Courtney Johnson
Survival Machines
Photographic emulsion on hand blown glass, 2007
Recommended by Bernice Steinbaum, Bernice Steinbaum Galleries

I have to issue a “hold the phone” for this one: Florida Craftsmen Gallery has a sweet little show up called Highly Recommended, which they cobbled together by asking arts industry insiders around the state to recommend a promising emerging artist. As a prerequisite, the artist may not have had a solo show before, though group shows are okay. (USF MFA grad Deon Blackwell, whose salt chandeliers I’ve cooed over in this space before, was disqualified for this reason.)

Of the 15 who made the cut, two Miami artists leapt out at me. (Really, add current USF MFA student Sean Erwin to the mix, and you’d have three, but I’ve already seen his porcelain Virgin Mary water fountain with rubber ducky at least twice before, so it just didn’t have the impact for me that it has in the past.)

Courtney Johnson makes the terribly fragile blown glass balls seen above. Through some trickery that I don’t know enough about photography—or glass blowing—to explain, she manages to trap what looks like a floating photograph inside each ball. Elizabeth Kozlowski, FLC’s curatorial assistant, told me it has something to do with getting photo emulsion to stick to the glass. (Anyone who would care to shed further light on the topic, please leave a comment.)

Anyway, the result is an almost painfully poignant inscription/embodiment of memory. Indeed, if the globes weren’t riddled with bubbles and other purposeful imperfections they would be cloyingly precious, but instead I find that they sound the ring of truth. I had a harder time locating an entry point to the balls that contained images of people—a harder time reading my own memories onto them, that is. But the ones that show off a photograph of some ghostly architectural form, St. Mark’s or—best of all—the façade of the World Trade Center, come alive as conduits into another time and place.

Martin Casuso
Burn Book (Gabriel), Volume 3, 1 of 2 and 2 of 2
Incense sticks and paper, 2006
Recommended by Elizabeth Kozlowski, Florida Craftsmen Gallery

Equally wonderful, and also dealing in large part with memory, are Martin Casuso’s “burn books.” Drawing from personal photographs and archives to create pages, Casuso creates miniature, accordion-like books around a spine of incense. Though the pieces invite destruction through cathartic burning rituals, I’m sure most collectors couldn’t bear to destroy something this lovely.

Get out and see it:
Highly Recommended
Through Feb. 22
Florida Craftsmen Gallery
501 Central Ave, St. Petersburg
727-821-7391
floridacraftsmen.net