Miami indie bookstore Dale Zine takes on the art world

Rows of books, zines, and artwork line the walls inside Dale Zine’s colorful space in Little River. (Photo courtesy of Alfonso Duran)

The bright, welcoming space of Dale Zine’s shop in Little River has a pull — it draws you in and makes you never want to leave.

Sunlight streams through the windows and onto the funky orange-and-off-white checkerboard linoleum floor. Art books and zines, the majority published by independent presses, line the walls and tables alongside stickers, candles, t-shirts, sunglasses, and other ephemera.

The shop, recently declared “Best Bookstore” by Miami New Times, sells books on all kinds of subjects: exhibition catalogs from prestigious museums, experimental photography books, zines featuring rave culture memorabilia. One can walk out of the place with a quarterly magazine on natural wines or a funky jigsaw puzzle from an independent designer, a photo book of street art in New York or a pack of incense. You never know what you’ll leave with, but you’ll always leave with something.

Outside Dale Zine’s storefront in Little River. (Photo courtesy of Alfonso Duran)

The space’s focus on art and visual culture has seen it survive where more traditional bookstores have closed. They also use the shop as a community space, holding events like small press fairs, book signings, and art classes.

“I’ve noticed a lot more people being more endearing to Miami, and being like ‘we want to support what you do, and we understand how hard it is,’” Lillian Banderas, the shop’s co-owner, says. “I think, definitely, our demographic has grown into that, where before it’s just been, I feel like, people that geek out about specific things like we do.”

Her partner Steve Saiz agrees, pointing to things like a comic book on Drexciya, a conceptual techno group from Detroit. “If one person comes in they’re obviously gonna be (excited) like, ‘Why the hell do you have this?’ And that’s what we love so much. It’s not like, ‘where’s the bestseller section.’ We try to get the deeper things in there.”

Dale Zine expanded from a shop selling art books into a gallery selling art. It recently showed work from local artist Kelly Breez at the NADA New York art fair. (Photo courtesy of Vanessa Diaz)

It’s this kind of esoteric appeal that’s made Dale an inseparable part of local life for many Miamians, especially when such spaces remain threatened by rising rents and encroaching development. Banderas and Saiz both hold down full-time jobs in addition to running Dale, and the physical shop itself has been forced to move frequently – their first locations were small, booth-sized storefronts in Downtown Miami. Their current space, adjacent to the Fountainhead Studios arts complex, is the largest they’ve ever had. Artists with studios in the Fountainhead complex frequently pop in, adding to the shop’s neighborhood feel, and although the building has been threatened with demolition, Banderas and Saiz feel confident in their landlords and their ability to source another location nearby, should the need arise.

“I feel really secure in the neighborhood, but I’m starting to feel like, you know, really our brand is always on the go. It’s a part of Miami, too,” says Banderas.

“We’re movers and we also sell books and art,” Saiz says jokingly.

Dale Zine’s owners have been forced to move locations multiple times. They’ve gotten creative by reusing materials, such as creating this display table out of an old shop sign. (Photo courtesy of Amanda Martinez)

“I think we’re a good example of how hard it is to have a small business in Miami,” Banderas continues. Saiz adds, “That’s not like a tourism or nightlife thing. Something cultural in Miami, I feel like, I grew up here and (small art businesses) aren’t really a thing that survives.”

For Dale, sustaining their business has meant traveling down a new avenue: art dealing. The shop began showing art as a gallery when the current location opened in 2021, including at NADA Miami during Miami Art Week. Buzzy locals such as Alejandra Moros and Thomas Bils, both known for their hyperrealist paintings, have held down shows with Dale, which usually shows artwork on the shop’s back wall (on a recent visit, works on paper by Portland artist Momo Gordon were on display). Their gallery activity has been such a success that they were invited to show at NADA’s New York art fair in May; they recruited friend and Fountainhead resident Kelly Breez, who curated the space’s inaugural show “Sun Showers,” to show new work.

“. . . Starting to sell things in that kind of atmosphere will help us support having (the shop) and having this platform for keeping things accessible,” says Banderas.

Banderas and Saiz credit Ebony L. Hayes, a boundary-pushing curator at David Zwirner Gallery and 52 Walker, for helping them take the next step from publishing zines and artists’ books to putting on art shows. “She dry-called us, basically, and was like ‘Hey, I would love to see you guys as curators for NADA,’” says Banderas. “She was very matter of fact, like ‘I’ve been following your guys’ careers for a while, and what you guys are doing with zines is kind of disrupting how we see gallerists.”

In keeping with their grassroots sensibility, the duo tries to take a more sustainable approach to art dealing, a field that can be fraught with ethical issues and high prices designed to gatekeep art for the upper class. “Every show, we’ll try to do a scene with that artist that someone could get for like five or 10 bucks,” says Saiz. “Or you could buy a painting, depending on your economic (situation).”

Banderas believes it’s about removing barriers.

Kelly Breez’s work explores the kitschy culture of a bygone era of South Florida. (Photo courtesy of Vanessa Diaz)

“I think accessibility starts with us, and with the artists too,” says Banderas.

Both describe a certain sense of impostor syndrome when exhibiting alongside art world heavy-hitters like multinational mega-dealer Hauser & Wirth, one of several art world heavy-hitters with gallery spaces in Chelsea where NADA New York was held. But they say it is empowering considering their humble origins, comparing themselves to David going up against the blue-chip Goliaths. Maintaining a firm curatorial voice and focus on Miami’s idiosyncratic culture helps: Notable past shows have included meditations on Hurricane Andrew and illustrations by Brian Butler riffing on local iconography. Breez’s presentation at NADA New York featured “matchbook paintings” celebrating vanished and imaginary small businesses evoking the ‘80s and ‘90s in South Florida.

Not all of what Dale shows or sells comes exclusively from locals – they’ll stock whatever they think is cool whether an artist lives in Opa-Locka or Osaka. But it’s undeniable that having such an accessible space for art and artists in Miami has had a deep effect.

“We’re not trying to sell work to sell work. We’re selling the work to really empower new artists to feel really secure about their future,” says Banderas.

WHAT: Dale Zine

WHEN: 1 to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

WHERE:  7395 NW Miami Place, Miami.

COST:  Free.

INFORMATION: dalezine.com or instagram.com/dale_zine

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Texas native turned Miami artist highlights environment, experience in ‘Textures of Humanity’

Troy Simmons, “Pearl,” (2023), reinforced concrete, cardboard, wood, house paint, acrylic mix, and powder-coated aluminum, is one of the works included in “Textures of Humanity” at Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami. (Photo courtesy of Fredric Snitzer Gallery)

As a boy, Troy Simmons would spend summers sitting at his grandfather’s feet on a small farm in Texas and watching as he created magic with his hands.

Totem poles were coaxed from hunks of wood and furniture emerged from deer antlers and skin.

Intrigued, Simmons attempted to follow suit and, on that farm, (his very first studio) he fiddled with sticks, experimented with concrete and dirt, and launched his career through the art of play.

Troy Simmons, “Push-Pops & Daytons,” (2023), reinforced concrete, aluminum, and acrylic mix. (Photo courtesy of Fredric Snitzer Gallery)

“I didn’t go to art school,” says Simmons. “Basically as a kid, I just was one of those kids that liked to experiment with things.”

And while his family encouraged his creative side, they also reminded him to be practical.

“My parents weren’t fans and didn’t really know much about art, so there wasn’t a discussion about ‘Oh, I’m going to be an artist. There was more of like, ‘Okay, you’re having fun playing with that wood, now go get a job, find a career and you could play with that later on.'”

And that is what Simmons did.

His first job opened his eyes, giving him a front-row seat to a whole new universe.

“I got a job working as a lab technician for a water treatment company,” says Simmons.

“It was interesting. It brought me into this world of microbes and really seeing what’s in the water that we’re drinking before we put it back into the environment and the water that’s coming through our tap. All that stuff was cool for me,” he says. But, he admits that he was bored.

“I wasn’t able to be creative . . .” says Simmons.

“Flagship ’83, (2023) reinforced concrete, aluminum, and acrylic mix. (Photo courtesy of Fredric Snitzer Gallery)

During his off hours, he made sculptures but it still wasn’t enough. He decided then and there he needed to go in an entirely different direction.

“I went back to school again for architecture. It was one of those things for me that felt like it was checking all the boxes,” he says.

Then working at a design-build firm satisfied some of the yearnings.

“I was able to take a customer’s idea from a napkin and basically put it into the real world…So this was all growing my art practice at the same time, too. So, when I got off from work as an architectural designer, I would come home and do my own sculptures.”

But when his wife was offered a new career opportunity, the couple moved to Miami and it afforded him the chance to wholly immerse himself in his artistic practice.

Artist Troy Simmons with one of his works exhibited at Volta New York art fair. (Photo courtesy of Anton Kirindongo)

“We just decided to make that career change. My art practice is pretty mobile so I was able to move my tools and everything Miami and so it was good for us.  We were young. We were excited . . . We chose to come and explore Miami. So, when I moved to Florida, I basically just jumped all into the art world.”

It paid off.

His pieces have been featured at numerous events including Art Basel Miami Beach, VOLTA New York, Art Paris and the Cornell Art Museum. He received the Oolite Ellies Creator Award and completed residencies at Artpace San Antonio and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. His pieces appear internationally in private and corporate collections and he has also been tapped repeatedly for permanent public installations. This includes “Janus Portal,” a towering 22-foot concrete aluminum and steel sculpture commissioned by Bombardier Inc. at Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport and a building facade in Wynwood commissioned by Goldman Global Arts at the Wynwood 2300 building.

His latest exhibition, “Textures of Humanity,” is on view at the Fredric Snitzer Gallery through Friday, June 30.

The work of Miami artist Troy Simmons is at Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami, through Friday, June 30 (Photo courtesy of Fredric Snitzer Gallery)

“This is our first solo exhibition of his work,” says Joshua Veasey, managing director of the gallery, who adds that highlighting a local artist is important for the gallery.

“The other artists that we’re showing right now are based in Los Angeles yet have lived in Miami for a number of years, but our program is sort of rounded in the sense that we work with a lot of Cuban artists, a lot of Latin American contemporary artists, artists in Los Angeles and in New York, but it’s always important for us to be able to highlight and showcase a Miami artist.”

Veasey says that Simmons offers a unique perspective mostly because of his science and environmental studies and architectural background as opposed to formal visual arts training.

“. . .That he doesn’t come from this structure of visual art . . .  it’s pushed his own vernacular and his own voice and what he identifies with on a personal level into work that is very sophisticated and nuanced. And that also feels poetic with the way that he is juxtaposing these different materials together into his own formal language.”

The show consists of five pieces, but one, in particular, has caught Vesey’s eye and, he says, he believes it’s the most powerful work in the show.

” ‘Chasm,’ which is a work done all in black,” he says. “It’s really nuanced and it’s something that you really have to see in person.

“Chasm,” (2023), reinforced concrete, salvaged roofing tar on felt, wood, house paint, acrylic mix and powder-coated aluminum. (Photo courtesy of Fredric Snitzer Gallery)

Vesey says what draws him to the work are differentiations between the tonalities of the blacks, as well as a play between matte and gloss finishes within the work.

“You can almost see different dimensionalities in that sense,” says the gallery director.

Simmons says that the piece entitled, “Pearl,” reminds him of his grandmother’s jewelry box.

“Just a bunch of old pieces of jewelry all intertwined so that she couldn’t get the knots out. It’s just this stuff sitting in there. I’m thinking about all those colors that I saw. This gold and this green, emeralds, and these little trinkets of rusted tin copper looking stuff that was fake gold. So, all those different things are coming into play as I was completing this.”

Transforming materials in his environment is a theme commonly found throughout his work, which leads to the title of the exhibition “Textures of Humanity.”

“I use concrete as a material because concrete is the most used material outside of water in the world. it’s recognizable. It’s in everything. It’s in your highways. It’s in your streets. So, when you see the concrete facades of my work, that’s just a representation of that thing that you didn’t really know.  When it breaks down into the color, that’s that interior buildup of what you can build up over years of who you are inside. It’s more about who you are, as opposed to your exterior. So that concrete again… you see it. You’ll know what it is. It’s humanity. It’s the material that is what it is. But, when you chip away at it, you don’t know what’s inside.”

WHAT: “Textures of Humanity”

WHERE: Fredric Snitzer Gallery, 1540 NE Miami Court, Miami

WHEN: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday,

COST: Free

INFORMATION: 305-448 -8976 or snitzer.com

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Artist Explores Cultural Significance of the ‘Black Card’ at Hampton Art Lovers

Brandon Clarke’s re-imagining of the birth of America at its core, stitching the stars and stripes to include all the people groups who helped build it, is part of the exhibition BLACK Card: Transactions of Cultural Currency” at Hampton Art Lovers. (Photo courtesy of Eye and Heart Photography)

The notion of the “Black Card” has permeated popular culture, often serving as a humorous reference. However, its meaning and representation as a marker of racial authenticity have raised questions.

Artist Brandon Clarke also shares these concerns, which led him to create t”BLACK Card: Transactions of Cultural Currency.” The exhibition will open on Saturday, June 17  and is on display through Aug. 31 at the Historic Ward Rooming House in Overtown.

“We curated this show to have a conversation about authenticity and access within our own community and outside our community,” says Clarke. “As we continue to make our Black voices known in America and around the world, we demand a seat at the table.”

A piece from “Black Card” interrogates the meaning of being Black. (Photo courtesy Eye and Heart Photography)

Delving into the intricacies of authenticity, access, and identity within the Black community, Clarke’s idea is to challenge societal perceptions and to shed light on the significance of the symbolic “Black Card” as a representation of cultural validation.

“My vision is not only to get our seat at the table, but we can sustain our seat at the table?” What good is wealth if you cannot sustain it for generations to come? I feel to help accomplish this alongside the strides we have already made requires a level of cultural sustainability within ourselves. The Black card became the perfect catalyst to represent much of what we are fighting for and against.”

The concept of the “Black Card” is not exclusive to the Black community but extends to various cultural groups. “Cuban Card,” “Haitian Card,” or “Jewish Card” are also figurative cards acting as signifiers of belonging and granting access to these specific cultures or communities.

In the Black community, some people have had their black card “revoked” because they have never seen TV series “The Wire,” the movie “Friday,” because they don’t like collard greens or sweet potato pie, or because they do enjoy pumpkin spice lattes.

Born in California, Clarke’s family moved when he was 8 years old to Lewes, Delaware, what he calls a beach community. He attended Cape Henlopen High School.

Because he didn’t grow up in a Black community or attended a majority Black school until he went to a historically Black college (Hampton University), he says he faced challenges to his own authenticity, with people questioning his Blackness due to engaging in activities that did not align with certain stereotypes.

“Oftentimes people question your authenticity when your experiences are different from theirs,” he says. “Sometimes, someone can lose his Black card, not because of what he may not know about the culture, but what activities he participated in.”

He says he surfed, snowboarded and skateboarded — activities that he enjoyed.

Artist Brandon Clarke. (Photo courtesy of Eye and Heart Photography)

“But people often questioned my Blackness because of it. Growing up I found out that a lot more Black people like myself had the same experiences.”

Reflecting on the level of Blackness, the Miami-based artist acknowledges that he is not sure “what the bar is.” However, he firmly believes that being Black in America is a precious gift, a tribute to the courageous legacy of his ancestors who faced countless limitations.

Quoting Christopher Norwood of Hampton Art Lovers, who co-curated and commissioned the show, the artist states, “As we expand our horizons and what it means to be Black in America, our ancestors expand their smiles.”

To explore the concept of the Black Card in his artwork, Clarke obtained a collection of black credit cards, which became the focal point of his creative expression. Some pieces portray the physical black credit card embedded within paintings, while others take a metaphorical approach, symbolizing transactions across various spaces, including marketing, social interactions, and economic evaluations.

“Our Blackness just doesn’t reach within our own community, but it stretches out the borders of who we are within this nation and even internationally,” says Clarke.

In deconstructing the idea of the Black Card as a euphemism for Black identity, the South Dade artist views it as a tool designed to confine individuals to predefined notions of Blackness.

This piece, included in Hampton Art Lovers’ “Black Card,” represents the internal transactions Black people make against and for themselves, according to the artist. (Photo courtesy of Eye and Heart Photography)

“The Black Card ultimately does not exist, it’s a tool to keep you in a box. But cultural currency is real, and we need to harness our culture and respect it as an economic tool for development,” proposes the artist. “Black culture absolutely drives the music business and sports, no one would argue with that statement. But the potential of our culture could also drive and revolutionize math and science as well.”

Clarke firmly establishes a connection between the symbolic Black Card and its real-life counterpart in the realm of credit and currency. He identifies the Black Card as the ultimate symbol of luxury and access, paralleling it with the value and global influence of Black culture, which has been at the forefront of defining “Cool” since the Harlem Renaissance.

Hampton Art Lovers, the organizers of the event, have played a crucial role in presenting Clarke’s artwork. The collaboration between the artist and the gallery stems from a shared love for Black art and a belief in its power to tell meaningful stories. With their mentorship and support, Clarke says he was able to develop the “Black Card” concept and transform it into this new installation.

“Chris (Norwood) and I began talking frequently. I pitched several concepts to him. We discussed them all and played them out visually. We scrapped most of them, but one of them was ‘Black Card’ and it felt personal to me in ways that the others didn’t. . . According to Chris, ‘Every great pitcher needs and even better catcher’ and on that day he caught ‘Black Card. and threw it back to me and said run with it.”

WHAT: “BLACK Card: Transactions of Cultural Currency”

WHERE: Hampton Art Lovers at Historic Ward Rooming House, 249 Northwest 29th St., Miami

WHEN: Opening 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, June 17.  noon to 6 p.m. Thursday through Sunday through Aug. 31.

COST: Free. RSVP for opening at hamptonartlovers.com

INFORMATION: hamptonartlovers.com

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‘All Black Everything’ showcases generations of African American graffiti artists

“Untitled,” 2019, by pioneering graffiti artist Bama, a Bronx, N.Y. native, is on view at the Museum of Graffiti’s “All Black Everything,” exhibit through Sept. 4. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

Sometimes you just run out of luck.

It wasn’t the first time that graffiti artist and pioneer Richard “Bama” Admiral had been accused of spray-painting trains, but it was the third time that did it.

“The first two times I was arrested I was completely innocent,” says Admiral.

Daze, “If I’m Not Getting Through to You, You Ain’t Listening” 2021. Acrylic on canvas. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

At the time his parents were in Las Vegas on their second honeymoon and his father, in particular, wasn’t in the mood for any shenanigans.

“So (Dad) just said, ‘Wait ’til I get back,’ because he was not going to give up his vacation,” says Admiral, who hails from the “Boogie Down” Bronx.

“. . .I had to sit there for a week till they came back because there was nobody to get me out. That taught me a great deal. And I was guilty,” he admits. “I couldn’t get around that. I was completely guilty.”

Despite this, Admiral’s arrest didn’t exactly end his career.  It just took a slightly different turn.

From then on he decided to embrace a different tactic — one that significantly reduced his chances of getting caught.

“I became a soloist.”

His father, of course, still wasn’t enamored with his artistic pursuits.

Augustine Kofie, “FIRST,” 2023. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

And if you ask East New York-born and raised graffiti artist Doc TC5, he could definitely relate. His mother wasn’t much of a fan either.

“It was like an embarrassment to her that I was a vandal,” says TC5. “She never saw that it could go somewhere.”

But eventually, it did.

Ironically, the now much sought-after artist, said that it was his own mom who inspired the name for which he is now known.

“Before graffiti, I was into music,” explains TC5.  “I was into DJing very early in my life. It just became a thing where, you know, my mother just associated anything with me, as being music related.

“One day she asked me, ‘What are you gonna be when you get older’  And I said, ‘Well, I’d like to work with something in the medical field.’ She said, ‘What do you want to be a disco doctor?’ And it stuck.”

In all, it’s clear to both casual observers and graffiti fans alike, that both artists have paid their dues.

Kool Koor, “The ‘K’ Factor Kool,” 2009. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

Whether it is getting arrested, dealing with detainment or getting ostracized from society and family members, it was all for the love of art; specifically their love of graffiti. The price they paid may have been well worth it because now their legendary pieces are unilaterally regarded as part of the bedrock of this street-based art movement.

Their contributions are part of the Museum of Graffiti’s “All Black Everything: A Survey of African American Graffiti” exhibition on view in Wynwood through Monday, Sept. 4. Also included are some of the most historically influential multigenerational artists, including Bama, Blade, Delta2, Dondi White, Ewok, Kool Koor, Noc167, Skeme, Web One, and Wane One. Original graffiti paintings on canvas and works on paper spanning the past four decades.

Alan Ket, curator of the exhibition and co-founder of the museum, says that it is important to highlight their contributions, particularly for those who are new to the art form.

One of the museum’s primary missions is “to preserve graffiti’s history and celebrate its emergence in design, fashion, advertising, and galleries,” he said. The “All Black Everything,” event is just one more way of celebrating graffiti while paying proper homage to some of those who initiated it first, according to Ket.

“These are real people that have contributed for decades and deserve to be recognized and not necessarily overshadowed by whoever is popular or is trendy at the moment, or the Instagram favorites of the past few years,” says Ket. “It seems like only people from my generation and older know this. Everybody else doesn’t have the awareness of the Black contribution to graffiti and how significant and important it is.”

Veefer, “Road & Track,” 2023, ink and watercolor on paper. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

Ket says it is important that it is known that there are, and were, important African American artists that should be celebrated and acknowledged. As a graffiti artist himself, Ket wants to share what he has personally learned and experienced. He hopes that this history will ultimately shine through the exhibition.

“It isn’t just what’s happening today, but this is 50 years of history and 50 years of this sort of shared experience. And I want them to know the names. I want them to learn about these artists.”

He said that the exhibition with its long run through summer will offer plenty of time for people to visit the Museum of Graffiti.

“. . .To come in here, experience it and learn.”

WHAT: “All Black Everything: A Survey of African American Graffiti”

WHERE: Museum of Graffiti, 276 NW 26th St., Miami

WHEN: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday.

COST: $16 plus fee and sales tax, general admission, $12 plus fee and sales tax, student/military/senior general admission, free general admission for children 13 and younger.

INFORMATION: (786) 580-4678  or museumofgraffiti.com

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Cuban Artist Mariano Gets His Due at Little Havana Gallery

“Naturaleza muerta” (“Still Life”), 1946. Oil on canvas is Mariano Rodríguez’s own take on the European standard and is featured in the Latin Art Core gallery exhibit, “Mariano. Everything Possible.” (Photo courtesy of Latin Art Core gallery)

Cuban artist Mariano Rodríguez is arguably almost as popular in the Spanish-speaking world as his compatriot Wifredo Lam. Yet widespread recognition of the modernist master has been more elusive in North America. An exhibition at Little Havana’s Latin Art Core gallery is lifting the profile of this painter, primarily known as Mariano, whose unique vision brought a world of light and color to works that also celebrate his homeland.

Showcasing some of the artist’s most iconic paintings, drawings and watercolors, “Mariano. Everything Possible,” features works from the 1940s through the 1980s, including a room filled with his iconic rooster images. The exhibition also features later work, from the 1960s and beyond.

Mariano, born in 1912, spent his entire professional life in Cuba, and is tightly associated with island identity and culture, though he visited New York and Mexico. Imbibing the styles of Picasso, and other early Cubists, along with the Fauvist approach to color, Mariano was also strongly impressed by the Mexican muralist traditions, according to Latin Art Core President Israel Moleiro, who has been working with Mariano’s art for several decades. The exhibit is a collaboration between Latin Art Core and the Fundación Mariano Rodríguez.

Mujer en interior con piña (Woman in Interior with pineapple), 1943. Oil on cardboard. Curator Cristina Figueroa says that Mariano enjoyed the company of his muses, his peasants, and his tropical fruits.

Greeting visitors as they enter the gallery on Calle Ocho is one of Mariano’s best-known works, “La Paloma de la paz,” (“The Dove of Peace”). Painted in 1940, the allegorical work is Mariano’s cri de coeur about World War II, then raging across Europe.

In the painting, a full-bodied white-clad woman bends backward and releases a white dove from a red handkerchief; beyond is sea and sky. Cuba, an early ally of the United States, was deeply involved in the war. “This is more a political statement about the war in Europe,” says Moleiro, who noted that the war produced a booming island economy, and rapid changes along with fears of German U-boats stalking the Caribbean.

Flanking “La Paloma” are works that highlight how Mariano integrated European and Latin American ideas to produce his signature oeuvre.

“La paloma de la paz” (“The Dove of Peace”), 1940, oil on canvas. Mariano’s comment on the ravages of WWII. (Photo courtesy of Latin Art Core gallery)

“One of the characteristics of Mariano is the connection between the muralist style from Mexico and the surrealist style in Europe,” says Moleiro, adding that many Cuban artists were similarly influenced, but in Mariano’s work, one can see the bridge. “That combination gives you a unique style.”

Mariano was deeply influenced by how the Fauvists and masters such as Paul Cézanne, André Derain, and Henri Matisse used color. Intense painting choices that may have seemed wild under the often-muted skies of Europe, fit perfectly the experience of Cuban island life.

“Most of the intention in the color is in relation to the culture – where you live and express yourself,” says Moliero. “Those are the real colors you see in the tropics.”

The work of Cuban artist Mariano Rodríguez, pictured here in 1964, is featured in a retrospective at the Latin Art Core gallery through June. (Photo courtesy of Ida Kar, The Mariano Foundation )

Those influences can be seen in several of the show’s masterpieces. “Mujer en interior con piña” (“Woman in Interior with Pineapple”), from 1943, shows a woman in purple, holding a pineapple, one leg raised behind her, a symphony of blues, mauve, green and orange.

Indeed, his take on the traditional European still life, channeling Matisse and Cézanne, couldn’t be more wry. In “Naturaleza Muerta” (“Still Life”) from 1946, instead of apples, we see pineapples and the Mexican fruit mamey.

In “Mujeres en interior” (“Women in Interior”), again from 1943, a woman holds a bunch of bananas to her breast, her face composed of greens, oranges, blues, yellows, and beige, referencing another Mariano focus, the intersection of fruits and sexuality.

“He was a very erotic artist,” says Cristina Figueroa, show curator who wrote the catalog’s introduction and text, and who is project manager of the Spain-based Mariano Rodríguez Foundation. “For him, the fruit was like a forbidden fruit,” she explains. Figueroa’s expertise about Mariano has deep roots. She formerly worked at Casa de las Américas, the well-known Cuban cultural institution, headed by Mariano in the early ’80s, where, explains Figueroa, he started the department devoted to art.

“Mujeres en interior” (“Women in Interior”) 1943, oil on board on canvas. Eroticism was many times a subtext in Mariano’s work. (Photo courtesy of Latin Art Core gallery)

Women with fruit weren’t his only erotic commentary. Many first come to know Mariano from his rooster paintings and drawings, a group of which are featured in the exhibit. “It’s a very common animal, but it lets you put all the colors inside,” says Moliero. His roosters were also a national symbol, a connection to the island’s everyday people and a reference to virility. “At that time, the rooster was a symbol of freedom, and of a strong man.”

In the last few years, Mariano, who died in 1990, has been attracting the attention his work deserves. A 2021 exhibit at The McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College showcased the artist, and Miami’s own Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) had a retrospective of his work last year. The Little Havana show now adds to that growing visibility.

WHAT: “Mariano. Everything Possible”

WHEN: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday. Through June 29, 2023

WHERE: Latin Art Core, 1646 SW Eighth St, Miami

COST: Free

INFORMATION: 305-989 9085 or latinartcore.com

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Lonnie Holley’s Transcendent Outside Art at MOCA North Miami

Lonnie Holley, “If You Really Knew I and II,” 1980s, chain link gate, scrap metal, fabric, painted street sign, pressure gauge, on display in the exhibition “If You Really Knew” at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami. Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo. (Photo courtesy of Zachary Balber)

Throughout Alabama artist Lonnie Holley’s show at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, we see faces. They occur in his sandstone sculptures that resemble Shona art from Zimbabwe or Mesoamerican stone carvings. They appear in profile all over his recent spray paintings and monolithic steel sculptures, sometimes in vivid fluorescent colors, other times in monochrome or earth tones, and always in a collage-like profile. It’s something of a fixation for the 73-year-old artist but speaks and moves with the wise, weary demeanor of someone even older, someone who’s lived a lot of life.

“I can’t put the whole body of everything. In my earliest faces, on my sandstones, I tried to,” says Holley. “But I can put us together, by symbolizing the many faces in one particular thing – and giving that particular piece of work a title – of us. No matter how, or where, or when, we are the us of humanity. And I may not be able to say that this is talking about Blackness, or colored-ness, or negro-ness. But I can say I’m talking about us as humanity.”

Lonnie Holley’s “The Spirit of the Misused Ones,” 2019, Steel, on display at MOCA, North Miami. Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo. (Photo courtesy of Zachary Balber)

To say the least, the life that Holley has led is an unconventional one. He is self-taught as an artist. He declares himself to be one of 27 children from 32 pregnancies. He faced extreme adversity throughout his life as a survivor of childhood poverty and the deprivations of the Jim Crow era. He spent time in the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children, a notorious juvenile detention facility now likened to a “slave camp.”  His work is informed by those traumatic experiences – the show’s title “If You Really Knew” speaks to the fact that we can never truly understand the complexities of his life. But the exhibition is not defined by it. It speaks to the greater humanity that we can all connect to through art and how we can use it to transcend ourselves.

“If You Really Knew” encompasses a small, but wide snapshot of Holley’s career as an artist, which is defined primarily from his use of salvaged objects, dating back to his earliest works —the sandstone heads that he carved out of discarded slag from local steel mills. Materials such as scrap metal, wood, and plastic are assembled with extreme intentionality.

Artist Lonnie Holley (Photo courtesy of David Raccuglia)

Many works in the show are contemporary meditations on past anti-racist struggles that reverberate into our own time. Works such as “The Water This Time” and “Without Skin,” made from fire hoses wrapped around stacked wooden boxes, recall the hoses that were turned upon Black protesters by police during the civil rights movement. In one of his spray-paintings, silhouetted faces loom over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched over. A similar painting on a canvas made from quilts, titled “What Women Are Afraid to Lose (The Fires on Our Planet),” references the contemporary fight against the anti-abortion movement in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s overturn by the Supreme Court.

Years ago, at an art workshop I attended taught by Holley, he told the class that everything he uses in his artwork comes from the earth. In a philosophical sense, he’s right: Everything in human civilization eventually comes from one source, our “Mothership.” So, by using these cast-off bits, Holley is forcing us to confront the “stupid” things we’ve done to the planet.

Lonnie Holley, “Without Skin,” 2020, chairs, fire hose and cement nails. Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo. (Photo courtesy of Lonnie Holley/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)

“We are blaming so much and leaving so much to blame for other generations to try to figure out,” he says. “Everything that we’ve buried, all in landfills, and all the sneakiness – we snuck away and we took loads and loads of trash, garbage, and debris off the backs of our vehicles and we just put them in what we call sacred, hidden places. We didn’t hide them from nature. Mother Nature still was feeling our way of throwing things away upon her.”

Holley has seen plenty of faces come and go in his time. Some of these were of fellow “outsider” artists following similar, self-taught paths, and a section of the exhibition co-curated by Holley features their work. This includes Miami’s own Purvis Young, as well as Thornton Dial and Mary T. Smith. All of these artists have passed away.

Lonnie Holley, “What Women Are Afraid to Lose (The Fires On Our Planet),” 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo. (Photo courtesy of Lonnie Holley/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York)

Holley becomes emotional, even shedding tears, when discussing his friendship with them, as well as the late art collector William Arnett, who championed underseen Black artists from the South as founder of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation. In a way, Holley has taken on that mission. He is proof that through art, anybody can be seen, and anything can be made greater than the sum of its parts. We’re all living on the same mothership, after all.

WHAT: “Lonnie Holley: If You Really Knew”

 WHEN:  noon to 7 p.m. Wednesday. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. Closed Monday and Tuesday. Through Oct. 1.

 WHERE:  Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, 770 NE 125th St., North Miami.

 COST:  $10, general admission; $5, seniors, students, and visitors identifying as disabled; free for children (12 and under), veterans, North Miami residents and city employees, caregivers accompanying disabled visitors, and museum members.

INFORMATION: (305) 893-6211 or  mocanomi.org

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Oolite CEO Dennis Scholl leaving to focus full time on creating his own art

“Untitled (DiMaggio honeymoon),” 2022, acquired objects and graphite 57 1/2″ X 57 1/2″ (Photo courtesy of Hua International)

A large part of Dennis Scholl’s success as an arts leader, collector, documentary filmmaker, and every one of his endeavors from attorney to entrepreneur is that when he commits to something, he does just that – commit.

For the past six years, he has been devoted to Oolite Arts as the president and CEO of the Miami-based non-profit artist support organization. Prior to that, from 2009 to 2015, he was vice president for arts at John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, where he oversaw the foundation’s national arts program, directing the giving of grants to artists and arts organizations.

Now, after years of being a supporter of artists and leaving the art-making to artists, Scholl says it is time to turn his attention to his own creative practice.

“I was a patron and a collector and a fan,” says Scholl. (For context, in 44 years of collecting, he’s amassed nearly 2,000 works and continues to purchase art.)

Seasoned arts leader Dennis Scholl, president and CEO, of Oolite Arts is leaving after six years to dedicate his work full time to creating films and his own visual art. (Photo courtesy of Mary Beth Koeth)

It was in 2009 when he made his first film, the six-minute short “Sunday’s Best,” a documentary that highlighted the African-American custom of wearing extraordinary hats to church services. He co-directed it with two other filmmakers, Marlon Johnson and Chad Tingle, and he felt what having his own creative practice was like.

“I enjoyed the process and the collaborative part of filmmaking,” he says. “And (the film) received a lot of attention.”

Since then, he’s made 100 short films and seven feature-length documentaries about art and artists.

And while he loves filmmaking and will continue, Scholl says that about eight years ago he felt he wanted to expand his practice. “I wanted to try and do something that didn’t take 15 people to make a piece of art. Films are collaborative and you need so many people – a photographer, a sound person . . .”

He began focusing on the question: “What is it that I know and do that I can bring to an art practice?”

Then, as someone who has been “collecting things almost since birth,” he began “poking around in that.”

The poking unearthed an interest he has always had in collecting historical ephemera, which has led to where he is now. It brings together his desire to create original art with his penchant for collecting.

Scholl began to look for historical and branded original objects, some that he already obtained from bidding at auctions and others that he would and will continue to acquire to create his original works.

“I generally reassemble the individual objects creating a dodecagon, a 12-sided figure,” he says.

In March, he exhibited his first solo show, titled “The Texture of Memory,” in Berlin, featuring nearly 20 works.

“Untitled (vintage Hermes scarves),” 2022. Twelve Hermes scarves. 104″ x 104″ (Photo courtesy of Hua International)

One of the pieces in the Berlin show was created with ephemera purchased from Yankee Clipper Joe DiMaggio’s estate, which included film footage and newspapers.

“I bought footage of him on his honeymoon with Marilyn Monroe and then I bought the New York Daily News’ newspapers from the week that Marilyn died and I put them together,” says Scholl.

There’s a Miami Beach connection to the inspiration for “Untitled (DiMaggio honeymoon), 2022,” Scholl recounts.

“Every day I’d go to breakfast at a place called Arnie & Richie’s (525 Arthur Godfrey Road). In fact, I still do. But back in the day, Joe DiMaggio would be there almost every morning. He was taciturn. You couldn’t approach him, you couldn’t ask him for an autograph or a picture, you couldn’t smile, you couldn’t even look at him. I would think, ‘Why is he like that, he’s one of the greatest baseball players ever, so why is he so unhappy.’ Then I made this piece about him and about Marilyn dying.”

Another one of the pieces is made up of royalty statements Scholl acquired at an auction for songs written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

“Untitled (Lennon and McCartney Royalty Ledgers),”  2022. Acquired objects and graphite. 56″ x5 56″ (Photo courtesy of Hua International)

He told ARTNews that taking “objects of desire,” like the DiMaggio footage and the Beatles’ original ledger sheets, “draws you into this collective memory we all share.”

Scholl says as much as the work resonates with him personally, it has with others. After the show in Berlin, he got offers to have shows in England and France. “I’m going to Poland in July to see if I might do a show there, and a gallery wants to keep working with me and do a show in Beijing,” he says.

Stepping away from all that’s happening with Oolite wasn’t an easy decision. He was at the forefront of Oolite’s major modern transition – a move from Lincoln Road to a sprawling new urban village, its $30 million headquarters in Little River, designed by Spanish architectural firm Barozzi Vega.

And, as anyone might do when considering a significant career change, he thought aloud to a trusted colleague.

“I called Franklin Sirmans (the director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami). And I said, ‘Franklin, I have all these opportunities,’ ” he told Sirmans referring to what was coming to him with the interest in his art practice. ” ‘But you know at Oolite, I want to finish up the building, which is going to be another two years. So, I think I’m going to defer the opportunities.’ ”

A rendering of Oolite Arts’ new campus in Little River designed by Barcelona-based Barozzi Veiga. (Photo courtesy of Oolite Arts)

He remembers Sirmans’ response: “He laughed. And he said, ‘Dennis, that’s not how the art world works. Somehow you have gotten all these opportunities out of your first show and you have to keep going now if you want to keep the momentum.’ ”

Scholl says that in the same month, he received offers to do two films with good budgets.

“You can’t do all that and have a full-time job,” says Scholl. He consulted with his wife, Debra, and made the decision. “I’m going to go for it.”

He’ll continue to consult for Oolite and won’t officially leave his position until later this year. Oolite has already announced it will conduct a national search for his replacement who will open the new campus with an expected completion in 2025.

And while Scholl says he never says never – “I’m not someone who forecloses any opportunity down the road” –  he believes that what he calls his “third act” will be making films and art for the next 15 years.

“How exciting it is for me to have the opportunity to be part of an artist community that I embrace and that I revere and now can be a part of it in a different way,” he says.

Miami artist Jason Seife digs deep into Middle Eastern heritage at PAMM

Miami-based artist Jason Seife has his first solo exhibition in the U.S. opening at Pérez Art Museum Miami. “Coming to Fruition,” at PAMM through March 2024, explores his dual heritage. (Photo courtesy of Lazaro Llanes)

Jason Seife’s intricate paintings of near-Eastern carpet patterns may belie the fact that it is the work of an artist raised in Miami.

Born to a Cuban-American mother and a Syrian-American father who both immigrated to the United States in early childhood, the artist admits that his work seems foreign in the context of Miami’s art landscape, driven as it is by flashy pop art and immersive installations. Yet his upbringing in the very cosmopolitan city, where it was not strange for himself and his friends when growing up to have origins in other places, was crucial to his development as an artist.

He was immersed in his Hispanic identity in Little Havana and admits he wouldn’t have explored the Middle Eastern side if there hadn’t been a certain lack of exposure to it, especially after his father’s parents died.

“It was always spoken of as this like, mystery, or this utopian thing,” says Seife. Some of his earliest childhood drawings were of the oriental carpets his family would keep in the house.

Jason Seife, “Untitled (Render)” (2022). (Photo courtesy of Jason Seife)

“I was always drawing them, I remember, just because I loved the shapes. I didn’t think much about them, I didn’t think about making them as artwork.”

Today, Middle Eastern textile art forms the backbone of Seife’s artistry, which will be on full display in his first solo show in the U.S. and his first solo show the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). Titled “Coming to Fruition,” the exhibit realizes a childhood dream for Seife, who became interested in art as a child after visiting the Miami Art Museum — PAMM’s original incarnation.

“I didn’t even think it was fathomable,” he says of showing at the museum. “That’s why we leaned into that idea of ‘Coming to Fruition,’ because there’s that importance of walking through that space from a young age, (and) my first solo show in Miami being there.”

Seife did not go to art school and took a lengthy break from art after a traumatizing rejection from the New World School of the Arts.  “It completely destroyed me… I took it in a way where it was so black and white. It wasn’t the denial of the school, it was the denial of this dream,” he says. It was only later, as he began to look into his heritage, that he returned to art and began to consider his early drawings in a new light. He began to research carpet-making practices from around the Middle East, learning about the details and histories behind certain designs from experts. Eventually, he traveled to Syria and Iran, two countries that are almost impenetrable for an American citizen, to learn from the source.

Jason Seife, Untitled (Detail), (2022).  Acrylic, ink, and natural dyes on hand–poured mortar. (Photo courtesy of Jason Seife)

“I was actually the first U.S. tourist visa that was granted to go to Syria since the war in 2011,” he says. “It was bittersweet being there because it’s so beautiful, but also, you’re very much reminded constantly that this is a country that is still an active war zone. And even when I would check into a hotel, they saw my passport and would just look at me like I’m crazy.”

Seife was helped through the “taxing” visa processes through contacts made with locals in the Middle East on Instagram. His anecdotes from the journey are remarkable. He traveled through small towns where the novelty of a foreign traveler would cause the locals to ask for photos. In Syria, he found himself enamored with the unique aesthetics of run-down buildings in need of repair – tile missing from walls, revealing the mortar work beneath – that ultimately informed his paintings on concrete.

Jason Seife’s process is to digitally design his carpet-inspired compositions. He subsequently hand-paints these intricate patterns onto a concrete slab or canvas. (Photo courtesy of Lazaro Llanes)

“I was really drawn to the natural degradations that would happen in these walls,” he recalls. “I saw these kind of buildings that had weathered away over time, and I was more attracted to the ones that were in some of the poorer cities that didn’t have the budgets to renovate them. Because you really saw the aging of time.”

Influenced by his travels, Seife’s work places the ancient craft practices of Syria and Iran into a contemporary context, blending handmade detail with modern tools. Rather than weaving, Seife executes his ornate designs as paintings, some on canvas, and many more on solid slabs of concrete that have been purposefully weathered. He uses Photoshop to pre-draw the designs before painstakingly coloring them in on the slabs, a process that can sometimes take hours and requires an almost meditative state of focus.

“The more I’m somewhere else in my mind, the more precise I am in my paintings. The more I’m thinking about a line, the more I’m gonna screw it up. I’m not a gestural painter, I’m not a physical painter, I don’t need to be thinking about what I’m doing. The process is done already in the digital stage. Once it’s here I’m kind of just bringing it to life.”

Jason Seife, like many Miamians, is the son of immigrants, in his case of Cuban and Syrian descent. (Photo courtesy of Llazaro Llanes)

Applying his own artisanship while using digital technology is Seife’s way of evoking the same feeling of awe that he found overseas. He describes being thunderstruck by the sacred geometry of Iranian mosque architecture, and hopes his paintings can inspire a similar state of ecstasy.

“When you know that something’s handmade, you want to understand how they do this or that,” he says. “Between machine-made carpets and handmade carpets, what’s the difference there? Why do we gravitate towards (that)? Why do we feel something a little bit more when you know something was funneled through a human being? It has a spirit to it, or a soul that maybe the machine one doesn’t. So that’s something I always try to involve in my work,” says Seife.

Jason Seife, “Moon Underwater” (2020).  Acrylic on hand-poured mortar. 60 x 40 inches. Private Collection. (Photo courtesy of Jason Seife)

Seife’s travels seemed to solidify this perspective in him. Generally, Seife says, the people in these far-off places were extraordinarily hospitable, despite his fears about being shunned as an American. Rather, he says that most of the people he encountered were thrilled that a foreigner had expressed such deep interest in their culture.

PAMM Assistant Curator Maritza Lacayo with artist Jason Siefe. Lacayo organized “Coming to Fruition.” (Photo courtesy of Llazaro Llanes)

In one of the carpet studios he says his Iranian guide took him to, Seife recalls meeting a weaver who had gone blind in her old age and continued to work by memory and touch. In another, he was told through a translator that the weavers, most of whom were female and worked under a male designer, always left intentional errors in the rugs they worked on. “They always make mistakes because only God can be perfect.”

His ability to synthesize those experiences and the perspective gained from them with his upbringing in Miami makes him a truly unique artist.

“On either side of my family, if there were a couple of different decisions made, I would have a very different life, if I grew up in Cuba or in Syria. You kind of have to get over that and be like, I have to use this gift and make the most out of it.”

WHAT: “Jason Seife: Coming To Fruition”

WHEN:  Exhibition opening reception, Thursday, 6 p.m., May 18.  11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday through Monday. Closed Tuesday and Wednesday. Through  March 17, 2024.

 WHERE:  Pérez Art Museum Miami, 1103 Biscayne Blvd, Miami.

 COST:  $16 for adults, $12 for seniors (62+ with ID) and youth (7-18), free for children (6 and under), active U.S. military and veterans (with ID), Florida educators (with ID), healthcare professionals and first responders (with ID), disabled visitors and caregiver, and museum members.

INFORMATION: (305) 375-3000 or pamm.org

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit source of theater, dance, visual arts, music and performing arts news.

Little Haiti Book Festival returns in full swing

A young reader and his book during the 2022 Little Haiti Book Festival. The festival returns Sunday, May 7, at three locations in the Miami neighborhood. (Photo courtesy of Miami Book Fair).

After a cautious return to in-person events in 2022, the Little Haiti Book Festival is gearing up for a major comeback this year. The annual event takes place on Sunday, May 7, at three locations, Libreri Mapou Book Store, the Caribbean Marketplace (Mache Ayisyen), and the Little Haiti Cultural Center.

The book fair, which takes place during Haitian Heritage Month, is a celebration of the literary arts and cultural heritage of Haiti and the Little Haiti community in Miami.

The organizers have lined up several authors, publishers, and booksellers to participate in addition to a range of activities, including book readings, panel discussions, and music and dance performances.

After a cautious return to in-person events in 2022, the Little Haiti Book Festival is gearing up for a major comeback this year. Inset: Book festival founder and Libreri Mapou bookstore owner, Jean-Marie Willer Denis. (Photos courtesy of Miami Book Fair and Jean Mapou)

“We view this as a unique opportunity for community members to reconnect in person after being separated by the pandemic, and for our children to engage with, and learn about, the vibrant cultural heritage of Haiti,” says Jean-Marie Willer Denis, aka Jean Mapou, founder of the festival and Libreri Mapou bookstore owner.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the book fair was held mostly virtually for three years.

“COVID-19 has strongly impacted our community, and for the past three years, people were afraid to participate in public events. So, we held the festival on Zoom in 2020 and 2021,” says Mapou, adding that although the event was successful online, it still missed what he says was a sense of togetherness. Most especially, readers couldn’t meet the authors in person.

Last year’s event saw some attendees, but not to pre-pandemic levels. However, with the lifting of pandemic restrictions this year, festival organizers are optimistic about a robust showing.

“We’re definitely back, with a hybrid festival that combines in-person and online programming,” says Mapou. The festival’s initiator also confides that book production has surged during the pandemic, both in Haiti and in the diaspora. “We’re seeing more and more new writers and works coming out, and the book fair provides an excellent opportunity for the community to connect with these new voices and their messages.”

The Little Haiti Book Festival, which was launched officially in 2014 by Jean Mapou’s Sosyete Koukouy, an advocacy group dedicated to preserving Haitian culture in the United States, has provided a platform for notable Haitian authors such as Edwidge Danticat, M. J. Fièvre, Lyonel Trouillot, Marc Exavier, to showcase their work to Miami’s Haitian community. The adventure started with Mapou’s idea to open a bookstore promoting Haitian literature and culture. The festival founder’s vision was also to combat negative stereotypes and misconceptions about the Haitian community.

Acclaimed Haitian American author Edwidge Danticat, a frequent guest at the fair, will be at the 2023 Little Haiti Book Festival. (Photo courtesy of Miami Book Fair)

“People were saying terrible things about Haitians – notably that we were illiterate. I wanted to challenge those ideas and show the world the richness and beauty of Haitian culture,” he says.

The creator of Sosyete Koukouy (The Fireflies Society) started the bookstore with a small library in the Caribbean Marketplace in an effort to educate people about Haitian culture through books. The bookstore quickly became a hub for the Haitian community in Miami, attracting Haitian intellectuals, non-Haitians, and students. That’s how Libreri Mapou started.

The idea for the Little Haiti Book Festival sparked after Mapou attended the annual Haitian book fair called “Livres en Folie” during a trip there. Inspired by the event, Mapou, who already had some experience as a Miami Book Fair board member, decided to launch a book fair in Little Haiti.

“We started timidly, but over the years, our festival has grown and become more popular, drawing in a larger audience,” he says.

After five years, the Miami Book Fair joined forces with the Haitian book fair to provide logistical support, becoming a supporter and is now co-organizer of the Little Haiti Book Festival.

“This partnership exemplifies the power of collaboration to achieve extraordinary results,” says Fièvre, coordinator of ReadCaribbean, a Miami Book Fair program focusing on Caribbean-specific events.

“Both Miami Book Fair and Sosyete Koukouy work together to plan every festival aspect, from logistics to programming. These organizations pool their resources, skills, and passion for literature and culture to finance the event,” she says.

As a result, over the years, the festival has grown significantly in size and scope, attracting a more comprehensive range of authors, publishers, and attendees, according to Fièvre.

“While the primary focus remains on Haiti and the Haitian diaspora, we now welcome authors from various Caribbean and non-Caribbean countries, enriching the event’s diversity and fostering cross-cultural connections.”

It is worth noting that this year, the organization of the Little Haiti Festival is particularly significant as it takes place amidst the ongoing gentrification of the neighborhood.

“It’s important to organize this festival in this context to make the world know that we are not going anywhere. We are here to stay,” exclaims Mapou.

NSL Dance Ensemble will perform during the 2023 book fair. (Photo courtesy of Miami Book Fair)

Fièvre says that the gentrification of Little Haiti makes it even more crucial to have a Haitian book festival that preserves and celebrates the community’s rich cultural heritage.

“The festival counters the erasure of Haitian culture and history from the neighborhood by providing a space for Haitian and Caribbean authors, artists, and community members to share their stories and experiences,” she says.

Millien-Faustin, author of a collection of short stories in Haitian Creole (“Tim Tim: Jaden Kreyasyon” and “Eli Fèt Leyogàn”), says it is heartbreaking what Little Haiti is facing.

“In this time of despair, gatherings such as the Haitian Book Festival become more important to keep the community together and stronger.”

This year’s Little Haiti Book Festival promises to cater to diverse interests and age groups. A primary focus of the festival will be author readings and book signings.

Almost 100 authors will be present, showcasing their latest works and conversing about their creative processes and literary journeys, says Fièvre, who is coordinating this part of the festival.

Festival organizers have also scheduled two panel discussions for attendees to spark thought-provoking conversations. The talks  will explore relevant topics, such as “Chaos and Community: The Impact of New Immigration Laws on Haitian Refugees in the US” and “Building a Healthier Future: A Panel Discussion on Environmental Sustainability in Haiti.”

Among the panelists: Gepsie Morisset-Metellus, co-founder of the Sant La Haitian Neighborhood Center; Edwidge Danticat, Haitian American author; Paul Novack, former mayor of Surfside; Leonie Hermantin, director of communications and development at Sant La; Philippe Mathieu, agronomist, and CEO of Agroconsult Haiti, and Florentin Maurrasse, Ph.D., a geologist at Florida International University.

“These conversations will allow attendees to engage with the issues and themes that resonate with the Haitian and Caribbean communities,” according to Fièvre.

Bilingual writer and storyteller Marie Ketsia Theodore Pharel will read aloud two books, one in Creole and the other in English, at the Little Haiti Book Festival. (Photo courtesy of Miami Book Fair)

Various workshops are also planned including sessions on contemporary Haitian dance (NSL Dance Ensemble), music, Haitian theater, and film project management by filmmaker Yanatha Desouvre (“The Sweetest Girl,” “Fragmented Scars”). The workshops will be led by industry professionals, providing valuable insights into Haitian culture.

The festival will feature special events and activities for children and young adult readers, such as storytelling sessions and hands-on activities including artmaking with GO GO MOAD and Haitian artist Asser Saint-Val.

Bilingual writer and storyteller Marie Ketsia Theodore Pharel will read aloud  “Tanga” (in Creole), a legend about a magical fish, and “Dumb Boy in Hot Water” (in English), the story of the Haitian occupation with a twist on dumpling soup.

“In addition to writing books, I am committed to preserving the oral storytelling tradition that is so precious and cogent to Haitian culture,” the author says.

WHAT: Little Haiti Book Festival

WHEN:  11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Sunday, May 7.   Online events Sunday, May 21 and Sunday, May 28

WHERE:  Little Haiti Cultural Complex, 212 NE 59th Terrace, Miami

COST: Free

INFORMATION: 305-757-9922 or miamibookfair.com/littlehaiti

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High schooler’s poem to get prominent display on Miami Beach water tanks

Lines from a poem written by Miami Beach Senior High School sophomore Valentina Mena’s poem were selected to be emblazoned on an art mural wrapped around Miami Beach water towers. (Photo courtesy of O, Miami)

A year ago, Valentina Mena moved to Miami Beach from Villa Maria in Argentina.

When she entered her sophomore year at Miami Beach Senior High School, a new school in a new country, she says she found it daunting. Then a poetry workshop. hosted at the school by O, Miami, gave her an outlet to express her feelings.

She says words flowed from her pen onto her paper, collecting in a pool of thoughts and memories that contained the sentiments of her heart.

“(The poem) reflects the things that I went through,” says Mena.

The bilingual poem is inspired by Mena’s experiences as an immigrant and its message has so strongly resonated with others, it has taken on a life of its own.

“My Home, Mi Hogar” has become an integral part of O, Miami’s 12th Annual Poetry Festival, with the festival’s mission that every single person in Miami-Dade County encounters a poem. Selected lines from Mena’s poem will be emblazoned on two, three-million-gallon water storage tanks at the Miami Beach Public Works Department, 451 Dade Blvd., Miami Beach. One tank presents the work in English, while the other in Spanish, where a brightly colored design along with the words are spun around the tanks.

The water-tank project, which is taking place during O, Miami’s month-long festival celebrating National Poetry Month, was created by Madrid-based collective Boa Mistura, with support from The City of Miami Beach. This is a mock-up of what the finished mural will look like. (Photo courtesy of O, Miami)

The mural on one water tower will be emblazoned with the line: “Finding My Home In Every Voice That I Hear,” while the second will read, “Hay Un Hogar En Cada Voz Que Eschucho.”

“I am completely grateful,” she says, about her poetry being selected.

Valentina’s full poem in English reads:

This is my first place in a new reality
where it received me but made me miss my old me
While time passes it feels alright
Afternoons are humid and sun hits my skin
Riding my bike, watching the green in the neighborhood,
and the blue reflected in the ocean
I’m living the music of them
and recording moments so I won’t forget
but sometimes it’s hard to adapt
But people here feels like a family’s part
finding my home in every voice that I hear,
Walking down the streets, wondering people’s lives
I know that I’m not alone, that my fears are shared
and that we are all searching for the best next alternative possible
That’s what recomforts me at the end of the day.

The mural was designed by the multi-disciplinary collective Boa Mistura and Mena’s fellow students from the high school will help paint sections of the mural on Friday, April 26.

The completed project is set to be unveiled on Friday, May 5.

“It’ll be a long-term installation for Miami Beach residents, but also residents of Miami Dade County to view and take a little joy from while they’re passing by,” says Melissa Gomez, O, Miami’s communications director.

Luz Rossy was the winner of the Zip Ode poetry contest hosted by O, Miami and WLRN. Her poem was an homage to her grandmother. They share the same name. (Photo courtesy of Chantal Lawrie/O,Miami.)

Another public display of poetry from O, Miami was also culled from submissions for the [Your Poem Here] contest, which would put the winning entrant’s poetry on a billboard at  NE 8th Street and Biscayne Boulevard in downtown Miami.

The selected poem by Little Havana resident Luz Rossy was an ode to her grandmother who is also named Luz.

For Rossy, the contest turned her flirtation with poetry into a full-blown affair.

The library assistant at the Westchester Library Health and Wellness Information Center dates her passion for prose back to when she was in the sixth grade.

“And ever since then, I fell in love with just the artistry of turning everyday life into love on a page.”

So when she heard about the contest she jumped at the chance.

The campaign was held in partnership with WLRN Public Media and O, Miami who both invented the poetic form called “Zip Ode,” a five-line poem that corresponds to the numbers in one’s zip code.

Rossy’s zip code is 33125: Her poem:

(3)”My name came
(3)from my abuela
(1) and
(2) she said
(5)we can share it forever.”

Luz Rossy’s winning poem on a billboard at NE 8th Street and Biscayne Boulevard, Miami. (Photo courtesy of Chantal Lawrie/O, Miami.)

Katie Cohen, engagement editor at WLRN, said that Rossy’s enthusiastic response wasn’t the only one they received. Her entry was just one of over 1,500 entries for Zip Odes.

“It’s incredibly overwhelming and powerful,” says Cohen. “There  has been a lot of support from the community,”

The poems, she says, covered a range of topics.

“There are odes to dogs to traffic to palm trees to cats to mangoes to iganaus . . .The themes stretch from the sun to the beach. It’s a really special way to communicate. It’s like a love letter to your neighborhood,” says Cohen.

More of the Zip Odes will be read at a poetry celebration at Vizcaya Museum & Gardens on Wednesday, April 26 from 6 to 9 p.m. The event will be immediately followed by the 2023 Marjory Stoneman Douglas Poetry Awards at the same location.

For those who didn’t submit a Zip Ode, there’s still the opportunity to submit words of art through two touring projects that will show up around Miami.

El Palacio de los Recuerdos Project by Melissa Guitierrez, a miniature replica of the signature Cuban and Latin restaurant with its unmistakeable yellow background and red stripes, will be at various locations, where people will be asked to write and contribute words of art. The miniature is meant to serve as a memory bank, of sorts.

Created by Melissa Gutierrez, El Palacio de los Recuerdos prompts locals to submit poetry about
their favorite Miami memory. (Photo courtesy of O,
Miami.)

El Palacio de los Recuerdos Project will be at Super Wheels Skating Center’s open mic night on Thursday, April 27, to celebrate the festival’s 12th birthday. Additional locations are expected to be released.

Another festival event where poetry will serve as a backdrop to imagery is “Portrait at 34” by Miami-based artist Najja Moon. The project involves a custom-designed photo booth, which produces portraits of participants. that are then combined with age-based poetry submitted by local poets and students.

Her booth will be at Lincoln Road Euclid Circle on Saturday, April 29 from 3 to 7 pm.

The installation was inspired by the death of Najja’s cousin, the poet Kamilah Aisha Moon. “She was an incredible poet,” said Moon. “For me, it’s about Aisha. To be able to introduce people to her work is an honor.”

She began the project after stumbling onto one of her cousin’s poems.

“As I’m reading through her first published book of poetry, there’s a poem entitled ‘Portrait at 34.’ I was 34 years old at the time, so I was like, this is weird. It’s like she’s speaking to me from beyond. And then I had this really beautiful and tense moment of connection and felt like it was speaking to me and that prompted this idea of how could I create a structure that could replicate that feeling?”

The project has since expanded and at one point, it was used as a lesson plan to prompt students throughout Miami-Dade County to write poetry.

“Portrait at 34” is a custom-designed photo booth inspired by late poet Kamilah Aisha Moon. The traveling booth produces portraits that are paired with age-specific poems for each participant. (Photo courtesy of Chantal Lawrie/O,Miami.)

Last year, more than 300 submissions were received.

Moon is excited about participating in this year’s festival but says that she has learned from previous years and has scaled down her photo booth.

“Transporting it was a pain . . .,” she says. “ It was ginormous!”

Since then, Moon has made some important improvements.

“It’s been completely redesigned to be more portable, and I’m very proud of it.”

WHAT:  O, Miami 12th Annual Poetry Festival

WHERE: Various locations

WHEN: Through May 12

COST: Free for most events. Tickets for Zip Odes Finale Reading at the Vizcaya Museum & Gardens is $10 for 13 and older, $5 for ages 6-12 and free for 5 and younger.

INFORMATION: For a full list of activities visit omiami.org

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit source of theater, dance, visual arts, music and performing arts news. 

World Congress on Art Deco returns to where it began

A detail of The Wolfsonian–FIU, located in the heart of the Art Deco District of Miami Beach, one of the featured excursions during the 16th World Congress on Art Deco, coming to Miami and Miami Beach from Thursday, April 20 to Thursday, April 27. (Photo courtesy of Miami Design Preservation League)

Awake, O Miami! The 16th World Congress on Art Deco is coming to Miami, a chance for visitors and residents alike to discover, or rediscover, South Florida’s Deco treasures. Deco experts, including architects, designers, and aficionados, will see and learn about the hotel, theater, and residential structures built in the Deco Modern Art style, which swept the world in the early 20th century.

“Modernism – Florida’s Hidden Treasures” begins with a pre-congress in Orlando, on Tuesday, April 18, then the congress’ main event is in Miami Beach and Miami from Thursday, April 20 to Thursday, April 27, and closes with a post-congress in Palm Beach, where World Art Deco Day will be celebrated on Friday, April 28 with a costumed ball. Events end there on Sunday, April 30.

While the 13-day event takes in different locales throughout the state with its full slate — everything from lectures to tours of some of the area’s top Deco sites, Jack Johnson, board chair of the Miami Design Preservation League, says the World Congress is returning to where it all began.

Lectures during the World Congress will be on site at the Jewish Museum-FIU. The main museum building, at 301 Washington Ave., Miami Beach, was built in 1936, is on the National Register of Historic Places and has many Art Deco features. (Photo courtesy of Miami Design Preservation League)

The first World Congress happened on Miami Beach in 1991. “It was the idea of Barbara Baer Capitman but she didn’t live to see it happen,” says Johnson. Capitman, a legendary force for South Florida historic preservation, who died in 1990, was instrumental in starting the preservation league. She also led efforts to create Miami Beach’s Art Deco Historic District, which runs from 5th Street to 23rd Street and is home to more than 800 Deco structures.

Johnson, who helped organize the congress, along with other members of the International Coalition of Art Deco Societies, says that while the roster is designed to showcase South Florida Art Deco, organizers hope the event will highlight the need to preserve all of the region’s historic architecture.

Art Deco takes its name from the 1925 Paris Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes, highlighting the avant-garde architecture and design movement. It was soon taken up worldwide by forward-thinking architects and designers, who each put a local spin on the style. For example, Napier, New Zealand, has a significant number of Deco structures, built after a 1931 earthquake leveled much of the city. A number boast Māori motifs.

Included in the itinerary of the 16th World Congress on Art Deco will be a walking tour through the Flamingo Park historic Art Deco district in Miami Beach. (Photo courtesy of Miami Design Preservation League)

Similarly, South Florida blended in vernacular elements, says Johnson, noting that Miami Deco, sometimes called Tropical Deco, or Marine Deco, often incorporates native animals, plants, and wave forms. Most were built post-Depression as Deco became streamlined and geometric.

“Here in Miami Beach, we tend to have the simpler buildings, not built by corporate entities, but by small investors,” says Johnson, contrasting Miami buildings to grand icons, such as New York’s Chrysler and Empire State buildings.

In an email exchange, noted Miami architect Allan Shulman described Art Deco as belonging to the ” ‘evolutionary’ strand of modern architecture, contrasting to the ‘revolutionary’ ideas of Le Corbusier and other early 20th century modernists.”

Shulman, founding principal of Miami-based firm Shulman + Associates, who is also a professor at the University of Miami School of Architecture, author and researcher, says that Deco architects were trained in the classically oriented Beaux Arts method and aesthetics, which they brought to their structures.

In reconciling modernism with traditional classical architecture, Miami practitioners found a certain opportunity and freedom.

Designed in 1936 by Yugoslavian architect Anton Skiskewicz, the Breakwater Hotel on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach remains one of Miami’s most iconic Art Deco buildings. (Photo courtesy of Miami Design Preservation League)

“Far from the principal American academic and professional centers, Miami architects worked in the frontier context of an emerging leisure city, and attempted to bring a regional sensibility to their work,” says Shulman. “Art Deco helped codify the ‘cosmology’ of Miami as a singular resort city, reflecting a world of values, meanings and intentions.”

Shulman will headline a talk titled “Tropical Stucco: Miami’s Art Deco and its Architects” on Friday, April 21, at 2 p.m. at the Jewish Museum-FIU. Andrew Capitman, Barbara Baer Capitman’s son, will present: “Barbara Baer Capitman, the Early Years of Art Deco Preservation” on Saturday, April 23 at 3:30 p.m. Other speakers will address topics such as Art Deco in Mumbai, Chinese Art Deco, and Deco in Havana.

Silvia Barisione, chief curator at the Wolfsonian-FIU museum, will discuss architect Igor Polevitzky, behind such icons as the Collins Avenue Shelborne South Beach hotel.

Barisione wants the congress to raise greater awareness about the need for historic preservation in South Florida – not just Deco, but MiMo, Mediterranean revival and other threatened styles. The Wolfsonian-FIU is also making available archives for those undertaking restorations in their own cities. They include records from John and Drew Eberson, credited with creating the “atmospheric” style movie palaces, such as Miami’s opulently decorated Olympia Theater on East Flagler Street.

Tours of Casa Casuarina, built in 1930 by Alden Freeman and bought by fashion designer Gianni Versace in 1992, are part of the World Congress on Art Deco. (Photo courtesy of Miami Design Preservation League)

Sharon Koskoff, president of the Art Deco Society of the Palm Beaches, says area structures may be a revelation for some. “Our Art Deco is rarer, more significant, and so few and far between,” says Koskoff, who worked with Capitman on the first Miami Beach-based world congress and has been advocating for preservation ever since. A mural artist herself, Koskoff hopes the 16th World Congress on Art Deco will raise the profile of South Florida architecture.

“We are highlighting our hidden gems,” she says, noting that designers and photographers who attend the events will go home, and share. “It creates awareness, and all the global awareness trickles out.”

WHAT:  The 16th World Congress on Art Deco: Modernism– Florida’s Hidden Treasures

WHEN: April 18-30

WHERE: Orlando, Miami Beach, Miami, Palm Beach

COST: $35 to $429 (day passes for Miami and Miami Beach events available here.)

INFORMATION: 16thworldcongress.com

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit source of theater, dance, visual arts, music and performing arts news.