Oil on canvas, 22 x 30 in.
Oil on canvas, 71 x 47 in. Photo: Abby Wright-Day.
Cardboard, archival glue, paper ephemera, acrylic paint, 75 x 47 x 1 in.
Chinaberry, forged steel, 114 x 82 x 28 in. Photo: Rachel Treide.
Found objects, stone, dandelions, dimensions variable.
Digitally manipulated ballpoint pen on adhesive print, dimensions variable.
Ink on rag paper, 10 x 7 in.
Natural wool, waxed thread, polymer clay, found wood, porcelain, steel, epoxy, 76 x 14 x 12 in.
Flashe, ink, acrylic aerosol, paper collage on paper, 44 x 30 in.
Screen printed ice block, 10 x 8 in.
Digital mural, 3D animation, AR Software, limited edition 12 + 2 AP, dimensions variable.
Smoke verso on lexan, silver mirroring, vinyl, copper, wood, 60 x 40 in.
Mixed media on canvas, 102 x 156 in.
Four plate four color etching and spit bite aquatint, 14 ⅜ x 18 ½ in.
Skyway 2024: A Contemporary Collaboration
July 28–October 27, 2024
In its third iteration, Skyway is a triennial exhibition celebrating the gamut of regional creativities and contemporary art practices flourishing in Hillsborough, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, and Sarasota counties. Originating as a collaboration among art institutions in the Tampa Bay area in 2017, Skyway has galvanized the artist community in the region, introducing artistic talents and vigorous practices to a larger audience. This year, Sarasota Art Museum proudly joins the other esteemed institutions: the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg; The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota; the Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa; and the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa. With Evan Garza as a guest juror, six curators from five collaborating museums selected 63 artists from nearly 300 artists who responded to the open call.
Highlighting their recent work, Sarasota Art Museum will feature 14 artists working with a wide range of media and coming from different stages in their careers: Kim Anderson, Ryan Day, Sue Havens, Dominique Labauvie, Tatiana Mesa Paján, Samantha Modder, Roger Clay Palmer, Herion Park, Gabriel Ramos, Eszter Sziksz, Jill Taffet, Rob Tarbell, Kirk Ke Wang, and Willow Wells.
Some of the artists have exhibited in the previous Skyway, while for others, it is their first time. Their work is varied in style, media, scale, process, and concept, and it is as distinctly individual as they are as artists. Nevertheless, viewers will find many connecting threads: pensive and poetic ruminations on the human connection with nature as well as on environmental issues; deep rootedness in their unique identity; or probing investigations into their cultural heritage and immigrant experiences. These artists explore individual lived experience that are simultaneously collective; they imaginatively and critically examine our surroundings and the commodities we consume, discard, and rediscover. Several engage with ever-changing digital technology. Throughout it all, they reveal their existence not merely as isolated individuals but also as parents, children, life partners, and citizens who are reflecting on this moment in historical time.
This exhibition is organized by Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design and curated by Rangsook Yoon, Ph.D., senior curator at Sarasota Art Museum.
SAM’s participation in Skyway 2024 is made possible, in part, with generous support from
Platinum Sponsors
Judy and Fred Fiala
Silver Sponsors
Marge and Leon Ellin
Keith Monda and Veronica Brady
Gallery Didactics for Picking up the Pieces:
Special thanks to the many generous donors who made gifts in memory of Peppi Elona.
Programs
Artist Bios
Kim Anderson
b. 1974, San Francisco, CA
Lives and works in Bradenton, FL
Kim Anderson is a painter working at the intersections of painting and photography. Her work engages various representational systems, including figurative and still-life painting, vernacular photography, home movies, and the twin imagery of stereoscopy in ways that expose the mutability of art-historical conventions, and the roles women have assumed in particular. Dislocated from their original contexts and cast into new fictional narratives, paintings derived from vernacular photographs and home movies evoke the ways we see and are seen through various layers of media, both old and new. Rendering the familiar unfamiliar through the distillation of a home movie into to a single, painted film still, or through the doubling of a stereoscopic image, Anderson reflects on the ways images and objects tell stories, are imbued with meaning, gain value, and become stratified within hierarchies of visual culture.
Born in San Francisco, CA, and raised on O‘ahu in Hawaii, Kim Anderson is an artist and educator residing in Bradenton, FL. Her paintings have been exhibited regionally and nationally including at the Tampa Museum of Art, FL; Site:Brooklyn Gallery in Brooklyn, NY; and Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, OH. She was a 2023 recipient of the HALO Artist Fellowship in Sarasota, FL; a finalist for both the Manifest Creative Research Gallery’s Grand Jury Prize and Annual Manifest Prize; and a recipient of the Ringling/Tower Artist Fellowship with the Sarasota Arts Council. Her work has been featured in publications including New American Paintings, Studio Visit Magazine, Create! Magazine, UNC Asheville’s 12th Annual Drawing Discourse, and Manifest Creative Research and Gallery INPA and MEA. She earned an MFA from the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, and a BFA from California College of the Arts, San Francisco. Currently, she holds the position of Professor of Art at Sarasota’s New College of Florida, where she has taught since 2004.
Ryan Day
b. 1993, Allen, Texas
Lives and works in Sarasota, FL
Ryan Day states: “I find that taking pleasure in small daily occurrences brings significance to otherwise mundane aspects. I like to abstract these daily moments of my routine into a new object or painting. The chaos of the world seeps into my portrayal of an American dream, like a nightmare being revealed within a dream, or an ever-changing interpretation of a moment in time. Spotting differences amongst similarity in a cul-de-sac life or a typical day, I create life for a typical moment of mine with use of soft shapes and comfy colors. This escape brings me back to my childhood with feelings of tenderness, chaos, and contentment.”
Ryan Day received a BFA in painting from Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA, in 2016. He has exhibited his works throughout the United States in New York, Texas, Georgia, Florida, Washington, DC, as well as in France. His paintings and sculptures are based on memories, narratives, and experience. He currently lives and works in Sarasota, FL.
Sue Havens
b. 1972, Rochester, NY
Lives and works in Tampa, FL
Sue Havens is known for her work in the expanded field of painting. Of her practice she writes: “Using languages culled from everyday life, I make installations that include ceramic sculpture and large-scale collage that become immersive.” Works for Motherboard began by rolling up task lists during virtual faculty meetings in the spring of 2020. Ephemera related to being an artist, mother, and professor were incorporated into the paintings, including materials such as junk mail, supermarket circulars, origami experiments, wrapping paper, fast food bags, report cards, recreation center puzzles, tests, and PTA fliers. The heightened anxiety of life during the pandemic was absorbed into tightly rolled and regurgitated balls. Paintings on paper also involved collaborations with her son. Paintings that resemble a motherboard (the main circuit board in computers) hold communication between electronic components of a system with expansion capabilities—often referred to as the “mother” of all components attached to it. Urn-like forms also evolved after a conversation with Havens’s mother about her inevitable death and her wish to “be” in one of Havens’s forms. Works in Motherboard represent a kind of pre- grief pendulum within daily life and, perhaps, exercises in imagining loss.
Sue Havens received a BFA in Art from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, NY, and an MFA in Painting from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. She lived in New York for twenty-five years before relocating to Tampa, where she is currently Associate Professor of Art at the University of South Florida, Tampa, FL. Havens has exhibited her work in numerous venues nationally and internationally for the past thirty years, including a recent solo exhibition at the Marjorie Barrick Museum in Las Vegas, NV. Havens has been the recipient of several grants, including a McKnight Fellowship grant in 2017. Her ceramic sculpture was featured in Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine in 2018.
Dominique Labauvie
b. 1948, Strasbourg, France
Lives and works in Tampa, FL
In the words of Dominique Labauvie: “This series of sculptures awakens parts of my memory recalling all the forests I have entered. My friend William Douglas named this series The Forest. From the origin of man, the forest has warmed us in caves, sheltered us in its architecture, protected us in our battles, and fed us with its legends, myths, and secrets. We cross it, it is in us, and in front of us. Since the time of antiquity, sculpture generates its own life through its frontal relationship with space. Even in the state of ruin, sculpture invents its existence through rhythms of growth, the multiplication of constructive elements, and its destruction; and even more intensively when the distance between fiction and reality increases, and invention becomes king.”
Dominique Labauvie is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is rooted in literature, philosophy, and art history. Labauvie’s sculpture primarily uses steel as its medium, pushing the material to reveal its fragility, using line as the conduit of thought within a minimal narrative context. In 1997, Labauvie was commissioned by the City of Paris to create the monumental cast-iron sculpture Suspended Skyline, which is installed along the Quai de Seine. His work has been exhibited across Europe, Japan, and the United States, in galleries, museums, and cultural venues. He was included in the inaugural exhibition Color Theory & b/w, at Sarasota Art Museum in Florida in 2019. Labauvie’s work is represented in private and public collections such as the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul de Vence, France; The Runnymede Collection in San Francisco, CA; The Tampa Museum of Art, FL; and the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL. In 2009 he received the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation grant.
Tatiana Mesa Paján
b. 1981, Havana, Cuba
Lives and works in Tampa, FL
Tatiana Mesa Paján is a process-based artist with a particular focus on poetic gestures. She expresses her ideas across various media including performance, installation, readymade, printmaking, artist books, and poetic prose. The language she selects for her work varies, depending on questions of documentation and memory. While the forms of her artwork change, her sensibility remains rooted in archeological, anthropological, and linguistic studies. Her research is based on an archeology of her present, fascinated by human nature and subjectivity. She attempts to read the life experience through the lens of art, treating such experience as art material. The artist grapples with questions of documentation and the ethical implications of what is shared and what is hidden. She defines her pieces as poetic gestures that are often indeterminate—collections of everyday memories such as kissing, touching, walking, or any simple gestures. Some works may span a lifetime, while others are ongoing collections over many years. Any evoked experience is a memory built through the medium she chooses, whether word or installation. This limitation of attaining the real moment allows her to decide how she sees, remembers, and shares each life experience.
Tatiana Mesa Paján was born in Havana, Cuba, and moved to the United States in 2013. She currently lives and works in Tampa, FL. Mesa Paján is a member and founder of The Department of Public Intervention (DIP) in Havana, and is co-curator of Experiencia de Acción: 30 días, 8th Havana Biennial, Havana (2003). Mesa Paján’s art has been displayed internationally in Cuba, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Madrid, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Lithuania, and the United States. Her creative writing prose has been published online and in print in Cuba, Argentina, the United States, and Brazil. She graduated from San Alejandro Academy in Havana (1999); University of Arts of Cuba (ISA) in Havana (2004); and got her MFA at University of South Florida in Tampa (2022), where she is an Assistant Professor in the Printmaking Department. As an artist of loneliness, influenced by situations, and a poet of everyday gestures, Mesa Paján takes refuge in the collection of objects as the relics of experience. The items collected are seen as evidence of a conversation, touch, or memory with someone. She collects materials with the weight of her heart—lost things, mirrors, images related to the past, human hair, and sunken things as a coping memory mechanism.
Samantha Modder
b. 1995, Lagos, Nigeria
Lives and works in Tampa, FL
Samantha Modder works figuratively in pen, collage, and digital media to portray larger-than-life Black female characters taking up space in real and imagined worlds. A Field of Lost Hair Ties is a chapter in an ongoing series, in which the artist presents a subjective Black woman’s fairytale to process interlocking structures of oppression. Like a storybook made into a mural, the installations are digitally manipulated ballpoint pen drawings that follow a Black woman in her nightdress and striped socks in a world made up of only herself and her duplicates. The work is an allegory for our contemporary condition, confronting questions of power, exploitation, and resistance. Modder further explains: “In A Field of Lost Hair Ties I reflect on my urge to hoard, even when I have all I need, and the impact of my ambition and careless consumption on the natural world. Making this work during our ongoing climate crisis, I saw visual and conceptual connections between my imagined field and our very real forests. As my work towers above viewers, I hope they will step back into a space of childhood, wonder, and possibility, and that they would, in the best of ways, feel small and open, ready and willing to hear one more story.”
Sam Modder is a Nigerian Sri Lankan artist who works figuratively in pen, collage, and digital media. She graduated from Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, in 2017 with a BA in Studio Art and Engineering, and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, MO, in 2022. She currently works as an Assistant Professor of Art and Design at the University of Tampa, FL.
Roger Clay Palmer
b. 1947, Medford, OR
Lives and works in Tampa, FL, Jackson Heights, NY, and Ozello, FL
Roger Clay Palmer does drawings in series, working on a theme from the sub-narrative or unpredictable edges. He defines a drawing that works as one that cannot be used to protect oneself from one’s own sense of wit. The social or political begins to live in a drawing through unexpected situations, allowing one to savor a small fragment of context. The acceptance of numbness from overstimulation by a contemporary issue is a facing of the page: a daily page made of rag and paralysis waiting for the stumbling of a wet brush. The artist infers that drawing is an act of trying to feel something that is at least alive in the hand, a drawing diary against the blunting flow of information too cleaned and trimmed to support the weight of its own absurdity. A word is naked until it tries to contain. He continues: “I cannot have a complete visual or verbal thought without shifting from visual mark to word inside the image process. I draw with a Ronin Zenga Southern Dog Without Papers attitude; I want to jump off of a drawing clean and free.”
For over 50 years, Roger Clay Palmer has been producing poetry, paintings, installations, and primarily a large body of works on paper. Born in 1947 in Medford, OR, he spent most of his childhood on a ranch near Ocala, FL. Growing up listening to family members tell stories, his work reflects his love of Southern oral tradition and depicts a world where animals often mimic and reflect us. He later moved to Tampa, FL, where he received his BFA and MFA at the University of South Florida, Tampa. Strongly affected by his experiences in the army before being discharged as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, he often focuses on the dark side of current events. Six weeks in Japan in 1985 deeply influenced his work; as with Japanese haiga and Zenga, words are an indispensable component of his brush, pigment, and ink drawings. Teaching intermittently over the years at USF and other area schools, Palmer currently divides his time between Jackson Heights in New York City, Tampa, and Ozello, FL (where he hand-built a pole house on a gulf hammock). In 2021 a monograph of his work, with an essay by David Norr, was produced by KMEC Press.
Herion Park
b. 1956, Seoul, Korea
Lives and works in Sarasota, FL
Herion Park’s work is powered with the perspective of a woman blessed by experiences (mostly victorious), love, desire, loss, and resurrection. Using the conjured muse-spirits of her mother and six sisters, her work embraces ‘love,’ the life force within us, and our ‘desire’ to be one with humanity and to thrive. It mourns the ‘loss’ of the ability to reach or commune with that love force, because of departure or distance. And, in the end, it celebrates the ‘resurrection’ of that love. Physical pain accompanies the rigor of the making of Park’s work, but the work does not transmit that pain because perhaps, in a perverse way, the artist enjoys it. For Park, it is important to use her body in the manipulation of these forms. The pressing and pulling of material is a confirmation of a positive life force and it stands in permanent witness to determination. Satisfaction and comfort come after the pain—akin to a life well lived. The fulcrums on which Park’s soft forms precariously balance are metaphors for the fragile foundations that our lives are built upon. As fragments representing lives intersected by circumstances both benevolent and fearful, they are ultimately triumphant stories.
Herion Park is a Korean American visual artist, sculptor, fashion designer, and professor currently teaching art and fashion design at Miami-Dade College, Miami, FL. After immigrating to the United States in the 1980s, she received a BFA in Painting and Fashion Design and a Master of Design in Fashion, Body, and Garment at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL. She has participated in an expansive list of significant exhibitions and has been awarded multiple residency invitations, including Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; Hambidge Center, Rabun Gap, GA; and Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY. Her artistic means of expression have encompassed and integrated varied media. Her work is informed by the immigrant experience of a naturalized citizen and the spiritual and biological ties of family. Both her personal experiences and those of her many young students from immigrant families are transmuted into her art. Her most current work speaks of matters of sorority and motherhood through forms emanating from spiritual inspiration and conjured up from contemplation on familial memories. She has lived in Seoul, Chicago, New York, Miami, and currently makes Sarasota County, FL, her residence.
Gabriel Ramos
b. 1987, Aguadilla, Puerto Rico
Lives and works in Tampa, FL
Gabriel Ramos draws inspiration from his identity as a Puerto Rican LGBTQ+ individual residing in the US, and engaging in an exploration of intricate themes, including identity, social visibility, sexuality, queerness, fear, and displacement. Through bold interplays of shapes, lines, and expressionistic gestures, Ramos’s artistic practice captures the vibrant essence of his community and culture. His abstract compositions seamlessly weave tropical landscapes, architectural elements, figures, and stylized representations, inviting viewers to delve into layered narratives that reflect the complexities of life’s challenges and resolutions. In each piece, Ramos aims to distill the essence of personal experiences and cultural heritage, crafting a visually dynamic and enigmatic language. This distinctive aesthetic serves as a portal, encouraging viewers to uncover profound meaning beyond the surface. His artworks mirror a nuanced dialogue of personal narratives and shared cultural history, employing these elements as catalysts that prompt contemplation, deeper exploration, and the forging of meaningful connections with the themes explored.
Born in 1987 in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, Gabriel Ramos currently lives and works in Tampa Bay, FL. He earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Tampa’s University of South Florida in 2011, and his Master of Fine Arts from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, in 2018. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in locations such as the National Gallery of the Bahamas; National Gallery of Jamaica; USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL; FotoFest Biennial, Houston, TX; and Gasparilla International Film Festival, Tampa, FL. Ramos has received several awards, fellowships, and grants, including the Creative Pinellas Professional Artist Grant, Creative Loafing Best of the Bay 2021, Critic’s Pick for Best Masterwork by a Local Artist, Cornell Council for the Arts Grant, Vermont Studio Center Educational Foundation of America Creative Equity Fellowship, and Ox-Bow School of Art MFA Residency and Fellowship.
Eszter Sziksz
b. 1976, Szekesfehervar, Hungary Lives and works in Sarasota, FLAs a visual artist and printmaker, Eszter Sziksz explores the ephemeral nature of art as it evolves over time, decays, and leaves a memory behind. Her prints aim to create a psychic imprint that encourages the viewer to engage more deeply with their inner life. For the artist, creating art is a personal ritual that is essential to her foundation. Sziksz emigrated from Hungary 16 years ago, and since the COVID-19 pandemic she has felt more separated from her family, whom she misses dearly. Sziksz often prints repeated family portraits using ephemeral materials such as ice, sand, and ash, which quickly wash away. This metaphor speaks to the organic metamorphoses of the materials: oil on canvas, print on paper, melting ice sheets, or fragile sand prints. The artist states: “Sometimes, waiting for something to change is all we can do, and nothing lasts forever. I also print words that express the feelings I experience during my seemingly endless isolation, which creates sentient impressions that may be more crucial than the survival of the artwork itself. My latest work is inspired by my Arctic Circle Residency, and it explores the effects of climate change on a slowly disappearing landscape.”
Eszter Sziksz is a Hungarian artist, and has traveled to and lived in several countries, from Asia to Europe. Her work blends printmaking, installation, and video elements. She has shown at the regional and international level, from Tokyo to Budapest. Her works were recently shown at the Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, NJ; Santorini Art Biennial, Greece; International Artists Collective Museo del Brigantaggio, Itri, Italy; Ice Hotel, Sweden; Krakow International Print Triennial, Poland; IMPACT10 in Spain; and IPCNY (International Print Center New York). Eszter’s works were featured in Art in Print magazine. After earning a BA from Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, she made her way to Memphis College of Art, TN, where she completed her MFA in Studio Arts. Eszter recently received a DLA in Fine Arts, from Pecsi Tudomany Egyetem in Pecs, Hungary. Eszter’s prints are included in collections at Pecsi Tudomany University, Hungary; Memphis College of Art’s Presidential Purchase Collection; Szent Istvan Museum, Szekesfehervar, Hungary; University of North Florida, Jacksonville; Santorini Biennial of Arts, Greece; and the International Artists Collective Museo del Brigantaggio, Itri, Italy.
Jill Taffet
b. 1956, New York, NY
Lives and works in Siesta Key, FL
Jill Taffet’s innovative artworks seamlessly merge traditional artistic techniques with cutting-edge technologies, offering immersive experiences that delve into the complexities of human perception, particularly the perception of vision, and the creation of visual continuity and motion. Through a combination of still images and dynamic elements, Taffet involves the viewer as an active participant in her art. Inspired by science and the natural world, her augmented reality, video projection, and animated objects feature fluid transformations of biomorphic forms, inviting viewers on a journey of wonder and discovery. Sentient Beings is an augmented reality mural installation. The architecturally integrated mural features dormant biomorphic forms that spring to life as viewers interact with it using their smartphones. Through augmented reality technology, 3D animations are triggered, transforming the static forms into dynamic entities. This interactive experience fosters a collective journey of discovery as viewers move around the mural, each interaction breathing new life into the artwork.
Jill Taffet earned her BFA from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Art and Science in New York, NY, studying under the mentorship of renowned artist and experimental animator Robert Breer. Following graduation, Taffet embarked on a successful career as a motion artist in both New York and Los Angeles, where she garnered awards for her groundbreaking animation and new media projects for television and cable networks. Transitioning her focus in the mid-2000s, she redirected her attention to her personal artistic endeavors and higher education. In 2013, she was awarded an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute, CA, studying under the guidance of esteemed media artist Lynn Hershman Leeson. Since then, Taffet has been deeply involved in creating immersive and time-based artworks, showcasing her creations both nationally and internationally. She is currently faculty at Ringling College of Art and Design, Sarasota, FL.
Rob Tarbell
b. ca. 1970, Findlay, OH
Lives and works in Sarasota, FL
Through documentary style portraiture and embellished narratives, the Imbroglio and L’Avouterie series depict dissonant and shifting points of view in reflection—with twisted and conflicted virtues and burdens. The Imbroglio series furthers a preoccupation with the elusive, dynamic, and translucent properties of smoke and silver mirroring while L’Avouterie wrestles with the insecurities of porcelain, a seemingly pure and strong, yet vulnerable substance. Each smoke-rendered subject is present, yet avoidant, inviting close inspection before dissolving and reemerging amidst shifting color flourishes and fleeting transparent and reflective grounds. Clarity and resolution are dependent on position, perspective, proximity, and engagement. The smoke and mirroring processes balance both accident with control and intend to give permanence to the ephemeral. Both processes involve directly permitting or preventing accumulation by indirectly encouraging or discouraging the flow of smoke and silver on the surface. Through the collection, corruption, assemblage, and mechanical activation of found, second-hand ceramic, porcelain, plaster, and chalkware tchotchkes, the L’Avouterie flings precious figurines into unfortunate circumstances and wobbly narratives. These once cherished curios are debased, preserved and adulterated with talc, wool, lights, motors, fine flatware, and rabbity guises.
Over the past 15 years, Rob Tarbell has been recognized for creating and developing unorthodox processes involving the indirect manipulation of the material properties inherent to smoke and porcelain. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the United States and in Canada, Korea, China, and England. Tarbell’s work has been featured in Huffington Post UK, Daily Mail UK, Installation Magazine, New American Paintings, Studio Visit, 500 Ceramic Sculptures, and Ceramic Sculptures, plus the Kultura Zabaikalya in Transbaikalia, Siberia. Awards include: the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Visual Arts Fellowship, and residencies at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Amherst and Auvillar, France; Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest, IL; and the Hermitage Artist Retreat in Englewood, FL. Tarbell has taught foundations, fine art, and design at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA; James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA; and New College of Florida, Sarasota; and is currently a faculty member at Ringling College of Art and Design, Sarasota, FL.
Willow Wells
b. 1996, Middletown CT
Lives and works in Tampa, FL, and Boise, ID
Willow Wells represents the human body and nature with the objective of tangling them into a symbiotic form. She uses traditional fine-art techniques and takes visual and conceptual inspiration from the genre of body horror and its use of the metamorphosis narrative. Wells is particularly captivated by the feminine representation of the grotesque, a theme that pervades her artistic exploration. She uses intricacy to create artworks that present themselves as beautiful in order to entice viewers to look closer at the inherent grotesque subjects of her work. Through painting, drawing, and printmaking, Wells renders figures and plants into cohesive forms, meant to give the work a sense of “in-between” male and female, and plant and human. Wells addresses the act of metamorphosis as a tool to express things beyond verbal explanation. The body itself tells the story, exposing exterior and interior conflicts. Taking this narrative format and implementing it into other elements of visual culture as well as art history, she hopes to further the conversation around the fluidity of gender, sex, and the constriction of binaries.
Willow Wells is a New Englander, born in Middletown, CT. She draws inspiration from the haunting beauty of old cemeteries and folklore. These influences have shaped her into an artist who delves into the realm of symbolism. Wells uses painting, drawing, printmaking, and animation to communicate ideas that transcend verbal expression. In her creations, the metamorphic journey becomes a visual language, inviting viewers to engage with and reflect upon the nuanced complexities of the human experience. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts in Old Lyme, CT, where she studied the figure as well as traditional techniques. She then received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of South Florida, Tampa, where she began employing the concepts within the genre of body horror to unravel the narrative of metamorphosis, resulting in figures seamlessly merging with botanical elements. While at USF, she worked with Graphicstudio to learn the process of reduction printmaking, bringing fresh color into her work. Wells will begin teaching in the drawing department of Boise State University, Idaho, in fall of 2024.
Kirk Ke Wang
b. 1961, Shanghai, China
Lives and works in Tampa, FL, and New York, NY
This work is a research project inspired by a street sign for Gim Gong Road, which Kirk Ke Wang recently discovered near his neighborhood in Oldsmar, FL. It’s named The Citrus Wizard to honor Asian American Lue GimGong (1857-1925) for his contribution to the orange-growing industry in Florida 110 years ago. Wang read many homages to GimGong’s achievements as a hardworking, talented horticulturalist. However, upon further research, he is fascinated by GimGong’s life stories as a 14-year-old immigrant laborer, an adopted son to a white American mother, a man escaped from a heterosexual marriage arranged by his family, a lonely soul outcast from his fellow countrymen, and a life of loving flowers and pet roosters. Wang tries to investigate his character as a young man, perplexed by his desire and sexual orientation, which was forbidden by the society of his time, ignored by historians, misled by writers in books like Ruthanne Lum McCunn’s Wooden Fish Songs (2007). Through colorful flowers, layers of rhizomes, images of deities, and an Asian young man, Wang celebrates the life of a lost Asian American legend, to open a dialogue reexamining current politics on LGBTQ+ rights, alternative sexual orientations, immigration, and history taught in public schools.
Kirk Ke Wang received MFA degrees from the Nanjing Normal University in China and University of South Florida, Tampa, FL. He is a Professor of Visual Arts at Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, FL, and an educational software developer. He is also currently serving as board member for the Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL, and the Public Art Committee of the City of Tampa, FL. Wang has exhibited his art in galleries, nonprofit institutions, and museums locally, nationally, and internationally, including MoMA PS1 in New York, NY; National Museum of Art of China in Beijing, China; Dr. Sun Yat-Sen National Gallery of Taiwan in Taipei; Polk Museum of Art in Lakeland, FL; Tampa Museum of Art, FL; Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL; and University of Southern Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa. His works have been collected by museums, galleries, and private collectors in the US and Asia, including the National Gallery in Beijing, China. Wang was awarded the bronze medal by the Cultural Ministry of China, and he is also the recipient of numerous grants and awards from institutions such as the National Endowment for the Arts, Freeman Foundation, Ford Foundation, National Asian Network, and Florida Arts Council. Wang maintains studios in Tampa and New York City.
Corinne Zepeda
b. 1997, Naples, FL
Lives and works in Tampa, FL
Corinnne Zepeda thinks of her work as an expressive collection of herself, including her cultural, political, and social background. The artist strives to bring important topics to the forefront through visual storytelling. Her recent work showcases both Indigenous imagery and important social issues through traditional and modern media. She states: “I enjoy mixing more traditional mediums, such as beadwork, with modern social issues, to create a cohesive piece of art. I hope to inspire more Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth to keep their traditions and stories alive through art and its potential applications.”
Tampa-based Seminole artist Corinne Zepeda grew up in Naples, Florida, with her multicultural family. Zepeda’s skills have either been self-taught or learned from watching family members. Her passion for art comes from seeing her father, Brian Zepeda, tackling many forms of art when she was a young child. She creates works of various media, including digital art, beadwork, textiles, basketry, and doll-making, all of which tell a different story. Zepeda’s works have been exhibited at the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, Clewiston, FL; Collier County Museum, Naples, FL; Museum History Ft. Lauderdale, FL; The Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL; and most recently at the Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens in Winter Park, FL.