Metamorphosis II , The Evolution of the Black Artist
February 17 - 26, 2023. Opening reception Febuary 17, 6 - 8pm. Free and open to the public.
“ We are very honored to showcase the works of these very gifted artists. The first of this Metamorphosis series was presented at the Larimer in 2004 with featured artist Overstreet Ducasse and now deceased Richard Norris. I truly want our community to witness the gifts of these talented artists with hopes that we may encourage more involvement, especially amongst our youth, with events like this.” - Shirley Edwards, EMAGINE Arts
This exhibit is a tribute to the contributions of three beloved local artists that have passed on: Arlene Polite, Dave McClain and Richard Norris.
Featured artists will be:
Targi Fisher - quilter - Johnson native
Evangeline Johnson - photographer - Palatka native
Eddie Roundtree - visual/mural artist - Palatka native
Khamil Ojoyo - sculptor - Jacksonville native
Overstreet Ducasse- visual artist - Jacksonville native
Other artist include: Mary Lawson Brown, Carolyn Taylor, April Alexander, John Alexander, Michael's Eye, Richlan & Walden Ryan, B Brothers Comics, Lalonnies Art, Flowers by Louis and Larimer curator Dan Askew. Also, local art collector Gerri Robinson will display her private collection of African artifacts, and paintings by Bahamian artist, Gerri.
Also, Palatka artist, Luke Taft will be doing a live portrait of Nina Simone during the opening reception.
Dan Askew - For Keeps Sake
Edward Roundtree
Evangeline Johnson
March 10 - April 9, 2023. Opening reception March 10, 6 - 8pm. Free and open to the public.
LYDIA BORKO
Lydia is a northwest Florida native, and graduated from Florida School of the Arts in Palatka in 2019. She is newly graduated from Illinois State University, where she earned a BFA in Ceramics. In her work she utilizes a multitude of mediums to explore connection, identity, and the body.
“Art is a habit of the intellect, developed with practice over time, that empowers the artist to make the work right and protects her…from deviating from what is good for the work. It unites what she is with what her material is. It leads her to seek her own depths. Its purpose is not her self-enhancement, her having fun or feeling good about herself. These are byproducts. It aims solely towards bringing a new thing into existence in the truest manner possible. It is about truth and, as such, has to do with ultimates and, as such, posits self-sacrifice and consecration.”
- Nell Sonneman on Martin Puryear, taken from the second page of Art On My Mind by Bell Hooks, pronouns changed from he/him to she/her
I make art in an attempt to bring ideas, feelings, and experiences that exist inside my own body to the world outside my body. It is a direct action of turning the immaterial into something I can feel with my hands. There is a biological imperative within me to create, some kind of internal compass that, over and over again, points me where I need to go. Since the work comes directly from within it is deeply personal to me, as if I’ve turned myself inside-out and invited all of you to look. At the same time, my goal is to instill enough life into it that it no longer needs me - enabling the work to connect with each viewer on their own terms without knowing me or my story.
Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about what is essential to humanity - what is the common thread between us despite our different experiences and cultures and beliefs? What is a statement we could make, something we could say about all people, that brooks no argument? The only thing I can say with any confidence is this: we have bodies.
We as humans are born into such breakable, smelly bodies, corporeal forms that are cursed (or blessed) with an intense need for connection that we cannot escape. We accumulate our identities over the span of our lifetimes, an intricate history of memory and experience. Everything that ever happens to us results in who we are at this exact moment, determining how we meet each other and the world around us. All of this information is held within our physical forms, while also manifesting as our physical forms. (Our thoughts are electrical currents, our emotions are chemicals, our memories are brain matter.)
I find within myself a tension between the dual realities of existing inside a body and as a body. I think it has something to do with the way our physicality is bound by time, but our identities are not. I think it has something to do with the line between my inside and my outside, that mesa of tectonic movement where I end and the world begins. The work is my attempt to better understand the tension within myself, and to turn that intangible line between inside and outside into something I can see and touch and walk around. It is an attempt at making a space that only exists within myself accessible to all, in hopes of creating a common ground where we can navigate our bodily selves.
Lydia’s work photographed by SARAH ECKSTINE
NADIA GRACE HARRIS
April 14 - May 14, 2023. Opening Reception April 14, 6 - 8pm. Free and open to the public.
Featuring music by Kai Harris
“My name is Nadia Grace Harris I started painting at a very young age. My art is an example of strong women, men, love, and fantasy that I encounter in real life or in my head. I see art as an escape from the world into my own reality. In art, I have found that I am able to take my feelings and put them on a canvas. Art is very important to me, and I see art in everything everywhere. I have been blessed to learn so much from art and it has given me a voice that I did not know I had. It is important to me that women have a voice and if you can’t say it, it’s okay to draw it, paint it, or sing it, it does not matter as long as you get it out.
In my art, I want to uplift and inspire young women especially young children to use their voices. I plan to show them that they don’t have to wait until they are older to make a difference. We can make a difference now. There is no better time than now. There is a big world out there and there are so many doors to be opened. I plan to bring others with me on a journey and explore the world in art form because I truly believe that art is a universal language that everyone understands, and we can use that as common ground.”
May 19 - July 2, 2023. Opening Reception, May 19, 6 - 8pm. Free and open to the public.
“Florida’s premier professional-level artist organization that inspires, celebrates, and promotes the excellence of the state’s finest visual artists”.
AREA 6 OF THE FLORIDA ARTISTS GROUP
Representing: Alachua, Baker, Bradford, Clay, Duval, Flagler, Levy, Marion, Nassau, Putnam, St. Johns, and Union counties.
JULY 7 – AUG 20, 2023. Opening Reception July 7, 6 - 8pm. Free and open to the public.
Chad Pollpeter was born and raised in the mid-west. He attended school at Florida State University, from which he graduated in 1994 with a degree in Art Education. After earning his degree, he moved to Virginia where he continued painting and began teaching art. In the summer of 2000, Pollpeter relocated to Central Florida, where he currently teaches traditional art classes at Full Sail University. He continues to exhibit his work and has collectors throughout the country and abroad.
Pollpeter paints intuitively, in doing so the meaning of the painting develops with the painting itself. His paintings tend to be about emotion. Not the outer influences that trigger our emotions, but rather the result of such triggers. One of the main underlying concepts in his paintings is that one thing affects everything else. Everything is cyclical and revolving. Nothing is isolated. Everything revolves and involves everything else. Much of his work depicts organic and natural type forms that surround and envelop the faces and figures in the paintings. This is to illustrate how we are tied to and grow from our environment. There is a rhythm to life, but this rhythm is easily disrupted. This is reflective of how, no matter how much we try to control our environment, our lives, our world, that we can really only react, adjust, and continue to move forward.
Aversion
Dream Bird
Ram
Mär Martinez is an interdisciplinary artist specializing in sculptural painting. Her work dissects dominance, aggression and power dynamics through the lens of a culturally-enforced binary system. She received a BFA in Painting and a BA in Art History at the University of Central Florida.
Selected Awards include: JAW Breakers Grant, Bridge Ahead Initiative Grant, Bronfman Artist Grant Finalist, Jewish Art Salon Student Fellow, FusionFest Best in Show Award, Order of Pegasus Finalist, Katherine K. & Jacob Holzer Art Scholarship, Frank Lloyd Wright Scholar Recipient, and the Miniature Fine Arts Society Award.
Mär Martinez Tension Point
August 25 - September 17, 2023. Opening reception August 25, 6 - 8pm. Free and open to the public.
Mär Martinez is an interdisciplinary artist specializing in sculptural painting. Her work dissects dominance, aggression and power dynamics through the lens of a culturally-enforced binary system. She received a BFA in Painting and a BA in Art History at the University of Central Florida.
Selected Awards include: JAW Breakers Grant, Bridge Ahead Initiative Grant, Bronfman Artist Grant Finalist, Jewish Art Salon Student Fellow, FusionFest Best in Show Award, Order of Pegasus Finalist, Katherine K. & Jacob Holzer Art Scholarship, Frank Lloyd Wright Scholar Recipient, and the Miniature Fine Arts Society Award.
“My work explores structural power dynamics that breed dominance and aggression based on gender, ethnicity, and sexual identity within our society. The culturally enforced binary system of gender constrains self-expression and exacerbates violence. My work is informed by my mixed Latinx/Arab-American heritage, and has evolved into a dialogue about the exploitative nature of unchecked power imbalances.
My overall body of work addresses themes of consent as well as power; the jagged edges of the hand-cut forms on wood imply a nonconsensual departure by being forcibly cut out. The hand-cutting of the pieces is a crucial part of my process. The violent act of stripping figures from their context mimics how power can be given and taken away. The figures become vulnerable, naked objects in the outside world. There’s a tension in the body language of intertwined figures, whether it’s sexual, aggressive, or playful. Often violence is not an explosive act, but is slowly and deliberately built up. I contract the violent immediacy of the physical cut with gentle glazing.”
Lucia
Habibti III
Scission XII
Praying With My Eyes Open IV
September 22 -October 15, 2023. Opening reception September 22, 6 - 8pm. Free and open to the public
Tides and Terrain: Lily Kuonen, Chris Stephan Hicks, Tiffany Gonzalez
Chris Hicks - Ritual
Tiffany Gonzalez - The Pottsburgs
Tides and Terrain
There is an ever-shifting interplay between the tides and the terrain, an ebb and flow, a transformation of the landscape, and a complex yet symbiotic relationship. Intricate patterns and textures are formed from rhythms and currents found in our natural environment. The work in this exhibition was developed with a sense of reverence, responsibility, and reflection to explore fragility, resilience, and possibility, connecting ourselves to the surrounding region. Tides and Terrain will feature the work of artists Tiffany Gonzalez, Chris Stephen Hicks, and Lily Kuonen with a range of media including painting, drawing, print, and ceramic work. Tiffany, Chris, and Lily are a part of The Bolles School visual arts program where they work to support the development of young creatives in Northeast Florida.
Lily Kuonen - Hale
Becoming MORGAN GOLDSMITH
Spiritual GPS
Guest House
October 27 - December 15, 2023. Opening reception, October 20, 6-8 pm. Free and open to the public.
Becoming is the autobiography of a woman; healing through postpartum.
My body became a home for my children, a storage facility for trauma, a vessel for Supreme Wisdom to
remember itself within, a fountain of love.
Ballooned, deflated, stretched, scared, shedded - pushed to the edge of where life and death meet. I sit in
my heart center and witness the unraveling of what it means to be human, and to become something more
Divine.
I use my lived experiences as a foundation for understanding the intersection between the Cosmic Spirit,
Love, trauma, fear, vulnerability, domesticity, and motherhood. I continue to explore identity and the gap
trauma creates between the omnipresent divinity and the impermanence of being human.
My art-making practice transforms the intangible narrative of becoming a mother into palpable objects
which shelter my stories. Motherhood acts a platform to perform all the pillars of yoga of which are then
absorbed and processed into large scale collages. Embarking on a deep spiritual and healing journey, my
personal becoming is returning me home to Atman, my true Self, and is mirrored in the marks, textures,
colors, and layers in my works on paper.
Monumental collages act as skins, absorbing my lived experiences. These works are bodily, visceral, and
alive. They have a microbial quality with textural and deeply layered flesh. They are conceived from
collaborative paintings and drawings made with my children which I then shred, tear, rearrange, and use
as the foundational material for my paintings to develop upon, akin to the transformation of my body,
mind, and soul experiences as a mother.
A yearning to restore inner harmony lingers in the storytelling embedded in the works alongside
representations of sentimental objects. Childhood games and learning activities like writing and math
exercises are recorded in my works. Meaning is given to the mundane and repetitive nature of domestic
life forging new ways of seeing and communicating as a mother, maker, partner, yogi, and divine being -
parts of my ever evolving humanity. Crayons, drool, crushed up medicine used as pigment, marks from
children’s safety scissors, stickers, glue, glitter, kids workbook pages, to-do lists, and letters are smashed
together within my works.
As I sit on the floor playing tic-tac-toe with my son Leo, and my daughter Rai clinging to my breast, my
nervous system shot to pieces, stuck in fight-or-flight, stomach sore from being manipulated, heart sore
from a broken partner, tears rising, overwhelmed and overstimulated, signing songs and smiling. Leo
giggles and claps as he beats me in the game. The complexity and messiness of motherhood is invisible,
often lonely, and simultaneously joyous and magnificent. Traumatic birthing experiences can make life
extremely confusing and pull you deep into the darkest parts of humanity or the brightness of Brahman
and Love.
The Shape of the Small Self