By turns witty, moving, and poignant, the exhibition Tom Jones: Here We Stand at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, makes a clear statement that Indigenous Nations remain connected to their past while ensuring their values are projected into the future. Tom Jones is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin.
This is the first major retrospective of Jones’ career and features more than 100 photographic works in more than a dozen series. Tom Jones: Here We Stand originated at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend, Wisconsin. The exhibition was co-curated by Dr. Jane L. Aspinwall, Senior Curator of Photography at the MFA, and Graeme Reid, Director of Exhibitions at the Museum of Wisconsin Art.
Here We Stand showcases Jones’ photographic vision ranging from intimate shots inside his relatives’ homes, to acerbic wit recording appropriated Native names and iconography in the American landscape, to majestic and monumental portraits with hand-beaded embellishments.
Jones’ early series Dear America pairs enlarged collaged historical vernacular photos with diegetic captions that force viewers to confront their assumptions about the Native history they may have learned.
Tom Jones, Sweet Land of Liberty, 2002, Inkjet print and ink. On loan from the Artist. Image credit: Bay Art Files.Tom Jones, Long May Our Land Be Bright, 2002 Inkjet print and ink. On loan from the Artist. Image credit: Bay Art Files.
In the image Sweet Land of Liberty, which collages a 19th-century group portrait of Sioux with a jaunty white hunter who has harvested a raccoon, Jones has written a short summary of the largest one-day mass execution in American history–when Abraham Lincoln approved death sentences for 38 Sioux men on December 26, 1862. Jones employs a similar technique with the image Long May Our Land Be Bright, half of a 19th-century stereographic image from Taos Pueblo. In this text inscription, however, Jones celebrates that the Red Willow People of Taos Pueblo have maintained their cultural integrity despite centuries of invasions by colonizers.
The beaded portraits in the Strong Unrelenting Spirits series build on the technique Jones used in Dear America, adding intricate beadwork to the large-scale portraits. Members of the Ho-Chunk nation pose in front of a stark black background, many in traditional ceremonial garb. These portraits are striking in their size as well as in the subjects’ appearance. What, in reproduction, appears to be designs drawn on the black background behind each individual is actually intricate beadwork applied to the surface of the photograph itself.
Tom Jones, Bryson Funmaker, from Strong Unrelenting Spirits series, 2020, Inkjet print and beadwork. On loan from Mike and Linda Schmudlach. Image credit: Museum of Wisconsin Art.
Even before European colonizers introduced colorful glass beads in trade, for centuries Indigenous artisans created beads from stones, bones, and shells, and used them to create jewelry and embellish clothing.
For Jones, the beadwork on these photographs represent a ritual encounter with ancestors. “Beading is a metaphor for our ancestors watching over us. I am also referencing an experience I had when I was about 8 or 9 years old. My mother took me to see a Sioux medicine man named Robert Stead. He led the call to the spirits, the women began to sing, and the ancestors appeared as orbs of light.” Strong Unrelenting Spirits eschews the formalism of photographic portraits that seek only to show what is before the camera. Combining the realism of photographic portraiture with the spiritual experience of light orbs further cements a Native visual language that can combine the visible and ethereal presences of one’s experience.
Tom Jones, Fire Pit, from I am an Indian First and an Artist Second series, 2008, Inkjet print. On loan from the Artist. Image credit: Museum of Wisconsin Art.
A recurring theme in Jones’ work is the appropriation and commodification of Native culture in America. Two series, The North American Landscape and I am an Indian First and an Artist Second, use plastic figures from Cowboys and Indians playsets to wryly reference the way Native culture has been repackaged and sold as a product. The images in the series “Native” Commodity are deadpan documentary representations of Indigenous culture co-opted by the tourism industry. The series Studies in Cultural Appropriation also presents a witty question: if Native designs are readily appropriated by corporations, why not make use of a variety of Indigenous material designs for high fashion?
Tom Jones, Blake Funmaker, 2020, Inkjet print. On loan from the Artist. Image credit: Bay Art Files.
One of the most striking photographs in the exhibition is a portrait of Blake Funmaker (2020) in ceremonial regalia that includes an embroidered and beaded face mask. COVID-19 was a particular danger to Native American communities. Noreen Goldman, demographer and social epidemiologist at Princeton University reports, “Elevated COVID-19 death rates among Native Americans serve as a stark reminder of the legacies of historical mistreatment and the continued failure of governments to meet basic needs of this population.” To promote the protection of the community during the pandemic, the Ho-Chunk Nation Department of Health commissioned Jones to photograph members of his community with facemasks as part of their full regalia.
What is consistent across the diverse bodies of work is the existence of a Native photographic language, one that blends traditional Indigenous art forms imbued with ritual, spirituality, and heritage with the detail and historicity lent to a subject by the medium of photography. In contrast to white photographers who have perpetuated the idea that Indigenous nations have vanished or are frozen in a romanticized past, Jones’ visual language instead reinforces that Native peoples are resisting erasure and maintaining their identities despite attempts by colonizers to assimilate them.
Tom Jones: Here We Stand is on view at the Museum of Fine Art, St.Petersburg through August 27, 2023. The exhibition originated at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend, Wisconsin. A catalogue, including a major essay by Dr. Jane L. Aspinwall, accompanies the exhibition and is available for purchase in the MFA Store. Installation photography photo credit: Darcy Schuller, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg.
About the artist
Tom Jones is an artist, curator, writer, and educator. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Master of Fine Arts in Photography, and a Master of Arts in Museum Studies from Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois. Jones is currently a Professor of Photography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For more information about the artist, visit his website.
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.
Two figures sharing a meal together, Dinner Date from 1963, was my introduction to Marisol’s work. I gravitated to it right away when scrolling sculpture images several years ago. I was not familiar with the artist Marisol (Maria Escobar, Venezuelan-American, 1930-2016) but kept bookmarking images of these captivating, odd, intriguing carved figures with various details highlighted, an actual shoe here, a sculpted hand there. I was immediately fascinated by Marisol’s work and vowed to see it in person.
That opportunity came this summer when my good friend Jose Gelats and I learned that the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) was showing Marisol’s work in a traveling exhibition, Marisol and Warhol Take New York, organized by The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg, PA.
Driving to Miami took much less time than I remembered, and winding through the streets of South Beach was pure delight. Nothing compares to the authentic, historical, elegant Art Deco buildings, an architectural Disneyland in magical pastels. We stayed at The Whitelaw Hotel on Collins Avenue, one block up from Ocean Drive, and immediately found a delicious coffee shop nearby. Across the street, we stumbled into a tucked-away hotel bar complete with a kind (patient) bartender, Darrell, who put up with two chatty Kathys. He made delicious cocktails and even talked me into trying peanut butter bourbon which insulted me at first (bourbon doesn’t need a flavor) — however, it wasn’t terrible, and now I have a bottle of my own.
Our zigzagging drive to The Pérez the following morning took us through various neighborhoods, reminding me how tropical and lush Miami is — you can round the corner and feel like you are in a dense, colorful rainforest. Vivid beauty in every direction.
Once at the Museum, I made a beeline to Marisol’s work. I breezed past the entrance layout and introductory wall text in search of the larger free standing installations — Dinner Date being a favorite (top image) and The Party, one of her most well-known (below).
It was easy to become distracted by the wooden structures and how elements were presented. When I actually locked eye-to-eye with the figures, their features were superbly drawn and many were immediately recognizable as well-known newsmakers of the time.
Who is this person who can come up with such original configurations of mediums while simultaneously rendering identities and known personalities so well, yet in an unusual, unorthodox way? Marisol also incorporated objects and fabric, yet you weren’t initially aware of the materials — at least I wasn’t at first. I was so mesmerized by the whole chunky, blocky, wood figure, or figures, that the skill, meticulous craftsmanship, and sheer artistry of a face, body, or detail was discovered moments later — and then, I would marvel at her work all over again. I’m just so darn knocked out by her work.
Standing amidst The Party guests — fifteen life-sized, carved figures in wood, each having its own dramatic flair and all sharing similar facial features — I was enchanted by the flourishes of each costume, the clever use of drama, and exposure. I also noted the aloneness of each figure — all were arranged together but hardly a connection between them.
The placement of Warhol’s loud pink and yellow cow wallpaper, running floor to ceiling behind The Party, was annoying. Obnoxious party crasher. I was incensed and confused. Why would you do that?
Marisol’s The Party, 1965-66, as installed in the exhibition Marisol and Warhol Take New York at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. Listen to curator Jessica Beck from the Andy Warhol Museum discuss this particular work in a video walkthrough of Marisol and Warhol Take New York.Detail of The Party as installed at the Pérez Art Museum Miami. Photo: Camp Jen
In one review I read, the author felt very much like I did but expressed the impact more clearly. “The only mistake in this display of “The Party” is the use of Warhol’s cow wallpaper as a backdrop, which grotesquely draws oxygen away from Marisol’s genius,” wrote Emily Cardenas of The Biscayne Times.
Below is an image of The Party without wallpaper distraction, as shown in The Toledo Museum of Art (TMA), where is it part of the Museum’s permanent collection. TMA’s published description of the installation reads, “As someone who always felt uncomfortable in the 1960s social scene, Marisol chose to display the figures in a setting where none of them interact with each other, many appearing entirely self-absorbed. By seeing these figures up close, you will also notice that each one shares similar facial features; Marisol often used herself as a model.”
Marisol Escobar, The Party, 1965-66. As installed at the Toledo Museum of Art. For a fascinating discussion on this work, listen to Fashion & Alienation in 1960s New York with Dr. Halona Norton-Westbrook of the Toldeo Museum of Art and Dr. Steven Zucker of Smarthistory. Photo: Dr. Steven Zucker
Perhaps TMA could add an installation addendum requesting that the piece be shown without a background, ideally a plain white wall providing a clear and undistracted view.
Installation details of The Party, 1965-66.Photos: Dr. Steven Zucker.
Meandering through the full exhibition at PAMM, I noticed that a few other installations suffered from the wallpaper cacophony. Marisol’s wonderful sculpture of John Wayne on a horse — when you look straight at it — is almost erased due to the louder, bolder cow images behind the figure (see image). Warhol continues to mark his territory in ways that hinder views of Marisol’s work. Ironically, one of the few unencumbered views of Marisol’s work is her figure of Andy Warhol himself. Andy sits — as if on a throne — in a pristine, white corner.
Marisol Escobar, John Wayne, 1963, and Andy, 1962-63.
Tricky to do, to show two very different bodies of work, together, created during the same timespan by two very different artists — both influenced by, and motivated by, the other. I find it interesting — fascinating really — to see how each chose to convey similar ideas. Marisol’s work, to me, just blows Warhol’s work away and I wince to see her unique authentic work watered down by an attempt to blend the less impressive work of another artist — or perhaps, in the opposite way, Marisol’s work shines even brighter because, when seen side-by-side, her work far surpasses Warhol’s.
“A lot of people will assume that Warhol was the famous one first, but really it was [Marisol],” says PAMM’s curator Maritza Lacayo in an art article that appeared in the Miami New Times. “There was so much about her that Warhol admired. She, in a way, inspired him.”
On our way out of town, we stumbled on the Laundromat Art Space, in the neighborhood known as Little Haiti, a clever re-use of an actual laundromat converted into a gallery and artist studios. Even though the building wasn’t open, we knocked anyway. And to our delight, an artist appeared and let us in and showed us around.
Laundromat Art Space is an artist-run studio and exhibition space located in the neighborhood of Little Haiti in Miami, Florida.
Jose and I are curious Nancy Drews at heart, and delight in aimless moseying. All we need is an inspiring anchor to organize around, and we are off and running. This last stop was a nice way to wrap up our indulgent, highly enjoyable road trip, spurred on by seeing Marisol’s work in person. Completely worth it — and really not that far from Tampa — a repeat round trip for sure.
As you drive here and there for the holidays, visiting — or escaping — family and friends, try taking the backroads instead of boring interstates; drop in a diner instead of a drive-through; visit a fruit stand instead of a jiffy store. Go in the direction of what gets your attention and tune out the obnoxious cow heads along the way.
About the exhibition
Marisol and Warhol Take New York debuted at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg in October 2021 and was curated by Jessica Beck, The Warhol’s Milton Fine Curator of Art. On view at the Pérez Art Museum Miami from April 15, 2022, through September 5, 2022, it was organized by Franklin Sirmans, Director, and Martiza Lacayo, Assistant Curator.
About the author
Katherine Gibson, creator of ArtHouse3, is a regional art consultant and independent curator living in St. Petersburg, Florida. Gibson is the former Director of the Hillsborough Community College (HCC) Dale Mabry Gallery, which was rebranded Gallery221@HCC. Gibson received a 2018 Individual Artist Award from the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance for her Drive-by Window Project and was selected for an ArtsUp Grant by Creative Pinellas as creator and curator of the 2019 summer exhibition Tonge & Groove. Creating temporary exhibits in alternative spaces is a focus, and so far, has included storefront windows, empty lofts, rustic lake houses, and her home. Current projects include selecting artwork for various client environments, hosting exhibitions in ArtHouse Upstairs and writing the occasional piece for Bay Art Files.
Installation shot of Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott with 1919 (1980) on the left. All photographs courtesy of the author unless otherwise noted.
Establishing the Sarasota Art Museum was a lengthy process that began back in 2003. After two years of speaking with community leaders in the arts and education sectors, the Sarasota Art Museum joined forces with Ringling College of Art + Design. Their decision? To transform the historic 1926 Sarasota High School into an art museumand education space. The school was originally designed by M. Leo Elliott but features a mid-century addendum created in 1959 by Paul Rudolph, an architect whose influence is still seen today in Sarasota. In 1996, classes officially moved to the current Sarasota High School, leaving the previous building abandoned for nearly 20 years. There were talks of demolishing the building until thirteen Sarasota volunteers, partnered with the Ringling College of Art + Design, petitioned for it to be transformed into an art museum.
The Sarasota School Board unanimously awarded them the building in 2004. From there, years of rigorous fundraising were required to begin renovations on the building. Over $22 million was raised by 2014. In 2015, they brought on Anne-Marie Russell to serve as founding executive director and chief curator, a position she held for six years. Russell oversaw the final renovations, the museum opening in December of 2019, as well as exhibitions and other programming through 2022. This includes Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott.
1919, 1980, Acrylic on Canvas.
The first painting in the Robert Colescott exhibition is the first thing on most of our minds lately: America. Regardless of one’s political position, it is difficult not to see events in our country over the past few years as anything other than grim, claustrophobic, and without clear resolution. 1919 (1980), Colescott’s painting of the continental United States of America, presents our massive and varied slab of land, still curiously bound together somehow, at least on a map. The rendering of this map is not bleak and dreary, however, but throbbing with vivid technicolor. Each state is granted its own color that is different from the surrounding states, emphasizing contrast. Some states are stamped with images symbolic of their culture: an alligator in Florida, a bottle of wine in California, an ox skeleton in Nevada, charmingly rendered. The map is flanked by two figures in profile who are only visible from the chest up. The rest of their bodies are submerged in a billowy mass of cotton-candy clouds, sprinkled with “studio sweepings” like cigarette butts and opened cans. The figure on the left is a white woman, hilariously buxom, and the figure on the right is a Black man in uniform. Evidently, these are the artist’s parents, who are also symbolized in the bird’s nest image in the center of the painting.
There are a lot of tropes here: 19th-century silhouettes in the figures in profile, state symbols on children’s maps, the “melting pot” of America formed by distinct cultures, and the latent but potent tension between Black men and white women in our country. 1919 certainly taps into the unsightly race relations that helped form and maintain the U.S. but it’s with a light touch. As the exhibition progresses, Colescott becomes increasingly direct about his positions regarding race, the history of painting, and American popular culture. This cocktail of uncomfortable social commentary, crude figuration, and a lush color palette is Colescott’s modus operandi. Like Paul Mooney and Robert Crumb, Colescott aims for the status of great comedy by presenting these blunt and jagged truths with a sense of levity and even glee. Essentially, he’s his own straight man and funny man; Laurel and Hardy in one painterly package.
Installation shot of the artist’s early work.
It took a while to get there, however, and the exhibition traces Colescott’s history succinctly. Born in 1925, Colescott doesn’t develop his signature style until the 1970’s when he was well into his forties. This is peculiarly late for an artist to “find their voice,” particularly when individual styles were so prized in the mid-20th century. A room in the exhibition dedicated to Colescott’s early work presents a serious student of art history, from Manet to Matisse to Léger (a teacher of Colescott’s). These paintings are mostly executions of the styles of other artists, if not copying specific artworks altogether. One exception is a small painting, Untitled (1949), made while Colescott was a graduate student at UC, Berkeley. It’s a small work of geometric abstraction that is an early cue of Colescott’s later strategies for organizing compositions and his affinity for pink. The rest of the work documents Colescott’s attempt to find his point of view through other artists. Fake it ‘til you make it. All artists go through this, but Colescott’s lengthy growing pains risked him becoming a permanent student of art history: a practitioner of the values of others instead of synthesizing his own.
That all changes after an extended stay in Egypt beginning in 1964 where Colescott became the first artist-in-residence at the American Research Center in Cairo. It’s always a little slippery to deduce clear cause-and-effect from an artist’s life to their work, but with Colescott, it’s pretty case-closed. There is a dramatic shift in formal concerns and sensibility that result from Colescott’s five-year stint in Egypt. The paintings become larger, the colors more saturated and delicious, and the figures less realistic yet full of life somehow. Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet (1968) is an early example. This is the beginning of the “cartoonish” style for which Colescott is remembered. Something about Egypt awakened his childhood love of color and comic strips (I suspect Egyptian hieroglyphics and ornate linen are to credit). It’s apt that Pop Art and psychedelia were occurring simultaneously in the States and the UK while Colescott was in Egypt. The social revolution of the 1960s was also brewing, exploding into the Civil Rights Movement in America and Second Wave Feminism in the west writ large.
Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet, 1968, Acrylic on Canvas.
This leads to another clear awakening for Colescott in Egypt: race. It seems that moving from the Pacific Northwest to Cairo forced Colescott to confront, accept, and celebrate his own bi-racialism. This, paired with his beatnik influence after moving to Oakland in 1969, focused Colescott to present these issues with a crass, cheeky sense of humor and almost hallucinogenic imagery. Sprinkle in some appropriation from art history and American popular culture, along with the occasional flashes of self-reflection and autobiography (see Bad Habits from 1983), and voila: you’ve got an artwork by Robert Colescott.
Colescott is extraordinarily productive once he finds his groove. The exhibition is replete with examples of Colescott keeping his basic ingredients but playing with the proportions. Cactus Jack in El Dorado (1977) amps up the transparent use of stereotypes, in images and text, but dials back the viscous painting style for which Colescott is best known. The painting’s crisp colors and flat rendering narrow the attention to Colescott’s matter-of-fact delivery of stereotypes, inducing an appropriate discomfort. Even the scenery is a stereotype of the American landscape and desire to head west.
Detail of Cactus Jack in El Dorado, 1977, Acrylic on Canvas.
Hard Hats (1987), by contrast, relishes in cloddish, lumpy figures but doesn’t reduce them to signs or stereotypes. Instead, Colescott presents a rather intimate scene of solidarity between a wife and her husband, a construction worker and his coworkers, Americans and their fellow citizens. “We’re all building this together.” While the comradery is definitely visible, so is the looming fear of collapse. Hence, the hardhats. When is this whole thing going to tumble?
Some paintings eschew any immediate story altogether. Sleeping Beauty (2002), a large diptych centrally mounted in the exhibition, appears more interested in marks rather than images. Reduced and swift, the marks made on the canvas tempt the viewer to decipher any specific reference but are ultimately illegible. The painting has a sweeping sense of time that is enhanced by its large scale. It invokes the history of recording touch, from cave paintings to Abstract Expressionism, but isn’t particularly located in the specific project of America that concerns the rest of his work.
These paintings, however, are examples of Colescott’s deep cuts. They meander slightly from his primary “one-two punch” strategy: presenting the audience with cherished imagery and symbolism that connects them to their childhoods and rosy-eyed views of America, then immediately injecting the garish, foul costs of that imagery without any clear path towards reconciliation. They get the sweet and the bitter.
Shirley Temple Black and Bill Robinson White, 1980, Acrylic on Canvas.
Or at least, that’s the goal. This “one-two punch” often consists of injecting Black figures into scenes in which they weren’t originally visible, like Rubens or Lichtenstein paintings. Sometimes Colescott is even more upfront by portraying white figures as Black and vice-versa. Shirley Temple Black and Bill Robinson White (1980) is an example. Here, the famed actor/tap dancer ambles through a garden with the iconic child star of the 1930s. It could easily be a scene from one of the several movies they made together except that 1) the scene is in color and 2) their races are switched. Colecott’s intense color palette, drenched in saturation, amplifies the feeling of disorientation. The figures, however, are some of Colescott’s most realistically rendered. The result is a painting that is acutely abnormal. Besides the disarming switch of the figures’ races, the friction between the cartoonish colors (the background sunset looks like something straight out of The Simpsons) and the more focused realism of the figures confuses fantasy and reality. Don’t movies do this, too? There’s got to be a Wizard of Oz joke deep in this painting; the double entendre of switching from black and white to color when Dorothy arrives in Oz. The painting contains a remarkable stillness, as if frozen in suspended animation. A tonal remix occurs, too. Robinson’s laughter reads more like horror and Temple’s luminous enthusiasm comes off more withholding and cautious.
Left: Bad Habits, 1983, Acrylic on Canvas. Right: The Judgement of Paris, 1984, Acrylic on Canvas
They aren’t all hits, however. The Judgement of Paris (1984) uses the same “one-two punch” but just comes off rushed. Colescott had a fine line to walk: how to employ clear strategies of appropriation but not become utterly formulaic. The Judgement of Paris wears its formula on its sleeve: steal a title and composition from a canonized painter, usually a white male, and make one or all the figures Black! That’s a fine place to start, but The Judgement of Paris doesn’t really go anywhere with it. It doesn’t transcend this formula. The paintings have to offer more than the sum of their parts, and with Colescott they usually do. If not, the humor flattens, the point is cheapened, Colescott’s hard-earned voice is lost, and the painting quickly sums itself up. Yawn.
However, the final room that contains The Judgement of Paris does present other work that successfully complicates Colescott’s practice. Colescott’s signature oeuvre relies on this “one-two punch” that the viewer, ironically, is continuously hit over the head with throughout the exhibition. The idea being that Colescott shows us what these symbols from history books, Disney movies, and magazine advertisements really mean. He, the insightful artist and enfant terrible, reveals the truth of our complicity to us. Without him, perhaps we’d be lost in our personal fantasies and delusions of grandeur; fantasies in which we’re the heroes, of course. That’s fine, but it’s just fine. The show becomes richer when Colescott points that outward perception a little closer to home, making tidy, moral judgments tougher to deliver. After all, it is his work that relies quite heavily on stereotypes, on appropriating charged imagery that already exists only to alter it slightly, if at all.
Lone Wolf Trilogy (Strutting his Stuff, Checking It Out, Yes Virginia), 1976, Graphite on Paper.
Perhaps Colescott never completely developed his own unique strategy for creating images outright. Whether it’s through Rubens or Shirley Temple, Colescott almost always needs a pre-existing vehicle through which to express his ideas and attitude. A series of drawings called Lone Wolf Trilogy (1974) makes this compromise well. Colescott steals the stereotype of a dapper, randy wolf, originally made popular by famed animator Tex Avery. With a lengthy and lascivious grin, the wolf is always standing confidently, puffing on a cigar (shout out to Freud), and dressed to the nines. In case it wasn’t already clear what the wolf is hungry for, Colescott draws an obvious dick print in the wolf’s pants. His legs spread wide exacerbate his intentions: he’s ready to deliver.
Lone Wolf in Paris, 1977, Acrylic on Canvas.
Colescott uses one of these drawings as a template for the painting Lone Wolf in Paris (1977). Here, the wolf is dancing with a blonde woman at a restaurant. Orbs of light (spotlights?) focus on the couple as the wolf dips the woman, an iconic and erotic position in salsa dancing. His once obvious erection is obscured the bent body of the woman, but sexual symbols linger. What else could those stiff candles, slowly dripping milky wax, be there for? The shadow underneath the dancers, an amalgam of intertwined forms, predicts more shapes and contortions that the dancers will take on later when they find someplace a little more private.
Of course, the wolf is Robert Colescott. Whether it’s how he saw himself, or how he wished he did, or both, who knows. Regardless, what’s successful about these drawings and the resulting painting is their sharp humor and lack of judgment. Colescott understands the pleasure of being a horndog and the resulting complications of it. It’s possible that the work in this room reveals Colescott to be even more reflective. What if stereotypes are often unfair representations with real consequences and pleasurable to slap onto others? If one needs a clear takeaway or lesson from an art exhibition (I don’t), this one offers a useful quandary: how do we attempt to make a better world for each other, whatever that means, while accepting our innate appetites to segregate and flatten each other into caricatures? What if America isn’t as pretty and fluffy as we’re sometimes told it is, but that’s because we aren’t either and never will be? Not in some high-minded, academic way, but in our tedious, daily negotiations with our egos and various thirsts?
In a culture where image management is high currency and many people, perhaps artists most egregiously, are constantly manicuring their morality on “the public stage” like a bird preens its plumage, Robert Colescott reminds us that manicures only go so far. In fact, they could even be detrimental in their disguising of the malformed and grisly impulses that run through all of us. Like all good art, Colescott’s work provides an opportunity for integration: to work on a better, more equitable world for all while acknowledging the quiet rumble in our bellies at the cheap pain of others; our animal eyes glowing in the dark.
Art and Race Matters: The Career of Robert Colescott, curated by Lowery Stokes Sims, Raphaela Platow, and Matthew Weseley, was organized by the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. The traveling exhibition is on view at the Sarasota Art Museumthrough October 31, 2021. For additional information and related programming, visit the museum’s website.
Bay Art Files contributor Jonathan Talit is an artist currently based in central Florida. He received his BFA from Boston University and recently received his MFA from the University of South Florida, Tampa. He makes sculptures, essays, exhibitions, friends, fun, and occasionally money.
Pausing at the entrance, taking in what is in front of me, many things come to mind when walking into Gallery114@HCC at the School of Visual and Performing Arts on the Ybor City campus and encountering the works of Ry McCullough.
Ry McCullough, Themes for the American Kestrel, installation view. Image courtesy of Gallery114@HCC Ybor City Campus.
There are three pedestals composed in the middle of the floor, each covered with little objects, some with oddly familiar shapes, like Claes Oldenburg’s monumental sculptures that more or less resemble everyday things, except these are in sizes that can easily fit inside a coat pocket; there’s a video showing the same stuff in a smaller, but ever-changing grouping, the setting like a photographer’s studio; there are framed mixed media works hung on the wall, each depicting a landscape with a scattering of these objects; and finally there’re two small shelves, each with a rectangular box made delicately from Japanese paper, sitting on a greenish felt, like architectural models of some basic structural forms.
Ry McCullough, Themes for the American Kestrel, installation view. Image courtesy of Gallery114@HCC Ybor City Campus.
The pedestals could be an archipelago, a small group of islands with colored and differently shaped things that washed in from the sea, and the wind blew them around and around to end up where they are now, curios.
And taking a walk on these island shores, kicking around at your feet, these shaped and color things, maybe they are sea shells, or sand smoothed pebbles, perhaps pieces of coral, but most definitely flotsam and jetsam telling tales of their long transformative voyage through the ocean waves, when a glint of something catches your eye and you pick it up, examine it, drop it in your pocket, take it home, place it on a shelf, or window sill, or the end table, alongside all the other odds and ends that have been collected from here and there over the years, and now together they all are, in the same time and space, more or less coexisting, little islands in of themselves.
A friend comes and visits and they might admire your collection, picks one up, studies it, puts it back, but not quite the same spot or orientation; or maybe it’s cleaning day, and the objects are lifted one by one, dusted and put back, and again, not all returned to the exact same position. The arrangement thus shifts slightly, hardly noticeable, and continues shifting one cleaning day after another, one friend’s exploratory hands after another.
This constant picking up and putting back is essentially the 20 minutes long video piece. With the magic of video editing, pieces suddenly pop in and out of existence, creating a slightly different composition with each editing cut. One piece may go poof and reappear in a little while next to something else, or maybe never appear again. The viewer’s brow tense with concentrated anticipation. Did someone just get kidnapped, or is this an example of what physicists call entanglement? Who knew such unassuming objects appearing and disappearing could create such a drama. A suspenseful video performance where the artist is unseen.
The framed works on the wall is non-action action in a flat space. There’s a line, could be a table’s edge or the horizon, plane of the sky meets plane of the earth, but unlike the objects on the pedestals or in the video where they’re visibly grounded, the objects in these mixed media pieces feel suspended, while not as high as the floating bowler hat men in a René Magritte painting, they are not as affected by the gravity that anchors their pedestal counterparts.
Ry McCullough, Themes for the American Kestrel, installation view. Image courtesy of Gallery114@HCC Ybor City Campus.
Within each frame is a vignette of possibilities. They are very precise and elegant, exuding a calm to the videos’ caprice. Its stillness belies conscious intentions and subtleties of movement, like a person in meditation, where meditation is a deliberate act, as in the long wave of the tsunami, its motion unseen, or unrecognized until it momentously meets the shore.
The exhibition is titled Themes for the American Kestrel. There’s a curious group of objects way up on one of the gallery’s architectural ledges, next to the title wall, with one of the objects resembling a bird, watching all that’s below. This little vignette does not have a title or exhibition label, nor is it acknowledged anywhere else, and being high above eye level, could be easily missed.
Ry McCullough, Themes for the American Kestrel, installation view. Image courtesy of Gallery114@HCC Ybor City Campus.
Perhaps the zen like statement from the artist in the exhibition brochure may explain this apparition high on the ledge: “I sit and the bird arrives or the bird sits and I arrive, or not.”, or maybe it’s the meaning of the exhibition title, or both, or neither.
The exhibition brochure, designed like one of the framed wall works, is very handsome, includes a meaningful quote from Virginia Woolf, with the opening phrases: “How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake….”
Following this is a brief artist statement outlining his ideas and intentions. Towards the end of the statement, McCullough references the artist Giorgio Morandi and his still-life paintings as a counterpoint to the evolving compositions in his video piece.
Ry McCullough, Themes for the American Kestrel, installation view. Image courtesy of Gallery114@HCC Ybor City Campus.
Morandi (1890-1964) lived his whole life in Bologna, Italy, where for the last 40 or so years of his artistic practice he maintained a singular focus on regimented compositions of bottles, vases, and similarly shaped and size objects, painted with subtle hues and tone gradations. It is an ascetic discipline, like a monk repeating a mantra, like Sol LeWitt’s endless iterations of the skeletal cube. The subtlest of details and changes are noticed with potential significance, like when physicists discovering an elemental particle, or that tiny chili pepper altering the flavor makeup of an entire dish.
If Morandi’s 40 years could be compressed into a 20 minutes time-lapse video, the result might be something like McCullough’s own video performance. Of course, a time-lapse video skips over many moments and details. But what is 40 years or 20 minutes, barely a nanosecond within a razor-thin sliver of a rock layer tucked in a stratum of the earth’s crust in the expanse of geologic time.
The exhibition is open to the public by appointment through June 24, 2021. For additional information about the gallery visit the Galleries at HCC website.
Ry McCullough received his MFA in Printmaking and Book Arts from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia. He is an Associate Professor of Art and Design at the University of Tampa in Tampa, FL.
“The main appeal of the name is that it speaks to how an artist collective functions on exhibition night: one shared space with many distinct voices.” – Katelyn Montagna and Adam Mathieu
Separate Checks is an artist collective founded in the summer of 2018 by Katelyn Montagna and Adam Mathieu, who created the group to reconnect with friends and encourage each other to produce new work. Additional members include McKinna Anderson, Aaron Castillo, Krista Darling, Jonathon Dorofy, Anna Dunwody, Nabil Harb, Andres Ramirez, Erika Schnur, Kristy Summerson, and Jessica Thornton. Many members are University of South Florida alumni who came through the School of Art and Art History’s photography program or the School of Advertising and Mass Communications. It is easy to imagine that assembling the group’s roster had a definite “getting the band back together” feeling.
While the USF connection forms the backbone of Separate Checks, other artists have joined by contacting Adam and Katelyn on social media. Adam amusingly recalls how member Aaron Castillo slid into his DMs on Instagram before meeting with him and Katelyn in person. They describe the encounter as feeling like they were on a blind date with a photographer, but thankfully everyone clicked and the date did not end in awkwardness and disappointment.
Installation view of Narrative Nowhere exhibition at Gallery221. Photography credit: Emiliano Settecasi.
The many distinct voices of Separate Checks will be in conversation with each other in Narrative Nowhere, showing at Hillsborough Community College’s Gallery221@HCC Dale Mabry from November 2 – December 10. Visitors are encouraged to view the show in person, by making an appointment on the Gallery221 website and following guidelines on social distancing. Originally slated to debut this spring, it is yet another exhibition that was postponed because of the coronavirus. The show’s change in schedule also led to a change in content, as the extended timing allowed artists to respond to their experiences over the past eight months of this turbulent year.
The initial concept of Narrative Nowhere was to invite other artists to collaborate and reflect on personal histories and the geographic spread of the group, but some members have refocused on addressing Covid-19, racial tension in the United States, and the U.S. Presidential Election. The collective has worked in concert with Gallery221 director Amanda Poss to adjust to these atypical conditions and deliver a show well-suited for this cultural moment.
Andres Ramirez is one member whose work confronts the political, with the artist reacting to the Trump administration’s brutal border policies. His images in Narrative Nowhere are “about facades and what hides behind them; whether they’re digitally invented or not, these images are constructions much like the norms of our society.” This year he has been grappling with the concept of borders and their violently divisive nature, as he questions whether they should even exist.
Anna Dunwody, Sempiternity I and Dioscorea bulbifera 1-5, 2020, cyanotypes. Photography credit: Emiliano Settecasi.
Anna Dunwody’s recent works tangle with themes of loss, discovery, and regrowth. Here she displays a series of cyanotypes that she created while in quarantine. She draws connections between the unpredictability of this year and her chosen media, musing that with cyanotypes “you can do everything with such care and intention and each one always comes out a little different and maybe not how you wanted or expected, much like life.” She says that in her work she seeks to find the constantly surprising and occasionally beautiful.
Installation view of Narrative Nowhere exhibition at Gallery221. Photography credit: Emiliano Settecasi.
The current exhibition at HCC represents a major sign of growth for the young collective, who previously held one-night-only showings in venues like the Creative Loafing Space and Dojo Sounds recording studio in Ybor. Those events emitted a special “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” energy, where it was exciting to see a show in an unfamiliar space and not already know everyone there. However, Adam is thankful for the opportunity to display work in a fixed space like Gallery221, where the group can reach a wider audience and their works are given ample time and room to breathe.
The Main Course one-night-only show held at the Creative Loafing Space in 2018. Image taken by Anna Dunwody.
The members of Separate Checks meeting during simpler times. Image taken by an unnamed family member of the group. Sorry, fam!
Why join an artist collective in the first place? For McKinna Anderson, the group offers her friendship and a sense of accountability, without being restrictive or stifling her voice. Living in Nashville in 2018, she knew Adam and Katelyn from her time as an undergrad at USF and she found herself wandering through a similar post-graduate fog until she joined Separate Checks. She explains that the group has a tethering effect, acting as a lighthouse that always leads her back to the art community.
Separate Checks logo designed by Jonathon Dorofy
The group’s identity is still in flux, but it adopts several traits from its founders. Adam’s Fine Art background blends with Katelyn’s graphic and advertising skillset to produce something with an art school sensibility and savvy self-promotion. The mixing of elements is persistent among the membership, with both Aaron Castillo and Kristy Summerson moving between the Fine Art and advertising worlds. Member Jonathon Dorofy is also heavily involved with the group’s branding, where he imbues quintessential Florida motifs with a sleek veneer and graceful simplicity.
In a subtle way, the collective also has a quiet confidence that reflects Adam’s and Katelyn’s personalities, wherein his calm demeanor and her animated enthusiasm form a perfect partnership.
Separate Checks is currently finding its place in the Tampa Bay art community alongside established collectives like QUAID and the photography-centered Fountain of Pythons. USF photography professor Wendy Babcox is a member of FOP, and Katelyn remembers being intrigued by the group when Babcox mentioned it in class. Babcox’s guidance has had a lasting impact on Adam and Katelyn, and they single her out as an important mentor from their undergraduate days. Additionally, FOP member Selina Roman also serves as a member of Gallery221’s Advisory Council, and she proposed the Narrative Nowhere show to HCC. She was one of the earliest and most ardent supporters of Separate Checks, and she continues to offer her encouragement on its ventures.
What is next on the menu for the young collective? The group plans to eventually host a juried show, and they have kicked around the idea of having their own permanent exhibition space. They are becoming friendly with other artists collectives such as Portland’s Small Talk Collective and are discussing a show exchange and curating each other’s work. For now, they seem content with taking things as they come and not looking too far ahead.
When it comes to Separate Checks, part of the excitement is in not knowing what comes next. For many viewers, the Narrative Nowhere exhibition is likely their first exposure to the group. This show provides a rare chance to see numerous artists creating work together in the early stages of their careers. These separate voices are coalescing into something new right before our eyes. Don’t blink and miss the moment.
Narrative Nowhere runs from November 2 to December 10 at Gallery221@HCC Dale Mabry campus. To learn more about the gallery and make an appointment to view the exhibition, follow these links:
James Cartwright earned his M.A. in Art History from USF in 2017. He focuses on cross-cultural exchanges in art production, while occasionally wandering into the realm of contemporary art criticism. He is an adjunct Art History instructor at USF and the University of Tampa, where he uses his liberal arts background to joyfully corrupt the impressionable youth of America.
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.
Installation view of Derick Adams: Buoyant. Photo: Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg.
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 anEbony 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.
Installation view of Derick Adams: Buoyant. Photo: Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg.
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 Floridawith 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.
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: CarrieJadus, 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!”
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.
Tongue and Groove – Exploring a Common Visual Language Creative Pinellas, Largo, FL July 11 – July 28, 2019 Opening reception: Thursday, July 11, 6 – 9 pm The curator and the artists will do a gallery walkthrough at 6:30 pm and 7:30 pm. Free and open to the public
Traditionally, the creative process is considered to be a solitary one. So it is that there is something very interesting about examining how artists’ works might work together and the results that happen when that occurs. Kathy Gibson, an independent curator with a considerable resume of exhibitions, gallery experience, and leadership, has brought together two artists to examine how very real synergies might arise out by combining the work of two artists. Specifically here, Babette Herschberger and Ry McCullough whose works have been brought together for the exhibition, Tongue and Groove, showing at Creative Pinellas from July, 11th. The exhibition’s subtitle ‘Exploring a Common Visual Language’ makes explicit as to how a dialogue between two artists can be productive. Gibson states, “There is a palpable visual connection, a similar visual language regarding line, color, shape, and composition…. this exhibition celebrates a third element that is created when the works of these two artists are combined.”
Installation in progress view of Tongue and Groove – Exploring a Common Visual Language
Both Herschberger and McCullough are relative newcomers to the Tampa Bay Area. They both arrive with an impressive track record and their contribution to the local art scene is already one to be much looked forward to. Furthermore, it should be noted that also relatively new Creative Pinellas is quickly developing into a cultural powerhouse. At their headquarters at the former Gulf Coast Museum of Art in Largo there has already been a very impressive exhibition program in their splendid galleries.
Here, at Bay Art Files we are very pleased to be sponsoring a Coffee and Guava drop-in on Thursday, July 18th, between 10:30 am – 1:30 pm. The artists and the curator will be in attendance and open to questioning/discussion. We do hope you will be able to attend.
About Babette Herschberger
Babette Herschberger was born in Indiana and graduated from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale with honors. After many years as a successful working artist in Miami, she moved to St. Petersburg where she has created a live/work studio. Her work has been in exhibitions at Visceglia Gallery, Caldwell University, The Gulf Coast University Gallery, The Hollywood Art and Cultural Center, The Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art and The Florida State Capitol Building. She has also been represented at “Art Basel Miami/Scope Art Fair”, “AAF Contemporary Art Fair”, New York, “ArtExpo Atlanta”, “Art Expo New York”, and is in the corporate collections of American Airlines, Bank of America, The Fontainebleau Hotel, The Four Seasons Hotels, Neiman Marcus, the University of North Carolina, Continental Real Estate Companies, Crescent Miami Centers, White + Case LLP and Quantum on the Bay Collection. Her work is represented by Cheryl Hazan Contemporary Art, New York City and Mary Woerner Fine Arts, West Palm Beach.
About Ry McCullough
Ry McCullough is an artist and educator, working in Tampa. He earned is his Bachelors of Fine Arts from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio where he concentrated in the areas of printmaking and sculpture. Upon completion of his undergraduate work he served as the Director of Sculptural Studies as well as teaching printmaking at Stivers School for the Arts. McCullough received his MFA in Printmaking and Book Arts from the Lamar Dodd School of the Art at the University of Georgia. He currently is serving the Department of Art + Design as an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Tampa. McCullough has exhibited internationally and is the founder of the Standard Action Press Collaborative Zine Project.
About Katherine Gibson
Katherine Gibsonis an independent curator and regional art consultant living in St. Petersburg. She has curated exhibits for the Morean Art Center, Florida CraftArt Gallery, Lake Wales Art Center, Hillsborough Community College (HCC) Ybor Art Gallery and pop-up galleries in Polk & Hillsborough counties. Gibson is the former Director of HCC’s Dale Mabry gallery that she rebranded Gallery221. While Director, she doubled the exhibition space, established a permanent art collection and organized 30+ exhibits. Gibson received a 2018 Individual Artist Award from the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance for her Drive-by Window project.
In this month of March, celebrating Women in History, Sarah Howard, USF Curator of Public Art & Social Practice, will lead a free walking tour on Wednesday, March 27th of site-specific public art on the Univerity of South Florida campus in Tampa. The one-hour tour starts at artist Nancy Holt’s Solar Rotary at noon.
USF’s public art collection includes some significiant examples of works by major female artists. It is of particular interest to see how artists have applied their practice to site-specific commissions in the university environment. It is the sense that thoughts which should be of interest; relationships with place, environment and, indeed, with each other as a community, are explored and provoked is the remit of successful public art, especially so in a place of education.
Specifically, the women represented in this tour have added significantly to important gender equity issues over time. Women in History Month seeks to highlight and celebrate, indeed educate the public of such contributions. The nexus of important matters and public art within the university campus, irrespective whether they are accurately, in fact, purely a historical matter should be of great interest to us.
Alice Aycock, Maze, 2000. Photography courtesy of USF Public Art.
Per the USF Facebook event page, “The tour will feature site-specific works by renowned artists such as Alice Aycock, Lynda Benglis, Nancy Holt, Stacy Levy, and Janaina Tschäpe. Participants will have the opportunity to learn about the history of the program, and the artists and collaborators who created the public artworks. Tour will begin at Nancy Holt’s Solar Rotary, adjacent to the USF Communication & Information Sciences Building (CIS), weather permitting.”
On view through March 7th at Hillsborough Community College’s Gallery 221 as part of an annual exhibition celebrating African American heritage and presented in conjunction with the Tampa Bay Black Heritage Festival.
steve locke: the color of remembering is on view at HHC’s Gallery 221 though March 7th.
This exhibition examines how African Americans have been depicted in ways which betrays explicit and implicit cultural prejudices depending, in this case, the age of the memory. From schematic diagrams of slave ships, historical photographs of lynchings, to modern day video, brutality and racism – institutional or otherwise – images have been made and disseminated which tacitly imply values which we should, indeed, must find deplorable.
Not only by subject matter but, significantly, it is through the means of presentation that Locke employs in the photography series Family Pictures, 2016, that he addresses how different standards apply, in particular, that there isn’t an universal sense of respect and dignity when it comes to the memorialization of the atrocious. Locke himself memorializes images of the barbaric, setting them in unexceptional frames, engraved with the platitudinous and set against strong colored backdrops – notions of remembering and color are brought to the fore – the colors are strong but it is an overall sense of banality which is most provocative and the taint on remembering which Locke communicates most powerfully.
steve locke: the color of remembering is on view at HHC’s Gallery 221 though March 7th.
In Three Deliberate Grays for Freddie (A Memorial for Freddie Gray), Locke further confronts how there remains to this day a biased filter as to presentation of the African-American experience in the media. In this case, the tragic death of Freddie Gray on April 12th, 2015 whilst in the custody of the Baltimore Police Department. The intrusive and the demeaning combined with sensationalized reporting to ignore the dignity and suffering of this man. Validly, it might be asked had this not been a young African-American man whether the coverage would have taken on a different tone. By distilling the color palette of three commonly circulated photographs of Freddie Gray down to three hues of gray, Locke speaks to the debasement of this individual, his suffering and brutal death. Freddie Gray became a media-currency. His life and death had determined a value, that of a commodity. One that was exchanged between us and the news outlets. Locke shows us how we are complicit in this process, that the communication of outrage embraces complexities which have at their foundation the self same prejudices which they seek to make clear, here it is literally gray.
steven locke’s: the color of remembering at is a powerful exhibition. By bringing together the history of slavery, racism and subjugation through to the contemporaneous he threads a course of prejudices towards African Americans from the overt to the more hidden. It is instructive, in particular, how this exhibition focuses us on the modern day and practices which covertly but evidently seek to assuage the sensibilities of the mainstream at the expense of Black experience. The works themselves, are compelling and visually strong. The replication of composition in Family Pictures is one which has an unerring sense of imbalance. The images contained, framed with frames and repetitively composed powerfully suggest a diluting of content whilst, in fact, communicating the exact opposite. Steven Locke shows a consistent mastery of practice and sheer intellectual energy in working with the complexities of this difficult but very important subject matter. To be asked to re-think, indeed, re-remember and to give life and color to the challenging is the significant and worthy success of this exhibition.
At Bay Art Files, we have asked Tyra Mishell, who is pursuing a BA in Studio Art at the University of South Florida, to write about this powerful and timely exhibition. Her impressions of viewing the exhibition and meeting with the artist will post soon.
