Art: The biggest news in the local art world this weekend is artpalmbeach, which opened Friday night. Featuring more than 70 dealers and special exhibition spaces, this show at the Palm Beach County Convention Center looks every bit as dynamic as the Art Basel Show last December.
Not to be missed is the huge installation by Colombian-born artist Federico Uribe, represented by Praxis International Art. This young sculptor has created an amazing environment of farm animals and jungle critters and living room scenes using shoes, pencils and boards as his materials. In the gallery area, he has created bronze-looking sunbursts from house paintbrushes and another from clothespins and plastic forks. You’ll want to spend some time looking at his astonishing work.
In the International Sculpture Institute booth, Flamingo Park snowbird and sculptor Yvonne Parker is displaying her 7-foot-tall sculpture Flight of Fantasy. Parker uses fragmented pieces of porcelain, ceramics, wires and memorabilia to fashion her intricate work, inspired by Antoni Gaudi and Niki de Saint Phalle.
Across from Parker is the Ellen Liman Gallery from Palm Beach, which is featuring three artists: Marcia Gigli King, Louis Finkelstein and Arthur Carter. King’s paintings are large and graphically captivating, technically excellent with a feeling of batik or monoprints. King is a Texas artist with an MFA and a long résumé of exhibitions and museum collections. Artpalmbeach also offers an impressive list of lectures by major curators, collectors and artists. The fair hours are noon to 7 p.m. Saturday through Monday, and noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday.
Elswhere, the Paul Fisher Gallery is presenting Art and Hustle: From the Block to the Brush, showing how graffiti artists are transitioning from the street to galleries. Featured artists are Crash and Lady Pink, along with 1Hundred, Atomik, Adriaan Mol, NF, Romero, Sandoner, Studio SixFive and Christa Z. The exhibit, which runs through March 1, opened Friday night. The gallery will also be open from noon to 10 p.m. Saturday. The Paul Fisher Gallery is located in The Flamingo Building at 433 Flamingo Drive in West Palm Beach. For more information, call (561) 832-5255, or visit www.paulfisher.com. – K. Deits
Stage: For those of you who thought you’d seen everything, there is Dogs Gone Wild with Todd Oliver & Friends. It’s not pooches misbehaving on spring break, but an offbeat “how does he do it” ventriloquism act. These days, anyone could make a dummy talk (insert the political punch line of your choice here). What Oliver does is a traditional voice-throwing act, but he does it with live dogs — Irving, Lucy and Elvis. (Yes, of course, Elvis is a hound dog.) Oliver and his canine accomplices have been featured on Letterman and Leno, but you have to see them live. At Stuart’s Lyric Theatre twice on Saturday and again at the Borland Center in Palm Beach Gardens on Mon, Jan. 18. Call (772) 286-7827 for tickets.
Film: We told you to see The Road, the bleak post-apocalyptic adaptation of Cormac McCarthy‘s novel and you didn’t listen, did you? Well, as sort of an opportunity knocking twice, opening this week in area theaters is The Book of Eli, about a loner (Denzel Washington) roaming about, vaguely reading west, after am earth-scorching war and natural disaster that leaves the world low on food, water, energy and compassion. He carries with him what might be the last Bible on earth and a baddie named Carnegie (Gary Oldman) who understands the book’s power and will do anything to get his hands on it. The Hughes brothers deliver a slightly optimistic, but very violent end-of-the-world tale, worth seeing, despite the Twilight Zone-ish ending. – H. Erstein
Music: It’s a good weekend for contemporary American classical music, as works by major composers are scheduled for Sunday.
In addition to Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Septet for Piano Trio and String Quartet, scheduled for Sunday evening, the Violin Concerto of Ned Rorem is set for Sunday afternoon. The Rorem concerto is the centerpiece of the second seasonal concert for the Boca Raton Symphonia, and the soloist will be the young violinist Livia Sohn. Conductor Alexander Platt also has scheduled the Symphony No. 1 (in D, D. 82) by the teenage Franz Schubert, and the Symphony No. 1 (in B-flat, Op. 38, Spring) by Robert Schumann. 2:30 p.m., Roberts Theatre, St. Andrew’s School, Boca Raton. Tickets: $42-$53. Call 376-3848 or visit www.bocasymphonia.org.
Meanwhile, the conservatory at Lynn University opens its New Music Festival on Sunday, welcoming North Carolina-based composer Kenneth Frazelle as its composer in residence. Frazelle, whose work often focuses on nature and Appalachia, has written a new work for Lynn called Gee’s Bend Scenes, a trio for marimba, trumpet and piano inspired by a visit to that area of rural Alabama celebrated for its quilting community. The festival opens at 4 p.m. Sunday with a concert by faculty members playing their modernist favorites; young composers are featured Tuesday night, there is a contemporary music forum Wednesday night, and Frazelle’s music is the focus Thursday night. Tickets for all events are free. Call 561-237-9000 or visit www.lynn.edu/tickets.
If your taste runs more to the traditional, the Firebird Chamber Orchestra, sibling ensemble of the Seraphic Fire concert choir, tackles Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, perhaps the most popular classical composition of all time. Vivaldi wrote the sonnets that preface the scores for these four violin concerti; Firebird concertmaster Adda Kridler is the soloist. 8 p.m. Saturday at All Saints Episcopal Church, Fort Lauderdale, and 4 p.m. Sunday at Temple Emanu-El in Miami Beach. Tickets: $35. Call 305-285-9060 or visit www.seraphicfire.org.
Finally, there are concerts by the American Chamber Players — music by Bach, Beethoven, Raimi and Fauré — at the Society of the Four Arts (3 p.m. Sunday; tickets are $10; call 655-7226), and duo-keyboardists Adam Brakel and Keith Paulson-Thorp at 3 p.m. Sunday at St. Paul’s in Delray Beach (music by Soler, C.P.E. Bach, Wesley, Dupré, Franck, Planyavsky and del Aguila; tickets are $15-$18; call 278-6003).
Dance: The dance series at the newly renamed Palm Beach State College opens this weekend with two appearances by the Complexions Contemporary Ballet troupe, founded by Desmond Richardson and Dwight Rhoden. We were too late to preview Friday’s performance on the Web, but another show is set for 8 p.m. Saturday at the college’s Lake Worth campus. Tickets: $37-$95. Call 868-3309 or visit www.duncantheatre.org.
The Miami City Ballet brings Program II to the Kravis Center this weekend, with three classics by George Balanchine — Divertimento No. 15 (Mozart), Valse-Fantaisie 1953 (Glinka), and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (Rodgers) — sharing the stage with Twyla Tharp’s The Golden Section, set to music by David Byrne. 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday, 1 p.m. Sunday. Tickets: $19. Call 800-572-8471 or visit www.kravis.org.