New Times Best Art Exhibition: (Un)Common Traces at ActivistArtistA Gallery

NEW TIMES!

ActivistArtistA Gallery Exhibition Wins! 

Best Art Exhibition Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach 2014 - "(Un)Common Traces"

To Ecuador and Back (Un)Common Traces! Best Exhibition 2014

"For building bridges among cultures and among South Florida arts communities, 

"(Un)Common Traces" was unmatched."

Read all about it here: Best Exhibition 2014

What an honor!! Thank You New Times Staff and Writers!!
Last year we had the honor of being selected as Best Art Walk 2013, this year we have been honored with Best Art Exhibition 2014. I cannot tell you how thrilled we are with this news.
As a member of Art Synergy and a part of the Palm Beach County Art Galleries it is nothing less then a privildge to curate and create art and cultural programs for the Boynton Beach Art District in the City of Boynton Beach and Palm Beach County Arts. South Florida Arts are now recognized in our county because  the quality and perseverence of our students and emerging artists.
Special Thanks Fire Ant for a great review of this exhibition! Go to:

New Times!

Projects, Emerging Artists Collective, Descends on Boynton Beach by Fire Ant

Artist and arts impresario Rolando Chang Barrero has another lively show opening this weekend at his Boynton Beach exhibition space, ActivistArtistA Gallery. (Un)Common Traces is a fresh effort by four artists from Dwelling Projects, a Dade County artists' collective. FULL STORY

http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/countygrind/2013/10/dwelling_projects_a_wandering.php

Related story:

To Ecuador and back: 

Artists to unveil new vision

Thank you Jan Engoren, Sun Sentinel!

 SunSentinel REVIEW
Rolando Chang Barrero, ActivistArtistA Gallery Curator.

New Times! "Fire Ant" Reports: BBAD Got Bitch-Slapped !

New Times 

Boynton Beach Live: Arts District Bounces Back From Flood Damage

Ali Miranda

Boynton Beach Live Tonight: 

Thursday, February 20, 2014 | 7-11 PM

410-422 West Industrial Ave.,

Boynton Beach, Florida 33426

786-521-1199

FREE

Bitch-slapped by the 100-year flood of last January, the intrepid artists and entrepreneurs of the Boynton Beach Art District are back on their feet again and ready to roll. To celebrate, they're hosting an art walk tomorrow night including live music, live painting and fire dance.

See also:
- Best Art Walk Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach 2013

Located in a low-lying industrial district just west of the FEC railroad tracks off I-95, the BBAD's storage bays and workspaces were especially vulnerable to the nearly two feet of rain that came down January 10. The district's residents lost an estimated $60,000 of equipment, materials, and irreplaceable art to the flood.

The local community's response to the disaster was "moving, overwhelming," according to Rolando Chang Barrero, whose ActivistArtistA Gallery is the district's spark plug. "Almost every artist I know kicked in $20 or so to help out," he told New Times. "The vendors at our events held a fundraiser at Respectable Street. Local businessman Glen Pearce donated $900!"

The money raised so far -- nearly $2000 -- has been set aside to replace the BBAD's sound equipment. (They're using borrowed equipment tomorrow.) A March 2 benefit (details to follow) is slated to raise funds for computers and a/c. The art that was lost, that's gone with the wet. "I held a waterlogged fire sale," Barrero told us. "Sold damaged pieces off for $10 each."

"We went from flood to festival in one week," Barrero said. "The Art al'Fresco show went on as planned. With the art walk tomorrow, we're fully back."

Tomorrow night's musical headliner is J.C. Dwyer, lead singer and guitarist with Lake Worth's Mobile Homies, self-described "Rockers who grew up on country and got sick of hearing the glitzy crap that passes for country these days and decided, 'Zoddammit, we gotta do something about this!'"

Working the turntables will be DJ Thought, of Smooth Bounce Entertainment. Slinging paint in real time will be multi-media threat Craig McInnis. The Philosofires performance troupe will set the night alight with fire dance, hula hoop, and belly dance. The show must go on.

Boynton Beach Live. 7 to 11 p.m., Thursday, February 20, 422 West Industrial Ave.,
Boynton Beach

Fire Ant -- an invasive species, tinged bright red, with an annoying, sometimes-fatal sting -- covers politics, activism, the environment and culture in Palm Beach County and elsewhere. Got feedback or a tip? Contact Fire.Ant@BrowardPalmBeach.com.

New Times! Palm Beach Artists Unite....Shop Creative Saturday!

Ian Witlen

New Times! 

Palm Beach Artists Unite for "Shop Small, Shop Creative Saturday"

In an example of ethical consumerism, and aligned with the same thinking that fires the locavore movement, two of Palm Beach County's most visible alternative arts entrepreneurs are urging aesthetically adventurous, socially conscious holiday shoppers to "Shop Small, Shop Creative" this Saturday. They ask we patronize "the various art hubs, shops, districts, and galleries that promote emerging artists."

See also: ActivistArtistA Celebrates Two Years of Art and Fun with Three Days of Art and Fun

Shop Small is the brainchild of Boynton Beach artist/gallerist Rolando Chang Barrero and Lake Worth artist/gallerist Jacques de Beaufort. 

It involves open houses at Barrero's ActivistArtistA Gallery Saturday afternoon and de Beaufort's Unit 1 that evening, including a nightcap of live local music from Delray Beach's Smith Sundy, in an acoustic set, and Lake Worth's electronica-oriented Astrea Corporation.

See also: Smith Sundy's Music Is Inspired by "Outer Space"
Astrea Corporation Points Out, "You Can't Roll a Spliff on an MP3"

Acting under the umbrella of the Florida Arts Association (applying for 501(c)3 status, and which Barrero hopes will grow into "a statewide resource for emerging artists") Shop Small also touts Vape Trends (Delray Beach), Spot Coffee (Delray Beach), Art-Sea Living(Boynton Beach), The Glass Mermaid (Boynton Beach), Coastars Coffee (Lake Worth), and Harold's Coffee (West Palm Beach), all of which will be open and featuring the work of local artists.

Barrero has committed to price the work at his gallery at half off usual prices, with similar bargains from the many resident artists adjoining his space in the Boynton Beach Arts District. He says "a good deal" of work on display there and at Unit 1 will go for $25 to $50, with nothing priced more than $500.

De Beaufort denounced the prohibitively high prices of most art and "the architecture of suburbia" for its inability to support local artists. In a Shop Small manifesto of sorts he wrote:

Think of it this way, if you don't have the requisite $142 million to buy a Francis Bacon triptych, there's probably going to be a drawing or collage with bacon in it...or at least some sort of depiction of an animal to buy, and probably for around $142 dollars or less. And lots of people at the show will like Bacon, I mean who doesn't?

Shop Small Shop Creative. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., on Saturday, December 14, at ActivistArtistA Gallery, 422 West Industrial Ave., Boynton Beach, 7 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. at UNIT 1, 1202 Lucerne Ave., Lake Worth. Visit activistartista.com.

Fire Ant -- an invasive species, tinged bright red, with an annoying, sometimes-fatal sting -- covers Palm Beach County. Got feedback or a tip? Contact Fire.Ant@BrowardPalmBeach.com.

Thank you SE!

New Times: Art and Culture Review and Photos of (Un)Common Traces Opening Reception

Cultural Council of Palm Beach: 

Call for Nominations for prestigious 2014 Muse Awards Due November 15th, 2013.

Please consider ActivistArtistA Gallery/ Rolando Chang Barrero for: 
Outstanding Collaboration withThe City of Boynton Beach in the developement of the Boynton Beach Art District and contributuitions to the arts in Palm Beach County.

Outstanding Festival for KeroWACKED ART and MUSIC Festival 2013and The Boynton Beach Art District Art Walk (awarded Best Art Walk 2013), both of which were recognized by the press and the public, as new refreshing and vibrant.
.
http://activistartista.blogspot.com/2013/10/cultural-council-of-palm-beach-call-for.html

NEW TIMES REVIEW:

Arts & Culture

Dwelling Projects, a Wandering Artists Collective, Descends on Boynton Beach

By Fire Ant Fri., Oct. 4 2013 at 11:15 AM

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Categories: Arts & Culture

The artist and arts impresario Rolando Chang Barrero hosts another interesting diversion this weekend at his Boynton Beach exhibition space, ActivistArtistA Gallery, with the opening of (Un)Common Traces, a fresh effort from the Dade County-based artists' collective Dwelling Projects. Four of the group's core members have come to Barrero's venue to reflect on their recent visit to Ecuador, where they spent 4 weeks immersed the Andean nation's artisanship and culture.

Spread throughout three bays of Barrero's compound -- a collection of what were formerly industrial storage and workspaces -- the works are in media including photography, video, pen-and-ink, charcoal, found objects assemblage, and fiber.

The bay labeled "Ephemera" offers the most direct documentation of the four artists' Ecuadorean experience, with a totem of travelers' gear -- shoes, backpacks, blankets -- delicate drawings by Sofia Bastidas, and two walls of photography. Some photos are from their time at La Factoria, an ecologically aware craft and design center on the Pacific coast, where they absorbed and played on the methods of local crafts. Others are from their stay at a private home in the highlands.

A second bay, unnamed, contains individual pieces by two others of the group. Andres Ramirez shows a flair for abstraction from nature in a video and more photography. Eddy Peñafiel's mixed media work of video, floorboards, and feathers is a very clever play on the "hunt-and-peck" method of typewriting.

A full other bay is taken up by Nathalie Alfonso's untitled installation piece in which immense spools of burlap are draped from the space's ceiling and uncoiled across the floor, with a long stretch of charcoal markings on paper along three walls of the room. The implications are deeply political, the burlap referencing the bags of commodities on which so much of the Ecuadorian economy relies. The charcoal markings mimic the housecleaning work Alfonso does to support herself as an emerging artist. It's a thoughtful, imposing, provocative piece.

The four artists in the show are just a small cohort from the Dwelling Spaces group, which grew out of the arts program at Florida International University. The group's membership is floating and elastic, up to two dozen individuals at one point, all from Latin American backgrounds. Just two years along, the group's early shows were held in private homes and other unorthodox spaces. Their improvisatory, socially conscious spirit is a fine match for Barrero's wild and wooly enterprise.

(Un)Common Traces, 7 p.m., Friday, October 4th thru the 25th, at ActivistArtistA Gallery/Studio, 422 West Industrial Ave., Boynton Beach.

Fire Ant -- an invasive species, tinged bright red, with an annoying, sometimes-fatal sting -- covers Palm Beach County. Got feedback or a tip? Contact Fire.Ant@BrowardPalmBeach.com.

More photos....