october hodgepodgery

While Wynwood Burns

If there is to be an October surprise then let it be the five alarm fire that consumed the warehouse of Art by God just days after the Biscayne Times published an in depth article on the swamp's infamous   target for animal rights activists unhappy with the metaphysical art of collecting stuffed animals and other treasures from the wilds.

And so it is that from the wild winds a flurry of ash and mulch give rise to another glimmer of promise for the artists community counter culture and fringe thinkers. 

The establishment of a temporary homestead for ArtLurker and friends is a welcomed site to visit and support with canned goods and campfire stories of escapades into the tormented world of art.

Happy also are the visitors to the Collage Pottage show. The smiles are a result of the glue that bind good times with rhymes, chimes and the avant garde. The spirit is generational.

Generational are the shifts in Westwood (west of wynwood) evidenced by the action just south of the old OhWow gallery on NW 7 Ave.

Words are Weapons and you will need them.

The Spinello Gallery in its new fringe location is currently showing a collection of drawings and silkscreens inspired by banned books in history.  Great works indeed.  Manny Prieres has painstakingly traced these iconic jackets of literary genius to build a library of gauche and graphite.

Oh wow, and Manny makes the ladies sweat a bit.

Not to be out lined, this complex of gentrified kiosks in proper old Wynwood gets a nice lighting scheme to heighten the vertigo after dark.

Of fires and false alarms, the Freedom Tower has been red hot with programing.

The showcase of finalists for the Cintas Fellowship was a bit of a flub compared to the adjoining gallery where a show of Jaimie Warren's photography shocks anyone beyond the closet and out of this world .

One could juxtapose that MDC may have resources to make most 501Cs green with envy but skilled observers know such institutions can not be the establishment and the avant garde at the same time.

Of juxtapositions look no further than the Fountianhead Residencies up in Little Haiti.  A short stroll from St. Marie's Cathedral and the Little River Yacht Club is a cavernous arc of a building parceled off to accommodate all manner of creative types.  

William the aviator greets vistors with the confidence of a frequent flier.

 Funded by the legendary Mykesells of Morningside, the Fountainhead complex is a petri dish of practical application with peculiar proportion.  There is no space available in this Ayn Randian barn of bewilderment,  suffice to say it would appear that artists grow on trees.

Fifteen minute drive to the beach and a world apart from the ravages of mainland is the retail cathedral of shopping centers, Bal Harbour where another sort of art adventure is unfolding. A stroll along the open air mal is like an intoxicating breath of freshly minted monopoly money.

To walk in someone else's shoes is ok so long as they have the same size.  And the size of one's stomp matters when vying for limited art dollars.  Limited not so much as in not enough to go around but limited in that in a scripted world there are few things not rehearsed already by the haves, the have mores and everybody else.

To walk in peachy shoes and matching fur-trimmed pocho is perfectly normal at the posh Bal Harbour Mall.  To walk loudly and carry a small stick is also common among the well heeled.

To walk outside and get blinded by giant mirrored letters spelling out SANCHEZ or some such thing is actually new to the people of this tony seaside town.  It is the art of getting used to things according to one councilman.

Refreshing times call for interesting fashion directions.  That's swampy.

Andre Courreges vintage eyewear,  RedWhiteBlue Thrift find.

*