Exit the King, Eugene Ionesco's protracted absurdist exercise, is about a blustery monarch, played in Dramaworks' production by Colin McPhillamy, who refuses to accept that, after hundreds of years of rule, he is finally dying. But the only character onstage that exuded a genuine air of regality was Angie Radosh, who, with her upright posture and hardened countenance, appeared to be the show's lone anchor on a ship of fools sinking ever faster into the abyss. As the king's first wife, long abandoned for a clingy trophy played by Claire Brownell, Radosh was, in other words, the only adult in the room. But it isn't until the play's end that we realize she's been bestowed with an otherworldly wisdom transcending time, space, and dimension. When she ushers her husband into the afterlife, Radosh becomes the show's mesmerizing center, pulling us in with every hypnotic command as much as she helps the king's transition. It was a performance full of surprises, echoing through the auditorium, haunting us even while it soothed us.

The Arts Garage in Delray Beach is a rather unassuming locale at first glance. Located in the ground-floor storefront space of the Delray Beach parking garage, you might at first walk past the place without much notice — at least until you catch a glimpse of what's going on inside. The Arts Garage only recently celebrated its second anniversary but it has come a long way in that short time. The Delray Beach CRA originated the concept for the theater, envisioning a spot that would promote the arts, provide arts education, and be a place where emerging artists could ply their craft before an audience. Already, the theater has been awarded a Knight Foundation Grant and fought off a move to displace it from its current location. The beloved theater has held strong, and every week, locals line up at the doors with their bottles of wine and picnic dinners (it's strictly BYOEverything at the garage) to catch the latest performance. The main thrust of the theater's musical programming is jazz, but patrons will also find original plays, films, student theater, and the only drag show within city limits. Judging by the Arts Garage's success thus far and the broad support shown by residents when the city dared to suggest moving the theater, the Arts Garage will be a beacon for the arts in Delray Beach for years to come.

In the ever-cutthroat and fast-paced world of architecture and design, it can be hard keeping up with the names who literally shape the world of the future, but when it's one of our own making the waves — earning features in top industry magazines like Chicago's Design Bureau and awards from internationally recognized institutions like the World Architecture Community — it's probably a name worth remembering. Margi Nothard is a Zimbabwe-born, South Africa-raised, Southern California Institute of Architecture-trained architect who's spent the past 14 years living and working in South Florida. She's the founding president and design director at Glavovic Studio in Fort Lauderdale, a firm responsible for more than 50 projects across South Florida since its inception. Dedicated to creating locally inspired work that competes on a global scale, Nothard is the mastermind behind some of South Florida's most exciting recent projects, including Girls' Club in Fort Lauderdale, ArtsPark at Young Circle in Hollywood, and the award-winning new Young at Art Museum in Davie. Apart from their aesthetic beauty, Nothard's designs are innovative, often incorporating the latest in green technologies. With a new GS TALKS series of community lectures well underway as well as spearheading involvement in the up-and-coming Third Avenue Art District ArtWalk in Fort Lauderdale, it seems this highly motivated and talented Fort Lauderdale-based architect and her team are headed toward a bright future of continued success.

If art is meant to reflect life and life is becoming more and more virtually real, then it was only a matter of time before someone had the bright idea of putting together an art exhibition exploring the 40-year-old ubiquitous medium of videogames. This past year, the Smithsonian American Art Museum debuted "The Art of Video Games," a traveling exhibit tracing the evolution of videogames and their global impact through the lens of artistic expression. Of all places, the innovative exhibition made its first stop at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, where retirees and soccer moms mingled with gamers and art buffs to take in the 80 games featured over 20 platforms, from the Atari VCS to the PlayStation 3. Visitors were invited to interact with the exhibit — reminiscent of a time-warped arcade tunneling from the past into now — by pushing buttons to watch clips from the various games. The result was an immersive experience that told the story of our changing relationship to videogames as the medium itself became more complex, cinematic, creative, and expressive. Hands-on, collaborative, and truly a multimedia medium, videogames will only evolve as an art form; "The Art of Video Games" succeeded at provoking questions related to our future relationship with technology and the effects of the ever-increasing ubiquity of violence in media.

Give a community of artists free range over a 2,400-square-foot exhibition space split into three levels, housed within the live/work loft facility where they also live, and you're bound to end up with an abundant stream of some really great art. That's what ArtSpace must have had in mind when it created the Sailboat Bend Artist Lofts, where downtown Fort Lauderdale's 1310 Gallery makes its home. With new exhibitions rotating through the gallery monthly as well as strong ties to the surrounding Sailboat Bend and FAT Village arts districts, 1310 Gallery is a pillar in the burgeoning Fort Lauderdale art scene. As each resident takes his or her turn curating a show, 1310 Gallery has featured a diverse range of media, from painting, photography, and sculpture to spoken word, video, and performance art. In the past year alone, exhibitions included "Re:Vision: See and Shift," an art collaboration to provoke thoughtful dialogue and transform the way onlookers view ordinary things; as well as "Appropriated Gender," a group show exploring the malleability and changing notions of gender identity. The gallery is open by appointment in addition to the opening and closing receptions.

Less than two years ago, the strip of warehouses off of Boynton Beach's Industrial Avenue, just a block west of I-95, was home to old machine parts, drab façades, and a couple of high-end galleries that have been around since the '80s. Now, it's nearly all filled with art. Things began to turn around for the area when artist and gallery owner Rolando Chang Barrero moved up from South Beach, turning his studio into a gallery and taking the reins on the newly developing Boynton Beach Arts District. With a crew of like-minded arts advocates including Lea Vendetta, Andrew Ackerman, Alexia Hemingway, and Chan Shepard of the KeroWACKED Crew, a growing collection of projects meant to infuse and inspire the area with art, and new galleries popping up like weeds, it's no surprise a monthly art walk brings in the community. Apart from spearheading the Bay Gates Project, which assigns a different artist to paint a warehouse gate each month, Barrero's ActivistArtistA gallery also sponsors the Boynton Beach Arts District Art Walk. Visitors can expect to see open galleries and studio spaces, open-jam musical performances, food trucks, raffles, and lots more arts-fueled surprises on the fourth Thursday of each month.

"This is our town, and it is creative," says Joshua Miller, founding director at C&I Studios, a 7-year-old media company and idea agency based in the up-and-coming FAT Village arts district in Fort Lauderdale. "People just didn't know where to go. Now they do." At the root of any innovation or movement is a free-flowing exchange of ideas, and Miller knows that if there's one thing essential to fostering the arts, it's having a community where like-minded individuals can get together over shared passions and a strong drink. Miller's DIY media and production company has been making a name for itself in the FAT Village neighborhood since moving into the 4,000-square-foot warehouse space in 2011, hosting themed art walk events, $1 movie nights, and Live at C&I mini music festivals. The events draw crowds of mixed ages and styles — "anyone who is tired of going to Vibe and YOLO and is starving for something real," says Miller. While the facilities boast a fully licensed liquor bar, recording studios, and a trendy design aesthetic, the savvy director also knows that many young creatives are still working on getting on their feet — which is why many of the events at C&I are BYOB, often with free food and no cover charge. If Miami's burgeoning Wynwood Arts District is any indication, it would seem Miller has figured out the recipe to a successful arts community: If you feed them — art, culture, food, and drinks — they will come. C&I Studios is most certainly bringing up a small but hungry community of artists in Fort Lauderdale.

Fort Lauderdale tends to get a bad rap for clinging to its old, sleepy boat-town mentality, despite being the largest city in Broward as well as one of the most promising waterfront metropolitan areas north of Miami Beach. That's why when anyone decides to go against the norm and break the old mold a bit, we can't help but get that warm, tingling feeling that makes us want to shout it to the whole world. Helium Creative in Fort Lauderdale's rising FAT Village arts district is the kind of out-of-the-box company that helps raise the bar for a city by providing an example of just how much better different can be, when it's done right. A boutique-style advertising agency with an edge for web development and graphic design, Helium Creative has created innovative campaigns for a diverse range of clients — everyone from the W South Beach and Levinson Jewelers to Burger King and Pollo Tropical — all from its cozy, alternative office nestled among some of the area's most exciting and creatively focused new businesses. Founder and creative director Christopher Heller's roots are in Philadelphia, where he graduated from the Art Institute of Philadelphia with a degree in graphic design, but since starting Helium Creative ten years ago, his heart and his thriving business belong to Fort Lauderdale. Helium Creative regularly opens its office space — an edgy, scaled-down version of something you might see in New York's SoHo neighborhood — to the public during the monthly art walk; and Heller, an artist himself, continues to promotes the arts through his virtual/real-life gallery space, Project Fine Art.

"It's easy to get sucked into Peggyworld and follow her in an almost cult-like way," says one student's review of the beloved Florida International University photography professor on RateMyProfessors.com. Represented by the Dina Mitrani Gallery in Miami, 70-year-old photographer and instructor Peggy Levinson Nolan makes her home in Hollywood, where she continues to capture the mystical in the mundane in her delicately rendered images. After discovering photography fairly late in life, the mostly self-taught Nolan received her BFA and MFA from FIU and has been a full-time staff member of the art department there for more than ten years. A proponent of film photography, Nolan inspires her students to hone and honor the craft of film while continuing to garner recognition herself for her photographs, which turn everyday subjects and settings — her children, the kitchen sink, a candid moment in bed or in the bath — into transcendent, even magical glimpses of life. Nolan's work is collected by major institutions like New York's Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art, MOCA, Norton Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Light Work Permanent Collection, and the Martin Z. Margulies Collection. She was selected for Light Work's artist-in-residence program in 2005 and twice won the South Florida Consortium Individual Artist Grant in 2004 and 1994. Apart from her natural talent as a photographer and teacher, Nolan has a personality and passion for life that leave all who encounter her wanting more. Joke or not, a student-made fan website titled Peggy Nolan's Gentleman Callers is a testament to her infectious popularity.

Young at Art's new permanent facility, which opened in 2012, embodies both the wise maturity of a teacher and the playfulness of a child with crayons. The 55,000-square-foot interactive museum offers a fun and stimulating environment for field trips and birthday parties and also eight-week classes, like "Digital Cartooning," "Darkroom and Digital Photo," "Drawing and Painting," and "Adult Mixed Media," for children, teens, and adults. Musically inclined teens can work in a recording studio, kindergartners can crawl through a four-dimensional replica of The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, and everyone can discover a thing or two about the connection between art and ecology. Of the myriad virtues of Young at Art Museum, perhaps the most essential is its potential to bring the same eternally youthful glow of inspiration to faces of all ages.