Ten Broward Visual Artists You Need to Know

As BroCo's tight-knit arts scene grows into a more serious place for professional visual artists to call home, the small yet ever-evolving scene continues to foster an innovative community where artists crank out impressive works and organize quality exhibitions. While Broward can sometimes feel like Miami's ignored little sibling, plenty of artistic talent can be found in our neck of the woods — you simply need to know where to look.

Luckily, we do. To help you get started, here is a trusty guide featuring ten talented visual artists to follow this year. 
Francesco Lo Castro

The Italian-born Lo Castro is a true mover and shaker. All you have to do is follow his Instagram account to see what he's up to, whether he's showing new works in major art fairs such as SCOPE Miami Beach and New York, respectively, or curating exhibitions at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood. The man is sure one creative mind committed to his dream. Lo Castro had us fall in love with geometric designs with his Geometry series, mind-blowing paintings done in a unique and skillful technique that have helped to catapult his career. 

Check him out: francescolocastro.com, and follow him on Instagram instagram.com/locastro.

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• Leah Brown's Installations at Young at Art Museum: A Dream Wonderland
• Hollywood Artcenter 2020 Art Walk Opening Features Sri Prabha's "Noise Reduction Experiment # 3"
• Artist Francesco LoCastro Curates Exhibits at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood

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Sri Prabha

A trippy journey to the cosmos is what viewers can experience when exploring one of Sri Prabha's mixed-media installations. The Indian-born, Seattle Cornish College of the Arts educated artist, knows how to playfully introduce scientific discoveries into art making. His works, nearly fantastical in nature, explore his deepest thoughts and questions about the nature of humanity. He integrates subjects often not seen around the South Florida art-sphere, such as geology, nature, time, and human origins, into his work. A walk around his large-scale installations features a dash of sensory overload through his use of experimental sounds and abstract video projections juxtaposed with sculpture, paintings, and prints. Onlookers can take it all in, in a meditative state as the artist intended, or stargaze while enjoying a geological time exploration before heading off into another orbit.  

Check out Sri Prabha, Best Visual Artist 2015, New Times, via sriprabha.com.

Leah Brown

Dream narratives and the unconscious mind are subjects at the heart of Leah Brown's body of work. A Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) art school undergrad and University of Miami MFA grad in sculpture, Brown sculpts characters cloaked in white sheets that take on creepy and imaginative lifeforms. In last year's solo exhibition The Transformation of Echo at the Young at Art Museum, which just closed in January, the Fort Lauderdale-based artist showed how she can transform a space from floor to ceiling into an Alice in Wonderland-esque realm. The large-scale show included tree-people and a series of hybrid human-animal sculptures that told a metaphoric tale that delved deep into the artist's study of the unconscious mind. In addition, she and her hubby Peter Symons co-curate a rotating schedule of impressive shows at The Projects Contemporary Art Space in FATVillage. 

Visit Leah Brown online at leahbrownart.com.

Ben Morey

Provocative paintings, cheeky interactive installations, and cutting-edge sculptures are all part of what makes Ben Morey's work so intriguing. The South Florida native earned his BFA in interactive media from the Maryland Institute College of Art before taking up the task of curator with the alt-collective Bedlam Lorenz Assembly. He works at the fine arts department at Broward College's North Campus when he's not creating his own multimedia pieces that poke fun at issues in today's society. He describes his stylistic oeuvre as a vehicle that examines his personal experiences and take on modern ills drawing from the context of hospitals and vintage game shows, which are "distilled into objects which are presented in a detached, clinical manner in order to be objectified and analyzed." 

Visit benmorey.com to see more of his work.