“F**k Wall Street”

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by Colleen Dougher

“F**k Wall Street,” a painting that shares a title with Keith Clark’s upcoming solo show, depicts a person squeezing their eyes shut while throwing back their head and screaming from a mouth lined with burgundy-colored lips. “Resignation,” another of Clark’s works, portrays a person with face tilted skyward, eyes closed and pale lips slightly parted. The figure’s somber expression conveys defeat.

These paintings reflect emotions Clark has felt since 2008, when the economy sent his finances into a downward spiral. Four years earlier, the architect and designer relocated from Washington, D.C., to Fort Lauderdale. He hoped that moving to a less-expensive area and doing less-demanding work would leave more time for painting.

He began working as a retail consultant and painting abstracts and figuratives. He’s since participated in more than 50 shows, including three solo exhibitions. For two years, Clark has been painting from a palette of neutral sepia tones to, he explains, “focus the viewer on the shades, shadows, layers and the texture of the image, while reserving the use of color as a statement in itself, such as red for passion or anger, and blues for reflection, calm, or sadness.” The seemingly intense blue eyes peering from the shadowy face in “Disappear” suggests the artist has achieved that goal.

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But other goals, such as paying his mortgage, have proved to be challenging. When the economy took a dive, so did Clark’s retail-consulting work. And when he couldn’t find a full-time job, he began working part-time at art organizations and retail stores. “I was taking pretty much anything I could get,” he says. “I worked at a Halloween store for Halloween, Pottery Barn for Christmas. I have a Bachelor of Architecture degree. It’s a humbling experience to be a stock boy making minimum wage when you’re almost 50 years old.”

By March 2010, those frustrations, combined with the stress of working as many as 80 hours a week, left Clark unable to paint. But after about 10 months, he hit the canvas again, and those feelings of anger, helplessness and resignation drove him to create the works he will exhibit in F**k Wall Street, his fourth solo show, which will open Saturday at Gallery 101 in Fort Lauderdale.

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Clark’s previous show, Without You I’m Still Nothing, contained works about growing up and the homophobic slurs he found written on the door of his college dorm room. His new show is equally introspective. Clark says the works he initially painted for F**k Wall Street were very angry, and while he acknowledges that those works are among his strongest, he didn’t want the exhibition to be a complete rage fest. To avoid that, he began exploring the emotions that lie beneath his anger, including his thoughts about growing older and feeling like a failure as a businessman. “It’s more than just being mad at the banks or politicians or the economy,” he explains. “It’s also about looking at myself and how I got here and forgiving myself and moving on.”

Even though the show on many levels is quite personal, Clark feels people will relate to the 12 works, each of which will be accompanied by prose. “I think everyone is suffering due to anger at the economy right now and [having] feelings of remorse for overspending or not being careful with their finances prior to this,” he says. “Or maybe they just know what their friends or someone in their family has gone through.”

Clark says his art has helped him to re-assess his life. As he notes in a poem that accompanies the show’s only abstract work: “The pieces just don’t fit anymore, but amassed they are beautiful, like a puzzle cast to the floor, resplendent with anticipation.”

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Clark recently landed a full-time job as the special-events coordinator for Flamingo Gardens in Davie. He says it pays about half of what he made as a retail consultant, so he’s adjusted his lifestyle to suit his income and is short-selling his home. “I just can’t hang on anymore, he says. “The house is worth half of what I paid for it, and it’s gonna be 10 years before I get caught up.”

On the upside, his new job concerns three of his biggest passions — art, wildlife and nature — and leaves him time to paint. “I’ve decided to rearrange my life to pursue a job I love rather than pursue a job to accommodate my former life expenses,” he says. “I moved down here because I wanted to paint, and that’s what I’m gonna do.”

F**k Wall Street will open 7-11 p.m. Saturday and run through April 8 at Gallery 101, 3350 N.E. 33rd St., in Fort Lauderdale. Call 954-882-1861 or visit Thegallery101.net.

Contact Colleen Dougher at cdougher@citylinkmagazine.com.

A still from Autumn Casey’s video installation.

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by Colleen Dougher

Following are City Link’s picks for the week’s top art events in South Florida. For our “obsessively updated” guide to the local art scene, visit Artmurmurartguide.blogspot.com.

Open Process: New Work by Miami Artists
Curated by Ruba Katrib, the associate curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, this show will feature work by Jessica Laurel Arias, Tatiana Vahan, Autumn Casey and Domingo Castillo, all of whom used museum resources to create their pieces. In a performance project, Vahan incorporates audio from the QVC network with photographs she took of herself and various Walmart shoppers in the store’s photo studio. Casey’s video installation was inspired by a cross-country trip guided by her mother and a psychic.

The show, which marks the 15th anniversary of MOCA’s Joan Lehman Building, will open 6:30 p.m. Thursday and run through June 5 at 770 N.E. 125 St., in North Miami. Admission is $5, $3 for students. Call 305-893-6211 or visit Mocanomi.org.

Christina Major
This solo exhibition will feature portraits of the artist and people she knows. Across each painting in textured gesso, words containing information about the subject overlap one another.

“As an undergraduate, I developed into a portrait painter,” Major explains. “I have been interested in the ways the identity of both artist and subject can coexist in a portrait. My graduate thesis exhibition work evolved from my desire to combine portrait-painting with writing, as well as to develop methods of using paint to express a merging of myself with the individual depicted in the portrait.”

The portraits are based on underwater photographs of her subjects, some of whom appear to be dreaming or whose long hair floats like tentacles. Some appear to be drowning, yet not fighting it, as though they’ve come to terms with the reality of their situation.

Major’s show will open 7-10 p.m. Saturday and run through April 9 at For Art Sake, 2000 Harrison St., Bay No. 2, in Hollywood. Call 954-921-2533 or visit Forartsake.com. In the meantime, check out our recent Fresh Art feature on Major.

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Aesthetics and Values Fine Art Exhibition
In this second annual show, Florida International University students learn about curating an exhibition by … curating an exhibition. Taught by artist John Bailly, the school’s Aesthetics and Values seminar is designed to educate students about the role of art in social and cultural events throughout history.

This year, 64 students worked with 10 local artists to present an exhibition meant to challenge viewers’ perceptions of reality. The show, which will feature work by Antonia Wright, Cristina Lei Rodriguez and Jen Stark, will include writings done with fly pigment, ping-pong balls shaped like clouds and a video of a woman screaming underwater while people above the surface remain oblivious to what’s happening below them.

The event will run through April 17. An opening reception will take place 6-9 p.m. March 23 at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum on Florida International University’s Maidique Campus, 10975 S.W. 17th St., in Miami. Call 305-348-2890 or visit Thefrost.fiu.edu.

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Seussville
Inspired by Theodor Seuss Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, this party will feature works by more than 25 artists, including photographer Jason Nugent, glass-blower Ryan David and mixed-media artist Cary Polkovitz. The event also will feature live-painting by Georgette Pressler of Devious Body Art, music from DJ Joshua Daniel and sushi from YellowJack Sushi. Presented by Art Nouveau Events, the party will begin 8 p.m. March 23 at the Lounge, 517 Clematis St., in West Palm Beach. Call 561-655-9747 or visit Artnouveauevents.com.

Contact Colleen Dougher at cdougher@citylinkmagazine.com.

Meris Drew

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by Colleen Dougher

Meris Drew is sometimes surprised where her pen or brush takes her. “My Love After All,” an ink pen and oil pencil on linen paper, began as a drawing of a single red rose with the words For My Love After All just below a green leaf. She then began incorporating intricate floral designs, eyes, Xs and Os, and swirly patterns, and became engrossed in the process.

“I was intrigued by the way more detail could be added at any point in a seemingly infinite way and ended up just filling the entire page,” the 16-year-old Cooper City High School student explains.

Once finished with that piece, she created the equally detailed “Absolution,” which began with a drawing of a candle, and “Think, Feel,” which includes the same obsessive patterns around a knife dripping with blood.

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The works, each of which took three to four weeks to finish, appear in Tenuousness, a series featured in Drew’s debut solo show at Undergrounds Coffeehaus in Fort Lauderdale. The show also includes watercolors of psychedelic landscapes, in which mountains have colorful leaf designs and skies burst with blue hearts, yellow diamonds and Van Gogh-like swirls.

Undergrounds Coffeehaus owner Aileen Liptak says she didn’t initially realize Drew was only 16, but that the artist was superorganized about producing a bio and pictures and having her work matted, framed and priced. “I really like her style,” Liptak says. “It’s definitely bright and colorful and it’s different. She did some serious pen and ink [works] and they were amazing, very detailed.”

Drew creates art at home while hanging out with her cat, Turbo, and listening to music, mostly folk-rock and bluesy tunes from groups such as Fanfarlo, Fleet Foxes and Andrew Bird. She also draws during school hours. “I’m actually probably the most productive at school when I’m being lectured,” she says.

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While she doesn’t plot out her works, she often creates a psychedelic world she’d like to visit. “Sometimes, they just end up representing these nice places I’d never seen or thought of,” she says, “which is kind of cool because I can spend awhile looking at something after I’ve already made it, exploring this new place.”

Drew’s favorite artists include Banksy, Koznydan, Roger Dean and Miami’s Danny Brito. Her favorite quote is by Chuck Palahniuk: “Art never comes from happiness.”

“The appeal I find in that quote isn’t necessarily to say that art comes from sadness or struggle,” she explains. “Art doesn’t come from happiness. But I think that’s because happiness — or any emotion, really — is what comes from art. It’s not necessary to feel anything in order to create art, because the creation is what should spark the feeling. Some people may work off inspiration, but I find inspiration in working and the emotional vagaries it draws forth.”

Meris Drew’s exhibition will be on display through April 5 at Undergrounds Coffeehaus, 2743 E. Oakland Park Blvd., in Fort Lauderdale. Call 954-630-1900.

Contact Colleen Dougher at cdougher@citylinkmagazine.com.

Chicha-style posters will be on view at Para Mi Gente.

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by Colleen Dougher

Following are City Link’s picks for the week’s top art events in South Florida. For our “obsessively updated” guide to the local art scene, visit Artmurmurartguide.blogspot.com.

PARA MI GENTE
This exhibition curated by Primary Flight founder Books IIII Bischof, Typoe and Chris Oh is inspired by the Chicha poster art movement of Peru. Fortunato Urcuhuarangas, credited as the movement’s founder, decided to make his own posters to promote local bands and craft fairs in Lima when he couldn’t afford to hire someone else to do so.

The activity quickly became a family affair, with various Urcuhuarangas making stencils to create posters that contained brightly colored band names, inspired by the handmade crafts and textiles in the Andean region, against a black background. As time went by, the family got crafty by designing and distorting fonts and ornamental details in posters that have an almost glow-in-the-dark look.

The movement has since inspired other artists, more than 40 of whom will participate in a Chicha-style installation at Primary Projects in Miami. Shepard Fairey, She Kills He, the TM Sisters, Anthony Spinello and other artists have provided images that will be cut into stencils and then collaged to form the installation.

“Chicha is one of the most-basic yet effective propaganda styles and has emerged as an art form in its own right,” said Bischof, the principal of Primary Flight/Primary Projects in a statement about the exhibition. “So much of our culture involves integrating text and altering typography to fit into our overall brand aesthetic. Para Mi Gente allows us to take control of our mass-marketed environment while we work with tools provided by contemporary artists.”

The show will open 7-11 p.m. Saturday, March 12 in conjunction with the Second Saturday Art Walk in Wynwood, and run through April 4 at Primary Projects, 4141 N.E. Second Ave., Suite 104, in Miami. Visit Primaryflight.com.

KREEPY KRAFT FAIR
Kreepy Kittens, a self-described group of “babes who promote the preservation and advancement of the pinup lifestyle of ’40s and ’50s Americana,” joins Kreepy Tiki Tattoo and Radio-Active Records in sponsoring Kreepy Kraft Fair. The fair will feature more than three dozen vendors, including Allison Kapner Originals, Smash Art Studio, Way Wicked Art and Four Arrows Art.

Vendors will sell, among other things, Scrabble necklaces, handmade bags, cartoon wallets, hand-painted guitar pedals and T-shirts for people who love pit bulls. Music will be provided by DJ Sensitive Side. It will take place 1-6 p.m. Sunday, March 13 at Revolution Live, 200 W. Broward Blvd., in Fort Lauderdale. Admission is free. E-mail Kreepytiki@yahoo.com.

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IMPRESSED: A SOUTH FLORIDA PRINTMAKING EXHIBITION
A variety of printmaking concepts and techniques, including etching and lithography, will be explored in Impressed, an exhibition of prints created with artist-made printing plates, screens and blocks. The exhibition will feature pieces by 28 artists, including AustinPaul Flores, Brian Reedy, Eddy Lopez, Ingrid Eliasson and Tatiana Sainz.

All prints will be for sale. The show will open 7-10 p.m. Friday, March 11 and run through April 1 at Bakehouse Art Complex, 561 N.W. 32nd St., in Miami. Call 305-576-2828 or visit Bacfl.org. Convergence y Anomalias, a collaboration between painter and sculptor Anthony Ardavin and artist Rosa Naday Garmendia, will open concurrently in Bakehouse’s Swensen Gallery.

Contact Colleen Dougher at cdougher@citylinkmagazine.com.

Antonia Wright

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by Colleen Dougher

When Fidel Castro resigned as the president of Cuba in 2008, Antonia Wright bought a big cigar, set up her video camera in her studio apartment and proceeded to vigorously smoke the whole thing. She stopped only long enough to vomit, and then continued until she was finished.

“I always think of the Castro regime as so all encompassing and toxic and you can’t escape it and it’s shoved down your throat and it makes you sick,” she explains.

Last summer, Wright had a cameraman friend meet her in a dark alley at 3 a.m. to film her rolling naked down the dirty puddle-filled alley, a maneuver that left her black and blue and wearing long sleeves to work. “The BP oil spill had just happened, and I was livid and upset and just felt so disgusting,” she recalls. “I imagined being those birds when I saw them, and it feels like I’m naked and in this disgusting place and getting cut up literally. So that’s what I did.”

This is how Wright, daughter of Miami-based novelist Carolina Garcia-Aguilera, processes overwhelming news. “My first reaction is to bring it to the body to make sense of it,” she says, “to almost even eat it or digest it so I can come to understand it.”

Are You OK?, her recent two-video installation at Spinello Gallery, depicts such processing in an experiment that also serves as a cultural study. The videos, one set in Miami and the other in New York, depict Wright as she takes to the street crying while secretly filming the reactions of passersby from a tripod off in the distance.

The idea developed in New York, where Wright earned a Masters in Fine Arts from New School University and later studied photography. After moving to the city, Wright says she often encountered people crying in the streets. “It was really jarring, because as a person you think you should offer them help and see if they’re OK,” she says. “But then, you stop yourself [and ask], ‘What should I do in this situation? Do they want me to come up to them? Is it rude because there’s an invasion of privacy?’ ”

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Curious about society’s unwritten rules about such interactions, Wright decided to become the weeper and see how people would react. Her goal was to have authentic encounters by considering things that make her sad.

The concept isn’t new to Wright, who first mixed crying and art several years ago after some photojournalist friends discussed how the mainstream media avoids graphic images of war casualties. “I thought that was interesting,” Wright recalls. “So I wanted to find [the images] and I did.”

Doing so, however, made her feel far removed from the horrible reality the images depicted, as if she could not grasp the extent of the suffering. “If this were in our country, people would be wailing in the streets, and there’s no public grief about this?” she said. “All of these questions started coming up, so I thought, ‘Why don’t I just cry almost in solidarity with these people?’ And then, I thought, ‘Could you imagine if I was there and lost my own sisters?’”

As in other works, she brought these emotions back to her own body. “I was projecting all of these terrible, terrible images of children and mothers losing children and tons of bodies onto my own body,” she explains. “And in the process of doing that, I just felt so sick and really upset. It was a political piece very much so in the beginning. But now, anything I read about or see that’s really sad, I just store it. And when I go into the street and do this, I revisit it on a personal level to invoke that emotion.”

But the sadness of a weeping artist can be as easy to ignore as devastation taking place 7,000 miles away. “I’ve been doing this for a few years and I basically go into the streets and cry and document how usually people don’t ask me if I’m OK,” she says. “Then, every once in a while, people do ask me if I’m OK, and it’s really incredible and I get hugs and people invite me to coffee or lunch or to go sit down and talk.”

The few people who respond warmly are typically women, Wright says, though she was once comforted by some on a beach in Miami, a circumstance she describes as unprecedented. “I’ve seen guys who wanted to ask me, but they seem almost paralyzed with how uncomfortable they feel,” she says. “I don’t want to generalize but I don’t think men are as comfortable with these forms of expression, and the ones on the beach who asked me if I was OK were all Latin men, which I thought was interesting, too.”

At Are You OK?’s Feb. 12 opening at Spinello Gallery, Wright says she got more questions than usual and that some visitors told her the videos made them cry. “I think they just got really emotional watching me so upset and alone, or any person who is upset and alone with all of those people around them,” she says.

As Are You OK? draws to a close, Wright’s next installation, “I Scream Therefore I Exist,” will be on exhibit at Aesthetics and Values, a 10-artist show that opened this week  at the Frost Museum of Art. Shot in various bodies of water with a camera half above and half below the water line, the video depicts Wright screaming underwater in the lower portion of the screen, while the upper part shows people frolicking in a pool or ocean completely unaware of the screaming woman just below the surface.

Are You OK? will close Thursday, March 10 with an artist discussion moderated by Bonnie Clearwater, the chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, at Spinello Gallery, 155 N.E. 38th St., No. 101, in Miami. Call 786-271-4223 or visit Spinellogallery.com. Aesthetics and Values will run through April 17. An opening reception will be held 6-9 p.m. March 23 at the Frost Art Museum, 10975 S.W. 17th St., in Miami. Call 305-348-2890 or visit Thefrost.fiu.edu.

Contact Colleen Dougher at cdougher@citylinkmagazine.com.

For Just As You Were, her first solo show at Butter Gallery, Jipsy Castillo will fill the walls with a few hundred of the nearly half-million photographs she’s shot in Miami nightclubs. Even though her late-night photography excursions recently have slowed down, Castillo for five years weaved in and out of crowds with camera in one hand and flash in the other, photographing at least three parties a night, five or six nights a week. And she has the muscles to prove it. “It’s a pretty heavy camera, so my forearm has really grown,” she says. “I can definitely do a nice right punch.”

“I just jump in and out of crowds and take the picture,” she says of her technique. “My lens is wide enough that I can physically just stick the camera out and know what I’m pointing at and almost how it’s gonna look without [seeing] the viewer.”

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While Castillo has shot celebrities such as singer-actress Juliette Lewis and New York-based performance artist Joey Arias, she’s less interested in VIP lounges than in photographing people who wait in line, pay admission and come to dance rather than pose. Her own passion for dancing took her into Manhattan nightclubs starting at age 14. She owned a camera then, too, but mostly used it to document nights out with friends.

“I had a curfew, which I hardly ever admit,” she recalls, “but I had to be home by 12:30 or 1, when the party is actually getting started. But I didn’t care. I was in, I got to breathe the air, and that was it.”

After moving to Miami with her husband in 1996, Castillo found more reasons to hit the clubs. In 2001, she quit a corporate office job to create an online vintage-clothing store. When not working temp jobs or shopping for clothes to sell, she photographed clubgoers she thought might like her store. She’d then invite them to visit her site to check out their photo and explore her eBay store.

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The pictures garnered more attention than her clothing, and Castillo found shooting them to be more enjoyable than shopping. “It snowballed really, really, really fast,” she says. “I kept going out. They kept wanting to see themselves.”

In 2004, she launched Nefariousgirl.com and began posting interviews and fliers about upcoming parties. Soon, Miami nightlife guide Cooljunkie.com asked her to take over the weekly “Girl About Town” column, a position that earned her access to major events, which she also photographed for her Web site. Within weeks, offers began pouring in for her to shoot more parties. By 2005, Nefariousgirl.com was her full-time job and she’d purchased a digital single-lens-reflex camera to support her mission.

Castillo’s work has since appeared in Women’s Wear Daily, Spin, Inked and local publications, including City Link. Many of the pics in her Butter Gallery show were taken at the long-running hipster party Poplife. “I was their house photographer for five years,” Castillo says. “If I missed a Saturday, I think it might have been once.”

Her devotion to documenting parties takes a toll on her camera, however. She’s on her third high-end SLR in five years. “They go through so much hell,” she says, “the smoke, the alcohol spillage. Not me, other people. I’m short, so I get bumped into a lot.”

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Her firm grip on the camera is in part how she developed such a strong forearm. “When you grip a few thousand dollars’ worth of equipment, you know that somehow, some way, you’re not going to let that go,” she says.

She has, however, loosened her grip on the late-night party scene and become more of a daytime creature, devoting time to assignments for various clients and developing her style in fashion photography and portraits.

Clubland has changed, she maintains, and not just because everyone’s posing for a zillion photographers. “It’s a little, I want to say, dull,” Castillo argues. “I don’t want to disrespect the up-and-comers, but maybe I’m waiting for something to evolve in their world, because it’s definitely not my party. It hasn’t been in years. … Maybe something exciting will come up, somebody will start wearing glitter again.”

Meanwhile, Just As You Were will feature photos taken since 2005 of Miami clubgoers “at the club or party, with no stress, no paparazzi and just having fun,” Castillo says. “I’ve been getting a lot of text messages and phone calls from people saying, ‘I hope I make it onto the wall’ or ‘I hope I don’t see that picture. They know, they remember … or they don’t remember.”

Just As You Were will open 7-10 p.m. March 8 and will also be open 7-9:30 p.m. Saturday, March 12 during the Wynwood Art Walk and remain on view through April 2 at Butter Gallery, 2303 N.W. Second Ave., in Miami. Call 305-303-6254 or visit Buttergallery.com.

Contact Colleen Dougher at cdougher@citylinkmagazine.com.

Following are City Link’s picks for the week’s top art events in South Florida. For our “obsessively updated” guide to the local art scene, visit Artmurmurartguide.blogspot.com.

Birds Are Nice: A Little Love
Birds Are Nice is one of three artists who will open shows Friday at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood. A Little Love, her exhibition in the center’s project room, will include “Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” a 45-second animation about a lonely man who finds love with the help of a bird, and “The Compliment Dome,” an interactive installation that allows visitors to hear compliments via a device placed on their heads. “This piece cracks me up,” admits the artist, who works under a pseudonym. “I have a serious problem with mean people. Some people are so judgmental and just not nice. The Compliment Dome talks to you and tells you how wonderful you are. Even if you don’t believe it, you’ve gotta smile for a second.”

The show also will feature vinyl lovebirds, stickers and the artist’s stencil of a little girl reaching for a birdhouse. Expect plenty of birds, hearts and happy colors.

While these works seems fun and whimsical, Birds Are Nice infuses them with plenty of symbolism. To read a Q&A with her, visit Artmurmur.citylinkmix.com. A Little Love will open along with Cristina Lei Rodriguez: Forever (the subject of this week’s Fresh Art feature) and Louise Erhard: Yes, No and Everything in Between, 6-9 p.m. Friday and runs through April 10 at Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, 1650 Harrison St. Call 954-921-3274 or visit Artandculturecenter.org.

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Beyond Reflection
Shortly after meeting at ArtCenter/South Florida, Stephanie Rodriguez, who was teaching classes there, and Angelica Clyman, who had a studio at the center, were chatting about art, music, fate and reincarnation. They have since formed the two-person art collective Janus Bridge and begun painting diptychs and collaborative works in which they both paint on the same canvas.

The pair will celebrate their collaboration Saturday at the opening reception for Beyond Reflection, a show of works in which the artists make literary, historical and cultural references, explore identity and question the nature of the roles they say women are expected to perform.

The exhibition in the 924 building’s Vitrine space will feature diptychs and collaborative works such as “My Sweet 16,” a painting about the man behind the mysterious Coral Castle in Miami, and “Janus,” about the two-faced Roman god. “We identify with this image because although our paintings are stylistically different, we share one philosophy,” the artists state on Janusbridge.com. The opening will take place from 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday and the show will run through March 21.

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Meris Drew’s solo exhibition
Undergrounds Coffeehaus owner Aileen Liptak has a four-year history of making excellent coffee and gourmet Tater Tots while promoting local emerging artists, including Lisa Parrott, Katya Neptune and Japanda Farley.

This month, she will host a solo exhibition of work by Meris Drew, a Fort Lauderdale artist who works in oils, watercolors, pen and ink, and charcoal to create works that blend intricate designs and trippy counterculture techniques. Her subjects have included birds, women and swirly-skied landscapes.

The show will open 9 p.m. Saturday and remain on the red walls of the coffee shop until April 5 at Undergrounds Coffeehaus, 2743 E. Oakland Park Blvd., in Fort Lauderdale. Call 954-630-1900.

Contact Colleen Dougher at cdougher@citylinkmagazine.com.

Cristina Lei Rodriguez (photo by Federico Nessi)

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by Colleen Dougher

If you repeatedly tossed chains into the same place where you kept tinsel, glitter and rhinestones and the materials started to mingle until they formed a glimmering and gorgeous object, you might wind up with something like “Gnarled,” a sculpture Cristina Lei Rodriguez made in 2008. The sculpture is one of about 20 works the Miami artist will exhibit in Forever, her solo show that will open Friday at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood. The exhibition, a survey of the sculptures and installations Rodriguez has been creating since 2003, will include Gravity and Decomposition, a series of three sculptures that incorporate materials from previous projects.

Rodriguez is represented by Fredric Snitzer Gallery in Miami and Team Gallery in New York. She has had several solo shows, but Forever will be the first to show works produced over an eight-year span. “I’m really excited about having the opportunity to show works from different series, different bodies of work and different moments,” she says. “Usually, you put together your little project or show a new body of work or something like that. I’m hoping — even if some of the works are different — that it’s interesting for viewers to see the connections.”

A constant in Rodriguez’s work since 2001, the year before she earned her Master’s of Fine Art from California College of the Arts, has been her use of plastic and resins to explore the differences between real objects and fake ones. “In graduate school, I started looking at mass-produced plastic items like fake plants and dollar-store objects and was collecting them and hoarding them in my studio,” she explains. By adding plastic to fake flowers, she learned that she could make them appear to be dying instead of blooming.

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She could also incorporate them into large landscapes along with beads, jewels and plastic miniature houses or trees to create other little worlds. Close inspections of her works, particularly her earlier ones, may reveal surprises such as a figurine, a sailboat or a door in the side of a mountain.

“My intention is for the works to be miniature worlds or landscapes where you’re not going to see everything at first glance,” she says, “but the more time you spend with it, the more things you discover about the work.”

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The moment-in-time feel of Rodriguez’s works may stem in part from her unforgiving medium. “The main resin I use sets in three to five minutes, and I usually do small amounts and lots of layers,” Rodriguez explains. “The plastic I kind of use as a paint. I can add any kind of color or pigment or glitter or whatever to it. So in every layer, my work starts with a bought or found object and gets covered in layers and layers of plastic.”

Using a medium she can’t completely control causes her to work more intuitively to capture moments in which colors appear to drip like icicles and artificial plants populate landscapes made from found objects.

Rodriguez also has created large works. “Endless Autumn,” an installation in the Miami Art Museum’s collection, is 20 feet long, 14 feet wide and 8 feet high. She created the garden setting with plastic, epoxy, foam, Plexiglas and found objects, including benches. “The person is entering into a larger environment,” she says. “There’s a place you can sit down.”

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One of the smallest works in her current show is “Forever,” which she describes as “a flower that is overly ripe and dripping jewels.” Like the artificial blooming flower that initially inspired Rodriguez, it appears to be in perpetual bloom.

“Once I started working with the material the objects were made of, it opened up so many possibilities for me in my work because I could maintain all of the qualities that I liked about the object, which was the color and the fact that there are all these things that are fake and disposable and designed to catch your eye,” she says. “Those are the things I was really interested in. Using the plastic allows me to maintain that bright color that comes with buying a plastic shampoo bottle, a plastic cup or a fake flower — all those things that are meant to stand out in a sea of products when you go look for them.”

Cristina Lei Rodriguez: Forever will open 6-9 p.m. Friday and run through April 10 at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, 1650 Harrison St. Call 954-921-3274 or visit Artandculturecenter.org.

Contact Colleen Dougher at cdougher@citylinkmagazine.com.

Lake Worth Street Painting Festival

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by Colleen Dougher

Following are City Link’s picks for the week’s top art events in South Florida. For our “obsessively updated” guide to the local art scene, visit Artmurmurartguide.blogspot.com.

STITCH ‘N BITCH ‘N LIT
Needlework does not have to be done in isolation or silence. The Girls’ Club, a Fort Lauderdale art space, will host Stitch ‘n Bitch ‘n Lit, an afternoon of needleworking led by artist Frances Trombly and featuring readings by South Florida writers such as Parker Phillips, Yaddyra Peralta, Jessica Machado and Denise Delgado, Girls’ Club’s first resident writer. All are members of Miami Poetry Collective.

Peralta says she is still finalizing what she will read, but that it mostly will be her prose and poetry. “One set is from a series of prose poems based in Meso-American fables,” she says. “I also have several short poems inspired by Yoko Ono and Fluxus’ event scores. I am also hoping to visit Frances Trombly’s show beforehand so I can maybe write an ekphrasis — a piece inspired by her artwork.

“I am expecting a vibe somewhat like at the Cuban cigar factories, where lectors would read while the workers rolled cigars,” she adds.

Participants are invited to bring needlework projects in progress from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 26 to Girls’ Club, 117 N.E. Second St., in Fort Lauderdale. Call 954-828-9151 or visit Girlsclubcollection.org. Cost: $5 suggested donation includes refreshments.

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THE SOUND OF ART
Those people who missed The Sound of Art’s opening last month can catch its second incarnation Saturday during the Fat Village Art Walk. The exhibition of audio-focused art features work by more than 20 artists, including Peter Symons, whose installation “That Damned Racket” got much attention at the opening. It featured nine brightly colored lamps and a sign that read, “In this piece, a VU meter measures and interprets the information received through the microphone. This information is then output to a series of relays that control nine thrift-store lamps. Yell, whisper and sing into the microphone to interact with the artwork.”

Throughout the night, people approached the microphone and spoke, sang or yelled into it at various volumes and pitches while assessing how many and which lights would come on as they did. It’s an addictive piece, because people want to explore the possibilities of what they can do and detect patterns. They want to make sense of it. Some of us, who apparently think more is better, want to make all the lights come on. (Tip: Yelling does not necessarily turn on more lights but it may make you feel better.) At some point in the evening, a man began playing violin into the microphone as everyone watched the lights react.

Other works included “Business as Usual,” Cristina Sierra de Leste and Lauren Jacobson’s installation of plastic sandwiches in open briefcases around a monitor playing a video of Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good.” The piece is meant to poke fun at self-important, businesspeople.

Also in the mix was artist AdrienneRose Gionta’s signature in neon lights, accompanied by a rose scent and a loop of someone saying her name over and over. As Gionta explains in her accompanying statement, “When I close my eyes, I see this thing, a sign. I see this name in bright-pink neon lights. And this name is so bright and so sharp that the sign — it just blows up because the name is so powerful. … It says, ‘AdrienneRose Gionta.’“

The show, which also will feature art by Tina La Porta, Donna Haynes, MarcPaperScissor and Matthew Falvey and a performance by Pocket of Lollipops, will take place from 7 to 10 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 26 at 18 Rabbit Gallery, 17 N.W. Fifth St., in Fort Lauderdale. Call 828-279-1481 or visit 18rabbitgallery.com.

LAKE WORTH STREET PAINTING FESTIVAL
Now in its 17th year, this event attracts roughly 400 artists to downtown Lake Worth, where they’ll spend Saturday and Sunday creating chalk works on the streets while bands perform in nearby pubs, restaurants and the cultural plaza in the heart of downtown.

You couldn’t go wrong checking out the festival on Saturday, since Lake Worth has become a relaxed hot spot for music and local art. But by Sunday afternoon, downtown Lake Worth will have been transformed into a street gallery. Even the chalk-covered artists will look like works of art.

Even though Lake Worth is a bit of a hike from Broward or Miami-Dade counties, the event offers a great opportunity to experience Tri-Rail, which will provide a free shuttle from the station to the festival area. The fest will take place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 26 and Sunday, Feb. 27 along Lake and Lucerne avenues. Call 561-582-4401 or visit Streetpaintingfestivalinc.org.

Contact Colleen Dougher at cdougher@citylinkmagazine.com.

Christina Major

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by Colleen Dougher

The idea of being submerged intrigues Christina Major, who for 18 months has been painting very large portraits based on underwater photographs of herself and people she knows. “Submerged,” a self-portrait, depicts Major with her head tilted back and long hair flowing around her face like tentacles. Her calm expression suggests she is dreaming. Her lips are parted and bubbles emerge from her nose. Across the painting in textured gesso, words overlap one another.

“The viewer might feel as though the person is drowning, losing air, but not struggling — almost as though they are at peace or accepting the unknown,” Major explains. “Drama is enhanced by the dark, cool color and shimmering, fragmented light coming from the surface. The textures from my stroke seep through to the surface, acting as a layer of blur over the face, similar to the effect that brackish water gives.”

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To create her portraits, Major, who recently earned her Master of Fine Arts from Florida Atlantic University, took underwater photographs of her subjects, and then manipulated the photos on the computer to create the works she references in her paintings. Working in five- to 10-hour sessions using oil, gesso and canvas, Major alternates between two canvases at a time while listening to songs from Moby, Coldplay, Massive Attack and other bands that help her reach a meditative state.

While in this inspired mode, she’s created works such as “I Love You,” a diptych portrait of her mother underwater, with eyes closed and a smile, and “Shelly II,” which depicts a woman with her hair floating over her face and words that Major culled from the subject’s written account of a positive view of her life.

The dissolving figure in “Sam” symbolizes a deteriorating friendship. As is typical of the text in many of Major’s works, the words are not all legible. “I freely wrote my feelings of this soon-to-end friendship,” she explains. “I intentionally allowed certain words to be more legible and accessible to the viewer for discovery.”

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Major’s works, some of which are as large as 8 feet long and 6 feet wide, contain an element of mystery. “In most cases, my paintings demonstrate the push and pull between construction of a coherent face and deconstruction,” she says. “The viewer is left alternating between seeing the painting for text, brush stroke and expressive color, and seeing it for description of a specific face. I desire to leave my paintings ambiguous in meaning and feeling, leaving the viewer somewhat uncomfortable as they cannot quite pin down a specific answer to what this portrait depicts.”

Her approach has captured the attention of Debbi and Alan Becker, owners of For Art Sake, the Hollywood gallery that will host Major’s next show. It will be Major’s second solo exhibition in four months at the gallery. “We had an exhibit in November 2010 after my husband saw Christina’s work at another venue,” Debbi Becker says. “We are awestruck by her talent and the uniqueness of her artwork. It is so different, huge in size and has a personal and very spiritual touch and feel.”

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Christina Major’s exhibition will open 7-10 p.m. March 19 and run through April 9 at For Art Sake, 2000 Harrison St., in Hollywood. Call 954-921-2533 or visit Forartsake.com.

Contact Colleen Dougher at cdougher@citylinkmagazine.com.