Birth of Swampthing

Creature from the DesignDistrict

Be There or Be Somewhere Else.

Snooze You Lose, and Bring Some Booze

Back to the Od Old Nights

Big Book Don't Lie

All that Glitters is Shiny.

Obama Endorses Swampthing @ Swampspace Tonight.

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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.

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Collage Pottage

Swampspace Gallery

presents

the Collage Pottage show

Cut & Paste Re-Creation

featuring

Beatriz Monteavaro, Bhakti Baxter, Sabetty Patterson, Brandon Opalka, Jeiddy Lopez, Bike Lane, Walter Latimer, Brookhart Jonquil, AD LER, George Horner, Christian Curiel, Loriel Beltran, Melanie Ratcliff, Daniel Newman, Natasha Velez, Clifton Childree, Douglas Hoekzema, Sleeper Speaks,  Regina Duarte Jestrow,  Stian Petter Roenning,  Patricia Margarita Hernandez,  Jessy Nite,  Christina Pettersson, A.G. & Rainer Davis, Kiki Valdez, Maitejosune Urrechaga, Mike Vasquez and your name here…

Opening Reception

October 13th  6-11 pm

150 NE 42 Street - Miami Design District

Collage Pottage is a science and an art.

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see y'all in september

to Walk Softly and Carry a Big Brush might be his legacy. 

Summer is over and this year we pause to say Adios to Tony Goldman. A singular guy with a really great team of close advisors, muses, lieutenants and gofers.  Go gently now Tiger, the burden of knowing is lifted off your hearty shoulders.   Go knowing that Art is the most Powerful Force in this World. 

Big MAC

Go knowing there is now one more school in the swamp devoted to teaching enlightenment for a life worth analyzing.

Go knowing generations of regular people will be inspired by your unique gentle brand of gentrification, your inflorescence.  Go with the comfort that you did allot more than place  tired old Borinquen Wynwood on the world cultural map.  

Respectfully, a short ride from the Wynwood Walls Hood is DownTown Miami.

In this fertile swamp others will pick up the drumbeat and move the pieces forward.

The seeds are being planted for the next crop of creativity but as George Lindemann said succinct,

"Well scratch that, at least for the foreseeable future"  

dear george in response to the Herald

 Time of the Signs

This lumbering place moves slow and dirty in the direction of history.   One history rewritten each year in the ebb and flow of power and funding that fuel enterprise in art. What accumulates for the fast approaching seasonal tide is nothing less than an Art Funds Grab Frenzy. More on that later.

For now we focus on the prevailing winds. Some say the trend toward enlightenment seems to be stalling.  Yet in Little Haiti there are signs of something truly unique brewing... open your own sign company.

“If you work all day and drive home in traffic, you don’t really feel like going back out,”

Laura Quinlan - Rhythm Foundation

Jordan Levin for the Herald

On North Beach there is a open call to artist, just don't get caught...

“Our budget has expanded so we can expand our programming, and we want people to take advantage of it.” Shana Sheldon - Locust Projects

At best, our Arts Awakening is moving like molasses. 

Yet Michael Dezerland Collection is doing his Happy Days Best to keep art alive in North Miami.

Big North Miami shout out for 12345 North Dixie Highway and their YoMomma Show and Best Address in the swamp.

If the Mink and Mignon of art is on Miami Beach and the Meat and Potatoes of art are in Wynwood, then the place for just that Perfect Pastiche of good taste and taste good is the Design District.

During Fashion Night Out, scene from District Factory featuring a kick ass set by Afro-BETA !

But pardon the appearance Miami Design District is in a perpetual temporary state of improvements, progesterone makeovers, open bars, twilight zones,  reacquisitions and all things next...

Relax dear followers,   All Roads lead to Swampspace

The perfectly peculiar master of menagerie Mark 3-Diamond greets visitors...

Where the wild things go, legendary style mama Pat Fields goes greenjeans...

Lovi Liz and the purple professor drink the swampy punch...

Hey babe, Take a Walk on the 3-D Side...

With zero funding for the arts Swampspace does more proportionately for Miami than the entire provincial government of Bangladesh.

swampy demographic...

Nutting hollow bout them cheeks.

Honk if you are with the Toot Your Horn party...

And be prepared for a big group celebration of Re-creation ala Hannah Hoch...

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Spatial Recognition in 3-D

Swampspace Gallery

is thrilled to announce

the photography of

Mark 3-Diamond

s p a t i a l   r e c o g n i t i o n

opens September 8, 2012  6-11pm

150 NE 42 Street Miami Design District

 3-D Mark Diamond Invades Swampspace

The Spatial Recognition Show 

is sure to be eye-opener of 3-Dimensional photography reflecting this amazing medium. 

Diamond helped establish the Museum of Holography in New York City in 1975.  For three decades he has maintained a laser laboratory for holographic research and more recently developed an indescribable lenticular imaging technique applied to portraiture of notables such as Buckminster Fuller and more importantly the impromptu photo-journalism of street theater personalities .  At mid-career Diamond is nudging the envelope of contrived expectation with a stunning sense for the power of kitsch.  

“this is a new medium for most people, and as such a new visual language which requires a bit of contemplation in order to really see what is going on in these little gems. By presenting such an overwhelming pastiche of subjects all in one place the viewer can readily acclimate to this new lexicon if they have the patience to engage, the rewards are great and it directly affects their appreciation for the 3-D- depth of the world around them.”

Not to be underestimated, Diamond professes to have assembled a gallery of hundreds of images aptly called the 3-D Wall-o-Gram.  Included in his arsenal is an unusual  3-Dimensional Aerial Atlas of Miami filmed from a helicopter over the last 4 years.  The centerpiece of Diamond's 3 ring circus is entitled GreenSpace.   Visitors will encounter a chunk of earth and green leaves popping from the floor causing the sensation you are seemingly knee deep in it.  Diamond says that the experience is achievable in a dream state where objects intersect and share 3 dimensional spaces in a way “real” things cannot.

 Special musical guest  Jam I Am

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