Orange StateThrough June 24. Synovus Gallery at Morean Arts Center, 719 Central Ave., St. Pete. 727-822-7872. moreanartscenter.org.
What better a color to represent the Sunshine State than the hot hue orange? Not only is it an invigorating color, it exudes joy and strength. Featuring everything Florida-related from central Florida artists, Orange State arrives just in time for the beginning of summer.
Guest curated by Katherine Gibson, the artist lineup includes Ruby C. Williams, Bud Lee, Suzanne Camp Crosby, Diana Lucas Leavengood, Margaret Ross Tolbert, Gary Borse, and Carl Knickerbocker. Such diverse mediums mix clean, crisp photography with some more instinctual, “primitive” paintings included in the exhibit.
What started out as a concept for a folk art show featuring Williams slowly turned into talk of incorporating Lee’s pictures, eventually leading to an excitement for including more photography.
“We didn’t necessarily want it to be fake Florida, like, ‘Oh, look at this lovely place we live.’ It was more about the rural parts outside of Tampa Bay. People out there are working hard: They’re fishing, farming produce and ranching. It’s more about the real people of Florida that actually live here, from people that have either been born here or have lived here for a long time. All of the shows opening right now at the Morean Arts Center are all in different ways referencing where someone is from and how people are influenced by their environments,” Gibson says.
Going straight to the obvious, Williams paints an orange ball outlined in black on a solid yellow background, adding “Orange” in all caps above it—just in case we didn’t know what it was. Coming from a folk art perspective, she reflects on old Florida, but also on her art beginnings when she started painting brightly colored signs to entice travelers to buy her fruits and vegetables along the side of the road.
Acrylic on wood, 2014
Ruby C. Williams
Knickerbocker also gravitates towards a folk art aesthetic, and breaks up the wall space with his mixed media sculpture Scene from Middle Florida. Juxtaposing a primitive, child-like style with deeper undertones, Knickerbocker explores the reality of Florida’s overdevelopment. Cookie-cutter houses with red brick roofs butt against an orange grove, their stark white walls visually shoving the dark green trees off the sculpture’s pedestal. The roughly-shaped orange trees sometimes morph into abstracted heads sprouting from the ground depending on which side of the installation you face, which just adds to the mystery of his pieces.
Channeling Carmen Miranda, but in a special citrus edition, fruit hats make a comeback. In Lee’s Ana Tampana and Dick Pope (Founder of Cypress Gardens), Miss Tampana is decked out in her performing costume, donning a red feather boa, with a cherry — ahem, orange — on top. “Mr. Florida” escorts her as she rides her noble steed (a.k.a. giant tortoise) through an orange grove. In a surreal situation, kitsch is exposed when Cuban heritage was mixed with marketing ploys to portray Florida’s “exotic” and fertile grounds.
Camp Crosby mixes collage into her photography, using large cut-outs placed in real spaces. In Grapefruit Tree, an image of a basket brimming with the orange fruit, which looks like an old poster advertisement, is cut and pasted into the landscape (like Photoshop in real-time). They tumble out of the tree—their flatness given away by the shadow on the white picket fence behind them—and into a pile of real fruit on the red picnic bench below it. Reminiscent of Daniel Gordon’s sets, the contrast between flatness and dimensional space, which is re-flattened through photography, is enticing.
It comes as a huge relief not to be inundated with beach scenes. The only hint of the ocean comes through in She Sells Sea Shells, where Lucas Leavengood uses photography to poetically document old Florida through its back road vendors. Touristy shell ladies, most likely hot-glued together, painted, with a splash of glitter for good measures, pose for passersby on a shelf in Citra’s Orange Shop. Putting the focus on things locals quickly dismiss, the artist rejuvenates the magic and narration in some of the more tacky parts of our state.
A square photo of a woman is sandwiched between two square buns of painted canvas, with abstract swirls of blue and green paint hinting at water in Ross Tolbert’s Sirena at the Abyss. This piece comes from the artist’s series Sirena, which includes photography, video, and painting. Exploring the fantastical fictional story of this young woman’s mysterious life in the underwater world of north Florida’s freshwater springs, we may find Sirena reading, skating, or in this piece, sneaking off with the Trojan candelabra.
Anyone can enjoy this vibrant, colorful exhibition, but Sunshine State natives will especially appreciate and understand the inside jokes and history of our area coming from local artists who poke fun of, embrace, and celebrate all aspects of central Florida, whether it’s weird, kitschy, touristy, old school, back-roads, fun or fruity.
