MIAMI ART OVERLOAD - pt.1

After almost two weeks at my dads in Mass., I took a quick trip down to Miami to join the Shooting Gallery crew at Art Basel. While I've been to Miami a few times in the past, I was pretty unprepared for the sheer amount of art I saw in such a short period of time. The whole city turns into an art gallery; with the main Art Basel fair at the convention center, and a million satellite fairs of various sizes spread all over the place. That compared with the usual weirdness that is Miami; 90º weather in December and beautiful people dressed terribly, made for an exhausting few days.

I spent a lot of time wandering around Aqua, where The Shooting Gallery (and Whitewalls) setup shop. They had a brand new piece of mine on display and I often got to overhear what people thought of it, as most just assumed I worked for the gallery. It was slightly voyeuristic and very interesting...people sure like to talk about boobs. I met a few of artists I'm huge fans of (Eric White and David Kassan to name a few), and even got to talk a little shop...a treat for me since I haven't had too much contact with other figurative artists, especially those experienced and knowledgeable enough to teach. About a half mile from Aqua Art Fair was Scope, which was about 4 times as big and had some really good work, most from artists I hadn't heard of before (not that I'm at all knowledgeable about who's who in contemporary art, but finding so much new stuff I actually liked was great).

Here's a few highlights from the Aqua and Scope fairs:

art in the bkgd: nas chompas, shawn barber, jesse hazelip, and me... (will post a final pic of that one soon)

I'll have more from Art Basel and Miami up within the next few days. thank you for checking in! - a