This is the 39th year that the Alliance for the Arts has organized its "All Florida Exhibition." As the name implies, it features work by artists from across the state, but of the 441 submissions, only 49 were accepted by jurors Tim Yaeger and Barbara Hill for inclusion in the show. Barbara Hill gives this overview of what viewers will find when they visit the Alliance.
“There’s tremendous excitement about the quality and the diversity of the work in this exhibition,” said Hill. “Even though there were several award winners, there’s not one piece in this entire exhibition that is not award-worthy. It’s really a remarkably good show. There’s a diversity of image. There’s a diversity of discipline. There’s incredible variety in terms of scale. We have some works that are seven feet tall, which is the sculpture that wound up being best of show … and then we have, of course, some smaller, more intimate works.”
While "All Florida" references the fact that all of the artists chosen for the exhibit live and work in Florida, a number of the artworks on display depict typical Florida scenes such as beaches, birds and Florida flora. But the exhibition, overall, features the wide array of subjects and themes that weigh on the minds and hearts of Florida-based artists.
“For me, when I was selecting these works, it was based on works that were non-traditional,” Hill said. “There were works here that were dealing with issues of 21st century culture …. But I don’t believe there’s an overall theme. If anything, it just shows the breadth of the expression that these artists are exploring.”
The 39th Annual "All Florida Exhibition" is on view at the Alliance for the Arts through March 29.
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While Tim Yaeger and Barbara Hill have been involved in the art scene for decades and know many of the state’s best and most renowned artists, they based their selections on digital images that do not indicate who the artist is. This blind judging process is designed to eliminate favoritism from the selection process. In fact, the jurors did not know the names of the artists they chose for the exhibition until the exhibition’s opening night reception.
This year’s All Florida artists are Denise Andresen, Stacie Becker, Barbara Bose, Steven Bradbury, Marc Brechwald, Autumn Britton, Amy Broderick, Joan Carew, Sharon Crute, Kevin Curry, Summer DeSalvo, Patricia Esposito, Sherry Fonseth-Lais, Todd K Fox, Viktor Genel, Shah Hadjebi, NC Hagood, Paulie Hernandez, Robert Jinkins, Christine Knize, Sandy Lerman, Zan Lombardo, Forrest MacDonald, Leah Mendez, Anne-Lise Merchant, Julie Obney, Raquel Pantin, Efi Perez, Creighton Phillips, Rick Plummer, Leeann Rae, Nadine Saitlin, Carole Schnitzer, JL Schwartz, Tom Scicluna, Mei Shibata, Jean Shon, Steven Strenk, Alice Sundstrom, Wendy Wagner Campbell, Freida Wallach, Lynne Wesolowski and Patricia Zalisko.
Yaeger and Hill chose Viktor Genel’s “MeconoMorph Tree of Life” as best of show. Genel claims that he “deutilizes” things. “Everything ever created by humans is art,” he once said. “It’s just difficult living conditions that made them disguise this great art as useful practical objects, without even realizing it.”
Nowhere is this truer than with business cards. “Their true essence is under a dark cloud of pragmatic use. Their real meaning is to be tiny portals of people’s most dearest dreams and desires.” So he uses them to create mecons, or perfectly-packed bricks that come to life in his towering sculptures such as “Tree of Life.”
During a tour of the exhibition for this story, Hill stopped at a work titled “Retool Window,” by Tom Scicluna of Miami.
“This work is very linear, and actually he configured and reinterpreted window frames, which I thought was a very fresh idea,” Hill explained.
Hill found Freida Wallace’s complex and content-packed wall hanging, “Border 6,” the most intriguing work in the 39th "All Florida Exhibition" because of its numerous associations and layers of interpretation.
“This piece was awarded second place,” said Hill. “It really is more of a grid. It refers to housing developments and cookie-cutter housing developments.”
Each of the 225 grids in “Border 6” contains an individually painted mouse and complimentary painting. “There are a lot of wonderful symbolic references here, not only with how the mice are patterned, but also some of the other references are quite symbolic and powerful,” Hill observed. “Yet, there’s a certain sameness and formality to the overall composition.”
Hill’s next stop was at a painting by Miami artist Leah Mendez titled “Banana Phone.”
“I loved this work because of its reference to mid-century modern connotation to the '50s, the rollers in her hair, the bubble bath and the banana serving as the phone,” said Hill. “It’s outrageous, it’s absurd and it’s fun, and her face is quite remarkable in that it shows a certain contentedness in the situation that she’s in. So you can almost put yourself there.”
Both the banana and the plastic duck have storied references in the realm of art. Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan created a viral sensation in 2019 when he sold a banana duct-taped to a wall for $120,000. But that was small potatoes because a third edition of the artwork recently sold at Sotheby’s auction in New York for $6.24 million to Justin Sun, a Chinese collector and founder of a cryptocurrency platform.
Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman has also created quite a stir with his series of giant floating yellow rubber duck sculptures which have appeared in cities worldwide from Amsterdam and Sao Paolo to Hong Kong and Sydney Harbour.
Hill next paused at a “lovely painting” of an Ocala horse farm by artist Sharon Crute titled “Distractions” and a graphite “very academic and traditional” drawing of a woman by Tampa artist Marc Brechwald.
Hill was especially enamored of Forrest MacDonald’s “Jamie at the Barnes, Room 2,”which received a Juror’s choice award from Tim Yaeger.
“It was a close second for me as well,” Hill said. “It is actually an artwork where the artist depicts being inside the Barnes Collection Gallery. He’s depicted the paintings on the wall, the actual installation of the gallery itself, and the people who are enjoying the artwork or even taking photo images of it, maybe looking at the brochure. But then you look again, and these people are all in knee-high water. What is that all about? That’s sort of startling to say, ‘My goodness, what is going on here?’ Of course, the artist is not going to provide the answer. It’s up to the viewer to determine.”
For Florida-based viewers, there might be a temptation to ascribe the water to storm surge or flooding, but the Barnes Foundation is actually located in Philadelphia.
“For me, the beauty of contemporary art is that it conjures up many more questions than it provides the answers to,” Hill added.
Since 2005, Barbara Hill has provided advisory services to emerging, mid-career and established visual artists throughout the United States, assisting artists in identifying and achieving personal career goals. Hill also provides consulting services to municipalities, nonprofit cultural organizations and collectors in the Southwest Florida region and beyond.
Hill has more than 30 years’ professional experience in executive positions for Florida’s leading cultural institutions. She also serves as an independent curator, juror, grant writer, collections manager and educator. She is founding member of the Barrier Island Group for the Arts and the Florida Association of Public Art Professionals, which recently honored Hill with emeritus board status.
Tim Jaeger, originally from Paducah, Kentucky, earned his Bachelor of Arts from Ringling College of Art and Design in 2002 as a Trustee Scholar. For over 25 years, he’s maintained a studio in Sarasota, participating in exhibitions across several states and countries, receiving awards such as an artist residency and fellowship in France and the arts leadership award in Sarasota.
Alongside his studio work, Jaeger serves as director and chief curator of galleries and exhibitions at Ringling College of Art + Design, and is an art instructor, husband, and father of two. Jaeger’s recent works are gestural constructions about observing and understanding a subject/object and giving it a new abstract, material body. The work is created through a process involving an application consisting of a variety of mediums and materials, which create a familiar union brought to life through the equality of elements, patterns, and design.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.