I went to the Miami art fairs and all I brought home was some snake oil

All I brought home was some snake oil, a stack of cards, sore feet and aching eyes. But, boy, we had fun!!!

There were so many fairs going on at once, outside the BIG ONE at the convention center, that I had to make some decisions regarding my finances, my tolerance level, and Miami traffic.
Untitled is by far my favorite fair. The tent on the beach glows with diffused light and the art work is smart.

Carl D'Alvia work (its a drawing of one of our sculptures!)

house flipping- a common sight in my neighborhood

burned out rubble of a neighborhood, spelling...

more commentary on Florida real estate?

In addition to clever drawings and sculptures, there was an abundance of good painting. I was intrigued by the works in umber and browns on top of neon yellows and oranges by Karine Hoffman of Galerie DIX9 in Paris. Very beautiful. Yet my favorite works were these crazy clever tight photographs of painted elements arranged with attention to the juxtopositions of shapes, the very edges of shapes forming new shapes, by Erin O'keefe. She calls herself an architect and a photographer and was represented by Denny Dimin of NYC. The work almost took off where de Chirico left off.
Next door in SMAC, gallery from South Africa, were some thickly painted largely smeared portraits by Georgina Gratix of Mexico city. Enjoying her work was all about the viscosity of paint.

There was such an array of materials on display! Miami artist Michelle Weinberg had a rack of bleached jean jackets for sale and for use in a daily collaborative dance performance. She was in the midst of sewing her tattoo designs onto one of them when we stopped by. We had enjoyed her open studio at Fountainhead studios last weekend and it was great to see another side of her art practice.

a series of words cut through almanac pages give new meaning to the map

these porcelain models are absorbed on their cell phones

 Topics such as immigration and technology pervaded much of the works on display. I love the use of different materials... especially the variety of the woven materials. There were woven photographs, woven furniture, recycled toothbrush heads, the plastic bags turned into dresses, and embroidery patches sewn to walls.

A good warning for some of us- but I avoided putting on the ear buds.

After Untitled we lunched with a view of the ocean, and then went into Scope. That fair was full of riffs and humor. My camera started to die, but I did get a few images... I had to wrestle past all the people striking selfie poses with the works.

I had a few "aha" moments... as an artist, as a teacher, and as a human being. I got to see in real life the paintings of Emilio Villalba from San Fransisco who I enjoy on Instagram. I saw art that gave me lesson plan ideas, such as the guy using packing tape on light boxes, Max Zorn in Stick together Gallery. And art that should have been what I was doing like the guy painting portraits out of his ice cream shoppe in BGArt Gallery from Santa Monica! For $80 John Kilduff would "serve up" a custom small 8x 10 portrait of you as an ice ream cone. Apparently he is the host of a TV series called Let's Paint TV. In other acts he paints while running on a treadmill or answering live calls on air. Basically it was a performance and a fun spot for creating a carnival atmosphere in truth.

There was serious stuff to think about such as a lot of art addressing gun control and school shootings. This exhibit gave me pause.

We left the fair in the late afternoon and then found our way, by a few clubs, to my favorite little hotel fair: Aqua. It was dark and the music was pounding. Our feet were starting to really ache. If we didn't laugh we would have cried. At one point we seriously contemplated how we could purchase a $4600 painting by John Sanchez for my son for Christmas. That's when I knew we should go home.
Somewhere along the way we picked up the bottle of snake oil.