Random Ramblings of an American Abroad: Artful Miami

For six months I lived on a yacht in Miami Beach, which was very nice, but I was on the yacht for work not an extended vacation. However, when I did have time off, I took advantage of the opportunity to explore the city. I’d say Miami has it all, but that simply isn’t true. The first thing it is lacking is seasons. While in Miami, I found myself in the middle of what felt like an endless summer. Even though I was there in the winter, I had just spent the last summer in Alaska, and the Florida 'winter' felt like summer to me. This made it hard to remember that it was winter almost everywhere else in the country. I had never considered how helpful seasons are for marking the passage of time, but in Miami I was losing track of time as fall and winter slipped past and the arrival of spring was just a slow rise in temperatures from hot to uncomfortably hot. For months I spoke to friends about their summer plans, and I kept thinking it is already here rather than three months away. I’m not saying I haven’t enjoyed the warm weather, but I think I prefer a place with seasons to mark my place in the year.

However, the consistent great weather did afford me the opportunity to check out the impressive Miami art scene. And I think the art scene might be thriving, because you have to be creative if you’re going to celebrate Christmas when it is 80 degrees outside. This occurred to me as I explored Wynwood during Art Basel and passed a Christmas tree sales tent with a backdrop of palm trees and an inflatable Santa standing on thick green lawn.

Art Basel is the biggest arts event in Miami and a plethora of other satellite events and tents have sprung up around it. I spent my time around Wynwood, the Miami art district, which is full of murals and artisan breweries that are also covered in Murals. The area is popular year round, especially for their monthly second Saturday events, however the Art Basel scene made a second Saturday look sleepy.

The streets were packed with traffic, which was largely deadlocked, in part due to the major street party that was going on at 22^nd St. and 2^nd Ave. Two large tents covered several empty lots, and were filled with bars, a stage of lights, jumbotrons, Speakers and DJ equipment, and a sea of humanity raging between it all. Beyond the tents was a pop up Skate Park and another large lot filled with food trucks. I had to make a video, because pictures simply would not do it justice:

At the corner of 25^th and 2^nd, I passed a U-haul that was parked on a corner, back wide open with the storage space converted into a mobile stage. The band was pouring out into the street, which was being blocked by the onlookers with arms raised and phones recording the impromptu performance. After a few songs, they broke into slow rap about how the cops were going to shut them down, but that quickly ramped back up into pleas 'for five more minutes.' I moved on before their fate was decided.

I was more interested in getting to the J Wakefield Brewery, which has some of the best beer in Wynwood. Despite the great beer, it normally has pretty small crowds and a laid back vibe. However, as I suspected, they were overflowing with Basel crowds as well, and had a DJ out front keeping the overflowing crowds entertained as they drank beers at the picnic tables or awaited some food at the food truck. The DJ, beers and crowd were fun, but I didn't linger long, because I wanted to check out the new murals that were being painted around the district.

One of the more controversial aspects of the art scene in Wynwood is the constant transition and renewal of the mural works throughout the district. At J Wakefield, they have covered their walls in murals, mostly tied to Star Wars, but I've also seen them change in the time I've been here. While I enjoy the new art, I also hate to see the old works painted over. The brewery use to have a phoenix on one of the walls, which has now been replaced by a dragon. In another year it will probably be something new. I heard a story about a local painting company that actually has the job of painting over walls to prep them for new murals. The owner of the company is also a local graffiti artist and often has to take a lot of heat from other graffiti artists while he is on the job painting over their work to prepare it for something new. He has even had to paint over some of his own work. In the end he says he does it because he has to pay the bills, and he gets the work because property owners know they can depend on him to show up and get the job done. I guess it is like all aspects of life, the only thing that is constant is change. At J Wakefield, the the tap list changes even more often than the artwork, and both will keep me coming back.

Just a few blocks away, I decided to stop at an art shop I had passed several times before but hadn't stopped because of the security, fence and valet had made it seem less inviting in the past. However, for Art Basel, they were living up to their name - Art Fusion Gallery - with live band in the parking lot, surrounded by several sculpture pieces, in front of the mural covered walls, which also had art video clips being projected on them. Inside I discovered it had been voted Florida’s number one gallery two years running, and I could see why. The artwork was excellent and represented local talents as well as several artists from around the world. They also represented a variety of mediums as well, from photography and paintings, to sculptures and found object pieces. They even had one artist who had added an augmented reality experience to her paintings, which could be seen by viewing her work through an ipad camera screen.

In the end, I never even made it to the main Art Basel event tents around the Miami Beach convention center, but I did visit several satellite events around Wynwood. Although, they did have more of an art show feel, they too had the festival/party atmosphere as well. There were café bars in each tent as well as a rolling wine carts for the VIP crowd. I was not a VIP and was primarily there for the art, but as I left someone in line asked me if there was a bar inside. I told him there was and he loudly reported this news back to his friends. I'm not sure if it was the news of booze or their thirst for the arts that kept them in line, but they stayed.

Months later, Miami hosts the much more laid back Coconut Grove Art Festival. It started in 1963 and has grown to include 360 international artists selected from 1,300 applicants, plus a stage for musical performances as well. I attended this festival a year before I made it to Art Basel, and enjoyed the fact that it is organized into individual booths for artists to display and sell their work. This provides you with the opportunity to meet the artists and learn about their work, inspiration and more. While a few artists were at Art Basel as well, I found that most of the art was being presented by sales surrogates, and sometimes the same artwork was being displayed and sold in more than one area. This gave Basel a much more sales focused and less approachable feel.

One artist I met at Coconut Grove, also did murals and told me he had several works in Wynwood, and even invited me to an event in Wynwood later in the week. We chatted for a while and he also told me about a cross country road trip he funded by painting mural bread crumbs along his path. Before he departed on the trip, he had searched his route using google street view, and called businesses that he found with graffiti on their walls. He would offer his services painting murals and then planned the trip according to the jobs he lined up.

Another was photographer Brad Pogatetz, who searched for blight in all the towns he attended art festivals. He had some pretty amazing photographs of churches and factories in various stages of decay. I was shocked to see some of the churches that had been allowed to crumble, with such beautiful art and wood work left to the destructive forces of the elements.

I probably chatted with over a dozen artists before I finally decided I needed to cut the conversations short in order to make it through the other 300 exhibits. Despite my best efforts, I wasn't able to finish before the show closed for the evening.

Besides the annual shows and the murals throughout the city, Miami also has several art museums and even an art bar worth checking out. On my first trip to Little Havana, I discovered CubaOcho, which proclaimed it had 'the best Mojitoe' around. Of course I had seen this same sign outside of almost every bar I passed in Little Havana, but what drew me into this bar was that it was also called a Museum and Performing Arts Center.

Inside I found walls, ceilings, and even table tops covered in art. The stage looked like a library, complete with an antigue fainting couch and other sofas. Even the bar was covered with artwork. The owner had escaped Cuba with some Cuban artworks that were endanger of being destroyed by the Castro's communist revolution, and after arriving in Miami, continued his efforts to rescue pre-revolution artwork, as well as introducing post-revolution Cuban artwork to the Miami area. The Mojito was good, but it is the artwork that keeps me coming back.

Finally, even the architecture of Miami has Art in the name. Miami Beach is famous for it's Art Deco skyline, as well as the later development of MiMo, or Miami Modern architectural style. This was one of the first things that drew me to Miami, long before the yachting. I have been on several Art Deco walking tours and also would recommend the FIU Wolfsonian Museum, which is housed in a historic storage building that was built in the Art Deco style as well. The Museum has a great collection of art and appliances from the 1920's and '30's all built in the futuristic style of the Art Deco era.