Daily Loaf

Welcome to On the Radar, where we preview up-and-coming arts events to mark your calendar for. The busy bees at the Best of the Bay-winning [5]art Gallery live up to the title this weekend, and we enjoy the sweet reward of their work with two interesting interdisciplinary events.

On Friday, the gallery debuts cumbas:echeverry:torres, a collection of recent works from Tampa-based artists: paintings by Edgar Sanchez Cumbas (also a BOTB winner); new media and printmaking by UT professor of art Santiago Echeverry ; and drawings by Alex Torres. A one night-only exhibit at the opening reception also includes mini-masterpieces from 5by5 that you can own for just $20 a pop. These small works on paper let even those of us on a Ramen noodle budget take home original art by hometown heroes like Allen Hampton, Rebecca Skelton, April Childers and many more. Our other local artisans – of beer, that is – from Cigar City Brewing provide suds and hors d’oeuvres.  Up next: Sleep of Reason Cinema Series. Read the rest of this entry »

Because it’s hard to know these days whether to be cautiously optimistic that the recession might be ending or terrified that nobody knows what will happen next, contemplating Florida’s place in the economic (and, increasingly, environmental) miasma is a harrowing exercise.

Artist Michael Parker has his own vision of the state’s fate, as expressed in a composite of digital photographs (”The Final Battle,” right): two toddlers, each sunk ankle-deep into cement, seeming to lunge toward each other in a grappling contest, set against a slightly surreal landscape of swirling clouds and an ominously looming tree.

The picture — simultaneously laugh-out-loud funny and disturbing — conveys in a nutshell for curator Manuel Lopez what the exhibit Slow Death of a Flamingo is about. Read the rest of this entry »