Pat Greene is Bungalower Media’s first sponsored Resident Reporter. Greene has joined our team as our Arts and Culture Correspondent for the next quarter, supported by the efforts of Interstruct Design + Build, an award-winning Orlando-based design and build firm.
Artists constantly ask me where to find affordable studio space in Orlando, and I usually can help point them in the right direction. Still, it has become more challenging to answer in recent years.
Queue United Arts stepping in with a solution. United Arts of Central Florida (Website) and Highwoods Properties (Website) have joined forces to provide studio spaces to five artists, demonstrating a collaborative approach to supporting the arts.
Highwoods has donated office space that has been converted into artist studios, and they’re all visible from the street. Walking by the studios and their floor-to-ceiling windows, pedestrians and passersby can see the artists doing their work.
The project is called Spark The Arts and the featured artists right now are Gisela Romero, Damon Dewitt, Oritt Reuben, Jokeeta Savariau, and David Wheeler.
I have worked with most of these artists. They all deserve this opportunity.
Romero (Website) is someone that I’ve worked with a few times and she is not only exceptionally talented but also a joy to work with. Her primary medium is drawing. Earlier this year, she had a brilliant solo exhibition at the Maitland Art Center (Website). Her work is primarily textiles and it usually tells stories of immigration and its relationship to uprooting families. She was born in Venezuela and received her MFA from Pratt.
The new studios are located at 300 S. Orange Avenue, Suite 150 [GMap]
Friday and Saturday, September 6 and 7, FAVO (Website) will host its monthly exhibition and community open house. The opening times are between 5 and 9 p.m. I’ve written about FAVO, (Faith Arts Village Orlando), consisting of several Googie-style (Googie Architecture) hotel rooms built in the 1950s.
Each room of the former hotel has been converted into a gallery. There are a lot of varieties of art. Each room is a different experience.
I’m also excited about some upcoming exhibits at the Orlando Museum of Art, both of which open on Saturday, September 21.
Torn Apart is an exhibition of Andrew Krivine’s (Website) punk rock graphics, Malcolm Garrett’s (Website) collections of Vivienne Westwood’s (Website) fashion, and Sheila Rock’s (Website) photography. Raymond Pettibon’s work with SST records, Jamie Reid (Website), and others are also included. SST was a Los Angeles record label formed in the late 70s by Greg Ginn of Black Flag. Pettibon (Website) was commonly referenced with Henry Rollins (Website) and Black Flag, but Pettibon has become an art superstar in his own right.
I wonder if these people who likely worked with little or no budget at the beginning of their careers ever thought they would be in museum collections.
J. Grant Brittain’s (Website) skateboard photography from the late 70s and 80s will be featured in the PUSH exhibition (Website). Brittain is one of the most widely recognized and influential skateboard photographers of the moment and has mentored dozens of skateboarders and photographers from around the world during his career.
This will be the first time his work has ever been shown in a museum exhibition retrospective.
These two shows are full of nostalgia and examine the influence of punk rock and skateboard culture on contemporary life.
