A limited edition of 30 wooden boxes, like this one containing a thumb drive with the “Feast of Flowers” digital publication, an antique Florida postcard and a butterfly, will be sold for $95.
the honor of a one-man exhibition at the Cummer Museum — one of a few artists so honored — he is certainly an important regional artist who is on the cusp of national recognition and more.” Draper’s latest exhibition, “Feast of
departure on a journey to explore the idea of nature as a consumable and vulnerable resource … in order to explore and discover new ways of understanding Florida’s history, environmental aesthetics and our place within the natural order.”
“Jim’s work allows us to combine our passions for both art and the landscape in a single experience for our visitors. It is a perfect fit for The Cummer.” Flowers,” is on display beginning Dec. 18 at The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens. The museum’s chief curator Holly Keris curated the solo show, which features oil paintings based on flora, fauna and landscape endemic to Florida. “The museum has long believed in the transformational impact landscape can have on individuals and the environment can have on the community,” Keris explains. “Jim’s work allows us to combine our passions for both art and the landscape in a single experience for our visitors. It is a perfect fit for The Cummer.” “Feast of Flowers” is a nod to the 500th anniversary of the naming of Florida. On Easter Sunday, April 2, 1513, Juan Ponce de Leon set out to find an island called Bimini. After getting lost and drifting into the Gulf Stream, the expedition party stumbled upon an uncharted land, somewhere along the eastern shore of present-day Florida. Ponce de Leon named the land “Pasqua de Florida,” which translated from the Spanish means “Feast of Flowers.” “These paintings are about my attitudes toward consumption of Florida land,” Draper says as he flips through a pile of finished canvases in his studio. “I am not celebrating colonialism in any form. There is no direct evidence of human interaction with nature in these pieces.” According to a description of the exhibit on Draper’s website: “While acknowledging the history of the Spanish, we employ this phrase [Feast of Flowers] as a point of
In conjunction with the exhibition, Draper has spearheaded a digital publication that seeks to explain Florida’s unique environmental and social landscape. The book, available Dec. 12, features a unique collection of voices, including environmental writer Bill Belleville, UNF philosophy department chair and professor Hans-Herbert Kögler and environment advocate Karen Ahlers. “My piece focuses on the lives of four women and the impacts the Cross Florida Barge Canal and the destruction of the Ocklawaha River has caused them,” explains Neil Armingeon, who headed the St. Johns Riverkeeper from 2003 to 2012 and is a contributor to the publication. “Florida’s environment is on the brink. Jim’s work — this exhibit — shows all of us what we have left and what we stand to lose if we don’t say ‘enough is enough.’ ” Born in 1953 in Kosciusko, Miss., a small town in the middle of the state that boasts such diverse natives as Oprah Winfrey and blues musician Charlie Musselwhite, Draper describes his childhood as “privileged” and “pleasant.” He was the youngest of three siblings in a family that owned a department store in town. They lived like many did in the “Old South” — without a lot of conversation or showing of emotion. “Being artistic in rural Mississippi doesn’t get you a lot,” Draper explains of drawing and painting during his formative years. “There weren’t any art classes in school and there wasn’t that idea of being creative.”
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