Tim Sukits

Category: Art

  • Brand aid: Ringling College’s fourth annual International Design Summit highlights the importance of design in building a business

    Published February 3, 2010 Sarasota International Design Summit Various times Feb. 4-6, Ringling College of Art and Design, 2700 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, 351-5100 orsarasotadesignsummit.com/2010; Larry Thompson: noon Thurs., Feb. 4, Ken Robinson: 1:15-5:45 p.m. Thurs., Feb. 4 (invitation only) and 9-9:30 a.m. Fri., Feb. 5; Marty Neumeier: 5:15-5:50 Fri., Feb. 5; see website for full list of events and times; summit registration fees are $495 with various discounts available for promotional partners, government employees and Ringling College students and alumni. It’s no secret that Sarasota houses one of the top art and design schools in the country, and probably the most technologically advanced art school in the world. But not many people think of Ringling College of Art and Design as being on the leading edge of the business world. Those views may change after this weekend’s annual Sarasota International Design Summit. “This is the forth year and the theme this time is design and business,” says Ringling College President Larry Thompson, pictured above on the left, “the art of designing business solutions… It’s not a conference for designers. It really is people from all walks of life. It’s a very eclectic group.” (more…)

  • What next? Friends throw a benefit for Eddie Sager

    Published Dec. 29, 2009 CHARITY The story: A benefit called the “Kidney Koncert” is held for Eddie Sager on Nov.29 to help pay his medical bills after he was diagnosed with cancer over the summer and had no health insurance. What next? Everybody’s best friend in town, Sager is in much better shape these days, thanks to the Kidney Kincert at The Children’s Garden. Sager’s friends raised a total of $8,000 at the event, half from entry fee donations and half from the art auction that a number of local artists participated in. Sager has already spent over $3,000 to pay off previous bills and has over $4,000 in reserves to tackle his first round of follow-up tests, which go down Dec. 28. He expects the CAT scan and chest X-ray to run about seven grand, but he’s not worried. He’s felt like a new man since his urologist’s two complimentary kidney surgeries.

  • What next? S/ART/Q emerges onto the local art scene

    Published Dec. 29, 2009 A&E The story: A new contemporary artist collective called S/ART/Q presents themselves to the community with alive screen-printing party. What next? Those crazy artists over at S/ART/Q have been busy strengthening their organization by planning new exhibitions and events. Their Inaugural Exhibition went down in early November and was set up in the former DK Vogue space on State Street. They are now nailing down plans for their second full-scale high-end art exhibition and are looking at several interesting locations to hold the event, which is planned for late February or early March. They will still put on the screen-printing party as an annual event in late summer, and are now tossing around the idea of holding a community bike art event in the spring.

  • The Rosemary District has come a long way since the first Rosemary Rising, but its potential remains unrealized

    Published in Creative Loafing Sarasota, Dec. 1, 2009   Rosemary Rising V Holiday Walk 5-9 p.m. Thurs., Dec. 3, between Central, Lemon and Orange Avenues, just north of Fruitville Road, Sarasota, free, 954-8800 or facebook.com/rosemaryrising. The Rosemary District has been an up-and-coming area in the city for the past decade, but the ascent has proven to be a sluggish climb. Bordered by Fruitville Road, 10th Street, Tamiami Trail and Orange Avenue, Rosemary has one of the richest histories of any square mile in Sarasota. Its ebb and flow over the last century from bustling commercial hub to ghost town and back have become part of its character. The streets showcase an eclectic mix of renovated historic buildings standing beside some of architecture’s most modern designs. And while the past serves the aesthetics of the area well, the scars from Rosemary’s long journey remain visible. The area was the original “Town of Sarasota” plat, filed in 1886. By the mid 1920s, the intersection that is now Boulevard of the Arts and Central Avenue was the heart of Overtown, the first segregated black community in Sarasota. Although the neighborhood boasted an impressive collection of all-black businesses, the Rosemary Cemetery — which would in time lend its name to the district — only houses the remains of two African-American residents. The names of some of Sarasota’s most prominent white figures, however (Burns, Gillespie, Higel, Browning, Whitaker, Stickney) can all be found among the gravestones. In a way, the Rosemary District still struggles with this delicate balance between the haves and have-nots. While some see it as a burden, others embrace the diversity as a unique urban quality. With its collection of independent boutiques, upscale salons and community service organizations like the Salvation Army, Planned Parenthood, Resurrection House and ALSO Out Youth, the district has all the needed ingredients to grow into a hip, alternative, funky urban community. Rosemary businesses have forwarded this effort for the past five years with the Rosemary Rising Holiday Walk, a tradition that continues this week. Laura Gale, owner of Everything But the Girl, is the self-proclaimed birth mother of the event, and feels the district is finally starting to find its identity. “At the event five years ago we had street closures and the shell from the county to do the bands and it just didn’t work for us,” she says. “It was a little too trying-to-be-something-we-weren’t as a neighborhood. For me this night is about saying to people: a) we’re here, b) we’re super cool and c) you don’t have to be scared of coming up here at night. Because the neighborhood is beautiful.” Sarasota Olive Oil Company owner Kelly Kary also helped plan the first Rising event and believes Rosemary’s momentum is building. “I think in the last two years it’s really progressed,” says Kary. “It’s actually taken quite a step forward. I would love to see it become a nice little neighborhood-type Mecca, not a downtown Main Street-type Mecca.” Derek Barnes of Derek’s Culinary Casual, who has served his famous gumbo at every Rising, says that attracting new businesses is key. “I would encourage other restaurants that could bring a lot of people and bring awareness to the neighborhood. I would prefer anything that brings strong foot traffic. I welcome anyone. I would be perfectly fine with a fine dining restaurant opening up right next door to me. I’d actually encourage it.” An exciting addition to the Rosemary family this year is Citrus Square on Orange Avenue. Twenty-six-year-old Shayna Teicher, owner of a new holistic, eco-conscious beauty boutique called Butterfly Effect, thinks the new storefronts are already attracting the right businesses. “You’re getting some really great local talent and people,” Teicher says. “You feel like you’re discovering a little gem when you walk into these stores. This is going to become a really cool, funky little district over here.” Teicher’s Citrus neighbors — Michael Krempel of Michael’s Urban Salon and Lynne Epstein, owner of Divinia Jeanne’s Chocolate Heaven — believe Rosemary’s history is its biggest asset. “I think it could be a SoHo: a more urban setting, more offbeat, with a history attached to it,” says Krempel. “I’m more drawn to something like that than something more polished.” Epstein, who moved her shop from Lemon Avenue, felt the need to stay in the district: “As much as people have been saying it’s on the verge, I really believe it. People are trying to get away from the box stores and Rosemary is it. I think over the next five years there’s going to be some great development.” Lourdes Castillo of Lourdes’ Hair and Nail Studio thinks the public’s perception of the area is finally improving. “It used to be really bad,” says Castillo. “This used to be a rehab center. The landlord told me he was afraid to walk in here because he would find needles. But it’s getting better and better. There’s just more businesses here, more upscale things. Even people from downtown are starting to move here. It’s happening. We’re ready.” While business has picked up, the owners realize that some problems, like homeless traffic due to the Salvation Army and the Resurrection House, will be harder to solve. Lori Frary, who just opened her Frary Art Gallery in the old Ace Theater building, thinks it needs to be addressed. “The Salvation Army has been a big detriment to the area because you have that steady stream of the homeless wondering back and forth through here to get to downtown,” she says. “Being an urban person, that’s part of the edginess of life to me. But to most people it’s fear of the unknown. When it becomes hip and cool to go to a spot people will overlook some of that. The main players in the area have to work together and, God forbid, form a committee. But without that it’s all fragmented and nobody knows what anybody else is doing.” Dave Sutton, Director of Programs and Facilities at the Salvation Army, says Rosemary’s homeless problem has improved significantly from five years ago. “I think the amount of traffic that we are seeing isn’t the same traffic that we had before. I don’t see the large cluster of drug dealers that I did. We have put in lighting to illuminate the other side of the street so it diminishes the people hanging around.” Sutton agrees with Frary that some dialogue between owners is needed. “We’d be glad to meet with them. It would really do a lot to help with the disdain. If we’re all speaking with one voice, and stop giving them handouts, and just tell them there are services available like the Salvation Army and the Resurrection House. If you give them something they will come back. Just send them to us.” A meeting of the minds will be a crucial next step in the Rosemary District’s long promised rise to glory. Now that it’s expanding, business owners need to figure out how to get foot traffic from Citrus Square to Central and Fifth, while changing attitudes about the safeness of the neighborhood. Hopefully, by the time the 10th Rosemary Rising rolls around, the district won’t still be up-and-coming.   Rosemary District entrepreneurs Lourdes Castillo, Lori Frary, Kelly Kary, Laura Gale and Derek Barnes (left to right) Photo by Tim Sukits

  • 2009 Fall Arts Preview: S/ART/Q, Joint

    The Dirty More-than-a-Dozen: S/Art/Q

    Published Sept. 21, 2009

    The contemporary arts scene in Sarasota has been getting a little fed up with many of the local galleries around town. They point out Palm Avenue and some of the city’s arts organizations as purveyors of what they consider pretty lame art. Two groups, S/ART/Q and Joint, have recently taken the initiative to start their own contemporary arts organizations — no seashell paintings, no blown-glass dolphins, just pure creativity.

    S/ART/Q presented itself to the community with a live screen-printing party in August. The group currently consists of 14 of the city’s finest painters, sculptors and photographers and each of them created a T-shirt design for the event. In other big news, as of last week, the arts collective was officially incorporated as a nonprofit organization.

    They will hold their inaugural S/ART/Q art exhibition during the first week of November and they plan to school downtown Sarasota on how to rock a real traditional gallery show. “It will be right in the middle of downtown somewhere,” says founding member Joseph Arnegger. “We’ve got a couple of options.” The exhibition will be a week-long event focused on attracting art collectors to the area. “We’ll do a collectors’ forum on Thursday night, then anybody can come Friday night and then Saturday we’ll bring in the farmers’ market so it opens it up for more people. We’ll actually be showing all the members’ strongest artwork, so it will be more of a museum quality. Getting collectors to actually buy here is the end goal.”

    One of the biggest aims of the exhibition is connecting with the community. “There will be outreach during that time too,” says Arnegger, “maybe some student tours, and have the downtown farmers’ market do tours, just get people activated. Fifty percent of our goal is outreach, to stimulate the economy and introduce people to Sarasota.”

    S/ART/Q is still in its infancy and the members are serious about quality over quantity. “We’re moving slowly and methodically,” says Arnegger. “We’re interested in doing it right the first time and keeping control of the movement of things. We’re not in the T-shirt business. That’s something we will do again, but not every week.”

    Sarasota’s other freshly established arts coalition was designed for artists who aren’t quite as savvy in the professional world. Joint was formed over the summer after 10 recent Ringling grads and current students responded to an open call to create an arts community. The goal of the collective is to provide something for art school students to be involved in after they graduate. They want to give Ringling kids and other fine art grads around the area a reason to stick around Sarasota.

    The group tries to unite all mediums of art with local music during their art events, which they throw out of a three-bedroom fixer-upper that one of the member’s parents let them use for their shows. 1335 12th Street is much more than a house to them, though, and much more than a gallery to the community. It’s a place for the city’s youth to express themselves in their own way, without school or the city trying to interfere.

    Joint’s first “Art and Music” event just took place last week, but they plan to hold new exhibitions every couple months with different artists and bands participating. They are currently in the market for a permanent art space, because the house will eventually have to be rented, but the events will press on. “We are willing to work with other organizations like S/ART/Q for the next show,” says founding member Katie Foster.

    Details about S/ART/Q’s fall exhibition will be available at sartq.com.

     

  • Joint venture: A new artists’ collective unites recent Ringling graduates and current students

    SIX OF THE 10 MEMBERS OF JOINT: Jack Gessley, Michelle Fisher, Natalie Molinari, Alex Wallis, Katie Foster and Annie Schor (left to right) (Tim Sukits)

    Published Sept. 11, 2009

    Sparse
    8 p.m. Fri., Sept. 18, 1335 12th St., Sarasota, entrance free, $1 Pabst Blue Ribbon on tap or BYOB.

    The city’s art scene has a new youth movement boiling up from underground, and its goal is something heard often around town: keeping art school graduates in Sarasota. The group, which consists of recent Ringling College grads and current students, formed over the summer after an open call to establish an arts community.

    “We’ve always wanted to do something,” says Katie Foster, the 2009 Ringling fine art grad spearheading the effort. “Something non-school affiliated, something on our own. It’s trying to come up with a solution where we can still stick around here and make art and show it and start some kind of a community. It would be a way to keep people here in Sarasota. Everyone else has left to seek out something like this because it’s already established in other cities.”

    The first step was finding a space. Originally, they started looking at empty hotels on the North Trail, but soon realized that for a bunch of broke college students, the cost of a lawyer, an accountant and rent, even split 10 ways, was out of their budget. Luckily, the parents of Annie Schor — another 2009 Ringling fine art grad — own a few fixer-uppers on 12th Street. The couple offered to let the kids use the house at 1335 for their project.

    “There’s nothing in our community,” says Schor. “There’s Ringling, but it’s this little bubble, and there’s not even really that much going on at Ringling. There’s no alternative stuff going on. A lot of the galleries around here are not showing contemporary stuff; they’re showing things that are more marketable to the Sarasota people. It’s terrible. We want the art to have quality. We don’t want it to look like the galleries downtown. We don’t want it to be Palm Avenue. That would be awful.”

    “It’s really kind of bland,” says Ringling photography senior Michelle Fisher. “Once you graduate there’s nothing until you get to your 30s, and then there’s the S/ART/Q group. But in between there you’re like, ‘Now what can I do? I’m not going to graduate school. I don’t have enough money to move up to New York. What do I do?’”

    Schor also complains that Ringling doesn’t give students opportunities to collaborate with other mediums. “Our majors are so separated, nothing is integrated. I really find that frustrating,” she says. “The only chance we get is the Crossley Gallery. There’s a show every Friday and you have to jump on it to get your own show. That’s when you can choose who you want to be with, but that’s the only chance.”

    The kids explain how even the shows they land outside school leave something to be desired. “We got a gallery in Art Center [Sarasota] and they put a huge Szambelan sign in the middle of the room,” says Ringling grad Alex Wallis. “They moved all the pedestals to line the walls and there was a chick serving screwdrivers in the middle of the room.” Schor chimes in: “Yeah, and we had priced all of our work hoping that we could sell something and maybe make some money, but somehow they lost all the price tags and shoved our work into the corner and put a big vodka stand up. I don’t think anyone went in there other than to get a drink. It was very disappointing.”

    Foster says the house-turned-art space — which the group calls “Joint,” referring to their joint effort and joining of styles — is more gathering than gallery. “It’s about the event and the art working together,” she says, “and the fact that we have music too. Music is so not a part of Ringling in anything, and it’s a lot of local and experimental music that doesn’t get any kind of recognition really.”

    Joint will hold its first “Art and Music Event” on Sept. 18. “The show is called ‘Sparse,’” says Foster. “It’s referring to the lack of this type of thing going on.” Each of the house’s three bedrooms will have an installation piece by one artist and the living room will feature works from a number of artists. A keg of PBR will be tapped and Skunk Ape, Staring Contest and Stead & His Larson will perform.

    “It’s kind of overwhelming to say, ‘Let’s start a community,’” says Foster. “Even for this one show there’s so much planning and work involved. It’s sort of like, ‘Why would you do this if you could just go to New York and it’s already there for you?’ I considered it, but then I was like, ‘No, I really want to see if we can start something.’ I’d like to be able to give somebody a reason to stay here. I think there is great potential, especially in our generation. We want this kind of thing going on and we’re willing to work for it.”