Our favorite gallery exhibits this year found artists pushing their materials to the limit. At Tampa’s Bleu Acier, New Yorker Jean Shin stripped the leather from ladies’ shoes — culling tiny skin pelts in shades of beige, brown and white — and re-stitched the fragments into a hanging net. The project, called The Hides, seemed part shamanistic ritual, part exploration of “animal nature,” and part wacky fashion statement. In the same space, Hervé Di Rosa presented bizarre, cartoon-ish creatures cast in brightly colored resin. A two-headed baby, frozen in mid-stride, and a furry green monster with a gaping maw managed to seem creepy and cuddly (though made of rock-hard resin) at the same time. At Florida Craftsmen, Twist and Shout set traditional needle-based craft on its ear. Pate Conaway crocheted with rubber, telephone cord and polyurethane rope instead of natural fibers — a satisfyingly perverse response to the synthetic stuff that surrounds us. Tom Lundberg’s abstract embroidery took on painterly depth and texture. A subsequent show, Unrestricted, addressed some of the same themes (and media) with work by, and often about, women. Neverne Covington’s mixed-media pieces combined seedpods, fur, flesh-colored silicone, metal bits and a white leather glove in mischievous suggestions of pain, pleasure and female anatomy. Blue Acier, 109 W. Columbus Drive, Tampa, 813-272-9746; Florida Craftsmen, 501 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, 727-821-7391, www.floridacraftsmen.net .
This article appears in Sep 13-19, 2006.