper clippings of flowers and car crashes and found commercial objects, Marisol’s practice was more introspective with her own face in most of the works. Her portraits were either people she knew personally or admired as mentors. She demonstrated a dynamic combination of folk art, dada, and surrealism with a deep psychological insight into contemporary life.

One of her best-known works from this period on display here is the stunner called The Party, a life-size group installation of figures. All of the figures, gathered together in various dresses, sport Marisol’s face. Using a floor to ceiling backdrop of Warhol’s neon pink and yellow Cow image as wallpaper, the full Dada effect is in play. A party of one artist in multiple, in front of a wall of repeated bovines.

Using assemblages of plaster casts, wooden blocks, woodcarving, drawings, photography, paint, and pieces of clothing, Marisol creates her own vision of femininity, most commonly determined by the male onlooker, seen as either mother, seductress, or partner.

She was also an archivist. A glass case holds the contents of a year’s worth of ephemera – date books, lists, and photos. She had close to a thousand of them, each labeled by year.

She drifted off to Europe and thus ended her New York Pop tenure. She lived to age 86, far outlasting Warhol but only recently getting her due.

This exhibition seeks to reclaim the importance of her work and place and practice; to reframe the strength, originality, and daring nature of her work; placing her as one of the leading figures of the Pop era.

A publication exploring the relationship between Marisol and Warhol, includes contributions by Jessica Beck, Jeffrey Deitch, Angie Cruz, Eleanor Friedberger and PAMM director Franklin Sirmans. Created from extensive research of reviews, articles and archival documents, the catalogue has a timeline of shared events and the overlap in Marisol and Warhol’s early careers from 1949 to 1968.

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The exhibit goes through September 5^th, 2022 at PAMM at 1103 Biscayne Blvd, Miami, 33132. Online www.pamm.org

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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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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

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With a collection of art of ancient America on loan from Museo Larco in Lima, Peru, and Museo de Sitio Manuel Chávez Ballón in Aguas Calientes, Peru, many of these gorgeous, gleaming objects of gold and silver and turquoise have never been on loan before.

Presented in an imaginative, engrossing way, viewers enter the full museum exhibit on the second floor and are ushered into a full surround cave-like interior, with full wall projections of leaping jaguars, twittering birds, and ominous storm clouds high above the mountains of Peru.

Pottery and ancient wares are displayed with lively stories beside them, bringing to life the ways they were used.

Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Inca site located on a ridge between the Huayna Picchu and Machu Picchu mountains in Peru. High above the clouds at 8,000 ft elevation, it overlooks the Urubamba River. The site’s pristine preservation, the quality of its advanced architecture, and the breathtaking mountain vista have made Machu Picchu a true wonder of the world. Terraced fields on the edge of the 80,000-acre site were once used for growing crops, likely maize and potatoes, and coca.

In 1911, explorer Yale University Professor Hiram Bingham III visited the site and published its existence to the modern world for the first time. Covered with vegetation, the buildings were made without mortar, their granite stones quarried and precisely cut.

Archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was a royal estate of sorts, used by the emperor and his family as a temporary respite, with no war was ever fought there. Machu Picchu has a number of structures that enhance the spiritual significance such as “Temple of the Sun,” an elliptical design similar to a sun temple found at the Inca capital of Cuzco.  A rock inside the temple is as an altar. During the June solstice, the rising sun shines directly into one of the temple’s windows, and this indicates an alignment between the window, rock, and solstice sun.

Although their empire existed for only 100 years before being cut short in 1533 by the arrival of the Spaniards, the Incas created 26,000 miles of roads, ruled an empire of 10 million people, and ruled with their language and culture from one end of the Andes to the other.

Photo Gallery

The exhibit highlights many of these features, including the barbaric animal and human sacrifices. While the exhibit shows a man’s heart being cut out and a silver sacrificial cup, it was often children who were sacrificed after being drugged with coca leaves and plied with alcohol, they were left to freeze to death high in the Andes, their bodies preserved for centuries.

Why the sacrifices were made is a strange melange of Inca religious beliefs, natural catastrophes, and the sheer difficulty of trying to survive amid the frozen heights of a volatile mountain chain.

Violent earthquakes are common, as were savage floods that disrupted food supplies.

In response to such terrifying natural phenomena, the Incas resorted to religion, believing the elements were controlled by gods. To survive, the Incas sought to form reciprocal relationships with their gods, appeasing them with simple prayers, food, coca leaves, woven cloth, animals, blood, and, in the ultimate sacrifice, human beings.

The most powerful room is the gold room, filled with incredible masks and “ear flares” and headdresses made of gold that have been melted, hammered into sheets, then cut and formed into plates and shapes and hoops and jewelry. Turquoise stones are cut into small beads or inlaid to form creatures in mosaics.

The biggest thrill is the Virtual Reality expedition of the mythical “Fortress in the Sky,” located in a separate room off the lobby. Sit in a cocoon-like chair, don the headset and take a flying journey with an Incan warrior to the various rooms and sections of Machu Picchu. Leaping off the cliff is a heady thrill as butterflies flit by and surprised llamas peer up in surprise from the ground below. Temples and food storage rooms, irrigation systems and crop fields, gods, and symbols are all introduced in a fast-paced VR trip. The ground – and chair – even shake as an earthquake strikes. Not to be missed!

A new gift shop at the back has some quality Peruvian exports of llama skin rugs, textiles, painted boxes, and jewelry.

If you visit, Machu Picchu and the Golden Empires of Peru runs through Sunday, March 6, 2022. Online at bocamuseum.org

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Discover Machu Picchu in stunning new exhibit at Boca Museum

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He started his art career in Philadelphia, bought a large rundown property which he fixed up, then moved to Miami, smartly purchasing two condo lofts in the pioneering Wynwood arts district. He started as a painter, then moved into painting on sculptural forms like eggs provided by the Faberge company in a series they sponsored.  

“I was intrigued by the egg shape which looked like a face to me, so I started making heads in different materials,” he says sitting in his studio surrounded by his multi-media artwork. 

A balloon project came his way, so making a balloon head was a natural next step.  

“To add interest I made a face on each side which is classic imagery in art history. I call them Janis intentionally spelled with an I as opposed to a U as in Janus,” he says. 

Janus is an ancient Roman religion and myth, the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces. 

“If you have two sides to see from it makes you see ‘the other’. It’s also been compared to Shrek,” he laughs.  ‘Well people like to compare it to something that is familiar. But to me, it’s a kind of unity.” 

After perfecting – and inventing – a way of making the 6-foot heads out of a lightweight plastic and parachute material and designing a mixed media approach to combine printed color with hand-painted details, he then came up with a way to build them into a rolling suitcase that builds in a battery pack, electric outlet, motorized fan, and color-changing LED lights. They weigh about 40 pounds, a genius portable large-scale art. 

Hyder’s The Janis Project began in Istanbul Turkey when it caught the eye of Frank Del Rio, CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line, who asked Hyder to come along on the cruise, make art in an open studio, and set the heads up at the different stops in a three-month journey.  A spontaneous daily placement aboard the luxury Oceania cruise liner and its ports of call, surprised cruisers, and locals with its presence, stimulating dialogs – as well as police presence – in many languages. He hiked up trails with the suitcases on his back in Machu Pichu to get one setup. 

The air-filled huge heads range in size from 4-11 feet tall, can reference the Moai of Easter Island, Olmec heads, and Janus, but at the same time the sculptures have their roots in street art and inflatable toys found everywhere from carnivals to car dealerships to the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade. The police came out in Seville, Spain, for a lack of permits and the blow-up heads received a definite no from Russian border police in St. Petersburg.   

“You don’t want to get in legal trouble in Russia,” Hyder says in all seriousness. 
The heads attract serious attention and fill up a gallery exhibit or an outdoor space. They can tether down in case of wind. Several will be on display at the upcoming Kinetic Art Exhibit in Boynton Beach, along with some indoor works that will create an infinity room. 

Hyder does more than the heads, he has an impressive body of painted fiberglass works, a large lit-up from behind series is on display in the long hallways of his loft building. He has an exquisite painting series of bright Koi fish against unusual silver and gold backgrounds. The koi reappear as sculptures made of flexible pipes, several of which hang in his studio. He has worked in ceramics and in bronze, and a beautiful portrait series on a lace like paper with floating leaves. 

Hyder has participated in more than 200 group shows and over 100 solo exhibitions throughout the Americas, Asia, and Europe, including 10 individual exhibitions in New York City.   

He was chairman of Fine Arts and faculty member at the Moore College of Art and Design.  His works have been featured in Color in Contemporary Painting, The Art of Watercolor, The Song of the City, and Artist Homes and Studios.  His works have been reviewed in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Examiner, ArtNews, and Art in America. 

“I think these are interesting and timely,” he says of Janis’s heads. “They keep changing meaning as they evolve.” 

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Frank Hyder is blowing up the art world one head at a time

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Her winning painting features the famous Jupiter Lighthouse along with fantastical birds, fish, and hibiscus flowers in vibrant colors. The annual event, which features a juried art exhibition, interactive exhibits, children’s activities, live music, and demonstrations, will take place February 13-14 at The Gardens North County District Park in Palm Beach Gardens this year.

“I have such a passion for art that I’ve managed to do this full time my entire professional career,” she says from her studio in Bonita Springs. “My current favorite work is my abstractions, I am moving more into that area after years of working more realistically. I’m phasing out murals to concentrate on that.”

Adele owns a fine art, mural, and wall finish company, and has worked with top designers and interior decorators creating exacting work for dozens of projects. She has made ceiling murals, children’s rooms, outdoor frescos, and even pet portraits.

“You do what you have to but every project that pushes me out of my comfort zone gives me another skill set,” she says. “I do love commissions though as I can work in my style and it’s very freeing.”

Christine still paints by commissions, on both large and small scale, and loves every project. “They (the commissions) make me grow continuously,” she says.

Each assignment comes with the unique desires of the client and constantly pushes her out of her comfort zone, thereby increasing her range as an artist and giving a wider range for her talents and style abilities.

Born in northern New Jersey to an artist mother, Christine studied at Fine Art at the University of Delaware, Maryland Institute College of Art, and New College of Southwest Florida before she settled in Florida. She joined the Art festival circuit in 2017, saying the comradery and interacting with the public is fun and stimulating after working solo in a studio.

The wildly colorful flora and fauna of Florida has been a huge inspiration. Her work shows feathered owls, bright pink Spoonbill Flamingos, flapping sea turtles, vibrant red wildflowers in the breeze.

“I love doing the art festival circuit and showing off these works. Meeting the public, meeting other artists who are like-minded shows we all share a kind of gypsy spirit. I pack up my van and go from festival to festival. Yes, it’s hard work but if you really love what you do it doesn’t feel like hard work.”

As for the winning poster art Adele’s winning entry, titled “Delightful,” is an acrylic painting on canvas highlighted by oil paint. The main image is the iconic dark red Jupiter Lighthouse surrounded by swirling abstract animals and flowers. She says they were not given any kind of direction, but she had spent time in the Jupiter and Hutchinson Island area beaches and took her imagery from days spent at the beach and the parks with her family.

“The art just had to speak to the area, I felt the natural world all around the lighthouse,” she adds.

Adele was among eight artists who submitted entries for the festival’s 2021 commemorative poster.

This year’s theme was “Love of Art.” Adele’s painting, which took two months to paint, was the right fit, said Noel Martinez, chief executive of the Palm Beach North Chamber of Commerce, which is producing the event.

“This poster represents the beauty of Palm Beach North,” he said. “Its dreamy feel and Florida imagery remind us that we live in a pretty special place.”

This is Adele’s first time to be selected as the ArtiGras Festival poster artist. She has also been selected as a poster artist for an upcoming show in Sarasota.

As the 2021 ArtiGras poster artist, she will receive a free booth during the festival and looks forward to meeting visitors.

The annual event moved to Palm Beach Gardens due to construction after spending two decades in Jupiter. Tickets are $11 per day with advance purchase. Children 12-and-under are free.

More about Christine Adele online at christineadelearts.com

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Christine Adele wows with abstract design for ArtiGras poster

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“I always start with drawings,” he says from his studio of 30 years in Vero Beach. “I sit down and start sketching out ideas, dozens of them. Maybe one will catch my attention and then I develop it into a series. It has to be a series as several forms spin out of the main idea.”

He will be exhibiting one of his “only slightly Kinetic” works at the upcoming Kinetic Art exhibit in Boynton Beach in March.

“I’ll be showing IPO 004, a brightly colored, abstract sculpture in aluminum metal. It’s part of my Containment Series where an organic object is contained by some sort of cage or frame. This piece has been shown all over the US and in Mexico. It does move, but not a lot, it rocks back and forth slightly in the wind. It does bring another aspect to the work.”

Robert Coon’s work is very physical, with large pieces of metal being welded, suspended, attached, and manipulated. Born in Charlotte, NC, Coon attended the University of Georgia (B.F.A.), and the University of Massachusetts (M.F.A.). Early in his career, he concentrated on painting, with various painting techniques. He concentrated on painting for nearly a decade. He then moved toward 3D, making unique waxes, cast in bronze or aluminum.

Since the mid 1980s, he has made large outdoor works fabricated in aluminum and painted, using bright colors since 1963. His work is included in many collections – civic, academic, and individual.

“I work alone, no assistants or helpers at all, so the work takes a while,” he says. “But to me, that is part of what it is in the end. I can see every step of the way.”

The Containment Series can be seen as many things – nature against man-made, freedom against confinement, ideas struggling to break free of discipline. Organic shapes strain against their straight-line cages. He sometimes exhibits the drawings with the sculptures, but he doesn’t consider it necessary.

“I think somewhere along the way I hung a piece inside another piece and that sparked the idea. Then dozens of sketches followed. Even with the drawings, it doesn’t always end up looking like that in the sculptures as the process changes during the creating.”

Other series of his are inspired by washed-up hurricane debris he dragged off the beaches. The enormous amount of debris that washed up near the Disney Resort in Vero Beach after back to back hurricanes a few years ago looked like sculptural forms to him – ones that had been created by force through nature.

“I’m a visual person, I learned old school with drawing but was then drawn to three-dimensional shapes. I spent a lot of years teaching drawing. It was a successful change for me and the way metal lends itself to curves against straight lines fascinates me. After the drawings, I then make a maquette, usually about 8-12 inches high. This is necessary when I submit proposals to shows so they can see the sculpture in its entirety and how it will look in the space they want to place it in.”

He also needs viewers to see the negative space – the shapes between the lines and metal. This is as important as the metal itself.

Coon made his way to Florida because of his wife. They were living in the northeast when she applied for a job in Florida. She suggested he apply for a sabbatical from his teaching job. They both got accepted and have been in Vero for 3 decades.

“It’s been good here as I can work outside year-round,” Coon says. “I don’t need a big indoor studio here.  I was an artist in residence at the Vero Beach Museum and had a great space there.”

His work has been shown in dozens of exhibits over the decades and resides in many museums and collections. Next up, after the Boynton Beach Kinetic Art show, he has a sculpture for an exhibit called Wild Things in Asheville, NC happening in April.

“This one is intriguing because they are showing animal photographs with sculptures,” he says.

He’ll be at the Boyton Beach exhibit, supporting this one-of-a-kind exhibit with his large outdoor work, watching it spin in the wind.

More about the artists online at robertcoonsculptor.com

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Robert Coon’s figurative abstractions

The post Nature in a cage: Robert Coon’s figurative abstractions appeared first on The Florida Daily Post.

These are some of the wondrous indoor and outdoor kinetic works of art that will be displayed at the 5^th Biennial Kinetic Art Exhibit presented by the City of Boynton Beach Art in Public Places from Saturday, March 6^th to Sunday, March 7^th, downtown Boynton at East Ocean Avenue where large scale sculptures will be accompanied by more entertainment and other displays at the newly renovated Cultural Center.

“We are excited for the opportunity to showcase outdoor and indoor artworks, live music, food, and a Children’s Kinetic Artwork Display, plus fun for the whole family at the Schoolhouse Children’s Museum during this year’s memorable event. In addition, exhibits and displays will be held in our newly renovated Boynton Beach Arts & Cultural Center and live music performed on the City’s new state of the art outdoor stage,” says Lori LaVerriere, City Manager.

As the first major event in the newly renovated 4,000 square foot Cultural Center, a three-day exhibition of kinetically inspired work will be presented in an area that can safely welcome 130 people at a time with masks.

“Cities in Florida create unique art events to spark interest in the city and art,” says Glenn Weiss, Art in Public Places Manager for the City of Boynton Beach. “Miami Beach has Art Basel. Tampa has Lights on Tampa. Jacksonville has Art Republic murals. Lakeland has Lemon Street sculptures. Boynton Beach invented the only continuous Kinetic Art Biennial in the world. What do you need for Kinetic Art?…. Sunshine and a breeze. Both abundant in south Florida.”

As for how the artists were selected, they come from across the globe and in our backyard.

Some of the top national artists working in kinetic sculpture will be presented, several of them are Florida based. Artists include Ron Agam, Joel Amit (Blue Gallery); Olga Duenas; Kimon Fotaidis; Brookhart Jonquil; Oliver Haligon; (Haligon Fine Art); Marco Mahler; Debbie Mostel Designs; Kyle Poyser; Luisa Russo; Darren Miller; Frank Hyder; Lloyd Goradesky; Ana Giovinazzo and more. Mobiles, op art, and at least, eight of Frank Hyder’s giant two-faced inflatable heads will be on display.

There are already two new permanent works of public art for the Town Square Boynton Beach Redevelopment Project by Ralfonso and Don Gialanella. Both polished stainless-steel sculptures were completed in 2020.

“Reflections” is a kinetic sculpture by Ralfonso who shares time between West Palm Beach and Geneva, Switzerland. The World-renowned kinetic sculptor’s piece “Reflections” sits at the corner of E. Ocean Ave. and E. Seacrest Blvd. The 27’ high sculpture features twenty-one 3′ to 11’ long bird-like wings that rotate in the wind. Made of polished stainless steel, it reflects nature by day and is colorfully lit at night. The wings intersect and rotate like wind tunnels, representing the City’s diversity and unity. Three Zen-shaped seating walls allow sculpture viewing from various angles.

“Synesthesia” by Donald Gialanella of St. Petersburg, is an intimate circular space of polished columns, sound, and light.  As one enters the space, surprising sounds can be heard like a symphony tuning up. Thunderclaps and lights flash like lightning in the clouds.

Outside are new works by Rubem Robierbo of Miami – “Dream Machine” and “The Healing Heart”. A Pop-Artist born in Brazil, Robierb has worked with poetry, painting, photography, and sculpture to create captivating, visually compelling works of art with strong symbolism and underlying messages. During this year’s Kinetic Art event, Robierb will feature cutting-edge Augmented Reality (AR) technology to display along with each of his pieces.

Sure to be a crowd-pleaser, “The Mechanical Horse” will run in the wind by Adrian Landon, Brooklyn. Adrian developed his initial body of work in the New York area, with his first Mechanical Horse created in 2014 when he began to show his work nationally and internationally. In 2019, he received the Honorarium Grant from Burning Man to make a giant mechanical Pegasus, his largest and greatest sculpture yet.

A familiar sight at art fairs throughout South Florida, “Janis Project” by Frank Hyder of Miami. Hyder has participated in more than 200 group shows and over 100 solo exhibitions throughout the Americas, Asia, and Europe. His colorful inflatable heads create a Pop art Easter Island with multiple meanings.

“Let Love Guide Your Way” by Lloyd Goradesky of Hollywood, uses the power of art to create social interaction and dialogue with innovative technology combined with a unique use of materials. He incorporates natural elements within the environment such as sunlight, wind, rain, etc., to amplify the design or effect of a public art piece. He is well known for his enormous floating Gator in the Bay with snapping jaws made of rubber floating art tiles from 2013.

“Prairie Flame” by Darren Miller of Decatur, Illinois explores the relationship of line, form, and negative space as a manifest in dance which he applies to kinetic sculpture. His background as a machinist/metal fabricator, pen and ink artist, avid windsurfer, and hobby fiddler are invaluable tools that help him create unique durable metal works.

“Magnify” is by successful designer Kirk Seese of Baltimore who has made work for the sets of blockbuster movies, HBO series, in school classrooms, and countless homes and buildings across the country. He designed hundreds of themed climbing walls, and his 2D designs became a 3D reality, as they built and opened new gyms across America.

“IPO 004” is by Robert Coon of Vero Beach, a painter, sculptor, and printmaker known for his brightly colored, abstract sculptures in metal.

If you plan to participate and need more information, please visit www.boynton-beach.org/kinetic. All Events FREE to the public. Masks are required to attend.

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Boynton Beach 5th Biennial Kinetic Art Exhibit

The post Boynton Beach 5th Biennial Kinetic Art Exhibit: A moving experience appeared first on The Florida Daily Post.