Art Basel Day 4: The Thursday report

In a typical Miami sort of way, today was essentially characterized by a lots of young women as slim as rifles (and just as dangerous), and men of all ages in impossibly tight high-water pants with no socks taking a lot of selfies in front of artwork.

In a previous review of ABMB a decade or so ago, I wrote the below... and little has changed:

Once the VIP pre-opening parties were finished and the elegant crowds, booze and small food ceased to circulate, and tightly-dressed women in lethal-looking six inch heels finished their improbable art fair strolls with plastic wine glasses in their manicured hands, and handsome young men in slim suits and nerdy black glasses used their cell-phones to photograph the artwork, while third generation blue-eyed Cuban-American girls, four or five inches taller and 25 pounds lighter than their political refugee grandmothers, and slim as rifles, finished shooting selfies in front of the artwork...

Working the art fair is brutal work for the galleries and dealers - on your feet all day and floating in that rarified world where you never know if the person that you're talking to is just another nice guy or the planet's third largest art collector.

It is also great fun for people watching, where often the person becomes the artwork itself...

The day went fairly fast, with visits from a DMV museum director (who purchased one of my Bisque drawings!), the very talented Sondra Arkin, gallerist Corey Hampsom from Habatat Galleries, and the very talented Zanni.

Zanni looking at a Tim Tate piece

At art fairs you meat all kinds of gifted people from all sorts of mankind's talent pools - one such super talented human being is a young rapper named F.O.E. YoungHustla who just released a record which I suspect will be noticed and should be noticed - part of that is the spectacular and gritty design of the release.

Talent rises to the top in spite of all obstacles -- Expect big things from this young and rising star - he needs a good promoter...

After the fair closed at 8PM, we hustled (pun intended) to dinner, as tonight there are extended hours till 11PM, and ran once again into Akemi Maegawa at the nice Thai restaurant on Washington Street where we all met by chance.

Tony Porto, Lenny Campello, Akemi Maegawa, and Michael Janis

Mike Janis and I then hobbled back to the SCOPE Art Fair to see what the extended hours were all about... once we got there, we discovered that it was essentially a party, and since both Mike and I are past our sell-by date for that, we strolled in and strolled right back out to our beds... but not before Mike snatched two pink flamingo inflatable drink holders... cough... cough...

Art Basel Day 3 - The first day of the public opening

Once again, in spite of the fears of the Covidian Age, decent crowds showed up again to the Scope Art Fair in Miami Beach. Today was the day that the fair technically opened to the public - yesterday was the VIP opening.

The brisk sales of the drawings on Bisque continued (they are quite affordable), and by now about half of them are gone.

I rea-arranged them so as to put them all onto one and half panels and thus be able to hang more artwork.

This gents has returned 3-4 to consider one work

The "interest gage", as I would put it, was also noticeably higher, with loads of interested collectors making the rounds, and we also saw some DMV folks, such as Akemi Maegawa and others.

Artist Tony Porto holding court

I walked around the fair, trying to (as I always do) select my top 10 booths/artists of the fair.  The spectacular work of DMV artist Mark Jenkins - as always - stands out immediately. Jenkins is without a doubt one of the best-known DMV artists on the planet.

Mark Jenkins artwork at SCOPE Miami Beach 2021

I also liked the spectacular technical skill of the Austrian artist Nychos' artwork with Miris Gallery in booth D01 - this is clearly the work of a master technical "urban/graffiti" artist with almost Renaissance-like painting skills.  Nearly all of his work was sold!

Nychos artwork at Miris Gallery

After the fair closed, we headed for Greek food at Poseidon, where we feasted on Greek food... on the way we passed two of most terrifying ATMs on the planet.

Art Basel Miami Beach Week Day Two: The VIP Opening

We head to the SCOPE Art Fair tent around 10AM. In the middle of the night artist Tony Porto arrived from the West Coast after a much delayed flight from San Francisco and after a taxi ride with the planet's only cab driver who didn't have a GPS or a cell phone and drove Porto to a place seven miles away from Ocean Avenue in Miami Beach. In fact Porto (fearing for his life on a potential set up Mafia hit)  had to use his own GPS to re-direct the driver to the right place.

Only in Miami.

We finalize the clean-up and final steps for the VIP Platinum and press opening, and at noon the crowds descend upon the fair.

SCOPE is right on the sands of Miami Beach at 8th street - to its left is Untitled, another tent-on-the-beach art fair, and between these two fairs, a really good crowd packs the fair throughout the day.

The outside wall of the WGS Contemporary (located at H27) is hung with about 50-60 of my drawings on Bisque. It also has a gorgeous view of the Atlantic.

Upon arrival, I notice one of my pieces, the one on the left-most upper corner is missing.  Was it stolen? Did one of the cleaning crew bump into it making it fall and break? Mystery... for posterity's sake, it was the piece below:

She couldn't believe that he proposed to her via a text message
Charcoal on Bisque 2021 by Florencio Lennox Campello
MIA

The crowds are substantial and seem deeply interested in the fair and the art.  I start selling a lot of the Bisque pieces, which are very affordable. A tall, blonde woman asks if the prices are a joke. I explain that one of my goals is to seed the planet with as many Campello works of art as I possibly can. She buys one of the lowest priced ones; her date buys one of the most expensive.

A Russian family comes by, and the very attractive lady buys five of the largest pieces - all portraits of artists: two Kahlos, Warhol, Picasso and Dali. The man with her (husband?) says to her in Russian: "why so many?" She shoots him a furry look and he freezes. They buy $1200 worth of work and pay in cash with shiny, brand new $100 bills.

The Monster Picasso
Charcoal and conte on Bisque by Florencio Lennox Campello, c. 2021
In a private collection in Miami Beach

At 8PM the fair ends - we're all thrashed after being on our feet all day. For dinner we head back to Naked Taco, where I feast on blackened octopus. VIP opening day is over - I've sold about 30 Bisque pieces, so the art spreading has begun.

#wgscontemporary #scopeartfair #scopeart #artbaselmiami2021

Art Basel Week - The Arrival

3:30AM wakeup for a 4AM Lyft ride to Reagan National Airport is the start of the trek to Miami for the 2021 version of the planet's most important art event as the Art Basel Miami week re-starts after a long 2020 pause from the Covidian monster released upon the world by the Communist Party ruling and abusing the long-suffering people of China.

After an eventless flight, another Lyfter takes me to Miami Beach, the car is driven by Daniel, a recent (three years) Cuban gentleman who relates to me his tortuous escape history from the other place where Communism brutalizes its people. Three years ago he won a "lottery" to visit Nicaragua, as soon as he arrived there he "escaped" to neighboring Honduras, from there to Guatemala and onto Mexico.  He relates the horror stories of Mexico and dealing with the corrupt Mexican police.  Eventually, he flies to the United States, is granted refugee asylum and three years later, busting his ass with two jobs, is loving life as a free man in the US.

Welcome to Miami.

Mike Janis, the hardworking director of WGS Contemporary, is waiting for me at our AirBnB almost across the street from the SCOPE Art Fair. Somehow Mike (who drove my van from DC to Miami packed to the gills with art) managed to unload all work to the gallery booth - no small feat considering that part of the trek involves a trip across the sand!

Mike has already installed mixed media glass work by Tim Tate as well as his collaborations with Tony Porto. The work in the booth has been curated by Janis to showcase the theme of Superheroes, and it will also hang work by Mexico's great Dulce Pinzon, England's Simon Monk and yours truly.

The entrance to SCOPE has been decorated in a graffiti manner... cough... cough.

We begin hanging the remaining work, and one wall goes up quickly.

We get kicked out around 4PM and then head out to find vittles and end up in Janis' fave restaurant hang-out at Naked Taco, where a fabulous waitress brings out fabulous Mexican food and also takes our photo.

After dinner we head back to our apartment. My daughter Elise calls from Gig Harbor and we chat and she can't believe that we're heading back to the roost at 7PM... and we're in Miami Beach.

Parked in front of our rented condo is a gigantic black Esplanade SUV with enormous tires, dark, tinted windows... and a handicapped parking sticker hanging from the rear view mirror... only in Miami Beach does such a sight seem normal.

The Benedrylization of America

Has anyone noticed that Benadryl or diphenhydramine is marketed under a dozen different labels and dosages as a sleep aid as a walk down the sleep aid section of your local pharmacy or supermarket clearly shows?

Nearly (not all) of the OTC sleep aids out there in Americaland is essentially a dosage of Benadryl! 

Sleep tight America!

Anatomy of a Commission

At the last Affordable Art Fair in NYC - held last September and documented in this blog, I received a commission to create a work that reflected and incorporated the LGBTQ flag in a mixed media works with embedded electronics.

As I've noted multiple times, clear communications is KEY to a happy commissioning! I sent the client a draft contract and explained all processes... then I sent her some rough sketches for the central figure in the work -- the work was to depict a visitor to a gallery/museum where the center piece rotates digital images sampled online from famous abstract artworks -- a "new" Jackson Pollockish work (created by me, not a copy of a Pollock) was to hang to the left, and a Washington Color School style painting of the LGBTQ flag (a very cool stripe painting by the way...) to the right of the figure, while the center piece rotates images.

I sent her these rough drafts... one of the figures is her, as she expressed interest in possibly "being" in the painting.

She liked the lady all the way to the right (who was her), so then I painted her and sent her this...

She loved it! So we moved on! And here's the finished work, which rotates a famous abstract painting (and some not so famous yet) in the middle embedded digital screen.

A Thanksgiving story

About two decades ago, I walked into a Whole Foods supermarket to buy some olives and some Manchego cheese. As I strolled by Whole Foods' fantastic deli, I noticed that in this store they had signs in both English and Spanish.

I almost died laughing when I saw how the Thanksgiving turkey special had been translated! In English, the word "turkey" is the same for the country that spans Europe and the Middle East and for the Thanksgiving bird.

But in Spanish, the word for the country Turkey is Turquia, and the word for the bird is "pavo."

Guess what this store was selling as their Thanksgiving bird? Turquia! What a bunch of turkeys...

Happy Thanksgiving!

A Woman Bored by Superheroes

 

A Woman Bored by Abstraction - by F. Lennox Campello 2021

One of the cool things of working with embedded electronic components that sample and show images from the Internet, is that the sampling can be focused on essentially any theme... thus the above painting, which samples famous (and some not so famous - yet) abstract works from the web... such as above and below...

... can be reprogrammed/reloaded to any subject - such as below, where it is now transformed into A Woman Bored by Superheroes!

A Woman Bored by Superheroes - by F. Lennox Campello 2021

More drawings on Bisque

 These will be heading to Miami in December!

Bettie Page

Cuban Girl Flying Over Miami

Suddenly, She Wasn't Afraid Any More

The Monroe - with Attitude 

Next Year in Jerusalem

Frida The K

An Unmarried Woman 

A Man Begging a Woman

Suddenly She Wasn't Afraid Any Longer 

The Fridanator

La Fridita

Monster Orgasm

After the Orgasm

Andy Warhol

Mr. Spock

Wild, Wonderful Things

A Cuban girl running towards freedom

Finally she achieved an orgasm!

Mr. Spock

 Why not?  Here's Mr. Spock - conte and charcoal on broken Bisque.

Mr. Spock
Charcoal and Conte on Broken Bisque
c. 2021 by F. Lennox Campello