Seen: We’ll Make A Lover Of You (12.09.06)

[ed: Our coverage of Art Basel Miami events comes to a massive close with Clay C.’s report on  the large and superb We’ll Make A Lover Of You art show. Curated by Francesco LoCastro, the show features the very best in Lowbrow art and runs through 1.21.07 at Art Center/South Florida.  Pictures are courtesy of Clay C. and Art Center/South Florida.]

Even with approximately 114 other Art Basel events hopping on the same night, the WMALOY opening Friday night 12/9/06 at the Art Center/South Florida  was a mob scene (I don’t think the pictures half convey the crowd – lots fled the crush outside to Lincoln Road) – Shawn Barber’s beautifully-inked model for his piece (Kat Von D from Miami Ink) was present and a popular on-camera interview, and Colin Christian’s ten-foot-tall (!) fiberglass/silicone sex mouse kept a crowd around it all night long (and sold before the opening, for $30K).  Ron English’s 6-by-4.5 foot Camouflage Clown Boy seemed to draw the most plaintive "If only I had the ($50K) money" sighing Friday night.  Ron was present and graciously signed a Rabbbit and an MC Supersize at the opening.) Many of the artists returned Saturday night for a signing at the Art Center, and with the crowd much smaller, they had plenty of time for sketching on the books and vinyl offered.  Mars-1 spent a while embellishing an Observer for me, and seemed like he couldn’t have been happier to be there.


The after-signing party Saturday at Maxine’s on Collins was long and loud and liquid, and even when I finally left, local artist R. Grimes  was still painting shirts for all the attendees.  I actually remembered that he was gonna be doing this, and wore a favorite floppy old yellow shirt, which I took home with a top-shelf fresh Grimes hand-silkscreen of an immense broken heart, bleeding daggers -insert your own subtext here (maybe I was putting out some grim and solitary vibe …)

Thursday to Sunday during the Art Basel run, both Jonathan LeVine and Billy Shire had mini-galleries in adjoining rooms at the Bridge art show at the Catalina Hotel on Collins, and they each had additional work by many of the same artists from the WMALOY show.  Billy had several original pieces by Gary Baseman, Yumiko Kayukawa and Tim Biskup, and Jonathan had some Ray Caesar edition pieces that have been held off the market until now.  Among the Ray Caesars shown at Bridge was one of his truly iconic works, "The Burden of Her Memories,"  an edition which I assumed had long since sold out.  I had to have that one, but Ray said there are still a few other editions from his earlier work that have long been held back, but which will release for an upcoming show in 2007 at Mondo Bizarro Gallery in Rome.  He also said he anticipates doing his first 3D work in 2007 … maybe one day we’ll see vinyl?


By the way, I got a few emails asking about the Skywalkers balloons and parade – The balloons were custom made for Friends With You (and Ara Peterson, Mumbleboy, paper rad, David Choe, Misaki Kawai and Devilrobots) by Joel Mangrum at www.sportogo.com in Bakersfield, CA (who also did the Cloud City installation for Friends With You, at Art Basel 2005.   I saw the comment posted here from local S. FL artist and fellow blimp-wrangler PeenLoon —  As he (and anyone else who got to handle these things) could tell you, they were amazingly well-made, with a separate (replaceable PVC) bladder inside a vinyl cover.  You can’t order a flying spherical Malfi from Joel (Copyrights Feed Artists!), but you can get anything else that your twisted little heart may desire – Joel will do custom from your art, so you can send in your own art and see it fly …  (I am definitely gonna design something myself, to fly as a marker for parties at the beach and that kind of thing.)  The Skywalkers balloons were very large indeed – the very smallest ones, the black Malfi-spheres, were 7 feet in diameter, and the large Life Savers-ish cylinder took 30 people underneath it.  Also, in many of the pics you can see people sitting (and sitting, and sitting … ) with their assigned balloons – the volunteers truly earned their FWY tees, because some of the very large balloons had to be held down by people rather than tied up to something (so that a gust couldn’t cause a tear), and inflating all eighteen took a while!  As a result, some volunteers did have to recline in the sand with their balloon for quite a while before everything got inflated and under way.  (And even they had it easy compared with Joel, whose 18+-hour day started with setting everything up on the sand at 2 AM the night before!)

-Clay C.


[Ed: Be sure to click below to the full post with 138 pics]


ArtCenter/ South Florida Gallery

800 Lincoln Road
Miami Beach Florida 33139
305.538.7887








































































2 Replies to “Seen: We’ll Make A Lover Of You (12.09.06)”

  1. YOU HAD TO BE THERE, AND I WAS!! I’M AT A LOSS FOR WORDS WITH DESCRIBING THIS SHOW…IT WAS THE BEST I’VE EVER SEEN, AND THE GALLERY WAS FABULOUS!! IT WAS AN HONOR TO MEET SUCH TALENT ALL IN ONE NIGHT….I WOKE UP WITH A SMILE ON MY FACE THE NEXT MORNING….THANKS TO ALL, I WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER THIS NIGHT!!
    CORRIE

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