Brush to canvas: News from the art community

Now that’s a big chair.

Making its debut Saturday out in front of the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg (near the entrance, at 255 Beach Drive), Nuestra Silla may look like nothing more than a really tall red plastic chair.

Lucia Hierro.

It’s actually a stainless steel installation by New York-based conceptual artist Lucia Hierro. And it’s the artist’s first-ever public art sculpture, in keeping with her oeuvre, which is transforming familiar objects and imagery drawn from popular culture into art. Her work references pop art and Minimalism.

Nuestra Silla translates as “our chair,” and for Hierro, who’s of Dominican descent, the 7-foot-six-inch piece evokes the lively social world of local bodegas, where the ubiquitous plastic seat meant gathering, hospitality and community.

From the artist’s website: “By transforming an ordinary domestic object into towering sculptural form, Hierro draws attention to its cultural significance, elevating an object associated with gathering, leisure, and social connection into a monumental representation of Dominican life and identity in New York.”

New York’s Marc Straus Gallery exhibited a big blue chair, and a big green chair, both by Hierro, at the Armory Show last month in Manhattan’s Javitz Center.

Hierro will be at the MFA Saturday for a conversation with Amaris Castillo of St. Petersburg. A Brooklyn native and the daughter of Dominican immigrants, Castillo is the author of Bodega Stories, a book of stories about the people who orbit her parents’ bodega, the Orlando Latin Market in St. Pete.

The 11 a.m. talk, which is free with museum admission, will take place in the MFA’s Marly Room.

New at Sightline and Soft Water

Creative Pinellas’ Sightline Gallery at St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport has a new exhibit to greet incoming and outgoing passengers. Opening today, it spotlights two of St. Petersburg’s most reliably creative visual artists.

Duncan McClellan, “My Jungle.”

Paradise Found consists of nature-themed works by blown glass artist Duncan McClellan and painter Carrie Jadus. Curated by Maggie Duffy, the exhibit puts the spotlight on Jadus’ “Florida Girl” series, surrealist faces composed of native flora and fauna, and glass works by McClellan inspired by the garden world outside his 13,000 sq. ft. gallery, hot shop.

The new show at Jadus’ own Soft Water Gallery, Aloft: The Flying Fancies of Carla Poindexter, features a variety of works from a University of Central Florida professor of art whose imaginative acrylics (and more) range in size and execution from tiny to massive.

“Poindexter’s highly-imaginative work has a playful, almost childlike aesthetic, though at times the play comes with a slightly sharpened edge,” says Soft Water director Lisa Lippincott.

The gallery, on the Warehouse Arts District Arts Xchange campus, is open noon to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and Sundays noon until 4 p.m.

Carla Poindexter, “The Atomic Color Wheel of Our Youth.”

Coming up soon

The Old Southeast Artist Enclave Studio Tour, Oct. 24 (10 a.m.-4 p.m.), is a free, self-guided allowing visitors to wander through the neighborhood (one of only two official Art Enclaves in St. Petersburg), stepping into private studios, homes and gardens, and meeting the artists behind the work.

Tour maps will be available at the Chattaway, 358 22nd Avenue S.

Nov.12-15 will bring the inaugural Booker Creek Arts Festival, held throughout the EDGE District. The innovative idea is that the district itself will become an immersive art gallery,  throughout the district, with art hung on the walls of participating venues – boutiques, retail shops, restaurants, cafes, hotels and residential buildings. Additional arts-related activities are scheduled along Central Avenue.

Check the website (here) for additional information on this new initiative.

Please add us to your mailing list – send all press releases and event info to bi**@************st.com.

You can also submit your events to the Catalyst calendar, by clicking here.