Art & Design: Rhythm

August 8 – December 13, 2009

Ledger & Murray Galleries

This exhibition is the fourth in a series of exhibitions over two years that demonstrates the role of the Principles of Design within artworks from the Museum’s Permanent Collection. The last two exhibitions will focus on Contrast and Movement. This exhibit will focus on rhythm, which is the alternation or duplication of elements in the artwork to produce movement, pattern and/or texture.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Mark & Lynn Hollis
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• The Reitzel Foundation
• BCI Engineers & Scientists
• Eunice Lee Fuller Fund
• Summit Consulting, Inc.

Beautiful Things

September 5 – November 8, 2009

Dorothy Jenkins Gallery

Oscar Wilde once wrote that “No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.” Here is your opportunity to explore your own idea of beauty, and, potentially, ugliness. A variety of works from the permanent collection have been selected to represent the many ways in which we might find beauty within an art object. Confucius might have been right when he declared, “Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.” Viewers are encouraged to express their thoughts, and some of the most interesting responses will be added to the wall label text as the exhibition remains on display.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Mark & Lynn Hollis
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• The Reitzel Foundation
• BCI Engineers & Scientists
• Eunice Lee Fuller Fund
• Summit Consulting, Inc.

A Perfect Mesh

September 5 – November 8, 2009

Emily S. Macey Gallery

Though screen printing was invented in China about 1,000 years ago and introduced in Europe more than 200 years ago, only in the last hundred years has it become a popular medium throughout the commercial and art worlds. Since Andy Warhol popularized this technique in the early 1960s, it has been used widely by major and emerging artists. This exhibition from the permanent collection includes works by Robert Indiana, Jacob Lawrence, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Miriam Schapiro, and many others.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Mark & Lynn Hollis
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• The Reitzel Foundation
• BCI Engineers & Scientists
• Eunice Lee Fuller Fund
• Summit Consulting, Inc.

2009 – 2010 Lakeland Sculpture Invitational

September 2009 – August 2010

A Joint Project of Polk Museum of Art and the City of Lakeland
Lemon Street Promenade, Downtown Lakeland

Selected artists:

• Carl Billingsley
• James Oleson
• Hanna Jubran

The Lakeland Sculpture Invitational, showcases four or five works by three artists, instead of the ten artists that were displayed as part of the Sculpture Competition. The sculptures are installed on the three blocks of the Lemon Street Promenade between South Florida and Massachussetts Avenues.

Polk Museum of Art has been working with the City of Lakeland since 1999 to place sculpture on the Lemon Street Promenade. In the past, we’ve presented two one-person exhibitions, and seven years of the Florida Outdoor Sculpture Competition. Last year, due to budget concerns, the City of Lakeland decided to try something different. Supporters of recent sculpture projects raised enough private funding to support an invitational exhibition. This year, funds continued to be tight, and the city asked the sculptors who were installed last year if they would be willing to leave their work on display downtown for another year. Happily, two of the three were able to do so! Carl Billingsley and Hanna Jubran both loaned their work to us for 2009-2010.

In the Summer of 2009, the City and Museum staff invited James Oleson, a sculptor from Brooksville, Florida, to install his work on the block between Kentuck and Massachusetts. Carl Billingsley has the block between South Florida and Tennessee, and Hanna Jubran has the block between Tennessee and Kentucky.

Silver Linings: Delicate Drawings by Carol Prusa

June 13 – August 30, 2009

Dorothy Jenkins Gallery

The exhibition consists of seven 2-d works and eight hemispheres which Prusa refers to as “domes.” The domes are clear acrylic hemispheres created by a Canadian company under her direction. She then puts several layers of gesso onto the outsides and then draws on them with a silverpoint tool and graphite, adds titanium white pigment and uses silver leaf to complete her images. Plus she drills tiny holes in the domes and has white LED lights that twinkle from within. Within the largest of these domes is a brief repetitive video that shows the exterior pattern of the dome in motion. The domes play off of the idea of other worlds, other universes, and the potential for things to be nearly identical to what we know while being still distant and different. The domes range in size from 1′ diameter to 5′ diameter and have an incredible presence.

Her 2-d works, which are now as large as 4’x14′ and 8’x8′, present similarly detailed and patterned images that bear much in common with either the structures of the universe or the structures of the most minute features that make up the material world around and within us. For this reason, she conceives her work to have an immediate, big impact while including astonishingly fine detail to lure viewers closer. It’s delicate, beautiful, often suggestive of creative forces either through its floral imagery or the inclusion of Adam and Eve, and spectacular in its scale and drama.

Prusa lives in Boca Raton and is a prior Florida Individual Artist Fellowship recipient.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

All Natural: Organic Forms by Akiko Sugiyama and Jean Yao

June 13 – August 30, 2009

Emily S. Macey Gallery

Akiko Sugiyama and Jean Yao are two of the most widely revered fiber artists in the state. In contrast to Carol Prusa, whose creative energies are directed toward the tiniest and most expansive elements of our world, Akiko Sugiyama and Jean Yao focus on the materials and structures of the natural world in which we live.

Sugiyama uses rice paper to create wonderfully delicate forms in a wide variety of shapes and compositions. She cuts, rolls, coils, and layers the paper, adding just a few touches of other organic materials to enhance her work. Her works are wall-mounted but very definitely three-dimensional, sometimes taking the shapes of house structures or boat forms, but just as often working as purely non-representational sculpture. Her colors are generally muted, allowing viewers the opportunity both to appreciate the natural beauty of the materials and to recognize the painstaking effort and patience required to create her works.

Jean Yao makes baskets. And she makes great baskets. Woven from indigenous Florida materials, her baskets are functional and beautiful recyclings of one of the most recognizable parts of our state’s landscape: its palm trees.

Her forms are influenced by a mix of Asian functional vessels, traditional basketry, and her own sense of what is possible from the challenging toughness of palm fronds and flowers. Though she keeps her works unadorned by artificial color, she is able to create a great range of patterns, colors and textures that allows her work to be appreciated as fine art sculpture.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Shelter

June 6 – August 23, 2009

Perkins Gallery

The idea of a shelter can be anything from a physical enclosure to emotional security. Sometimes shelter is a state of mind in which one feels safe and protected. Sometimes shelter is simply a physical structure that leads to that state of mind. Shelter brings together diverse works from the Museum’s permanent collection that touch on those concepts in some way. Some of them are serious and poignant; others are more whimsical. All of these artworks point to the fact that art, as an outlet for personal expression, is itself a form of shelter for many artists. The exhibition will include works by artists including Virginia Beth Shields, Hollis Sigler, Suzanne Camp Crosby, and many others.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Art and Design: Proportion

April 18 – August 2, 2009

Ledger and Murray Galleries

This exhibition is the third in a series of exhibitions over the next two years that will demonstrate the role of the Principles of Design within artworks in the Museum’s Permanent Collection. Upcoming exhibitions will focus on Rhythm, Contrast and Movement. This exhibit will focus on proportion, which is the relationship of the size, location, or amount of an element to another part of the work or to the work as a whole.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Unbelievable Transformations: Moving Sculpture by Gregory Barsamian

March 14 – June 7, 2009

Dorothy Jenkins and Emily S. Macey Galleries

WATCH A MOVIE OF THE SCULPTURES IN ACTION.

CLICK HERE to read an article on TheLedger.com about the sculptures and see a video of Gregory Barsamian talking about making money as an artist.

SPECIAL EVENING HOURS:

Thursdays 5:00 – 8:00pm

Members admitted FREE during this time.

In the last ten years, perhaps no other exhibition has excited our community more than Innuendo Non Troppo: The Work of Gregory Barsamian. This nationally touring exhibition that was organized by the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati came to Polk Museum of Art in the spring of 1999. Ten years later, Barsamian’s work is coming back!

This time Polk Museum of Art is taking the lead in the project, working with Barsamian to conceive a major exhibition of his work. Looking at Gregory Barsamian’s artwork is like watching three dimensional stop-motion animation magically take place right in front of your eyes. Barsamian’s unique works combine a series of sculpted images on a rotating framework with a synchronized strobe light. By using elaborate metal structures that support the sculptures and timing the strobe perfectly, viewers experience the illusion that sculptures are transforming right in front of their eyes. His dream-like imagery is enchanting and unforgettable.

Barsamian’s work is based in dream imagery and philosophy. Immediately upon waking, he records his dreams and uses them as a starting point for new sculptures. He is also interested in the concept of time, and feels that sculpture, more than two dimensional art, relies upon time – in the act of viewing – to be fully understood. He has taken this idea further by creating artwork that changes with time.

Gregory Barsamian’s work has been creating animated sculptures for 20 years. His works have been displayed and collected all over the world. In 2007, he won Grand Prix at the Platform International Animation Festival in Portland, Oregon.

SPONSORED BY:
Universal Painting, Lakeland, FL
Porter Paints

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Unfiltered: Self Taught Artists from the Permanent Collection

March 7 – May 13, 2009

Perkins Gallery

Outside of the world of academic art training, ordinary people pick up brush or clay and create artistic objects. Sometimes these things have personal meanings and sometimes they are meant to simply be decorative. Although the skill level varies, these pieces are admired and collected by individual and museums alike.

Three years after its first popular exhibition of work by self-taught artists in its permanent collection, Polk Museum of Art presents an exhibition of more than 30 works. Most of these works have been acquired since the 2006 exhibition and many come from Florida’s large contingent of talented artists, including Jack Beverland, Tony Garan, Alyne Harris, Mary Proctor, Mary Jo Snell, and Ruby C. Williams.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Art and Design: Balance

December 13, 2008 – April 5, 2009

Ledger and Murray Galleries

This exhibition, focusing on Balance, is the second in a series of works from the Permanent Collection that presents examples of how artists think about design principles.

Most of us understand the basic compositional tools that are used to create artworks. Referred to most often as the Elements of Art, these include line, shape, value, texture, color and space as means to manipulating the materials artists use to make a work of art come to life.

But before the lines and colors can be created, artists consider the impact that design will have on communicating with viewers of their work. While the Elements of Art can be considered a form of language, the Principles of Design is the grammar that helps the artist create a work that makes sense to our eyes.

Balance is used by artists and designers to maintain an overall equilibrium in an artwork and to direct the viewer’s eye to multiple parts of a composition. And this can be achieved by symmetrical balance or asymmetrical balance, and by utilizing color, value, shape, and position, texture or direction.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Radcliffe Bailey: Between Two Worlds

November 15, 2008 – February 26, 2009

Dorothy Jenkins Gallery

Radcliffe Bailey (b. 1968) has quickly become recognized as one of the most important artists working in the Southeast. His work is the combination of personal reflection and innovation within a serious understanding of artistic traditions. Much of his work uses vintage sepia-tone photographs of African-Americans from his family’s collection. Using these images as the centerpiece of his artworks, he constructs sophisticated collaged artworks around them that reflected in abstract ways the presence of history within our contemporary world.

The title of the exhibition, Between Two Worlds, refers to a number of different considerations: Past and Present. Paintings and Prints. Tradition and Innovation. Migration and Settlement. While the exhibition includes three of his most recently completed monumental paintings, artworks that displays Bailey’s current artistic direction, the exhibition also looks back at work produced by Bailey as his career was beginning to rise to national prominence in the mid-1990s. Included are works from a 1997 series entitled Until I Die, mixed media prints that reflect the deep influence of music on Bailey’s work. Those works and his more recent work also address the issue of migration that has served to form and develop this country.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Miroslav Antic: Family Album

November 15, 2008 – February 26, 2009

Emily S. Macey Gallery

Miroslav Antic has become well-known and respected for his stunning paintings that feature formal indoor or outdoor settings, depicted in astonishing detail. However, he covers these images with a sheer layer of paint that seems to veil the image from our view and adds a pattern on top, a pattern that sometimes appears as water droplets and sometimes as simple dots, that remind us that what we are looking at is just out of reach.

In Antic’s current body of work, Family Album, he works from family photographs in much the same way. The added personal content to these paintings, however, brings a new sense of dealing with the past. By taking one object that reflects his family and turning it into a second object, he is able to focus on the important meaning represented in the subject of the photograph, while grappling with the increased distance between him and the depicted scene.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

A Moment in Time: Works from the Permanent Collection

December 13, 2008- February 26, 2009

Perkins Gallery

As the world around us seems to continue to speed up, one of the advantages of art is that it gives us an opportunity to consider things on our time rather than as they rush by us. This exhibition of works from the Museum’s Permanent Collection provides many such opportunities. Included are paintings, prints, drawings and photographs, representations of scenes both real and imagined, that show how pausing the action for a moment affords us the best chance to consider all the possibilities around us.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Art & Design: Emphasis

August 23 – December 7, 2008

Ledger and Murray Galleries

This exhibition, focusing on Emphasis, is the first in a series of works from the Permanent Collection that presents examples of how artists think about design principles.

Most of us understand the basic compositional tools that are used to create artworks. Referred to most often as the Elements of Art, these include line, shape, value, texture, color and space as means to manipulating the materials artists use to make a work of art come to life.

But before the lines and colors can be created, artists consider the impact that design will have on communicating with viewers of their work. While the Elements of Art can be considered a form of language, the Principles of Design is the grammar that helps the artist create a work that makes sense to our eyes. Exhibitions to follow will include additional Principles of Design: Balance, Proportion, Rhythm and Unity.

Emphasis is used by artists and designers to clarify for viewers how important each visual element in a composition is. In a sense, Emphasis can be used to create a form of visual ranking system. This is accomplished in a number of different ways:

Contrast
In compositions that are dominated by dark colors, bright colors will stand out. The same is true in the reverse. Think of hunters or road crews wearing orange vests for safety. But contrast can also be created through different sizes of elements, through solid shapes against more detailed backgrounds, and through combinations of vertical and horizontal elements.

Isolation
If one element is clearly different from everything that surrounds it, that element will attract your eye. Think of the difference between trying to view a single cloud in a sky filled with clouds versus looking at the only cloud in the sky. Or a single, brightly colored umbrella set up on a sandy beach.

Placement
The placement of elements has a major impact on our ability to “read” an artwork. Our eyes usually are attracted to the central element of an artwork. But artists can utilize Contrast and Isolation to place important elements in unusual positions to give us a different perspective on what lies in the center of the artwork.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Wilder Life: Works from the Permanent Collection

September 6 – November 16, 2008

Perkins Gallery

Animals are popular subjects for artists. They are sometimes purely for their beauty, and sometimes as a symbol for something more profound. This exhibition will present works from our permanent collection that feature wild life.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Frederic Remington Makes Tracks…

September 13 – November 9, 2008

Dorothy Jenkins and Emily S. Macey Galleries

DOCENT LED TOURS
will be held every Saturday at 2:00pm for the run of the exhibition, except Saturday, September 20. Just meet in the Museum’s lobby. Free with exhibition admission.

Cowboys and Indians.

Those words bring up images of rough hewn men on horseback on the frontier, herding cattle or hunting buffalo. It was an adventurous way of life that has captured the American imagination since the mid 1800s.

Frederic Remington is the most famous of western artists. His images of bucking broncos and Native Americans on the hunt have become embedded in our collective psyches so deeply that we can not imagine the old frontier without imagining one of his illustrations.

Remington (1861 – 1909) found popularity in the mid 1880s as an illustrator for prominent magazines like The Century, Harper’s, and Collier’s. His illustrations were not drawn from photographs, but from his observations and impressions of the American West. However, he was known for his painstaking attention to the details of the images he produced. Rather than formal portraits or landscapes, Remington preferred to show his subjects in the middle of a gesture or in full-blown action.

This exhibition will feature prints and recast sculptures from the permanent collection of the Frederic Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, New York, as well as two original paintings from the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota. Frederic Remington Makes Tracks… is organized by the Frederic Remington Art Museum and toured by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services.

EXHIBITION SPONSORS:

Mosaic

Heacock Insurance

McKay Enterprises
Mr. & Mrs. Ralph W. Weeks

MEDIA SPONSORS:

Max 98.3
97 Country WPCV
Talk 1430 WLKF
WONN AM1230

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

2008 – 2009 Lakeland Sculpture Invitational

September 2008 – August 2009

A Joint Project of Polk Museum of Art and the City of Lakeland
Lemon Street Promenade, Downtown Lakeland

Selected artists:

• Carl Billingsley
• Charles Brouwer
• Hanna Jubran

Polk Museum of Art has been working with the City of Lakeland since 1999 to place sculpture on the Lemon Street Promenade. In the past, we’ve presented two one-person exhibitions, and seven years of the Floirda Outdoor Sculpture Competition. This year, due to budget concerns, the City of Lakeland decided to try something different. Supporters of recent sculpture projects raised enough private funding to support an invitational exhibition.

The Lakeland Sculpture Invitational, showcases four or five works by three artists, instead of the ten artists that were displayed as part of the Sculpture Competition. The sculptures are installed on the three blocks of the Lemon Street Promenade between South Florida and Massachussetts Avenues.

In the Summer of 2008, artists were asked to submit images of their work for consideration. A small panel of City and Museum staff then selected three artists and invited them to bring pieces for display. Each artist was given one block of the Promenade for his work. This year, Carl Billingsley has the block between South Florida and Tennessee, Hanna Jubran has the block between Tennessee and Kentucky, and Charles Brouwer has the block between Kentucky and Massachussetts.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Digital Art in the Post-Digital Age: Works from Florida Faculty

May 24 – September 7, 2008

Dorothy Jenkins Gallery

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT’s Media Lab, declared in 1998 that “the digital revolution is over.” By his account, for the last ten years we have been living and working in the Post-Digital Age. During this time the use of the computer in the design and construction of art has advanced remarkably.

As a way of sampling the various ways in which digital technologies are assisting artists, Polk Museum of Art created a juried competition open to all art instructors and professors at the colleges and universities throughout the state of Florida. This exhibition includes 66 works by 28 different professors representing 15 colleges and universities, ranging from Miami to Tallahassee and almost everywhere in between.

Just as we have come to rely in so many ways on computers to help us through both our work and private lives, this exhibition has revealed that computers are being used in manners both predictable and surprising. It is no surprise that the exhibition includes digital video and photography work. More surprising is that artists who are painters, printmakers and ceramicists are making use of computer software to assist them in their work. In addition, though the largest universities in the state are represented in the exhibition, professors at a number of smaller universities and community colleges are doing outstanding work.

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates

Karsh, Leonard, and Bagert: A Photographic Legacy

May 24 – September 7, 2008

Emily S. Macey Gallery

Yousef Karsh, Herman Leonard and Jenny Bagert represent three “generations” of photographers. Karsh is recognized as one of the pioneers of 20th-century portrait photography. His portraits of luminaries such as Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein and Ernest Hemingway are iconic images. His protégé, Herman Leonard, has achieved international fame for his documentation of jazz musicians as well as numerous other projects. Leonard’s first internship after college was working with Karsh, learning Karsh’s ability to translate his subject’s character into print and commitment to perfect print quality. Leonard’s protégé, Jenny Bagert, also owes something to her early mentor, but she has achieved her own unique vision as well. This exhibition will show the way photographic traditions have been passed down from mentor to student.

EXHIBITION SPONSORED BY:

Peterson & Myers, P.A.

and Robert and Malena Puterbaugh

With Additional Support From:

Ron and Becky Johnson
Kerry and Buffy Wilson

ANNUAL EXHIBITION FUND SPONSORS:

• Cowles Charitable Trust
• Dorothy Chao Jenkins
• Ron and Becky Johnson
• Reitzel Foundation
• Swain Companies and Affiliates