On Friday night, I paid a visit to Pride & Passion 2008, the Tampa Museum of Art’s annual celebration of gay pride, to check out Equilibrium, a one-night exhibit featuring three Tampa-based GLBT artists: Jen Saavedra, Santiago Echeverry and Kurt Piazza. Wish y’all could see the exhibit, but it’s gone now. Instead, check out this [...]

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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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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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Bi-polar bunnies by Coralette Damme, a.k.a. the Crafty Hag, at Saturday Morning Art Market.
In addition to the largely food-based Saturday Morning Market (where you can buy assorted herbs, plants, soap, batiked garments, etc., as well as fruits, veggies, prepared foods, baked goods, and so on), downtown St. Petersburg now hosts the Saturday Morning Art [...]

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A detail of the installation of Rediviva by Tampa artists’ collective Experimental Skeleton last year at Miami’s Locust Projects. On Friday, the same project opens at Flight 19. Sculptures, clockwise from bottom right, by: Bob Dorsey, April Childers, Gregory Greene, Jeremichael Bonds, Brian Taylor, Joe Griffith and Paul Pisoni. Image courtesy Experimental Skeleton. [...]

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Dominique Labauvie. Arcas et Callisto. Pastel, charcoal and pigment, 2008, 29.5 x 42 in. Image courtesy Bleu Acier.
Since Dominique Labauvie moved back to Tampa from France a year or two ago, I’ve become a big fan of his drawings, prints and forged steel sculptures. Click here to read a piece I wrote for NY [...]

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Organizer Brandon Dunlap says this show’s a good one. With a line-up of more than 30 artists (!) and a chance to see what Pale Horse owner Chris Parks has done with his St. Petersburg space now that the business no longer includes tattooing– well, I’m thinking there are multiple reasons to check this show [...]

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Friday night, join artists Theo Wujcik and Josh Pearson at Urban Outfitters in Centro Ybor to view their recent art installations. In March, the store’s windows will feature work by Kim Coakley, who will also be on hand Friday.
On Saturday, Coakley is a featured artist at the Tampa Artist Emporium’s monthly mixer in Hyde Park [...]

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A Non Grata performance in Boston last year. Courtesy nongrata.ee
Is it just me—or is the number of art events taking place this weekend insane?
On Friday, it’s a tough call. If you stop by [5]art at the West Tampa Center for the Arts for their Polaroid Show, you can also see the FLOCAS show of [...]

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Inside Ybor’s Czar nightclub.
Saturday night, I went to Dirty But Sophisticated 4 with Avant Garde, the Tampa Museum of Art’s young professionals group. They had finagled a pre-DBS tour of artist Theo Wujcik’s studio as well as early entry to the main event, a collaborative art-and-fashion show featuring the work of 16 local artists and [...]

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Elisabeth Condon, Impending Fall, 2007, Watercolor, 11 x 15 in.
With few natural signals to indicate the passing of the seasons, Bay area residents are left to simulate the arrival of spring with a flowering of arts and cultural offerings. Dear friends, as we face a never-ending onslaught of oppressively sunshine-filled days in the coming [...]

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A little late to throw this out there, but the Tampa Museum of Art’s young professionals group, Avant Garde, is offering an interesting opportunity to attend a VIP preview of Dirty But Sophisticated 4 tomorrow night.

If you are already a member of the museum, you can pay $15 for a year-long membership to AG that [...]

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