Broadening our scope

The gallery exhibition program at the MacArthur campus library is transitioning from traditional exhibitions toward new media (art film) and special projects throughout the year [The last post was an example]. Hence, this blog will also be transitioning to include a broader scope of writing to include national and international spotlights of contemporary art.

The mission of the gallery program is to bring contemporary art not seen in this area to the academic community on the Jupiter campus. This blog will continue to do so by bringing these to you virtually.

First up: South Florida printers and writers team up

Miami, October 23, 2012 - Miami Dade College’s (MDC) Galleries of Art + Design will present The SWEAT Broadsheet Collaboration, a project that originated with a small group of South Florida artists and writers, from Friday, Nov. 2 through Friday, Dec. 21 at the Wolfson Campus Centre Gallery. An opening reception will be held at 6 p.m. Thursday, November 1.The reception and exhibition are free and open to the public.   

The 46 artists and 40 participating writers were interested in the intersection of their respective genres – that is, artists interested in text and book arts, and poets and fiction writers attracted to visual images. Through a series of planned meetings, artists and writers from Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties met, shared their work and began to collaborate to create varied and vibrant limited edition artworks.

Nearly four years in the making, this exhibition includes seventy-eight broadsheets, fine art prints created in a wide variety of media. Media included in the exhibition include letterpress, silkscreen, etching, digital pigment prints, relief prints, monoprints and many forms of hand work, including hand coloring, hand-cut paper and applique on fabric.

The theme was “sweat,” partly as homage to South Florida’s tropical climate, partly as a nod to Sweat Records, the beloved store in Little Haiti where the group’s first meeting was held, and wholly intended as a flexible, broadly defined concept to be interpreted widely by the participants in the project.

MDC will host two related events. On Saturday, Nov. 17, a reading and discussion will be presented as part of the college’s Miami Book Fair International. A panel discussion with Alex Campos, executive director of the Center for Book Arts in New York, will be held at 6 p.m. Monday, Dec. 10. Panelists will include visual artist Rosemary Chiarlone; Michael Hettich, poet and professor at MDC; John Cutrone, director of Jaffe Center for Book Arts and Frank Luca, Chief Librarian at the Wolfson Library.