Our Florida Odyssey

We are on day 14 of our Florida odyssey we will arrive home on Sunday night. We have visited St. Augustine, Gainesville, Miami, Key West, the Everglades, and St. Petersburg. We seen a lot of relatives and a lot of art (in Miami). I have also done a fair amount of thrifting for books, I'll be back to regular blogging soon. Somewhat perversely, I'll be flying back to Florida the morning after we return to attend the opening of a show I'm in at the Norton Museum of art in Palm Beach. The show is called Now What? and it was curated from art in the Miami art fairs. The curators selected my 11 faux books from Black & White Gallery's booth at the Pulse fair. I was pleasantly surprised, they only took five artists' work from Pulse. I sold 8 books at the fair which was also a nice surprise, I wasn't sure how collectors would interact with them as art.

Driving through Everglades

Alligators in the Everglades on a cold day

Part of the outdoor Rainbow City installation by FriendsWithYou in Wynwood in Miami

Key West

Stingray in St. Petersburg

The Miami Art Fairs / Road Trip

I spotted this in a Home Depot parking lot in St. Augustine.

Blogging has been and will be slowed down for a little while because I'm on a Florida road trip until December 13th. The main reason for the trip is to attend the various art fairs going on in Miami from the 2 through the 5th. We are also visiting a number of relatives around the state of Florida. We are thrifting as we go so I'm hoping to find a ton of great new stuff for the blog. I'm also planning on doing a lot of scanning of my Grandfather's books in St. Petersburg.

If you are in Miami, I'm showing, my faux books with Black and White Gallery at the Pulse Fair and I have two pieces at the Aqua Art Fair (at the hotel) that are part of a William Brovelli project about contracts with Horse Trader Gallery. I'll be posting more about all this later.

The Fairs

We got back from Miami yesterday afternoon. We had a good time and saw a tremendous amount of art. I skipped the Miami/Basel convention center (A.J. went), but we both attended NADA, both Aqua Fairs, Art Miami, Photo Miami, Scope, Art Asia and the Art Positions Containers on the beach. It all gets a bit repetitive after a while. Most people seem to feel the need to judge fairs as a whole, this one was good, that one was bad, yadda yadda. I have a hard time looking at the fairs that way, I basically just try to to remember individual artists that I like. I will, however, say that the containers were awful. The one exception was Martha Friedman's huge rubber bands in Wallspace's container (and I'm not just saying that because we are both in the Armand Bartos show, the giant rubber bands were cool). The whole thing seemed more low key than last year (Recessionista!), although I heard that Jay-Z and Shakira were among the celebrities spotted at the big fair, and that has to qualify as encouraging.

Some of the ephemera collected over the course of three days of intense art tourism

This is the dreamiest, weirdest iPhone photo I have taken so far, a cloud and its reflection on the Gulf of Mexico.

Low Rollers

View of Miami from the art shuttle as it crosses the MacArthur Causeway

The Aqua Hotel, home of the Aqua Art Fair. I had work here with Black & White Gallery. I've only been in the hotel during the art fair (each room is taken over by a gallery), but I'd really like to stay there under normal conditions sometime.

A.J.and a new friend at Aqua Wynwood.

me

This lucky guy snagged a hammock outside the NADA fair. It was a very pleasant scene in the NADA garden. While we were sitting there drinking beer, Brian Eno's Here He Comes from Before and After Science drifted out of the sound system.

Off to Miami

I'm going to Miami tomorrow for the art fairs. Black & White Gallery (which represents me) will be at the Aqua Fair with a couple of my spider pieces. This will be my fifth trip to the Miami Fairs, it's always fun, exciting, and a little appalling. In terms of weather and economics, the contrast between Buffalo in December and Miami Beach is almost surreal, I like the strangeness of travelling from one to the other. Unfortunately the mood is going to be less exuberant this year due to all of the economic problems. Colette can't go this time so I'm going with my friend and fellow B-lo artist, A.J. Fries. I won't be posting again until Monday or Tuesday.

Flying over Miami Beach, heading home (2005)

Flying over Coney Island, which seems like Hoth in comparison

Brunch at the Sagamore Hotel, the two identically dressed people are a strange art couple (man and woman) who are always dress the same. I don't know their names.

This is the trunk of a car, wholesome Miami style

Paris in South Beach

This is the kind of thing I would have posted a couple of months ago if I had had a blog. Colette and I were in Miami for the art fairs in December and this was our big celebrity sighting. Photo credit: Colette