MEET THE ARTBURST WRITERS: GEORGE FISHMAN

A visual arts veteran and pioneer of two of Miami’s long-standing, established visual arts venues, George Fishman is a welcome addition to the impressive list of Artburst writers.

He spent 25 years into the late 1990s working in traditional mosaics, creating commissioned works for hospitality and religious clients and was involved in the startup of the Bakehouse Art Complex and the ArtCenter/South Florida.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania where he studied painting and art history, George’s career as an arts writer is extensive. He has written for trade publications, done presentations at conferences in the U.S. and abroad, and currently freelances for the Miami Herald.  His strength as a arts writer comes from extensive time spent recording conversations with curators, designers, writers, dealers, administrators, and studio artists about their challenges and accomplishments. “I aired these interviews on a weekly Web-based radio show and archived them on the MosaicOfArt.com,” he says.

That work allowed him to establish a rapport with arts professionals and in turn he feeds his intrigue about themes of identity, memory, process, and the practical issues in an art professional’s working life: Mainly — the business of making a living.

He enjoys the perks the Artburst writing gig provides, such as the privilege of attending performances and getting access to accomplished classical and experimental musicians, producers, choreographers, costume designers, composers, and their audiences. The range of genres has been highly diverse. “I am attracted to the adventurous spirit and devotion that artists bring to their practice, regardless of the modality. There are distinctive qualities among performance genres and languages and how to describe them that I am determined to master. I love the challenge to improve my sensitivity to what’s happening on stage and describing that world ever more clearly and perceptively through my writing,” he says.

Ultimately, writing for Artburst is a blast, he says. “I believe in creating a voice, but not in allowing that to overshadow the main goal of providing insights and intrigue regarding a performance and its creators.”

Click here to read his review on Afua Hall’s Red.