Those wondering when the next homegrown art star will be minted usually cast their peepers at Miami's New World School of the Arts which has chalked up an impressive record in recent years of producing bumper crops of fresh talent.
Mind you NWSA is not one of those dippy art school chorizo factories cranking out flavor-of-the-day creative types like so many casings of linked sausage. Instead the school regularly graduates creative types that have gone on to earn top-drawer gallery representation, dazzle the Basel art world glitterati and found their own spaces while spicing up local culture.
If you're hankering to sink those gums into a meaty helping of the level of talent simmering in our city check out "Young Blood: So Fresh" a savory group show featuring twenty one NWSA grads all who are making their mark in Miami.
The exhibit, organized by alumni, is now in its fourth annual edition and on view at the fresh squeezed Flagler Art Space recently opened by the school's graduates.
On display you'll find Aemi Thorne's discomfiting Untitled (Crab), a mixed media marvel that appears not unlike a mutant crustacean, a bearskin rug and a ramshackle doghouse churned out of trash compactor.
Devin U. Caserta plays nice with the four-legged critters weighing in with Family, a sensational charcoal drawing of a clan of plush toy bunnies.
One of the rising stars in the show is painter Timothy Buwalda who is represented by Wynwood's Fredric Snitzer Gallery. Buwalda's eye-searing Poseidon fuses abstract and figurative elements with super charged results and depicts a monster truck thrashing up a sea of dust not unlike the Greek god churning waves in a storm-tossed ocean.
Also don't miss Asser Saint-Val's weirdly titled Nicolas, R.A., "Colored Organic Semiconductors: Melanins Rend," Acc. Sc. Fis. Mat. Napolis, Vol. LXIV, 325-360, a mixed media on masonite rendering painted with acrylic, color pencils, oil and chalk pastels not to mention some good old fashioned shoe polish. Saint-Val is exhibiting an image of what appears to be aquatic life forms morphed with a turbine engine perhaps reflecting South Florida's biodiversity or a mash up of the Big Mango's multi-culti tapestry.
A portion of sales will go to support the artists' alma mater.
Through September 3, by appointment, Flagler Art Space 172 West Flagler Street, Miami. Visit youngbloodnwsa.wordpress.com.
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