Salty Eggs on Gallery!

“Journalist/Voyeur” Opens Friday at ActivistArtistA Gallery

• by Terra Sullivan
• on March 22, 2012
• in Art, Happenings, Photography
• Leave a comment

“Most journalists are restless voyeurs who see the warts on the world, the imperfections in people and places. Gloom is their game, the spectacle their passion, normality their nemesis.” — Gay Talese

Some days, the journalist serves his or her calling’s highest purpose: informing the public about wartime struggles and corporate corruption, or documenting the senseless shooting death of an unarmed Florida teen by a neighborhood watch volunteer.

Then there are the not-so-banner days – when the journalists of the 24-hour news cycle offer little more than celebrity mental breakdowns, 911 calls to tell police that Burger King is out of lemonade, and breaking news coverage on the demise of Kim Kardashian’s and Kris Humphries’ nuptials.

The split personality of the journalist as both careful informer and insatiable voyeur is one that has been debated at length both on air and in the public sphere. This split is now also the inspiration behind ActivistArtistA Gallery’s latest installation “Journalist/Voyeur: The Work of Jonathan Dvoretz and Michael Herb,” which opens Friday. To coincide with the Boynton Beach’s Artwalk, show curator and Gallery owner Rolando Chang Barrero wanted to show the “tension between the two roles of the journalist.” So he selected two photographers to play with the idea. Michael Herb brings the more newsy part of the equation with a series called Project 365, for which Herb took one picture a day for an entire year. Many of  these days included chasing down and documenting events from San Francisco to Florida. Photographer Jonathan Dvoretz, on the other hand, brings in the more playful and voyeuristic side of photography, working mostly in commercial, fashion, editorial, and advertising.

The show opens 6 p.m. Friday and continues through April with a special roundtable discussion with Palm Beach Post reporter Lona O’Connor on April 5.

Where: ActivistArtistA Gallery (422 W. Industrial Ave., Boynton Beach)
When: 6 p.m. Friday, March 23
Price: Free
Contact: http://activistartista.blogspot.com/

Artists Get Shot at Art District

For Immediate Release:

Saturday February 11, 2013 at 4 PM
ActivistArtistA Gallery 422 West Industrial Ave., Boynton Beach, FL

The Largest Artist Photo Shoot will take place in Boynton Beach!

This documentary event will record all the participants who have donated their time and effort to bringing awareness to the Boynton Beach Arts District through their involvement in the KeroWACKED: Homage to Jack Event which is scheduled to take place on Sunday, February 26^th 2012.

Come meet the artists who support your city!

The photograph will be styled by ActivistArtistA Director, Rolando Chang Barrero

The Image will be photographed by, acclaimed photographer and videographer, Andrew Colton of 3^rd Day Video Production.

You are invited to see history being recoreded.

Join us and experience a preview of the artists and musicians who will create KereoWACKED!

The image will use the ActivistArtistA Bay Gates as a background.

Here is the list of participants:

Andrew Ackerman

Rolando Chang Barrero
Alan Burgess
Valyn Calhoun
Paul Caprio
Jamaal Clark
Kris Delgado
Kim Fay
Leslie D. Grossman
Alexia Heminway
The KWAK
Jen Locane
Lorraine Marks
Elio Mercado
Chan Shepherd
Paul Slater
Thomas McAvoy
Joshua Von Noon

Shayne Pilpel
Brock Lambert
David Orozco
Sebastian Perez
Asa Hochhauser

Lea Vendetta

Waveframe

The M(e)yers Trilogy
The Loxahatchee Sinners
Behold the Wolf 
Teri Catlin
Al Kush
Tonto Goldberg
Steve Minotti
Teri Catlin Shandra Hurt
{in Boxes}
LMNOP
Mike Mineo

New Times Review: 20 years ago!

Recently bumping into an old friend, we began to chat about the "old days," we had a good laugh and recalled good-times.  Then we talked about the future. A future that included the possibility of creating something special for this generation.  The basic formula is there, people's desires don't change to much, we still like art, we still like to dress up, we still want to be part of, not apart from.

I trust that in time ActivistArtistA will remain dynamic enough to embrace this generation, and the next, while borrowing from the last few decades-all that was good, leaving the rest behind,

Yesterday the News Times reviewed ActivistArtistA's Art Walk 2012. Mickie Centrone wrote a very complimentary article, as always, we are grateful for the press.  I have never discounted the power of the press to engage, challenge, and provoke thought-in this we share common goals.  

Below is reprint of an article published almost exactly 20 years ago.

 New Times was there, as it is now.

Swelter

This is a reprint 

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1992-02-05/news/swelter/

A A ACommentsWednesday, Feb 5 1992

Performance art. It's brilliant, irritating, verging on the psychotic, irony-clogged stuff that neatly dissects the angst of the modern metropolis. Or maybe it's just television: Short, brutish, nasty, lots of jump cuts, kind of like real life but with better production values. It's Laurie, it's Mary, it's celebrity parties as guerrilla theater, performance pieces whose sole artistic function is to provoke envy and nausea. Clubs that open and close in milliseconds, nights that go awry, a devotion to personality as art form that would have shamed Oscar Wilde.

It's places where worlds collide. Miami Mensual's Richard "Mr. Wonderful" Perez-Feria, this week's winner of the glamarati-bearing-celebrities awards, on the La Dolce Vida beat with Gloria Estefan, Joan Collins, and of all people, Edward Villella, whooping it up at Victor's Cafe. Better yet, yacht cruises and late-night Burger King take-out with Hollywood mogul David Geffen andKevin Sessums of Vanity Fair. Other celeb worlds, like serious actors James Spader, Robert DeNiro, and Johnny Depp happily stomping around the Beach. Lee Radziwill, in the shadows of mega-glamour, having dinner at The Strand. Designer Gianni Versace, back again for moreWarsaw high jinks. Ivana Trump at the Doral Saturnia, surgically superior, pleasant enough even when surrounded by the less rich.

Former downtown cult figure Laurie Anderson moving way uptown, being feted amid the mega-Eighties splendors of the International Place sky lobby, the world spread out prettily below. Her Miami Light Project performance earlier at Gusman an interesting counterpoint to General H. Norman Schwarzkopf wowing the Temple Emanu-El troops at TOPA, with lots of insights about the Gulf War ("It was a cut-rate video production that was almost as dangerous to win as it would have been to lose") and everything else. The culturati nation trekking out for the summit gathering - people like new music impresario Steve Nestor, Mitch Kaplan of Books & Books, publicist Charlie Cinnamon - also getting a heavy dollop of Anderson's easily digestible songs and videos, as well as fey-beyond-belief patter: "The laugh track, the Greek chorus of American life.... Is it `artistic attitudes presented in an unappetizing manner?' With Bush, it's like nothing is important and everything you ever worried about is happening on Mars...a Fellini party that's gone horribly, tragically wrong."

Fortunately , nothing went horribly wrong at Acting Out: Seven Unspeakable Acts - the debut of the Island Club's new Wednesday-only performance art series "Lower East Side of the Beach" - and there were just enough jokes and psychoses. Master of ceremonies Matthew Owens, simulating a clown corpse, working the death-humor angle: "There's nothing more attractive than a disaster." Producer Joanne Butcher, wrapped in paper, beating on drums, engaged in Silence/Speech/Writing. An unappetizing artistic attitude screaming, "I want to murder what's already dead." Erotic dancer Rick Cockerell. 
Roly Chang-Barrero doing a heartfelt reading from the work of Reinaldo Arenas. The Goods, rock band/performance artists, presenting Five Steps to Getting Signed: An Operatic Parable About Patience. Club regular Yoda looking confused. My number-one fan on a downtown frolic, posing the impossible existential question: "What are you doing here?" Overseeing it all, the very likable Island Club co-owner, Tom Bellucci: "South Beach just never stops. There's no real season here like the Hamptons. The party goes on all year long. I'll tell you, it really tests the mettle of people."

Fave rave and performance art pro Mary Luft, of Tigertail Productions, presenting a selection from "Passarela," part of her Stories from Miami and South America. Readings from real immigration forms, tales of life in our fair hemisphere: "Of all the things I've lost in my life, it's my mind I miss the most.... In Brazil the people are poor and beautiful, and art is everywhere. Living in Miami has taught me that art is meaningless and people won't come if it's in the wrong neighborhood."

And more art/nonart mettle-testers happening all the time, in all the right and wrong neighborhoods. A dinner at Northern Trust Bank to kick off the 30th annual Miracle Ball for theSt. Jude's Children's Research Hospital - Anthony Abraham, singer Julie Budd, et al. - coming to a ballroom near you February 15. Another new Miami City Ballet production. The unveiling of Mariana's, "Miami Beach's Most Intimate New Restaurant," last week. The grand opening of the aptly named Gallery of the Unknown Artists last Friday night. A kickoff party at Barocco Beach restaurant on the same night for the Miami Chapter of the City of Hope National AIDS Research Center, which will be taking part in the upcoming nationwide exercise party, the Workout for Hope '92 benefit. Aerobics against AIDS: push, push, stretch those thighs. The right people stretching: local chairperson Cheryl Patella, committee member Sherri Krassner, national chairperson Kirk Prais. Weird kind of modern symmetry to the whole thing.

In the fashionable world, the first semi-symmetrical Avenue A party of the season at Les Violins. Miami Rocks Vol. 4. The Thursday-only party "4AD" at the Patio on Eighth Street. Something called "Metro" club in Fort Lauderdale - "live kickboxing, four ladies nites," and God knows what else. "A Kick Off Jam for Jamaikin Me Krazy Night" at the Roxy, also in Fort Lauderdale. Ah, Broward County. "Bohemian Artist Night" at Sencle's on Mondays, dinner for five dollars and exhibitions by artists like Fernando Sucre and JP Pelletier-Troupet, and upcoming, Carlos Alves. "Cocktails and conversation with Interview magazine's Patrick McMullan," at the World Gallery, tomorrow night. The Ninth Miami Film Festival, opening February 7 with the Mambo Kings. And a juicy tidbit just out on the lesbo hot line - a female club-owner getting involved with her partner's ex-wife and being forced out.

Openings and closings, like the rapid semi-rise and ugly fall of 32 Grand in Coconut Grove. Ex-bartender Mark J. Vander Sande, among others, not happy about being owed back pay, writing an open letter/press release to partners Jimmy Asher of the Asher Insurance Group, Barney Kaufmanof Premier Films, Steve Kraus of International Cinema, Richard Abel of the Tropics Hotel, Peter Polo, and attorney Mark Singer. Real personal and real irate: "We do not take the fall if your business suffers.... Jimmy Asher told me, `I don't care.... This is a pimple on my ass, people take chances....' You are in violation of federal law." The other side not real happy either, according to Mark Singer: "Some money was missing and some staff was let go. These things happen in the bar and restaurant business." It's real life, not performance art, messy and not shapely at all. The kind of situation that calls for tough culture, like The Goods, with just the right dose of post-Sid Viciousness: "You Make Me Sick - Fuck you!

ART WALK 2012! Jan.26, 2012

ActivistArtistA Gallery presents....

Art Walk 2012 at the District! 

Palm Beach County's Art District in Boynton Beach!

We are located 1 block west of I95 off the Boynton Beach Blvd. exit

786.521.1199

Fun for all! Bring your family and friends!

For More information visit ActivistArtistA.com

The Boynton Beach Art in Public Places Expands Program!

ART IN PUBLIC PLACES includes Visits to The District!

Led by Debby Coles-Dobay and museum docent 

Lori J. Durante, the initial tour to The District was a success!

  The 20 members from the Vizcaya Country Club visited all the 

Studios and Gallery located at The District this past Monday.

Presentations were made at every stop and a question and answer period to help the guest acquire a 

rich and insightful view of the work and events happening on a regular basis. Given the experience and wealth of information of the studio artists, the tour fascinated and intrigued the guests! 

Enjoy the photographs of the event!

Photography by Debby Coles_Dobay, 

Public Art Administrator for the City of Boynton Beach