Keith Thomas, Young Liar, 2009. Oil on prepared cardboard.

Most artists I know make work inspired by their personal lives — even if the end product looks so abstract or conceptual that you’d be hard pressed to find evidence of human experience in it. Keith Thomas, perhaps, just takes a more direct route than some from life to canvas — or, in his case, from screen to page.

Since his late teens, Thomas, a recent graduate of the University of South Florida’s BFA program, has made drawings, paintings and installations inspired by his experiences meeting other gay men online. In fact, for all intents and purposes, his Internet-enabled love life is itself a work of art. Whenever he logs into a gay chat site or arranges to meet a guy in real life, Thomas embarks on research — not because he approaches each encounter with the scientific remove of an anthropologist, but because his intimate thoughts and feelings give rise to poetic visual translations of experiential data.

(Wait a minute, I hear you asking: Does that mean every time I jerk off to a photo of a naked, ripped guy online that I, too, am making art? No, honey — only Keith.)

Read more at Creative Loafing>>

From Plugged Art Collective Co-Director and Founder, Raina Benoit>>

Hot Sauce and Magnolias: A Southern Experience

Link: www.pluggedartcollective.com

Deadline: September 30, 2009

Plugged Art Collective announces a call for videos for our new 2010-2011 touring video festival Hot Sauce and Magnolias: A Southern Experience. This festival is open to all artists living and working in the Southeast. Free to apply. Videos under 5mins. Postmark deadline September 30, 2009. Visit our website to download a prospectus.

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From Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP:

The law firm of Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP is seeking an image of an available piece of two-dimensional artwork for the cover of their annual Holiday card. The piece should be produced by a Florida artist, should be an existing piece of two-dimensional art, and needs to be available for purchase. The selected piece will be added to the Shumaker Loop & Kendrick, LLP, corporate art collection. Subject matter can be broad, yet appropriate, and does not need to reflect a specific expression of the Holidays.

Submission Requirements:

* Complete Application (incomplete applications will not be considered)
* No more than 3 high quality, clear images of existing artwork that can be sent as a jpeg or email attachment.

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From C. Emerson Fine Arts>>

We are now accepting submissions for

“Seriously?”

A Humorous / Satirical Exhibition

April 2010

Please send submissions no later than January 30, 2010

Any Medium

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Guest contributor Kurt Piazza provides this review of artist Allen Hampton’s latest work. -MV >>

Installation view of work by Allen Hampton.

“I feel like I’m not able to connect to most people. Eventually they disappoint you,” says Allen Hampton. I met up with Hampton recently to talk about his new work, which deals primarily with loneliness, ennui and fear. As an artist, he approaches these subjects with stunning sensitivity, shadowed by a sense of menace.

I first met Hampton about four years ago while serving as curator at the Gulf Coast Museum of Art in Largo; he was in his first year of graduate art school at the University of South Florida. His work was gritty, yet incredibly detailed and full of complex, layered imagery and text. I was drawn to it almost immediately and have followed his progress since. Hampton graduated just over a year ago and has been developing a new body of work, which he showed recently at Three04, an alternative art space in Tampa. His new work, consisting of paintings, drawings, sculptures and video employs—among other things—found objects, recurring imagery of wolves and self-portraits. The work feels lonely and disengaged, yet when experienced all together, there is a sense that something dreadful or cataclysmic is about to happen.

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Via Florida Craftsmen>>

Call to Artists: Original Handmade Book Exhibition

Dates: September 18 – October 31, 2009

Description: A national juried and invitational exhibition of original handmade books.

Curated in collaboration with: Margaret Miller, Director, USF Contemporary Art Museum and Graphic Studio

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Via Surrealmuse>>

The Progress Energy Art Gallery (PEAG) in historic downtown New Port Richey, Florida, invites you to submit your artwork for our upcoming October exhibit on “Gods and Goddesses”. Deadline for submissions is Sunday, August 16th.

To be eligible, artists must be a Florida resident. All artwork must be clean, in good shape, properly framed and wired and ready to hang.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Via Morean Arts Center>>

Good Angel/Bad Angel:
A Naughty and Nice Holiday Exhibition

Deadline for Entry is Monday, October 1, 2009

The Morean Arts Center’s Annual Holiday-Exhibition-With-A-Twist will be held November 20 through December 31, 2009. It is a juried exhibition, open to any visual artist, and each artist may enter by sending images of up to five 2-D or 3-D works.

Any artwork that references good or bad angels will be eligible for the exhibition. Images submitted must represent work that will be available for the exhibition. We are particularly looking for items for gift-giving, including ornaments, jewelry, small sculptural objects and functional pottery. We will also accept drawings, paintings and photography. Please include slides or a CD of work listed below, with each image labeled according to the entry form. Please include an SASE for the notification letter.

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Via Cafe Hey>>

Cafe Hey is looking for artists in all media for its October 17 through November 31 installation to be titled “Monster’s Ball.”

Work should manifest the theme “Monster’s Ball.” Interpret that as you will. Performances the night of the 17th are encouraged. Works are for sale at artists’ discretion, and Cafe Hey retains no commission.

Please submit images of pieces (or performance plans!) with the subject line “Monster’s Ball Submissions” to cafehey[at]gmail. Art work should be hang-able or have its own mounting system and weigh no more than 50 pounds. Submissions are due by the 26th of September, and we will notify you by the 30th. Artist must be available for installation either the 12th or 13th of October before the show.

Cafe Hey is located at 1540 N. Franklin Street, Tampa, FL 33602.