Students get private tour of the Rubell Collection

One of my favorite annual art field trips is the spring AP student trip to Wynwood. This year we were able to have a private viewing of the Rubell Family Collection. The main exhibition downstairs featured Purvis Young, (1943-2010), Miami's own original self taught street artist from Overtown. A contemporary of Basquiat, Young was always educating himself with public library and radio resources. He painted on any found hard surface and used donated paints from his fans. Finding him on some hard times, Mera and Don Rubell came to his aid by purchasing hundreds of his paintings. The show is hung thematically so you could see the symbolism and repetition in Young's practice.

Young's boat series

Life in the hood...angels at the scene of an accident

Upstairs was a colorful eclectic collection of new acquisitions of younger artists. The students really enjoyed the bubblegumish cartoon paintings of Janiva Ellis, the installation and video by Trulee Hall, all the work of story by Simphiwe Ndzube, and the Haitian artist and grandson of Issa, a family friend and famous gallery owner, Tomm El-Saieh!

Students interact with Fertile Blue by Hall

Simphiwe Ndzube

If I picked just ONE work to take home it would be a Purvis Young Pregnant Woman. Not only is it exquisite and tender in color, but it could stand for the way we all felt when we left... pregnant with possibilities. Great sights and a real educational day! My gratitude goes out to the Rubell Family Collection staff who did a wonderful job of welcoming and showing us around.

My favorite Young painting, Pregnant Woman series

Bringing Wynwood to campus

Wynwood is an art district of Miami that has become synonymous with artistically painted walls. Not a surface is left uncovered by art. Looking around campus at the new and old construction, the art club got itchy to add some designs. We painted rocks, banners for the gym, and then this spring we christened the baseball dugout with our own geometric school color design. Three designs were submitted to the athletic department, and this is the one that won out over the other two.

Natali and Michi with the vision

Angel (really!) in the Maintenance Department prepared the wall for us. We took 3 hours and 7 rolls of tape to prep before being able to paint!

This is the third student mural I have facilitated in my 8 years at Palmer. It brings me greatjoy to see the ownership and pride that develops in the students as they showcase their talents to the campus in a big way. I barely lifted a finger, except to hand them some pizza!

We painted through a home game and removed all the tape after 7 hours of work!

I am feeling Artsy

Check out my work online on a new gallery venture called Flow-305. 
It's easy to see the work of my friends and check out individual pieces that represent the best I have to offer. Please look at it and if you can, forward it to a friend. I have some new paintings, all inspired by the joy of living in a tropical zone.

Birds of a Feather

All acrylic works on paper, 12 x 18 inches. Right now I am asking $400, but the price might have to go up.

Flamingo Pat Party

Also these are uploaded onto my Fine Art America account for printing onto Merchandise!

Outdoor Flamingo Party

Student multi-color print assignment

a 4 color print by a senior

My level one Design and Composition class just worked on creating symmetrical designs of unique court cards. I gave the most point to the ones who could register the most colors. Everyone had to use at least two.

3 colors by a 10th grader

 3 colors by a ninth grader

three by a ninth grader

First they drew a half design and made their own carbon transfer paper to trace it twice onto a linoleum plate. Making sure that the two halves met somehow interestingly. Then they carved out the white, printed yellow. Carved out the yellow, printed red or blue, and repeated the process, printing black as the last color.

lots of diversity in designs

3 color print by Sophmore

2 color print by senior

They were required to start with as many prints as there were people in the class- so either 17 or 19. By the end- the challenges of registering each print in place made the edition size only 3 or 5.

10th grader

Sometimes you need 3D glasses to make it pop out at you!

3 color print by a freshman

3 ways Cranach solidified his career

two color linoleum print

 Lucas Cranach the elder (1472-1553) made his reputation by painting the nobility and court personalities into biblical or mythological stories. By this way he was granting the German princes of 1720 a lineage back to the beginning of the calendar. For a non-literate society, Cranach's paintings and prints really read as the truth.

first run

 He made his fortune painting barely veiled nude women for his male patrons.

Just resting on a decapitated head

And he garnered respect from the women by depicting them as victorious, saintly and beautiful.

A new venture!

I am so happy to be part of an Artsy gallery put together by Nicole Maynard-Sahar called Flow 305.
Most of the artists are Miami friends and the work is diverse and awesome. Please check it out! Let me know what you think, what you would like to see, and which pieces are your favorite.

Women with Swords...on the way to the Stake?

One line of imagery that seemed to interest Cranach was Death and the Maiden. Biblical stories such as Judith and Holofernes depicted women as heroic defenders of Germany as well as provided cautionary tails for men. Even though Cranach painted at least 40 of them, there was not a single Judith in any of the churches and cathedrals we visited.
Looking on the internet I quickly located 23 versions painted by Cranach and his assistants. They are spread around the world in collections from NYC to Vienna, Frankfurt, Washington DC, Glasgow, Ponce, Kassel, Stuttgart, San Fransisco, Dublin, Syracuse, Cologne, Budapest, Greenville, and (one) in Berlin!
The paintings are enigmatic... decorative and almost titillating. Cranach painted aristocratic women richly dressed calmly smirking as they run their fingers through the hair of their decapitated foe. The lopped off head is most always shown with the gore and hints of vertebrae turned towards the viewer. It is a creepy yet elegant scene and I wonder if it in some way excited the male gaze of the 16th Century courts.

I am torn between thinking of them as a perfect revenge trope for the #MeToo movement or an early advertisement of warning that precludes the next half century of rabid witch burning. The paintings, made by a man for other men, might have been a best seller sold under the guise of patriotic heroines to admire, yet I don't think the women benefited from the depictions. The models were real women of the court and little is known about their lives. For men, the image clearly presents women's sexual behavior as a real threat to society. These paintings are of the vulnerability of man and the passionate, violent,  sexual beings of women.  These images would have justified retaliation by society. Within 50 years there is widespread "witch craze" through out Europe of the 1600's and 1700's.