My First Solo Show

The last few days we set up my first solo exhibition, Integration. I’m excited and honored for my work to be featured at the Forever Florida Gallery, 2629 Central Avenue, St. Petersburg.

Resident artist Wasil has invited a series of interesting and well-known artists to present their work in the main exhibition space each month the past few years. Guest resident artist Mark Williams’ work is now in the resident space. I adore Mark and his bold, colorful art; it’s great to be in the gallery with him!

The opening reception is Saturday July 11, from 5-9 pm. That’s Art Walk night, when most of St. Petersburg’s art studios and galleries are open with refreshments. Come out and do a gallery tour!

The exhibition closes with a poetry reading and art/literature discussion on Sunday July 26. Poet/artist Nate Truly will read poetry and lead the discussion. Nate is a young, powerful voice speaking through his literature and art. I’m grateful he’s part of this show, and grateful to Wasil for his ongoing promotion of the arts in our community.

(Insert show pictures in text as desired)

Spain and Germany

Last month I spent two weeks in Spain and a week in Germany. One highlight from Spain was connecting in person with Antonio Diaz, one of my online Spanish teachers, who lives in Málaga. He took me for tapas at a traditional taberna and also introduced me to some of his other favorite spots; he’s a great teacher, friend and just an awesome person.

Another highlight was seeing several German friends from my time studying economics at the Universität Mannheim in 1982-3. Although we kept up through the decades, I had not seen one friend, Ralf Rupp, in 43 years. I spent the night with him and his wife, Daniela; Ralf cooked chili just like we had for the parties we put together that year we were in school together (and I helped a little).

During the trip, I recorded and uploaded Instagram and Facebook videos in Spanish, German and English. It was a fun challenge to use all three languages, sometimes in the same video, but with a real concentration on the Spanish I am learning.

Art-wise, where to begin? In Madrid, my art journalist friend Miguel Sirgado literally snuck us into the Reina Sofía Museum, where I saw Picasso’s Guernica for the first time. We also saw powerful installations of work by the gay Cuban-American artist Felix González-Torres, who died of AIDS in 1996.

At the Thyssen, I was moved by works from Caravaggio, Van Gogh, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Gorky, and a cool geometric piece from Frank Stella.

At El Prado, I spent a lot of time studying Las Meninas by Valázquez, but what I really enjoyed were his court buffoons. What haunted me most afterwards, however, were faces from the murals El Goya painted on the walls of his home; these dark, modern images were a foretaste of what was to come in the century ahead.

I visited the Picasso Museum in Malaga, which had six pieces from the last show he curated, which opened after his death in 1973.

I had lunch at a club in Málaga where Federico García Lorca, the great Spanish writer and lover of Salvador Dalí, hung out until his murder by Franco’s fascists in 1936. They were planning a June 16 Bloomsday reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses, in English and Spanish.

And there was so much more.

The 16-kilometer Roman aqueduct in Segovia, and the view from the Segovia castle Walt Disney used as the model for Snow White’s castle; the former capitol city of Toledo, and El Greco’s work in its cathedral; all of Seville, the home of Spain’s imperial administration and the launching point for the galleons that conquered much of the world in the 16th and 17th centuries; the mixture of Muslim and Gothic and Renaissance architecture, sometimes all in the same building, in Seville and Granada. The Jewish quarter in Seville; an intimate flamenco concert in Seville.

The Alhambra, the sensuous and intimate home of the last Muslim ruler in Spain, the Sultan Boabdil, who surrendered Granada to the Spanish Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, the year Columbus set sail and launched the Spanish empire.

The Cologne Cathedral, the epitome of High Gothic architecture, and the nearby local brewery’s restaurant with the best alcohol-free beer I have ever had.

White asparagus (it was Spargelzeit in Germany).

And… so many people. Old and new friends, guides, taxi drivers, strangers in restaurants and trains and hotels, many with direct questions about the pathetic man in the White House tearing the world apart.

The world looks on, in horror and dismay, as the US destroys its own values, the world order and the international organizations it created. Trump is, I realize, a consequence as well as a cause of our national self destruction, committed by and supported by those who have no idea the destruction and danger they are bringing on themselves and their descendants, who will deal with the consequences.

New Abstract Art

Somehow, I managed to create three new works in June, full of inspiration from the trip.

These are all spray acrylic on wood panels, now my preferred technique. Please click on the individual pieces to see them in better detail on my website.