“Everyday Objects” speaks to the subject matter of three artists, but their exhibit is anything but common. Stephanie Jaffe Werner creates dioramas framed in candy wrappers for dolls dressed in clothes the Miami artist has made from still more brightly colored confectionery packaging. From these objects of childhood whimsy, she…
Respectable Street Café opened in West Palm Beach in 1987 as the city was falling apart. Corporate giants like Walgreens and Burdines were fleeing, leaving room for the suburban kids who flocked to Rodney Mayo’s first nightclub. Respectable Street — “Respecs,” regulars called it — played new wave and goth…
I’m a word junkie and a chronic verbalizer. I get my fixes by writing, but some of my best highs come out loud. At open mics, I can read poetry or sing lyrics; I can perform my words and get instant gratification from a live audience. For folks who share…
“A Painter’s Prints: John Alexander Retrospective” provides a quickie tour of the artist’s work from 1974 to 2006. In his early years, the expressionist era, the lines of Alexander’s work explode outward and slice across one another as the images consistently confront our mortality. In Feast Fit for a King,…
It’s an ugly world out there, full of invasion, erosion, corrosion, distress, and decay. But “Phillip Estlund: Modern Nature” creates from such destruction, finding beauty and meaning there. Using discarded reference books, field guides, trade catalogs, and salvaged materials, the Lake Worth artist creates collages that juxtapose the natural environment…
Art is not only illuminating; sometimes, it’s illuminated. This is certainly true of “Extraordinary Leaded Glass,” an exhibit of the work of the late Jackson Hall. You can’t really think of leaded, stained glass without thinking of windows — whether religious imagery glowing in churches or Frank Lloyd Wright’s luminous…
The Mai-Kai calls itself “Polynesian,” but my friend Ike has a different take on the 51-year-old club. “It’s a piece of Americana, the velvet Elvis of globalization, exotic cultures made safe for White America,” he said, sipping his sunset-colored rum drink from its gigantic snifter. “I don’t think you could…
“It’s 2007, goddamn it! Punk rockers eat raw, organic, free trade chips made of dehydrated vegetables!” Chris Cartrett, former guitarist for Doorway 27, said this with an ironic grin after somebody remarked on the strangeness of seeing party people in a whole foods environment. It was the rock ‘n’ roll…
An exhibit of memorabilia and merchandise inspired by the Frank Baum classic “Wonderful World of Oz” aims at creating a miniature magical kingdom. In a community theateresque experience, you will literally follow the yellow brick road to the Emerald City exhibit. Here, the man behind the curtain is executive director…
Most girls dream of being beauty queens, but me? I’ve always wanted to be a drag queen. Probably because my attempts at glamour always feel like something of a joke, and there’s nothing I love more than a good laugh. Plus, I’ve always shared the queens’ more-is-more aesthetic. I’m crazy…
While Whitman could sing the body electric, Vincent Lardieri composes its score. What the poet did in free verse, the painter accomplishes in abstract paintings. Acknowledging the music within his work, Lardieri refers to his own work as “staccato,” since the thick applications of acrylic paint and polymer are cut…
Proving the adage about a good man, Ray Carbone couldn’t be kept down. His West Palm Beach music venue, Ray’s Downtown, inhabited the 500 block of Clematis for 12 years before giving up the ghost last August — a year and a half after New Times first reported the dire…
Mulry Fine Art offers brain teasers for art lovers. Half the fun of its exhibits is figuring out how the works relate to the show titles. A photograph of a massacred pigeon, a giant embroidered pillow, an abstract sculpture that pays homage to Duchamp: It’s puzzling how these fit into…
Are you one of those who needs to ride the short bus to art school? “Looking at Art: A Primer” offers a crash course in art’s elements and principles — 15 terms in all — taught by informational placards and exemplified by the masters. Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and Joan…
It’s not like my friend Kyle and I aren’t open to new things. In fact, on the way to the grand opening of Pazzo’s Cucina Italiana and Lounge, a chain restaurant imported from Chicago, we were discussing that very thing — how our flexibility had let us, in his words,…
You can check out the original Da Vinci code, the mirror writing of the artist’s personal notebook, Codex Forster I, in “Medieval and Renaissance Treasures From the V&A.” You won’t even have to fight an albino or dodge the Illuminati to get at the code in this or the other…
“The Other Half: Women Artists in the Collection” seeks to help balance the gender inequity, one supposes. Acknowledging that women’s “contribution to society, arts, literature, and sciences has been overshadowed by their male counterparts,” Boca Museum has selected works from its permanent collection by women who “have created important work…
Some occasions just require a trip to Goodwill for the perfect ensemble. The Friday-night dance party Heater at Crazy 8’s is one of them. So when the parking garage’s elevator doors opened, I stepped out in my “new” white-patent-leather Gucci loafers with “$9.99” still emblazoned on their Italian soles and…
To be beautiful and meaningful, some things just need to be pieced together well. The Cornell Museum shows many ways to do it. On the first floor, “National Collage Society” offers a creative array of approaches to the vastly varied medium. Just about anything goes here. How about photomontage, the…
Some are born great, others achieve greatness, still others have it thrust upon them — and then there’s the rest of us; we’re supposed to count ourselves lucky just to share a room with greatness, I guess. At least that was the idea on Sunday, October 7, when Nobles, the…
For some, Sunday is a day of rest, prayer, and reflection; for others, it’s the best night of the week to pick up, thanks to JB’s on the Beach. On a recent blustery Sunday eve, the wind whipped foliage and hairdos westward, and updrafts lifted fabrics heavenward — but this…
‘Tis the season to be hot for teacher (easy when there’s a kiln involved) and for the faculty to debunk that nasty adage about those who teach. “Annual Faculty Exhibition” shows what these teachers can do in three galleries full of ceramics, sculpture, jewelry and metals, glass, printmaking and photography,…
