But for a certain ball-kicking soccer star – the BIG cleated shoe fits and he’s wearing them.

After winning the FIFA World Cup in 2022 and seven Ballon d’Or, the annual football award presented by French news magazine France Football for the World Player of the Year – and rejecting a massive payday – over $561M a year from the Saudis, Messi has landed in Miami.

Lured by the Inter Miami American professional soccer club based in Fort Lauderdale, he was introduced at a flashy fireworks show dampened only by a little rain. On Friday night, he proved to be money well spent. Messi capped the opening night with his new club by delivering the unforgettable. His magical left foot sent a free kick into the upper left corner of the net in the 94th minute Friday night, giving Inter Miami a 2-1 win over Mexican club Cruz Azul in a Leagues Cup match.

Messi is now part of co-owner David Beckham’s Inter Miami, established in 2018. Inter Miami plays and trains at a 34-acre facility, which includes the 19,100-capacity DRV PNK Stadium, a 50,000-square-foot training center, and seven fields in Fort Lauderdale.

In Miami though, you are nothing unless you have a mural like Gloria Estefan and Celia Cruz.

So the new local superstar has one that also has Beckham’s approval by hyper-realist Argentinian artist Max Bagnasco at 148 Northwest 28th Street. A huge grinning bearded Messi is seen in a headshot and running elated on the field on the full wall mural.

Bagnasco has been a mural painter since 1998, he creates large scale very detailed, photorealistic portraits of giants Bob Marley, Diego Maradona, and baller Lebron James. Bagnasco was in Albania painting another mural when it was announced that Messi would be coming to Miami. The artist received a call from Gustavo Miculitzki from Block Capital Group who commissioned the massive photorealistic double portrait mural in Wynwood.

WATCH: The Argentinian artist paints giant Lionel Messi mural in Miami

David Beckham couldn’t resist joining in.

“(He) came to paint with me!” Bagnasco said in an Instagram video when Beckham came to help paint. “Thank you for your visit… you are the king. Well, we are here with the giant Messi waiting to receive a new “Welcome Messi to Wynwood”… we’re happy.”

Beckham presented Bagnasco with a new Messi clothing set by a local clothing store.

There is another mural before Bagnascos by Venezuelan artist Arlex Campos at 2303 NW 2nd Avenue. This one is full-on pink – the color of the summer combined with the Barbie film media blasts.

Messi is still wearing the blue and white stripes from Argentina that are blended with Inter Miami’s pink uniform and number 10. The mural has a photo scan quality with a serious-looking Messi standing with arms folded and a full sleeve of tattoos.

Campos has been in Miami for eight years and has gotten lots of praise for the mural he did in June.

“It’s a revolution for the league to have a player of this level playing for Inter,” Campos said. “It’s craziness for the city.”

A group called Vice City, the official supporters’ group for Inter Miami, started with a mural to welcome Messi at 55 NW 25th St.

Ignacio Martinez, one of the Vice City’s supporters says, “We started with the mural, and gatherings for our away game watch parties, now we’re working on a “telón” that I can’t disclose at the moment”.

There were painting sessions in the week leading up to Messi’s birthday for fans.

“Taking it to the street is part of our culture,” Chris Moramarco, the group’s co-founder and artist said. “It’s part of who we are.”

Messi has been at the entrance to the family-owned Argentinian restaurant Fiorito in 2018 at 5555 NE Second Ave. and repainted in 2020 by artist Claudio Picasso.

Maximiliano Alvarez, the restaurant owner is a longtime Messi fan. The restaurant got a lot of backlash when Argentine did not win a World Cup a few years ago, as fans thought the mural should be Maradona instead.

But time and a big deal have brought the art full circle. The paint is dry – let the games begin!

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In a nod to what made the boom happen, they have added 8 artist studios and exhibition space on the ground floor. High ceilings, concrete floors, and white walls are begging for paint splatters.

As the first artist to break ground in this new studio space, she and her spunky white dog occupy a space already filled with a brand-new series she is creating for Miami Art Week in December.

“I moved into this particular studio two months ago,” she says wearing paint-splattered clothes as trains rumble behind her and residents stroll past to walk the dogs. Sage burns in a bowl.

“Before that, I was in Little Haiti. I had a residency with the `Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator (DVCAI)’. They gave me a two-year residency where they funded my studio and it was really good, but the space just wasn’t suitable for a painter. Then I ended up moving here and this is a lot more spacious and it is a lot more suitable. I’m here for six months.”

“I moved in and I wanted something fresh. Regular shapes like squares and rectangles became boring to me. So I started making my own circles. These are almost sculptures. They’re canvases that are stretched onto custom stretcher bars. These are for Scope Miami with The CAMP Gallery, which represents my work in Miami, and Project Art Box, to whom I donated a custom piece. And then I’m showing another piece at the Museum of Graffiti in Wynwood as part of a group show.”

Perez shows off the series of smaller and larger works, organic shapes with depth, base colored black with gleaming swatches of magenta and gold.

She was an early pioneer in the street art movement, exploring abstract expressionism with pop art.

In 2014, she represented Wynwood in a solo exhibition in Dubai’s very first street art gallery. She has exhibited at the Delano Hotel, Intercontinental Hotel, and the Sagamore Hotel for Art Basel 2017 titled: “Urban Legends” where her works hung next to Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Banksy.

Perez has worked on product development and in-store visual design campaigns with global brands Armani Exchange, Lululemon Athletica, Whole Foods, Barry’s Bootcamp, and Prada.

In 2020, she designed a sculpture for Aventura Mall, the only living female artist with a piece in the collection. She has been featured in international publications including DISfunction Magazine, Latina Magazine, Lumiere Magazine, and onCuba.

“So you can see they’re starting to feel like a collection,” she says gesturing at the new art. “The small ones look really good. I’ll finish something and then maybe a collector will swing by and will purchase it. I’ve sold three of these already and I’m trying to get as much done as I can so that I have enough work that week. It’s a worthwhile problem to have.”

Recently, Perez designed a tote bag based on one of her works that launched with Zak the Baker.

“It’s a really cool initiative that he does. He selects one artist every year to place their artwork on a tote bag and sell it in his bakery. A hundred percent of the proceeds go to the artist because I just moved in here.”

Outside of her studio is a small gallery space with more of her work where she has held receptions, part of the deal with the Strata building to share the arts.

“Just a lot of changes now. I’m rolling with the punches. Here in Wynwood, I never thought I would end up back in Wynwood. I did street art here when I was much younger–I basically grew up in the neighborhood. And then I had my first studio here and was part of the initial spark that launched Wynwood, that first wave 10 years ago.”

She says it was fun at the beginning, like the start of all scenes.

“Everything was so new and everybody was here. It was a real community and a real connection to artists. You could walk anywhere and run into your friends, especially if you were working artists in the city. I would meet a lot of people, international artists.”

She says a lot of people set out for New York to be working artists.

“It’s what they did, but something inside said I needed to stay here and be a part of what’s happening here. And I’m really happy I made that decision because it was pure magic. Like the things that we got to do and experience were just so cool.”

“It’s like what happened on Lincoln Road in South Beach in the 90s. I don’t even want to be on Lincoln Road. It’s not cool at all. It’s the same now though with Second Avenue here. It’s hard to find a neighborhood with that sense of community anymore.”

“But I go over to the farmer’s market which is at Legion Park, and that feels a little bit like a community. Because you’re starting to see similar faces every week and that kind of thing. It was really wonderful to be a part of Wynwood’s culture. And it was many years that it inspired my work and it drove my work because I was in the right place at the right time. I met a lot of people that took me from point A to point B, like a domino effect.”

Jenny says that “this is why I’m essentially here. This building, in particular, I can’t speak for any other developers, but this one, they want to build a sense of community. So they asked me to come in and I’m here on a six-month residency and part of the requirement is to host events here with the residents. I already did one in August. It was called Creativity and Mindfulness because I also practice yoga. I have a partnership with Lululemon. I did that ambassadorship program with them, I was able to ask them to sponsor the event, they were able to donate yoga mats and really nice water bottles, and so we were able to host the residents and a few people from my own personal address book.”

“I get a lot of people peeking in through the window wanting to see what I’m doing. I invite them in. For me, this is my office, my workspace. So sometimes I don’t see the coolness of it, since I’m here 12 or 16 hours a day. But when I see people come in and they’re like, “Wow”, then I see it through their eyes.”

“I can probably say the only studios in the neighborhood that I know of that are actually designed for artists. There are sinks outside, there’s restrooms.”

There used to be scores of galleries in the neighborhood, Jenny says, but now only a few as the rents got too expensive and the Gallery Walk nights got out of control as the party people took over.

“And they were requiring a lot of the galleries to demolish their walls and build retail windows, so it just changed, the whole thing changed. And there’s nothing wrong with change. I just think if you’re going to kick the artists out, where are they going, you know?”

The answer is they flee to more industrial parts of town like Lemon City and Allapatah. Then the developers follow them and start scooping up real estate there.

That was literally what Jenny did. She went from Wynwood to Lemon City to Little Haiti then back to Wynwood because she’s good and does the work.

“In the context of rising prices and the challenges that accompany it, like finding an affordable studio, I am so grateful to Strata Wynwood for giving me both a conducive space wherein to develop my work and a platform to share it with a community that I have grown up in.”

For now, she is not just surviving but thriving, making her way through the new big-money Wynwood, one painting at a time.

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For more information on the artist, visit www.jennyperez.com

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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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Magnus Sodamin has been making wild nature art around South Florida for years, with innovative shows of black light paintings that changed with timed lighting and painting every wall, floor, and ceiling. The result was completely immersive.

His melting flowers in rainbow rain covered entire blocks of Wynwood engulfing a Diner and a mall, and a new series called “Wild Altars” embodies what he calls nature as church. In downtown Miami, a new altar mural called Florida Wildlife Corridor depicts the artist’s vision of flora in an urban jungle.

On the side of a brick building that formally held a huge smiling orange head by Atomik – another Miami artist who gets around – the 11-story mural highlights the need to protect our state’s last wild places.

Filled with mangroves and iguanas and black Anhinga, sawgrass and palm forests, and lush landscapes, all are under assault by development. The importance of preserving green spaces for the future has never been more evident. Sodamins’s mural in a concrete jungle setting drives home the need for preservation.

He says, “Nature is my church. Anywhere in the world and whenever I enter, I know that they are not my space.”

Born in Manhattan, Sodamin is a long-time Miami resident, having received his BFA in painting from the New World School of the Arts, Miami. He then spent a year painting at the Nansenskolen (Nansen Academy) in Lillehammer, Norway, a humanitarian institute that focuses on cross-cultural exchange.

He spends a great deal of time outdoors. His Instagram is filled with art and fishing, his other passion. However, he is no Guy Harvey when it comes to his subject matter. His interest lies more in birds, panthers, and trees.

He spent a year-long residency at the Deering Estate and a period of research at the Artist in Residency in Everglades (AIRIE) program. Out of that came a large body of work focusing on the gardens and glades of Florida.

A show at Dot Fifty One Gallery found the space turned into a kaleidoscopic place of worship, with large scale arched paintings that resemble stained glass windows, and a new series of slightly bizarre tufted tapestry sculptures that turn birds into deities, demi-gods of the glades.

The layers were so dense that one was drawn into the pink and green world. The paintings were based on preparatory drawings Sodamin made both in the wild and from photographs taken during his frequent visits to remote locations in the Florida landscape. He creates a radically different kind of language, a living zone between abstraction and landscape.

Nature bats last and deserves such praise.

“For humans, art has developed into a language of how we see and want to experience the world. Through our senses, we find inspiration- which leads to discovery. It is in our nature to be captivated and in awe of something larger than us,” he explains.

A recent weekend in February found him painting a skateboard park ramp at Skatebird Miami with kids. He taught them to beautify something that will become a joyous place of activity and community.

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Follow him on Instagram: @magnificentmagnus

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The works on view depicted an obvious love of structure and function all bundled together to generate exquisite floating compositions that appear to gently glide from side to side, like a misty storm in a technicolor theatre of purposeful ambiguity and inherent splendor. Some of the paintings take on a pictorial sense of deep space, where forms appear to drift in a sky charged with soft pastel molecular clouds. However, Herrington’s work basically is non-narrative, and evidence of recognizable motifs (such as extra-terrestrial shapes) are coincidental for a viewer to perceive. The strength of Melissa Herrington’s paintings is not only in her choice of sumptuous colors and tints but in her exuberant configurations that are perfectly balanced with a square.

Herrington’s bold and sensitive canvases seem to perform on many levels through her idiosyncratic, painterly, dreamlike, and handsome surfaces. Occasionally the works are accented with a distinctly single figurative contour outline that could produce a cubist constellation, counterbalancing her saturation of the raw canvas and offering an aesthetic illusion on numerous planes. Those canvases that pay strict attention to the cloud-like silhouettes, which seem effortless in their application, become dreamy and sensual as they magically fill a design with bravado and intuition. The early experimental works of Helen Frankenthaler, the undisputed inventor of the stained canvas, come to mind with some of Herrington’s works on view. She seems to have a knack for piecing together disparate flowing ambulatory shapes without an initial plan of action, preferring to allow her natural sensitivity for abstract compositions spiced with and characteristic color perception that invites the viewer on a short journey of sensations; touch and taste stimulating a keen sense compulsory viewer participation.

These works offered the viewer an enjoyable flight into unknown painterly galaxies of dynamic interplanetary shapes in an imaginative context that is saturated with earthy hues, from deep coffee browns and snippets of Payne’s gray to daps of harmonious blues reminiscent of bodies of water. These layouts are often accented with flicks and drips that tie the artist’s orbiting arrangements together in weightless non-narrative designs patterns that are confident and inherently stunning. Squint your eyes and you can almost imagine a first view of the unexplored universe as seen from the Hubble telescope light-years away and constructed by an accidental hurricane of galaxies whose velocity and effervescent vapors create their own hidden exhibition in the open sky.

As the spring season warms up in South Florida and the tropical plants come into full bloom, Melissa Herrington adds her own innovative vibrant acrylic landscape that is packed with organic colors and forms that seem to break through an invisible barrier as they fall into place like a well-planned garden of visual delights.

Herrington’s work proudly provides a unique and sensitive feminine color examination of the ever-changing nature of the female form that often is incorporated into her canvases. Many of the works have opulent transparency that allows Herrington to layer shapes and add dimension. In “Cerulean sky, a murmur of a love epistle,” the title offers a clue to the painting’s nomadic spirit. “In that twilight, so heavy through her midnight moment’s landscape” depicts Herrington’s offer of a space voyage into thin air, highlighted in shades of purple as if from the aftermath of a tropical storm. In the picture “Unfolding from her center (2),” the artist articulates a drawing that outlines a female profile that has become a familiar hallmark of Herrington’s oeuvre. “Unraveling the night. Sea sprayed shadows holy as pink skies” is a title that hints at the evening sky and beyond, perhaps even light-years away. Another engagingly beautiful painting is “Blooms a starry portal unfurled. the conjurer. the alcove,” where the title beckons to the outer reaches of our universe.

Melissa Herrington continues to take the viewer on a rewarding journey through her personal world of saturated colors and shapes, expanding in all directions as she ‘builds’ each painting. Judging from this enchanting show, her reputation is about to take a quantum leap in critical acclaim and aesthetic recognition.

For more information on the artist, visit melissaherrington.com

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Bruce Helander is an artist who writes on art. He is a former White House Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts and is a member of the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. As an artist, his work is in fifty museum collections, including the Whitney, Guggenheim, and The Met.

Melissa Herrington springs into orbit

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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

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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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As an artist, Lloyd Goradesky thinks big, not just in scale – as in his football-field-sized Gator in the Bay work – but also in how he documents and presents his work with photos, books, and in tabletop-sized editions as with the heart weathervane.

His Hollywood home studio is jammed with his artwork, it lines up against the walls in the living room, fills a guest room, and decorates his spacious waterfall pool. He has stacks of boxed “Let LOVE Guide Your Way” in his office, already for sale on his website.

When he was asked to contribute to the Kinetic show he was initially given a drawing of hearts that stood up in a pattern on thin rods. It wasn’t all that visually interesting so Goradesky came up with a better idea.

So how come a weathervane?

“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!” he says.

The art piece is free-standing at 16-foot tall and features a 15.5-foot rotating-circumference kinetic wind vane or Cupid’s Arrow.  The weathervane freely rotates on three precision-quality stainless steel rotating bearing gears. The metallic red paint on aluminum gives the work a deeper glint.  The front end of the Cupid’s Arrow is a 36-inch cut-out heart-shape.  The opposite side of the Cupid’s Arrow is a 4- inch solid heart-shape that captures the wind.  The large heart-shapes are attached together with an 11-foot steel beam.  The stanchion’s heart-shaped top plate and heart-shaped base plate are supported using four 10-feet curved steel plates each with 6 heart-shaped cut-outs.  The cut-outs allow for heart-shaped reflections during daylight allowing the piece to look different upon every viewing.  Using ‘scrap’ from the cut-outs, there are 9 random hearts attached to the stanchion.  For additional support, half-inch steel rods create an ‘X’ on each side that represents the loving ‘kiss’.  The heart-shape points of the top plate and base plate point due North to measure wind direction.

” … it truly is a beautiful, unique piece with a tremendously important message.” Says Trip Barrett, Director of Tourism.

According to Goradesky “Let LOVE guide your way” is the universal color of LOVE, bright red.  The art is covered with gold speckles which reflect in sunlight and then coated with a clear UV protectant that maintains the bright red color and protects the surface from all elements. The art illuminates an ambience of Love using LED lighting that enhances the heart-shapes on the Cupid’s Arrow.  The stanchion and the Cupid’s Arrow are assembled and moved in two pieces.  The piece is created with recycled structural steel.  The total weight of the piece is 1850 pounds.”

“There is interpretation with every aspect of the Art,” he continues. “The weathervane has two main components: the base and the arrow. The base represents a singular human form which represents the ‘Act of Kindness’ in the singular art message: to be Kind, Compassionate & Tolerant for each other. The message to be Kind is an individual thought.

If the human condition is not mindful of Kindness, it will not be Kind. To be Kind is a conscious thought. There are 4 stations on the base which point North, East, South, and West which represent our world. The top and bottom heart-shapes point North to give the functioning weathervane a point of reference. There are heart-shaped cut-outs in groups of three which represent family. The number 3 has the meaning of Family & LOVE. Multiples of the number 3 have meaning in all cultures & religions. There are 24 total heart-shaped cut-outs that represent our World. The arrow is ‘Cupid’s Arrow’ which represents Universal LOVE. Although Cupid is known to be a prankster, this is a ‘golden arrow’ meaning LOVE in mythological stories. The large oversized arrow with hearts on either end encourages the viewer to think of Kindness & LOVE.”

As a public artist, Lloyd Goradesky’s projects have received wide media coverage. The Gator in the Bay  – a multi-media work made of floating tiles, photo-screened gator feet, and a head with moveable jaws – was featured in over 30 foreign newspapers.
A rare occurrence in the sky led to a series of photos of rainbow clouds that he turned into collectible prints and a book.

While Goradesky’s work is extremely diverse, the purpose is always to raise awareness while showing the beauty of our natural surroundings.

“Let Love Guide Your Way” will be on display at the 2021 5^th Biennial Kinetic Art Exhibit presented by the City of Boynton Beach Art in Public Places on Saturday, March 6^th – Sunday, March 7^th, 2021, and beyond in #DowntownBoynton.

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Lloyd Goradesky’s nature-inspired art

The post Gators, hearts and rainbow dragons: Lloyd Goradesky’s nature-inspired art appeared first on The Florida Daily Post.

“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.

“I started doing art at a young age when I was 7 years old back in school,” she says. “I remember drawing in my notebooks and just letting my imagination take over my thoughts. Art was my escape during my childhood, I have a fascination with anything related to the art industry. I won several art contests back in my childhood that motivated me to pursue my dream to be a big artist and one day to own my art gallery. One day I decided to create a big oil painting titled “Bosque Misterioso” a mysterious forest of trees and exotic animals, a very detailed painting that I created when I was 15 years old. The artwork inspired me to continue creating more paintings with tropical trees, flowers, and exotic animals. I did that painting back in Honduras located in Central America, a place that inspired me a lot with the beautiful mountains, lakes, and gorgeous traditions.”

Growing up in Honduras, her family took her to a lake, giving her inspiration as  “the silence of the lake …it was beautiful. Those beautiful memories stay in my heart and sometimes I use them to create a painting,” she says.

Laelanie says her style depends on her mood and inspiration, but art has always been part of her childhood and dreams.

“Talking about dreams… my biggest goal was to have an art gallery and be able to share my artwork with everyone!” she exclaims. “Several people did not believe in me, that never stopped me. I continued my journey and one day I left my country to pursue my dreams, and came here to Miami in 2012. I remember being part of Brickell Art Walk and other art galleries, also I was always looking for galleries and places to exhibit my artwork, everything I did it alone and I’m proud of it.”

She opened Laelanie Art Gallery in Doral, Florida, managing the business and selling her paintings there.

“Right now I have a very nice art collection that is named “Blue”, it’s tropical and has that coastal energy with vivid beautiful colors! I just love bright bold colors it gives me joy when I’m painting, also when I paint… I love to listen to pop music or techno songs. I can’t paint in a quiet place… I need to have music around me to be inspired and let my imagination run away with my thoughts.”

She became a painter as the bright bold colors can become drastic combinations, she lets her “imagination emerge in the canvas and I just let my inspiration go wild. Flowers and ocean waves are part of my new art collection, the design of the flowers is different from the normal floral painting. I love to paint huge flowers with long petals with swirls and textures. And other days my inspiration goes totally coastal with blue ocean waves and gorgeous sailboats. The medium that I only use is oil on canvas, it has been the only medium used since my childhood, and is a very easy medium to use when I’m painting.”

Her message at heart is “I’m trying to say that your imagination has no limits and that our natural surroundings are beautiful with flowers, oceans, blue skies, butterflies… that represents joy and happiness! Most of them have bright orange with gorgeous gradients and textures, my recent painting “Soul of a Butterfly” is a lovely painting that has orange, magenta, blue shades, and turquoise. You can see the drastic color combinations and my signature design of energy spheres of colors near the butterfly. My artwork also has a lot of circles and waves they are part of my art style, also back in my childhood I remember drawing circles and big eyes and right now I still paint circles and spheres, and sometimes I do paintings of surreal big eyes.”

Owning her own gallery ended up being a plus during the pandemic shutdown as she continued painting and even completed two art collections as well as selling almost her entire art collection during the shutdown.

“Right now I only have a few paintings left at Laelanie Art Gallery, most of them sold. The collection right now in the gallery is titled “Blue” inspired by ocean waves, sailboats, butterflies, and flowers, everything is related to nature and bright strong colors.”

Art rules her world though she plays chess, listens to music, and loves photography, visiting unknown places to take pictures of the beach, trees, flowers, and other objects to inspire her work.

“But most of the time I’m focused on my artwork and at the art gallery,” she says cheerily.

Online at: www.laelanieartgallery.com

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The colorful homeland of Laelanie Larach infuses her work

The post The colorful homeland of Laelanie Larach infuses her work appeared first on The Florida Daily Post.