SPAACES Art Gallery ’24-25 Season Exhibitions

July 29, 2024 | Sarasota

OCTOBER 2024

“SPAACES Studio Artists Present” At Arts Advocates Gallery

Alicia Brown, Amanda Walters, Christine Gahagan, Bjorn Thorkelson, Claudia Ryan, Ellen Mason, Jessica Mowery, Laine Nixon, Marianne Chapel, Marina Shaltout, Michael McGuire, 

Carol Lewis, Danielle Dygert, Margaux Albeiz, Nicholas Keen, Rebecca Quigley, Stephen Perkins

Arts Advocates Gallery: The Crossings at Siesta Key Mall, Suite 119, 3501 S. Tamiami Tr.

Opening Night Reception: October 5th, 2024 | Saturday 2:00 – 4:00 pm

Exhibition Dates: October 5th – October 29th | Gallery Hours Sat, 2-4 

Art Advocates hosts the SPAACES Studio Artists in their first group exhibition, “Spaaces Studio Artists Present,” since the program’s inception in 2018. SPAACES supports full-time, career-focused artists with infrastructure, career enhancement, networking, and mentorship opportunities. The program values artists’ working time and offers a sliding scale rental plan based on income, ensuring affordable studio space. SPAACES fosters a community that understands the challenges of being a professional artist, providing feedback and support. Studios are work-in-progress zones, dedicated to creating cohesive, well-crafted, and conceptually strong artworks.

NOVEMBER 2024

TA DAA’ AND THE JOURNEY GOES ON

A Solo Exhibition by Ake Arnerdale

Opening Night Reception: November 1st, 2024 | Friday 6:00 – 8:00pm

Exhibition Dates: November 1st – December 14th | Gallery Hours Fri, Sat, 11-2 or by Appt.

In this relatively uncertain time, Ake Arnerdale observes how individuals can easily feel adrift amidst a torrent of images, text, and conflicting viewpoints, compounded by the pervasive influence of unbridled power across societal realms and the persistence of longstanding issues due to enforced fragmentation. Consequently, the challenge of discerning truth and charting a course forward looms large. Arnerdale’s artwork for the exhibit meticulously explores this fragmentation, employing a diverse array of materials including paint, discarded objects, fabric, photos, papier-mâché, and text, crafting an immersive experience that invites viewers to delve into introspection. Themes of longing, belonging, decision-making, and progress resonate throughout Arnerdale’s work, drawing inspiration from diverse sources such as graffiti, children’s art, outsider art, folk art, and the baroque. 

JANUARY 2025

KX2 – A Collaborative Exhibition by Ruth Avra and Dana Kleinman

Opening Night Reception: January 10th, 2025 | Friday 6:00 – 8:00pm

Exhibition Dates: January 10th – February 1st | Gallery Hours Fri, Sat, 11-2 or by Appt.

KX2 is a collaboration between Ruth Avra and Dana Kleinman, sisters and artists whose practice revolves around the fusion of metalwork and painting. Their artwork delves specifically into the domain of data research, with a particular emphasis on climate change and water infrastructure, in order to illuminate pressing environmental concerns. Employing a blend of repurposed and sometimes salvaged industrial materials with more traditional artistic mediums such as paint on canvas, KX2’s work yields a distinctive visual encounter. At an initial glance, these artworks captivate the observer with their bold forms, color and textures. Yet, upon closer inspection, viewers can unravel a visual narrative addressing themes such as environmental concerns, infrastructure, and overdevelopment.

FEBRUARY 2025

Grids and Stripes: The Power of Pattern

A Collaborative Exhibition by Sam Modder and Joshua Haddad

Opening Night Reception: February 7th, 2025 | 6:00-8:00 pm

Exhibition Dates: Febuary 7th – March 8th | Gallery Hours Fri, Sat, 11-2 or by Appt.

Grids and Stripes: The Power of Pattern pairs the work of two Tampa-based artists who use pattern as a primary visual language to explore themes of identity, power, and liberation. Abstract to figurative, color to black and white, grids to stripes, the exhibition provides a compelling contrast between the artists’ approaches to pattern, all at a towering, and immersive scale that is hard to ignore. Sam Modder’s digitally-manipulated ballpoint pen murals follow a Black woman in a world of her duplicates. Using striped socks to symbolize exploitation and curly hair to represent resistance, her work serves as a fairy tale allegory on power, exploitation, and resistance in contemporary society. Joshua Haddad creates patterns inspired by the “Progress Pride” Flag, incorporating gender equality and sexuality symbols to emphasize LGBTQIA+ inclusivity. With a background in architecture, he uses grid modularity for infinite possibilities, highlighting visibility and diversity through contrasting colors and saturation.

FEBRUARY 2025

Park East Picnic 

Saturday 11:00AM – 4:00PM Shenandoah Park 715 N East Ave, Sarasota, FL 34237

The Park East Picnic is a creative place making project using food, music, and art to promote enduring social change and improve the physical environment and social cohesion of the Park East Neighborhood. The picnic celebrates the full time residents of Park East, bringing joy, building relationships, enhancing community engagement, and growing feelings of inclusivity. It creates opportunities for people of all income levels, ethnicities, and backgrounds to thrive, offering support and encouraging pedestrian activity, creating a safer and more animated Park East neighborhood. The Park East Picnic demonstrates a new way for contemporary art organizations to engage with their local communities, working together to create projects that positvely affect them. The Park East Picnic leaves the community enriched by the experience, providing a sustained sense of empowerment and autonomy, allowing them to gain more control over their own social and political situation. The Park East Picnic is spearheaded by the SPAACES art organization, in collaboration with the Park East Neighborhood Association, Limelight District, Creative Liberties, and SRQ Strong.

MARCH 2025

Dissonance (=) The New, Way

Classical Guitar Performance, Original Works by Edwin Culver

One night event March 7th, 2025 | Doors open at 6:00. Performance at 6:30 pm

This final stop on Edwin Culver’s Spring 2025 Tour includes the most extensive program of original work by the composer to date.  These works grapple with conflicting themes of war and salvation, disambiguation and loss, the ephemeral and the eternal. Dissonance is employed as the “new harmony” in one work, the chaotic “noise” of busy streets in Yichang City, China provide the backdrop for another, and 100-year old letters and recordings from WWI link together the largest scale work on this program. Included will be the premiere of a new work that seeks to connect us with the “sound” of eternity itself.  Ultimately, Dissonance (=) The New, Way attempts a bleeding edge exposition on the question, “What’s the point when there’s human suffering in this world?”

MARCH 2025

L I M I N A L S P A C E

A Collaborative Exhibition by Anthony Mancuso and Bobby Aiosa

Opening Night Reception: March 14th, 2025 | 6:00-8:00 pm

Exhibition Dates: March 14th – April 12th | Gallery Hours Fri, Sat, 11-2 or by Appt.

Artists Anthony Mancuso and Bobby Aiosa are interested in portraying the complexities of our built environment and how these designed spaces, public and private, impact our daily lives. The exhibition explores the threshold of domestic and public lives and how one can influence the other. Anthony Mancuso’s paintings focus on visualizing the psychology of everyday domestic scenes of co-habita through the lens of multiple points of view, skewed perspectives, and saturated colors. By conflating historical design movements and architectural motifs with familial and organic objects, Bobby Aiosa’s sculptural architectural fragmentations reflect on the past lives that once occupied these spaces, and how constant urban redevelopment can bring these once concealed histories to the surface. Both artists utilize the influence of structural form, organic shape, and hue as a tool to convey an underlying consequence behind the imagery and objects presented. Behind the colorful façade of our designed spaces there are more complex stories beyond what the passive viewer may discern within our everyday environments. 

APRIL 2025

CARE: Givers and Receivers

Charles Clary, Michael Stevenson, Rebecca Quigley, Amanda Walters, Samo Miller Davis, Barbara Zucker, Yajaira Urzua-Reyes, Macon Reed, Isys Hennigar, Meg Pierce

Opening Night Reception: April 18th, 2025 | 6:00-8:00 pm

Exhibition Dates: April 18th – May 31st | Gallery Hours Fri, Sat, 11-2 or by Appt.

CARE: Givers and Receivers is a curated group exhibition that delves into the profound relationship between those who provide care and those who receive it. Through a variety of mixed media artworks, including paper, porcelain, fiber, and installation, rich textures and layered narratives combine to discuss the concept of CARE in contemporary society. The artists employing these innovative materials create works that reflect on the emotional and physical labor involved in caring relationships, highlighting the delicate balance and interconnectedness between givers and receivers. CARE goes beyond personal relationships, and includes the evolving attitudes and opinions regarding care, looking at how care, or the lack of, manifests in current events and social shifts. Through these evocative pieces, the exhibition invites viewers to reflect on the deep significance of care, highlighting our personal journeys and the urgent need to care for all people and the planet.

JUNE 2025

Echoes of Youth: Journeys of Self-Discovery

Safe Children Coalition Artists

Opening Night Reception: June 6th, 2025 | 6:00-8:00 pm

Exhibition Dates: June 6th – July 5th | Gallery Hours Fri, Sat, 11-2 or by Appt.

“Echoes of Youth: Journeys of Self-Discovery” is a collaborative project between SPAACES and the Safe Children Coalition, running from August 2024 to June 2025, highlighting the experiences of foster youth in Sarasota/Bradenton. Featuring the artwork of fifteen young individuals, the initiative explores their unique paths of adaptation, self-discovery, and identity. Guided by artist and SPAACES founder Marianne Chapel, participants will express their journeys through experimental art, emphasizing unconventional pedagogy. The project aims to amplify the voices of foster youth, honoring their stories, and empowering them as active members of society and future changemakers, showcasing the transformative impact of socially engaged art.ReplyReply allForward