FebruFest

The old Boat Show is now the Yacht Show... and it is still bigger than Basel for sheer number of obnoxious pomp and circumstance.

The Design District is pounding with the wrecking ball scheduled demolition of obsolete architecture like hell yeah, this gem where legend Willy Chirino once recorded hispano-hits making way for Luis Vitton and a Wall Mart in Midtown.

Yet with the recent untimely Palm Beach Art Fair and Art Wynwood one can wager others still have boat-loads of mula left over to buy that uber sleek yacht you've always wanted.

Graffiti (and a luxury car) go up in the bastion of civility, the Palm Beach Art Sleeper.

Media is celebrity worship, with an emphasis on acceptable behavior.

Shopping carts laden with generic cash... at the art fairs.

I want one.

Light for Sale.

Brahman begs the Question, is my body ready for the body shop?

S & S Diner next to a fail.

Double Fail actually equals success across from Arsht.

Bridge Red knocks it out of the North Miami courtesy of Sherri Tan.

Not a blurry photo, Gentle giant Bob Thiele's studio.

Swampspace wraps up six glorious years of serving the community with a kick-ass class-act group-show that was not quit politically correct, it was the grand finale and genesis for the phoenix incarnation of the next swampspace.

Be On The Lookout for general brash goodness with the swampstyle you've come to expect.

And be sure to catch Jessy Nite rockin shockin down the street at Primary Projects.

*

Last Call Wreckin' Ball

Swampspace Gallery

presents

Last Call Wrecking Ball

a collective retrospective

Join the Community of Design District Artists to Commemorate a Decade of Emergence and Fruition.

Opens February 11, 2012

6-12 pm

Cristina Lei Rodriguez - Wendy Wischer - Nektar De Stagni - Naomi Fisher - Frances Trombly - Jim Drain - COOPER - Leyden Rodriguez - Friends W U - R & R - Bhakti Baxter - Jason Hedges - Daniel Arsham - - Domingo Castillo - Nicolas Lobo - Martin Oppel - Adler Guerrier - Tao Rey - Daniel Newman - David Rohn - OliSan

*

Season Premier 2012

Swampspace Gallery

Season Premier 2012

Southernmost Situations

presents

Free Key West

opens Saturday January 14

6-12 pm

3821 NE 1 Court

Miami Design District

Junkuary Jam

MacroMicro

It is no small wonder that an unassuming item or person can have tremendous value . Such is the case with this pocket sized symbol of Charlotte Bornte's ruminating genius, creator of the diminutive feminist heavyweight Jane Eyre.

Dr. Frankenstar Power

Likewise it is not easy pinpoint how exactly a spark of genius is ignited, and more so where or how it is sustained for a lifetime. In the art world it obviously helps have a pedigree, a purse, and a respected critic for a partner. With all that it is also imperative to keep an eye on the sublime and a finger on the pulse of elegant non-objectivism. Helen Frankenthaler did just that; no wonder so many homely artists tend to emulate her.

Art Nights at the Mall

With increasing focus the swamp can be defined by its own highs and lows.

At one end of the spectrum there is a glorification of touted refinement from a culture that is sustained by characters who identify or appropriate our loose knit arts community. At their low end is a failed world built modern on hype and consumerism. On the high end is clarity and swampy liberation.

Occupy Cave

It is not hard to find our way past the clutter of artificiality. Even in the worst of times, the young will court, dance and trip head over heals. Such is the power of the love of art.

Legal Rehab

Even today among the ruins of Downtown, there is a transformation of which legality is undeniable. With inalienable right, the arts community is contributing significantly to the revitalization of a city lost in the tropics.

A Head of Time

Where there is push there is pull. Gains made are not always set in stone as we see in the destruction of the Midtown World Gardens. This city block was to be a magnificent passive park for the good of public commons. What happend ? Do we really need another MoviePlex.

Midtown Quiz

Q: Why does man kill trees? A: Because trees can not run away.

Much Ado about Street Art

Meanwhile back in colorful old Wynwood, the walls are closing in and Tony Goldman is doing well.

Casa de Grande Nuts

I was fortunate to stumble into the distinguished Enrique Martinez Celaya having a 5Guys burger with his curator. A fellow cuban painter and professor of all things impressive, Enrique was as expected nothing less than charming and demure. For sure Wynwood is much improved with Celaya's Whale&Star enterprise in town... non more pleased than our very own self -appointed arbiter of markets Snitzer.

Nearby neighbors throw up a bit of their own beautification. No sign permit needed.

Ouch, Out of the Back of the Truck Sale?

At the end of the day, the best things in the swamp are the ones left alone.

*

What on Earth

After another brilliant Basel flashow the neon lights of Miami Beach are dimmed. But soon enough we again fire-up them old holiday season illuminations. Like a mirror of South Beach before the Arts Awakening, the neighborhood of Wynwood has also molted dramatically. Over on the mainland in the past decade, 'Little PuertoRico' has been transformation beyond the beyond. For better of worse with the year closing, perhaps some ruminations on art's place in the swamp are in order.

Watching paint dry one would think shazam-things just don't happen fast enough. But the truth is things are always changing. This is why God invented the 20% Off Sale; invented to further the flow of events. But where there is movement there is wear n tear and oftentimes some unintended transmutation. Such is the weirdness of Wynwood.

Nothing happens all of the sudden; Otto Von Jr. of South Florida proves well versed in Design District cyclical cynicism, when we discussed with elegance how moldy bricks and mortar are giving way to gleaming kubrickian faces, spaces and towers of blinding modern luxury .

Quite the conversation piece at the Design Miami Fair Entrance, this year's very pleasing Pine Lumber Sculpture Conversation Cage now disassembled and loaded on a truck in route to storage on NE 36 street.

But this post is about a neighborhood in the final throes of an ambition gone wild, the focus of the December dispatch is what on earth has happened over there in Wynwood. Like the Gold Rush of Cali past, this unassuming working class neighborhood was intended to become a museum of street art. Instead Wynwood today is a colossal hodgepodge of mash culture anthropological technicolor public venting on a scale unseen since graffiti exploded on the NYC scene 30 years ago. There is an explanation.

Here below is a primer for property owners and would be muralists of all stripes.

If you own a building in this neighborhood (or anywhere else) make haste arrange with an artist of your choosing to commission a work of art lest the place be plastered with uninvited tags and throw-ups.

I will not blame the higher forces for what on earth has happened, but i will say indeed a bodacious bomb of belligerence sure as hell went off in this pocket of floundering Puerto Rican culture and identity. Wynwood is in need of paint... mostly white.

LA's only Retna, Top to Bottom of course.

The site of the impetus swarm the original Locust Project thrives on auto-pilot while the new incarnation in the Design District searches of the next level of re-invention and a new home amid the ruins of self mutilating cut concrete and steel jumble.

Kinda lika OhWow Version 2.0 just less original.

Crass for Clunkers, we Wynwood your ride.

Unstoppable overexposure. Many locals don't visit SoBe anymore either.

Rays of sunshine in a storm of hard. A non-arts business gets w the program.

Southbound from 29 street, N.W. Second Avenue is where the Street Art Circus begins.

But venture just a block off the beaten path and you will see the detritus of a city in shambles from economic instability and lopsided public policy. How little can i get that for...

Venture far beyond the areas of concentrated efforts by our dynamic developers like Goldman and Robins, Miami is on the brink of cultural bankruptcy where despair is just a red-light ticket away and most folk cling to the comfort of their couch except those who brave the pavement on Art Walk Second Saturday in Wynwood.

Not all graffiti is sanctioned, thank the Lawd. When will the endless roadwork end.

North of Wynwood the swamp is as it should be, unchanged for decades.

While the intelligential set politely discuss the nuanced broad trends in this current arts awakening, infusing the anointed few with visual and performing arts funding is their true focus. For better or worse the mass culture folk are not waiting for permission from the adults. Artists are taking to the street with paint cans and expressing visions of their place in the swamp. Question begs, when is enough enough; to what end is the Wynwood blossom a whither.

This holiday season, everybody has one. What's your Brand?

*