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

Thursday

7 p.m. – Surrealism in the 1930s multimedia presentation by Salvador Dalí Museum curator of education Peter Tush at the Leepa Rattner Museum of Art. Cost: $5 members, $8 non-members and free for students.

7-8:30 p.m. – Amazon Safari Night information session for the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts’ fall photography safari to the Amazon (Nov. 13-22).

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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.

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Andy Warhol. Flowers (1970), screenprint. ©The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ARS, NY. On Loan from Bank of America’s Art in Our Communities Program.

At the outset of writing anything about Andy Warhol, it seems like a sure bet that nothing new can be said. Nothing, anyway, that hasn’t already been better articulated by scholars, biographers and filmmakers, by Warhol himself in his published diaries, or even by Lou Reed and John Cale in their album Songs for Drella (the Warhol nickname that fuses Dracula and Cinderella). His trademarks — the painstaking accounting for even small expenditures, the chronic unhappiness with his physical appearance and consequent plastic surgery, the wig, the Factory — seem less like insights and more like distractions that prevent proximity to the “real Andy.”

Warhol himself was famously dismissive of attempts at biographical or psycho-analysis of his work, saying, “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol just look at the surface: of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.”

So in response to Andy Warhol Portfolios: Life and Legends, an exhibition of 72 of the superstar pop artist’s silkscreen prints from the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, I’ll simply exhort you to go and look.

Read more at CLTampa.com>>

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.

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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 more at CLTampa.com>>

Via Central Art Supply Company>>

Central Art Supply Company announces
THE JURIED ART SHOW 2009: Works on Paper
November 6-16, 2009

Exhibition & Sale
Hosted by The Studio@620
620 First Avenue South, St. Petersburg, FL

Entry Deadline: September 15, 2009

Eligibility:
Only RECENT ORIGINAL works on paper, including, but not limited to: printmaking, painting and drawing (no photography, please). Work must have been completed within the past two years.

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From artsarasota.org>>

C A L L  T O  A R T I S T S
Green: The Primary Color
July 14-September 12, 2009
Art Center Sarasota

For those who reside in Florida year round - appreciating the natural environment unconditionally or rather “air-conditionally” - we invite you to join us in an exploration and celebration of the Florida environment. Artists from around the state are invited to submit works of art in all media expressing their relationship to the natural environment.

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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 more at CLTampa.com>>

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.

Thursday

5:30-8:30 p.m. – Dali RETROMIX networking event at the Salvador Dali Museum; $10, includes admission to current exhibitions.

6:30-7:30 p.m. – Champagne Toast with Cookies party in honor of the Studio@620’s fifth birthday (at the Studio@620).

8 p.m. (doors at 7 p.m.) – The Agreeable Husband, a multidisciplinary performance combining theater, dance, art, music, recorded video and live jazz, choreographed by Shana Perkins and directed by Ami Sallee Corley, at the Ritz Ybor; $15, $7/student in advance; $20, $10/student at the door.

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.

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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.

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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.

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Artist trading card holder by 7Gypsies, via Paper Goodness.

Via Tampa Realistic Artists (TRA)>>

ATC’s (Artist Trading Cards) Exhibition
June 30–July 24, 2009

Old Hyde Park Art Center
705 Swann Ave., Tampa, FL 33606

Deadline: June 26

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