Flocas 2008 opens tonight in Tampa, and I’ll tell you—my reaction to this project (the consortium of Florida university masters degree programs) is like, why didn’t someone think of this sooner? Best. Idea. Ever.
We have some really talented graduate students in the state, and it breaks my heart when they leave after graduation. We need [...]

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Jamey Grimes. Merge IV, 2007. Mylar, acetate, transparency film, thread. Courtesy DFAC.
This week in Creative Loafing:
These days, it’s hardly an exaggeration to call the evening news the stuff of nightmares. Between the implosion of Wall Street and the prospect of the other guy winning the election, the current state of national affairs might be enough [...]

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Chris Parks, The Fleet of Doom, digital illustration, 2008
Saturday night marks the return of The Exhibitionists (the TMA young members group formerly known as Avant Garde) to downtown Tampa. Their show, Brand New Day, staged in the ground floor of Skypoint, aims to be an art party with a curatorial premise that actually holds some [...]

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A wall-mounted sculpture made of vynil records by Susan Janvrin of Papergeist.
Sooo… This is just a little recap of some things I saw last night for your reading pleasure.
I stopped by Art After Dark, the third Friday party-exhibit at the Tampa Museum of Art, to check out Sound Effects, an exhibit of music-related art [...]

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Jade Dellinger, curator of MashUp at USF CAM, sent me a link to this highly amusing video earlier today. My only disappointment: the reporter didn’t rock out (which everyone else who participates in the project does) before smashing the guitar. I was there on Friday night for the opening and additional guitar smashings - most [...]

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Jeppe Hein
Smoking Bench, 2003
Fog machine, bench (stainless steel and leather), mirror
Courtesy Johann König, Berlin
For most folks, Sarasota’s John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art is synonymous with Old Master style: ginormous Rubens tapestries, Italian canvases in dramatic chiaroscuro, twisting Baroque columns. In comparison, the Ringling’s current exhibit of modern art from the mid- to late-20th [...]

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Alex Espalter-Torres in his studio at the West Tampa Center for the Arts. Photo: MV

Over Memorial Day weekend, the West Tampa Center for the Arts held an opening reception for the last exhibit of their inaugural season. (Click here to read the article I wrote in September about the organization’s transformation from Gallery 1906 into [...]

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Edgar Sanchez Cumbas in his West Tampa studio. Photo: MV

Over the weekend, I visited with Edgar Sanchez Cumbas, an artist who lives and works in West Tampa. Last month, he created a large-scale abstract painting for Creative Loafing’s annual Sensory Overload art-music-performance bash—but it wasn’t just the idea of a new painting that caught my [...]

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Neil Bender. Borders. Mixed media on paper, 2007, 30 x 22 in. Courtesy Bleu Acier.
Neil Bender is Randy.
Check out his opening tomorrow night at Tampa gallery Bleu Acier.
Click here to read the feature in Creative Loafing.

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Laura Bergeron helps a walker pick her poison.
A couple of weeks ago, I got to hang out with a group of USF students staging a collaborative performance designed to draw attention to the way we walk—or, most often, don’t walk—in Tampa Bay. (See the previous post, Desert Walk at Sulphur Springs, for more information about [...]

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From the press release:
123 Show 
An exhibition of the first, second, and third place winners of the first annual Juried Art Show.
Artist Biographies
First Place
Alicia Loomis
Alicia Leigh Loomis is a native to Florida and currently resides in Bradenton, FL.  In 2006, Alicia received a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from Eckerd College with a major in [...]

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Janae Easton
Golden Locks that Moss Grew, 2008
Floral foam, dried plant material, wrapping paper, Mylar, found paper, pen, colored pencil and polymer clay
Courtesy of the artist
If you haven’t been to see the exhibit Drawing Beyond the Plane at the Tampa Museum of Art, I urge you to drop everything and head over today (Saturday) to catch [...]

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