Visual Arts
Angelika Rinnhofer: Photographer, Conceptual Artist
Introduction to Angelika Rinnhofer. 1:38 min. Music: The Upper Room by AudioBinger. Photo & Design: Raymond Elman. I first met South Florida artist Angelika Rinnhofer while I was viewing the exhibition of her “a priori” project at FIU’s Miami Beach Urban Studios on Lincoln Road. I thought I was the only person in the gallery, as I took the time to consider each photo and video carefully, and understand the powerful content of “a priori.” Suddenly I became aware that I was not alone. A beautiful woman was standing by a white...
read moreThe Multi-Talented Cameron McNall
Introduction to Cameron McNall. 6:01 min. Video of 4016 Tivoli: Electroland LLC. Photo & design: Raymond Elman. Cameron McNall is an architect, educated at UCLA and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. His many awards across disciplines include the Rome Prize in Architecture, the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture, and the Siggraph Theater for digital animation. McNall founded Electroland LLC in 2001 with partner Damon Seeley. The work of Electroland has received wide notice for its conceptual strength and...
read moreRobert Zuckerman:
Photographer and Planetary Inhabitant
Introduction to Robert Zuckerman. 4:12 min. RZ Portrait by Raymond Elman. Music: Billy Torello. Will Smith calls him ‘Picasso.’ Jerry Bruckheimer, Denzel Washington and Michael Bay vie to have him on their film sets. Arnold Schwarzenegger introduced him to President Bill Clinton by saying, “This is Robert Zuckerman, the best photographer I have ever worked with.” As a photographer in the motion picture industry, Robert Zuckerman’s images have become the advertising and publicity campaigns for such films as “The Crow,” “I Know What...
read moreJordana Pomeroy — Being Expansive at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum
Introduction to Jordana Pomeroy, director of the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum–FIU. 1:20 min. Music: Nicole Henry. Design: Raymond Elman. The director of the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University since January 2015, Dr. Jordana Pomeroy came from Baton Rouge where she was the executive director of the Louisiana State University Museum of Art. Dr. Pomeroy received her B.A. in art history from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. in art history from Columbia...
read moreThe 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...
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