Daily Loaf

Customers browse at the Tampa Artist Emporium in South Tampa. Pictured below: Boggs stands behind the Emporium’s front desk.

Two years ago, Tampa photographer Shelby Boggs took a gamble. Inspired by the Kress Emporium, an historic building in Asheville, NC, that serves as a marketplace for more than 80 regional artists and craftspeople, she set out to create something similar (if smaller) in Tampa. Using some money she’d pocketed after flipping a house in the once-hot real estate market, she snagged a favorable lease in Hyde Park Village.

Boggs dubbed the location, once occupied by retailer Ann Taylor, the Tampa Artist Emporium and soon began renting wall and shelf space to local artists, who displayed their work. Monthly mixers and an open-door policy during the shopping district’s popular outdoor art fair led to sales. In relatively short order, Boggs’ pie-in-the-sky idea didn’t look so crazy after all.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sheree Rensel. Twingo. Copper and mixed media on wood. 11-3/4″ x 11-3/4″ x 3″. Artist’s statement: “Twingo” is the unique and original tweet language of Twitter Tweople. Bio: BFA, MFA, Detroit artist born, NOW living and loving my art life in the real and virtual Universe.

If you’re following St. Petersburg artist Sheree Rensel on Twitter—that’s to say, if you’ve signed up to read her “tweets” or 140-character updates throughout the day—you can pretty much count on receiving a smile-inducing greeting routinely at around 9 a.m. It goes something like this:

“Good morning ART Tweople!”

(For those not already fluent in Twitterspeak, tweople—or tweeple—is a blend of “Twitter” and “people” used to refer to other users of the service. To learn more Twitterisms, consider consulting a twictionary like this one.)

A self-described “hyperactive” early adopter, Rensel has taught visual art to emotionally and developmentally disabled kids at a public school in Gulfport for 17 years, incorporating digital projects like photo portfolios and basic animation into the curriculum when possible. A mixed media artist by practice, Rensel—who describes her age as 50-something—uses Twitter mainly to keep up with other artists whose work she admires.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ricardo de la Vega and Felipe Packard. Strolling in the Park. Mixed media, 2007. Image courtesy Morean Arts Center.

Thursday

5-7 p.m. – Opening reception for Green: the Primary Color, featuring environmentally-themed art by Florida artists, at Art Center Sarasota.

5:30-7:30 p.m. – One Wild Night networking event, in conjunction with Wild Spirits exhibition at the Morean Arts Center. $10 admission includes interactive activities with the artists, heavy hors d’oeuvres and cash bar. RSVP to Lara Shelton at 727-822-7872 x15 or e-mail lara[at]moreanartscenter.org.

Read the rest of this entry »

Aqua Wynwood 2007: Rusted wheelbarrows cut with lace-like patterns by Cal Lane at New York’s Foley Gallery. Photo by Megan Voeller.

Since reports (like this one) surfaced that collectors were actually buying earlier this summer at Art Basel in Switzerland, the international art fair circuit has managed at least partially to shake its recent image as a victim of the economy.

In December, when Art Basel Miami Beach arrives in Florida, St. Petersburg’s C. Emerson Fine Arts will take part in Aqua Art Miami, one of the popular satellite fairs that orbit around the larger showcase. Aqua, which plans to ditch its original venue (the Aqua Hotel on Miami Beach) and set up shop only in the Wynwood gallery district, has a reputation as one of the stronger satellites. It typically includes galleries from around the US along with a smattering of international participants.

Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Brian Vandervliet

Friday

5:30-8:30 p.m. – S’REAL Happy Hour and opening reception for summer exhibitions: Mabel Palacín: Una noche sin fin [An Endless Night], Dalí at Work and Play: The Photographs of Marc Lacroix and Dalí: Seen Through Glass, at the Salvador Dalí Museum. Complimentary snacks and cash bar. Half-price admission ($8.50) after 5 p.m.

6-9 p.m. – Summer Jazz Series with the Campfire Quartet at the MFA; $15 for non-members, $10 for members, includes admission to Hazel Hough Wing galleries (currently on view: Andy Warhol prints).

7-9 p.m. – Opening reception for Discontinuum, photography by Brian Vandervliet, at the Globe Coffee Lounge. From the release: These forty photos were taken close to home in St. Pete, on the other side of the world in Asia and Europe, and around the United States. An Indian actor shares the wall with a bemused grandmother in Bangkok, and she with celebrators in a Pride Parade.

Read the rest of this entry »

Denis Gaston. Little Boxes. Mixed media on masonite, 20″ x 16”. Pictured below: Denis Gaston. Ground Control To Major Tom (Grab ‘n Go Art Collection). Ink on paper, 7″ x 5″. Images courtesy of the artist.

If it’s summer, it must be time for the Cool Art Show. Any other time of year, the region would be lousy with outdoor art fairs—but from July through September, who wants to brave heat, humidity or the chance of an afternoon thunderstorm?

Twenty-one years ago, Dunedin artist Denis Gaston had a simple idea that turned out to have staying power: round up a group of the Tampa Bay area’s most committed professional artists and add air conditioning.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tes One’s spray-paint-on-wood painting measures 10-ft. by 11-ft.

You know what they say: when the going gets tough, the tough get…bigger?

Despite the ongoing economic malaise—which seems to find Florida in a particularly compromising position—St. Petersburg artist and art party impresario John Vitale isn’t giving up. Though the muralist and owner of Vitale Studio recently downsized out of a company warehouse that doubled as an art gallery, his response to tough times is simply to take the show on the road.

All the way downtown to Nova 535, that is.

Read the rest of this entry »

Rumors of a Sarah Jessica Parker-produced reality TV show – think Project Runway for visual artists – have finally been confirmed, and a round of regional casting calls held over the next two weeks will determine the series’ first round of participants. Aspiring Tampa-based contenders can head to Miami for next Tuesday’s try-outs at Fredric Snitzer Gallery in Wynwood. Just fill out the 23-page application (actual question: “What annoys you about other artists?”) and prep your portfolio (including “any original artwork that is easily transportable.”)

The application warns that contestants will need to have a current passport and submit to all medical and psychological examinations deemed necessary. So bring the drama, but leave the crazy at home.

Official Bravo casting call
Media Bistro’s UnBeige blog

Megan Voeller is Creative Loafing’s visual art critic. She teaches at the University of Tampa and blogs at Artsqueeze.com.

Allen Leepa (American, b. 1919). Homage to Tarpon Springs, 1998. Acrylic on canvas, 5 x 12 feet (2 panels). Courtesy Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art.

Earlier this week, Allen Leepa– abstract painter and founder of the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art at St. Petersburg College– died at age 90. In celebration of his legacy, the museum will showcase his art in an exhibition scheduled to open on Aug. 2, Allen Leepa: In Memoriam.

In 1997, Leepa and his wife Isabelle donated $2.5 million to St. Petersburg College (then St. Petersburg Junior College) along with an extensive collection of works by Leepa, Esther Gentle Rattner (his mother) and Abraham Rattner (his stepfather). The collection, which is valued at upwards of $20 million, also includes works by Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Georges Rouault and Hans Hofmann.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bruce Marsh, Riverwall (detail). Photo by Megan Voeller.

Downtown Tampa’s Riverwalk gained a public art cornerstone recently with the installation of Bruce Marsh’s Riverwall– a 40-foot long mural composed of photographic images of the Hillsborough River. Fired into porcelain enamel on steel plates, the images show the river– a 54-mile long waterway integral to the region’s ecological health– in a variety of incarnations, from a forking artery seen from above to a forested stomping ground for boaters.

Marsh, who taught art at the University of South Florida from 1969 to 2003, is well known in the region and beyond as an outstanding landscape painter. Though the Riverwall relies mainly on photographic depictions of the river, some of his paintings appear as pictures among the 550 featured images (each 8-inches by 9-1/2-inches). From afar, the grid forms a purposely enigmatic, river-like shape based on a photograph of floating water lilies.

“The whole idea [was to make] something that would offer a visual hook… that would entice and draw people… and function as a gathering point,” Marsh says.

Read the rest of this entry »

Fuzión Dance Artists performing “Just Girls.” Image courtesy fuziondance.com.

Friday

6-9 p.m. – Closing reception for Reincarnate Metaphors: Girard Louis Drouillard at Salt Creek Artworks Galleries.

6-9 p.m. – Summer Jazz Series with Orlando Stewart Trio at the MFA; $15 for non-members, $10 for members, includes admission to Hazel Hough Wing galleries (currently on view: Andy Warhol prints).

Read the rest of this entry »

Image courtesy Polk Museum of Art

This weekend, the Polk Museum of Art celebrates the debut of its recently acquired Art-O-Mat with an interactive talk by Art-O-Mat founder and creator Clark Whittington.

Whittington, a conceptual artist based in Winston-Salem, NC, first hatched the Art-O-Mat idea for an exhibition in 1997, when he transformed a dilapidated cigarette machine into a retro-fabulous contraption to dispense his own small-scale works of art. When the show was over, the hosting venue—Mary’s Of Course Café in Winston-Salem—requested that the machine stick around. Whittington obliged, inviting other artists to refill it with cigarette pack-sized works.

Read the rest of this entry »

Craig Kaths. 24 bit one. 18” x 18”, 24-color screen print on Arches 88 paper. Image courtesy craigkaths.com.

Though this weekend ushers in summer – a season notoriously devoid of art offerings in Tampa Bay – you wouldn’t know it from this busy slate of openings and events. The weekend begins early with tonight’s Heart Show 2009 and an Ybor Art Party. Friday night’s opening for Craig Kaths’ exhibition at Reax Space promises to be a June highlight, along with a triple header at the historic Santaella Cigar Factory (1906 N. Armenia Ave.), where the West Tampa Center for the Arts, [5]art and Three04 will all host opening or closing receptions for current exhibits.

Thursday

6-9 p.m. – Ybor Art Party at Ybor Art Studio (2702 E. 7th Ave.), featuring art by Ron Guerin; $5 donation.

6 p.m.-12 a.m. – Heart Show 2009, a night of art and fashion at Snow Park in downtown Tampa to benefit the James Anthony Ray Sadler Scholarship Fund, hosted by Tribeca Salon; $50 VIP admission (6-8 p.m.) includes wine and hors d’ouevres by Mise En Place, $10 general admission (8 p.m.-12 a.m.). For more information, email guestservices [at] tribecasalon [dot] com.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jeremy Chandler. Couple at the Fair. Image courtesy of the artist.

First there was Beth Reynolds’ documentation of Tampa life in heterogeneous form—from the flamenco dancer to the crab fisherman. Then came Suzanne Camp Crosby’s more surreal take on the city’s character—think headless mannequins in period costume arranged on the veranda of Plant Hall. Next, Rebecca Sexton Larson’s pinhole photographs, Steven S. Gregory’s digitally altered landscapes and Marion Belanger’s haunting interior spaces, devoid of people.

Now the sixth shooter to take up the mantle of photographer laureate for the City of Tampa, Jeremy Chandler, offers his view of the burg’s charms and curiosities. Through July 6, twenty of his color photographs (from a portfolio of 35 images in all) are on view at Gallery AIA at the American Institute for Architects offices in downtown Tampa. Like each of his predecessors, Chandler sees Tampa through his own aesthetic ‘lens’—in this case, one devoted to portraiture.

Read the rest of this entry »

Arlene Lueck’s quilt, Mom’s Hair Tools, is included in EXPLORATIONS: An Exhibition of Journal Quilts at the Dunedin Fine Art Center.

Special shout-out: The weekend’s art offerings include an unusual performance to held in conjunction with Homemade: A Music Symposium on Saturday. At HCC Ybor’s art gallery, co-collaborators John Russell and Kurt Piazza, aka AVAACC, will embark on an interactive sonic adventure with the help of visitors, recording and remixing sounds gathered at symposium sites throughout the day. The resulting composition will be distributed on a collectible CD at the symposium’s end. See Saturday’s listings for more information.

Friday

5:30-7:30 p.m. – Opening reception for Wild Spirits: Lenné Nicklaus-Ball, Candace Knapp, and Felipe Packard & Ricardo de la Vega at Morean Arts Center.

6-8 p.m. – Opening reception for SAWTOOTH: New Quilts from an Old Favorite and EXPLORATIONS: An Exhibition of Journal Quilts at the Dunedin Fine Art Center; $5, free for members.

7-10 p.m. – Art Auction, featuring work by Charlie Parker, Duncan McClellan, Brian Ransom, Neverne Covington, Chad Mize, Kevin Brady, Herb Snitzer, Carol Dameron and more, in honor of the Studio@620’s fifth birthday, at St. Petersburg Clay Company.

Read the rest of this entry »

Photos by Megan Voeller

The new Tampa Museum of Art, now slated to open to the public in early 2010, inches closer toward completion each day on downtown Tampa’s riverfront. Close observers will note that the building’s distinctive cladding—a double layer of perforated metal sheets offset to create a moiré pattern on the structure’s surface—has begun to be installed. Within days, the building’s air conditioning system should be active; museum staff may begin to move in as soon as November.

Now that more than the building’s skeleton is in place, TMA director Todd Smith leads three or four hardhat tours of the structure each week (one reason why he’s looking forward to the imminent addition of air conditioning). At 66,000 sq. ft., the new museum is the right size for the community, Smith explains as we stand in the sky-lighted atrium. (That square footage, roughly on par with the expanded Museum of Fine Arts and the proposed new Dali Museum, which is expected to weigh in at 75,000 sq. ft., seems to be a sweet spot for the region.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Restrooms at Nova 535, left, and Tampa Theatre.

(Via Tampa Downtown Partnership)

Strange but true: two Tampa Bay area arts venues – downtown Tampa’s iconic Tampa Theatre and downtown St. Petersburg’s Nova 535 – are in the running for Cintas Corporation’s annual America’s Best Restroom contest.

Read the rest of this entry »

Neverne Covington’s drawing, Portrait of Bob Devin Jones (detail), 2005. (Pictured below left: Covington’s Portrait of Dave Ellis. Pictured below right: the complete portrait of Jones, which measures 45″ x 88″.)

Since April, St. Petersburg’s Studio@620 has been unfurling a series of events designed to celebrate the multidisciplinary arts venue’s fifth birthday. Following a gospel brunch, film screening and theatrical shorts, Friday’s art auction – to be held at St. Petersburg Clay Company – benefits the Studio while offering local collectors a chance to purchase works by some of the area’s artistic luminaries.

Neverne Covington, a St. Petersburg-based artist whose longtime studio space at Jannus Landing makes her a neighbor as well as a fan of the Studio@620, contributes two large-scale portraits of the nonprofit’s co-founders, Dave Ellis and Bob Devin Jones. Recalling her first encounter with Jones (while attending a performance of his play, Uncle Bends: a home-cooked negro narrative, at Eckerd College), Covington remembers thinking, “Who is this person? We need to keep him around…”

Mission accomplished—thank goodness.

Read the rest of this entry »

Wallpaper design (detail) by Anthony Zollo. Image courtesy of the artist.

For a couple of years now, Florida Craftsmen has been organizing a series of exhibitions that explore a single theme: living with art and fine craft. Despite their conceptual commonality, the exhibits couldn’t be more diverse. At Home With Crafts, the inaugural effort in 2007, offered everything from artist-designed linens and a custom fireplace to one-of-a-kind flatware and a handmade wood crib, all presented in a model home-style layout inside the gallery. Last year’s follow up, Architectural Details and Other Decorative Crafts, wowed with pieces like Alison Swann-Ingram and Carl Johnson’s eco-minimalist coffee table, made of reclaimed wood topped with glass.

This year, Florida Craftsmen narrows its focus to one particular ‘medium’—an interior design staple that has enjoyed a recent upswing in mass market popularity: wallpaper. True to their mission (“empower artists, enrich the community, engage the next generation”), the nonprofit has partnered with about 20 artists—the vast majority of them local and ‘emerging’—to create more than twice as many unique wallpapers that, it seems safe to say (for now at least), you won’t find anywhere else.

Read the rest of this entry »

Friday

6-9 p.m. – Opening reception for View Point, photography by members of North Tampa Arts League, at The Great Frame Up Gallery (1646 Bruce B. Downs Blvd, Wesley Chapel). The exhibition is judged by Robert Louis Kerns, a retired professor of visual communications from USF, who is a prizewinning photographic artist and photojournalist, as well as a teacher and author.

7-10 p.m. – Emerge art party Eight Is Enough, presented by Kick Start My Art and Tampa Artist Emporium, featuring artworks that measure 8-in. x 8-in., at Tampa Artist Emporium.

7-10 p.m. – Film Lingual 3 at C. Emerson Fine Arts. C. Emerson Fine Arts’ annual showcase of genre defying photographic works, Film Lingual 3, opens Friday with a one-night-only interactive video projection that puts visitors in the spotlight. (“We need your bodies,” tweets gallery owner Lori Johns.) This year’s roster of artists — David Audet, Nancy Cervenka, Brandon Dunlap, Corey George, Illuminations 33701, Jamie Jackson, Laszlo Horvath, Matthew Lindhardt, Austin Nelson, Leah Oates, Dana Plays and Joseph Walles — promises diversity in their creative explorations, alternately serving up documentary photography, digitally-crafted images and sculpture made from found movie film. Don’t miss an experimental film screening hosted and featuring films by Audet on Tuesday at Café Bohemia. June 5-20, with an opening reception 7-10 p.m. Fri., June 5, C. Emerson Fine Arts, 909 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, 727-898-6068, c-emersonfinearts.com; and Short Attention Span Theater, Tues., June 9, 9-11 p.m., Café Bohemia, 937 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, free, myspace.com/cafe_bohemia. (From CLTampa.com.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Black-figure Column Krater. Greek, Attic, about 510 BC. Ceramic. Tampa Museum of Art; purchased with funds from the Friends of the Arts (FOTA) 1981.5. Courtesy tampamuseum.org. Foreground: Richard E. Perry curator of Greek and Roman art Seth Pevnick.

The Tampa Museum of Art (TMA) announced this afternoon that it has hired Seth Pevnick of the J. Paul Getty Museum to serve as the museum’s Richard E. Perry curator of Greek and Roman art. Despite recent budget cuts, the museum was able to bring the curator on board thanks to a 1998 gift by Dr. Richard E. Perry and his wife, Mary, of St. Petersburg, which established the endowed position. TMA’s collection of Greek and Roman antiquities is widely regarded as the museum’s most valuable asset; Pevnick’s duties will include designing and overseeing the installation of the collection in the new building (currently scheduled to open in early 2010). A PhD candidate at UCLA’s Cotsen Institute of Archaeology and a graduate of Loyola Marymount University and Dartmouth College, Pevnick begins his position at TMA on Sept. 1.

Megan Voeller is Creative Loafing’s visual art critic. She teaches at the University of Tampa and blogs at Artsqueeze.com.

Wallpaper design by Jenipher Chandley, featured in Off and On the Wall at Florida Craftsmen. Image courtesy Florida Craftsmen.

Correction: Bejeweled takes place on Saturday night, not Friday.

Friday

5-7 p.m. – Opening reception for Re-Art, an exhibition of artworks made from repurposed objects by Dee Hood, Sheryl Haler, Kevin Dean, Gwen Fryer, Polly Holt, Rose Marie Prins and Peter Rampson, at ArtCenter Manatee.

5-7:30 p.m. – Opening reception for Jeremy Chandler: City of Tampa Photographer Laureate VI at Gallery AIA (American Institute of Architects), 200 N. Tampa St., Suite 100, Tampa. Kindly RSVP to publicart[at]tampagov.net.

6-8 p.m. – Opening reception for Paper: Off and On the Wall, an exhibition of original wallpaper designs by more than 20 artists including Wade Brickhouse, Bluelucy, Claudia Jennings, Daniel Mrgan, Melia White and Anthony Zollo, at Florida Craftsmen.

Read the rest of this entry »

Friday

6-10 p.m. – Opening reception for Experimental Skeleton’s To Boldly Go at West Tampa Center for the Arts, gallery 209.

From the release>>

‘To Boldly Go’ will explore the utopian ideas, visual flavor, pop culture influence, imagined technologies, flora and fauna, and virtually any aspect of the original Star Trek series that invited artists have focused on. Works will be in [a variety of] media. Come experience a very unique and exciting reception.

Participating artists include David Waterman, Mike Stewart, Chris Deacon, Max Valentonis, Don Fuller, Vincent Kral, April Childers, Allen Hampton, Bob Dorsey, Katey Raven Dorsey, Brian Taylor, JR Bonds, Joe Griffith, Kym O’Donnell, Jason Rodrick, Bradley Paul Valentine and more—with Special Sonic Enhancement by DJ Sam, DJ Brian Oblivion and Bud Mayhem.

Free and open to the public. Donation Bar.

7-9 p.m. – Closing reception for Fever Fakers at [5]art.

7-9 p.m. – Closing reception for Roger Chamieh: New Work at three04.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tampa Theatre begins screening Little Ashes, a film about the more-than-friendship between surrealist painter Salvador Dali and poet Federico Garcia Lorca, this weekend. Showtimes tonight, Saturday and Sunday are preceeded by talks by Dali Museum staffers, including director Hank Hine (Saturday). Twilight heartthrob Robert Pattinson plays Dali, and the film’s trailer promises a titillating mix of flamboyant artistic tempers, fragile egos and underwater eroticism. As Lorca fans know, this story doesn’t have a happy ending.

Megan Voeller is Creative Loafing’s visual art critic. She teaches at the University of Tampa and blogs at Artsqueeze.com.

Keith Haring, Andy Mouse (1986) © Keith Haring Foundation

This weekend’s visual art options include the debut of Andy Warhol Portfolios: Life and Legends at the Museum of Fine Arts, featuring more than 70 screen-prints by the pop master. Classics including Campbell’s Soup I (Cream of Mushroom), Flowers and portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Superman and Muhammad Ali go on view, along with several lesser-known portfolios. The showcase spans Warhol’s career as a fine artist, from his heyday in the 1960s to the 1980s, when he produced the poignant Endangered Species series (included in the exhibit)—four years before his unexpected death of complications from gallbladder surgery in 1987. As a bonus, the show includes portraits of Warhol by Keith Haring, whose perversely Disney-esque Andy Mouse strikes the perfect irreverent note, and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Andy Warhol Portfolios: Life and Legends, May 16-Aug. 16, Museum of Fine Arts, 255 Beach Drive NE, St. Petersburg, 727-896-2667, fine-arts.org.

Friday

6-9 p.m. – Opening reception for Reincarnate Metaphors: Girard Louis Drouillard at Salt Creek Artworks Galleries. Resident artists’ studios open during reception.

7-9:30 p.m. – Back In the Day Bazaar and Social at Tampa Street Market with special discounts, music, drinks and food provided by Loko Cuisine. Meet artist Anika Easter. $15.

Read the rest of this entry »

A 2007 work by Sabrina Small (Out Of The Trenches And Into The Fire, watercolor and ink on paper 8” x 11.5”), one of the artists featured in Zero Modern Arts Directory. See Saturday for more information.

Thursday

6-8 p.m. – Closing party for Contemporary Chinese Photography with a performance by Paul Wilborn and the Blue Roses at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts. Admission ($10 for museum members, $12 students over 21 and $15 for non-members) includes wine and hors d‘oeuvres.

Friday

8-11 p.m. – Double Takes Second Annual Dalí Look-Alike Contest, featuring a screening of the competition videos and an exhibition of surrealist artworks, at Gallery Live. (Event continues Saturday night.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Image courtesy Isabel Czerwenka-Wenkstetten and Leslie Fry

Tuesday evening marks the public debut of a collaborative project between St. Petersburg-based artist Leslie Fry and Austrian artist Isabel Czerwenka-Wenkstetten at the Studio@620. The pair met via email and Skype earlier this year then teamed up for an intense, ten-day collaboration in St. Petersburg. During Tuesday’s opening reception (6-9 p.m.), visitors are invited to peruse the resulting artwork and play an interactive game while enjoying Austrian and American food and introductions by three speakers: Andreas Stadler, Austrian Cultural Forum New York; Wallace Wilson, Director, College of the Arts, University of South Florida; and Erika Greenberg-Schneider, Owner and Master Printer of Bleu Acier Inc., Tampa.

Hoping to spawn more cross-cultural connections out of their own, Czerwenka-Wenkstetten and Fry say the reception is an opportunity to network and encounter other perspectives. Their collaboration continues in the fall when Vienna’s Windspiel Galerie will showcase their work. Over the weekend, both artists offered thoughts about their collaboration by email.

Artsqueeze: How did you both meet and decide to collaborate?

Isabel Czerwenka-Wenkstetten: I researched in the area who did interesting work, so I searched the internet, and Jorge Vidal at the Arts Center, among others, mentioned Leslie Fry. So I researched her. And I like her work, I love the aesthetics and background she works with. So I called her from Europe and told her about the project. That was in September, I guess. Then some emails, and soon Leslie gave her OK to that exploration.

Read the rest of this entry »

models wait to go onstage at IADT's annual fashion show

I hadn’t seen daylight since about 1 p.m., yesterday. From then on I was the backstage photographer for the International Academy of Design and Technology’s annual student fashion show.

This year’s fashion show was titled Imagine, at the A La Carte Pavilion in Tampa.  I hardly saw the runway, instead I was in the back hallway, lined with rows of costumes, ranging from sea creatures, to bikini brides, and goth couture.  At any moment, depending on which way I turned the atmosphere could be chill, frantic or anywhere in between.

See more photos after the jump: Read the rest of this entry »

The lineup for October’s Ringling International Arts Festival features New York cabaret sensation Meow Meow. Meowmeowrevolution.com.

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, in partnership with the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York, announces the first Ringling International Arts Festival, scheduled to take place in Sarasota this October. The festival, which runs Oct. 7-11, features an array of dance, music and theatrical performances. (Somewhat disapointingly, it looks like the visual arts offerings will be limited to the museum’s planned exhibitions, Venice in the Age of Canaletto and Louise Fishman Among the Old Masters.)

However, the festival’s dance and theater offerings are out of this world (or, at least, out of this region, in the sense that aficionados would ordinarily make a pilgrimage to PS 122 or Jacob’s Pillow to see performances like these). Both a world premiere by Canadian choreographer Aszure Barton and an extended version of Arena, choreographed by Deganit Shemy, are festival commissions. Theater offerings include a world premiere (another festival commission) by Elevator Repair Service and Ella Hickson’s Eight, winner of the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe Festival’s highest honor.

Also not to be missed, “post post-modern showgirl” Meow Meow’s Beyond Glamour: The Absinthe Tour.

Click here to access the festival’s website, including an order form for festival passes. (Individual ticket sales start May 15.) Ringling members, of course, get the best deals– like an eight-performance pass for $180.

Megan Voeller is Creative Loafing’s visual art critic. She teaches at the University of Tampa and blogs at Artsqueeze.com.

Ann-Marie Manker, Hummingbirds. myspace.com/cheddarbunny

On Friday, [5]art presents the first in a series of exhibitions from contemporary art galleries around the country where the Tampa collective’s work will be shown later this year. Fever Fakers, featuring five artists from Young Blood Gallery in Atlanta, is particularly notable for its fine examples of figurative drawing and painting: from Steven Alexander Dixey’s chilling acrylic interpretations of classical and biblical imagery (e.g., Cain at the moment of his sentencing, guiltily clutching a handgun), rendered in a style that’s half graphic novel and half medieval altarpiece, to Ann-Marie Manker’s delicate drawings that follow a female figure through a fantasyland populated by curiously affectionate animals. If this show doesn’t raise the temperature of Tampa’s visual art scene by a few degrees, what will?

Friday

6 p.m. – Opening reception for Verso: The Other Side of the Urban Vista, photographs by Thomas U. Gessler, at the Studio@620.

7-10 p.m. – Opening reception for Fever Fakers, featuring art by Steven Dixey, Ann-Marie Manker, Samuel Parker, Joe Tsambiras and Cristina Vidal of Young Blood Gallery (Atlanta) at [5]art.

7-10 p.m. – Opening reception for Roger Chamieh, featuring work by the Tampa-based sculptor, at three04 (adjacent to [5]art).

Saturday

10 a.m.-5 p.m. – ECO.lution, Cotanchobee Fort Brooke Park in downtown Tampa. (Though not a visual art event, let’s support the Urban Charrette’s efforts to promote sustainable living in Tampa Bay.)

10 a.m.-5 p.m. – 10th Annual Wildlife & Western Visions Art Show at Raymond James Financial, St. Petersburg. For more information contact The Plainsmen Gallery 1-888-779-2240 or go to wildlifeartshow.com.

Read the rest of this entry »

Dominique Labauvie, Firecloud, 2009, Steel, 21 X 21 X 5 in. Courtesy Blue Acier.

Bleu Acier announced last night that French sculptor Dominique Labauvie has received a Gottlieb Foundation grant for 2009. Labauvie, who lives in Tampa, will be featured in an exhibit at the gallery opening May 23.

Megan Voeller is Creative Loafing’s visual art critic. She teaches at the University of Tampa and blogs at Artsqueeze.com.

Oil painting by Kimberly Adams

The University of South Florida’s MFA grads are having an End of the Semester Studio Sale in anticipation of summer vacation. Snag affordable art by up-and-coming artists. Facebook users, click here to find out more and peruse pics.

Wed., Apr. 29, 2-5 p.m.
FAS Grad Studios (Located in the small building just north of the Contemporary Art Museum.)
4202 E. Fowler Ave., Tampa

For more information: emmuelle[at]mail.usf.edu.

Megan Voeller is Creative Loafing’s visual art critic. She teaches at the University of Tampa and blogs at Artsqueeze.com.

Leslie Fry. Detail of Towards. Painted plaster, 12” x 18” x 3”. Image courtesy of the artist.

This weekend roundup goes out with special happy birthday wishes to ARTpool! (see Saturday)

Friday

5:30-8:30 p.m. – Opening reception for Alternative Vistas: New and Recent Work by Creative Clay Artists at Creative Clay.

6-8 p.m. – Opening reception for Clearing the Path: Leslie Fry at Allyn Gallup Contemporary Art.

6-8 p.m. – Opening reception for Buy Florida, By Florida Furniture and Original Design at Florida Craftsmen Gallery.

6-9 p.m. – Opening reception for craft-ed!, works by emerging artists of Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts Artists-in-Residence program 2003-2008, and solo exhibitions of work by Charles Parkhill and Kim Michelle Coakley at Dunedin Fine Arts Center. Gallery talk for craft-ed! at 6 p.m., followed by reception at 7 p.m.

Read the rest of this entry »

Intersect at C. Emerson Fine Arts features celluloid sculptures by Gulfport artist Nancy Cervenka. Image courtesy CEFA.

Friday

7-10 p.m. – Opening reception for Pompous Circumstance, the USF Senior Thesis BFA Exhibition, at the West Tampa Center for the Arts.

7-9 p.m. – [5]art opens in conjunction with Pompous Circumstance at the WTCA. Current show: Five + 5.

Saturday

8 a.m. – Roser Park Photo Walk, free and open to photographers of all levels. For more information go to PhotographyIsEasy.com.

10 a.m.-3 p.m. – Art in the Park art and craft market in Williams Park, 400 First Ave. N., downtown St. Petersburg.

3 p.m. – Opening day and gallery talk with Chief Curator Dr. Jennifer Hardin for Developing the Collection: Recent Acquisition of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts.

Read the rest of this entry »

I became a fan of Tampa-based fashion designer Ben Chmura after seeing his work at Dirty But Sophisticated 4. (He was also featured in last summer’s installment of Wearable Art at the Dunedin Fine Art Center.) Chmura describes his design aesthetic as “retro-futuristic” and lately has been incorporating the influence of ancient global cultures into his sexy party dresses. This weekend he brings his latest and greatest work out of the closet at DENILE, an Egyptian-themed fashion event at Ybor nightclub Czar.

Venomous snakes, from the black mamba to the cobra, inspire both the dresses’ fabric color and texture and their construction, which Chmura describes as modeled on snake musculature and other anatomy. “Each carefully created frock is intended to be a statement of subtle, sophisticated empowerment for all women,” according to the event press release.

Damn straight, hiss…

DENILE, Sat., Apr. 11, 9 p.m.-12 a.m. (fashion show at 11 p.m.), Imperial Theatre at Czar Nightclub; after-party continues at Czar. Standing-room admission is $7 for 21+ and $10 for guests under 21; limited seating available for $20. Admission includes a free “Bleeding Cleopatra” cocktail by sponsor Absolut Vodka. For more information, click here.

Megan Voeller is Creative Loafing’s visual art critic. She teaches at the University of Tampa and blogs at Artsqueeze.com.