MEDIATING GROUND ART OF THE LOCAL Dade Art Educators Association Participating Artists ANGELICA LONDONO CATHI RIVERA ANIA MOUSSAWEL JULIE ORSINI-SHAKHER LIZZIE HUNTER MARIA LANTIGUA SHELLY MCCOY PETER DEMERCADO ALINA RODRIGUE-ROJO DAMIAN ROJO MIRENA SUAREZ NADYIA DUFF CURATOR NOOR BLAZEKOVIC Miami-Dade College Hialeah Campus
Contents CUR ATOR’S FOREWORD
NOOR BLAZCKOVIC, MIAMI DADE COLLEGE HIALEAH CAMPUS “Art is a Mediator of the Unspeakable”. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Continuing Miami Dade College Hialeah Campus Art Gallery’s support of teachers and students from Miami Dade, we are pleased to host the Dade Art Educator’s exhibition Mediating Ground: Art of the Local. The exhibition showcases master artists who also work as visual art instructors for Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS). Since the inception of the Miami Dade College Hialeah Campus Art Gallery, we have strived to provide teachers with exceptional opportunities for professional growth through teacher workshops and events. One of the very first exhibitions at the Hialeah Gallery housed the M-DCPS’ Museum Education Program Annual Exhibition. Our collaboration spans over five years and we look forward to continuing our work with teachers, students, parents, and administrators in developing events, workshops, and groundbreaking exhibitions. Mediating Ground: Art of the Local is on exhibition at MDC Hialeah Gallery Campus from January 8-February 28, 2022 and features the extraordinary talent of artists Peter Demercado, Nadya Duff, Lizzie Hunter, Maria Lantigua, Angelica Londono, Shelly McCoy, Ania Moussawel, Cathi Rivera, Alina Rodriguez-Rojo, Damian Rojo, Julie Orsini-Shakher, and Mirena Suarez. The artists in this exhibition stand their own ground, each one brings a unique area of knowlege, experience, and expertise in their own media and practice. From the monumental silverpoints by Shakher to the delicately drafted drawings by Duff, poetic photographs by Lantigua and London, plein air paintings by Hunter, sculptures by Suarez, deMercado, and the Rojo’s, textile works of McCoy and Rojo, jewelry by Rivera, to the video art by Moussawel; all move us to our core as spectators. We really do not need to know what the work is about to feel their power and message. These artists are mediators and storytellers that are able to say through art and symbolism what is almost imposible to voice or speak about.
2 CURATOR’S FOREWORD Continuing Miami Dade College Hialeah Campus Art Gallery’s support of teachers and students from Miami Dade, we are pleased to host the Dade Art Educator’s exhibition Mediating Ground: Art of the Local. The exhibition showcases master artists who also work as visual art instructors for Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS).
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ABOU T DADE ART EDUCATORS
The Dade Art Educators Association, Inc are a group of Miami-Dade art educators, artists, retired teachers, and community art leaders invested in the future of arts in education. We welcome public school teachers, charter school teachers, private school teachers, working artists, museum art professionals, and any person with vested interest in arts education.Together
12 PAINTING 14 PHOTO AND VIDEO 20 SCULP TURE
we act as one voice to advocate the many challenges that face 21st century art education.
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DRAWING
10 JEWELRY
THIS EXHIBITION WAS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY MIAMI DADE COLLEGE HIALEAH CAMPUS. THE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT ON MOSAICS WAS GENEROUSLY SPONSORED BY IBERIA TILES.
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DADE ART EDUCATORS ASSOCIATION Who are the Dade Art Educators?
The Dade Art Educators Association, Inc are
a group of Miami-Dade art educators, artists,
openings, professional development with International and renowned artists. Current
artist members have the opportunity to showcase their own work during our annual
juried exhibits. Members and their students are eligible for awards and scholarships.
We are invested in the future of arts education.
retired teachers, and community art leaders invested in the future of arts in education. We welcome public school teachers, charter school
teachers, private school teachers, working artists, museum art professionals, and any person with vested interest in arts education.
Together we act as one voice to advocate the many challenges that face 21st century art education.
Why should you join DAEA?
By joining our team of leaders, you help
maintain the high standards of art education in Miami-Dade County. DAEA works very closely with Miami-Dade County Public Schools to support the arts programs, all art
students in grades K-12, and their visual arts teachers. We welcome charter and private
school teachers to also join DAEA, so that
we can work together towards a common goal. What are the benefits of joining? Our members get to enjoy an exciting agenda of social events during the school year including
free receptions, events to cultural institutions,
DAEA Executive Board Alina Rodriguez, President Sarah Farooq, President Elect Lissette Lutz, Treasurer Kirstie Martinez, Secretary
THE DADE ART EDUCATORS ASSOCIATION INC. WAS EXTABLISHED TO ADVOCATE FOR ART EDUCATORS AND ARTS EXCELLENCE IN OUR PROFESSION, VISUAL ARTS EDUCATION. WE ARE COMMITTED TO PROMOTING THE VISUAL ARTS IN OUR COMMUNITY. WE FULFILL OUR MISSION BY RECOGNIZING STUDENT AND TEACHER ACHIEVEMENTS. WE FUND ART EXHIBITIONS, AWARDS, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TRAINING, AND SCHOLARSHIPS. WE FOSTER PARTNERSHIPS PAIRING CULTURAL VENUES WITHIN OUR COMMUNITY.
CONGRATULATIONS! The Dade Art Educators congratulates curator Noor Blazekovic and director Andrea M. Forero, Miami Dade College Hialeah Campus on being nominated the 2020-2022 Sara T Maddox Support of Art Education Award. This award was created to honor a dedicated and talented lady. Sara T. Maddox was one of the first region art specialists, serving in the southwest area of Miami-Dade. This award is presented to an individual, institution or an organization who has provided significant support
Julie Orsini Shakher
Julie orsini shakher This body of work is done in silverpoint-a medium that is historical and permanent. Orsini Shakher’s goal is to bring an ancient Renaissance form of drawing to the contemporary platform. It is a series based on the magical quintessence of nature which is the crucible of equilibrium. There is only thirty-five percent of the wilderness left on our ailing planet today. Without nature where would we stand; separated from a stream of water, a sunset, the call of the Mayan. Orsini Shakher wants the viewer to be enthralled by the beauty and be forced to succumb to the mindfulness of the scene. A romantic scene urging us to reflect and view the balance of ecosystems and its beautiful diversity of the natural world entwined with humanity. “My wish is for the viewer to reflect upon the harmony of our coexistence”. Orsini Shakher’s work was judged best in show.
DRAWING
Nadyia duff Nadyia Duff creates eleborate narratives using her method of drawing and painting. She combines the painterly artistic styles with the realistic. Every layer of her traditional work is a unique and uncalculated build- up of mediums and colors. Together, the juxtaposition of roughly drawn background imagery and the detailed subject imagery creates vast visual narratives. My work is about telling stories and “snapshots” of time. A lot of the imagery we are exposed to in media and in life, are curated snapshots that often do not tell us the complete story. However, it is up to us as viewers to interpret it in our own way. Many of the subjects in my portraits are strangers who give me creative freedom to use their image. I create narratives with their images by placing them in backgrounds curated by me. I make up a visual story that the viewer can interpret in their own way. The backgrounds are randomly chosen and based on my world view. I depict them with a minimalist style to keep the viewers eye moving around the subject. The backgrounds are often out of perspective and simplified to contrast with a realistic but stylized figure since these people I choose to draw/paint do exist but the space behind them isn’t real.
JEWELRY cathi rivera Formerly an award winning Art Educator for MDCPS, Cathi Rivera has been creating Art to Wear and Fine Jewelry for 43 years. Her work has been exhibited by galleries, art festivals & museums across the United States and is in many private collections around the world. Cathi’s work is inspired by travel, nature, water and light. It includes glass, silver, stone, base metals, beads, and found objects. It tells a story, captures a moment, and inspires remembrance of people and places that have touched her life.
Detail
Luminescence, botanical and marine organic forms inspire me to create my unique sculptural pieces of wearable art. Incorporating fused glass, pearls, clay and bone I am able to capture a moment in nature. As a metal artist, I create fluid forms that appear soft, warm and inviting in a
usually cold, rigid material. Fusing the dichroic glass in each piece is reminiscent of the iridescence of butterfly wings, tropical fish, sunsets, coral reefs, and tropical Florida. Pieces are fabricated using traditional metalsmithing techniques with silver, brass, bronze, and copper. Other materials are
Catherine Rivera, The Flowers that Remain, pendant, 1 x .75 fused glass, silver, pearl, 26” satin ribbon
collected from the many places I travel, African bone, Angkor Wat clay tablets, Venetian glass, Tibetan sand, and Egyptian rocks. Each piece tells a special story and shares a spiritual connection with another place and time. Each piece is a wearable work of Art. When wearing one of my pieces, others are drawn closer to examine and talk about the work, and that’s where the story begins.
PAINTING Lizzie Hunter is an artist and art-educator based in South Florida. She has proudly served as a Magnet Fine Art Instructor at South Miami Senior High Magnet School for the Arts since 2007, and in 2020 she was appointed as an FIU Dual Enrollment Courtesy Lecturer in Art. Her work is included in several Florida International University art collections, including the Reagan Presidential House, and Fros Art Museum’spermanent collection. Lizzie has explored a variety of subjects and concepts over the years, investigating each one in series. These works all
share the common thread of capturing the essence of a moment or location, while recording the joy of pushing materials around on a surface. The pieces oftentimes reveal the history of how they were created, featuring thicklyapplied layers of buttery paint in some areas and revealing thin under-paintings in others. Most recently, plein air landscape painting has been Lizzie’s focus. The urgency of capturing fleeting light and shifting subjects pairs well with her intuitive, energetic approach to painting, oftentimes resorting to directly applying and scraping pigment with gloved fingers.
Lizzie Hunter, Early Riser, , 9 x 12 in., 2021
PLEIN AIR PAINTING Lizzie Hunter, Shark Valley, 9 x 12, 2021
MARIA LANTIGUA
Maria Lantigua, In the Mangroves, 2021 Maria Lantigua, Within, 2021
My photographic montages focus on the environment, especially the unique ecosystem of wetlands in the Everglades and the diverse ocean landscapes throughout Florida. I use my images to create a photo montage that heighten our awareness to the inherent relationship we have with our landscapes. I do this by combining images of both land and oceanic environments, depicting their importance and the connection we share with them. This imagery allows me to connect with nature and open my eyes to how we treat our environment. As an artist, I feel that using my photographs will bring awareness to how fragile our natural environment is and why we should all come together in playing a role to ensure the conservation of these natural wonders. I was first introduced to the fragility of our environment while studying the design of the “Surrounding Islands” project by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. I began to understand the environmental impacts that occur in our oceans because of how people misuse our environment. These artists created artwork that embraces our connection with the environment and, in turn, lit my passion for conserving the wellbeing of our oceans. Therefore, this art is made with the aim of rethinking our relationship with nature.
ANGELICA LONDONo I engage post-conceptual methods to address the tensions between meta-reality and technology in contemporary art. I am also interested in revealing and generating feminist narratives, as well as, exploring generational issues through addressing these tensions.
Ocean, 2019 Video https://vimeo.com/579605450
Angelica Londono’s work was a judge’s choice award for new media.
PHOTO & VIDEO
Annia Moussawel My identity as woman, artist, and mother has informed my recent work, The Days are Long. This series of photographs centers around my grandmother, mother, daughter, and myself. I examine the complex relationship between mother and child, the individual, and the evolving role of mothers and women over generations in my family. Influenced by the work of photographers like Elinor Carucci, Sally Mann, and Larry Sultan, I often collaborate with my subjects, while in other instances the images are the result of my constant observation of gestures, color, and light.
Ania Moussawel
SCULPTURE
Peter deMercado, Cenco Sexto- 40” x 15”
Peter deMercado’s work was Curator’s Choice Award for 3D Media.
Peter deMercado is a mixed media artist with a focus on found objects, recycled materials, and bricolage. His primary subject matter relates to fish, ocean pollution and environmental pollution. Peter’s most powerful influences come from indigenous and outsider artist and cultures His fish series are all related to what I call the “New Sea”. -the plastics and “E waste polluting every facet of our lives and oceans. DeMercado has lived his entire life near water and as a fisherman the ocean has been an ever-present influence on his work throughout the past 20 years.
Cenco Five-0- 40” x 15”-
PETER DEMERCADO
If art is pure thought, “Justice Bell“ is pure unconscious cerebration based on a shared praxis. This co-authored work based on the women of the suffrage movement spans several genres, sculpture, installation, printmaking, and textiles. The work is the first artistic partnership by sibling artists Damian and Alina who come from two disparate fields. Damian is a designer and sculptor and Alina a textile artist and veteran art educator. Each one playing a crucial role in the ideation for the work that was born without constraints, through experimentation, and out of the vast reserves of their collective memory.
ALINA RODRIGUEZ ROJO DAMIAN ROJO
MIRENA SUAREZ Through a variety of media that includes mainly tile mosaic, printmaking, drawing, and photography, Suarez explores philosophical questions associated with the concepts of loss, memory, conception, survival, fragility, perception of time, social relationships dynamics, and emotional communication as originators of a visual dialogue that expresses the thoughts, worries, perceptions, and the constant internal fights that she experiences.
The part of the Mind that is called Heart, 2018 Thread, metal, mirror econd Nature, 2021 Mixed Media (ceramic tiles, Wedi panel, mirror, metal, steel, glass, etc.)
Shelly mccoy The Truth, 2021, Quilt, applique, paint
Isabella Baumfree better known as Sojourner Truth was a force to reckon with. She became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women’s rights in the 19 th Century. Through her talent as an orator, she spoke out for the rights of African Americans and women. Her famous speech, “Arnt- I- a- Woman?” laid the groundwork for the ERA movement in the 70s and later, The Woman’s March on Washington in 2017. “If women want any rights more than they got, why don’t they just take them, and not be talking about it.” Sojourner Truth Women have been ignored in society. Often when they are mentioned, they are commonly referred to as the wife or friend to their male counterpart. While we are allowed to have our careers and the choice to pursue other options, we still must deal with the looming ideologies and crushing societal pressures that imply that women are not only lesser than, but devoid of purpose without their masculine counterparts. The existing ideology of the trophy wife is alive and well, yet it is often the woman who carries the entire burden of the household and family, while tryingto look attractive and sexy, but not too sexy! Women have purpose beyond the expectations of social norms. It is through their strength and perseverance that often keeps families together, during various situations like divorce, illness, financial collapse, etc. Through the experimentation of different materials, I combined and rearranged elements toenhance the narrative.
TEXTILES
Shelly Mc Coy, Quilt, Applique, Paint, 2021
alina rodriguez roj0
Side Show, Series, 2021 Quilt, appliqué, sublimation, embroidery on Silver Mirrored Vinyl Provenance: The Camp Gallery, 2021, 40 Women Pulling at the Threads of Social Discrouse: The Quilt
These works pay tribute to Astoria Gibbons, Maud Wagner, and the fearless tattoo women of the 1900s sideshow circus scene. Circus women were at the forefront of the women’s liberation movement. Gibbons and Wagner broke every 19th-century preconception of the “pure” woman and fearlessly controlled their bodies and destiny. In Western culture, the tattoo has always been a sign of subversion, particularly for women. Tattoos follow popular fashion, folk art, graphic arts, and fine art trends. Tattoos depicted on Wagner and Gibbon’s skin coincide with popular 19th-century taste but do not accurately document their ink designs. The mirror-like background surface on the pieces catches the distorted reflection of the audience. Reflection is a memory process that disorients our spatial perception and lets us see ourselves through the eyes of others. These mirrored portraits of tattooed circus women are part of a larger body of work titled “High Wire Act”.
The center's mission is to celebrate the arts and culture of the Hialeah and MDC community by providing opportunities for students and visitors to interact with innovative and unique multi-format (Above and Above Right) Urban Walls Exhibition, 2019, Artists Ivan Roque & Aquarela
exhibitions.
Sabol, Curator Noor Blazekovic, Irreversible Projects
1780 West 49th Street, Hialeah, Florida 33012 (305) 237 - 8812
