[ arts + culture ]
LEAD THE WAY
over 5 feet tall and 30 inches wide — that together create a breathtaking vision spanning 180 feet in length, annexing an entire large wall of OMA in two rows. The physically massive panels that make up “The Promised Land” (231 in all) have been occupying a good amount of creative and Orlando artist and UCF professor Robert Rivers takes home this year’s top literal real estate in Rivers’ life for about a decade now. “The Promised Land” began as something very different honors in OMA’s ‘Florida Prize’ exhibition than the giant hyperreality scroll that it is now. An early starting point was a landscape that Rivers was making for BY MATTHEW MOY E R his brother as a tribute to Rivers’ nephew — a Marine killed obert Rivers is still in shock. A good befuddlement, leagues and even his brother (more on that in a moment), in Afghanistan in 2010 — but soon it became something very different: an ongoing series of illustrations that have but still. The longtime Maitland resident and UCF he can only call it an “enchanted evening.” And though Rivers has exhibited his work around preoccupied Rivers for years. What perhaps started out as professor of art — grading for the semester finished mere minutes before Orlando Weekly rings him — just days the world — including shows in Washington, D.C., and a means of processing grief has kaleidoscoped outward into ago took home the top honors in this year’s Florida Prize Edinburgh, Scotland — this particular show feels quite a bit a new visual mythology. “The day that I found out Thomas got killed I came in Contemporary Art exhibition-cum-competition at the more personally special. The annual Florida Prize group exhibition brings home and did a drawing that started ‘The Promised Land’ Orlando Museum of Art. It’s worth mentioning also that this is the very first year together the crème de la crème of practicing new and drawings. It was a 22-by-30 inch drawing that sort of that two local artists walked away with both the Florida mid-career artists in the state. Each year sees OMA filled encapsulated the idea. The image for the soldier would be Prize and the People’s Choice award — which went to with bleeding-edge creativity across genre — installations, just a white T-shirt, army fatigues, boots and haircut. The photography, painting, conceptual art and, in Rivers’ case, first ones were very much about the soldiers, groupings of painter Matthew Cornell. “I was very, very surprised,” says Rivers of being named towering, dizzying mixed-media illustrations that create a soldiers,” says Rivers. “And then I wanted to do something for my brother. We recovered a picture of my nephew from the winner at the opening reception for the Florida Prize surreal, at times nightmarish otherspace. This is “The Promised Land,” a series of 69 panels — each his camera, and it was him with his gun inside a Humvee, exhibition. Thinking back to the gathering of friends, col-
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ORLANDO WEEKLY ● JUNE 30-JULY 6, 2021 ● orlandoweekly.com
