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 [...]

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Image courtesy Isabel Czerwenka-Wenkstetten and Leslie Fry
Tuesday evening marks the public debut of a collaborative project between St. Petersburg-based artist Leslie Fry and Austrian artist Isabel Czerwenka-Wenkstetten at the Studio@620. The pair met via email and Skype earlier this year then teamed up for an intense, ten-day collaboration in St. Petersburg. During Tuesday’s opening reception [...]

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Sensory Overload 4.0 has come and gone, but you can watch video of the event on YouTube (above) and check out pictures on Flickr (click on the image of artist Valerie George below). Congratulations to the judges’ choice winner of the student competition, Thomas Pregiato, Ringling College of Art and Design, and the audience favorite [...]

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3D rendering from Giancarlo Giusti’s Occupiable Highways
For the past two years, I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing the artists who participated in Creative Loafing’s Sensory Overload and writing about their work in advance of the event—but I’ve never been involved in planning the annual art-music-performance party. This year, after CL staffers decided that Sensory Overload [...]

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The University of Tampa’s digital art biennial Electronics Alive closes Mar. 24. Check out the exhibit– and a screening of award-winning 3D animations that takes place at UT’s Reeves Theater tomorrow night.

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Screenshot of World, Santiago Echeverry’s interactive database of 1874 cellphone videos. Courtesy santiago.cn.
For the past three years, Creative Loafing’s annual Sensory Overload has combined visual art, performance and music in an event of extravagant proportions. This year’s installment, Sensory Overload 4.0, aspires to be bigger and better than ever (of course) and distinct from [...]

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Audio interview between Jim Wegener and Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo with images of the artist’s work, via cynthialawson.com.
Every two years, the University of Tampa hosts Electronics Alive, an invitational exhibition of computer animated shorts, graphics and otherwise digital artworks with a global flair. During the exhibit, which runs through Mar. 24 and takes place in [...]

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Check out Creative Loafing’s cover story for your guide to Lights On Tampa action this weekend. Drop in on tomorrow’s symposium at 4 p.m. at Tampa Theatre. Listen to CL’s ArtsSpeak podcast on LOT (below). And—if you’re really a glutton for punishment—tune in to see me and Casa Magica artists Sabine Weissinger and Friedrich Foerster [...]

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A daylight shot shows the effects of a dozen mirror balls hanging from the Tampa Convention Center’s entrance portico, part of Chris Doyle’s Ecstatic City (Tampa).
Happy New Year, art lovers! What better way to ring in 2009 than by taking part in an event I think we can safely call, even at this early [...]

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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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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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