Magazine Posts Table of Contents

Beck's Urban Canvas Launched in Miami

Posted 2015-08-09 11:36:17 | Views: 5,178
Beck’s, the most popular German-style beer in the world, has taken over walls across Miami this summer for the art and community revitalization campaign “Urban Canvas” . 

Twelve Miami-based artists have created 15 murals in Wynwood, Little Haiti, Little Havana and Hialeah. Beck’s aim is to “foster progressive thinking in Miami” and create a “community-focused art project aimed at neighborhood revitalization.”

 
Wynwood has been the center for street art for a few years now and mural projects are nothing new here but Beck’s introduced its multinational corporation support and exposure while respecting the local art scene and artists. Beck’s also decided to include neighborhoods lesser known for their respective art communities and create additional programming throughout the summer.

Says Beck’s Regional Marketing Director Mateus Schroeder, “The artists we’ve invited to participate in this project are helping to shape the local culture and we are excited to share their creations with Beck’s drinkers and support events in these respective communities that everyone can appreciate.”

The “Beck’s Urban Canvas” launch party took place at Wynwood Walls on July 23, 2015 with, of course, a lot of complimentary Beck’s as well as hors d’oeuvres by Wynwood Kitchen & Bar, music, art and special giveaways.  
The artists:
2 Alas, Abstrk, Diana Contreras, Don Rimx, Ernesto Maranje, Hoxxoh, Jessy Nite, Jose Mertz, Magnus Sodamin, Trek 6, Typoe and Tatiana Suarez

The Adidas Do-Over @Sidebar Miami

Posted 2015-06-21 08:34:30 | Views: 5,107
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Analog Art 2014

Posted 2014-07-26 06:44:52 | Views: 6,718
ANALOG ART 2014

The second edition of Analog Art was held at Yo Space in Miami's Little River district. After a successful first edition in 2013 at Sweat Records patrons were excited to see what artists would do this year, painting and manipulating vinyl records and record sleeves. The one-night only event featuring DJs spinning... what else?... records, turned out to be a night of art, music, friends, fun and positive vibes.


Analog Art 2014 was a very diverse show with over 50 artists such as 8bitLexicon, Agent7, Aquarela, Atomik, Bad Panda, Buddha Funk, Carlos Alejandro, CP1, Ernesto Kunde, Evoca1, Jessica Schnur, Jill Weisberg, Jorge Rodriguez, Lorie Ofir, Luis Valle, Nate Dee, Red, Ruben Ubiera, Teepop, Tesoro Carolina, Whut and Yuhmi Collective




 


Michael Vasquez Artist Series Release Party at Del Toro

Posted 2014-07-24 18:36:34 | Views: 6,341
Michael Vasquez Artist Series Release Party at Del Toro

Jeffrey Noble "Welcome to MarZ" at Butter Gallery

Posted 2014-06-16 08:43:07 | Views: 5,070

Based on photos taken in Jeffrey Noble's hometown of Melbourne, Florida in the late 80s and early 90s, the series of paintings by the young artist explores the climate of the time with a twinge of nostalgia and a rather gloomy outlook on the future. Inspired by Noble's musings on the lifestyle of the last generation growing up without the internet the paintings are defined by a pervasive black atmosphere. With sand, oil and spray paint Noble creates a system that responds to cultural context and materiality. He mines his life experiences in Melbourne and Miami and uses those to present a narrative rendered in a unique style that merges European painting tradition with graffiti and Noble's personal aesthetic. He thereby creates works that grapple with often dark and apocalyptic thoughts and themes set in a digital future projected upon images of the now defunct Melbourne nightclub The Marz Club.

"Welcome to MarZ" is on view until August 30, 2014 at Butter Gallery, 2930 NW 7th Ave, Miami 33127

New York: Bushwick Collective

Posted 2014-05-20 13:04:02 | Views: 5,489
BUSHWICK COLLECTIVE

Ernesto Kunde "Symbiotic Promise" at the Bakehouse Art Complex

Posted 2014-05-13 08:12:09 | Views: 6,086
ERNESTO KUNDE "SYMBIOTIC PROMISE"

Brazilian-born Miami-based artist Ernesto Kunde has found inspiration in the architecture, lifestyle and art of Miami since he first relocated to the city just over seven years ago. His most recent series of works, large scale mangrove paintings inspired by research trips to the Everglades and the Florida Keys, are now presented in an exhibition at the Swenson Gallery of the Bakehouse Art Complex.


Curated by Ananda DeMello, Kunde's solo exhibiton "Symbiotic Promise," examines South Florida's  mangroves, the native flora, and humanity's relationship with nature. DeMello's curatorial approach creates a space designed to heighten awareness about that symbiotic relationship. Surrounded by mangroves viewers are transported into an artistic version of a sensory nature experience.


“Symbiotic Promise” runs until June 8, 2014 at the Swenson Gallery at the Bakehouse Art Complex, 561 NW 32nd Street, Miami 33127


Locust Projects Spring Fling 2014

Posted 2014-04-30 08:24:08 | Views: 4,221

Locust Projects Celebrates La Dolce Vita at the Annual Spring Fling Fundraiser

On Saturday April 26th Locust Projects invited friends and supporters to their highly anticipated annual fundraiser, the Spring Fling. The La Dolce Vita theme brought together the who is who of Miami’s visual art scene for the sunset soiree overlooking Miami Beach.

On the 7th floor of the Lincoln Road parking garage, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, a diverse crowd gathered to enjoy culinary delights, wine and cocktails, mingle, and support Locust Projects through the silent auction, which included luxury items and contemporary art works by Daniel Arsham, Michael Vasquez, Justin Beal, Evan Nesbit, Judith Eisler, Ruby Sky Stiler, Sean Duffy, and Anthony Pearson among others.

Dawn Fine, Debra Scholl, Linda Adler, & Chana Sheldon - photo by World Red Eye, provided by Locust Projects

The Spring Fling, which has become a highlight on the Miami social calendar, also offered music by DJ Le Spam, a fine wine auction led by Eric Larkee, Wine Director of the Genuine Hospitality Group, and the O Miami Poetry Festival poetry station where three poets created poems on demand.

Thanks to the dedication of the host committee, including power-house names like Debra & Dennis Scholl, The Related Group, Art Basel Miami Beach, Leni Sender, Craig Robins, John Speers, Greenberg Traurig LLP, and Holland & Knight LLP the Locust Projects’ signature event was a success again in 2014. Attendees enjoyed every minute of the event and the auction raised essential funding for exhibitions and programming.

photo by World Red Eye, provided by Locust Projects

Guests included SocialMiami.com publisher Aaron Glickman, President of Northern Trust Ed Joyce, Program Director of the Knight Foundation, Matt Haggman and wife Dane Linares, Art Advisor Lisa Austin, Coral Gables Commissioner Vicente Lago, art collectors Florence & Sheldon Anderson and Isabelle Kowal, gallerists Carol Jazzar and Anthony Spinello, as well as artists like Daniel Arsham, Typoe, Asif Farooq, Agustina Woodgate, Brookhart Jonquil and Jillian Mayer.

Locust Projects, a not for profit exhibition space in the Design District, is known for embracing cutting-edge exhibitions and innovative installations. “We are celebrating more than 15 years of providing local, national and internationally based contemporary visual artists the freedom to experiment with new ideas and methods without the limitations of conventional exhibition spaces. Community support has always been vital to Locust Projects' success and the Spring Fling is one of Locust Projects’ most important sources of revenue for the year” says Locust Projects Executive Director, Chana Sheldon.

Locust Projects supports the local community through educational initiatives and programming that are free to the public. For more information visit www.locustprojects.org

"Eroded Rose Quartz Walkman" by Daniel Arsham
"Things Fall Apart" by Michael Vasquez
Typoe and Daniel Arsham - photo by Heike Dempster
Dennis Scholl and Joey Daoud - photo by World Red Eye, provided by Locust Projects
Carol Jazzar and a friend - photo by Heike Dempster
David Marsh and Kristen Soller Marsh - photo by World Red Eye, provided by Locust Projects
Gustavo Oviedo and girlfriend - photo by Heike Dempster
DJ Le Spam - photo by World Red Eye, provided by Locust Projects
Asif Farooq and Typoe - photo by Robert Dempster
Neil Ramsay and Michael Hughes - photo by World Red Eye, provided by Locust Projects
Jill Weisberg, Sarah Michelle Rupert and friend - photo by Heike Dempster
O Miami Poetry Festival poets - photo by World Red Eye, provided by Locust Projects
Jillian Mayer, Brookhart Jonquil and friends - photo by Heike Dempster

An Interview with Tatiana Suarez

Posted 2014-04-21 07:58:29 | Views: 5,960
TATIANA SUAREZ

Tell us a bit on how you got started in your career.


It goes back to school, I guess. I always had a passion for painting and art but then, when I was in college, I focused more towards graphic design. I realized I could not really do both. It was difficult to graduate in both majors. It would take me forever so I put art to the side and focused on design. I graduated and worked in advertising for a couple of years and then I realized I was kind of miserable. I was living with my mom at the time so I was able to save enough money to quit and focus on my art. I have been doing that since 2008. Really glad I did. That’s kind of how I got started.


Please share some career highlights with us.


Some highlights of my career have been getting into mural painting. My first one was in 2009. A lot of my graffiti writer friends were always encouraging me to take my stuff out to the streets and I finally did. I was really nervous. A blank canvas is already intimidating for me so a blank wall was even more so.

What’s the hardest about painting a mural?


To me, the scale and being in public. It’s not my favorite thing. I still prefer to paint in the privacy of my studio. You are vulnerable. People see your progress and the mistakes. I kind of get uncomfortable and it is really hard to cover up. I feel like, don’t look at me, don’t look at me. It’s stressful because you always have an audience. It’s something you have to get used to. Also, it’s different materials. I am still getting comfortable with the spray cans. I am still trying to figure out my technique when it comes to murals.


You have been doing a lot of mermaids lately. Is that a particular passion of yours?


I have always been inspired by Disney. I have always liked the little mermaid. It is one of my favorite cartoons. When I started painting the girls in high school I had a fascination with the fantastical. Fairies and mermaids. The whole mermaid mural thing lately though, I think it happened while I was living in New York. That was my way of feeling nostalgic of Miami. The ocean and stuff like that. It is just like a fluid figure for a while. It seems appropriate for Miami. It is funny that I never really considered that but now people are like, oh, do you want to paint a mermaid? I am kind of falling into the category of mermaid painters. It’s funny.

Are you from Miami?


Yes.


What do you love most about this city?


The ocean. That was the one thing I missed when I was gone. We live really far away from the ocean right now but we try. It’s therapy. Going out there and that’s our back yard and being able to relax and take that all in.


You had moved to New York. Why did you come back?


We were homesick. We did not ever mean to leave Miami permanently. Miami is always home but we wanted to experience living outside of this city for a little bit. The weather was a big factor. The lifestyle in New York was just too difficult.

Did you get to do any work in New York?


I did a couple of murals. I was working hard but most of the time it was for shows in California and Miami. It wasn’t until towards the end of my stay in New York that I started exhibiting there. I exhibited in a small gallery space called “My Plastic Heart.” That’s what sucks, because I just started to meet a bunch of artists. It was sad that I was leaving just as I started building relationships with them.

What was the experience like being in the New York art scene vs. Miami?


I wouldn’t really know because I am a homebody. I wouldn’t get out much. The one thing I did notice was that a lot of the art work I loved and a lot of the artists I am a fan of would exhibit there, where in Miami, you only see them during Basel time. It was always cool to attend an opening and meet them because they were going to be there.


Which artists’ work do you really like?


There is so many. When it comes to street muralists, I love Miss Van’s work. I love her canvas gallery work and her murals. I love Glenn Brown. I like the color palettes of different artists. Right now I like Eric Jones. There are just so many.


Your work always has a central female figure. Has your work always had that focus?


Yes, for the most part. It has always kind of been women or animal based. In my work, I always try to tie in females with nature. I remember in school I was always fascinated by drawing animals. I would always draw cheetahs and tigers and birds. Then it became women.

Why do you relate women and nature? Was that a conscious decision or did that just happen more randomly?


I guess it was just something that happened but it ties into Mother Nature.


Who inspires the women you paint?


She is someone that kind of just came up. People always ask if it is a self-portrait but they are not meant to be. My more recent work, it depends on the meaning and what I am going through. Maybe I put something of myself in the work but the figure is not necessarily me but the message or the symbolism is.


So are they all basically the same woman?


I never really thought about it that way. They are not supposed to be. They look the same and that’s something I want to work on more and use actual models as my reference.

Do you invent background stories or narratives for the women?


It’s funny because each piece is inspired by something super random. It could be a lyric in a song or a quote in a movie. I am really into folklore and mythology, especially from Latin America, Mexico and South America. If it is just a little tale that I heard or read somewhere, I like to base the piece off of that but I let the viewer interpret it themselves. They do come up to me and ask me and some of them do have a back story. It depends.

Where do you see yourself and your art going at this point?


I don’t know. I am excited. I kind of have a little time off because last year was a crazy one with deadlines. I am looking forward to just be experimenting and see where it goes from here. I always stay figurative for the most part.


What is your favorite medium?


The oil paint.


What features of the oil paint are you drawn to?


I love to blend and render and oil paint is just super creamy. It’s my favorite medium. It allows itself to get smooth and blend and it is forgiving and it smells nice. It reminds me of school.

You did a shoe collaboration with Reebok. How did that come about?


I actually met Wayne, who is the artist who represented the New York shoe during Art Basel during my first mural in 2009. A flamingo that is still kind of surviving. She has gotten vandalized a little. I met him and Stash was the one who curated the whole project. He passed my information to Stash and Stash told him to invite me. They needed an artist to represent Miami and they chose me and I was super honored. I was the only female on the project, which was cool, too.




You really incorporated Miami with the gators and the dominoes.


That was the project. All the artists had to do a canvas with your style representing your city. I did the gator. They did not want it to be too feminine, which is a weird request because my work is feminine. Every time I do incorporate animals like reptiles and mammals in my work I try to keep it less cute. I use the grouser animals that people don’t like. I tried to keep it as unfeminine as I could. It was cool. Then they just took the pieces and put them on the shoes. It was a long process.


Are you planning to do any similar projects in the future?


I hope. If I get contacted for something like that again I would love to do another shoe. It broke my heart that they did not do the female shoes so I really hope to get together with them in the future and do a female shoe.


Are you with any gallery right now?


I do not really have any representation. I show a lot. In San Francisco I show with Spoke Art. In Miami not yet. The idea of being represented right now is like getting tied down. I am not ready. Especially in Miami. I am from here so I like to participate in as many shows as I can. I don’t really want to feel tied down. Maybe if the right gallery came along.

Do you have any upcoming exhibitions?


I will be in an exhibition at Known Gallery in Los Angeles. It is going to be a three person show. I still don’t have a date.


How can people purchase your art?


My website has a shop that I need to update and I am working on getting a newsletter set up so people can keep posted. www.tatisuarez.com

What’s your favorite book?


One of my favorite books I have ever read is “Invisible Monster” by Chuck Palahniuk. I also love “Fight Club.” I am trying to get into the habit of listening to more audio books while I paint. I like to work with movies on in the background. I could listen to music but at some point I get stressed out when the song changes. I like to have TV or a movie as background. It is usually movies I have watched a million times so I don’t get distracted. I can quote movies.


Which ones?


Like “Pulp Fiction” and lately it has been “Shaun of the Dead” a lot.


You have a prominent tattoo on your arm. Can you tell us a bit about it?


It is the artist Alphonse Mucha. He is one of my favorite artists and a big inspiration. He is from the 1890s. Very art nouveau stuff. He was a big inspiration when I started painting, especially the way he paints women and their figures and his color palette. He does a lot of seasonal series. I went to Paris and I went to the Louvre and I bought one of his books and came to my tattoo artist here and he did it. We are adding as we go along.

You mentioned artist’s color palettes twice. How important is a distinct color palette to your work?


That’s another thing that sparks inspiration in pieces I have come across like a photograph. If I like the colors, I will try to incorporate that into my piece. Color is important. It changes a lot though. I don’t really have an idea when I start a piece unless something inspires me. The color palette changes as the piece goes by. That’s another struggle with the murals. You have to have more of an idea of the colors cause it is not as easy to change. It is still not super comfortable for me.


What’s the best advice your parents ever gave you?


I am super grateful that my parents have supported me and continue to so. My dad used to paint and he never pursued it. They let me follow my dreams. They never pushed me to do something I did not want to do so I guess the advice is to do what I love and continue to do it and be happy doing it.


Do you have any other news you would like to share?


I am involved in a project at the Marine Stadium in Key Biscayne . It is called Friends of the Miami Marine Stadium. They are doing this project to preserve the stadium and fix it and open it up again for business. The city has been wanting to tear it down. They are getting artists to come down, both local and from all over, and we are painting murals there and documenting it and we will release prints and the benefits will go to the stadium. For more info check out www.marinestadium.org


Primary Projects presents "Christina Pettersson: The Castle Dismal"

Posted 2014-04-19 08:00:47 | Views: 4,828

Primary Projects presents the solo exhibition "The Castle Dismal" by Christina Pettersson exploring her undying fascination with Southern Gothic, the poignancy of ghosts ever wronged.


In a seemingly haunted and eerie space, Pettersson addresses the Deep South through drawing, installation, sculpture, performance, and a series of weekly events.


Says Pettersson, “All this is a way of re-addressing the Deep South, a place I genuinely love and feel connected to. I am approaching this imagery hard, face first into utter desolation. A constant state of mourning. A life where everything else falls around you, until at last you are forced to admit that you may be the cause of it all."

 

“The Castle Dismal” is on view at Primary Projects until June 20, 2014

CHRISTINA PETTERSSON "THE CASTLE DISMAL"
photos C by Heike & Robert Dempster

Opening Reception of Bhakti Baxter's solo exhibition " 2014" at Gallery Diet

Posted 2014-04-08 14:51:09 | Views: 5,845

The solo exhibition by Bhakti Baxter presents a continuation of the artist's interest in geometry.


“2014” features a series of concrete sculptures and ink on mylar drawings that explore volume, surface, space, and composition guided by fundamental geometric theorems. Each of the concrete sculptures offers a unique handling of mathematic axioms such as the Pythagorean theorem and the vesica piscis.


In the project room, Baxter has prepared a series of drawings which return to his use of ink on mylar and incorporate recent experiences with elementary shapes and proportions. This playful body of work balances between strict mathematical laws and anarchic immateriality, embracing geometry as a dependable truth with a supernatural counterpart.

BHAKTI BAXTER: 2014
Photos C by Heike & Robert Dempster

"SOME LIKE IT HOT" at HistoryMiami

Posted 2014-03-20 14:32:44 | Views: 4,256
SOME LIKE IT HOT

We’re proud to be the first Miami museum to present the work of these incredible local artists and the street art movement, both pieces of South Florida’s history,” says Stuart Chase, Museum Director and Chief Operating Officer. “Aside from a few pieces sitting in private collections, art of this kind has been conspicuously absent from museums in Miami until now.”

Curated by Brandon Opalka, HistoryMiami presents “Some Like it Hot,” an exhibition highlighting Miami graffiti artists and muralists. Recently, street art has experienced a surge of popularity in Miami and has moved into the realm of fine art.

The work displays the vast variety and the scope of local street art, inspired by the city of Miami and its diverse, complex, and rich cultural landscape.

 

Artists like Abstrk, Astre 74, Atomik, Bhakti Baxter, Brandon Opalka, Erin Odea, George Sanchez-Calderon, Gustavo Oviedo, Hox, Jeffrey Noble, Luis Berros, Pucho, Tatiana Suarez, and Victor Muniz interpret their city and present who they are as artists within that context. 

For more information, opening hours and admission please visit www.historymiami.org

Jeffrey Noble

Posted 2014-03-17 10:26:33 | Views: 5,723
JEFFREY NOBLE

Interview by Heike & Robert Dempster


Photos of Jeffrey Noble by Robert Dempster


Photos of the art provided by Jeffrey Noble

Technically, how would you describe your work?


It is very figurative. It is pluralist, in a way. I identify with things that Donald Judd was doing and even though I don’t work minimalist at all, I sample . Perfect. Because I am part of this generation that has the internet and has access to all this information on all these different art periods I can just go research at the click of a button. I am able to sample whatever I want from whatever period of time. I almost think of myself as a DJ sometimes, flipping through albums, sampling and doing these weird match ups. Lately I have been looking at a lot of Francis Bacon because he had the figurative element as well as that gestural, very abstract expressionistic approach.

How does your process work? How much of the finished piece do you see before you put brush to canvas?


I’d have to say it’s 50/50 for the most part. Sometimes I can visualize a piece and it comes out almost exactly how I had planned. Not even almost exactly but it comes out close. And sometimes works really go off on another tangent and divert from my original idea. For the most part I would say about 50/50. I specifically have been working with referential material. The references that I am using have poor quality or have been run through several filters, like a screenshot taken from a conspiracy video that had sampled a movie clip. I take that and do a photo collage in Photoshop and then I use that as my reference. If it is just a really old, poor quality photograph or something like that, I like using that as a source of reference, because it allows me a lot of opportunity to implement my own artistic vision.

You say 50/50. Do you have a preference for either the ones that you didn’t plan that way or the ones that came out exactly as you had envisioned?


It is kind of just like a case by case basis. I would like them to come out but I do like a certain amount of surprises to happen in the work. If it comes out less like what I have planned, I am totally fine with that. I almost prefer that. I can see that as I grow as an artist I start to allow more and more of that to happen. More chance to be involved in the process. Right now, there is still a pretty good amount of control exercising over the works I think.


You have been traveling a lot since graduation from New World School of the Arts. How did that affect your work? What did you take away from it?


I went to several different places. First, I went off to Texas with the Chinati Foundation, which is a foundation that was set up by Donald Judd, the minimal sculptor. Marfa, Texas. It is in the middle of the desert. It is three hours from anywhere. Being out there in that landscape was very, very different. A very different environment. It was inspiring in a lot of ways. I am really into these mid-century artists like Donald Judd and the minimal sculptors. Especially the work I am working on now doesn’t really have much in common with them. There is something maybe about what they were interested in. Their fascinations. Reading about them. Reading some of Donald Judd’s writings, I could really relate to some of the things that he says. That was just a brief trip. After that I followed by going to Europe and I went through Italy and did Venice, Florence and Rome with my graduating class. Then, I went off on my own afterwards to Berlin, Amsterdam and Vienna, Austria. I have to say, Italy definitely impacted me the most because I was seeing all the historical paintings, sculptures, architecture. All the work of the masters. It is all within the Western canon of art making. It has always been something that I wanted to see in person and I had the chance to. There were some things that I saw and I thought, oh, that’s not as impressive as it is made out to be, and then there were some things I had never even heard of before, that I was completely floored by.

You have to give us examples. What did you see that you expected to be great and it was not and what were you amazed by that you had never heard of?


I gotta say the Sistine Chapel. So much hype around it. The fact that it is a fresco is amazing. He was painting it on his back onto the ceiling, but it is not as impressive. The anatomy is not that tight. A lot of the figures are kind of disproportioned and whatnot. Maybe it has to do with the context in which you are viewing it. It was kind of dark in the room, looking up, and crowded with a lot of people. You kind of have been walking through the entire Vatican already and it is kind of one of the last things you get to. You are crammed in there with a bunch of people like sardines so that doesn’t make it quite as enjoyable, I think. As far as something that I did not know much about that turned out, was the Tintoretto paintings. He has a lot of ceiling pieces in Venice in the Doge’s Palace and whatnot. His paintings are oil paintings so they are done on canvas and then installed on the ceilings so he wasn’t painting them on his back or anything like that, but they are still amazing. I think he was very much ahead of his time and set a precedence for how the work is painted. So much of what he was doing was so gestural. Very implied. I could really take apart the layers of how he was creating these paintings and that’s something I was really, really into viewing as a painter.

What are you currently working on?


I have got too much going on. Right now, I am working on a bunch of projects for a bunch of other people. That’s basically how it goes since graduating school and finishing my student life, for now at least. I have been lucky enough to be working around a lot of art and with other artists, whether that is working for the museums, collections or assisting people. I just came from assisting Typoe. He is one of my best friends and he introduces me to a lot of people. One of the reasons I moved here to Miami.


Where are you from?


I grew up in Melbourne, Florida. 321

Some of your new paintings have a dark aspect. What inspires that?


I am entertained by the fact that I lived through multiple manifestations of apocalyptic fear. We had Y2K where people thought the world was going to end cause the computers were going to crash. Now we have had 2012 where everyone thought the world was going to end because of the Mayan calendar. I love that we constantly think there is going to be an end to this shit. I don’t want to get into my religious or spiritual believes or anything like that but I think that that is a very, very fascinating aspect of life that we constantly have to search for I don’t know. We keep subscribing to this fear that we are going to stop and this is going to end and that something bad is going to happen. I just don’t think that that is something you should concern yourself with but I love concerning myself with the stories surrounding it. It is bizarre.

Could you tells us more about your new series of paintings please?


With these new paintings I am working towards an exhibition. I will have a show at Butter Gallery. We are shooting for mid-April. We have not set a date yet. It is still in the works. Paco of Butter Gallery has been great to work with. He is giving me the freedom of not having a deadline. Even though, most times I work better with a deadline. As I said before, I pick a lot of imagery that is based on poor quality photographs. It allows opportunity for me explore other things in paint. I don’t have to stick so closely to the referential image. The photos for this series are from the late 80s and early 90s. All the images I am choosing are kind of from that period. The images are from a friend of mine back in Melbourne. He is kind of a local legend where I am from. For various reasons. His name is Mike Webber. I used to see him driving around town all the time and you couldn’t miss him because he drives these old beat up trucks and he piles junk in the back of his trucks, taller than the cab. This stuff, you think it is a hazard when you see him driving around. He spray paints all over it and stuff. It is a real eyesore but I love it. I think it looks great. He has got a whole fleet of them. He is just known as the junkman in my town. One time I was painting a wall with Typoe and he pulls up in his truck and he asks is we want to paint his truck. We did some quick graffiti, like our names or something like that, and then he takes off. I bumped into him again after about a month or so and he hands me these photographs he took of the trucks and they had kind of this old quality and I actually held on to them for a couple of years. I was looking for something to work with in one of my painting classes and I found those photographs so I thought, why don’t I paint those trucks? I thought it was kind of interesting, like this inception thing, where I painted the truck and he took a photograph of it, giving it back to me and



then doing a painting of the photograph of what I painted on his truck. I kind of hope that these other references almost function in the same way because they are his photographs that he took in the late 80s and early 90s. It is basically just like the bar and club scene in my hometown of Melbourne. Growing up with older siblings and being around older people, you hear stories about these places like the old Mars Club or Coconuts. I was born in 1987, so I am interested in the climate of that time.

Do you know the people in the photographs?


Some of them yes and some of them no. Many of the people, I have no idea who they are, but some of them, every once in a while, I would be going through his photos and I would be able to recognize someone, like my friend’s dad. That’s kind of cool when that happens. It is funny that you bring that up. I have an image of Moby in 1993. He passed through central Florida and played a show. That was probably before he was big or well known.


Is central Florida in the 80s and 90s the theme for the exhibition?


I guess so. What interests me about this specific time period are the people and technology. My generation has been the first generation that has gown up with the internet. We have access to the web everywhere we go. We grew up with a lot of things, a lot of information, that wasn’t immediately available to generations that preceded us. Growing up in a globalized world. I think that something about that is the reason why I am painting these people from this time. There is a historical stamp that is going to be on that time right there.

Do you even remember a time without cell phones?


I do. I think my interest in this period, too, is because a lot of my peers don’t have the same sort of affinity and understanding for that period. I have siblings that are like 10 years older than me so they were influencing me, turning me on to punk when I was really young and exposing me to a lot of things. For various reasons my mom kind of kept things away from us for a while. I don’t think I got a cell phone until I was a senior in high school. We didn’t have cable TV. We were watching reruns from the antenna of Seinfeld or The Cosby Show. We didn’t have any video games. We were not allowed to play video games. I kind of feel more at home at that time. Am I confusing this with a sense of nostalgia that I might have? Cause that’s another thing I feel my generation is so hung up on, is this nostalgia for things before. Look at what Instagram is. It is a super technically advanced way of communicating and sharing but it is completely rooted in throwing a little filter on a photograph that makes it look old or trendy. We have this really deep nostalgia for things we did not really experience first hand. Look at music. Any music. All this really folky sounding independent stuff. I bet it has something to do with that as well. I paint pictures because I don’t know how to talk about it. But that’s what I was thinking about.


Girls Run This Motha!#% at Wyn317 Gallery

Posted 2014-03-07 12:14:19 | Views: 5,233

Inspired by the successful, talented, beautiful and iconic Beyoncé, Miami artist Diana Contreras invited fellow Miami artists Kazilla, Michelle Vasquez, Miss Lushy, Delvs, Lulu107 and Charlotte Jane Oedekoven to join her in an all female group exhibition at gallery WYN317 in Miami's Wynwood art district. The exhibit "Girls Run This Motha!#% celebrates Women's History Month and International Women's Day through paintings exuding the same indepentend and powerful spirit as Beyoncé, representing for women from around the world.

Thanks Diana for bringing these Miami ladies together in a show that brings Girl Power into 2014. Girls Run This Motha!#%