In Good Company: Strength of Character at Creative Pinellas by Jessica Todd
In her latest exhibition, Strength of Character at Creative Pinellas, curator Katherine Gibson welcomes the viewer into the gallery with warm familiarity. Oak seats and fruit chandeliers allude to home. Rich colors, natural materials, and hints of domesticity soften the formality of the impressively grand galleries of Creative Pinellas. There’s even a scent of cedar in the air.
The Art world is still shedding the restrictive boundaries between “Fine Art” and Crafts and Design. The Western Art canon has long excluded work due to medium, process, functionality, and proximity to the domestic. While oil painting and marble sculpture dominate the collections of major institutions and the pages of Art History books, a wealth of works in traditional Crafts media such as ceramics, wood, glass, fine metal, fibers, and paper have been largely ignored.
This exclusion is not due to a lack of artistic merit. Rather, it is deeply rooted in classism, racism, and sexism. Availability of materials, differing cultural applications of art objects, and restricted access to education and patronage led to different kinds of artmaking throughout history. To assert the dominance of the upper-class Western European male, the materials and functionality associated with the art of socially repressed groups were deemed inferior. And the tradition lives on.
Today, we see artists and curators challenging this bias. Audiences’ enthusiasm for Crafts media, Design, and functional work continues to push it into the mainstream. We see materials, processes, and forms we’re accustomed to living with in our homes now in gallery and museum spaces. This familiarity offers an entry point to the viewer. It democratizes Western art in a revolutionary way.
Gibson’s curatorial work is, in this sense, revolutionary. She integrates Crafts media with painting and sculpture, functional with conceptual work, and self-trained with academically trained artists. She integrates these works into the gallery seamlessly. Most importantly, her exhibitions are not “about” Art hierarchies. They’re about placing thoughtfully made artworks in a space and allowing them to converse with each other and with the viewer.
Strength of Character beautifully iterates this concept. We see the abstract paintings of Edgar Sanchez Cumbas next to the carved wooden furniture of David and Kathleen Bly alongside the sculptural installations of Kendra Frorup, which integrate printmaking, casting, and metalwork. Chandeliers converse with stretched canvas. Stools talk to framed paintings.
The harmony of the work in the gallery is a reflection of the collaborative installation process. The curator, artists, and Creative Pinellas staff came together to design an exhibition that is both cohesive and unexpected. Gibson isn’t afraid to ask the viewer to look upward or downward – “gallery height” is merely a suggestion. She’s a master of balancing scale in improbable ways: the Blys’ four petit Live Oak sculptures hold their own resting on the ground catty-cornered to Frorup’s wall-sized installation and substantial Sugar Apple Chandelier.
Each artist also contributed their unique perspective to the installation process: Frorup’s talent for collaging objects, Sanchez Cumbas’s eye for color and form, and the Blys’ engagement with architecture. Freddie Hughes (Gallery and Facilities Engagement Manager for Creative Pinellas) was instrumental in bringing the exhibition to life with his extensive installation knowledge and technical support. Serendipitous moments, like finding an old fence post outside to anchor Sanchez Cumbas’s Brush, or Frorup upending a utility cart from her studio to hold Banana Chandelier, reflect an openness to experimentation and play.
Though diverse in their media, the works in Strength of Character are united visually. Warm, rich earthy tones dominate the palette with intermittent pops of teal and quiet moments of textured white. Voluminous abstract shapes uncovered in the natural wood patterns of the Blys’ Live Oak series mirror Sanchez Cumbas’s explorations of human form in his Skinless series. Frenetic feather-like shapes in Sanchez Cumbas’s Compression Series and Reduction in Volumes are reflected in the crisscrossing screen- printed palm fronds of Frorup’s untitled installation. After seeing the symmetrical wood-turned bumps of the Blys’ work, Frorup responded with similarly shaped spun metal hardware to hang her Sugar Apple Chandelier.
Conceptually, all of the artists in the exhibition start with process. Frorup’s practice begins with collecting objects. She then problem solves through active making. Frorup engages in a range of art-making processes – from casting to papermaking to screenprinting – to arrive at her installations and sculptures. Her high regard for process is evident in her untitled installation featuring used screen-printing screens. The fruits that appear in Frorup’s work are an homage to her Bahamian roots and her mother’s farm that she grew up working on. Much like the artwork, the fruits are the sweet end result of a long cultivation process.
The Blys’ work is similarly driven by collected materials – reclaimed trees from Tampa’s urban neighborhoods. Their sculptures are a collaboration with the tree that bore the wood, which evolves throughout the making process. The tree tells them where to carve and when to stop. They work the wood while it’s still green, rather than fully dried, so that after their intervention the wood continues to bend, move, and crack. The resulting sculptures, many of which function as furniture, act as monuments to the downed tree from which they were sourced.
Sanchez Cumbas responds to the world around him through the cathartic process of painting. His kinetic brushstrokes in Compression Series and Reduction in Volumes reflect the turbulent war in Afghanistan and politics of 2010, when they were made (he notes, still relevant today). These works mark a turn from his figurative paintings, the last of which is Brush, also in the exhibition, a nod to the Buddha and his own Buddhist practice, a piece that is notably calmer and more grounded. The much more restrained works in the Skinless series sensitively explore bodies and skin, and issues around skin tone in the Latinx community. Each piece is a visual reflection of the emotion with which it was created.
It’s evident when speaking with Gibson and the artists of Strength of Character that they all share an immense respect for each other’s practices. The joyful spirit with which they engaged in this collaborative project is palpable in the gallery, and reflected in the enthusiasm of Creative Pinellas’s passionate staff. Head to Largo and make yourself at home in this beautiful exhibition, up through April 28, 2024.
A special thanks to the Gobioff Foundation for supporting this exhibition through their Microgrant program.
Creative Pinellas is Pinellas County’s non-profit local arts agency providing funding and support to artists while connecting businesses, tourism and the public with the arts community.
Jessica Todd is a curator, writer, and artist based in Tampa, Florida. She is passionate about building the creative infrastructures that support artists, and studying and addressing issues of equity, access, and inclusion in the arts. In October 2022, Jessica opened Parachute Gallery in Ybor City, first serving as an exhibition space for national artists and later a retail gallery representing local artists. Parachute Gallery currently operates remotely through online resources and off-site programming. Jessica has worked with a number of arts organizations since moving to Tampa in 2020, including Tempus Projects, Artspace Tampa Initiative, Crab Devil, and the Morean Arts Center. For six years, prior to moving to Tampa, she was the Residency Manager for the Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva, Florida. Jessica holds an MFA in Jewelry/Metals/Enameling from Kent State University, a BA in Art from Penn State University, and a Diploma of Hispanic Studies from the University of Barcelona.
This spring, visitors of the Tampa Museum of Art (TMA) have the uncommon chance to view a profoundly whimsical exhibition of works by a preeminent contemporary painter. Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love, features more than forty-five paintings and works on paper completed between 2019 and 2022. The exhibition is organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art and is on view at the TMA from February 23rd through June 4th, 2023.
Born in 1983, in Lahore, Pakistan, Salman Toor resides and works in New York City and exhibits internationally. His oeuvre primarily consists of dreamlike scenes, in which cartoonish figures appear suspended like marionettes, caught in the plotlines of ambiguous narratives. The stories are drawn from moments of the urban lives of imagined queer young men, as well as from the artist’s own lived experience and those of his friends. The emotional atmospheres of his canvases fluctuate between intimacy and isolation, contentment and embarrassment, and tenderness and violence.
This exhibition is important and timely as it draws attention to international human rights issues as well as domestic queer politics. In Pakistan, acts of homosexuality are punishable by life imprisonment, or even death in extreme cases.1 In America, LGBTQ+ rights, representation and recreation are coming under fire from lawmakers, politicians, and homophobic and transphobic members of the public who are banning or restricting drag shows throughout the country.
On view in the museum’s newly constructed gallery space, the exhibition consists of oil paintings done on panel and canvas, several drawings done in charcoal, ink, and gouache, and two of the artist’s sketchbooks. This body of works offers conceptual, material, and technical variety while also showcasing Toor’s characteristic style. Despite the surreal quality of many of Toor’s paintings and the specificity of his subject matter, the moments that he constructs are deeply sensitive to the human condition. There is a naivete to his figures, but their innocence is occasionally broken by the salacious scenarios in which they appear entangled.
Toor’s paintings reward the visually literate and those well-versed in Western art history. Drawing from the European painting tradition, he invites us to traverse through centuries of time without ever leaving our contemporary moment behind. Toor brings this legacy into our times to confront colonial structures that still confine us. In postcolonial fashion, Toor turns the canon on its head by replacing the typical subjects of Western easel paintings with queer, brown-skinned boys and men. Toor demonstrates his mastery over the Western tradition in a bold act of subversion that begs the question of who owns whose art history.
Figure 1: Construction Men, Salman Toor, 2021, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in. (152.4 x 121.9 cm), photo by author. Figure 2: Les Raboteurs de Parquet (The Floor Scrapers), Gustave Caillebotte, 1875, oil on canvas, 40.2 x 57.7 in (102 x 146.5 cm), Google Arts and Culture.
When visitors enter the gallery, they are immediately confronted by Construction Men (Figure 1), a scene that continues the homoerotic celebration of male laborers that can be traced back to Gustave Caillebotte’s The Floor Scrapers (Figure 2), of 1875, though with a campy flare evocative of costumes for The Village People. From there, visitors may circulate the room and explore the three thematic categories that the works are separated into, including desire, tradition, and family. Many of the paintings are neatly spaced along the horizon line of the gallery walls, with carefully adjusted spotlights illuminating each one. His smaller works, though, are clustered together on the south wall, in a way that evokes the salon-style displays of public galleries in the nineteenth century. This strategy slows down the viewing experience and aligns with Toor’s connection to artistic conventions of the past, but it also makes it difficult to see the details in each of them closely, especially for viewers whose vantage point is lower than others.
Not all the works in the catalog make an appearance at this venue. Two notable exclusions include The Latecomer, 2021, and the monumental Fag Puddle with Candle, Shoe and Flag, 2022, which is featured on the cover of the catalog edited by Asma Naeem and available for purchase at the Museum’s store. The painting is a self-referential triumph that blends symbols from Toor’s lexicon, including phalluses, shoes, used condoms, and tombstones. It is perhaps the standout of the show, but it is not on view at the TMA because it was swiftly purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Congratulations are in order for the artist as this painting is the first of his to be acquired by the prestigious institution, but I lament the missed opportunity for a Floridian audience to view this painting.
While the compositions that underly many of Toor’s canvases are taken from monuments of Early Modern European art, these works find themselves quite at home at the TMA, even though such a collection is conspicuously absent. The TMA has historically been known for its collection of classical art from Greece and Southern Italy, but its exhibition programming and the development of its permanent collection have also been centered around outlier art of the modern and postmodern eras. The humor, irony, postcolonial angst, and queer grunge, that we find on the surface of Toor’s paintings bear an uncanny affinity with the irreverent and kitschy contemporary art scene of the greater Tampa Bay area.
Figure 3: Cakes, Wayne Thiebaud, 1963, oil on canvas, (152.4 x 182.9 cm), Wikiart.
Several of the works made for this exhibition pull directly from works in the Baltimore Museum of Art’s collection of European paintings from the 17th– to the 19th-centuries. Attention to Toor’s references to early modern art is well-established but has perhaps overshadowed his visual connections to later painters. Toor typically uses oil paints over a surface primed with dark brown acrylic paint. His style is painterly, with thick, visible brushstrokes. The built-up textures of his paintings have been described as frosting on a cake, not unlike Wayne Thiebaud, whose paintings of seemingly mundane desserts and pastries, such as Cakes (Figure 3), 1963, were imbued with a postmodern sensibility and likewise question notions of desire, consumption, class, and privilege.2
Figure 4: Night Capture, Salman Toor, 2021, oil on panel, 14 x 18 in. (35.6 x 45.7 cm), photo by author.
The Western canon is not the only power structure that Toor seeks to upend. Toor also takes issue with the endemic homophobia that plagues his home country of Pakistan, as well as most other Muslim-majority nations. The perils that LGBTQ+ people face within these communities is a topic brought forth by several of Toor’s paintings, such as Stone Throwers, Night Capture (Figure 4), and The Vigil. The threat of violence compels us to hide beneath the protective cover of night and within the fickle safety of wooden areas, where individuals may cruise at their own risk. In Shadow Park, Toor provides us a glimpse into the underworld of queer desire that echoes the sexually charged nightmare-fantasies of Robert Gober’s The Heart is Not a Metaphor.
Figure 5: Cemetery with Dog, Salman Toor, 2022, oil on canvas, 43 x 36 in. (109.2 x 91.4 cm), photo by author.
In some of Toor’s paintings such as Thunderstorm and Back Lawn, we see domestic gardens as a space for freedom and unbridled affection. In Cemetery with Dog (Figure 5), Toor explores a different setting entirely, in which the homoerotic paradise of Sa’di’s garden is now a graveyard.3 The scene has the isometric perspective of Persianate manuscript paintings, through which we peer down at above-ground graves and tombstones. Unlike most of his paintings, this one is conspicuously absent of any visible human figures, though it hardly feels like an empty landscape. By searching for a person, we come to the grim realization that a graveyard is never an empty landscape, as the ground literally contains invisible bodies. In the background, there are trees entwined, an established motif in painting, prose, and poetry from the Islamic world for lovers yearning to embrace one another.4 By conflating the garden with the cemetery, and life and death, this painting serves as a dark reminder of the risk of pursuing forbidden love.
Toor is known for his proclivity for green, a color that has, perhaps coincidentally, also enjoyed an emblematic role in Islamic culture. Green is the color of the Prophet Muhammad, who is said to have privileged the color above all others, as well as the color of paradise, which is envisioned as a garden.5 For modern artists in the West, such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Pablo Picasso, green indicates a sickness manifests on multiple levels. Toor says that he is aware of the poisonous associations with green, but for him, the color is “velvety, nocturnal, and comforting.”6 The conflicting potentialities for the symbolic significance of green in Toor’s paintings, in a way, queer the color itself.
At the heart of his work, Toor celebrates the common love found in causal romances of the sex-positive queer world by elevating it by giving it the treatment of one that is found beyond the realm of the ordinary. He celebrates these because they are valuable, and we take them for granted, forgetting that these small acts of seemingly meaningless affection are a luxury not afforded to all.
Glowing like the green light from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, these gleaming, verdant paintings shine into the night, beckoning us into a world of uninhibited frivolity, misplaced desire, and dangerous trysts. Like Nick Carraway, the narrating protagonist of the hazy tale, Toor seems to find dissatisfaction with the world in which he has entered, where love is free, and therefore made worthless. Lovers are had and then disposed. Forbidden love is no longer forbidden, and therefore has become ordinary. Toor gifts us a fresh perspective by showing the value that remains in public displays of affection and to show us that there is nothing at all ordinary about such love.
Salmon Toor: No Ordinary Love is on view at the Tampa Museum of Art through June 4, 2023.The exhibition is organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art.
About the author
Richard Ellis is an adjunct professor at the University of Tampa, in the Department of Art & Design, and at the University of South Florida, in the School of Art & Art History. He holds a B.A. and M.A., both in art history and from the University of South Florida. His areas of interest include Islamic art and architecture, modern and contemporary art of the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and the diasporas, as well as Orientalism.
Asma Naeem, “Salman Toor’s Brown Boys,” in Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love, ed. Asma Naeem (New York and Baltimore: Gregory R. Miller & Co. and the Baltimore Museum of Art), 10.
Mika Natif, “The generative garden: Sensuality, male intimacy, and eternity in Govardhan’s illustration of Sa‘dī’s Gulistān,” in Eros and Sexuality in Islamic Art, ed. Francesca Leoni and Mika Natif (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2013), 3.
Michael Barry, “Illustrating ‘Attār: A Pictorial Meditation by Master Habīballāh of Mashhad in the Tradition of Master Bihzād of Herat,” in ‘Attār and the Persian Sufi Tradition: The Art of Spiritual Flight, ed. Leonard Lewisohn and Christopher Shackle (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 148.
Mohammad Gharipour, Persian Gardens and Pavilions: Reflections in History, Poetry, and the Arts (London and New York, I.B. Taurus, 2013), 24.
Evan Moffitt, “Green as the Night” in Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love, ed. Asma Naeem (New York and Baltimore: Gregory R. Miller & Co. and the Baltimore Museum of Art), 49.
Bibliography
Barry, Michael. “Illustrating ‘Attār: A Pictorial Meditation by Master Habīballāh of Mashhad in the Tradition of Master Bihzād of Herat.” In ‘Attār and the Persian Sufi Tradition: The Art of Spiritual Flight, ed. Leonard Lewisohn and Christopher Shackle, 135-64. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006.
Gharipour, Mohammad. Persian Gardens and Pavilions: Reflections in History, Poetry, and the Arts. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013.
Naeem, Asma, ed. Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love. ed. New York and Baltimore: Gregory R. Miller & Co. and the Baltimore Museum of Art, 2022.
Natif, Mika. “The generative garden: Sensuality, male intimacy, and eternity in Govardhan’s illustration of Sa‘dī’s Gulistān.” In Eros and Sexuality in Islamic Art, ed. Francesca Leoni and Mika Natif, 43-64. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2013.
Location, Location, Location Anthony Record and the Museum of Florida Art and Culture
by Jonathan Talit
Driving to Avon Park is just that: driving to Avon Park. The 50-mile stretch of US-27, between the southbound exit on I-4 and the northwest border of Highlands County, begins packed with strip malls, gas stations, and fast-food chains: the trademark scenery of any highway exit. The deeper one drives, the less frequently these landmarks appear until there is nothing to look at but grass, sky, and asphalt. Yet, I couldn’t help but look out even more; to open my eyes wider as the flat land pulled itself closer to the horizon and the sky bent around my windows so dramatically that it appeared to dig at the edges of the earth. It was difficult to imagine people living anywhere near here. Not out of snobbery: it just, quite literally, looked so empty of people.
Of course, that’s not true. People do live in Highlands County and many have for generations. Even more visit to celebrate acute passions: the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring car race, sold-out concerts by Rumours, a renowned Fleetwood Mac tribute band, the charming trompe l’oeil murals of Lake Placid, and Toby’s Clown School and Museum. The latter has graduated more than 1,500 clowns since its founding in 1993. Despite appearing sparse, or perhaps because of it, Highlands County is sprinkled with various sites of assembly.
The Museum of Florida Art and Culture, or MOFAC, is one such site. Part of South Florida State College, MOFAC hired Anthony Record as its new curator in March of 2022. Since then, Record has been busy organizing contemporary art exhibitions and managing MOFAC’s permanent collection of historic art and artifacts pertaining to the region. I met with Anthony on a Saturday afternoon, at the pristine campus of SFSC, just two weeks shy of Hurricane Ian pummeling the state, to discuss his new role.
Anthony Record, Curator of the Museum of Florida Art and Culture. Photo: J. Talit
“I’ll show you the concourse, first,” he said as he ushered me inside. The main exhibition space is divided into quadrants (quintets if you include the lobby of the Board Room). The main gallery has two sections: one for contemporary art exhibitions and one for the permanent collection. The third section is the lobby of the music hall.
The fourth is the concourse, which is within the building but outside of the main gallery. It consists of a large, curved wall that follows a hallway between the main gallery and classrooms. Several long canvases line the wall. Technically, they’re canvas prints: reproductions of oil paintings by the artist Christopher Still. The originals are on display at the Florida House of Representatives. Each print depicts some aspect of Florida in a style akin to history painting. The commanding gaze of Seminole Indian Osceola aims at the viewer in Patriot and Warrior (2001). Each hand gestures with conviction: one towards the sunset and an approaching Spanish vessel, the other gripped around a knife that pierces into a written document. This document “hangs” over the edge of the painting in a trompe l’oeil effect like the aforementioned murals at Lake Placid. An enormous alligator’s claws dangle over the borders of The Okeehumkee on the Oklawaha (2000). Each painting is concerned with narrative, landscape, and perspective: visual and historical.
Christoper Still. Patriot and Warrior, 2001. Canvas print. The original is on display at the Florida House of Representatives in Tallahassee, Florida.
Anthony Record’s curatorial interests are similar. “I don’t organize exhibits with a strict, pre-existing philosophy or ideology, like ‘I’m interested in shows about identity’ or ‘I only focus on work by abstract artists,” he explains. “However, many of the exhibitions I organize seem to involve place. Location matters a lot to me and to many of the artists I exhibit.”
Location has mattered to Record personally, too. Originally from Tampa, Record received his bachelor’s from the University of South Florida. After earning his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2008, he returned to Tampa and has maintained proactive roles in the arts since. Most notably, Record is Co-founder and Director of the artist collective QUAID, which recently moved to Ybor City after almost a decade in Seminole Heights. Along with exhibition spaces like Tempus Projects and Parallelogram Gallery, QUAID was part of a community of enthusiastic, DIY artists and educators who promoted contemporary art in a city that was otherwise lacking.
Record complemented his executive role at QUAID with educational positions, adjuncting at the University of South Florida as well as various community colleges from 2010 to 2018. “I love teaching, but I definitely prefer teaching at community colleges,” he confesses. “The students tend to be more diverse in every way: age, socioeconomics, political affiliation, level of background. All the students are interested in art but tend to be less interested in credentials. They also tend to push back a little more, which often makes for a richer classroom experience.”
In 2018, Record stopped adjuncting to assume a full-time role at the Tampa Museum of Art. While no longer a professor in a college classroom, Record worked in the education department as the Studio Programs Coordinator, where he organized after-hours classes hosted by local artists. Children and adults alike would attend these classes to participate in a wide range of making. “The classes were only a few hours long, so they had to be engaging but concise. The topics depended on whichever artist hosted the event. They could range from self-portraits in acrylic to large-scale collage to simply paper sculpture.”
Record left his position at the TMA earlier this year to become the curator at MOFAC. “The job at MOFAC has several moving parts, which I enjoy,” he says. “The most obvious are the contemporary artist exhibitions. Artwork that involves Florida, whether the artist is a homegrown Floridian or not, doesn’t have much institutional presence. The same is true of general Florida history and archaeology. I know a lot of great artists whose work deals with this state and deserves the kind of authority and attention that an institutional solo show can offer. To pair those works side by side with objects of Floridian craft and archaeology, which have very different cultural and intellectual histories than art with a capital “A,” makes MOFAC an exciting exhibition space.”
Considering Record’s noted contributions to the Tampa Bay art scene, contributions about which several people have expressed their gratitude in casual conversations with me about Record, one wonders: why leave? Avon Park is not as far from Tampa as, say, Las Vegas, but it’s still a hike. Culturally, they’re almost polar opposites. Tampa, specifically the art scene of which Record is a notable architect, is “cool.” Under no circumstances is Avon Park. To my knowledge, Record previously knew no one in Highlands County. “The position at MOFAC popped up and seemed like a good opportunity,” he concludes.
Succinct, polite, evasive. I press, albeit gently, and like any schlocky interviewer, I make it about myself. I mention that I’ve moved around a lot for school and residencies. Within two months of meeting with Anthony, I had left a yearlong residency in Star, North Carolina to pursue a full-time job in Orlando, a city I hate in the lamest way possible. I have some family and acquaintances in Orlando, but not the community I had in Star, Tampa, or Boston. Being an artist grants you the flexibility to hop to new places and meet new groups of people, but it doesn’t make leaving them behind, if only by a few hours, any easier.
He agrees and elaborates on his decision. “I guess that the position at MOFAC seemed like a full-time version of my role at QUAID: providing young, hungry, interesting, local artists with exhibition space for their work. I’ve had mixed feelings about some of the places I’ve shown my work. As an exhibiting artist, I had a lot of disappointments with various galleries and museums; just the things that weren’t provided and the level of engagement with my work that I was hoping to get but didn’t. I hope that I can use those experiences to cultivate an exhibition space that is both more attentive to the needs of artists while also staying out of their way.”
Whatever cocktail of circumstances led to Record’s decision, MOFAC is clearly lucky to have him. In just six months, Record has served himself a full plate: reorganizing the collection, changing the floorplan of the contemporary art galleries, securing future solo shows, writing exhibition didactics, planning gallery events, and developing an online presence via video interviews with exhibiting artists. These videos, crispy produced, are separate interviews with artists Bruce Marsh and Sam Newton, whose respective solo exhibitions A Long Glance and Herd of Thunder opened in early October of 2022 (Both exhibitions have since closed.) Marsh was a longtime professor at the University of South Florida and Newton is a current member of QUAID.
The videos are not just methods by which the museum can advertise online, however. They’re also not just interpretation tools for the viewer to glean deeper insights into the work, though they do that well. Record conducted these interviews and edited the videos, and his signature appetite for “place” is all over them. While Marsh and Newton discuss their interests and aspirations outright, each video underscores the setting in which these artists make art and presents a synopsis of their daily working life.
Granted, Bruce Marsh explicitly discusses how his home of Ruskin, Florida defines his work. What the video presents that isn’t immediately visible upon looking at Marsh’s work or listening to him speak is the kind of life that would produce such work: a contemplative life of teaching, commuting, and now retirement. Marsh moved to Ruskin as a compromise between he and his wife, Dolores Coe. She was teaching at the Ringling College of Art and Design and he was teaching at USF. Thus, the rural town of Ruskin was the middle point of their commutes.
Installation view of the exhibition Bruce March: A Long Glance which was on display from October 5 – November 18, 2022.
Marsh’s paintings indicate someone who spends a lot of time looking around at the same things: the outlet malls off I-75, a brewing afternoon storm on the horizon, an intersection at sunset on the way home from work. What most of us would tune out, Marsh isolates and lovingly renders but without hyperbole. Instead, he purposely portrays them as what they are: ordinary, without exaggeration. One’s attention is drawn to these paintings because of their elegant execution of space, not because they depict recognizable people or distort the everyday into a spectacle. But when Record’s camera cuts from Marsh and lingers on an empty bridge or the charmingly dilapidated Ruskin Drive-In, neither of which are the subjects of Marsh’s paintings, the audience is handed more insight than anything Marsh could say out loud.
Installation view of the exhibition Bruce Marsh: A Long Glance which was on display from October 5 – November 18, 2022.
Since Sam Newton’s paintings aren’t really about location at all, Record’s focus on place is even more exposed in her video interview. Newton’s paintings have backgrounds, but they’re simplified to emphasize attention on the real subjects: horses, presented in all their buxom glory. Unlike Marsh, Newton isn’t interested in playing with perspectival space and ordinary locations. Newton’s interests, instead, lie in anthropomorphism and a comic sensibility akin to the infamous Foot of Cupid from Monty Python or the flat irony of stick-and-poke tattoos. Newton compresses her horses barely within the edges of the canvas to articulate just how robust, knobby, temperamental, vigorous, and fragile they really are.
Complicated creatures. And that’s just the artwork itself. Like Marsh’s interview, the main subject of Newton’s video is the particular configuration of her working life (I won’t say “work-life balance”). Unlike Marsh, Newton lives in trendy Seminole Heights but has no dedicated studio in her home, at least not one that we see. The generational contrast between the videos is sharp. Within the first minute, the viewer is presented with a domestic environment that is unmistakably Millennial. The living room, which doubles as Newton’s studio, is engulfed in potted plants, mostly palms. A slate gray housecat lounges on a cat scratcher that appears surprisingly manicured. A child’s cozy coupe outside is plastered with a bumper sticker that reads, in block print, “HONK IF YOU LOVE KING STATE.”
Another big difference: Newton has two young children. Julian, the oldest, doesn’t appear. The youngest, Valentine, unabashedly makes his presence known. Newton explains that she began these horse paintings during the COVID lockdowns and her subsequent pregnancy with Valentine. She admits that it’s easy for her to project onto horses because, “…they all have bangs.”
If only a little sarcasm covered our tracks like we hoped it would. Clearly, there are other reasons why vibrant horses in claustrophobic spaces might resonate with Newton: the pent-up isolation of COVID lockdowns? An analogy for pregnancy, where you share limited space with someone else? A representation of the compressed hours in a day of a working artist and mother? “[Acrylic paint] is a plastic so it’s drying faster, and it has a different texture [than oil paint],” she says, explaining her transition from using oils to acrylic. Newton loves how acrylic more readily accepts other media, from colored pencils to crayons to ink. Ostensibly, she’s come to prefer acrylic’s flexibility and expansiveness to oil’s stiffness. “The sky’s the limit,” she claims of acrylic. I object. More likely, it’s precisely the limits of acrylic that attracts Newton. Its swift drying time and uncomplicated working conditions provide a conclusiveness that she’s found compatible in her life. “I’m able to make work that I wouldn’t be able to make, in the speed that I make it, in the situation that I’m in right now,” she says, before glancing warmly over her shoulder at Valentine.
What provides me all this information, and what grants me a sense of access that, in turn, elicits some hubris within me to freely speculate about these artists’ lives, is Anthony Record’s quiet but guiding eye. Editing, directing, curating, producing: all these jobs require clear decision-making with as little trace of the author as possible. At least, that’s been Record’s hope for himself as curator at MOFAC. So far, it appears he’s succeeded. In six months, a set of interests and a graceful sensibility for articulating them has already emerged. The towns we decide to live in, our hours spent on the road or in offices, the slivers we carve out of our days to do the things we really want to do, the people with whom we choose to spend our “off” time: all the pragmatic compromises we make and their effects on creative work are under Record’s nonjudgmental microscope.
The Museum of Florida Art and Culture (MoFAC) is located on the campus of South Florida State College in Avon Park, Florida.
I’m sure Record’s recent move, like mine, feeds these interests even more. Like it or not, tradeoffs between work and life must be made. Like the artists he exhibits, Record has made a tradeoff that works well for him. Avon Park supplies the tranquility for focus and Record supplies the faithful attention to detail. With QUAID, Record is happily one of several making executive decisions. At MOFAC, he’s largely driving solo.
Bay Art Files contributor Jonathan Talit is an artist currently based in Orlando. 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.
Visit mofac.org for more information about the Museum of Florida Art and Culture and its upcoming exhibitions and programming.
Click here to watch the YouTube archived videos on artists Bruce Marsh and Sam Newton.
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.
Before venturing to Nashville, there was a road trip to Durham, North Carolina, for my first 21c experience. Currently, there are nine 21c Museum Hotels, with plans for more, sprinkled across a few select states in mostly mid-sized cities. Each location exhibits museum-quality 21st-century art (21c) in a restored historic building, converted to a boutique hotel that always includes an inventive lively restaurant and bar. Durham was the closest 21c within driving distance of St. Petersburg and was offering a 2-for-1-night stay, so last August – mid-pandemic – I hit the road.
Upon arrival at the 21c Museum Hotel Durham, I was crushed to learn the restaurant space Counting House was still closed, although not surprised given the pandemic restrictions at that time. I could see through the expansive windows that, like the hotel, the restaurant was teeming with compelling artwork. The skeleton crew eventually allowed me to wander the large multi-room restaurant to view and photograph the art. In the center of the bar area, I was delighted to see Duke Riley’s work, as I had met him during a University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum (USF/CAM) artist talk related to a series of woodcut editions he had completed at USF‘s Graphicstudio.
The main exhibit, The Future is Female, was installed throughout the museum portion of the hotel. It was excellent. I loved seeing works by many favorite artists (Carry Mae Weems, Deborah Roberts, Marilyn Minter, Mickalene Thomas) – and again, was delighted to be alone with the work since only hotel guests were granted museum access at the time.
What was an initial grave disappointment – regarding access – turned out to be a private ocean of time and space. During most of my wanderings, I was the only person around which felt illicit and delicious. I couldn’t believe my strange fortune.
21c Museum Hotel Durham’s Counting House bar and restaurant, August 2020. (Center triptych by Brooklyn-based Duke Riley)Details of Duke Riley’s It Will Warm You Twice, 2015, Cigarettes on wood panels.
21c Museum Hotel Nashville Lobby
The wood carved figure of a woman was in mid-air with no obvious support. She was floating just beyond the reception desk, an ethereal greeter.
“She is suspended. Do you know how?” asked Brian, from behind the front desk. He was only too eager to tell me yet I wanted to see for myself.
Her only anchor was a hand-held leash that led to the head of a puma, bearing sharp teeth, whose beautiful fur skin was splayed out on the floor like a rug. As gorgeous as the fur of this animal was, my first instinct was to look away.
I am an easily overwhelmed visual sponge, not able to immediately compartmentalize, so the impact of this piece was, initially, too much to take in. Not until the third day did I examine what the artist Marc Fromm had created. I assumed it to be a complicated piece to produce, yet conveyed complete success in presentation. Seamlessly accomplished. Now I could look at the piece with sincere disbelief, rather than discomfort, although the discomfort remained beneath the surface. (I won’t spoil the technical magic – see image and resource links.)
The placement of Young lady with pet, as impressive and impactful as it was, would seem better served in a spacious, isolated corner rather than in the midst of a busy hotel lobby. Perhaps its arresting presence is precisely why it was chosen for the entry area.
Note to readers: Please don’t expect a review or a critique of artwork mentioned in this article. My musings are written more like diary entries, recording impressions of selected pieces and trip experiences. I’ve provided a resource section at the end with links to additional information. Also, 21cMuseumHotels/Nashville.com provides an excellent 3d visual tour of featured artwork complete with recorded content per exhibit area.
Marc Fromm, Young lady with pet, 2010, basswood, puma, oil resin color, steel. This is a screen shot from 21cNashville.com virtual tour.
Young lady with pet set the stage for many other impactful figures I would soon encounter as I processed the powerful Fragile Figures exhibition.
Per the exhibit brochure: “Fragile Figures: Beings and Time…illuminates the range and complexity of human emotions, revealing intersections between vulnerability and power – social, cultural, and political – in contemporary portraiture. Individual and group identity, and the forces that shape how we see self and others, are approached through direct references to noted works from art history, connecting past events to current issues.”
Fragile Figures is beautifully curated by the 21c Museum Director and Chief Curator Alice Gray Stites, and is visually, emotionally and intellectually compelling – and certainly relevant. It is also a heavy and loaded exhibit sharing stunning, controversial, chilling, and sometimes heart-breaking work by artists from the vast contemporary art collection of the 21c founders, Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson,of Louisville, Kentucky, where the original 21c Museum Hotel opened in 2006.
Fragile Figures in Nashville spanned three floors and meandered into several hallways and smaller rooms. It felt huge and daunting so I had to tackle it in smaller doses. Just when I thought I had seen the most impactful piece, there would be another mind-blower around the corner. Many of the pieces and installations resonated strongly with me and I found I needed to pace myself so I decided to focus on a few favorites rather than write about the whole exhibit.
After a full afternoon of digesting the work on a first walk-through, I was spent, and more than ready for a cocktail at Gray & Dudley, the in-house bar and restaurant. To my delight, all the specialty drink titles were Moira Rose (of Schitt’s Creek fame) inspired. I was torn between “The crows have eyes” or “David! Stop acting like a disgruntled pelican!” but instead ordered, “Where is Bebe’s chamber?” – nary a bad choice. To top that off, I ordered seared catfish, with creamy southern grits, to happily devour in my room where Ted Lasso was awaiting (a beloved Jason Sudeikis comedy).
Foreboding Figures
The series of dark and striking figures by Mohau Modisakeng were my favorite pieces in the exhibit. Their stark, large-scale shadowy beauty drew me into the end of a long hallway. Soon I was surrounded by these larger than life foreboding figures holding weapons. The hallway was not wide so I started to feel a bit claustrophobic. Usually, I would want to see pieces of this scale out in the open, with space around each of them, but in the crowded hallway their menacing impact was condensed and eerily palpable.
Below are a few of the images I took. Because of the glass and the lighting proximity, reflections of other warriors loomed in the background. Their multiplying presence was haunting enough – add to that, this strange faint music from down the hall and I decided to call it a day.
Mohau Modisakeng, Large-scale photography, from the Dikubo series.
Intrigued by this artist and his influences, I found an informative write-up by Joe Nolan, in White Hot Magazine (December 2020), who shared the following:
Mohau Modisakeng’s massive self-portraits are formally beautiful works of black-and-white photography. The deep blacks of the South African artist’s skin, garments and accessories are printed on glowing white watercolor paper, creating a dramatic contrast between the images of the artist and their backgrounds.
Modisakeng’s childhood in Soweto was marked by the oppressive violence of the last days of South Africa’s Apartheid-era – a life and death contrast between black and white. The artist’s photos examine violence, the instruments of violence, and the effects they leave on the bodies and psychologies of those affected by them. In a suite of images Modisakeng is armed with machete-like blades and cattle prods, and draped in a long black robe – the garment recalls traditional robes of African tribes as well as the garb of the Western legal and religious classes. Most striking is his donning of fedora hats over the kind of leather blinders you’d normally strap to a horse’s head. The blinders nod to the willful ignorance required to sustain a violent racist regime. The hat speaks to the gullibility and complicity of the educated, professional class which is most vulnerable to propaganda, and who benefit from maintaining an oppressive status quo.
Jane’s Hideaway
My sister Jane joined me for one night and we stumbled on a charming low-key little place a block from 21c – ironically called Jane’s Hideaway. We wandered in for a drink and headed toward a long bar in the back. As it turned out, the bartender (James) did indeed make a good Old Fashioned so we got comfortable and enjoyed the rotation of performers, especially Sierra Ferrell, who was completely outstanding (look her up).
We ordered another round, along with braised pork belly (I mean, please) and THE best Brussel spouts I’ve ever had, fried, with some sort of slightly sweet glaze. For a non-vegetable fan, this is high praise. It was great fun hanging with my awesome sister and happening upon this gem of a place.
Looking south on Broadway, which is a major entertainment district renowned for dive bars and live country music. Nashville-based singer and songwriter Sierra Ferrell (as shared on the site WallpaperFlare.com).
Head Hunter
Two photographs stayed with me as I meandered through the exhibit. I kept thinking about connections to the work of Tampa Bay photographer Selina Roman, who often photographs figures without showing faces. Sometimes her subjects are in masks or costumes, or maybe they are turned away from the camera or wrapped in fabric or material.
The first connection occurred when I came upon a Nan Goldin image of a figure, back to camera, wrapped in sheer material, standing in front of a drape-drawn window. Simon Silhouetted in the Window, Suite 22, NYC was installed in an upper floor hallway, among a few other stand-alone photographs. The wall text excerpt reads: “Nan Goldin began taking snapshot-like photographs of her lovers and friends in New York City in the mid-1970’s, which evolved into a groundbreaking project called “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency…”
The second connection was a day later, when I discovered a relatively hidden image, Head Hunter, by Denise Grunstein, installed high up on the other side of the reception area. It was a head and shoulders profile of a red-haired figure with hair wrapping around so the face wasn’t visible. The background was a solid vivid blue and the only other feature in the photo was an antiquated-looking metal contraption, making light contact, appearing like it could clamp or hold a head.
The above snapshots were taken in the exhibit space but because of their particular location and glare, they were difficult to capture clearly. Denise Grunstein, left; Nan Goldin, right.
I was glad that Head Hunter was in the vicinity of Marc Fromm’s Young lady with pet, given their shared metal elements – a steel leash leading to the toothy head of a puma and the metal head holder – each attached to an isolated figure. What could be a vulnerable, or even dangerous situation for either figure, given the strong-looking hardware that could cause pain or could lead to pain (puma) – doesn’t read that way. Neither the wood figure, nor the hair-covered head conveys fear – at least not to me.
The Head Hunter wall text read: “…Set against an expansive azure sky, the profile, whose features are obscured by gleaming red tresses, suggests a fetishistic fascination with hair, which has long been associated with feminine beauty and fecundity. The saturated sky surrounding the bodiless head, held stable by a centuries-old hairdressing tool, emphasizes the cinematic and the surreal in this at once seductive and unsettling vision.”
A screen shot from the Fragile Figures virtual museum tour; circles mark the online audio options. In the foreground, Marc Fromm’s Young lady with pet on the left; on the right, Denise Gundstein’s Head Hunter.
Matador Lady Killer
A show-stopping piece by Anastasia Schipani, Matador Lady Killer – is a rich, multi-layered, hand-sewn tapestry, twenty-six feet wide, created over a seven-year period as Schipani was processing the murder of her beloved.
Anastasia Schipani, Matador Lady Killer, 2014, Tapestry cloth, thread.
On her website, Schipani shares: “While living in Bangkok, my Thai lover was killed by a hit man. This personal tragedy created a before and after in my life and work. While recovering, back in the States, I worked in a Spanish nightclub whose walls were decorated with vintage bullfight posters. My consciousness forged a link between the brutal public spectacle of the bullfight and the cruel loss of my lover’s life…”
The piece is full of beautiful little story scenarios and connections. Many details when examined closely share some kind of tension or contradiction – lovely little fish surrounded by pointy sharks; plump birds too near a coiled snake; a smiling pin-up-style beauty under a jewel-laden tree, in proximity to a headless strong male body. The entire presentation is overwhelming in its vivid, technicolor hues toggling a tightrope between danger and bliss, good and evil, gleeful happiness and horrific tragedy.
It seemed inappropriate that the view of this expansive and stunning tapestry was visually interrupted by one of the life-sized 21c signature penguins (deep turquoise is Nashville’s assigned color). Sometimes blocked sightlines are unavoidable due to space constraints but this was not the case here, the tapestry was in the largest gallery, and the penguin could have easily served its branding role in a number of other places.
There are huddles of same-colored penguins for each 21c location and they are known to be on the move, sharing hospitality, showing up in unexpected places throughout the properties.
Site Specific
I’ve only been to two of the nine 21c Museum Hotels but in both of these locations, there was use of existing building traits in unique ways. In Durham, the building is a former bank with a large walk-in vault in the basement that was cleverly incorporated into an installation.
In Nashville, there was a one-off lower street-level window near the corner that had an interior shelf-like sill with an odd collection of random things (i.e. yellow cone, small plastic unicorn toy, orange ball). Since I passed it coming and going often, it fascinated me every time. I found it hard to photograph between the dirty outside window and the dusty inside surface, as though Boo Radley emptied his pockets and left his collected treasures undisturbed.
21c Museum Hotel Nashville’s window of curiosity. The basement vault at the 21c Museum Hotel Durham.
I was continuously curious about this quirky little find and enjoyed making up stories about who would put together a collection like that. Wait. I know who – Tampa Bay area artist Ry McCullough! Coincidentally, McCullough has a current exhibit of objects showing in Gallery114 on the Ybor City campus of Hillsborough Community College. [Read the recent BAF article by Tony Palms]
Top: 21c Nashville’s window of curiosity; Bottom, detail from Tampa-based Ry McCullough’s Themes for the American Kestrel currently on display at Hillsborough Community College’s Gallery114 in Tampa.
Elevate
The hotel’s website reveals: “Elevate at 21c” presents temporary exhibitions of works by artists living and working in the communities surrounding each 21c Museum Hotel property. Those I observed were installed in the immediate elevator area per floor, and my favorite was by Nashville-based Duncan McDaniel seen below.
Duncan McDaniel, Across the Clouds, 2018, Various metals, acrylic and LED lighting. Screen shot from 21cNashville.com website.
As I was watching the color tones slowly move into different shades, I thought of the recent Lights On Tampa public art installation by Erwin Redl, Circles Unity, a series of synchronized LED color-changing circles lining the darkened underpass of the Tampa Convention Center along Channelside Drive.
Erwin Redl, Circles Unity, 2021. Light installation with 31 ring-shaped programable RGBW LED-fixtures and circular white reflective disks. Commissioned for Lights on Tampa by the City of Tampa. Partial installation view courtesy of the LightsOnTampa.org website.
I greatly appreciate the 21c Museum Hotel’s long-standingcommitment to supporting artists at all levels of their careers. Through purchasing and collecting works, to exhibiting and promoting works, these effective philanthropists provide artists multiple ways to gain experience and exposure – not to mention being included in an important collection of contemporary art.
The 21c Museum Hotel concept integrates threeimportant elements that will always get my attention – historic building preservation, high-quality contemporary art, and delicious hospitality. What an intoxicating trifecta!
About the author
Katherine Gibson, creator of ArtHouse3, is an independent curator and regional art consultant living in St. Petersburg, Florida. 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 Tongue & Groove.
Ry McCullough’s Themes for the American Kestrel is on view at Hillsborough Community College’s Gallery114 in Tampa, Florida, through June 24, 2021. By appointment. Tampa-based artist and writer Tony Wong Palms provides observations about his visit to the gallery for Bay Art Files
– Give yourself over to floating, even a little bit.
“Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled— to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world. I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery…”
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.
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.
In the fall of 2019, Grounds4Art@HCC commissioned artist Cecilia Lueza to complete a mural on the Hillsborough Community Collge Dale Mabry Campus focusing on the theme of health and wellness. Community partners, such as the City of Tampa’s Arts & Cultural Affairs division, worked alongside a committee of HCC students, faculty, and staff to create a mural that would reflect upon the theme, taking into account feedback from the community, and to raise awareness of social issues such as food insecurity and mental and emotional health. The project resulted in a mural titled Exuberance that was completed in April 2020 on the exterior of the Social Sciences building. The artistic component was funded by a Community Arts Impact Grant through the Arts Council of Hillsborough County.
Amanda Poss is the Gallery Director of Gallery221@HCC Dale Mabry Campus and the Committee Chair for Grounds4Art@HCC.
Amanda Poss: I wanted to start this conversation with the opportunity for each of you to introduce yourself to our readers.
Cecilia Lueza: I’m a public artist with a focus on sculpture, mural art, and mixed media installations.
Melissa Davies: I work for the City of Tampa in the division of Arts & Cultural Affairs. I’m now in my 16th year there, believe it or not, working solely on public art projects. I’m a Tampa native… and I’m also a board member of the Florida Association of Public Art Professionals.
AP: Thank you both for introducing yourselves! Cecilia, let’s start with you and talk about your work, which can be found all over the Tampa Bay region. You have developed this very cohesive, very recognizable style: bright, colorful, and bold—often full of geometric patterns and shapes found in nature. This is something that you also brought to the mural you completed earlier this year at Hillsborough Community College (HCC), which you titled Exuberance. Could you describe what led you to this particular approach to art making?
CL: Well, it’s interesting because before moving to the United States, I was a very monochromatic type of painter. But I have always had a love of lines and curves and geometric elements. Then I moved to the US and things started changing—gradually I started incorporating more color, experimenting more, and trying to find a balance between geometric elements and color. I think that Florida, with its natural beauty, the light and the vibrancy really influenced my style. As an artist, especially as an art student, I was always looking for inspiration somewhere… and then I finally realized that nature has the answers.
AP: You can definitely feel that reaction to the Floridian landscape in your work. I’m a transplant from the Midwest, and color is something I always very strongly identify with Florida, living down here next to the water, surrounded by the pastels of beach houses, vibrant tropical plants, and the wildlife… So I love that you went from monochrome to this explosion of color in your work.
CL: Yes, because before Tampa Bay I was living in Buenos Aires, and in big cities, like New York, almost everything is monochromatic, buildings are gray, people wear neutral colors—wherever you live, as an artist, that influences you, and can really alter your work.
Lueza’s mural titled Exuberance that was completed in April 2020 and is located on the exterior of the centrally located Social Sciences building on the HCC Dale Mabry campus in Tampa, FL. The project was partially funded by a Community Arts Impact Grant through the Arts Council of Hillsborough County.
AP: So, what specifically inspired your design for Exuberance at HCC?
CL: First of all, it was the meeting we had with the community and the students. In this meeting, they learned about my work and we showed them [my] other projects, and they expressed that the colors made them feel amazing, and it was an expression of feeling good in every sense of the word—physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally. So that was the starting point for me, this concert of colors as a symbol of complete wellness.
In early 2020, Lueza participated in a comprehensive and interactive Community Dialogue discussion about health and wellness with HCC Dale Mabry Campus students, faculty, staff, the campus Public Arts Committee, and members of the Tampa Bay community. Photo: Courtesy of Gallery221@HCC.
AP: Yeah, that was the Community Dialogue event that we hosted back in January, which seems so long ago now… You’ve mentioned in other interviews that you really thrive on meeting people and working with people in different locations, hearing their thoughts and impressions. Was there anything that some of the students or the participants of that event said that led you to this idea of a holistic sense of wellness, a well-being of the spirit?
CL: At one point I was at a table with two or three girls and they were telling me about their expectations for this mural. They wanted to see something that made them happy, something to uplift their spirits, to inspire them and make them feel proud.
AP: I remember you sitting with those girls. During the event I was so impressed by the way you connected with the participants. For instance, you spoke Spanish with them and I think that allowed them to feel comfortable and build a rapport with you—they were in conversation with you for a long time.
CL: Yeah, they were funny and sweet, and many of the students spoke Spanish… so it was easy for me to really connect and understand what they were trying to tell me.
AP: I think they felt like you could really listen to them.
CL: Yes, I love to listen to other people’s stories… I usually prefer to listen to other people.
MD: I think those conversations are really important for a successful end product and installation [of art], because not only does the artist listen and convey that into some level into the design, but also, on the flip side, the people that are involved really take ownership of it, and take pride in the fact that they were part of the process. The cool thing about public art is that every single space is different, every single community is different, and every team is different.
AP: Absolutely. For us, working with community partners and listening to community feedback was especially significant given our project’s focus on health and wellness. I also think, broadly speaking, we’re seeing this intersection of public art and social issues more and more in recent years.
CL: People want to see something that’s not just beautiful, but also meaningful and conveys a message that speaks to them and expresses what they feel… they want to see that they are represented. I think it doesn’t have to be a very complex type of art for people to really connect with it and to find something that’s not only about beauty but also meaning.
Tes One, I AM PRICELESS, 2017. Initiated and funded by the Junior League of Tampa in collaboration with the City of Tampa’s Division of Arts and Cultural Affairs. Photo: Courtesy of Tes One.
MD: There’s so much going on right now, for instance… on the front page [of the news] with Black Lives Matter murals throughout the country. Artists leading social justice projects can be really impactful. For instance, the City of Tampa was approached by the Junior League of Tampa, who wanted to do a mural highlighting the issue of human trafficking, which is a huge problem in Hillsborough County… So we brought in a local artist named Tes One [for the project]… and he met with former victims, organizations that help the victims, the Tampa Police Department and then with the Junior League of Tampa. The end result was a very powerful mural featuring the words “I am not for sale, I am priceless.” Additionally, in the upper corner, the artist added the human trafficking hotline. The location of the mural was situated in an area that is right by the bus station… and between the location and raising awareness… if we just reached one person, you know? A spin-off of that project is that Tes One brought in another local artist, Jay Giroux, who took the theme “I am priceless” and installed posters at a lot of the bus stops throughout the city of Hillsborough County and the City of Tampa.
AP: So, Melissa, in your view, how have public art projects have grown, developed, or changed in our area from where they started to now?
MD: The City of Tampa’s public art program started in 1985. Back then, there were trends in public art like ‘plop art,’ purchasing or commissioning sculptures [for buildings]. In the 90’s there were more traditional public art installations at community centers. Over the last 20 years, under Robin Nigh’s direction, the program has grown through innovative programming that has been recognized by the Americans for the Arts public art network. We had a photographer laureate program, which really grew the public portable works collection, that also documented Tampa throughout a 10 year period, and we also saw technology change within those 10 years pretty rapidly. Lights on Tampa has been running since 2006 and is still going strong. Since Mayor Castor has been in office, we have a new program called Art on the Block, which seeks to get art and artists into neighborhoods. We have a wordsmith that is under contract—which is sort of like a poet laureate. We also have artists Sheila Cowley and Matt Cowley who are husband and wife team. They’re writers based in St. Pete—Cecilia, you may know them…
For the inaugural 2006 Lights on Tampa Paris-based artist and architect Jorge Orta created a projection on the University of Tampa’s Plant Hall, which transformed the iconic 1891 landmark and its surrounding environment for one night.Photo: Courtesy of the City of Tampa’s Art Programs Division.
CL: Yeah, I know them.
MD: He’s a Foley artist and sound engineer and she’s a writer… they’re working with Paul Wilborn and bringing in a team of actors, lyric authors, and literary artists to compile a sensory experience at Centennial Park… Public art can just come in different types of forms: it can be sculpture, sound, all sorts of different elements. Of course, we are still doing many traditional public art installations, but our primary goal is that it makes sense to the community and has context to the site.
AP: Cecilia, how about you? As someone who’s completed numerous artworks in the public realm for many years, what changes have you observed in the attitudes and culture surrounding public art?
CL: What I’m noticing is that people have more knowledge about public art now, I’m seeing public art agencies and committees doing a lot of research, talking with different artists, connecting with their communities and looking at collections in other cities, incorporating more community-based projects to their collections. So, I’m seeing a great, very positive, change.
AP: This is a conversation that parallels public art on a national scale with community-driven projects and programming. The idea of awareness is particularly important and transformative to how we approach public art, creating not just something that’s done to a community, but by, for, and with a community… So related to that point, I wanted to ask: what motivates and inspires both of you to continue working in the realm of public art?
Lueza participated in the City of Tampa’s 2020 Art on the Block Mural Day. Located in West Tampa at the intersection of Habana Avenue & West Tampa Bay Boulevard, volunteers were provided by the Our Aim Foundation. Photo: Courtesy of the City of Tampa Art Programs Division.
CL: For me, public art is a way to communicate with others. I was very shy as a kid growing up, and I realized that art was both a way to express myself and to connect with others. What I love about art and public art in general is the connections you create with the viewer, with people from all walks of life, especially during the process of bringing the artwork to life. There’s also the challenge of transforming a public space and making the space better than it was… to see this radical transformation. That’s why I want to keep doing it.
MD: I feel the same way. I like the connection to people, not only the community, but also each team, like I mentioned before. Each team is different, each site is different… it’s constantly changing. My primary role is as Project Coordinator, so digging into the details of the logistics is my thing, it’s exciting and fun. Sometimes it can be stressful, but you problem-solve and work with the team… I’ve worked with artists on design teams that have worked through challenges and have just completely transformed the space. I just love seeing the projects come about—being able to work and get to know our artists both locally and from around the world.
AP: I completely agree. For me, managing a public art program wasn’t originally part of my job description when I started working at HCC, but… between community involvement and that moment of radical transformation, as you said, Cecilia, there’s just something magical about it every time it happens. The last question I want to ask is: what have each of you been working on since we completed the mural Exuberance at HCC? Are there any recently completed projects or events on the horizon that we should know about?
CL: Well, I’m working on two sculpture projects: one is for Jacksonville, Florida, and the other one is going to be installed in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Right now, I’m on my way to Kentucky to complete a mural project that’s been in the works for months and months due to coronavirus.
New Tampa Community Center’s new 2020 installation. Photo: Courtesy of Matt May Photography.
Lights on Tampa rendering courtesy of Erwin Redl.
MD: We actually just finished an installation a couple of weeks ago with a local sports photographer, Matt May. Matt worked with the kids (gymnasts) and took action shots and created a window installation. The kids were thrilled to be a part of this, to see their images in the windows, and to be photographed by someone who shoots professional athletes… We’re also about to do a community project with local artist Ya La’Ford… Then, of course, there are a couple of Lights on Tampa installations. One is Erwin Redl who’s based in Ohio and New York—we actually worked with him in 2006 for Lights on Tampa—and he is under contract to do an installation underneath the Channelside Drive tunnel. We’ve also commissioned artist Andrea Polli, who is based out of Santa Fe, to do a sort of canopy of LED lights to emulate bioluminescence that’s going to be programmed and triggered by sensors. This will be on the Riverwalk under the Harbour Island Bridge. I think it will shine a light, if you will, and bring some positive energy that we need these days.
To learn more about HCC’s public art program, visit: Grounds4Art@HCC. To learn more about Cecilia Lueza, visit her website. Learn all about the City of Tampa’s public art program on their website.
jenal, 2019. Acrylic, oil, coffee grounds, enamel, on board, foamular frame, 50 x 50 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
Jenal Dolson is a nervous flyer even under normal circumstances. Add scrambling to get out of the country during a global pandemic before international borders close and anyone’s stress levels will ascend to new heights. It is Tuesday, March 31st, and she is leaving the United States and returning home to Canada to shelter with her family as the severity of COVID-19 slowly dawns on U.S. citizens. She sits alone in Tampa International Airport, waiting to board a flight that she never expected to be on and saying goodbye to a place she is not ready to leave behind.
To call the last few weeks of Dolson’s time in Tampa a whirlwind would be an understatement. At this point in March, she is a MFA candidate at the University of South Florida, in the thick of her final semester when the coronavirus hits America. Between transitioning her in-person classes to an online platform (no easy feat for studio art courses), finishing her thesis work, writing about said work, preparing for install, and making travel arrangements, change is the constant. Her graduating class’s MFA exhibition Battin’ A Hundred is canceled, their reception is canceled, their panel discussion moderated by artist Kalup Linzy is canceled. It feels like everything is canceled. However, the artists are undeterred, and they still exhibit their work in the USF Contemporary Art Museum. There is almost a defiant pride in displaying their art knowing that it will not be seen in person.
Dolson spends her precious final hours in Tampa packing for her flight and installing her work in the CAM, with the invaluable assistance of museum staff Vincent Kral, Eric Jonas, and Tony Wong Palms. She recalls visiting the museum for the first time on a 2014 trip to Tampa and sensing then that she would one day show work in this space, a premonition fulfilled these six years later.
Bump Dream, 2020. Acrylic, latex, oil on canvas, 72 x 72 inches. From the MFA thesis exhibition. Image taken by Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez.Soother, 2020. Acrylic, oil, fabric, foamular, on MDF, 50 x 50 inches. From the MFA thesis exhibition. Image taken by Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez. Whale, 2020. Acrylic, oil, foamular, on panel, 50 x 50 inches. From the MFA thesis exhibition. Image taken by Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez.
Her arrival in Toronto is not met with a warm embrace from Dolson’s parents, who are relieved to see their daughter home safe but still respecting the social distancing rules that now measure our lives. Everyone dons their face masks and Dolson sits in her parents’ backseat on the car ride from the Toronto airport to their family home outside of Cambridge, Ontario, taking these moments to let a wave of quiet calm wash over her and finally exhale. She is deeply grateful to her parents for hosting her, knowing that in doing so they have committed to the country’s mandatory 14 day returning traveler quarantine alongside her.
Dolson uses the next few days to reacclimate to these surroundings, the familiarity of place comforting her during an unfamiliar time. She self-isolates in a section of her family’s basement, with her beloved chihuahua Bam Bam to keep her company and a mini-fridge stocked with snacks to keep her fed, courtesy of mom. That Friday she joins a Zoom reception hosted by CAM for the MFA exhibition, which has a great turnout as many people are eager to see the artists’ work and congratulate them. Dolson later passes the two-week quarantine mark on the same day that she passes her thesis defense, and her reward for this tremendous accomplishment is finally being able to hug her parents.
Into the Belly, 2020. Coloured pencil, watercolour pencil, gesso, on board, 8.75 x 8.75 x 0.6 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
A welcome focus for Dolson’s energy comes in the form of creating a solo exhibition entitled Into the Belly for Tempus Projects, highlighted on the non-profit gallery’s Instagram account. The show, which ran from May 30th-June 12th, neatly aligns with the Tampa-based gallery’s approach to the pandemic’s unique challenges. Tempus is utilizing social media to showcase a series of mini-virtual exhibits that feature works on a small, intimate scale. As Tempus Founder and Programming Director Tracy Midulla explains, “We have taken the approach of offering small, short virtual exhibitions. This allows us to keep the quality of the work featured at a high standard, but the format and delivery of the works to a manageable level for everyone as we are distanced from one another.”
Installation view of Into the Belly in a section of Dolson’s converted basement space. Image courtesy of the artist.
Into the Belly consists of eight coloured pencil drawings on gessoed board, with each work’s dimensions around 5×6 or 7×8 inches. Dolson’s process is reliant on found materials, so she seamlessly adapts to her new circumstances by repurposing leftovers in her old studio in her parents’ house. Her use of coloured pencils on board allows for textures to come out of the surface itself, some areas pulling through the grain of the wood or underlaying brushwork; paired with a uniform attention to colour blocking and gradient fades. These underlaying patterns resemble countless tiny fissures, which further emphasize the material’s surface while adding layers of complexity to already rich compositions.
The Days Eye (Edelweiss), 2020. Coloured pencil, watercolour pencil, gesso, on board, 8.75 x 4.8 x 0.6 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
The small scale of each work is in keeping with the gallery’s current theme of miniature exhibitions. Dolson also expresses her interest in scaling down the works to a size that is accessible, where they can be held in your hand and you can take them with you very easily. Although these new images are much smaller than her thesis paintings, she draws several parallels between the two bodies of work. Dolson clarifies that the viewer is still looking at a series of shapes, forms, lines, directions, and pathways, which you can follow around the work finding little areas where something new can be seen.
Bathhouse, 2020. Coloured pencil, watercolour pencil, gesso, on board, 5.8 x 4.8 x 0.75 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
There is plenty to see in Dolson’s drawings, so much that you might get lost in looking. The artist presents the viewer with a plethora of shapes and motifs to latch onto and alluring pathways through each labyrinth. One might glance at a piece like Bathhouse and seize upon the chain in the lower right of the composition as a good entry point. If you follow this chain directly upwards, it becomes veiled by a light blue rectangular shape that hints of cloth or drapery. If you choose a different approach and start from top to bottom, does the chain then become unveiled? Other areas may suggest something recognizable while leaving you grasping to articulate this familiarity.
Into the Belly is an apt title, as Dolson equates our current COVID-19 reality with entering the belly of the whale or belly of the beast. As levels of infection fluctuate worldwide and we find ourselves months into isolation with no clear end in sight, she muses “it is hard to say if we are on the other side yet, are we still inside of it completely, or can we see the light? There is a lot of emotion in this time that is kind of unpredictable and everyone’s pace of life has changed dramatically. It is not only a metaphor, but it is allegorical of how everyone has been forced into this journey.”
The title also attaches us to the body, to be within a living thing, which she connects to the physical referents that a lot of the shapes and forms take on in her work. The tempest of emotions and anxieties we feel manifest physically in our bodies, and the pandemic makes us hypersensitive to these sensations. We continually self-monitor for the first signs of fever, the slightest cough, and to make sure we have not lost our sense of smell or taste. As Dolson succinctly puts it, “our emotions in our bodies are really in our guts.”
Insulation (viewfinder), 2020. Coloured pencil, watercolour pencil, gesso, on board, 5.8 x 4.8 x 0.6 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.
Dolson is appreciative of Tempus for giving her a platform to explore new ideas post thesis, amidst the pandemic. She explains that the timing was especially beneficial, as it “really gave me a lot of purpose during the first month and a half that I was back. I was able to come home and put in work drawing 8-10 hours a day and that was absolutely amazing. I think Tempus has a strong sense of what it means to be an art space in that they truly value their artists and look to foster a sense of creativity and programming that makes sense for who they are affiliated with.”
Proceeds from Dolson’s show will go towards helping Tempus fundraise for a paid full-time director position for the gallery. Dolson is also donating a portion of the proceeds from future sales to Black Lives Matter Tampa.
What is next for Jenal Dolson? “Making more work” is her immediate, unflinching answer. Dolson is making a new series of paintings on canvas and she looks forward to waking up each morning and having her studio time. She relishes the daily grind of making work, embodying that true artist-as-hustler mentality, where the balancing act of juggling multiple jobs and projects only energizes her to seek more.
In terms of future exhibitions, Dolson is thrilled to have a solo show this fall at an artist-run space in Benson, Nebraska called The Pet Shop, and she beams when discussing the opportunity. Her close friend Kim Darling, currently a MFA candidate at USF, ran a space at the gallery and helped Dolson make connections in Benson. Dolson also remains in good virtual company through regular studio visits with friends and a gallery in Chicago with which she is enamored. Finally, it has been only days since Dolson moved into an apartment in the port city of Hamilton, Ontario. The industrious city’s “steel town” identity matches her own tenacious work ethic. She is drawn to the city’s strong local arts scene, where she can make her marks on the community. There is also a lovely blend of nature and rich architectural history that she is wasting no time in exploring. Dolson is eager to create her place in this new environment, and everywhere she looks she absorbs new lines, new shapes, new textures, new patterns, and new objects, searching for another source of inspiration around every corner.
Dolson in her Tampa studio with Bam Bam. Image taken by Kim Darling.
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 corrupt the impressionable youth of America.
Lueza’s mural titled
