Jacksonville in Miami: North of Modern

Neighborhood Restoration Project North of the Miami Modern District Presented by the Florida Mining Gallery and Harbinger Sign

North of Modern #nomo is a multi-disciplinary art experience featuring a diverse array of 24 contemporary artists in a variety of mediums ranging from paintings to sculpture to video projection and performance art, as well as pop-up shops selling art and vegan fashions by OlsenHaus. Jacksonville-based Florida Mining Gallery is excited to be curating this multi-building art experience during Art Basel Miami Beach 2013, the premiere contemporary art event in the art world.

The purpose of this art exhibition is to increase awareness of a neighborhood restoration project that is underway at Biscayne Plaza, which will be transformed into a new facility named Midpoint.

[box type=”shadow” ]North of Modern will be presented at 591 NE 79th Street, Miami, FL 33139 (corner of Biscayne Blvd. and NE 79th) on December 5 thru December 7, from noon until 5 pm, and is free, open to the public. Friday night we will have an exclusive party featuring performance pieces and a projection installation from 8pm until 11pm.[/box]

Harbinger Sign – Preserving Florida Culture

Harbinger Sign’s commitment to preserving Florida culture is part of its mission to be Forward Thinking. Forward Doing. Art Basel Miami Beach has already proven that by bringing the world’s art focus to Miami, it has the power to revitalize neighborhoods. Majestic Properties and Global Fund Investments want to see this same future for the Little Haiti neighborhood surrounding Biscayne Plaza. To this end, the developers have acquired and restored six significant spaces, including a picturesque Art Deco, Post-Modern 5,000sf building as the property’s centerpiece and invited Florida Mining Gallery (a division of Harbinger Sign) to curate these newly renovated properties as gallery space; hence the North of Modern art experience.

“We see so much opportunity for revitalization in Florida, and we are excited to be a part of this incredible project,” says Steve Williams, President of Harbinger Sign and founder of Florida Mining Gallery. “Miami has so much of Florida’s cultural history evinced in its architecture and neighborhoods, it is crucial to support organizations committed to preserving and restoring those unique aspects of our state.”

Wynwood and Miami Modern have become thriving neighborhoods with rich art and youth cultures over the last ten years. As this trend moves north of the Miami Modern district, Majestic Properties and Global Fund Investments have taken the lead in restoring the Little Haiti neighborhood starting with Biscayne Plaza. By actively investing in this area and exposing the art community to this exciting emerging neighborhood, Majestic Properties and Global Fund Investments hope to see the trend continue with other area developers that share their vision of a new neighborhood. North of Modern is Harbinger Sign and Florida Mining’s contribution to this Florida restoration project.

For more information:
http://floridamininggallery.com/exhibitions/north-of-modern/
http://floridamininggallery.tumblr.com
https://www.facebook.com/events/684356141584332

NORTH OF MODERN | 24 FEATURED ARTISTS

[tabs type=”vertical”][tabs_head][tab_title]Betsy Cain[/tab_title][tab_title]Mark Creegan[/tab_title][tab_title]Donald Dusinberre[/tab_title][tab_title]Christina Foard[/tab_title][tab_title]Ke Francis[/tab_title][tab_title]Mark George & Tony Rodrigues [/tab_title][tab_title]Thomas Hager[/tab_title][tab_title]Dustin Harewood[/tab_title][tab_title]Marcus Kenney[/tab_title][tab_title]Russell Maycumber[/tab_title][tab_title]Geoff Mitchell[/tab_title][tab_title]Ibrahim Miranda[/tab_title][tab_title]Hiromi Mizugai Moneyhun[/tab_title][tab_title]Kurt Polkey[/tab_title][tab_title]Chip Southworth[/tab_title][tab_title]Kedgar Volta[/tab_title][tab_title]Milagros Art Collective[/tab_title][tab_title]Liz Gibson[/tab_title][tab_title]Jeff Whipple[/tab_title][tab_title]Miami Invasion Street Art Collective[/tab_title][tab_title]School of Everything[/tab_title][tab_title]Quintron & Miss Pussycat[/tab_title][tab_title]RJ Pozniak[/tab_title][tab_title]Elizabeth Olsen[/tab_title][/tabs_head][tab]Betsy Cain was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on the University campus and she grew up in Fairfield, Alabama, the steel mill city near Birmingham. She received both her BFA and MFA degrees from The University of Alabama, but did formative undergraduate work at Auburn University and Instituto Allende, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

“Since my paintings are imagined, I use abstraction to invoke an image that encompasses the idea of residual visual memory of the body’s states of being, the external landscape, and collective cultural remembrances. I like the idea of a painting lingering in a sustained moment, caught in the act of change or transition. An apogee of action which is often then subjected to some erasure or obfuscation.”

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[tab]Mark Creegan is an artist, educator, and curator currently living in Jacksonville, Florida. His diverse art practice includes drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, video, and performance. Creegan has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, and throughout the southeast. He is part founder of the curatorial project nullspace.

“For this project, I am using drawings made over many years using marker on found papers. With these elements, I will construct arrangements to be hung in the space and on the walls.”

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[tab]With formative years spent in the North and adolescent years in Florida, there has always been an awkward struggle between the two halves of Donald Henry Dusinberre’s brain; the creative side always battling the analytical side. That struggle has taken him through an unnecessarily long college career, which began at the University of Florida and ended at the University of North Florida with a BA in painting in 2001.

“As with anyone, my art courses took me through all sorts of styles and techniques, but my excitement didn’t usually come from getting the apple to look shiny or the model’s legs to look real. It was the stuff going on inside my head while I was working, regardless of what the product was. I began marrying the thoughts that ride alongside the process of creating art with the process itself, which is to say that the final product is not a ‘picture,’ but more like the evidence of an unusual event. Or maybe it just matches nicely with the sofa.”[/tab]

[tab]Christina Foard: Although my background training focused on classic and gestural figurative work, I have remained most curious and engaged by painting imagined worlds through abstract forms. Patterns in land, space, memories and the interior stirrings that form are what I attempt to depict. Many paintings are my interpretations of sliding, falling, floating, sinking, hanging, being trapped or breathlessly still.

Painting has been a pathway to open and react to memories; and when necessary, reframe and resolve them. Highly process oriented, my work is physical: pouring, spraying, sanding, scraping, carving paint at various stages and drying times, rhythmically moving between additive and subtractive methods. Every mark changes the entirety and creates a new puzzle to resolve. Therefore, I vacillate between analytical assessment and intuitive response. Letting go of controlled outcomes and a fixed plan is a constant in my philosophy. Taking risks with materials allows for surprising results and unplanned spaces, and over time, a specific language of symbols emerges. This affords a freedom to create my story without words.

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[tab]Oviedo, Florida, artist Ke Francis’s woodcut print “Rabbit Trap, Tar Baby and Flood Waters” delves into the intersection between racism and ecological disaster.” – Oxford American I have devoted the majority of my energies during this period to narrative work. I would say, simply, that almost all of my work is “about something”. I have very little interest in the decorative aspects of fine art, though I certainly hope that my work is visually exciting and aesthetically pleasing. I am most concerned that the work possess a sense of unity and that the structure, color, composition, drawing, and paint application fit the theme (content of the work).

I have struggled to take a singular vision and voice and carry them seamlessly across a variety of traditional forms. I cannot say that I have succeeded in this endeavor but recent developments in electronic media have made the task less complex. It is simpler than ever for one artist to move stories, text, and images through a variety of different mediums. The digital format makes the transfer simple. All that is needed is a consistent concept and the invention of unifying concept has been my continued focus for twenty years. Perhaps I’ll pull it off. In the meantime, just enjoy the art.[/tab]

[tab]Throughout their more than twenty year friendship, Northeast Florida artists Mark George and Tony Rodrigues have worked prolifically with appropriated images and materials from the mid-twentieth century to the present. In their most recent collaboration, George and Rodrigues bring vivid color, drama, tension, humor and trashy seduction to their series “Mistaken and Deluded.” The work on plexiglass addresses a plastic society and the sleek, shiny objects that inhabit it. The result is a eulogy for a golden age that exists only in the selective memories and artifacts of a bankrupt and artificial culture.

“Mark and Tony apply their distinctly nostalgic yet critical view of a select American consumer history that now exists only as a series of Pop relics. Mining this cultural trove of (sub)urban desire and gratification, the duo manage to pay homage to the patriotism of 1950s purchase power, even as they reveal the corruption beneath the glossy coat of “new and improved”. – Anthony Ausgang

tonyrodriguesart.com // markge.org/e[/tab]

[tab]Thomas Hager is a distinguished artist who has been producing compelling works of art for over 20 years. Hager’s unique use of vintage photographic processes from middle to late 1800s reveal a timeless sophistication with modern influences for which his work is revered. Drawn to these processes for their painterly aesthetic and historical contributions, Hager deems them as a perfect puzzle piece for his figurative works, which deal with the chaos of contradiction between flesh and spirit and his investigation of organic forms in nature.

As an award-winning participating artist in the prestigious Florence Biennale, Hager’s works have been exhibited at the Yossi Milo and Sears-Peyton Gallery in New York. His works are in the permanent collections of the Orlando Museum of Art, Huntsville Museum of Art, Mobile Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art Jacksonville, The Haskell Collection, Jennifer Johnson Duke Collection, and Henry Buhl Collection.

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[tab]Dustin Harewood: I was born and raised in New York City in the 1980’s. In the early 90’s my family moved to Barbados where I spent my high school years. I later moved back to the U.S to get my first degree in art at North Carolina Central University. I later attended the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where I received my M.F.A in painting and drawing. After graduating I moved to Jacksonville, where I am currently co-running the Art Program at FSCJ’s Kent Campus.

My latest paintings are portraits of poor young American children (the new Garbage Pail Kids.)

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[tab]Marcus Kenney (b. 1972) was born and raised in rural Louisiana and lives and works in Savannah, Georgia. Kenney earned an M.F.A. in photography from the Savannah College of Art and Design. He works in many mediums including sculpture, painting and photography.

Kenney has exhibited in museums, institutions, galleries and art fairs internationally, including Tel Aviv, Paris, London, Montréal, New York, Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Miami and Portland. His work has been featured and reviewed in Art in America, New American Painting, Artpapers, Art News, New York Times, Boston Globe, ArtVoices, Antlanta Journal Constitution, New York Art Magazine, and Art News. A high quality monograph of his works was published by SCAD and has been distributed worldwide by DAP

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[tab]Russell Maycumber: My work is formally about mark making. My initial compulsion comes from the materials I work with. The imagery generated is an evolution of the improvisational and economic working of these materials. The manipulation and abstraction of loosely representational imagery has developed over time into an idiosyncratic language appropriated from pluralistic cultural traditions and deeply informed by the phrase that no French man has ever coined, or would take credit for- “Le Juvenile de Vive”. This language is fueled by experiences molting from my day-to-day toil in the aberration that is temporal existence. In this sense, they are diary or journalistic in nature and share some similarities with the literary traditions of underground comics and their autobiographical tendencies. Direct historical influences include Emaki-mono of Japan, Mixtec codices, and Russian Lubki.

Translation: I like to draw…a lot. I draw a lot of little drawings. I like using sumi ink because it puts down beautiful, flat, dark black lines. I also like the ritual aspects to its preparation. The ink comes as pine soot bound with bone glue into a stick form and is ground on a stone. My drawings are most often made on post-it notes, though I sometimes use regular paper or scraps like cardboard packaging or napkins…whatever I have on hand, really. Lately I have been considering how I use humor in my work. As a kid I grew up popular pulp publications like Mad and Cracked magazine. A lot of my heroes were comedians. I realize that I utilize the levity of humor to introduce emotionally weighted subject matter. Identity politics of aging, gender and social position riddled my process with quirky proboscis, fur and ill-fitted clothing. Weapons and petrochemical refuse were the logical conclusions to powerlessness and self-denial (guns, blades, and exhaust).

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[tab]Geoff Mitchell earned his MFA in Visual Art from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and has since exhibited in galleries and museums across the U.S. in cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston and Atlanta, as well as abroad in Tokyo, Norway and Austria. He moved to California in 2005 and founded White Apple Studios in Los Angeles as a structure for his work in diverse mediums including painting, photography, film/video and sculpture. The studio name stems from the idea of white being a pure and empty state, a beginning that is innocent and open to any creative possibility. As well as the apple, the mark of temptation and a symbol of life, death and rebirth.

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[tab]Graduate of the Instituto Superior de Arte (I.S.A.) in 1993 specializing in etching, Ibrahim Miranda’s work have been exhibited in numerous solo and collective shows in galleries and museums throughout the world, among them: the Van Reekum Museum, Appeldorn, Holland; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Musée de Beaux Arts, La Chaux-des-Fonds, Switzerland; Museo de Arte Moderno, México, D.F.; Museo de Arte, Puerto Rico; Ernst Museum, Budapest, Hungary; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana; Museu da Gravura, Curitiba, Brasil; Cultural Centre of Athens, Athens, Greece; Museo Alejandro Otero and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Sofía Imber, Caracas, Venezuela; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; el Grafik Museum-Stiftung Schiner and Horst Janssen Museum, Oldenburg, Germany; Steirsher Herbst, Graz, Austria; The Chicago Cultural Center and The Kennedy Center, Washigton, D.C. in the United States.

His works have been shown in prestigious biennales and can be found in the collections of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana; The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York; Museu da Gravura, Curitiba, Brasil; Thyssen – Bornemisza Contemporary Art Foundation, Anit, Austria; the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; the Peter Norton Collection, Los Angeles; Museum of Fort Lauderdale, ASU Art Museum, Arizona, and GRAPHICSTUDIO, Tampa, Florida, among others.

The serie “Islas Urbanas” it is an iconographic research on the metamorphosis that take place on urban schemes. The idea is to find anthropomorphic figures that at the same time form new constellations of organic order. These same figures could be talismans of identity without altering the original scheme of the city. They have always been there unseen.

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[tab]“As with woodblock prints, Hiromi’s three-dimensional cut paper pieces are the result of a multistep process that produces an art that is at once amusingly lighthearted and startlingly alive.”

Paper-cut artist Hiromi Mizugai moved to Jacksonville, Florida, in 2004 from her hometown of Kyoto, Japan, the capital city for close to a thousand years before Tokyo. She began drawing at a young age, and by her teen years had developed a style of her own. With no formal art training, Hiromi has evolved a unique homegrown artistic voice that combines traditional Japanese visual art forms with the super-modernity that is now found in all of Japan’s biggest cities. The most obvious reference is to Edo Period Japanese woodblock prints (moku hanga), which had a major influence on her budding artist’s mind early on.

As with woodblock prints, Hiromi’s three-dimensional cut paper pieces are the result of a multistep process that produces an art that is at once amusingly lighthearted and startlingly alive. Her pieces invite the viewer in; indeed, one feels compelled to reach out and touch the images. Like the works of all the great masters, Hiromi’s pieces are best appreciated when viewed in person.

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[tab]Kurt Polkey’s mix media art is comprised of sarcasm, humor, bitterness, and glitter. Polkey is a co-founder of nullspace projects, an experimental curatorial team in Jacksonville, Florida. Polkey has exhibited his work, from Miami to Seattle and nowhere in between. If the song, “Missing You” by John Waite comes on the radio, Polkey will always sing along.

“My art is a parody of art. More specifically, it parodies pictures by a man making pictures for men. It’s a type of picture making that pretends to forget that painting was de-gendered in the seventies. There’s was a time when painting was a ‘man’s game’ and people talked about ‘painting with cocks’ at the Cedar Bar. Feminism knocked the wind out of those sails, but what would art look like with some maleness put back in?[/tab]

[tab]Driven by the movement and textures that are so elusive in painted representations, Chip Southworth explores freedom and motion through the construction and composition of his work, whether on canvas or wood panels. His work on wood panels pushes boundaries by exploring mediums that include wood, paint and graphite. He also utilizes scale to allow the tight work of the focal point to live in the same space as the abstracted extremities that are alive with motion and abstracted context. “I hope that this body of work shows the struggle of love, humanity and the soul as I see it.”

chipsouthworth.com[/tab]

[tab]In a life filled with fragmentation of feelings and thoughts, Kedgar Volta’s art brings it into form – shaping movement, creating context that is cohesive and complete. He creates work with a specific sense of purpose and a personal depiction of place: a contemplation of self, based on where he has been and where he is going. That inquiry reveals itself in Kedgar’s photography, graphic design, installations, and site-specific public art.

Kedgar emigrated to the United States in 2008, and since then, he has been able to draw on a dual cultural perspective, creating works that represent disparate lives and environments, but also narratives that serve to remind us of our common humanity. His art serves as both personal artifact and a reflection of our internal landscapes.

“The urban spaces I’m drawn to are defined as much by people as buildings and objects. Absent any human presence, I initially found this photo series incomplete – an unfinished canvas waiting to be populated. I decided to apply my own visual process of urbanization – relocating life and activity from one space to another, and in the process, creating the kinetic urban scene that I was originally looking for. After recording people moving through areas that approximated the physical perspective of my photos, I isolated their movements, removing all inanimate structures and objects. Applied to the photos, the dynamic elements in the projections migrate from video to print, and from conscious to concrete. Movements and paths through once empty physical spaces become defining characteristics of a new environment.”

kedgarvolta.com[/tab]

[tab]Felici Asteinza and Joey Fillastre are mural and installation artists operating under the name MILAGROS ART COLLECTIVE. The objective of MILAGROS is to reinforce individual strength through collaboration. Mutual respect and trust allow for a free environment of evolving creation. MILAGROS works to energize a site with a spirit of exuberance that champions the hand-made and radiates human dignity. Their intuitive way of working combines the context of a space and its history with color and intricate patterns. Site specificity is integral to the work. MILAGROS uses architecture as a counter-point; visually obliterating the seams of a space while simultaneously high-lighting the unique attributes of it. Elements of play and spontaneity culminate in surprise elation. Synchronicities and serendipity birth a new mysticism, based in the celebration of growth. MILAGROS works to re-energize a site with a spirit of exuberance that champions the hand-made and radiates human dignity.

milagrosartcollective.blogspot.com[/tab]

[tab]Liz Gibson has been an artist for twelve years. She works in painting, sculpture, video, installation, performance and storytelling. Her art has been presented and exhibited in galleries and museums including an evening of solo performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville in 2011. Gibson was recently selected to receive one of eight Individual Artist Fellowships from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs for 2014. She also received a grant from the Community Foundation of Northeast Florida for 2013. She received her MFA in Performance Art from Florida State University in 2011. She is based in Jacksonville, Florida and teaches at the University of North Florida.

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[tab]Jeff Whipple creates art that engages viewers in imaginative contemplations about the weirdness and beauty of our brief appearance in the infinity of time. He has won awards in professional competitions for drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, video, photography and playwriting. He has had 82 solo exhibitions in galleries, colleges and museums including the Tampa Museum of Art, the Gulf Coast Museum of Art, the Museum of Florida Art, and the Boca Raton Museum of Art. His art has been in dozens of group exhibitions across the USA and has received 48 top awards in competitions. Whipple’s play “Spokesperson” was produced in Chicago in 2008 and his comedy, “Couch Potatoes of the 22nd Century” was produced in 2009 in Orlando. He’s had 17 other play productions since the mid-1980s. He’s won several playwriting awards including five Florida statewide playwriting competitions. Whipple has won six state arts council individual artist fellowships: Two from Illinois: 1985 and 1990 and four from Florida: 1982, 1996, 2006, and 2014. The 1996 Florida fellowship was for Playwriting and Whipple is the only Florida artist awarded fellowships in two different disciplines. In 2001, he won the $10,000 Fulton Ross Grant based on career achievements.

Whipple’s paintings for a New Orleans library were selected as one of the 50 best public art projects in 2012 by the Public Art Network. His other public art commissions include an 80-foot long video on the exterior of the Tampa Museum of Art, a 300-foot long mural for the City of Tampa and a 150-foot long mural for a library in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Tampa Museum of Art commissioned Whipple to create a large-scale outdoor video and art installation in Miami Beach that was seen by hundreds of thousands during the week of Art Basel Miami in 2006.

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[tab]Projection Mapping Installation by RJ Pozniak[/tab]

[tab]OLSENHAUS PURE VEGAN

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