Florida – Page 2 – Bay Art Files

Being Seen

Recent Acquisitions from The Ringling Photography Collection

by Robin O’Dell

“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female form which is styled accordingly.”
― Laura Mulvey, Visual And Other Pleasures

The above quote was written in the 1970s by the noted film theorist Laura Mulvey (British, b. 1941). This idea of the “male gaze” was expanded to include all visual theories and spurred a re-evaluation of how and by whom images have been and are being made of women. Chris Jones, Curator of Photography and New Media, has culled eighteen photographs recently brought into the collection of The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and placed them sparingly on the walls, inviting visitors into this continuing dialogue. Small in number but large in visual delight, these photographs celebrate artists taking control of their own artistic identities.

Zanele Muholi, Kodwa II, Amsterdam, from the series Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness), 2017, Gelatin silver print. © Zanele Muholi

Artists using self-portraiture include Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972). A transgender artist, Muholi uses their own image to project strength and directness, challenging the very idea of how people of color have been depicted throughout history. Muholi considers themselves a visual activist and is specifically concerned with presenting gay and LBGTQ as part of the photographic canon. In these self-portraits, Muholi’s skin is darkened to an almost pure black and the prints are large, offering a visually dramatic and physically compelling visage. Muholi’s work is immediately recognizable and wholly unforgettable.

Bea Nettles (American, born 1946) is respected for her use of experimental processes. For The Ringling, she created an image that incorporates photographs of the Museum’s environment with one of her own body to make a unique portrait. These fragments combine to layer time and place with her own distinct sense of self. The photograph is part of the series Return Trips including images of Spain and Morocco, so recognizing something so specific to this Museum offers an unexpected delight. The Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, is currently presenting a virtual retrospective of Nettles’ fifty-year career. You can access it here: https://www.eastman.org/bea-nettles-harvest-memory. It provides a good overview of this very creative and inventive artist.

Ilse Bing, Self-Portrait with Leica, Paris, 1931; printed later, Gelatin silver print.
The Stanton B. and Nancy W. Kaplan Collection at The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, © Ilse Bing

In the photograph Self-Portrait with Leica twentieth-century photographer Ilse Bing (American, born Germany, 1899-1998) captures herself in the act of photographing. Using multiple mirrors, she plays with the idea of self and identity. The image shows both a frontal and side view of the artist while incorporating the Leica camera she became closely associated with. This small camera was revolutionary at the time, as most professional photographers still used box or cameras with bellows. This iconic photograph is part of a large gift of over a thousand photographs given to The Ringling by Stanton and Nancy Kaplan in 2019. Other gifts by the Kaplans in the exhibition include works by Ruth Bernhard (American, born Germany, 1905-2006) and Lotte Jacobi (American, born Prussia, 1896-1990). All three of these twentieth-century artists included in the exhibition were able to carve out noted careers, despite facing limited opportunities due to their gender. Women have actively participated in photography since its inception, yet when the history of photography was first written it was primarily male artists who filled the pages. Like in so much of Western society, women have had to steadily chip away at these constructs, often having to make their own opportunities. The bold images here testify to these artists’ skills. Bernhard, specifically, presents the female body in her own distinctive style, and Jones has selected some lesser-known, while still visually compelling, images.

Endia Beal, Martinique, 2015, Pigment inkjet print, Museum purchase. © Endia Beal

Endia Beal, Sabrina and Katrina, 2015, Pigment inkjet print, Museum purchase. © Endia Beal

The exhibition also offers some fascinating portraiture, which the Museum has purchased in the last couple of years, having made an effort to acquire photography by a variety of contemporary women artists. In her series Am I What You’re Looking For? Endia Beal (American, born 1985) takes young black women who are transitioning from college to the workplace and poses them in their own home, but in front of a generic workplace backdrop. These young women stand dressed in their workplace finest, staring into the camera with aplomb. The very act of presenting young black women within the construct of a traditionally male-dominated workplace environment heightens the understanding of how the societal norms we take for granted can be culturally biased. Likewise, Deanna Lawson (American, born 1979) carefully poses a tableau of young lovers fully clothed and embracing within a bedroom. This representation particularly elicits comparisons to the “male gaze,” as Lawson empowers the young black woman to control her own sexuality. You would think that the photograph is a spontaneous snapshot, but Lawson carefully constructs her images to intensify the overall effect. Knowing this invites the viewer to look at every detail for clues to the visual story.

Three photographs are presented from Rania Matar’s (Lebanese, born 1964) series A Girl and Her Room. Matar photographs young women in their bedrooms surrounded by the trappings of adolescence. The locations vary from Beirut, Lebanon to Winchester, Massachusetts. Seeing how each girl has dressed and decorated her room gives an almost voyeuristic glimpse into how she is materially shaping her identity. It brings to mind Sally Mann’s series At Twelve, Portraits of Young Women, not because of any visual similarity (Matar’s pictures are color and large scale), but because they also illuminate the awkward transition from child to adult, teetering on the edge of full womanhood. Matar captures the importance of the outer world to inform the inner.

Selina Román, Solar Flare II, 2016, Archival inkjet print on Museo Silver Rag Paper. © Selina Román

Selina Román (American, b. 1978) is a Florida artist. In her series Please Disturb, she invites friends and colleagues to visit her in traditional roadside motels and participate in the creative process through the use of props and costume. In the photograph chosen for this exhibition, Solar Flare II, the glare of sunlight obscures the face of the subject. Román uses this anonymity as a force of power. “I can see you, but you can’t see me–so you don’t know what I am thinking or feeling,” she is quoted as saying in the label. As a faceless woman, you are no longer being judged by traditional standards of beauty. That, alone, is empowering.

A trip to The Ringling Museum is always a delight. And where else in the Tampa Bay area are you going to see wall-sized sensual Baroque paintings by Peter Paul Rubens (Dutch 1577-1640) in one gallery and then experience the penetrating stare of Zanele Muholi in another? And if you have enjoyed looking at women claiming their power, the exhibition Circus and Suffragists is also currently showing at The Ringling Circus Museum through February 14, 2021, and Reframed is currently on view at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts through the end of the year.

Being Seen: Recent Acquisitions from The Ringling Photography Collection is on view at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art through January 3, 2021.

LEAD PHOTO IMAGE: Rania Matar, Anna F., Winchester, Massachusetts, from the series A Girl in Her Room, 2010, printed 2018, Archival digital chromogenic print. © Rania Matar
Courtesy of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.

Robin O’Dell is the former Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg and is currently the Curator of Collections at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts, Tampa. In addition to curating dozens of photography exhibitions, she has written for Image Magazine, George Eastman Museum, and the Arts Coast Journal for Creative Pinellas.

Radical Pleasures

by Sabrina Hughes

“I didn’t know that that work was even radical in the way that I see it as being radical now until I started to have a conversation with people—even black people—who thought that my work was “positive.”
Derrick Adams, Artnet News, February 5, 2020.

Derrick Adams: Buoyant is on its last tour stop at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg through November 29, 2020. The exhibition was initially conceived by the Hudson Valley Museum and curated by James E. Bartlett, founder of Open Art and former Executive Director of the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, in Brooklyn, and Laura Vookles, Chair of the Hudson River Museum’s Curatorial Department.

Installation view of *Derick Adams: Buoyant*.
Photo: Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg.

On entering, the exhibition may strike a viewer as many things: joyful, fun, playful, enticing, or whimsical. The twelve large-scale paintings in the exhibition are an explosion of neon and novelty. Radical may not be the first word that comes to mind upon visiting the exhibition when the subject matter, groups of people and individuals relaxing on novelty pool floats, is so patently ordinary.

The Floaters series was created over a span of three years (2016-2019). This is a rare opportunity to see works on loan from private collections, and to see some of the Floaters together as a group, which creates a much different feeling than would seeing any one on its own. Walking into the gallery is walking into a space occupied by paintings of African Americans. Part of the impact of the exhibition is that it highlights how rarely we see representations—in art or popular media—of Black people simply existing. This everyday reality of Black life in America suffers from erasure by omission.

*Floater 66*, 2018, Acrylic paint and collage on paper, Collection of D. Rebecca Davies and Jeremy Kramer. Photo: Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg.

In relation to the picture planes of all of the Floaters, the viewer is left rather floating themselves. With the exception of one, the backgrounds of the paintings are one solid shade of blue (one painting has a darker blue at the top that seems to denote the difference between sky and water, the only horizon line in the gallery). The paintings are acrylic on paper, so there are ripples in the paper most noticeable in the blue background as the paper absorbed the paint and dried. The ripples and the occasional variations in the blue field—not a different color, but from more or less paint on the brush—enhance the suggestion of water and gentle motion.

Figures are anchored to their novelty pool floats, but beyond that there are no clues to what kind of space they occupy, other than that it’s water. Without a horizon line, the viewer is left in an uncertain space. Some of the figures are looking out of their space, making eye contact with viewers while many others are engaged with other figures or are simply looking elsewhere.

The swimsuits of each figure are collage elements of different fabric, adding another visual flourish to the already dazzling paintings.

In an interview with Charles Moore for artnet news that I’ll refer to several times, Derrick Adams uses the phrase “Black radical imagination” which, as he sees it, can be a tool to create the future. It is worth exploring this idea so we can fully appreciate how radical these day-glo spaces inhabited by patchwork figures are.

Representation reflects and creates reality. We have seen this thought repeated a lot over the last decade or so—representation matters. Everyone wants to be able to see themselves and their possibilities reflected in the popular media they consume. When Adams conceived the Floaters series in 2015, he searched Instagram for #floaties and the algorithm returned only pictures of white people. In this instance, the representation failed to align with the reality that he had experienced.

Digital Reproduction from *Ebony,* June 1967. Installation view of *Derick Adams: Buoyant*. Photo: Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg.

In further research, Adams found inspiration in an Ebony feature from June 1967 of Coretta and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on a tropical escape to Ocho Rios, Jamaica (also included in the exhibition). While the article makes clear that this is not a vacation (King wanted a month in a place without a phone to write his book Where Do We Go from Here?), the photo essay is almost exclusively comprised of images showing Dr. King at rest: walking on the beach, relaxing in the pool, having breakfast on the balcony in his robe and slippers, reading the newspaper in bed. This fascinating editorial shows a seldom-seen side of Dr. King, but also shows what is necessary to fuel his public acts in the struggle for equal civil rights: rest, quiet, isolation, time to think and to put thoughts in order. Time and space to just exist.

It’s worth quoting Adams at length because his intent with the Floaters series was to depict Black people at rest, similar to how Dr. King had been photographed for Ebony.

*Floater 74*. Installation view of *Derick Adams: Buoyant*.
Photo: Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg.

“What I love the most is when I’m at an event or a party at someone’s house and I look around and everyone in the room is doing something. It’s all Black people doing all these amazing things and I’m like, wow, this is great. And I say to myself, this is what we should be making work about, this type of atmosphere. Young Black people should see that there are very normal, very consistent spaces like these—regardless of what’s happening in the news, regardless of what’s happening on social media. With all the conflicts that we’re having, we’re still finding the time. And not everyone in this room has money! These aren’t people who are all well off!

That’s what I’m thinking about in my studio: What can I reveal that has not been shown? And it always goes back to the simplest of things, like normalcy. Black people—not entertaining, just being, living. Letting people deal with that as reality. We’re sitting on this pool float. We’re thinking about life. We’re thinking about nothing. We don’t have to think about something every day. It’s a real human experience not to ponder on things constantly.”

The paintings that resonated most with me were both paintings of women. I’ll describe them but they’re not reproduced here, so you’ll have to go to the exhibition to see them for yourself.

Floater #28 depicts a woman on a white unicorn float. Her bathing suit is neon animal print with hearts and stars, like a Lisa Frank notebook. She looks out of her space and is smiling. Though the blue fields that the figures float on often have the effect of suggesting water through the variations in paint application, most of the geometric planes that comprise the figures are more even in tone—less painterly, more hard-edge. This figure is different. The paint application on her legs and abdomen create a variation in tone within the planes that most of the other figures don’t exhibit. It’s like seeing the natural variation in skin tone across different parts of someone’s body. Adams has also employed the grey-tone paint—usually reserved for the parts of the figures bodies that are underwater—on the figure’s arm and face that couldn’t be the only part under the water if the rest of her is not. It’s the kind of variation that feels like improvisation on the theme. It’s just different enough to have made me stop and look a lot more closely.

Representations like Floaters reflect one reality experienced by Black folks in America, one that aligns with the experience of love, community, family, and just living life. It hints at another reality from the not-so-distant past—the reality that all-Black spaces were backed by apartheid laws and violently enforced by police and mercenary groups. Pools and beaches were sites of contestation. Here in St. Petersburg, the beaches downtown were segregated. From Spa Beach north was designated whites only. The beaches for African Americans were South Mole at what is now Demen’s Landing and Lassing Park.

The subject matter of the paintings contain the tension of present and past, even while Adams is trying to create a future where celebrations of everyday Black life are more commonplace.

We see Black lives snuffed out on live Facebook broadcasts. We see representations of Black Americans working, struggling, mourning. We see them relative to the white supremacist political and economic system that their kidnapped ancestors were forced to build, and that largely controls what type of images are disseminated in the public sphere. It is rare to see representations of Black people resting. Images of Black bodies at rest are radical.

Floater #17 portrays a pregnant woman lounging on a hot pink float. I imagine the buoyancy of her body, with or without the float, is a welcome relief from gravity’s pull on the extra bulk of her body carrying a baby. Black women experience overlapping oppression of misogyny and racism, represented by the term misogynoir. As a class, they have always been expected to work (when white women may have been homemakers, Black women may have been their maids or nannies) and have had the highest labor force participation among all women for years. The United States has a dark history of sterilizing Black women without their consent throughout the 20th century. Yet look back earlier, when African Americans were enslaved and performing forced labor, and Black women’s bodies were commodities that grew the labor force.

Artists are worldbuilders. By making these paintings, Adams populates our world with many more images of Black leisure. Adams realizes the power of the artist to create reality—to create the world in images so that later people can create it through action. If you want an action to succeed, you have to be able to imagine it has happened, and then imagine what happens next. Adams invites viewers to co-create a future where images like this aren’t “positive” in comparison to other pictures, where all aspects of Black life aren’t adjunct to their white counterparts, presented as the default.

The term radical seems to be used with such frequency that the impact of the word has faded. From radical feminism to radical self-care, radical honesty to the radical left, radical is just as often used by Instagram influencers to sell protein powder as in any political reformist sense. We live in a radical-saturated world. Invoking Black radical imagination asks for a rethinking of all assumptions about Black life in America, from the roots up. Ask why things are the way they are and why they seem unchangeable. And then imagine what systems need to be torn down to their foundations and rebuilt differently. In 2020 conversations about prison abolition have entered mainstream political discourse. This is radical imagination at work.

As I’m writing this review, the verdict in Louisville has just come in. Nobody is going to be criminally charged for Breonna Taylor’s murder, though one officer is being charged for endangering the lives of her white neighbors. I’m thinking about Breonna who was not only at home, but was sleeping, literally at rest, when she was killed. Imagine if this had had a different outcome. Imagine what needs to be torn down and rebuilt to ensure future Black lives are valued and protected. I’m also thinking how even though Adams’ intent was to show Black joy and play and people just existing, it seems that there is no neutral in the representation of African Americans. It becomes political as soon as it enters the public because Black people just existing is a radical and revolutionary act. Unless we are part of the communities that Adams is talking about, we may not see the experience that he’s talking about. Black people just living, just being. Black figures at rest. Black people not othered by the implicit or explicit comparison to whiteness. Being in the gallery with so many Floaters makes me wonder if it’s a pool, how enormous the pool must be to hold the figures, the floats, and to still not see the horizon. Are we floating with them? Part of the party? Or interlopers?

Related Exhibition Programming

PANEL DISCUSSION: AFRICAN AMERICAN LEISURE IN THE SUNSHINE STATE & BEYOND WITH DERRICK ADAMS
October 15, 2020, 6:30-8 pm
Free for members, and $10 for not-yet-members.
An online conversation featuring Derrick Adams, Dr. Gretchen Sorin, author of Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights, and Cynthia Wilson-Graham, co-author of Remembering Paradise Park: Tourism and Segregation in Silver Springs. The discussion will be moderated by MFA Curator of Contemporary Art Katherine Pill.

BLACK FANTASTIC, BUOYANT AND BOLD: ART’S WAYS OF LEVITATING OVER THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD WITH AUTHOR TENEA D. JOHNSON
October 22, 2020, 6-7 pm
Free for members, and $10 for not-yet-members
Author Tenea D. Johnson will read joy-centered selections from her latest book, Blueprints for Better Worlds (May 2020)as well as the forthcoming collection, Broken Fevers.

POETRY AND SPOKEN WORD WITH DENZEL JOHNSON-GREEN
October 25, 2020, 3-4 pm
Free for members, and $20 for not-yet-members.
Join poet and author Denzel Johnson-Green in the time-honored tradition of utilizing spoken word and poetry to both raise awareness of, and develop mechanisms for addressing, the world around us.

About the author:
Bay Art Files contributor Sabrina Hughes holds an M.A. in Art History from the University of South Florida with a focus on the History of Photography. Hughes has worked at the National Gallery of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg and is an adjunct instructor at USF and is the founder and principal of photoxo, a personal archiving service specializing in helping people preserve their family photos. She has an ongoing curatorial project, Picurious, which invests abandoned slides with new life. Follow her on Instagram @sabrinahughes for selfies, hiking, and dogs, and @thepicurious for vintage photos.

Revisiting DFAC

FALL 2020 AT THE DUNEDIN FINE ART CENTER

R. Lynn Whitelaw

Over the past 15 years Catherine Bergmann has served as the Curatorial Director at the Dunedin Fine Art Center where she has organized over 300 thoughtful and thematic exhibitions for the Center’s seven galleries. Last year she was recognized by Creative Loafing magazine as “Best of the Bay” Visual Art Curator. Her innovative and engaging exhibitions have drawn on connections with artists from Florida, the southeastern United States, and invitational exhibitions open to artists from around the country and internationally. In 2017 Nathan Beard joined the curatorial team and became the Assistant Curator in 2019. Together the critical eye of Bergmann and Beard, both also well-established visual artists, have put together some of the most creative and original contemporary art exhibitions being presented in the Tampa Bay area.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, Spring exhibitions had to be altered and experienced virtually as the Center was forced to close for three months. Summer exhibitions opened to the public under the banner of the “Art of Social Distancing” with limited access to the galleries. Re-envisioned shows used the mantra, “The Distance Brings Us Closer,” and included the engaging show, I’ve Come to Look for America, with thirteen diverse artists “representing the complex cultural fabric of our county, and beyond that – our humanity.”

Catherine Bergmann and Nathan Beard in front of paintings by Carol Dameron and Herb Snitzer included in the exhibition ***Between | Us*** which is on view through October 18, 2020. Photo courtesy of the Dunedin Fine Art Center.

The Fall 2020 DFAC exhibitions have opened despite the logistics of organizing shows during a pandemic. Three new exhibitions expand our appreciation of the creative talents in our community while challenging us to open our minds to new artistic expression. Between | Us, co-curated by Bergmann and Beard, is on view through Oct. 18 and documents six “It” art couples working in the Tampa Bay area. The show provides a unique opportunity to compare and contrast the work of these highly regarded artists. The well-written wall text and artist statements afford a personal look into the media, processes, and “creative partnering” of these couples, and the mutual respect, collaborative support, and years of encouragement for aesthetic, community, and even social issues as hallmarks of their artistic successes.

***Between | Us:*** A collaborative print by artists Mickett and Robert Stackhouse. Photo courtesy of the Dunedin Fine Art Center.

***Between | Us:*** Carrie Jadus, *Walking with Scissors I + II*, 2020, oil on panel and Mark Aeling, *Lip Series 2 of 10: A Cutting Remark, 2017*, stainless steel scissors. Photo courtesy of the artists.

The artists include painters and retired art educators, Dolores Coe and Bruce Marsh; painter Carol Dameron and photographer Herb Snitzer (Herb even includes an endearing painting of his wife); painter Carrie Jadus and sculptor Mark Aeling; painter/emeritus art educator Mernet Larsen and multi-media artist Roger Palmer; joint collaborators and multi-media artists Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse; and, photographer Janelle Young and multi-media artist /art educator Ryan McCullough. This is a celebratory exhibition and gallery viewers will greatly appreciate and learn from its engaging theme.

The exhibition Heroes + Sheroes is an intriguing look at “shining a light on those who’ve shown us the light” was co-curated by Bergmann and Beard. Each curator selected a “Hero” and a “Shero,” including musician (Ronny Elliott), artist (Joan Duff-Bohrer); humanitarian/entrepreneur (Andre Heller), and poet (Hilary DePolo), respectively. The “four celebrants” were then asked to invite their Heroes or Sheroes to participate in the exhibition, thus making for a highly original and insightful exhibition to inspire “the many faces and forms greatness takes in our midst.”

***Heroes + Sheroes***: Gallery installation. On view through December 24, 2020. Photo courtesy of the Dunedin Fine Art Center.

Vespertine is an impressively poetic and cerebral multi-media exhibition curated by Nathan Beard. The word “vespertine” is defined as “of, relating to, or flourishing in the evening.” The reference, as defined by Beard is “the daylit logic of scientific and technological concepts or processes, … while probing the shadowed and paradoxical possibilities of the unknown …”. In organizing the show, Beard thoughtfully examined the work of artists who represent a scientific or technological searching for a liminal space of becoming. The nine invited artists include three from the Tampa Bay area: Elizabeth A. Baker, McArthur Freeman, II, and Luke Myers. Myers, an MFA student at USF, is fascinated with bugs, specifically the Florida Deep-digger scarab beetle (Peltotrupes profundus). Through video he documents the transformative “poetry” of the inch-long scarab moving “more than a pound of sand, one mouthful at a time” up from depths of as much as ten feet below. Massachusetts artist Lisa Nilsson, with a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, explores the topography of human anatomy through scientific reproduction of lateral cross-sections intricately created through the collage of Japanese mulberry paper and the gilt edges of old books. She represents one of the six artists Beard selected from around the country, including Julia Buntaine Hoel, Kysa Johnson, Anne Mondro, Elsa Muñoz, and Michael Reedy. Each of the artists in Verspertine incorporates fascinating approaches, utilizing either traditional media to explore macro- or micro-cosmic worlds or newer media, like video, transposed scientific data, and 3-D printing, to convey their artistic and scientific discoveries. If you spend time studying the bios and statements of these artists, you may realize we are on the cusp of artistic evolution.

**Vespertine**: Gallery installation.
Photo courtesy of the Dunedin Fine Art Center.

***Vespertine***: Lisa Nilsson, *Male Pelvis,* 2012, Mulberry paper collage.
Courtesy of the artist and Pavel Zoubok Fine Art, NY.

Additional exhibitions on view through the end of the year are Hold Me, an invitational exhibit by contemporary ceramic artists from around the nation and PHANTOMS and Bandits, a tribute to the Center’s past Wearable Art Runway events. Lastly, if the above exhibitions have not convinced you to visit to the Dunedin Fine Art Center soon, the show lining one of the hallway galleries is Velvet Elvis. Artists were invited to create their own kitschy versions of the nostalgic art form on supplied velvet canvases. Velvet Elvis is a fundraiser, so purchase tickets before October 18th for a chance to win your favorite piece – and as Elvis would say, “Thank you, thank you very-much!”

For more information about these exhibitions and related programming,
visit the Dunedin Fine Art Center website.

R. Lynn Whitelaw was the founding director and chief curator of the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, located on the Tarpon Springs Campus of St. Petersburg College. In 2015, Mr. Whitelaw was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Florida Association of Museums. An active independent curator and writer, he has served on numerous statewide and local boards and art committees and has been a judge for over 18 outdoor art shows and juried exhibitions throughout the state of Florida.