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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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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C. Wade Brickhouse, Paper Vessels, 2008. Courtesy Florida Craftsmen.
Most of you probably know the artists’ studios housed above Florida Craftsmen in downtown St. Petersburg as Artspace. I’m told by staff at FC, which owns the building, that a slight reorganization has taken place. The studios will be known as ArtLofts going forward, and the artists– [...]

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Inside ArtHouse3. Courtesy Katherine Gibson.
For those who don’t know, South Tampa resident Katherine Gibson has periodically transformed her home into a temporary gallery space for the past few years. Add friends and neighbors, guest artists, hors d’oeuvres and … you get the picture.
From Kathy’s email about the latest installment of ArtHouse3:
Come see a [...]

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Cosme Herrera. Frost, 2007. (via NYT)
Roberta Smith of the New York Times delivers a sound thrashing to “How Soon Is Now?,” an exhibit of emerging artists at the Bronx Museum of Art, but Cosme Herrera, a former Tampa resident who is represented locally by Paula Ysom Group, escapes unscathed. Check it out>>

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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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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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Louise Nevelson. North Floral. 1976.
Wood painted black, 1061⁄4 x 168 x 171⁄4 inches
The Ovitz Family Collection, Los Angeles
Photo Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York
©2007 Estate of Louise Nevelson/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
I haven’t been good about blogging recently– and I’ll admit it’s because I haven’t seen anything lately that really made me feel great about the [...]

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