Meet Oolite Arts’ new visual arts and cinematic arts residents at Resident Night on February 9

Jan. 5, 2022 (MIAMI) – Oolite Arts reinforces its commitment to supporting Miami-based visual artists with the selection of its 2022 Studio Residency and Cinematic Arts Residency recipients. These vital programs provide exceptional visual artists with a working space, funding, professional development, and other resources in addition to connecting them with opportunities to showcase their work and engage with the community. The public can meet the 14 new and returning visual artists and one cinematic artist during a Resident Night from 6 to 9 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 9, which will coincide with the opening of artist Roscoè B. Thické III’s first solo exhibit at Oolite Arts.

First established by the late Ellie Schneiderman in 1984 as ArtCenter/South Florida to provide affordable workspaces for Miami’s visual artists, Oolite Arts’ rich history now spans nearly four decades and offers programs that elevate local artists in various mediums. In the coming year, Oolite Arts will bring new opportunities to visual and cinematic artists, in addition to arts programming for neighborhood youth and adults at its new art complex scheduled to open in 2023.

“We are proud to fulfill Ellie’s legacy by continuing to support talented artists in our community and provide them with the necessary tools to help them thrive, including our esteemed residency programs,” said Dennis Scholl, president & CEO of Oolite Arts. “It is remarkable to witness the evolution of these artists that takes place during their residencies. I can’t wait to see their works come to life in our studios.”

This year, 14 Miami-based visual artists working in a range of disciplines are continuing or have been newly selected for the two-year Studio Residency Program, which offers up to 600 square feet of studio space at Oolite Arts’ Miami Beach location, opportunities to network with other artists and renowned curators, exhibit their work and more. The artists were selected by an independent juror panel including Amy Galpin, Meaghan Kent, Leilani Lynch and Larry Ossei-Mensah.

The 8 new 2022 Studio Residents are:

Rose Marie Cromwell is a photographer whose work explores the effects of globalization on our intimate lives, and the tenuous space between the political and the spiritual. Her first book, El Libro Supremo de la Suerte, was published in 2018 and was named one of the “25 Best Photobooks of 2018” by TIME Magazine.

Carolina Cueva is a Peruvian-born interdisciplinary artist working in sculpture, performance and 2D works for art. Her work examines identity, ancestry and displacement through personal narrative, history, and the transcendental.

Co-residents Rev. Houston R. Cypress & Jean Sarmiento formed the Love The Everglades Movement and will operate as a “Concierge for Everglades Action,” providing the community with resources and access to connect with the Greater Everglades. In studio, Sarmiento will experiment by creating prototypes of his Sustainable Water Towers and other functional sculptures inspired by bio-mimicry. Rev. Cypress will collaborate on documenting Queer Ecological Knowledge through a series of text-based works, photographs and videos.

Friday is a multidisciplinary artist who creates large-scale works, incorporating a chalk and blackboard aesthetic, that critique pop culture and mass media for the recurring messages it presents to the public regarding Black bodies.

Reginald O’Neal creates oil canvas paintings that reflect the complexity of the African-American experience in his hometown of Overtown. He bases his paintings on original photographs, which reveal personal and community narratives of domestic violence, marginalization, loss and beauty.

Edison Peñafiel was born in Ecuador and works with video and immersive, site-specific, multimedia installations that create surreal echoes of our world. Informed by his own life, Peñafiel centers the migrant as a subject.

Ema Ri (they/them) is a queer identified, Cuban-American, Miami-based artist. The artist’s work is procedural, layered, and expressive in nature and in many ways a reflection of the artist. Rather than communicating with words or using visual narrative to illustrate a story or moment in time, the artist’s work features materials that are often seen in the home and workplace.

The 6 returning 2022 Studio Residents are:

Jen Clay creates elaborate, whimsical installations and performances, which feature non-human forms that speak to the audience through audio or sewn messages to make fear, anxiety, and uncertainty approachable.

Yanira Collado is a conceptual artist who harnesses veiling techniques within abstraction to protect visual vestiges of modes of resistance and difference. In her work, she uses reclaimed literary texts and textiles, and various construction materials including wood, concrete, masonry brick, iron and drywall.

Mark Fleuridor is a Haitian-American artist, who explores his personal history within his background and familiar experiences through painting, quilting, collage and patternmaking.

Felice Grodin’s work combines the real and the virtual through experimental and transdisciplinary projects that reframe the familiar and confront the uncanny. With a background in architecture, her exhibition Felice Grodin: Invasive Species (2018-present) at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), became the first (AR) augmented reality-only contemporary art show in the United States.

T. Elliot Mansa has developed an assemblage practice that references materials found in roadside memorials, applying ritual practices and aesthetics from West African, Caribbean, and Southern religious and vernacular sculptural traditions.

Roscoè B. Thické III is a photographer, visual artist and community advocate born and raised in Miami Gardens. His work is centered around the resilience of spirit, affliction of memory, and the art in “seeing.” Thické will debut his first solo exhibition, ORDER MY STEPS: There are no answers here, move on, at Oolite Arts from Feb. 10-May 15, 2022.

The 2022 Cinematic Arts Resident is:

Greko Sklavounos, a Miami-based artist and filmmaker, has been selected for the Cinematic Arts Residency. Sklavounos earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in film from Florida State University and a Master of Fine Arts from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work engages with memory and mythology at the personal, cultural, and transgenerational levels. Through video, sculpture, installation, and photography themes of landscape, nostalgia, longing, communication, isolation, and place are explored as resonating phenomena on the psyche, particularly as experienced through the queer body.During his residency at Oolite Arts, Sklavounos, who is of Greek and Mexican descent, will develop a film about a man who must confront nature after his grandfather comes to him as a spirit. Sklavounos was chosen by a national jury of film experts including Zia Anger, Andrew Hevia, Jason Jeffers, Diana Peralta and Naima Ramos-Chapman.

“I’m thrilled to be working with Oolite Arts and am eager to push the limits of the opportunity in a film inspired by the landscape – the magic of the land and how it transforms the inner world of a man,” said Sklavounos.

This residency is just one aspect of Oolite Arts’ Cinematic Arts program that aims to strengthen Miami’s growing indie film community. Now in its fourth year, the initiative gives one filmmaker up to $50,000 to create a narrative micro-budget feature, along with a producer to oversee the project and a shared studio space for production. The residency also includes masterclasses, workshops, film screenings, and other unique opportunities.

Visit oolitearts.org to learn more about the Studio Residency and Cinematic Arts Residency programs.

CALENDAR NOTICE
Resident Night at Oolite Arts
924 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, Florida
Wednesday, Feb. 9 from 6 to 9 p.m.
Information: www.oolitearts.org

About Oolite Arts
Oolite Arts helps Miami-based artists advance their careers and inspires the cultural community to engage with their work. Established in 1984, Oolite Arts is both a community and a resource, providing visual artists with the studio space, exhibition opportunities and financial support they need to experiment, grow, and enrich the city. Through its educational programming, Oolite Arts helps Miamians learn about contemporary art and develop their own artistic skills.

Exhibitions and programs at Oolite Arts are made possible with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council; the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; the Miami Beach Mayor and City Commissioners; the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Funding Arts Network, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. For more information, visit oolitearts.org. Follow @oolitearts on social media.