A trip to and through Skyway at Sarasota’s Ringling museum is one worth taking

The uber-friendly guards and guides at Sarasota’s Ringling Museum of Art will gladly lead you through the many galleries one must pass through in order to reach the Skyway exhibition.

It’s a trip worth taking: a greatest-hits walk past Rubens tapestries, Renaissance masterworks and multiple Madonnas (a small part of the Ringling’s encyclopedic holdings), culminating in the eclectic, thought-provoking Skyway show: 14 artists selected by Ringling curators Christopher Jones and Ola Wlusek.

Make a day of it. Explore the rest of the Ringling, including the special exhibition “Enduring Light” featuring images of Black America and the Civil Rights movement by the acclaimed photographers Roy DeCarava and Danny Lyon. The 66-acre campus, once the domain of a circus magnate, emerged mostly unscathed from the hurricanes, but the Ringlings’ opulent winter home, the Ca’ d’Zan, and the Circus Museum, which suffered roof damage, are closed to the public for the time being.

Finish up your visit with a delicious meal at The Ringling Grillroom (get a table by the window).

Skyway at Sarasota’s Ringling Museum of Art closes Sunday, Jan. 25.

Don’t miss

• My favorite room in the show, a pow of color and high emotion, features work by Akiko Kotani, Michael Vasquez, and Elisabeth Condon (yep, she’s in two Skyway shows) I knew Kotani’s amazing “White Falls,” a waterfall of crocheted polyethylene, from seeing it in her exhibition at Creative Pinellas (the “Falls” are also part of this show, in another gallery). But I had not seen her knockout “Neon Forest,” three cascading “trees” in DayGlo colors of crocheted poly crepe-backed satin. (As always, the amount of labor involved in these monumental crochet projects is mind-boggling.) The vibrancy of Kotani’s work complements and is invigorated by Condon’s gorgeous floral-accented paintings and the in-your-face energy of Vasquez’s portraits of neighborhood life, which bring passion and compassion to the clichés of boyz in the hood.
• You’ll hear it before it lures you in: Ainaz Alipour’s “Slap-Eaters” There’s a video installation of roly poly bald creatures tumbling all over each other to a booming, vaguely martial soundtrack in a small room where the floor is partially covered with cuddly soft sculptures of torso-less legs and bums. There’s a VR component to this installation which I didn’t experience, but my reality was altered enough just by standing in the room.
• The acute environmental awareness of the Carol Mickett/Robert Stackhouse team reaches its apotheosis in their massive and beautiful “State of Water Triptych” Their work shares a space with the somber musings of Mohsen Azar, whose art of removal draws attention to the impact of war and censorship on our landscapes and language. The enigmatic sculptures of Ecuadorian-American artist Libbi Ponce, seen throughout the show, are inspired by Andean ceramics. Here she anchors the room with her snake-in-the-fountain installation, “tercioparazo.”
• What? Jewelry in a Skyway show? You mean the kind of thing proffered at weekend arts ‘n crafts markets? Nope, not this jewelry. Caitlin Albritton’s exquisitely contemplative pendants and bracelets, many of them showing tiny female figures in repose, employ materials which sound as romantic as the jewelry, including hyacinth jasper, spiny oyster shell, and Australian boulder opal.
• The intersection of selfhood, nature and sexuality, viewed via a mix of media Cyanotype and sateen, drawing and embroidery are part in the works of Saumitra Chandratreya.

Also look for

• Works by Robyn “Avalon” Crosa, Rachel de Cuba, Jake Fernandez, and Joo Woo

Readers are invited to submit their own events to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay’s things to do calendar.

Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.

Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter

This article appears in Oct 17-23, 2024.