#NowBeHere 3 Miami

There is a lot of movement in the visual arts fields these days. We are gathering, talking, "sharing our truths" and staring bravely into the culture. There is work to do!
Today at the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), in collaboration with Jane Hart, the Girls Club, and almost 400 artists we gathered together in front of the lens of Los Angeles-based artist Kim Schoenstadt. It was a sweet balm after the showy art events last weekend, with all of the attention on Art Basel and the 20-something satellite art fairs in town. Today was about the makers, visionaries, alchemists and dreamers. We saw a museum filled with such artists. We were the museum!

Ms Schoenstadt had an idea to call out the women who create and document the diversity of us for posterity. She has been traveling, meeting and arranging portraits of the urban communities. The first #NowBeHere was in Los Angeles, and then Brooklyn. The New York Times wrote about it here.http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/arts/design/now-be-here-takes-a-portrait-and-makes-a-statement.html?_r=0 Jane Hart, collaborated with Schoenstadt as artist. Known as a brilliant independent curator, Hart seemed truly touched by the strength of numbers and growing crowd and the warmth of PAMM Director Franklin Sirmans.
Today was Miami's turn to be shine!

The weather was atypical and too drizzly for us to pose outside. Artists lined up under the eaves of the Herzog and de Meuron Museum to file into the auditorium space where we had coffee and saw faces familiar and new. I met some amazing women starting on the Metro train there, then in the line, and either side of me in our positions. Of course, I forgot my contact cards- made do with a pad and pen for notes. Lots of us exchanged Instagram names. Truly I can't wait to set aside more time to connect again soon. Meg Wallace, an artist who works with the post traumatic stress of child victims of child trafficking (a huge local Miami problem) and Haitian artist and author Alexandra Barbot sat on one side of me, (who graduated high school with a sweet mutual friend!), and I could go on, but my girlfriend Krisse couldn't make it, and not my studio mates either. So it wasn't a complete scene for me. But Today was wonderful. Today I saw, felt and heard the intensity of great ideas and from a range of diverse thinkers. I was so uplifted I should be floating around right now.

I am number 104!!!