Local Art Talent Shines at Frost's South Florida Cultural Consortium Exhibit

Francie Bishop Good

Monica and Sienna, Fort Lauderdale

​For more than two decades, the South Florida Cultural Consortium has been a trend guru, recognizing local artists who are leaving deep footprints. Each year the alliance awards $7,500 to $15,000 grants to top talent in the Sunshine State. It also offers winners of the juried South Florida Cultural Consortium Visual and Media Artists Fellowship the opportunity to exhibit their opuses in area museums.

Two thousand ten was a bumper year for homegrown creative types, says Klaudio Rodriguez, assistant curator at the Frost Art Museum, which hosts the Cultural Consortium's exhibit opening this Wednesday. On display are close to 30 works ranging from "the profound to the mundane and everything in between," Rodriguez says.

Friends With You

Red and White Spirit

"It runs the gamut from drawings to photography, painting, video, installation, sculpture and even an artist who is presenting an alter ego she has created on the internet," Rodriguez adds. The year's crop of Consortium geniuses at the Frost include: Cooper, Michael Genovese, Francie Bishop Good, Nolan Haan, Sibel Kocabasi, Beatriz Monteavaro, Glexis Novoa, Jonathan Rockford, Bert Rodriguez, FriendsWithYou, TM Sisters and Tonietta Walters.

"There are definitely some names local art followers will recognize but also some fresh faces like Rockford who has crocheted a skateboard for this show and Haan who paints hyper-realistic images of bricks that are amazing that give a great indicator to the level of talent emerging here," Rodriguez adds.

Sibel Kocabasi

Your Mother

Kocabasi is an artist originally from Turkey who is based in Palm Beach," Rodriguez says. "She creates these tiny 6x6 inch, jewel-like paintings representing the relationships between humans and animals at times referencing her relatives as donkeys or apes."

The curator says Miami's Bert Rodriguez found himself strapped for exhibition space and created a site-specific piece for the show that effectively ironed out the kinks.

"Bert's solution was to come up with a work titled The Frost Art Museum (Detail), which is basically a magnifying glass attached to a bare wall you use to look at an amplified empty space. It is very tongue-in-cheek and the artist leaves you wondering whose tongue, whose cheek"?

See the South Florida Cultural Consortium exhibit this Wednesday through August 21 at the Frost Art Museum (10975 SW 17th Street, Miami). Admission is free. Call 305-348-2890 or visit thefrost.fiu.edu.

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