Walter May Art Speaks Lecture Series

Museum of Art - DeLand

2017 Walter May

ART SPEAKS Lecture Series

Museum of Art - DeLand presents

The 2017 Walter May Art Speaks Lecture Series Four Lectures with Reception January 6 | January 28 | February 10 | March 17 Reception 5 - 5:30 p.m. Lecture 5:30 - 6:30 p.m.

Cost $90 or $25 per Lecture (Members $80 or $20 per Lecture) Back to the Future: The Works of Natvar Bhavsar and Cy Twombly Friday, January 6, 2017 100 N. Woodland Blvd., 5 to 6:30 p.m.

Lecturer: Alpesh Patel - Assistant Professor, Contemporary Art and Theory; Affiliate Faculty, Center for Women and Gender Studies; Affiliate Faculty, African and African Diaspora Program; Director, MFA Program in Visual Arts; College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts, Florida International University Natvar Bhavsar is an India-born painter who spent most of his adult life living in New York City. Cy Twombly (1928-2011) is a US-born painter who spent most of Alpesh Patel his adult life living in Italy. At first glance, these artists have little in common. However, I will argue that a careful look at their works from the 1960s suggest that they both uncannily forecast contemporary understandings of sexuality and nationalism as fluid--moving away from the binary of male/female and here/there, respectively.

Exhibition Natvar Bhavsar: The Dimension of Color, October 21, 2016 to January 15, 2017 Natvar Bhavsar, as a purist, has reduced his art down to the very minimum and divorced it from any association with the appearance of physical reality. To him, art’s beauty, wholeness, even its unique kind of perfection, should come from within the sensibilities of the viewer, and not be spelled out too precisely on the canvas. His art stakes out new frontiers and establishes guidelines for the expansion of the human spirit.

Gallery talk with Artist David Remfry Saturday, January 28, 2017 100 N. Woodland Blvd., 5 to 6:30 p.m.

Lecturer: David Remfry - Studied at Hull College of Art from 1959 to 1964; first solo show in London in 1973 with more than 50 international solo exhibitions since; Elected member of the Royal Watercolour Society; Awarded the M.B.E. for services to British Art in America by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II; Elected Member of the Royal Academy of Arts, London; Received Honorary Doctorate of Arts by the University of Lincoln; and awarded the Hugh Casson Drawing Prize by the Royal Academy of Arts

David Remfry

David Remfry’s large scale watercolors are the bone and muscle of his art, the often fascinating and, in themselves, eloquent preparatory solutions that underlie his finished ideas. His brush is at once a surgeon’s scalpel and a sculptor’s chisel, a mirror, a telescope, camera, computer, and laser beam. His paintings are the videotypes of a recording eye whose curiosity and ingenuity remain a marvel in the contemporary art world.

Exhibition David Remfry: Dancers, January 27 to April 9, 2017 Through his career David Remfry has earned a highly regarded reputation as a draftsman and watercolorist, best known for his near life-size paintings and his urban subjects. His career includes more than 50 solo exhibitions in Europe and America including shows at P.S.1 Contemporary Arts Center, New York City, the Boca Raton Museum of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Julio Larraz: Painting in Time and Space Friday, February 10, 2017 600 N. Woodland Blvd., 5 to 6:30 p.m.

Lecturer: Carol Damian, Ph.D. - Professor of Art History in the School of Art and Art History; Former Director and Chief Curator of the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University (2008-2014); Specialist in Latin American and Caribbean Art; Teaches Pre-Columbian, Colonial, Spanish and Contemporary Latin American Art, Modern Art surveys and Women in Art. The magical images of Julio Larraz lure the viewer into an enigmatic reality that is Carol Damian as fantastic as it is lucid and believable. A master of color and light, Larraz describes objects, strange people, the landscape, interior settings and mysterious narratives with remarkable attention to detail and dramatic effects. An astute observer of everything around him, he is constantly questioning the very existence of the things of this world, while analyzing their plastic qualities and compositional relationships. It is a serious consideration of objective associations in time and space, and it informs both his paintings and sculpture. Larraz follows a realist’s approach to the production of art, but only insofar as the real world is considered to be the vehicle for an intellectual investigation into the complexities of pictorial structure and the physical properties of the objective.

Exhibition Julio Larraz: Painting and Sculpture, January 20 to April 2, 2017 Julio Larraz, extraordinary draftsman, painter and sculptor, is the quintessential embodiment of the post-World War II Latin American artist. Unmasking the angst of humanity, he sets out a new reality and politically conscious self-identity for existence in the modern world. His contribution to Western art, like that of the “boom” generation of Latin American writers, is a new kind of portraiture, which co-opts the conventions of the genre and transforms them into multilevel sociological and historical allegories.

Gallery talk with artist, Jill Cannady Friday, March 17, 2017 600 N. Woodland Blvd., 5 to 6:30 p.m.

Lecturer: Jill Cannady - BFA Cranbrook Academy of Art, MA Bowling Green State University, Ohio; Public Collections in The Brooklyn Museum, Norton Museum of Art, The Lowe Art Museum, Museum of Art, Ft. Lauderdale, Metropolitan Museum and Art Center Collection, Florida International University, to name only a few; and Awarded Southern Arts Federation/National Endowment for the Arts, Sculpture, and five State of Florida, Individual Artist Fellowship Awards Jill Cannady’s artworks offer the viewer, in the art of looking at art, a chance of Jill Cannady those “experiences as they once were.” She proffers the pleasure of something to see, a field of dreams, and object to admire, a mystery to ponder or appreciate, a way beyond. The glory of Cannady’s art is the art, its artistry stemming from profound thought, hard work, technical virtuosity and whatever it is that happens when a true artist takes up tools to create something never before seen.

Exhibition An Awareness of Gravity: New Drawings by Jill Cannady, January 20 to April 2, 2017 In Jill Cannady’s new drawings the viewer will discover larger than life figures, precariously balanced or helplessly falling in space. The idea that this perplexing world could be controlled through aesthetic systems fascinates this long time, award-winning Florida artist. Cannady is adept in all mediums, as was evident in her Idea & Medium exhibition (Jan – May 2014) which had more than 200 works of art on view in all Museum galleries at both 100 N. & 600 N. Woodland Blvd. (View a Google 360 Tour of Cannady’s 2014 Boxing Ring.) In this Awareness of Gravity exhibition, Cannady has placed her focus for this body of work using vine charcoal over a light acrylic wash on white stretched canvas – a surface typically used for painting other mediums.

Walter May

As a successful Forensic CPA and a respected philanthropist to many worthy non-profit organizations in New York, Walter May’s reputation as a supporter of the arts and as a passionate art collector preceded his retirement move to south Florida and precipitated his nomination to the Boca Raton Museum of Art Board of Trustees.

Because Walter and his family have spent a lifetime sharing their common love for the arts, he was instrumental in convincing his wife, Robin, to join and to contribute her expertise to the Museum of Art - DeLand’s Board of Trustees.

The privilege of naming this Art Speaks Lecture Series in memoriam of Walter May gives the art communities who have benefited from his lifetime largess an opportunity to pay tribute to this Renaissance Man who believed in everyone’s responsibility to contribute actively to their community’s cultural life, thereby ensuring the advancement of knowledge and education for future generations.

Museum of Art - DeLand

100 N. & 600 N. Woodland Blvd. DeLand, FL 32720 386.734.4371 Established in 1951, the Museum of Art - DeLand, Florida, is a vital and interactive non-profit community visual arts museum dedicated to the collecting, preservation, study, display and educational use of the fine arts. The Museum of Art - DeLand, Florida, is a 501(c)3 organization incorporated in the State of Florida and is a member of the American Alliance of Museums and the Florida Association of Museums.

Gallery Hours Tues. - Sat. 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Sun. 1 to 4 p.m.

Admission Museum Members & Children under 12: Free Nonmembers $5 | Special Exhibitions $10 Experience the Benefits of Membership MoArtDeLand.org

Sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture.