Dual Abstraction

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April 18 – August 1, 2015

Murray & Ledger Galleries

Tinia Clark, "Lost in Paradise," 2014

Tinia Clark (Winter Haven) and Gregory Jones (Lakeland) are award-winning artists whose works have earned them a local following. Clark, a native Floridian, initially studied under local noted artist Elizabeth Clement, but soon discovered her own expressive style. Jones, a Virginia native, has been a staple on the local arts scene for decades and has made himself a regular exhibiting artist at art festivals throughout Florida. Works by these two artists will be celebrated in an exhibition focused on the duality of abstraction. Traditionally, abstraction has been defined as an artist’s personal style of restructuring recognizable subjects into something visually different. The main point being that abstraction has roots in nature; in order to abstract, an artist must begin with a physical subject. However, abstraction has come to also describe expressive works of art that have no allusion to a natural subject. This form of abstraction is often also referred to as non-objective. Works by Clark and Jones represent both sides of abstraction: Clark’s more non-objective formal compositions contrast beautifully with Jones’s more traditionally abstracted subjects.

African American Art Since 1950: Perspectives from the David C. Driskell Center

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March 21, 2015 – June 27, 2015

Dorothy Jenkins Gallery & Gallery II

African American Art Since 1950: Perspectives from the David C. Driskell Center, an exhibition in which works by renowned artists such as Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, and Sam Gilliam are coupled with exciting new visionaries, including Chakaia Booker, Lorna Simpson, and Kara Walker, collectively reflects the growing prominence—and complexity—of the field of African American Art over the last 60 years. The exhibition is organized by the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland. Over thirty-five years ago, when prominent artist, collector, and scholar David C. Driskell developed the 1976 exhibition Two Centuries of Black American Art: 1750-1950, organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, he introduced the tremendous depth and breadth of African American art and creativity to an international audience.African American Art Since 1950: Perspectives from the David C. Driskell Center, curated by Dr. Robert E. Steele and Dorit Yaron, the David C. Driskell Center’s Former Executive Director and Acting Director, respectively, and Independent Scholar Dr. Adrienne L. Childs, honors the legacy of this landmark exhibition and brings to the nation the next pivotal chapter of African American art.

Presence

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Faith Ringgold, The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Arles, 1996, Nine-color lithograph, 22" x 30", Polk Museum of Art Permanent Collection 1997.17, Museum Purchase through the General Acquisition Fund, Faith Ringgold © 1996

March 7 – August 16, 2015

Perkins Gallery

African American culture is embedded in a rich and complex history. It is impossible to deny the influence African American culture has had on the progressive nature of the American condition or how it has profoundly shaped the modern American identity. It has assisted in exposing the murkiest corners of American history while helping to reform our collective consciousness as we mature into that proverbial American melting pot. African American culture is a profound part of the shared American culture that goes much deeper than the color of skin.

Contemporary African American artists contribute to the growing lexicon of their unique culture as it becomes ever more tightly fused with the American spirit. Artworks and the associated commentary made by these artists prove impactful on our perpetually evolving social environment. They keep the past evident and preserve those important pieces of a past that we do not boast. But, they also celebrate cultural heritage and inform the forward motion of contemporary American society.

As an addendum to the anticipated exhibition African American Art Since 1950: Perspectives from the David C. Driskell Center, Polk Museum of Art celebrates African American culture by presenting a sampling of works from its Permanent Collection. Works by contemporary African American artists are mixed with traditional objects from Africa to provide a well-rounded understanding of a resonant and constructive culture.

Fur and Feather

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January 31 – April 11, 2015

Pablo Picasso, Plate with Head of a Goat

Murray and Ledger Galleries

In 1970, British veterinarian and writer James Herriot published his first of two novels chronicling his experiences with animals and their owners. If Only They Could Talk is a semi-autobiographical anthology of stories from the perspective of a young 1930s vet. Although animals are most often the protagonists in Herriot’s stories, his underlying theses are how we as humans are ultimately conditioned by our animals and how our relationships with our pets often say more about us than they do about the animals.

It only makes sense that we are influenced by animals. It has been programmed into our collective unconscious for millennia. Beginning in the Paleolithic era, prehistoric artists painted herds of animals along cave walls. It is speculated that these primitive paintings were intended to celebrate, or perhaps worship, animals’ important contributions to human survival. Although their creative objectives have evolved alongside civilization, artists continue to use animals as primary subjects for their works.

In this exhibition, artworks from Polk Museum of Art’s permanent collection are displayed according to their focus on our animal cohabitants.

Revival: Paintings by Gabrielle Wu Lee

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O Sole Mio! Vires, Artes, Mores - To My Sunshine State

December 13, 2014 – March 14, 2015

Dorothy Jenkins Gallery

The late Chinese-American artist Gabrielle Wu Lee described her paintings as works of “dynamic expressionism.” Her works beautifully meld Eastern traditions and modern Western aesthetics into emotionally charged renderings of the power of nature in transition. To Lee, seasonal change, dusk, dawn, and the rise and fall of the ocean’s tide were all visual signs of cyclical rebirth of our natural environment. The sheer size of her work also emphasizes a sense of sublime meditation. This exhibition will be organized in collaboration with Florida State University and Dr. Paul Lee.

Her Self: Works by Kathy Sosa

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Kathy Sosa, Chile Lillies, Huipiles, 2007, 36" x 50", Oil portrait collage

Exhibition organized through Katharine T. Carter & Associates.

December 13, 2014 – March 14, 2015

Gallery II

Inspired by contemporary folk art and the American southwest, Kathy Sosa’s artistic style is characterized by prismatic color combinations and an emphasis on graphic patterns. Although she creates literal portraits of women from various backgrounds, Sosa also includes her painted interpretations of their cognitive and spiritual existences; she presents painted portraits that portray their thoughts, dreams, and aspirations.

Produced In-House: PMoA’s Graphicstudio Collection

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October 18, 2014 – February 26, 2015

Perkins Gallery

Abbott Miller & Ellen Lupton, On, Photogravure 16/60, Polk Museum of Art Permanent Collection 1999.23.1, Graphicstudio Subscription Purchase through the Kent Harrison Memorial Acquisition Fund

Founded in 1968, the University of South Florida’s Graphicstudio has earned a reputation among international artists as a place to brainstorm and produce new cutting-edge works of art. As a unique experimental workshop, Graphicstudio collaborates with some of the most respected artists of our time in order to preserve the important link between arts and education. The program has hosted a number of contemporary creative juggernauts, including Chuck Close, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, and Christian Marclay, among many others. Artworks produced by these artists while in residence at Graphicstudio are ultimately made available in limited series to public and private collections. Polk Museum of Art became a subscribing contributor to Graphicstudio in 1992, thanks to an acquisition fund founded in memory of Kent Harrison, the son of the late philanthropist Lois Cowles Harrison. As a subscribing member, the Museum is given special opportunities to acquire new works produced at Graphicstudio. These artworks hold an important place within the Museum’s Permanent Collection. This exhibition includes only a small portion of the Museum’s Graphicstudio collection and intends to celebrate the achievements made and barriers broken by USF’s important experimental project.

Working Title: A Faculty Exhibition

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September 27 – January 24

Murray and Ledger Galleries

Sarah Brewington Baulac, Human, Still, 2014, Digital photograph

Polk Museum of Art is excited and proud to announce its first ever exhibition of works by the accomplished arts faculty at two of Polk County’s prestigious colleges: Florida Southern College and Polk State College. This exhibition will be an opportunity for our audiences to see what these talented artists produce when not in the classroom. It will also offer students from the respective colleges an opportunity to learn from their professors by seeing and understanding their mentors’ more personal creative explorations. Artists will include Pavel Amromin, Sarah Brewington Baulac, Eric Blackmore, Beth Ford, Patricia Lamb, Vicki Lowe, Joe Mitchell, Bill Otremsky, Sam Romero, Holly Scoggins, Kelly Sturhahn, and David Woods.

Future Retro: Drawings from the Great Age of American Automobiles

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Design Proposal: Two Door Sports Car, Elia Russinoff, 1953, Colored pencil on black paper, From the Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf Collection

Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

September 20 – December 6, 2014

Dorothy Jenkins Gallery and Gallery II

This exhibition, comprised of 105 drawings from the collection of Frederick A. Sharf, showcases the beauty and ingenuity of American automotive design during the decades following World War II, a landmark period in car styling. An eclectic mix of illustrations, from preliminary sketches to fully rendered works, provides a rare glimpse into the creative process at some of America’s premier car companies. Dating from an era when speed and power were increasingly important factors in automotive sales, these drawings show reference to the emerging technologies that influenced postwar car design, like airplanes and rockets.

Remembering Florsheim

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July 26 – October 12, 2014

Richard Florsheim, Paris (aka La Seine a Paris, 1963, Color lithograph, Polk Museum of Art Permanent Collection 2004.8.14, Gift of the Richard Florsheim Art Fund

Perkins Gallery

Richard Florsheim (1916-1979) was a prominent American printmaker, painter, sculptor, educator and writer. He graduated from the University of Chicago before studying art at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He completed his formal art training in Paris at the Musee Nationale d’Art Moderne. Florsheim first gained international recognition in the late 1930s after exhibiting his work at such major institutions as the Salon des Refuses in Paris, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Art. He was a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists and the prestigious National Academy of Design. In 2004, the Richard Florsheim Art Fund donated 60 original works by Florsheim to the Permanent Collection at Polk Museum of Art. This exhibition will include a majority of those works and will be the first time in a decade that these works have been on public display.

Collected Color

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June 21 – September 13, 2014

Gallery II

Color is an important part of our world. It allows us to visually recognize, relate, and interact with our surroundings. Because of its enormous impact on how we interpret what we see, color has always been an important attribute of art. But, color is not important for art only because it affects what we see; it also affects how we reproduce what we see so that others may share our creative experiences. It was not until the late 19th century that artists began separating color from naturalism, using it in more expressive ways to emphasize emotion or creative formalism. How has the use of color in art changed? Is color still an important creative component? This exhibition examines how color is represented within the Permanent Collection at Polk Museum of Art.

Damien Hirst, Psalm Print, Domine, in Virtue tua, 2010, Screenprint with diamond dust, Purchased through the Art Resource Trust, Polk Museum of Art Permanent Collection 2013.6.1

Terra Incognita: Photographs of America’s Third Coast

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June 21-September 13, 2014

Richard Sexton, Ascension, Quadtone pigment print

On loan from the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, La., this exhibition is a photographic project of 15 years’ duration (1991-2006) by nationally recognized photographer and author Richard Sexton. Latin for “unknown land,” Terra Incognita consists of 57 black-and-white photographs of marsh, scrub lands, dunes, beaches, swamps and forests along the Gulf Coast from the mouth of the Mississippi River to the Florida Panhandle. According to R.C. Baker of the Village Voice, “Nothing in these extremely fine-grained prints remotely resembles a ‘snapshot.’ … Sexton’s spare compositions coalesce into a portrait of nature as the ultimate abstractionist.”

Ekphrasis

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Kenny Scharf, Space Travel, 2002, Line-etching and aquatint with spit-bite aquatint, PMoA Permanent Collection 2002.21.4, Gift of Norma Canelas and William D. Roth

May 3 – August 2, 2014

Murray & Ledger Galleries

Ekphrasis is a rhetorical exercise first practiced by the ancient Greeks. Essentially, it is a method of creating a new artwork as directly related to or inspired by an already existing work of art. Ekphrasis often takes the form of prose or poetry. The written piece is not necessarily a mere description of the artwork at hand (although it can be), but is a beautifully written account about the subject of the artwork. It is as if an illustration precedes and inspires the written story. For this exhibition, Polk Museum of Art worked with students at the Lakeland Montessori Middle School. Artworks from the Museum’s Permanent Collection were chosen and assigned to students as inspiration for their own explorations into the ancient art of ekphrasis.

All Decked Out!

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April 26, 2014 – July 20, 2014

Perkins Gallery

As part of Innoskate 2014, the exhibition All Decked Out! will celebrate the artistic and innovative spirit of skateboarding. Polk Museum of Art is proud to host an exhibition of contemporary artworks that smack of the edgy aesthetic so often associated with skating. Co-organized by Chad and Suzie Cardoza, two Tampa-based artists and independent curators of all things skate, this exhibition includes a diverse checklist of works by artists from around the country. Painted skate decks, skateboard photography, skate-related sketches, and assembled sculptures will coalesce to provide audiences a renewed glimpse into the unique and creative state of contemporary skateboard culture.

Site Specifics: Dan Gunderson & Barbara Sorensen

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March 22-June 7, 2014

Barbara Sorensen

This exhibition will include installations by two Central Florida artists, Dan Gunderson of Deland and Barbara Sorensen of Winter Park. Working collaboratively, these two artists will transform the Museum with their site-specific installations that will provide visitors an opportunity to experience art environments. Gunderson has been a professor of art at Stetson University for more than 35 years. Having spent 30 years almost exclusively in ceramics, his current works visually express his observation of pop culture. Via the medium of iconic movie characters, his work reflects that we are a composite of our experiences. Sorensen is known for monumental sculptural installations that draw on geological formations and classical elements, but she recently turned her energies to large-scale environmental vessels constructed of metals and resins as well as new, experimental mixed-media prints and two-dimensional works. She discovered clay as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin. After completing her degree there, she went on to work with mentors Gunderson, Peter Voulkos, Don Reitz and others who were pushing the medium in fresh, sculptural directions.

For more information on Sorensen and her work, please visit http://www.barbarasorensen.com/. For information on Gunderson and his work, please visit www.DanGundersonArt.com.

Dan Gunderson

What’s In a Gesture?

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March 1 – April 19, 2014

Perkins Gallery

A painter’s gestural brushwork can be important to convey emotional intensity. To some viewers, a wild lashing stroke of paint may seem like an unkempt act by an untalented artist. Yet actually, such gestural strokes are usually intentional; despite their appearances, these marks are important to the artist’s emotional intent.

The paintings in this exhibition emphasize gesture. Although they are characterized by a similar technique of animated brushwork, their inherent meanings are widely varied.

Stephen Knapp: New Light

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December 14-March 8

This exhibition will include 14 “lightpaintings” by Massachusetts artist Stephen Knapp. Knapp’s lightpaintings are created by using cut, shaped and polished pieces of specially coated glass, installed perpendicular to the wall’s surface, to reflect beams of colored light into abstract compositions. These unique works deepen the traditional relationship between the painter and light. They also expand the concept of light sculpture and light art, and they continue the traditions of kinetic art, op art and abstract painting. His sculptural canvases appear to be painted but are all created with light and glass. Lightpaintings are the intersection of painting, sculpture and technology by exploring color, light and space. Knapp has more than 30 years of experience creating installation art and exploring the possibilities of light. His work can be found in museum, public, corporate and private collections.

Home

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December 7, 2013 – April 27, 2014

Murray & Ledger Galleries

Home is more than a building of concrete and timber. It is that place where we feel most comfortable and secure. It’s the place we all long to leave, only to wish we could go back. And, more personally, it’s the container of our most cherished treasures and beloved memories. It’s where we feel most confident and less hustled to be something we are not. It’s a sense of belonging. It’s a much needed opportunity to let down our guards. It’s a chance to be open, critical, and uncontested with ourselves. Home is more than a place. It’s a state of mind.

Home can be a powerful subject for artists. As a repository for so many of our intrapersonal traits and a physical reminder of our identities, the idea of home can represent freedom, sentimentality, rawness, and honesty in an artist’s work.

In this exhibition, we select artworks from the Museum’s Permanent Collection that relate to this important sense of home.

Inventing Narratives

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November 16, 2013 – February 20, 2014

Perkins Gallery

Storytelling has always been an important part of the human legacy. Through stories handed down from one generation to the next, cultures have been defined, traditions have been established, and histories have been embellished. These stories have often been subjects for many works of art over time. Although paintings or illustrations may pertain to a specific story, it is difficult for us to refrain from applying our own creative interpretations to the story, which may over time become completely transformative to the original story.

Works of art are often open to our unique interpretations, which may or may not relate to an artwork’s intended meaning. Although the stories we create about a work of art may be different from the artist’s original intent, it does not necessary mean we are incorrect in our interpretations. It is only human nature to apply narratives to artworks that we may not understand completely.

This act of creating stories out of unfamiliarity is actually another form of art; although we may not fully understand a work of art, we still rely on our inherent creative abilities to construct some sort of relative narrative.

This exhibition is intended to spark those creative abilities within the viewer. The sole intent here is not to simply explain a work of art to the viewer, but rather to keep the meaning of a work of art hidden from the viewer so that they may create their own narratives.

Paintings of the Space Age

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October 12-December 7

Although the National Air and Space Museum is known internationally for its impressive collection of objects and crafts pertaining to America’s history in aviation and space exploration, it is less known for having a collection of artworks. With help from the Smithsonian’s Affiliations Program, the Polk Museum of Art will exhibit a sampling of artworks produced in the 1960s after James Webb, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, suggested that artists be enlisted to document the historic effort to send the first human beings to the moon. Working together, James Dean, a young artist employed by the NASA Public Affairs office, and Dr. H. Lester Cooke, curator of paintings at the National Gallery of Art, created a program that dispatched artists to NASA facilities with an invitation to paint whatever interested them. The result was an extraordinary collection of works of art.