Visual Arts
The Remarkable Jonathan Plutzik
Introduction to Jonathan Plutzik. 5:53 min. Drone video: Zachary Plutzik. Music: The (New) Beethoven Quartets. The 32 Piano Sonatas Reimagined. By Jeffery Briggs. Piano Sonata in C-minor, op. 13. Performed by the Amernet String Quartet. Photo & Design: Raymond Elman. How does the son of a poet become the owner of the most culturally advanced hotel in the world? Practice, practice, practice. (The hyperbole is mine until proven otherwise.) And with a “little” help from his family and friends — for the glorious cultural...
read moreFrank Stella: Experiment and Change
Installation of Frank Stella: Experiment and Change at NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale 4:31 min. Video by Elman + Bonilla. Music: Carmen Cicero Editor’s Note: The video above was recorded during the installation of the Frank Stella exhibition at the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale on October 27, 28, 30. You must be connected to the Internet to view the video. The essay below by museum director and chief curator Bonnie Clearwater is copyrighted by the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale. Frank Stella: Experiment and Change spans Frank...
read moreMichele Oka Doner: A Woman of Nature
Introduction to Michele Oka Doner. 2:58 min. Includes excerpts from A Walk on the Beach: Based on an installation by Michele Oka Doner at Miami International Airport. Director: Nick Merrick. Director of Photography & Editor: Athan Merrick. Producer: Hedrich Blessing. Original score for conch shell, Del Mar a la Estrellas: William Cepeda. From micheleokadoner.com Michele Oka Doner (b. 1945, Miami Beach) is an internationally renowned artist whose career spans four decades. The breadth of her artistic production...
read moreMichele Oka Doner Back Then (1990)
Editor’s Note: This article by Elisa Turner was originally published in the Miami Herald in September, 1990. It highlights both the consistency of Oka Doner’s vision, and her endless need to experiment with new materials. As a child in Miami Beach, where her father, Kenneth Oka, was mayor in the late 1950s and early ‘60s, Michele Oka spent hours playing in the wet sand, sifting for the fragments of shell and coral that still fascinate her. “I’d always look for forms on the beach,” she remembers. “I’d pick up coral rock that looked...
read moreBudd Hopkins at NADA Miami
Editor’s Note: Downs & Ross will be exhibiting the work of Budd Hopkins (1931-2011) at NADA Miami from December 7-10, 2017. The dualistic attitude which informs Hopkins’ work stems primarily from a dichotomy he experienced early in his career. When he came to New York in 1953 from Wheeling, West Virginia via Oberlin College it was the high-time of Abstract Expressionism. For that movement’s heroes – De Kooning, Kline, Pollack and Rothko – generalized public acceptance was just beginning, and their audience was still...
read moreA Video Conversation with Pulitzer Prize-Winning Art Spiegelman
Introduction to Art Spiegelman. 1:59 min. Photo & montage by Raymond Elman. Music: My Grey Heaven, from Normalology (1996), by Phillip Johnston, Jedible Music (BMI) From the Steven Barclay Agency: Art Spiegelman (b. 1948) has almost single-handedly brought comic books out of the toy closet and onto the literature shelves. In 1992, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his masterful Holocaust narrative Maus— which portrayed Jews as mice and Nazis as cats. Maus II continued the remarkable story of his parents’ survival of the Nazi regime...
read moreA Video Chat with Architect Kobi Karp
Introduction to Architect Kobi Karp: 6:03 min. Photo: Robert Zuckerman. Kobi Karp (b.1962) is the founder and principal of Kobi Karp Architecture and Interior Design, Inc (KKAID). Karp founded the firm in 1996 and has been the Principal-in-Charge of design since that time. KKAID is a full-service architectural and interior design firm providing an array of services, ranging from the design of large-scale, high-rise condominium and hospitality projects to intimate, small-scale low-rise residential and commercial structures. Educated at...
read moreBonnie Clearwater: Dean of South Florida’s Art Museum Directors
Introduction to Bonnie Clearwater. 2:56 min. Photo by Gary James. Music: Amernet Quartet. From NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale: Bonnie Clearwater joined NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale as Director and Chief Curator in September 2013. An influential leader who played a major role in Miami’s emergence and development as an international arts center, she is widely recognized for her curatorial vision, scholarship and record in administration, public education and community outreach. Ms. Clearwater spearheaded an exciting phase of...
read moreA Video Conversation with
Visionary Craig Robins
Introduction to Craig Robins: 2:31 min. Photo: Raymond Elman. Music: Carmen Cicero. Design District building photos: Richard Patterson, Robin Hill, Lala Pereira, ra-haus. Excerpt from the Dacra website: Craig Robins is an entrepreneur, real estate developer, and art collector based in Miami, Florida. As the CEO and President of Dacra, the real estate development company he founded in 1987, Robins focuses on developing creative communities that integrate art, design, and architecture to accelerate asset value creation and enrich...
read moreZero Net Energy
Let’s Make Miami a Net Zero Metropolis ! The built environment accounts for the lion’s share of climate changing carbon emissions, whether as energy consumed by buildings, or by cars moving through our cities’ streets, or as habitat lost to development. To be better stewards of the Earth, we need to ask how we can reduce the amount of resources used to construct and operate our built environment. Zero Net Energy buildings, or Net Zero, produce at least as much power as they consume over the course of the year. Through a...
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