It was like a family event. Everyone loved celebrating the 5th Anniversary of the Williams McCall Gallery in South Beach. Gail Williams and Dawn McCall own the gallery, but everyone close to them felt connected too. We have all learned so much about gallery life and the art world. It has been so much fun. Thank you Ladies. Happy Anniversary. You deserve the best.
Whitney and Fredrick attended the opening of the Williams McCall Gallery 2015/2016 season, South of Fifth, Miami. They are standing in front of Eliot’s photos. Eliot and I are in New York. We are thrilled that our children were able to stop by. We just found out that the photo to the right sold. Yes!!!!!
Gallery owners Dawn McCall and Gail Williams with artist Rubem Robierb.
Weatherman Sam Champion, husband of Rubem, with one of the guests.
Bachelorette star Josh Murray representing Enduring Hearts charity.
Josh’s aunt and uncle, the Feldman’s of Miami.
The Rubin’s and the Levy’s.
Rubem’s heart paintings
Other guests
This week I was working on getting some TV coverage for Enrique Flores-Galbis, a Cuban born landscape and portrait painter. His work, “Dreaming of Havana,” is on display at the Williams McCall Gallery in South Beach, FL. The invitation to the opening is posted above. Born in Havana, he left in 1961 with Operation Pedro Pan arriving alone in South Florida at the age of 9. Also a novelist, his award-winning book, 90 Miles to Havana, was based on the events that led to his departure and the life he encountered in the U.S.
NBC 6 Miami, the local affiliate, jumped at the chance to tell the story.
Click here for the segment. If the NBC app pops up. Just press “No Thanks” and then the TV appearance appears.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
“This ongoing series of paintings began before the first return to my birthplace, my magnetic center, the island of Cuba. The first images, painted from memories, were tinged by the emotions and longings this landscape evokes in the heart of an exile. After that first visit I started painting urban themes where the collision of memory and fact is palpable. The bare buildings of Havana, bitten by the salt and wind have the look of paper-thin, brittle honeycombs. The clanging approach of an old Ford retrofit with a sputtering Fiat engine is an unsettling metaphor for the intersection of nostalgia, history and cold fact.”
Flores-Galbis received a Master of Fine Arts Degree from the Parsons School of Design in 1992. He has served on the Faculty of the New Jersey Center for Visual Arts for over twenty years and Parsons School of Design for over sixteen years as well as the Morris and Montclair Museums in New Jersey. Flores-Galbis’ work can be found in corporate, university, and private collections throughout the country.
ABOUT WILLIAMS McCALL GALLERY
The Williams McCall Gallery is the first fine art gallery located in the South of Fifth neighborhood in South Beach and has become a “must visit” destination for art lovers and collectors. The gallery holds one of approximately 30 licenses issued by the U.S. Treasury Department to import artworks from Cuba.
The gallery represents a diverse roster of local and international artists creating contemporary paintings, works on paper, fine art photography, encaustic collage and sculpture. There is a unique mix of emerging, mid-career, and established artists. Several of the artists have a strong Provincetown, Massachusetts connection – the oldest, largest, and continuous art colony in America.
The gallery was voted the Best New Gallery 2013 by the Miami Sun Post newspaper. It was also a 2013 Finalist for Best Art Gallery by the Miami New Times newspaper.
I want to invite all DigiDame readers to a very special event during Art Basel at 110 Washington Avenue, CU-3, Miami Beach, Florida, on Saturday night, Dec. 7th, 6pm to 9pm. The exhibit will be open from Dec. 3rd to the 29th.
Our good friends, Gail Williams and Dawn McCall, of the Williams McCall Gallery South of Fifth, along with Gary Marotta Fine Art G-1 Gallery of Provincetown, are presenting the extraordinary late paintings and drawings of New York City artist Manuel Pardo (1952-2012).
Pardo became well known when Marcia Tucker, founder and director of the New Museum in NY, included his work for the groundbreaking exhibition in the 80s, The Other Man: Alternative Representation of Masculinity. Pardo went on to exhibit internationally in solo exhibitions in New York, Paris, Mexico City, Cologne, Havana, and Milan. Corporate commissions and events include The Motherland Series; Murals by Manuel Pardo at the British Airways terminal and JFK International Airport; and Hérmes & Visa for Masaryk: Arte Moda & Visa, curated by Justo Sierra, in México City, México.
Pardo was born on July 4th in Cardenas, Cuba. He died in November 2012 after a short illness while enjoying the success of his show entitled Stardust at California State University Fullerton. The artist’s obituary, written by David Frankel, Senior Editor, Publications Department, Museum Of Modern Art, New York appeared in The Huffington Post on May 16, 2013.
Pardo’s work tells his life story of a ten year old boy emigrating, against his will, to the United States from Cuba on Operaciòn Pedro Pan. In his best known series, Mother And I, the artist pays homage to his mother. Pardo depicts his mother Gladys adorned in couture clothing in lavish surroundings with elaborate patterns, colors, and details often referencing popular culture in the context of the work. Other works like Motherland represent a boy’s last memory of Cuba with a lone palm tree standing in front of a highly stylized mountain range.
Collectors and supporters include Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla, Henry Luce III, Joan Sonnabend, Mike McGee, and Andrea Harris.
Thank goodness for technology so I can share this news with you. Eliot’s photo that was taken in June, 2012 at Plitvice Lakes National Park, the largest national Park in Croatia, (at the border to Bosnia and Herzegovina) sold during Art Basel. It was being exhibited at the Williams McCall gallery South of Fifth in Miami Beach. The buyers, originally from Boston, just bought a townhouse a few blocks from the gallery. They felt the photo was very “Zen-like.”
Here are some photos from the magical evening. Over the next few days I will show you how technology has become part of art at Art Basel, the largest art exhibition in the world.
DigiDame 