Film Nook now showing Cheryl Maeder's Frequency

We are thrilled to be showing The film short, Frequency 

by artist Cheryl Maeder. 

Frequency

Over a period of five months, I researched and filmed reflections on a lake’s surface.  Every day that I filmed the lake’s surface, it took on a different pattern from sunny to overcast to rain, from calm, to turbulent.  On the editing of the film, I worked with Artist Mary Tidy-Coyle, an innovative conceptual artist.  There is always a transformative synergy in our collaborations.

Frequency communicates through non-verbal language the vastness of the infinite universe. 

It takes us on a psychological journey- questioning whether our universe is just one or many co-existing parallels?

The film is streaming during open library hours which can be found here.

or call 561-799-8530

Artist bios: Cheryl Maeder

I am a Fine Art Photographer and Video Installation Artist.

The core of my work has always been about “connection”; the innate connection to the self, each other and to all other life forms on this planet. We are not separate from nature. We are nature, the environment and the infinite universe.

I was born in Elmwood Park, New Jersey, USA, and in my early 20s moved to Zurich, Switzerland, where I studied photography at the Zurich University of the Arts.  After 8 years in Switzerland, I returned to United States and opened my photography studio in San Francisco, where I photographed international advertising and fashion campaigns. I transitioned from photographing fashion models to photographing real women. I wanted to celebrate the beauty of women in all shapes and sizes. My photography work became the inspiration for the Dove Campaign on Real Women, Real Beauty which transformed the way women are viewed in the global media.  In 2005, I relocated my studio to the Miami area and deeply immersed myself into fine art photography and filmmaking.

While the foundation of my work is photography, investigations into video and large-scale installations have expanded my visual world.  By immersing myself into the world of new technologies and shifting between the mediums, new opportunities for rewarding and creative collaborations have occurred for large-scale installations.  Through continuous experimentation, I utilize my camera as a precision instrument to replace the traditional tools of an artist’s studio, such as brushes and paint.  I focus my camera on the otherworldliness between reality and the abstract.

·         Permanent Collection Frost Museum, Miami & Coral Springs Museum of Art

·         The Louvre Museum, Paris, Group Exhibition

·         Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome, Italy, Miami New Media Film Festival, Public Art Platform, Art & Technology, Curated Thesis on Water, Climate Change & Communities Traveling Group Exhibition (Bogota, Caracas, Valencia, Miami, Santo Domingo, San Nicolas & Rome)

·         Montefiore Medical Center, Radiation & Oncology Dept., Permanent Collection

·         Solo Exhibition Miami International Airport Sept. 2016-2017

·         PBS, Filmmaker Project:  featured Filmmaker, funded by

National Endowment for the Arts

·         Submerge, Public Art Video Installation, City of West Palm Beach, Canvas Outdoor Museum

·         Auctioned at Sothebys New York

·         Exhibited at major art fairs worldwide including Art Miami, Scope NY, Art Toronto, Art London and Art Shanghai

Artist bios:  Mary Tidy-Coyle

Mary Tidy-Coyle is a nationally showing/published artist and curator. She is originally from Philadelphia, PA, where she received her BFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University, and her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Currently Tidy-Coyle lives and works as a professor teaching Drawing, Painting & Art History, while continuing to produce and show her work.

In her artwork she is a creator of fiction- a storyteller, giving her audience just enough to compose their own narratives. As artist, filmmaker and actor she adorns many disguises in her video work.  By inserting herself into an invented world her performance as ‘actor’  allows for the re-invention of self, commenting on  issues of identity and gender.  In her constructed collages and paintings she juxtaposes people, places and things, relying on imagination & memory to create an unknown reality; leaving her audience to muse.

Chromatic by Linda Behar showing at Product 81 in Miami

Fordistas & StArt present - Chromatic by Linda Bahar

Explorations of modern standards of beauty, society and the individual’s sense of self.

Linda Behar is a Venezuelan artist who’s lived, worked and studied in the United States for nearly twenty years. Originally trained as a civil engineer, her interest in art led her to attend the Academia Taller Art y Fuego in Caracas where she studied glass casting and pate de verre. She continued studying new materials and methods at Florida Atlantic University where she received a Masters of Fine Arts with an emphasis on printmaking. Her current work integrates new technologies and traditional printmaking techniques, specifically woodblock printing. Behar has exhibited internationally, received numerous awards and has been a dedicated teacher in Venezuela as well as at the University of Miami, and Florida Atlantic University. ​

Behar’s work focuses on the modern standards of beauty placed on the female body and seeks to bring forward the contradictions between expectations and the individual’s sense of self. In Maccabees, she aims to create images that echo the past while embracing the future and empower women to fight for their rights in society. She used the concept of paper dolls as medium of culture and social expectation to question the representation of women’s bodies and gender identities throughout history.​

In her collaborative work entitled Chromatic, Behar invites over 300 women from a variety of backgrounds and cultures to participate in a project inspired by the complex geometric patterns of modern coloring books to explore gender identity throughout history and body language as it relates to gender norms. The black and white prints use traditional art nouveau iconography to represent confident nude women in through-provoking poses.

Library staff collaborated with this artist and we all contributed by coloring one of her prints. It is really exciting to see her work grow and this project take on a life of its own. Linda is a great artist. She was kind enough to present a printmaking demo to our students and we enjoy following her projects and exhibitions.

If you are in the MIami area stop by the show

Julia Oldham’s Fallout Dogs

We are proud to be showing the film Fallout Dogs by Julia Oldham in our film nook. It will be showing through the month of April. Come by to view the film anytime the library is open. Below is the trailer for the film and an essay written by the artist.

FIRST CONTACT: The Dogs of Chernobyl  Julia Oldham

On April 26, 1986, I was a child of seven, safe in rural western Maryland, when an explosion

ripped through Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Power Plant, in what was then the Soviet Union.

Over the following three days this terrible accident would release about 400 times the amount

of radioactive material than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Around 300,000

residents of the city of Pripyat and the settlements around Chernobyl would be evacuated.

Details of the meltdown would be kept secret by the Soviet government.

On May 6, 2018, I am 38 years old, and my partner Eric and I are climbing into a van in Kiev,

Ukraine to be borne away into the countryside, our destination the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

After a two-hour journey through dense forests and tiny villages with our driver Nikolai, we

arrive at the first Chernobyl security checkpoint. There’s nothing to see yet -- just a road, a

security kiosk, some tough-looking security officers, a traffic gate, a coffee stand, and a

souvenir shop. There is forest on both sides of the road. Here we are united with our guide

Ludmilla, a 36 year old Ukrainian woman with a shock of bright pink hair, punky clothes, blue

Adidas, and a pair of radioactive trefoil earrings. She gives me a big hug.

Ludmilla and I have been emailing for months in preparation for the creation of Fallout Dogs.

She knows the dogs in the zone better than anyone, having spent years feeding them, giving

them medications and minor medical procedures when they are injured. I have told her that I

want to create a portrait of Chernobyl that is led by the movements and behaviors of the dogs,

and that I want to go wherever they spend their time. We have five days to accomplish this,

which is about as long as a tourist like myself is allowed to stay in the Zone.

In half an hour we pull over to the side of the road and Ludmilla leads us on foot down a back

road to a rowdy pack of gorgeous mutts who are leaping, barking, dancing and delighted to

see her. She carries a plastic shopping bag of freeze dried liver, tracheas, kidneys, and other

kinds of goodies that she calls her “stinky stuff.” Everywhere we go, the crinkling of this bag is

a lightning rod for dogs.

“This is Samantha,” she says, pointing to a large shepherd-y looking dog who is dashing into

the forest. And she points to another big dog with a puppyish gait and huge feet, and says,

“And this silly-pants doesn’t have a name yet. What should we name him?” I suggest Mr.

George, and he is dubbed Mr. George Silly Pants forever after. “Silly-pants” is Ludmilla’s pet

name for all the dogs with the goofiest personalities.

Following our new dog friends, we walk along a path that leads to the abandoned village of

Zalissia, my first glimpse into the haunting remnants of human life in the Zone. The Zalissia

Town Hall was once a beautiful wooden building, and inside it there is a stage for public

presentations with a delicately ornate but decaying proscenium. Above the stage is a large red

sign that says in Ukrainian, “Long Live Communism, the Future of Humanity.” The floor is

partially gone, so we walk gingerly along the remaining planks, not wanting to fall through and

break our legs. The dogs join us and scamper around in the town hall, wrestling and trying to

get Ludmilla’s attention. This space is now theirs.

As we continue walking through Zalissia, we pass traditional Ukrainian village houses that have

been empty for over three decades, an old Lada Zhiguli car rotting away in what was once a

driveway, openings to root cellars, and scattered possessions, like kid’s shoes, left behind. The

most poignant moment for me is when I come upon an old dog house sinking into the earth,

and a ceramic food bowl just outside it, filled with leaves, soil and rainwater. The heartrending

duality of this abandoned dog house alongside the presence of the joyous and energetic strays

sets the stage for Fallout Dogs and the portrait of Chernobyl that I want to share. This is the

beginning of my story.

You can read Julia’s bio and find out more about her artwork by visiting her website here.

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