“But, this is good.”

Mally Khorasantchi punctuates many sentences this way, speaking in her lilting German accent. Noshing on a dulce de leche-stuffed croissant from Bonita Springs’ Wolfmoon bakery, the artist frets playfully about her figure. “But, this is good.” The reflexive phrase signals her contentment and matter-of-fact wisdom. Overlooking the creek behind the Bonita Springs dream home she and her husband built together—the one completed just months after he suddenly passed away—Mally says the house can feel too big for one person. “But, this is good.”

Mally Khorasantchi is not one to dwell on what could be or what might have been. Her life occurs moment-to-moment, her mind fixed on the present, even when her heart wanders into the past. The last two years have been a shifting tide for the painter, but this period of upheaval—stemming from the loss of her husband and the move from Naples to a verdant tract in Bonita Springs—has settled into a contemplative quietude. Mally’s painting jeans tumble in the laundry more often now as she focuses on a new series: The Sun Also Rises, an apparent opus on life, love and a connection to nature influenced by the flora and fauna surrounding her.

“If you overthink things, you never do this. You know?” she says of immigrating to the United States from Germany some 32 years ago. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to move halfway around the world. The decision seemed rash to some, but at 43, she still felt young and adventurous. Her kids, by then grown, had moved to the United States. The house in Düsseldorf was too big and the weather too dreary. When Mally Khorasantchi and her husband visited their son for parents’ weekend at University of Pennsylvania, the pair allotted a week for a vacation to Southwest Florida. They quickly fell in love with the silky air and the smells and sounds of nature by the Gulf. “Why don’t we do this?” Mally remembers asking her husband. “Why do we live on the other side of the world with this ugly weather and the Germans, who are not so funny?” In a matter of three months, the two closed on a property in Naples’ Bay Colony community.

Mally paints botanicals—big ones—and abstract scenes interspersed with clippings from her favorite French fashion and architecture magazines. One day, while she flips through a publication, she’s inspired by the flourishing hemline of a pink, ruffled petticoat. Mally neatly slices the image from the page and places it into the woven basket she keeps at her side for just such moments—piecemeal parchment flutters in the container. 

The pink fabric’s movement and hue hold meaning, but she hasn’t deciphered it yet—that will take time. First, the artist must remove herself from the work. She’ll read a book, listen to music or sit by the creek and watch the manatees swimming in concert with the easy current. Then, some innocuous word, melody or blooming flower strikes a cord, and the swooping skirt reappears in her mind as a cluster of petals. Soon, this image bleeds into the magenta hues of her 2024 painting The Sun Also Rises VI. There is a narrative behind each of Mally’s paintings. Beneath the billowing petticoat, a bowl of fruit blends into blue, tendril-like leaves; a simple, white bed hides amid the texture of tree bark. In this way, life’s little monotonous moments are framed as part of a natural process—order and chaos in tandem. Everything is as it should be; everything flows along life’s current.

[caption id="attachment_68908" align="aligncenter" width="850"] Mally Khorasantchi’s larger-than-life artwork, which blends painted botanical imagery with collage elements, is a favorite for Gulfshore Life advisory board chair and trustee for Naples Children & Education Foundation Denise Cobb. “I love the colors and themes and especially love the fact that every piece is so unique, but you immediately know it is Mally,” she says. (Photo by by Christina Bankson)[/caption]

Steal Like an Artist, a book by Austin Kleon, further influenced Mally’s collage works. The author frames art as an iterative process and encourages readers to pluck inspiration from the imagery surrounding them; there is greater meaning in the context of individual experience. The Hidden Life of Trees, by German author Peter Wohlleben, forged Mally’s belief in the interconnectedness of life and nature.

The artist is an avid reader and collects fragments of ideas from books. Last year, Mally Khorasantchi and her lifelong best friend took a cruise to Key West and stopped by The Hemingway Home and Museum. She’d visited the site before, but this time, the artist purchased the author’s first novel, The Sun Also Rises. She hoped the book, where characters search for meaning after tragedy, would help her process the grief of losing her husband, Ali.

Reading the novel, Mally noted the telegrams Hemingway’s characters sent between New York and Europe—it made her think of the many messages Ali sent during business travels. Originally from Iran, Ali ran his family’s oriental rug company and would jet to foreign locales to visit manufacturers. He’d send telegrams back to his wife in Germany: “zur muttertag gratuliere iche liebe dich beste schone mutter der wel: dein mann” (‘Happy Mother’s Day, I love you, the most beautiful mother in the world: your husband.’). His messages were short—each word cost five Deutschmark (roughly $2.50 at the time), but with his voice now gone, each word carries more weight. “Today, we have all the words in the world and nobody cares. It’s overflowing. But this was so short,” Mally says. “I took the telegrams and put all the lines into my paintings. This is recycling my love,” Mally Khorasantchi says. These slices of affection reflect on the importance of our words and find their way into each piece from her current series.

Inside her artsy, eclectic home—which mixes Mally’s modern maximalist, antique and coastal sensibilities—stacks of works-in-progress line the hallway leading to her studio. Before construction ended, the artist worked out of the property’s only existing structure, a backyard shanty surrounded by the tangle of native plants and animals that first drew her to the green oasis near Old 41 Road in Downtown Bonita Springs. She would peer out the window, observing the way Spanish moss dripped from the overhead canopy or how seed pods went from fuzzy to rigid as they dried, and pull these small glories into her work. Mally’s massive canvases barely fit into the cottage, leaving little space to step back and adjust her perspective. To get a good look, the 76-year-old painter would drag her work out into the yard over and over again (no small feat after a spinal fusion in 2021) to check the light and refine each detail.

Once a work is complete, Mally releases it to galleries, museums or private buyers without reluctance. This piece of her was meant to be shared, not hidden away. “A painter is like a storyteller or a dancer,” Mally says. “We have to be naked there and present ourselves. And then, we have to wait for somebody to love us. You’re not really in charge after you make something. That’s the end of your story, but then, it takes its own little trip.”

Over the past decade, Mally Khorasantchi has refined and locked into her aesthetic. The vibrant hues of her modern-day work starkly contrast her paintings before moving to America. Dark-toned works have evolved into her current expressive and emotional style, inspired by Southwest Florida’s natural environment.

[caption id="attachment_68909" align="aligncenter" width="850"] Mally’s home reflects her artsy, eclectic style. Modern maximalist, coastal and antique elements blend seamlessly in the comfortable, open-concept living space. Various paintings from throughout the artist’s career adorn the walls, and stacks of works-in-progress line the hallway to her studio. (Photo by Amber Frederiksen)[/caption]

While her early work was more subdued, Mally’s personality never was. She was born shortly after the end of World War II in a culture that she says emphasized self-doubt over her natural boldness. Mally was certain she would be an artist, even when life challenged her dreams. At 9, she won an art contest at Düsseldorf’s annual lantern festival. At 12, she lost her father. Two years went by, and Mally began looking at art schools. Then, her mother was diagnosed with cancer. The artist reluctantly attended business school—the more stable option, impressed by her family—and married a man who was only good on paper. By 28, Mally was divorced and had two children. “Then I met my neighbor, later husband, Ali. He was short and Muslim and everything that my mother prayed against,” she says laughing. “But, we made it nearly 46 years, and it was very good fun. We had a wonderful relationship.” 

During her years with Ali, Mally Khorasantchi studied art and produced two popular exhibitions in Germany. The couple’s arrival in America, though a welcome change of scenery, once again impeded the artist’s work. She could not paint; she needed to work to get a green card, so for eight and a half years, Mally ran a nail salon, where she learned what it meant to be American. The women she worked with were fiercely independent, fearless and unapologetic—qualities that felt authentically ‘Mally’ in a way Germany never did. The couple became American. Then, they became citizens. Then, Mally returned to her canvas.

She opened a studio in the Naples Design District in 2001—the first studio on Shirley Street, now brimming with artists—and found representation locally with Harmon-Meek Gallery. Her work can be seen in the United States, Germany and Russia. The artist served as president of United Arts Collier between 2010 and 2011, planning events and raising money. She still attends events sometimes, but she’s learned to enjoy solitude and visits from friends. The backyard of her Bonita Springs home provides more than enough inspiration for her creative flow. Her little black cat, Mr. Tucker, stalks birds from behind a screened-in pool, and she drinks sparkling wine in the evenings. It is quiet and beautiful and lively and lonely. “But, this is good.”   

The post Revered SWFL Artist Mally Khorasantchi’s New Series Collages Life’s Cycles and Seasons appeared first on Gulfshore Life.

Marcus Jansen looks up in awe. Splashes of fireman yellow reflect in his eyes, pulling dominant hues from the assortment of Purvis Young paintings collaged into murals within the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at Florida SouthWestern State College in Fort Myers. There is an undeniable kinship between Marcus, a respected painter from New York City’s Bronx borough, and Purvis, the lauded, Miami-bred, self-taught expressionist. Though the two men never met, their artistic agendas mirror one another, so much so that a 2020 exhibit in Fort Lauderdale, Divided We Fall, emphasized the parallels in their practices. Marcus Jansen is the perfect guy to show me around the Purvis Young: Honey in the Sky exhibit, running through July 13.

The exhibit showcases more than 75 original paintings spanning more than 40 years of Purvis’ career. Among the gritty, pastel-tinged works, you’ll see Purvis’ knack for gestural paintings splashed onto pieces of reclaimed wood, canvas, burlap, cardboard and paper, with elements from African folk art and European masters, such as Vincent van Gogh and El Greco. Symbols (wild horses for freedom, cages for oppression, angels for hope and boats for migration) recur throughout the canvases, documenting the cacophony of urban life and strife Purvis saw around him in Miami. Most of the paintings are unnamed, so the viewer is free to draw their own conclusions. “It’s a big part of what good art provides us—something that stimulates your intellectual capacity,” Marcus says. “It makes each individual feel or see something differently because you bring something [of yourself] to the table.”

Marcus discovered the late artist’s work around 2005 through a mutual friend and now owns five of Purvis’ pieces. The two come from different generations and places, but the artists’ work is innately similar. Both explore themes of class, race, humanity and spirituality with vivid colors. Growing up in the inner city informed the Afro-Caribbean artists’ perspectives. Where Marcus’ contemporary depictions of colonial soldiers explore the deeply rooted issues of capitalism, Purvis’ abstract expressionist paintings serve as a lifetime thesis on the Black American experience.

Swells of sorrow, awe, nostalgia and joy roll through Marcus as he traces the visual narrative, which includes images of black, red and yellow figures depicted behind bars; kids’ faces floating in the sky like angels; and Black and white figures dancing in harmony. “I think he had deep human concerns, which is the same in mine—the underlying tone in my work is human concern,” Marcus says. “You’re really looking at his soul when you look at his work.”

Marcus is drawn to a simple pink and yellow landscape framed by what looks to be a fractured piece of wood paneling. Purvis’ use of found materials reminds us of the gallery’s namesake, Robert Rauschenberg, who would also walk around looking for pieces of his environment to incorporate into collages. Inside the thick frame, Purvis connected three strips of canvas to paint a high-rise building with his signature squiggle figures lining the street and roof above—a testament to his raw, innocent style. While the figures may look childlike in technique, each curved body is meticulously painted with one brushstroke.

For inspiration, Purvis looked to issues within his community, as well as global matters past and present. “We were both critiquing and commenting on the system, on an oppressive system for the Black and Brown people in America, which is not overly shown in the visual arts.” 

Purvis lived in the mostly Black, underserved community of Overtown, just south of Miami’s Wynwood area, from his birth in 1943 until he died in 2010. “[Overtown] was a rough area, but he was able to produce something so pure in that environment,” Marcus says. Purvis taught himself to paint and often incorporated found materials, like wood and carpet as frames, fabric as canvas, and leftover paint gifted to him by local firefighters (the source of many of Purvis’ yellow-toned works).

Looking at his paintings, you feel the Miami heat and hear the traffic. It’s as if you’re with him on the street, documenting the strife, celebrating the people and dreaming of a better life. Purvis would use proceeds from his works—which sold for $20 in the ’70s—to help his neighbors. The love for his hometown comes through in every quivering, calligraphic stroke. “That purity is what people are paying attention to,” Marcus says.

While Purvis’ works are now shown in prestigious institutions, from The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City to the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C., the artist spent much of his life struggling to make ends meet. “[His work] was often labeled as primitive art, outsider art,” Marcus says. “I never saw anything like that; it was always very much insider, very much contemporary art. It’s just a matter of how you label things, right? I never liked these labels anyways.” Marcus revels in the expanded inclusivity that’s emerged since the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 helped shine a light on artists of color. Inclusion, Marcus explains, is not a matter of reinvention but rather recognition. “That’s exactly what’s been missing, the idea that he’s included [in the world of fine art]. That goes for many Black and Brown painters over the decades—we want to be included. It’s not so much about changing anything, but it’s a matter of saying, ‘Hey, this work has a value stamp on it,’” he says.

Like Purvis, Marcus started his career selling works on street corners in his city, stacking canvases against the buildings in hopes a buyer would bite. Marcus points to the arrangement of Purvis’ works within the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery, cleverly cluttered onto the walls as Purvis would have done on the outside of abandoned buildings throughout Overtown. “This is really inspirational,” Marcus says, stepping closer to the expressive display. “You feel freedom when you’re standing here. He was completely free and direct.”  

The post Fort Myers artist Marcus Jansen guides us through a tour of an iconic expressionist artist appeared first on Gulfshore Life.

Few things awaken us to the need to protect our wild spaces like a stirring work of art. Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary—which recently launched an artist-in-residence program—is one of those Southwest Florida oases that provides endless inspiration to creatives and budding conservationists.

New York-based textile artist Tamara Kostianovsky found her muse on a morning jaunt through the preserve before her recent Botanical Revolution exhibit at Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum. The Argentinian-bred artist explores consumer culture, violence and environmentalism via stitched sculptures and panels of flora and fauna in various states of decay and rebirth. Working with recycled fabrics—her medium—softens and humanizes everything while speaking to the ecologically taxing fashion industry.

Recent works take the artist deeper into her ecological focus. In Botanical Revolution, birds perch on cushiony, dangling butchered animals (see: Carcass With Egret, inspired by her time in Naples); tree stumps (made from her late father’s wardrobe) depict fleshy tones and arterial ridges; and botanical tapestries brim with wildlife, reflecting the hope for the renewal of exploited regions. Gulfshore Life community advisory board member and Naples restaurateur Ingrid Aielli recalls the show as her favorite of the season. “You feel like you’re in nature even though you’re in the museum,” Ingrid says. She loved Tamara’s Southwest Florida-inspired Morning Walk at Corkscrew Swamp, which emerged from the artist’s visit.

Tamara was about to leave Corkscrew defeated, not having seen any wildlife, when she spotted the alabaster egrets that inspired the piece. “I was mesmerized by the sculptural nature of those beaks—so pointy and twisty,” she says. The brilliant blue comes from the artist’s first day in Naples, sitting outside Kunjani coffee shop. “I looked up, and [the sky] was the most incredible shade of blue—it almost belonged in a Disney movie,” she says.

Part of Tamara’s Fowl Decorations series—which recreates historic French wallpapers that flaunted non-native peacocks and other exotic birds to market in the New World—the piece aims to right historical fallacies. “It’s trying to repopulate French ornamental floral design with native birds in the Americas,” she says.

The triptych diverges slightly from Tamara’s focus on using flesh wounds to talk about cultural norms around violence and excessive consumerism. “It takes more of a zoomed-out look … at colonization as a violent act ecologically speaking—it’s a wound to the land—and how to repair the record,” she says.

Now part of The Baker’s permanent collection, Morning Walk at Corkscrew Swamp is a fitting tribute to the preserve’s 70th anniversary this year. “When you go out on that boardwalk, you get an opportunity to explore this cypress forest, spend time with the wildlife and experience what Florida was once like,” Corkscrew director Keith Laakkonen says. You may even find a little creative inspiration of your own. 

The post This New Textile Triptych at The Baker Museum pays tribute to Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary appeared first on Gulfshore Life.

In Cheri Dunnigan’s Naples home studio, a severed tree stump reveals a hodge-podge of bundled wires, anvils, pliers and forming tools. Here, the renowned metalsmith designer spends months weaving each of her intricate, lace-like sculptures and jewelry, be it a double helix collar or a glimmering sundial medallion.

The artist’s work is at once soft and brawny, twisting in on itself again and again in a dizzying whirlpool of woven wire—combining techniques of metalworking and textile creation. “I work with one basic stitch with metal, but the way I put those stitches together gives me this broad range of things I can create,” Cheri says. The Massachussets-bred artist’s Woven Collection, a series of delicate, chainmail-like jewelry and sculptures, displays a serpentine musculature that coils and stretches as if poised to strike. Cheri’s woven works often mimic the geometry of natural configurations—like the curve of a nautilus, the center of a sunflower or a tightly coiled fern. The metalsmith’s ornate Byzantine and Dandella collections, on the other hand, showcase sundial medallions embossed with gold, sterling and freshwater pearls.

Her mother’s Armenian heritage is inextricably linked with her creative identity. At 3 years old, Cheri proclaimed to her Sunday school teacher that she didn’t just want to be an artist but an Armenian artist. She takes pride in her people’s history, even the parts that cause her pain. Somewhere between 600,000 and 1.2 million Armenian Christians were murdered in what scholars refer to as the Armenian genocide, which occurred in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Before the tragedy, Armenians had been known for their expert craftsmanship and artistry, but many generational artforms were lost as families fled to escape the conflict. Cheri was in her 30s before she learned the meaning of her mother’s maiden name: Jaffarian, or “son of a jeweler.”

“There was a legend in our family that there had been jewelers in the old country way back, but the farthest back we knew, my great grandfather had owned a shoe factory in Armenia,” Cheri says. The discovery bolstered and gave credence to her work. A lace-making conference in Italy connected the metalsmith with a network of textile artists and reinforced her interest in modern weaving techniques. Before all that, Cheri was already entrenched in jewelry making, drawn to the craft as if by divine guidance. “When you’re creating, there’s a sense of something bigger than yourself working with you—it’s a spiritual thing,” she says. 

As Cheri’s interest in her culture grew, she began to see parallels between her woven jewelry and the tradition of Armenian needle lace, a generational lace-making technique marked by fine detail and elaborate patterns passed from mothers to daughters. After World War I, the craft allowed female refugees to establish businesses and support themselves abroad. “For me, it’s a symbol of the survival of the culture, because it was the only artform that really truly survived the ashes of the genocide,” Cheri says.

During high school in Massachusetts, Cheri’s teacher was an avid weaver and her husband worked as a master metalsmith. The two devised a metalworking project for Cheri’s class—a basic, linear broach made with hammered wire. Compared to her current work, the broach was a simple trinket, but it unlocked the gates to discovery. “The minute I touched [the metal], I was smitten,” she says.

Cheri’s teacher took the 15-year-old under her wing, encouraging her aptitude with metalwork and instilling basic principles of weaving, crocheting and macrame. “They would give me the keys to his studio and let me just work on whatever I wanted to,” she says. At Cleveland Institute of Art, where Cheri pursued the prestigious five-year metalsmithing program, she studied under revered jewelry designer John Paul Miller. “Everything he did was just so well done, so beautiful, so exquisite. The pursuit of beauty was important to him, and that rubbed off on me,” she says. Cheri’s work departs from John Paul’s style—which often depicts butterflies, moths, scorpions and cephalopods with a more direct, representational approach—but reflects his baroque intensity with a softer edge.

After college, the metalsmith ran a successful jewelry shop for eight years before relocating with her husband to Naples in 1994. Four years later, she was diagnosed with crippling lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease with no cure. Cheri had experienced bouts of extreme fatigue and soreness since she was 21 years old, and after having her son at 39, the episodes became more frequent and severe. Cheri grappled with shortness of breath and joint pain, particularly in her hands. “I thought if I ever had to give up metalwork, it would be like giving up breathing,” she recalls.

As Cheri’s dexterity faltered, the metalsmith found solace in painting. “I felt like the Lord spoke and said, ‘Stop focusing on what you can’t do, and start focusing on what you can do,’” she says. Her husband furnished a makeshift studio in their home. “I would crawl in there feeling horrible and come out skipping hours later,” Cheri says. “I really believe I painted my way into remission.”

Ultimately, the artist was unwilling to fully give up metalwork and would make pieces for her mother for Christmas, birthdays or Mother’s Day. The approach was far more limited, but each piece stretched her creativity. Around 2010, she crafted a necklace with intricate medallion shapes for her mother and felt her nimble fingers growing strong again as her condition went into remission. With her artistic energy reignited, she started to create limited-edition collections of one-of-a-kind adornments.

[caption id="attachment_65743" align="aligncenter" width="850"] Cheri Dunnigan's intricate metal weaving technique blends elements of metalsmithing and textile arts. (Photo by Anna Nguyen)[/caption]

Cheri’s now-coveted Dandella collection showcases her affinity for Armenian needle lace, with Akoya pearl-adorned pendants that resemble the craft’s delicate, web-like patterns. The Byzantine collection sees golden medallions encircled with precious stones and dainty arches of silver beads, calling to historic Roman coin pendants and brooches. Her Woven line of jewels and sculptures emphasizes Cheri’s apt blending of knitting and metalsmithing techniques.

When virtuoso gallerist and designer Chad Jensen—of Naples’ METHOD & CONCEPT, which now represents the artist—discovered Cheri’s work last year, he was drawn to her craftsmanship and attention to detail. Since then, the two have collaborated to expand Cheri’s repertoire, with Chad challenging her to experiment with larger sculptural works and different metals and coatings. “A lot of what we think about is future heirlooms and modern antiquities,” he says. “Her pieces could be on someone’s shelf in hundreds of years. They could look back and still think about how amazing her craftsmanship was and her attention to detail.”

Detailed, ornate and methodical, Cheri’s work mirrors traditional patterns in a way that looks fresh and awe-inspiring today. “My husband saw photographs of the lace and said, ‘I think you had a DNA leak,’” she says with a laugh. “Growing up in the shadow of that tragedy, I always wanted to do something creatively that would honor what happened to my grandparents’ generation. Then I found myself making these pieces that resembled the lace. It was like the Lord handed me the thread and said, ‘Make it in gold.’”

The post This Naples Artist Makes Lace-Like Jewelry Out of Metal appeared first on Gulfshore Life.

The region is flush with artists making moves. Naples message-driven painter, sculptor and poet Marvin Rouse moved from a shared creative space in Bonita Springs to his first studio and gallery, Rouse Designs, downtown on Fourth Avenue South in Naples. Marvin incurred some flooding and damage during the storm but is still working toward hosting his official opening party, with a target date of mid-November.

Nearby at the Dockside Boardwalk on Naples Bay, Cory Patterson, known as TenToTwo, does frequent takeovers at Passionfruit Art Gallery, while owner Natalia Stepina is traveling to museums around the world. When Cory is in charge, expect to see a variety of local artists, including tattooist-painter Matt “Mully” Mulhern and abstract painter Maureen Golgata. In North Naples, Quidley & Company Fine Art opened Project Space at Magnolia Square to sell a small selection of the gallery’s contemporary pieces, with a special focus on Neo-Expressionist painter Hunt Slonem.

Further north, in Fort Myers, Brian Weaver and Cesar Aguilera moved their colorful Artsemble Underground gallery from the retail-filled Bell Tower Shops to a more fitting location on the Alliance for the Arts Campus, where they plan to grow their monthly Battle of the Arts competitions—allowing participants to spread out on the vast lawn as they paint live for honors and awards.

Artists Helping Artists

Lauded Fort Myers painter Marcus Jansen starts a relief fund for local artists affected by Hurricane Ian.

Through his Marcus Jansen Foundation Fund, the Neoexpressionist painter is working with Naples-based artists Dennis Goodman and Juan Diaz to gather funds to help Southwest Florida creatives affected by Hurricane Ian. The money raised through their “Operation: Artists Helping Artists” goes toward rebuilding studios, restocking supplies and covering other expenses resulting from the devastating effects of the storm.

You can donate through Collaboratory, the Fort Myers-based community foundation, which the Marcus Jansen Fund is part of. 

The post Local Artists Open New Spaces (+ Help Other Artists) appeared first on Gulfshore Life.

Boundary-pushing art shines throughout local galleries this season. At the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at Florida SouthWestern State College, The Exquisite Moving Corpse (running through Dec. 10) is a video installation collectively assembled between more than 60 internationally renowned artists, who passed clips among each other, producing 1-minute segments that riff on the previous. The piece was inspired by the surrealist parlor game, where each artist contributes to the project without seeing their predecessors’ addition.
   

In one of the most anticipated shows of the season, Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum presents postwar abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler: Late Works, 1990-2003 (running through Nov. 27), with rarely seen works created later in her career. Then, continuing its upward trajectory of bringing world-class art to the region, Naples Art presents M.C. Escher: Reality and Illusion (Nov. 12 - Feb. 12), which showcases more than 150 works from the Dutch artist’s stellar five-decade career, including the famed Drawing Hands.
   

Early next year, big exhibits focus on local artists. In Fort Myers, Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center hosts dual shows for local nature-assemblage artist Ran Adler and figurative painter Lynn Davison (Jan. 6-25). And, Naples floral abstract darling Carmelo Blandino’s solo exhibition Bloom Ka-Pow! (Jan. 17 - Mar. 2) at Florida Gulf Coast University’s Wasmer Art Gallery features the artist’s lively, blooming floral paintings.

The post Visual Arts appeared first on Gulfshore Life.

Paul Arsenault came to Florida with conservation top of mind. It was 1973, and the recent art school graduate was looking for adventure. He took a gig as a deckhand on a Smithsonian Marine Station research vessel heading from Cape Cod to Fort Pierce to assess water quality as the state’s population increased. “When you look at my work, it’s largely based around the waterfront,” Paul says. He settled in Naples in 1974 and has been painting the coast ever since.

From his 104-year-old Old Naples home, Paul’s currently sorting through his life’s work to highlight the region’s heritage and culture through paintings of local landmarks and traditions. “We must embrace responsible growth and guidance and nurture this gem we’ve got here,” Paul says. Last summer, his Shorelines exhibit at the Captiva Civic Association celebrated local islands. Now, as we approach Collier County’s centennial in 2023, Paul is working with his wife, Eileen, historians and longtime locals to create a coffee table book of his paintings and archived photos to document Collier’s unique sense of place.

Here, Paul shares the sometimes funny, always intriguing stories behind his pastel interpretations of Southwest Florida’s fishing village roots.

SWIMMING HOLE ON THE MYAKKA RIVER, 2005
Paul was exploring Charlotte County’s section of the Myakka River, which flows through three counties, when he came upon this quintessential Florida scene: “I waved at the guys and said, ‘Hey, don’t mind me. I just want to paint a picture.’” One asked: “Are you a cop?” A puzzled Paul responded, “No, I’m not a cop. I’m an artist.” Then, everyone went about their business. To this day, Paul doesn’t call out their crime, but let’s just say it’s medically accepted now.

[caption id="attachment_46346" align="aligncenter" width="850"] Swimming Hole on the Myakka River, 2005[/caption]

SCHOOL HOUSE, Estero 2002
When Paul heard that the Historical Society was moving the 1904-built Estero Creek School from its Highland Avenue home to Estero Community Park, he wanted to capture it in its original location. Seeing structures in their historical, geographical context is crucial, he argues. He shares the story of the next-door Grove House and its recent owner. She grew up on Mound Key and would row to shore and walk 3 miles along the Estero River to get to school every day. “She made one of those Scarlet O’Hara proclamations, ‘As God as my witness when I get married, I’m gonna move close to the school house,’” he recalls being told. And, sure enough, for years, she lived right next door.

[caption id="attachment_46343" align="aligncenter" width="850"] School House, Estero 2002[/caption]

NAPLES BEACH HOTEL & GOLF CLUB, 2021
For 75 years, the Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club served as a mainstay for famous visitors and a social hub for locals. When it was announced that the building would be sold and demolished, Paul was eager to capture some of the property’s beloved scenes, including this penthouse view of the beach below.

[caption id="attachment_46347" align="aligncenter" width="850"] Naples Beach Hotel & Golf Club, 2021[/caption]

IMMOKALEE HARVEST, 1998
For this piece, Paul ventured to the agricultural community east of Naples. “This was part of a collage that was meant to show the essence of Immokalee, to tell these stories in the connectivity of their everyday lives,” he says. The painting is a departure from his typical water scenes, but still a true depiction of the vital local culture that Paul aims to celebrate.

[caption id="attachment_46345" align="aligncenter" width="850"] Immokalee Harvest, 1998[/caption]

INDIAN DAY AT SMALLWOOD STORE, 1990s
This painting recalls one of Paul’s favorite, if not short-lived, traditions: Indian Days in Chokoloskee, when Seminole tribes from around Florida would gather outside the Smallwood Store. The storied shop was built by Chokoloskee pioneer Ted Smallwood in 1906 as a trading post for early settlers, and it’s run by his descendants to this day. “There’s no better window into Collier County’s pioneer days,” Paul says.

[caption id="attachment_46349" align="aligncenter" width="850"] Indian Day at Smallwood Store, 1990s[/caption]

SEA MARVEL AQUALANE SHORES, 2000
Paul remembers when humble fishing boats docked throughout the now-ritzy Aqualane Shores in Naples. “The owner of the Sea Marvel (boat depicted below) wanted to purchase the painting with grouper as a barter, rather than pay for it,” Paul says with a laugh. “It ended up selling to someone else, and it’s in California now.” All jokes aside, Paul points to the fishing community as a driving force in maintaining Naples’ character.

[caption id="attachment_46348" align="aligncenter" width="850"] Sea Marvel Aqualane Shores, 2000[/caption]

LANTERN LAKE PORT ROYAL, 1974
This is the first scene that Paul painted when he moved to Naples. “I was discovering Naples and poking around the different neighborhoods and places of note, and I found Lantern Lake in the heart of Port Royal,” he says. “It had a certain tranquility to it, and it felt like a Garden of Eden.”

[caption id="attachment_46344" align="aligncenter" width="850"] Lantern Lake Port Royal, 1974[/caption]

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Over the years, there’s been a worthy supply of top-tier exhibits in Southwest Florida, with centers like Florida SouthWestern State College’s Bob Rauschenberg Gallery bringing through artists like Yoko Ono and the Guerrilla Girls since the late ’70s. The introduction of The Baker Museum at Artis—Naples in 2000 amplified our access. And, recently Naples Art has been elevating the cultural conversation with shows by Keith Haring and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec opening and closing the current season. Still, it’s not often that artwork you’d typically have to board a plane to see—or the type of exhibition usually reserved for the museums of major cities—passes through the Gulfshore. But, that’s the case with Magritte: Reflections of Another World, The Baker Museum’s exhibit focused on the Belgian Surrealist master René Magritte.

The show opened in 2019 with six paintings that haven’t been shown in decades and have never been exhibited in North America. Most of the pieces had never left their collector’s native Belgium. On loan for five years, the works are on view until 2024—a coup for local art lovers who have ample time to commune with the works by the enigmatic artist.

Magritte combined realistically painted symbols, figures, text and landscapes into wry, dreamlike images. His six paintings at The Baker are intimately housed in a darkly painted gallery and glow like gems in a jewel box. They’re accompanied by a case with artifacts, including letters between the artist and the collector and a home video of them on holiday. Here, The Baker Museum’s curator of modern art, Dr. Rangsook Yoon, delves into three of the paintings you’ll see and how they reflect the artist’s power to captivate viewers.

Les Grandes Vacances (Summer Holidays) (1956): In this painting, Magritte depicts an idealized young woman, her golden mane tumbling over her shoulders and arms, her bosom perfectly symmetrical, her lips barely parted. She stands columnal in front of azure water and under an equally bright night sky. A crescent moon almost touches her tresses like a crown. “I feel as though I am transported to a pristine beach on the Côte d’Azur on a clear summer night,” Yoon says. Modeled after Magritte’s wife, Georgette Berger (who he met when she was 12 and he was 14), the figure was painted decades after they married. In the piece, she reads like an ancient fertility goddess emerging from the water, Magritte’s counterpoint to Sandro Botticelli’s famed Renaissance painting, The Birth of Venus. “When our team first opened the crate, Summer Holidays took my breath away,” Yoon recalls. “Two years later, whenever I stand in front of this beautiful, Venus-like figure who looks out directly toward the viewer, I still feel the same way.”

Shéhérazade (1947): “As in Summer Holidays, Shéhérazade encapsulates the fantastic and sensual elements commonly found in Magritte’s work,” Yoon says. The only painting in Reflections of Another World done in gouache (a fast-drying, water-based paint unlike oil in its application and its flat, matte appearance), the piece depicts the storyteller-turned-Persian-queen from the Middle Eastern tales One Thousand and One Nights (also known as Arabian Nights). In this abstract portrait, no literal face or bust is rendered. Instead, floating strings of pearls encircle eyes and a mouth, with a midday sky visible through the strands. “Representing only her piercing eyes and gently pressed lips, traced with an arabesque ribbon of pearls, the painting is like a portrait of this imaginary queen,” Yoon says. Given the cheerful clouds, glittering waves, and pink curtains in the background, this painting hardly seems mysterious—especially when contrasted with Summer Holidays’ enigmatic nighttime setting—until the viewer notices the face within. “It evokes the enchanting, magical stories she tells in One Thousand and One Nights,” Yoon says. 

La Tour d’Ivoire (The Ivory Tower) (1945): “A sense of otherworldliness is latent in all of Magritte’s works. The Ivory Tower is no exception. The work’s ambiguous meaning makes it even more intriguing and alluring to me,” Yoon says. The painting doesn’t depict an ivory tower but the inverse: the craggy mouth of a cave. “Every time I look at the painting, fully knowing that it is a futile attempt, I try to establish a rational relationship between the equestrian figure and a rose in the foreground at the threshold of an open cave,” Yoon says. Magritte paints the cave’s opening around the canvas’ edges, so the viewer looks out from the cave onto a refined but unexpected scene: a rider sitting astride a glistening chestnut horse prancing toward a soft, pink rose at the cave’s entrance and Magritte’s signature blue sky filling much of the canvas. Knitting a rational relationship between the seemingly disparate elements—the cave, the equestrian, the rose and the sky—might require mental gymnastics, but it sure is fun. “That is the power of Magritte’s paintings,” Yoon says.

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Many artists wax poetic about the moment they realized they were an artist. Cape Coral-based Martha De la Cruz is prone to a little more pragmatism. “I was always a maker, even as a child, but it wasn’t until I was hired as a work-study student at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery that I fully committed to pursuing a career in the art world,” she says. After nearly five years at the Florida SouthWestern (FSW) State College gallery, De la Cruz’s aspirations now stretch to producing artwork that acts as a conduit, channeling her multicultural experience to find common ground with new audiences.

De la Cruz grew up in her native Dominican Republic before moving to Southwest Florida when she was 18. She worked at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery while earning an associate’s degree at FSW and, later, a bachelor’s of fine arts at the University of South Florida. Rauschenberg famously regarded art as “non-elitist,” in that it allows individuals from vastly different backgrounds to connect and understand one another. This is evidenced by his respected foundation and residency program on Captiva, where artists working in all mediums and from all walks of life hone their craft and collaborate, as well by his well-documented impact on developing class-defying artists, like street art pioneer Jean-Michel Basquiat. “Rauschenberg’s guiding ethos and his work in the local community gave me hope that I didn’t have to be born into the New York elite or attend an Ivy League university to participate in the art world in meaningful ways,” De la Cruz says.

Rather than using conventional artistic mediums like paint, she utilizes video, installation and sculpture to create mostly 3D works that incorporate and blend commonplace motifs from Caribbean cultures, from rosaries to roosters. “I use art as a means of trying to understand something. I don’t know where the process is going to lead me when I start a project,” she says. “I tend to begin with a problem that interests me and then let my curiosity lead me to places that may or may not be useful in understanding that problem.” De la Cruz’s work is autotheoretical, blending historical context, research and her own experiences to address troubling historical issues of ‘raza’ (the Spanish term for ‘race’ or ‘ethnic group’ within Latin America). She wryly combines everyday objects to highlight the longstanding repercussions of colonialization.

De la Cruz’ 2021 sculpture, Techo de sin (Roof of Without), is an exaggeration of the typical poor house in the Dominican Republic and other impoverished nations, with the Zinc roof built directly on a dirt floor without walls. The structure, visible from its partially framed gable and overhead, is made from stolen and donated materials, a nod to how disadvantaged populations often shrewdly reuse waste out of necessity. Inside the roof is a lightbulb that’s illuminated 10 minutes a day, alluding to the recurring power outages and lack of stability in impoverished nations. Though the structure appears woebegone, it’s far from slapped together. There’s a precision and a tenderness in its construction, demonstrating that those discarded materials are of priceless value to the builder—whether it’s De la Cruz or the denizen she’s channeling.

“Despite the existence of borders, we all experience very similar issues,” she says. In Se fue el cable (The Cable is Out), De la Cruz draped a rosary on the neck of an old, wall-mounted television to reflect Catholicism’s vast role in Latin America. And in Permutations of Power, she built an ornate, wooden structure, inspired by chairs and thrones from the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, when African tribes hid their rituals in the carvings, under the guise of adopting European traditions. “I feel I have an obligation to translate the things I see to others, knowing that art has the capacity to spark change,” she says. “With that, most narratives are a lot bigger than me, and I can’t control how my art is perceived, so in a way, it’s about connectivity and finding a shared experience.” Or, as Basquiat so succinctly put it: “I don’t think about art while I work. I try to think about life.”

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METHOD & CONCEPT, the art gallery-meets-design atelier at The Collective in Naples, is known for pushing boundaries with contemporary art from emerging and mid-career American artists. Starting on Jan. 13, the team showcases the effervescent art of Hawaii-bred, Nashville-based photographer Christy Lee Rogers. “Her work is dreamlike, theatrical and ethereal, and her production is nothing short of what a conductor or director does. It’s a choreographed performance,” METHOD & CONCEPT’s founder and director Chad Jensen says. Rogers’ radiant images show bodies twisting gracefully, fabric unfurling around the subjects while they’re suspended in water. Rogers, who has always loved being around water, primarily corrals friends and family as subjects, photographing them in residential pools, where she has more control over the environment than if she were shooting in nature. During the sessions, Rogers shines spotlights down into the pool, where the water diffuses the light. The subjects’ final contorted shapes in the images are simply the result of them trying to stay afloat. “Christy Lee is so immersed in the process,” Jensen says. “It’s very deliberate yet she allows so much room for improvisation and accidental discoveries. Sometimes it’s disarray; sometimes it’s intimate and romantic.”

Water plays a key role in Rogers’ work as the tool she uses to “pose” her subjects, but her subject matter is the figures themselves as manipulated by the buoyancy and atmosphere. The photographs are unedited, so the viewer sees the ensuing interplay of light, shape and color as it vividly appears underwater. Her work is also filled with historical and religious references. The arcing, intertwining montage of glowing limbs and hemlines recall influences ranging from Greek and Roman mythology to the extravagance of Renaissance- and Baroque-era artworks. Here, Jensen shares insights on Rogers’ work, connecting her affinity for water, art history, ancient mythology and otherworldly depictions of the human form.

[caption id="attachment_39963" align="aligncenter" width="850"] The artist, who has a show at METHOD & CONCEPT in the Naples Design District this month, presents classic references in a modern context. Pictured: Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Love (2020) (Courtesy Christy Lee Rogers)[/caption]

Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Love (2020)

In this image (shown on p. 321), Rogers’ figures twist and overlap with the flowing fabric, creating a continual sense of movement. “Water possesses a kinetic energy that Christy Lee loves to capture in her work, and the drama and fluidity of Truth, Beauty, Freedom and Love is a fine example,” Jensen says. “Sometimes there is stillness and other times controlled chaos—it’s all part of her process and a choreographed performance.” A similar piece is featured on the cover of coffee company Lavazza’s 2021 calendar, themed The New Humanity. In 2020, Apple also commissioned Rogers to create works shot on the iPhone 11 Pro to promote its creative capabilities.

[caption id="attachment_39961" align="aligncenter" width="850"] Christy Lee Rogers plays with water, light, shadow and form in her underwater photography. Pictured: Creation (2018). (Courtesy Christy Lee Rogers)[/caption]

Creation (2018)

Rogers luminously references the Sistine Chapel ceiling in Creation (shown on p. 314). A deep carmine robe billows like the cloak flowing behind God in Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam. “This is one of the pieces that drew me to Christy Lee’s work and reminds me of the power art can have,” Jensen says. “Much like the Sistine’s ceiling, one wants to stop, take it in and absorb it.” Rogers is aware of the responsibility she takes on when translating masterpieces into the present day, shown by the effort she puts into her shoots and how she astutely selects images that best imitate the original compositions. “I appreciate that Christy Lee does not shy away from big, ambitious projects, as also evidenced by her series inspired by Homer’s Odyssey. The sheer theater and production of Christy Lee’s work is a modern-day homage to those great Old Masters,” he states. “And she handles them with great care and respect.”

[caption id="attachment_39960" align="aligncenter" width="850"] Major brands, such as Apple and Lavazza, have commissioned Rogers’ photography. Pictured: Blue Romance (2018) (Courtesy Christy Lee Rogers)[/caption]

Blue Romance (2018)

In Blue Romance (shown on p. 316), Rogers uses movement and proximity to convey a full range of romantic emotions as figures float away from each other or closely interact. “Christy Lee’s canvas is water,” Jensen says. “Sometimes we see more, sometimes less. Her compositions are mostly full-bleed images that extend beyond the frame. Blue Romance pulls the lens back to reveal a slightly different context.” Here, Rogers’ perspective allows a more complete view of the figures, with the distances between their bodies easily shown in expanses of the exposed floor.

[caption id="attachment_39962" align="aligncenter" width="850"] Her work is filled with historical references from religion and Greek and Roman mythology, as seen in this piece inspired by a Sistine Chapel fresco. Pictured: Harmony (2018) (Courtesy Christy Lee Rogers)[/caption]

Harmony (2018)

The golden hue in Harmony (shown on p. 318)—which earned her the Open Photographer of the Year award at the 2019 Sony World Photography Awards—casts each subject in a luminescent aura as they reach for the glowing orange light source at the surface. “The color effect lends a sort of sepia tone and antiquity to the work,” Jensen says, adding that orange can also evoke positive and uplifting energy, leaving the viewer in a harmonious state. “She’s a multitalented artist who is seeking new media and ways to express our shared and universal connection to water and the past,” he says. “Her work makes me stop and pause for a bit, and in this world of hyperchaos, I think we all need to recognize when that hits us and then allow ourselves a brief moment of respite.”

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