Rocking Chair Sessions: Recent Episodes
BABA Collective
Rocking Chair Sessions was created by Elysa D. Batista and Maria Theresa Barbist as a hybrid between an artist talk and a therapy session. South Florida based artists and creatives are invited to share their lives and artistic process while sitting in a rocking chair.
Amanda Sanfilippo Long would like to acknowledge the following correction: towards the end, she mentions the “High Line” as an exciting upcoming project coming up for Miami-Dade County, she meant to refer to the project as Miami’s “Underline”, which is a similar project to New York’s High Line, both projects designed by James Corner Field Operations. www.theunderline.org
Amanda Sanfilippo Long is the Curator & Artist Manager of Art in Public Places, Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs. One of the first public art programs in the country (est. 1973), 1.5% of public land construction costs are allocated for the purchase or commission of artworks. With over 700 works of art in the collection, the program has gained international recognition. Amanda is the Director of the South Florida Cultural Consortium, and the Executive Director and Chief Curator of Fringe Projects. Amanda initiated and directed Art in Public Places’ co-presentation of the Creative Time Summit Miami, 2018. Amanda has held positions at Locust Projects, Miami, FL; Creative Time, New York, NY; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and the BCA Center, Burlington, VT. She holds an MA in Contemporary Art History, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London; BA in Art History, University of Vermont.
https://miamidadepublicart.org/ http://www.fringeprojectsmiami.com/
Jose Luis Garcia is a Photo-Based Artist, who lives and works in Miami, FL. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Art from New World School of the Arts/University of Florida and his Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from Florida International University. He has exhibited locally in venues such as the Patricia and Philip Frost Art Museum, Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Coral Gables Museum, O Cinema Wynwood in partnership with ArtCenter/South Florida, Bakehouse Art Complex, Laundromat Art Space and Turn-Based Press.
http://www.avantgarci.com/about
Natalya Kochak was born in New York and has since spent time in many different places, from Alabama to Chicago, Berlin to Beijing. She graduated with her BFA and MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and now resides in Miami. Natalya is currently a professor at Miami International University in the visual arts department. She was an artist-in-residence in 2018- 2019 with ProjectArt, teaching displaced teenagers and students from underserved school districts twice a week at the Model City branch of the Miami-Dade Public Library System. Recently, she finished doing a mural for the non- profit Raw Project that places artists in under served schools across the United States to brighten the walls and promote student engagement.
Franky Cruz (b. 1984, Dominican Republic) received his BFA from the New World School of the Arts, Miami, in 2011. He has participated in residencies at HomeBase Project, Berlin, and the Airie Residency at the Everglades National Park, FL, where he explores conservation issues as part of his interdisciplinary practice. Most recently, Cruz completed a residency at Elsewhere in Greensboro, NC. His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at Miami galleries and spaces including Spinello Projects (2016 & 2014), Dorsch Gallery (2015), and Primary Projects (2011), among others. Cruz currently lives and works in Miami, FL.
https://www.instagram.com/toolooselautrec
Yanira Collado lives/works in Miami FL. Education, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Collado was awarded first place in the 2013 South Florida Biennial at the Art and Cultural Center/Hollywood, Hollywood, FL and was a recipient of The Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, 2018. Group shows include, 10 – A Decade at Dimensions Variable, Fragment at Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami, FL, FL, Penumbras: sacred geometries at Project Row Houses, Houston, TX 2019.
http://yaniracollado.net/
Oscar Rieveling is a conceptual artist based in Miami, Florida. His works address questions drawing upon his Mexican heritage and investigation of ritual, folk tradition, and colonial legacy. In parallel with his artistic practice, he serves as Education Manager for The Wolfsonian-FIU. He completed his BA studies in the History of Art and French at Cornell University.
https://www.instagram.com/oscar.iii
Colombian-born, Miami-raised, Mateo is a photo-based artist. Growing up amongst a predominantly Latin culture, observing the striking humanistic similarities within the city serve as a muse to create work that emphasizes the beauty found within life. Being drawn to the peculiar exploration of the human experience, Mateo uses the camera as a tool to navigate through conversations that develop through organic interactions between people and the environment. Focusing on the premise that process is more important than product, the main drive of the artist rests within establishing a relationship with his subjects so that they, through dialogue unravel a guarded trust and thus illuminate their true essence.
https://www.mateosernazapata.com/
Rhea Leonard (b. 1991) born and raised in South Florida, is an African American artist that utilizes drawing, printmaking and sculpture within her art practice. She explores topics highlighting the Black body and how society affects Black psychology through her detailed, and poignant figurative works. She received her MFA from Florida International University and her BFA from University of Florida through New World School of the Arts College. Her work has been on display at Red Bridge Studios, The African Heritage Cultural Arts Center, The Art and Culture Center of Hollywood as well as with Art Africa Miami and RAW PopUp. She has also been a participating artist in the Contemporary Art Program LAB with Vizcaya Museum and Gardens. As a 2018 recipient of the Betty Laird Perry Award, her work is part of The Betty Laird Perry Emerging Artist Collection at the Patricia & Philip Frost Art Museum. She is currently a resident of The Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami, Florida.
https://cargocollective.com/rlart
My passion for Fiber Art started at a very young age. Creating with wool was only natural in my native country of Uruguay, where the number of sheep far exceeds the number of inhabitants. My beginnings were in tapestry and knitting. Quilting, free style embroidery, yarn bombing and fiber installations followed my ever-evolving fiber path. After graduating with a B.A. in Law in Montevideo, Uruguay and moving to the United States, I saw a chance to pursue my passion for art and creating. I attended Parsons School of Design in NYC, so that I could fulfill my creative side. I am now a 2020 candidate for MFA in Visual Arts from Miami International University of Art and Design.
https://evelynpolitzer.com/
Nicole Maynard-Sahar is an artist-in-residence at the Bakehouse Art Complex in the Wynwood Arts District of Miami. She most recently participated in the official studio tour of Art Basel Miami, Smash and Grab at Locust Projects, La Pinta Art Fair, Between the Legible and the Opaque: Approaches to an Ideal in Place curated by Adler Guerrier (on view through March 31, 2020), and New Work at the Bakehouse Art Complex curated by Justin Long. She earned awards at the University of Pennsylvania for painting and color theory. Originally from Boston, Maynard-Sahar relocated to Miami in June 2017.
https://maynardsahar.com/
With decades of experience as an arts administrator, curator, and educator Christopher Barake is the Deputy Director for the Doral Contemporary Art Museum - DORCAM. He is co-founder of Art Industry Movement and was curator at KER Art + Design Gallery and ConcreteSpace.
Barake is also an academic administrator for the Department of Art + Art History at Florida International University. He began his career at FIU in 2007 where his previous duties include coordinating an artist-in-residency program and community-based collaboratory art projects.
He earned his Master of Fine Arts in Curatorial Practice, along with a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Sculpture, and Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies from Florida International University.
www.dorcam.org
I use household items and industrial materials to explore identity, gender, displacement and the concept of home. My work is of an intuitive nature, rooted in the painterly and the language of abstraction- though it often defies a singular categorization. These hybrid works are based on the idea of stretching the medium beyond traditional interpretations. The objects I employ are marred by overuse, they speak to their history or demise in order to form and shape narratives between early childhood in Cuba and the present. Chaotic, humorous amalgamations of materials and disparate objects sometimes serve as stand ins for the figure or the self, challenging the threshold between stability and instability as they transcend boundaries between painting, sculpture, and installation. Household Plants, fishing line, discarded clothing, broken furniture, wood, and other unconventional materials provide clues as to a city's inhabitants while commenting on our relationship with interior and exterior spaces.
www.claravaras.com
Lucia Del Sanchez is an artist and designer from Miami, FL. Through sculpture and painting Sanchez seeks to build a new relationship with her hometown. In collaboration with her father, Oliver Sanchez, she has produced art shows and programming at Swampspace Gallery since 2008. This independent and non-commercial art space engages a wide range of tastes and often functions as an educational resource for the youth. Sanchez studied abroad at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Holland and the European Exchange Academy in Germany. She attended The Cooper Union in New York City and received a B.F.A in Fine Arts. Lucia Del Sanchez is of Cuban and Slovenian descent and traces her story, breaking down its historical narrative with an eye to archeology and the archive. She employs collections, observations, and word play to produce temporal poetics and protracted self portraits.
Kim Yantis is a visual artist whose work is fueled by collaboration, sewing, and design. Her current project with Lucinda Linderman, "Suiting-up for the Future,” is a wry runway show and workshop series of sustainable workwear and utilitarian accessories that act as “Wearable Tools for the 21st Century.” Together they create demonstration pieces, allegorical costumes, take-away postcards and performance works.Garments and accessories are available for purchase and commission.
http://www.kimyantis.com/ https://www.instagram.com/suitingupforthefuture
Paris-born Karelle Levy was raised in Miami by a Swedish mother and Tunisian father. She spent her childhood surrounded by arts and crafts, music, dance and fashion, which all play a role in her designs. Levy studied textile design at Rhode Island School of Design, where she knitted and wove fabrics for garments and costumes worn during her art performances. The costumes became the impetus for KRELwear, a fashion-forward collection of couture and ready to wear.
As Levy’s textiles evolved, her art grew more intricate and developed into large-scale, site-specific installations and two-dimensional works. Playing with a vast array of yarns and colors to create her signature fabrics, she knits shimmering, glow-in-the-dark rainbows and patchwork landscapes inspired by aerial views during frequent air travel.
https://krelwear.com/
Aaron Glickman is a writer, actor and filmmaker. Through his contributions to SocialMiami, he has had opportunities to document many fascinating people and organizations in the fields of philanthropy, the arts, fashion, design and real estate including Carolina Herrera, James Rosenquist, Baroness Philippine de Rothschild, Russell Simmons, Nicole Miller, Christian Louboutin, Lin Arison and many more. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Miami Theater Center (MTC) and is on the Executive Committee of the National YoungArts Foundation. He recently founded Current.Miami, a digital media platform that tells hyper-local stories through the use of video.
http://current.miami/
Barron Sherer is a time-based media artist with a background in moving image archival practice and research. He currently works in Miami with a focus on altering and repurposing archived films. In the early 2000s, he was curator at Lynn and Louis Wolfson II Florida Moving Image Archives where he programmed moving image festivals, public access activities, researched collections and managed photochemical conservation. He is the recipient of awards, fellowships, and residencies including a 2017 South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship, a 2019 Experimental Media Artist in Residence at Signal Culture and a 2020 Oolite Arts at Anderson Ranch Artist Residency. Sherer’s new studio project, Moving Image Alliance is a 2019 Knight Arts Challenge finalist.
https://vimeo.com/barronsherer
Ade J. Omotosho is a writer living in Miami and the Miami editor-at-large for Burnaway. He has held curatorial positions at Pérez Art Museum Miami and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
For Burnaway, he has written on subjects including the photographic history of the Black male nude and the work of emerging artists in Miami, and his review of Paulo Nazareth’s 2019 solo exhibition at ICA Miami was included in Stranger, Harder, Brighter: The 2019 Burnaway Reader.
https://burnaway.org/author/ade-j-omotosho/
Dímitra Pantoulia is a Conservator of Antiquities and Works of Art, trained in Athens, Greece. After she finished her studies in 2009, she worked for the Library of the Hellenic Parliament and then for the Byzantine Museum in Athens. In the US, she started working for the Caryatid Conservation Services in Miami, under the conservator Stephanie Hornbeck, until she accepted the position of chief Conservator on Field Museum at Chicago, in February 2017. During that period, Dimitra was conducting condition and conservation assessments, conservation treatments and maintenance of three-dimensional artworks.
https://www.pantouliaconservation.com/
Toña Vegas, (Caracas, Venezuela) is a multidisciplinary artist working with mixed media, printmaking, digital processes and site-specific three- dimensional works. Her work reflects on the visibility of an energetic underlying matrix present in every apparently distinct element of nature us humans included.
https://tonyavegass.squarespace.com/
Felecia Chizuko Carlisle, a native Floridian, has lived and worked in Miami, FL since 2009. She is an artist, educator and community organizer. She works across performance, installation, sound, sculpture, photography, and video within a wide variety of contexts including nightclubs, gardens, bathrooms, empty lots and fire stations; as well as, museums, commercial galleries and non-profit art spaces.
https://www.feleciacarlisleart.com/
Milly Cardoso was born and raised in Miami, Florida and is the Director and Curator for the University of Miami Gallery in the Wynwood Art District. Prior to joining University of Miami, she worked for the Miami Art Museum (Pérez Art Museum, Miami) and the Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. Private Collection.
Sammi McLean seeks out a particular sense of longing that seems impossible to satiate, bringing that which feels absent to the surface through the act of creating. In some ways, her work functions as the only physical tie that she has to significant people, places, or things that have gone. While the subject matter has transformed over time, the need to expose that yearning and resurrect what’s been lost remains.
https://www.sammimclean.com/
Gabriela Gamboa is a visual artist working with a broad range of media, including photography, video and performance, sound and printmaking. Though she was born in Pittsburgh she has spent the better part of her life in Venezuela. Her work draws strongly on current affairs and the effect of disruptive political agendas resulting in displacements and upheaval, of which she speaks from the heart.
http://gabrielagamboa.com/
I was born in the center of the Caribbean, where, according to the writer Junot Diaz, the fukú originated, Santo Domingo, where waves and palm trees were always saying something to me with their particular rhythm. Then, looking for new lights, I settled in the city of Miami, where the coast still wanted to talk to me, to offer me its insular imaginary, from the edge, the border. In my work, I explore the poetics related to the construction of a new imaginary in the contemporary Caribbean through video, photography, performance, painting and installation, crisscrossing it with my family history. I focus on ritual, and on the idea that we can eradicate the silences in which these contexts and imagery have been constructed. I call my practice integrating Afro-Caribbean folk traditions and participatory social practice “Art of Uncertainty.”
http://www.charooquet.com http://www.edgezones.org
Elisa Turner has been called “Miami’s art critic.” Probably a lot of other things too, but we won’t go there. She was an art critic for The Miami Herald when it was still owned by Knight Ridder, which no longer exists. Now that her Herald byline no longer exists either, this award-winning journalist is for sure not shutting up. Here's where to find her most current writing: Artburstmiami and Biscayne Times. In 2019 she won the Leadership Award from the Florida Chapter of ArtTable, Inc.
http://artcircuitsartcentric.blogspot.com/ http://elisaturnerartcrit.blogspot.com/ http://inspicio.fiu.edu/video-categories/elisa-turner/ https://www.artburstmiami.com/ http://www.biscaynetimes.com/
Atomik is a 100 percent Miami artist. Atomik, trained in graphic design, is a big name in the Miami art scene. The graffiti legend, part of the infamous MSG crew, a group of local graffiti heroes, has been painting the city for quite some time. While growing up in the emerging Miami graffiti scene of the 80’s, Atomik witnessed for himself at a young age what would later become his profession. Famous for his iconic orange character which emerged as a response to the demolition of the Miami Orange Bowl ,the artists also marks the walls of Miami with his sleek hand-styles, graffiti and lettering.
https://www.instagram.com/atomiko
After graduating from Florida International University with a bachelors in photography, Monica began collaborating with her sister on videos, large-scale installations, performance art, clothing, VJ sets, and fanzines. A video piece at Bas Fischer International that featured 35 local artists passing on "creative energy" to each other gained the attention of critics. Since then, TM Sisters work has been featured in the second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art and at Performa07 in New York. Locust Projects selected the pair from an applicant pool of 72 artists to receive the Hilger Artist Project Award. They were also included in the international exhibition "Uncertain States of America: American Art in the 3rd Millennium" curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Daniel Birnbaum, and Gunnar B. Kvaran (Miami New Times).
https://www.instagram.com/monicatronica
Thomas Bils’s paintings are a result of his interests over epistemology of memory and the ontology of its subjects, using his adolescence in central Florida as the base position of introspection. Working in photorealistic oil painting he references the mnemonic properties of the photograph and translates the image as an act of nostalgic contemplation. During the translation process Thomas assumes the role of the unreliable narrator, embellishing upon minute details or events, leavening the image with narratorial unease. This falsification accounts for the deteriorating truths of a reconsolidating memory.
https://thomasbils.com/
Evan Robarts (b. 1982) lives and works in New York and Miami. He graduated from Pratt with a BFA in sculpture in 2008. He has previously held solo exhibitions at Berthold Pott, Cologne (2017); Galerie Jeanroach Dard, Brussels (2016); and The Hole, New York (2015). Recent group exhibitions include Abstraction & Architecture, Université de Strasbourg (2018), See the Moon?, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn (2017); and the Fountain Head Residency Show, Miami (2017) organized by Kathryn Mikesell. This fall, Robarts will hold a solo exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Kunsthalle Kunstverein Bremerhaven in Germany.
http://evanrobarts.com/
Giannina Coppiano Dwin lives and works in South Florida. She has been the recipient of grants and awards such as the prestigious South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Visual and Media Artists funded in part by the National Endowment for the Art, the Women in the Visual Arts Award; as well as, several sponsorships and grants including research in Spain and Brazil. Her work has been included in national and international exhibitions as part of solo and group shows. Some of her more notable exhibitions include solo installations at the Fundacion Valdes-Salas in Asturias, Spain, Project Space in The Art and Culture Center in Hollywood, the contemporary wing of the Museo Municipal de Guayaquil, Ecuador; Ornare, Miami, as a collateral event during Art Basel; the Coral Springs Museum of Art, Coral Springs; Illegal Gallery, Florence, Italy.
http://gianninadwin.com/
My work has always had an organic, visceral aspect which I consider to be part of my concern with life issues, like vulnerability, passion, and the uncanny. Drawing in notebooks is my lifeline to my work. I keep one handy at all times and my hand goes where it wants in these visual journals. After I complete one, I reconnoiter, selecting and tearing out what might be used for inspiration.
http://www.sarastites.com/
Rafael Rangel was born in New York in 1978. Lives and works in Miami, Florida. He graduates with honors in Visual Arts at Pratt Institute in 2001. That same year, he works as an assistant for Matthew Barney and starts his exhibiting career. From then, has participated in group shows in Germany, Canada, Spain, United States and Venezuela. In 2013 he had a mayor solo exhibition at the museum Centro de Bellas Artes de Maracaibo, Venezuela. His works has been exhibited in Venezuela at the most important museums such as Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas MAC, Galería de Arte Nacional, Museo de Bellas Artes, Centro de Bellas Artes de Maracaibo and MACZUL.
www.instagram.com/rafaelrangelserrano
I grew up on a small blueberry farm in the middle of nowhere Georgia. I got immense satisfaction roaming the woods, gathering materials for little sculptures, and creating stories for myself, but the desire to connect with people, to explore, to learn was pervasive. After graduating at the top of my class, I caught the first ride to Athens, Georgia where I fought doubt and questions relentlessly to get my BFA at the University of Georgia. Clay became my conduit for processing my experience in this world, as a woman, in the South, and it gave me a way to speak, and often, to scream.
http://alex-hodge.com
Photographer Manny Hernandez has captured Miami's flash and moments of pizzazz in decades worth of candid images. His photographs chronicle the Magic City's celebrity-driven tipping point of the late 1980s and 1990s.
https://www.wynwoodbooks.com/
Agustina Woodgate creates art across multiple disciplines, her primary focus being the interplay between human beings and their surroundings. Born in Buenos Aires, Woodgate moved to Miami in 2004, where she gained recognition for covertly stitching labels inscribed with poems into thrift-store clothing (“poetry bombing,”) and for her work made with human hair. Today, her practice ranges from objects—human hair sculptures and kaleidoscopic rugs assembled with the pelts of recycled stuffed animals—to site-specific, context-based installations and performances. Striving to create work that fosters human relationships, Woodgate has produced public works such as park benches and color-changing billboards and bus shelters. Exploring an interest in residue and ephemera, she has sanded down the walls of an unused classroom and similarly, erased maps from a world atlas, both times collecting and cataloguing the dust.
https://agustinawoodgate.com/ http://radioee.net/
Timothy R. Rodgers, PhD, is the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum. Rodgers, who joined the Museum in July 2020, has nearly 20 years of museum-leadership experience, including 11 years as a museum director. Prior to joining the Museum, he served as director of The Wolfsonian–Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, where he oversaw the creation and implementation of a new strategic plan and expansion for The Wolfsonian’s future.
Born in 1967 in Chicago, while still an undergraduate, Tina La Porta developed a body of work photographing the Pro-Choice movement in Chicago, Milwakee, Waashington D.C. and New York City. In 1992 Ms. La Porta moved to New York's East Village to persue her Masters of Fine Arts Degree at The School of Visual Arts where she studied with Lisa Spellman, Sarah Charlesworth and Nan Goldin. During that time she interned at Pace/McGill Gallery and for Historian, Naomi Rosemblum while she wrote her book A History of Women Photographers (Abbeville Press). Her intial post-graduate work was immersed within the global internet art movement where she created several internet specific art works such as: net.works + avatars, distance and Re:mote_Corp@REALities. After 9/11 she shifted her attention to mediated representations and coverage of war where she found the "Veil" to be the perfect metaphor. Most Recently, Ms. La Porta's work has turned inward and paradoxically comments on consumer behavior in regards to everyday use of pharmceuticals.
http://www.tinalaporta.net/
Derek Hunter b. 1988 | New York, NY is an entirely self-taught painter, sculptor and muralist. His work explores the language of architecture and crystallography as a means to challenge expectations around site-specificity and urban construction, questioning how architectural spaces interacting with and designed in the likes of the natural world directly impacts our well-being and informs our sense of self. Hunter works and resides in South Florida.
http://derekhunterart.com/
After studying woodwork and design in Sweden he escaped the dark winters for the sunny tropical world of Florida where he currently lives and works. In his studio, he focuses on designing and the fabrication of unique modern furniture. He combines the clean, simple lines of Scandinavian sensibility with that of Caribbean warmth and function. His custom woodwork connects the unique desires of his customers with the soul of the design itself.
https://rudirepenning.com/
Santos art education is worldly, and his work has been seen around the globe, from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sicily, Italy and the Beijing museum in China to Chelsea, New York. Santos studied at Miami Dade College, where he earned his Associate in Arts degree in 2003. He then attended the New World School of the Arts and, just before graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, he dropped out to study abroad and to amplify his understanding of art. In 2006, he completed the Angel Academy of Art in Florence.
http://www.santocesar.com/
For more than thirty years, Miami-based artist Karen Rifas has amassed a body of work that endeavors to understand and re-imagine space. Well known for her minimal cord and leaf installations, and precise, methodical line drawings, in 2016, Rifas began a focused exploration into the constructive possibilities of color. Employing densely hued shapes and irregular lines, Rifas creates spaces that oscillate between the two- and three-dimensional. Deceptive Constructions surveys this recent body of work for the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in over 10 years. Through variegated floor and sculptural installations, works on paper, and wood panel, Rifas uses a concise language of richly contrasted color to alter our perception of space. (The Bass)
http://www.emersondorsch.com/artists/karen-rifas
Monique Lassooij was born and raised in The Netherlands and moved several years ago to Miami, Florida. In The Netherlands the artist started out as an abstract painter but over the years she developed a passion for figurative painting. She attended the Royal Academy for Fine Arts in The Hague and has gone on to receive several commissions and can be found in public places such as the Town Hall of the city of Scheveningen in The Netherlands as well as in numerous private collections all over the world.
https://www.molassooijart.com/
Gianna DiBartolomeo was born and raised in Miami, Florida. She currently exhibits her work throughout the United States. Gianna studied Fine Arts at Florida International University in Miami, Florida where she obtained her Bachelors of Fine Arts. She had the privilege of studying under Professor Emeritus Clive King from the United Kingdom and internationally acclaimed artist Jacek Kolasinski from Krakow, Poland.
https://www.giannadibartolomeo.com/
Nina Surel is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is best described as an ongoing exploration of the deepest recesses of our collective unconscious, from a decidedly feminist standpoint.
http://ninasurel.com/
Rafael Vargas Bernard utilizes performance, sound, programming, sculpture, video, painting, humor, and drawing in his creative practice. He employs readily accessible materials and technologies, found objects, and a utilitarian esthetic.
https://montane.bandcamp.com/track/j-bazzo-jar
Miami Beach artist Pamela Palma has been working with textiles since she was four years old. By 13 she was designing, sewing and knitting her own personal wardrobe as well as creating functional and decorative accessories. Weaving came later and accidentally – as a requirement for her degree in Design. The art and technique of hand weaving came so naturally that it changed her life. The limitless possibilities of designing woven fabrics as art and functional pieces reflects upon the timeless continuum of weaving across all cultures, brought into contemporary relevance in her works.
https://pamelapalmadesigns.com/
Since 1991 and the dazzling days of an emerging South Beach, Adora has graced Miami’s performance landscape. The alter ego of Danilo De La Torre, this famous drag queen combines camp with glam and humor. (current.miami)
https://www.instagram.com/adoradrag/
Asser Saint-Val is a painter, sculptor and installation artist. His quasi-figurative images, by turns humorous and grotesque, bring together ideas, people and incidents central to modern debates about the definition and valence of Neuromalanin. Rendered in a blend of traditional art mediums and a wide range of unconventional, organic materials—coffee, chocolate, ginger, tea and chocolate among them—his pictures, objects and environments are a surreal fantasia on such loosely linked themes as under-recognized African American inventors, the politics of sexual desire, and the complex aesthetics, narratives and metaphors that attach to the organic compounds neuromelanin.
https://www.assersaintvl.com/
Director of the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University, Miami, Dr. Jordana Pomeroy served for more than 15 years at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, rising to Chief Curator after being the museum’s Curator of Painting and Sculpture Before 1900. Prior to the Frost Art Museum, Pomeroy served as Executive Director of the Louisiana State University Museum of Art, Baton Rouge. Pomeroy earned her undergraduate degree from Bryn Mawr College, and her Ph.D. in Art History from Columbia University.
https://frost.fiu.edu/
Best known for the IG handle, Sofas of Little Havana, Sharif has been photographing discarded furniture as a chronicler in the greater interest of ethereal materialism. His quirky visions of our cast away sofas are a sober reminder of our fleeting comfort and temporariness of art in a spinning cycle of usage and abandonment.
https://www.instagram.com/sofasoflittlehavana/
Born on Lesbos, Greece, Eurydice is a multimedia artist & writer whose body of work is infused with a consistent ideological & aesthetic study of female marginalization & objectification, & the dualisms of mind vs. body, or repressed vs. uninhibited sexuality on daily life, as these are influenced by history & displacement.
https://eurydice.net/
My goal is to invite my viewers in to a dimension that goes beyond 2D visual art hanging on a wall; I want to lure viewers into a complex 4D world that includes the typical visual layers, but also has the textual stories, and an exploration of our environment. By doing this, my work can be a forum for dialogues that may find solutions to protecting the natural environment, which is precious for human survival.
https://www.elainedefibaugh.com/
Ian Fichman was born in Miami, Florida in 1978. With an outlook that defies the familiar, Ian renounces the regularly scheduled program. He has always been a weirdo. During his years at Florida State University, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Studio Art in 2002, he was introduced to metalwork. Given the freedom to explore the possibilities of the medium, Ian found fulfillment working with his hands. In 2010, after a brief venture into the digital arts, he returned to sculpture. Joining the program at San Diego State University, Ian gained unlimited access to the sculpture lab where he worked as a technician. It was there that he began to fine-tune the style and techniques that have made his work what it is today.
http://www.ianfichman.com/
Marina is a mixed media artist born in Chicago, she moved with her family to Buenos Aires, Argentina at an early age. She is now living and working in Florida. She graduated from the School of Fine Arts Pridiliano Pueyrredón (Buenos Aires) with a degree in painting and attended classes at IUNA (Instituto Universitario Nacional de Las Artes, Buenos Aires), pursuing a MFA.
http://marinagonella.com
David’s artwork explores contrasting elements between the natural and the human made. He uses photography, digital painting, and mixed media to depict/re-interpret beauty in nature and artificial objects.
http://www.davidgarylloyd.com
The use of different materials and techniques such as spray, crayon, acrylic, collage, stencil allows me to explore the richness of the accident. When I agglomerate the pigments, they give me a starting point that comes after the patient observation of the first gesture in the painting, the one that points the way to me, the one that invites or rejects the sum of other stains or elements in the work.
https://www.instagram.com/juanjhenriquez/
Belaxis Buil is a keen, acute and intuitive artist. She is also a woman and mother. Through years of a seemingly fantasized life by others, Corbusier’s own self, Buil has been hit on the head by the weight and realities of life—making her a hybrid humane human in constant evaluation of herself and human behavior. She builds upon an internal warfare of questioning morals, human rights, abuse and injustices, and wonders why these negative attributes in life have become so accepted and at times glamorized. (Neil de la Flor)
The artist was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1982 and currently lives and works in Florida, USA. She began her photographic studies in 2009 Roberto Mata Photography Workshop and her exhibition career in 2011. In 2014, she held her first solo exhibition, Caracas Fragmentada, tresy3 Gallery, Caracas.
http://gabrielagarciadalta.com/
My parents grew up on farms. One grandmother collected things (kept things) and the other was a Grand Storyteller. Both influenced me greatly. I create sculptures and installations using materials available in a given place at a given time – ranging from things found to collected experiences and retold stories. Often, I’ll alter a space using architectural interventions and enlist the public’s participation in the gathering of materials or through performative interactions.
https://www.kerryphillipsart.com
Carrie Sieh (b. 1978, Los Angeles CA) is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Miami, FL. Her work is inspired by cultural, geographic, and economic histories; theories of personality, intersectionality, communication, and organization; geoscience; pattern, cryptology and symbolism; thought experiments; game theory; social justice movements; personal narrative, and the ways in which knowledge finds material expression.
https://www.carriesieh.net/
While I am considered a veteran seasoned photographer, my specialty has been multiple visual formats that all render 3 dimensional views. I feel that this most closely approximates the reality we see everyday, and in cases of abstract imagery, colors and forms can be presented within a volumetric tableau rather than forced to be collapsed upon a paper or film.
http://www.diamondimages3d.com/
For our Culture Cast at Mana Contemporary we spoke with artist Nick Gilmore (@gilmoreworks), collector Dainy Tapia (@art.seen.365) and artist duo Poncili Creacion (@poncilicreacion) at Mana Contemporary (@manacontemporary). Culture Cast is a collaboration between Laura Marsh, curator at Art and Culture Center Hollywood and BABA Collective. Check out our Culture Cast exhibit with Tamara Despujols at 777 International Mall. NEXT: Culture Cast at UNTITLED art fair, Dec 8, 6pm—6:30pm https://untitledartfairs.com/miami-beach/podcast/live
Reginald O'Neal (Miami, Florida 1992) began painting in 2012, soon meeting his friend and mentor, Alejandro Dorda, who would teach him classically. In 2014, L.E.O. took his first trip to Europe to complete murals in Austria, Norway, and Spain, as well as exhibit in a collective show alongside his teacher in Berlin, Germany. In the years since, Reggie has focused on canvas work, residencies, and murals that embody his community surroundings, experiences and beliefs. Work of O'Neal's is held in the permanent collection of the Perez Art Museum Miami. He lives and works in Miami and is represented by Spinello Projects.
https://www.instagram.com/l.e.other
I work mostly in wood and paper: sculpture, furniture, and printmaking. A focus is the interconnectedness of the natural and built environment. Much of my current work incorporates old growth Dade County pine (pinus elliottii var. densa), an incredible local tree which was logged nearly to extinction by early development. Over 20 years in the construction trades largely inform this work.
https://gilmoreworks.com
Valeria Yamamoto is a Japanese-Argentinian sculptor, born in 1975 Buenos Aires, Argentina . She has studied and worked in the field of Graphic Design back in her country. In 2001 she moved to Miami, Florida, where she initiated her career as an artist earning a Bachelor of Fine Art degree in sculpture at the Florida International University in 2008. Currently, she is an artist-in-residence at the Bakehouse Art complex in Miami and has been working and participated in the Simposio2014 Ponte di Ferro Officina D’Arte in Carrara, Italy.
http://www.valeriayamamoto.com/
Jaffe’s studio practice and subject matter evolved after her move to Miami in the early ‘90s. The region’s bright hues and subtropical climate made mosaics an optimal medium as she began to pursue larger pieces with a more enduring presence, while continuing to exhibit in group shows at museums and galleries around the country. For the past two decades she has also worked as an accomplished public artist.
https://stephaniejaffeart.com/
Michelle Weinberg is a painter who creates art for surfaces, interiors, architecture and public spaces. She received her BFA from School of Visual Arts in NYC and her MFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia.
https://michelleweinberg.com/
Amanda Bradley was born and raised in Miami, FL where she received her BFA from New World School of the Arts. Currently she holds a studio at the Bakehouse Art Complex as an artist in residence. Her work explores place and landscape as a means to understand and expose histories, relationships and memory. Through photography she navigates the passing of time and the scale of individual in order to form relationships, both familiar and foreign.
http://amanda-bradley.squarespace.com/
Lucinda Linderman, a native to Chattanooga, Tennessee, is a recognized environmental artist and enviromental art curator living and working in Miami, Florida. She holds an MFA from the University of Miami in Sculpture and a B.A. in Biology. Lucinda has been a full time artist with works exhibited in juried shows since 2001. From 2001 until 2006, she worked as a master apprentice to renowned constructivist sculptor John Henry, where both her aesthetic sense and technical skills were honed.
https://lucindalinderman.com/
In my work, I like to tell stories using symbols which are universal, when you look at my work you could tell your own story, and would interpret what you see in your own way and each work in the series is created to evoke a different moods and emotions. I am exploring abstract appropriated images from our culture and translating these onto the surface of my work. I feel that they address or allude to specific ideals that interest me. It has always been my goal as an artist to make work that speaks to the viewer on a deeper level.
http://www.myungnaman.co.uk/
Nicole Salcedo is a first-generation Cuban-American artist born, raised, and based in Miami. Her practice includes the use of illustration, performance, and design to open up spiritual pathways that might heal our connection to ourselves and to Nature.
https://www.instagram.com/chachichinikki/
Mahshie’s work makes reference to fashion, pop culture, street swag, and tropical ephemera to highlight the allure of natural and manufactured surfaces.
http://www.nickmahshie.com/
Objects are very powerful and can evoke recollections of memories and experiences. Time machines - symbolic, historical, we identify them as a part of who we are or were and assign them significance and value. They can be personal or collective and pass from generation to generation or across cultures. I explores these relationships introducing some viewers to objects that have made the journey through time and reconnecting others to memories of their past.
http://www.rivamonterobots.com/
Tamara Despujols, a multimedia artist and architect, women’s rights and social activist, aims to merge both life and art in a most peculiar way, by viewing the interconnection between our bodies and the places we inhabit through the complex thread of thought that conceptually strings together all her works.
https://www.tamaradespujols.com/
Pedro Wazzan is a photographer born in Venezuela and currently a resident artist at the Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami, FL.
https://www.pedrowazzan.com/
My work is a reflection about the specific reality of my country. Usually I use the self-portrait as ways to meditate about the fact of belonging to an island where the collective history and the personal destiny are in very tight relation.
http://www.sandraramosart.com/
Born and raised in Queens, New York, I have been sewing and creating quilt pieces for over 20 years. I’ve exhibited work in various venues in South Florida, including The Boca Art Museum, The Coral Gables Museum, 6th Street Container, Hollywood Art & Culture Center, Girls Club of Fort Lauderdale, and Turn-Based Press. I've had the opportunity to do various residencies at The Deering Estate, the Artist in Residence in the Everglades (AIRIE), ArtCenter/South Florida, and The Studios of Key West.
http://www.reginajestrow.com/
Yuneikys Villalonga graduated from Art History at the University of Havana, Cuba (2000) and went to serve as Curator at the Ludwig Foundation of Cuba, for the next four years. During this time, she was also teaching Contemporary Caribbean Art at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana. In 2004, she won the National Curatorship Award from the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) with the exhibition, Së Bashku-Juntos-Tillsammans presented at the 2nd Tirana Biennial of Contemporary Art (Tirana, Albania, 2003) and at the Uppsala Museum (Uppsala, Sweden, 2004.)
Rook's multi-disciplinary practice investigates various artistic mediums to uncover cultural threads, so to speak- the 'fabric' of reality. He believes that culture can be seen as a textile manuscript. It carries techniques, methodologies, history, and values, intersecting and weaving as threads of meaning and agency, oscillating for primacy in their manifold representations.
Sarah Michelle Rupert is a visual artist and arts professional living and working in South Florida. Working with photography, video, collage, drawing and animation. Revolving around consumer, mass-communication and television culture in contemporary experience. Navigating the complexities inherent in this brave new digital world, with a wanderlust for the sublime, the humor and the beautiful.
http://www.sarahmichellerupert.com/
Lino, who works in a variety of media, describes her two most recent series, Working Hands and Agua/Water, this way: “I experiment with the interdisciplinary fusion of the visual arts and the documentary mode by combining drawing, video, digital media and animation with material that is traditionally considered documentary: interviews, still images, recorded sound and archival and appropriated footage.”
https://www.marialino.com/
Dr. Jill Deupi is the Beaux Arts Director and Chief Curator of the University of Miami’s Lowe Art Museum. Prior to assuming this position in 2014, Dr. Deupi was Director and Chief Curator of University Museums at Fairfield University, where she was also an Assistant Professor of Art History.
Kiki Valdes, born in 1981, is a Cuban American artist based in Miami, FL. He studied painting, drawing, and poetry at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. He spent many months painting from the masters at the Walters Museum of Art during his training at school. Currently, he is best known for combining nostalgic cartoon imagery with a historical art context.
http://www.kikivaldes.com/
All Things Creative.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kerrymclaney/ http://www.305creativegroup.com
These sculptures take this dynamic as both the essential human drama, and as our essential refuge from it. In the same way that a work of architecture shelters and becomes alive with the activity that fills it, these sculptures are perceptual environments that hold a continuous transformation of light and space. Reflections in mirrors create a world that extends into the immaterial. Subtler reflections in glass create infinities within infinities. To point at the endless, the works use abrupt truncation.
http://brookhartjonquil.com/
Ana Mendez is a professional dancer, performance artist and Bodytalk practitioner from Miami. She has been commissioned by the Adrienne Arsht Center through Miami Light Projects’ Here and Now Festival, the de la Cruz Collection, Miami Art Museum, ArtCenter/South Florida, the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami and Bas Fisher Invitational. She is an artist fellow for the Artist in Residence in the Everglades program.
http://www.anamendez.info/
Scott Brennan, a visual artist, photographer, and writer, lives in Miami. Florida. A resident artist at the Bakehouse Art Complex, his work has been shown at the Diana Lowenstein Fine Art Gallery, the Audrey Love Gallery, the Swenson Gallery, Luna Star, The Brattleboro Museum of Art, B. Florentine, and The Taplin Gallery.
https://www.instagram.com/scottbrennan6/
"Through our dreams, we make contact with a vast, yet elusive side of ourselves." - Morel Doucet
https://www.moreldoucet.com/
My paintings, often portraying children and the seashore, may at first glance appear prosaic. But, beneath their joyful sun-drenched surfaces, my paintings are intentionally subversive. By presenting positive images of black and brown people my work challenges the negative, racist images with which the media constantly bombards us while simultaneously confronting the homogeneity of the fine art canon and its representations of race and identity.
http://www.jacquelinegopie.com/
Gianna Riccardi is a contemporary photo-based artist born and raised in Miami, Florida. She grew up heavily influenced by her background of Haitian, Italian, and Lebanese roots. Being from a mixed cultural background in a vastly diverse city, she likes to encourage integration of people through creativity and the fostering of an inclusive environment.
https://www.gianna-riccardi.art/
Here is my confession: I am less interested in the theoretical and institutionalized questions of the contemporary art world than I am in interpreting direct experiences that contradict our conditioning. With first-hand experience we don’t see things as they are, but how we see them as we are.
https://www.anjamarais.com/
Amalia Caputo is a photo and video based artist, independent curator and art writer with an extensive exhibition and publication list. Recent exhibitions include Fantastical Vizcaya (2015) at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, Instacorrespondences (2015) in La Plataforma Barcelona, Belonging (2015) at the Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers, and Obra Abierta.Ejes de libertad (2015) in Centro de Arte El Hatillo, Caracas, Transferencias (2012) at La Caja Centro Cultural Chacao in Caracas, Venezuela, Ocupa (2011) at Farside Gallery. Recent curated exhibitions include: Querido Gusano, Homage to Luis Brito (2016), 9Topics along with artist Marina Font (2015) Paul Amundarain (2014), Whiskey & Rye, an all women exhibition (2013).
https://www.amaliacaputo.com/
I synthesize the possibilities across ecology, geology, and science in general. I travel the world to conduct research connecting geological identities, man’s drive for scientific exploration, and humanities connection to The Universe. Where are we going and how will we get there? Conscious and subconscious connections are visualized and expressed through art as a conduit to the interconnected cosmos.
http://www.sriprabha.com/
I've been interested in the ways of social and personal issues intersect and collide. The socio / political environment is diverse and contradictory in ways that are interesting to examine and to de-construct, and may lead to better understanding why it can be so difficult to feel connected to the larger whole or, even to oneself.
The scale and complexity of the social and political constructs are held together and split apart through an ever wider range of communication platforms, which seem, paradoxically more socially dis-integrative than ever.
The portrait series reflect my social observations and internal responses to what I see around me.
I believe the sense of loss, of disconnect and isolation, of aggression and degradation, seem widespread in our civilization now. Responding to this from my own experience, and reflected in people I see around me, represents an attempt to connect, or at least understand better what it might mean.
http://davidrohn.net/
Roxana Barba is Miami-based performer and dance maker whose practice incorporates interdisciplinary uses of dance, film and video. She pursued undergraduate visual arts studies in her native Perú prior to receiving her BFA in Dance from New World School of the Art (Miam, Florida). Working across performance, installation, dance on camera and experimental forms, her work references spiritual dislocation, turbulent beauty and the hidden.
https://www.roxanabarba.com/
As an artist, I focus on the creation and display of curious zoological and botanical structures. The objects constructed may live somewhere in the present or may exist in the future. The style of the work may be contemporary or recall the work of scientific illustrators of the past, transcending time. Through re-imagination and distortion, I invite the viewer to examine and interpret the ambiguous and sometimes disquieting forms that inhabit these works.
http://www.judithberkking.com/
I am a multidisciplinary artist. My work varies from painting, drawing, and collage; to photography, video, sound, sculptural objects, and installation. I design and build everything by hand. Running parallel to my studio practice is also a back-end production of projects that seek to create a dialogue, to connect, and to involve the broader community.
http://www.alettesimmonsjimenez.com/
Nathalie Alfonso (b. 1987, Bogota, Colombia) holds a Bachelor in Fine Arts from Florida International University. Her work investigates the value of manual labor, the degeneration of the body, and notions of impermanence through drawing, installation, and video. Her necessity to merge the practice of cleaning and art making is utilize to observe her constant obsession with cleanliness and this is manifested in the impermanent installations done with the repetitive movements use to apply and remove charcoal in different surfaces: walls, rags, and paper.
http://nathaliealfonso.com/
VOL 49. LAURA MARSH
Laura Marsh is a textile artist with a social practice. She defines installations for viewer participation at institutions. Marsh believes that immersive environments are needed in academic cultures to reflect upon a world that is becoming increasingly moderated by technology and social media competition. She has relocated several times, and her installations reflect the artist’s experience with relocation. Her desire to define spaces that are place makers for others is a direct reaction to gentrification and class issues.
https://www.lauramarsh.net/
My art practice comes into being as a metaphor for deciphering the multivalent relationships of cultures, peoples and histories while using ethnobotany and the performative as aesthetic vehicles for an art that references geology, ethnobotany, archeology, fiction writing with traditional art making.
http://www.art3st.com/ http://onajide.com/
Lissette Schaeffler is a Cuban born photographer whose work deals with the exploration of identity. Whether documenting or digitally manipulating photographs of family, friends, environments or herself, Lissette’s underlying meaning has always remained consistent. Lissette received her MFA in Photography from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2004. She has exhibited in solo and collective shows nationally and internationally. She is an alumni from ArtCenter/South Florida, where she spent 6 years in their residency program. Lissette lives and works in Miami, Florida
https://lschaeffler.myportfolio.com/
Jean-Paul Mallozzi was born and raised in Queens NYC, and received a scholarship to attend the Rhode Island School Of Design (RISD). He graduated with a BFA in Illustration. His works have been exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and internationally including Los Angeles, New York, and London.
http://www.jeanpaulmallozzi.com/
Adler Guerrier creates visual dialogue between a wunderkammer of materials and techniques. Guerrier improvises between form and function to nimbly subvert space and time in constructions of race, ethnicity, class, and culture. He calls upon the democratizing nature of collage and the authority of formal composition to designate to art history an axis of contemporary identity critique. Often chronicling the hybridity and juxtaposition in his immediate environs, Guerrier practices a contemporary flaneurie in an impending age of post-demography.
https://www.adlerguerrier.com/
Bianca Pratorius was born in Cologne, Germany in 1969. She started her formal training at the Holzfachschule, Köln and subsequently moved to Miami where she attended International Fine Arts College. She now lives and works in the Miami area.
http://www.biancapratorius.com/
Ingrid Schindall is a passionate and productive printmaker and book artist based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She has a methodical yet experimental studio practice. Her prints and artist books have been exhibited internationally and throughout the east coast. She is devoted to her writing practice and has produced several artist books throughout her career.
http://www.ingridschindall.com/ http://www.isprojectsfl.com/ https://www.nocturnal.press/
Michelle Lisa is currently completing a Master of Arts in Museum Studies & Non-Profit Management at Johns Hopkins University. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Florida International University in Photography & Fiber Based Painting. Her most recent work moves from a previous series of self-portraits, Dancing With Myself, which explored her relationship with herself away from the guidance of her parents, into a new body of work documenting trips and interactions with her parents and family, If Home Was Home.
http://www.michellelisap.com/
The art world’s Queen of Arts, Bernice Steinbaum, is no BS. An incredibly vibrant character, she stands no more than 5 feet 2 inches, is as distinguished as she is colorful, and just as big in presence as she is small in stature. But to know BS, the legendary art collector who has always advocated for women and people of color, is to see that she is showing few signs of slowing down.
https://www.bernicesteinbaumgallery.com/
Terence Price II was born in Carol City Florida and is a graduate of Miramar High School. His use of street photography is a form of documentation which seizes on the highs and the lows of family life and the surrounding community. While roaming the streets of Miami he aims to “capture” moments that move him deeply and invites the viewer to share in this experience.
http://mxlawkii.com/
“My formal studies began as an undergraduate at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. I received my BA degree from the California College of Art, and my graduate studies were pursued at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. My aim is to paint the light and pieces of color that describes what I see. When I paint I am reacting to the excitement I feel when I see something that registers as beautiful to me. My focus is on the magic!”
http://www.moniquelazard.com/
Michael Williams combines contemporary realism with a minimalist sensibility, using an overwhelming sense of light to deconstruct figural landscapes. He develops stark yet delicate depictions of the human figure, leading to the scrutiny of candid and often amusing observations that provide a dialogue on social identity and self-awareness. This obsessive scrutiny, deconstructed throughout his work, is broken by implied lines and ambiguous shapes, which fill the entirety of the implicit space.
https://www.michaelwilliamsartist.com/
My imagery is derived from the motion pictures of the 1930s through the 50s. I’m particularly interested in this era of film and how it aligns with the concept of artifice via opulent and escapist themes. The subjects of my paintings are about the fleeting, the missing, and the unattainable, however as paintings they become the very antithesis of the ephemeral.
http://www.kristenthiele.com/
The multidisciplinary work of Patricia Schnall Gutierrez (including painting, drawing, sculptural objects, performance, and installation) draws its inspiration from a self-referential account of personal memories, situations, and emotions. Using distinct choices of mediums, household objects and materials, she creates an autobiographical account of the every day, drawing the viewer into an intimate dialogue that often probes questions of gender and sexuality. Through her personal stories, she shares a unique perspective on controversial issues facing contemporary woman and society.
https://www.patriciaschnallgutierrez.com/
Sarah Margaret Knox Moody (SMKM) is a Photographer, an Artist, a Curator, a Collaborator and Community Voice based in Erie, Pennsylvania. “I document the world and I document my family. I enjoy images because they are tangible memories, ones that you can hold, the smell and scene comes alive in your hand. I document what pulls me, what grabs my attention.”
http://www.sarahmkmoody.com/
“I tell my life story through concrete, color fields and organic abstract forms. They help express my thoughts and beliefs, serving as a narrator for my day to day experiences. Through my current work, I explore social behavior, depression, relationships, aging and prosperity. My personal experience with these topics help fuel my passion to create art that exposes the stable coexistence of different entities.”
http://www.troysimmonsstudio.com/news.html
Alexander Zastera produces vibrating planetary portals, swirling masses of denim, dark urban landscapes, and tropical “grotesquery” in response to the dynamic and bizarre environments he calls home. Currently based in Miami, his work has been featured in Deep Space, & Gallery, Locust Projects, the Young Arts Gallery, the FSU Museum of Fine Arts, and Superfine! Art Fair: NYC.
https://www.alexzastera.com/
Born in Rio de Janeiro, DeMello developed Art Habit, a social business aimed to help artists find supplemental income in the events industry while working to fortify their artistic practices. Ananda has worked in several art sectors in Miami. From artist run spaces, nonprofit, commercial art fairs, cultural production, as a consultant for artists and galleries, the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, and was the gallery director at Spinello Projects and assisted during the production of the first edition of FAIR. Currently she is working with Laura Rathe Fine Art in Houston, TX, she continues to manage Art Habit, and works as an independent curator and consultant for special projects globally. Ananda holds a BA in Public Relations from Florida International University and a MA in Arts Management from St. Thomas University.
http://makearthabit.com/media/
Tina Salvesen recently returned to her native Florida after living in the Northeast and Europe for many years. Her work focuses on fine mark making with the use of charcoal, pencil, ink, watercolor, pastels, paint and encaustic to create her artwork. Tina attended Skidmore College, and received a Bachelor’s degree in Art. She also holds a M.Ed., in Art Education from Temple University. Regarded as a master draftsman, she has won many awards in various shows throughout the USA.
http://www.tinasalvesen.com/
Claudio Marcotulli was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. He is an award-winning Miami-based filmmaker and performer interested in exploring surreal and experimental genres, as well as subjective, rich imageries and the passage of time. Using the flickering medium as an extension of his eye and body, Marcotulli’s work engages in distorted narratives and dream-like imagery, breaking down the boundaries between subject and audience.
http://www.claudiomarcotulli.com
Jenny Larsson was born on the slopes of a small mountain village in northern Sweden and spent her youth enjoying outdoor activities such as skiing, reveling in the thrill of speed movement which she was later to enjoy as a dancer. After graduating from the University of Dance and Circus in Stockholm, life and dance has taken her through Spain, Thailand and New York, before coming to South Florida in 2007. In 2012 she completed her Master’s program in dance (MFA) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
https://jennylarsson.org/
“My work represents subjects, situations, and emotions in a reductive visual language. The indelible impressions of our experiences shape what we are inside: our contradictions, hopes, addictions, ego, love, self awareness, doubts — all part of a complex composition that exudes a type of wavelength, vibe, or presence that is projected outward. Each composition is drawn from the immaterial and intangible by way of what we can’t see, but feel, with the intent of being equatable as to who, or what, they are.”
http://seanmick.com/
Monica McGivern is a multidisciplinary artist who is best known for documenting music and contemporary art culture. Her extensive archive explores the role of photography, both analog and digital, in society as art object, and witness. McGivern is influenced by the writings of Henry David Thoreau, the photography and philosophy of Ernst Haas, and the stage antics of Iggy Pop.
http://www.monicaparty.com/ http://mobootyband.com/
Aurora Molina was born in La Havana, Cuba, in 1984. She emigrated to the United States at the age of sixteen, where she opted to pursue an education in art. Molina received her Associates of Arts in Visual Arts from Miami Dade College, a Bachelors in Fine Arts specializing in Mixed Media from Florida International University and Master Degree in Contemporary Art at the Universidad Europea de Madrid completed in 2009. She currently resides in Miami, Florida, where she works as a full time artist.
http://www.auroramolina.com/
Alex Nuñez is a Cuban-American mixed media painter from Miami, FL. She received her BA from Loyola University. Nuñez’s practice concentrates on the amalgamation of pop culture and personal image hoarding— ranging from appropriated images from vintage magazines to comic books—with explosions of color, texture, and sheen. Bursting with iridescent pigments, pastel chalk, glitter, confetti, pompoms, candy, and banana peels, Nuñez’s compositions become immersive environments that play on memory, erosion, overindulgence, disorientation, humor, vanity, narcissism, and opulence.
http://alexnunez.net/
"My goal is to create works that capture human emotions, the freshness of nature and the simple beauty of ordinary everyday objects, by following the steps of the Old Masters, with a contemporary vision".
https://www.salvadorzarate.com/
Gerbi Tsesarskaia was born in Zsitomir, Ukraine. After graduating from the Marine Technical University of St. Petersburg in 1980 with an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, she worked as an electrical engineer at “Elektrosila” Research Institute for four years. Gerbi has participated in numerous national and international exhibitions including two world competitions in Korea and Rumania. Her work has been included in many private and two museum collections in Korea and Romania.
http://www.gerbitsesarskaia.com/
Lauren is a working artist and educator born in South Florida. She is a University of Miami graduate and teaches at several institutions including New World School of the Arts and the University of Miami. She is a current artist in residence at the Bakehouse Art Complex in addition to acting as Head of the ceramics practice; assisting with the development of educational workshops, outreach and programming for artists. She was recently selected to participate in Labverde Art Immersion Program in Brazil this summer, where she will explore the Amazon Rainforest to study the intersection of art and nature.
http://laurenshapiroart.com/
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Multidisciplinary artist who develops her work through a wide variety of media such as painting, objects, photography, sound and video. Her work includes a diverse range of materials and techniques where a real passion for the matter and the expressive possibilities of texture, color or transparency, always prevails.
http://lujancandria.com/
Jen Clay is from North Carolina and is currently based in South Florida. Clay works as a multimedia artist in performance and video works and installations. Her practice include sewing wearable works, claymation animation, filming and editing videos. She received her Bachelor’s in Sculpture at UNC Charlotte and a Masters in Fine Arts in sculpture from the UFL while also studying costume design and applied behavioral analysis. She researches otherness to create depictions of estrangement and otherness that playfully explore stress and anxiety.
https://www.jenlynnclay.com/
Pioneer Winter, born and raised in Miami, is a choreographer, dancer, and the director of Pioneer Winter Collective. His company of allied bodies provide a platform for risk-taking and experimental projects that democratize performance through unexpected stories, places, and social change. Recent commissions have included the critically acclaimed duet Gimp Gait with Marjorie Burnett for Karen Peterson and Dancers and a site-specific solo Hephaestus for Tigertail Productions at Vizcaya Museum and Gardens.
http://pioneerwinter.com/
Before Vega started her career as a Fashion Designer, she began by exploring every aspect and technique in the world of art. Her collection is a reflection of those methods. From recyclable items, photography, collages of pictures, to finally allowing herself to create her very own fabrics by transferring her unique prints onto the fabric, making her pieces one of a kind. During the years Vega has been in the fashion industry for years, her objective is clear: She wants to dress women with versatile pieces that can be mixed and matched.
www.lisuvega.com
Bernadette Despujols is an artist and architect who works with a diverse variety of materials, scales and strategies, intervening and assembling objects, working in small format paintings or large participatory sculptures, which complete an acute body of work that questions gender, the perception of women by society and themselves. Her work encompasses nuances and subtleties that revolve around the cultural perception of women about themselves: guilt trips, social expectations, sexual desire as well as intimate bodily connections and thoughts.
http://bernadettedespujols.com/
Born in Connecticut, raised in New England, Gellatly has been living and working in Miami for the last 6 years. He has exhibited throughout New England and New York in both solo and group shows, and has continued that practice in Florida. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Pollock/Krasner Foundation Grant, and numerous state Individual Artist Grants. He has also been awarded several full fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center (twice), the Millay Artist Colony, NY, and was granted a 2 year project-residency at the Deering Estate, Miami, FL.
http://www.mgellatlyart.com/
Her love for the arts started in Paris 20 years ago, and it hasn’t stopped since. There, Barbara took painting and drawing lessons at the Parsons School and with Parisian painting masters. Back in Santa Cruz Bolivia, her hometown, she painted for seven years while exhibiting around the country and studying printmaking. She organized the exhibition Form as Context in July 2017, at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum.
http://www.bbollini.com/
As children, we are generally acutely aware and connected to the observations that shape us. As we age, our perspectives evolve, becoming rather adulterated by judgments and dictates of society. Analog film and alternative processes are creatively freeing to me in a time too often leveraged by the omnipresence and immediacy of technology. Polaroids infuse elements of intimacy and tangibility; with them I reconnect the surreal and beautiful with the otherwise familiar, making visible life and energy present in a moment. I strive to create work that invokes curiosity, action, wonder, dialog….photographs that inform the environment in which they are viewed and explore the relationship between impartiality and the personal experience.
http://satorired.com/
John DeFaro is a multidisciplinary visual artist and designer. John’s work was first influenced as a youth in an apprentice type of mode from his one-on-one connections with renowned artists who were neighbors in the Hamptons, NY. From age 25-27 John worked as an assistant in Southampton for Henry Geldzahler, the noted curator and critic whose enthusiastic advocacy of contemporary art made his name synonymous with the art scene in NYC in the 60’s through the 80’s.
http://www.johndefaro.com/
Deming King Harriman is a mix media and collage artist based in Miami Beach and New York City. She draws from archetypes and mysticism to fuel these narratives and characters, and how these themes play into the construction of identity. Throughout history, cultures have employed the power of narrative to explain reality and the human. From religion, legends, and mythology to fairy tales, folklore, and song, we use storytelling as a tool to connect and explain the universe.
https://www.demingkingharriman.com/
A former professional soloist ballerina, Andrea Spiridonakos has an aesthetic that is palpable, playful & elegant. As the creative force behind Spiridonakou she uses her knowledge & prowess of the human body to create a dynamic impression… one full of the magic of movement. Andrea has exhibited design work in Paris at Les Art Décoratifs, in collaboration with the Métiers d’Arts, Chanel and has produced hand-painted textile designs for Isabel† & Ruben Toledo’s recreation of Balanchine’s Nutcracker. http://www.spiridonakou.com/
Witnessing the effects of the recolonization gentrification of Miami’s underserved neighborhoods, I document structures which will soon be replaced by new development - chronicling the loss of a community’s cultural, social, and economic fabric.
http://eddiearroyo.com/
Ernesto Kunde was born in Paraíso do Sul, Brazil in 1973. After a brief stint re-discovering his family roots in Germany (where he worked in agriculture in Mosbach), Kunde returned to Brazil in 1995 where he first began his artistic journey by experimenting with works on paper: drawings and controlled coffee stains. Since then, Kunde has narrowed his aesthetic focus into painting on a diverse range of surfaces (most prominently found wood and canvas).
http://www.kundeart.com/
I am often obsessed with comparisons of reality and potential and the balance between them, in art: the idea of chaos in perfect order: an object seemingly solid to the eye can also be fragile and inconsistent to the touch; a common object used to create a piece of art becomes transformed into something complicated and intriguing.
https://www.augustoesquivel.com/
Claudio Roncoli was born in Buenos Aires, 1971. He is Professor of Drawing and Painting graduate of the National School of Fine Arts Prilidiano Pueyrredón (1995). In his latest creations he incorporates elements of advertising, cartoon, graphic design and collage, weaving them with resources such as imaging or re-photographing. Using a special technique and without abandoning his wry humor and scathing, through what he calls the “constant balance of life”, the juxtaposition of images and bright colors using the viewer moves to a “brave new world”.
https://macfineart.com/claudio-roncoli/
Donna Ruff grew up in Miami Beach and has relocated there after years in New York and Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 2000 she earned an MFA from Rutgers University, where she focused on printmaking and installation. She has been chosen to create site-specific installations at the Eldridge Street Project on the Lower East Side of New York, PS 122, and for ArtSPACE in New Haven, Connecticut.
http://www.donnaruffart.com/
“I create stories. Each piece is a part of a bigger conversation I’m having with the audience. Paper, wood panels, street signs, found objects, and aluminum sheets are some of my canvases. I choose the medium depending on each surface. Constantly moving between different points in time and space is what influences me. Have you ever been to someone’s house where nothing matches? From the furniture you’re sitting on, the frames on the wall, and the silverware on your plate, but it all feels right? I want my art to capture that feeling.”
http://www.mixedmediamartinez.com/
Sarah Henderson was born in Miami, Florida in 1986. After receiving her BFA in Photography and Imaging from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University Henderson has explored themes of femininity, tropical life, and patterns in nature through kaleidoscopic landscape wallpapers and geometric photos. Henderson has exhibited throughout South Florida at art institutions such as Artium Gallery, the Bailey Contemporary Art Center, Pinecrest Tropical Gardens, Scope International Contemporary Art Fair, The Boca Raton Museum of Art, and Art Wynwood.
http://www.sarahhendersonstudio.com/
Christin Paige Minnotte is a fine art photographer, conceptual artist and cinematographer from New York City. She has a BA from Bard College and a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute. Christin has exhibited her conceptual work Disposable Ethic in the 2015 Havana Biennial in Cuba. She has won awards at Screendance Miami, and exhibited her short films at Fringe Festival in Scotland and Perez Art Museum Miami. Recently she was awarded the competitive Voices of the Wilderness residency in Alaska to continue her conceptual work. Christin is currently a resident artist at Laundromat Art Space in Miami.
http://www.christinpaigeminnotte.com/
Born and raised in Homestead, Fl in 1976 on an airforce base. Generations of his family members served in the military but he followed a different path. He received a Bachelors of Illustration degree in 2002 from Ringling School of the Arts and Design with high honors. He moved to Boston where he obtained a studio at the Vernon Street Studios in Somerville, Massachusetts to continue his painting. He has participated in numerous exhibitions in the United States. In 2016, was awarded a grant by the National Endowment of the Arts.
http://www.jasonaponte.com/
Visual artist Jenna Efrein fuses sculpture, installation and performance art to draw focus to societal and environmental concerns. Driven by activism societal and environmental concerns and inspired by the moral and philosophical tenets of community, she stimulates social awareness through a practice that invites viewers to participate both physically and psychologically. The impetus for her work is derived from research and observation; it exposes the repercussions of being human in this world.
http://www.jennaefrein.com/