Each year in Palm Beach County, after a summer lull that seems endless, art starts happening again like Snow White gently waking from her sleep, bright-eyed, bushy tailed and — thanks to some local wizards — with remarkably plumper lips and a less-furrowed brow. After all, we do live in a veritable fantasyland of opulence and wealth and the “season” motivates us all to break … [Read more...]
The Boynton Beach Arts District: From machinery street to center of culture
By Chloe Elder Auto shops and heavy machinery might not be the first thing you think of as a backdrop for artwork. But the artists of the Boynton Beach Arts District have turned Industrial Avenue into just that. The arts district lies inconspicuously off Boynton Beach Boulevard at 422 Industrial Ave. The district houses a series of warehouses that function as galleries, … [Read more...]
Art and life blur in memorable Bedia retrospective at MAM
The idea to open José Bedia’s major career retrospective, now showing at the Miami Art Museum, with a painting of Coballende is a brilliant one. In the Afro-Cuban religion of Palo Monte, this god is the patron of the sick, the disabled and the homeless and wandering; his equivalent in Catholicism is St. Lazarus, and in Bedia’s sprawling acrylic on canvas, Coballende, like … [Read more...]
Edward Gorey, the gentle curmudgeon: At the Norton
The average museum visitor spends about 20 seconds looking at a work of art, but if you follow that guideline when you visit Elegant Enigmas: the Art of Edward Gorey, you’re going to miss a lot. The exhibit, which runs at the Norton Museum of Art until Sept. 2, contains more than 150 of the artist’s befuddling illustrations, sketchbooks, illustrated envelopes, book cover ideas … [Read more...]
Juried show easy to like, not so easy to remember
The underappreciated local artist ought to thank the Boca Raton Museum of Art for the 61st time. That’s how many times the museum has opened its doors to emerging talent through its annual All-Florida Juried Competition and Exhibition, the state’s oldest such exhibit. The good news is there are plenty of artists in Florida. This year’s juror, Valerie Cassel Oliver, senior … [Read more...]
Silence helps abstract masterworks reveal themselves
No matter what museum in the world one visits, there is always a crowd and with it comes murmuring. The museum experience then becomes like watching a movie with the director’s commentary on. Some weeks ago something highly unusual happened. I found myself alone with three creations by two American masters of painting: Clyfford Still and Joan Mitchell. The miracle took … [Read more...]
Barnet exhibit shows artist quietly going his own way
Forget garlic: When it comes to art, passion and honesty will get you far or, at least, get you to live forever. In case you have any doubts, the Boca Raton Museum of Art is currently offering a large dose of pieces by an artist who has always been far from extravagant and is now about to turn 101 years old. Will Barnet at 100: Eight Decades of Painting and Printmaking is … [Read more...]
Intricate, intimate metal sculptures evoke artist’s past
Memories in Mariko Kusumoto’s head do not need to fear a slow, eroding death. Think of them like waves, retreating, seemingly forgotten, and later hitting the shore bigger and stronger, darker as well. A unique and very personal show based on Kusumoto’s memories of Japan is currently on display at the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens until May 6. Mariko Kusumoto: … [Read more...]
Artist Cervetti brings color, spirituality to her work
By Tom Tracy If you were to stroll past Talia Cervetti’s studio on Lucerne Avenue in artsy downtown Lake Worth earlier this year, you might have found her seated low to the floor, listening to an old Sade CD while stitching a design into one of her acrylic paintings. Or she might have been drawing one of her abstract figurative series in black-and-white using pencil, graphite … [Read more...]
The VIP Art Fair: E-commerce comes to the Salon
The Web has enabled the advent of the pajama-clad, online shopping experience, but can e-commerce work in one of the world’s most lucrative retail markets? The founders of the VIP Art Fair — James and Jane Cohan, owners of the James Cohan Gallery in New York and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Jonas and Alessandra Almgren — believe so. They’ve created the world’s first virtual, … [Read more...]