• Article

    Maker Saturdays build bridges from DIY innovators to wider community

    Published March 14, 2014 by

    Miami Mini Maker Faire, a Flickr set by Michael Bolden Knight Foundation supports the Miami Mini Maker Faire and Maker Saturdays to connect talented people in a creative environment that stimulates new ideas. Below, organizer Ric Herrero, co-founder of MIAMade, writes about the maker movement here in South Florida. Miami is a DIY town. It’s long tradition of do-it-yourself ingenuity and tinkering is part of the reason why Kauffman Foundation ranks the city No.1 in the country in per capita entrepreneurial activity. A growing number of local entrepreneurs young and old are starting businesses making things, either embracing classic craftsmanship or using technology to hack traditionally “non-tech” goods into something new. 3-D printing has become more present; former hobbyists and do-it-yourselfers now call themselves makers; and schools around the county are seeking creative ways to integrate experiential STEAM learning into their curriculums. Yet it remains difficult for makers and innovators to build their ideas here. It is harder than it should be for them to connect with their peers and find valuable mentorship opportunities and support services.    We at MIAMade seek to bring this community of makers together and introduce their wonderful creations to consumers and the wider community. Through the Miami Mini Maker Faire supported by Knight Foundation, we provided makers with a highly visible, annual platform that they can coalesce around, eagerly anticipate together, and begin to build community. But that’s just the beginning.
  • Article

    In Miami salon, Redfords advocate using art to inspire social change

    Published March 14, 2014 by

    Above: Robert Redford and Sibylle Szaggars Redford at the Young Arts Salon Series Wednesday night. Photo credit: World Red Eye.  Winning hearts is half the battle when it comes to saving the environment, and art can be one of its strongest allies. That’s the message iconic Hollywood actor Robert Redford and his wife, artist Sibylle Szaggars Redford, delivered to a crowd gathered at the headquarters of the the National YoungArts Foundation in Miami Wednesday night. The event, moderated by Dennis Scholl, Knight Foundation’s vice president for the arts, was the second in the YoungArts Salon Series, which brings together renowned creative minds to discuss issues about the cultural landscape and to interact with the audience. That interaction actually began the night before at the YoungArts’ Biscayne Boulevard campus, the former Bacardi Museum and Tower, with the world premiere of “The Way of the Rain Miami.” The collaborative artistic performance pays tribute to the Earth and—through abstract art, dance, film, music and words—calls attention to the damage being caused by man. Directed by Sibylle Redford, it also starred YoungArts alumni, other Miami artists and her famous husband, a longstanding environmentalist, in a special reading. The artist was born in Germany and had a successful career as a trader before turning to art full time. The seeds of the project were planted last year, with an earlier and less elaborate version of “The Way of the Rain” presented in Albuquerque, N.M., where the Redfords own a home. The desert landscape and its weather inspired the artist, who then expanded the scope of the work originally created with David Thor Jonsson and adapted it for Miami. “So, what we did last night, what we tried to convey, is a tiny, tiny little drop,” Sibylle Redford said during the YoungArts Salon. “But I believe there is a chance to save this planet.” The couple admitted that chance faces many obstacles, from money pressures to political interests, but Redford considers change inevitable.
  • Article

    ‘Deep City,’ the story of Miami’s Motown

    Published March 13, 2014 by

    'Deep City' trailer from Knight Foundation on Vimeo. Well before Miami Sound became a brand name, there was a Miami sound. It came together in the mid ’60s and it was soul and funk as only Miami could make it. It was raw and gritty. It was built on the sanctified grooves of church and street life, the brash sound of marching bands and the lilting cadences of the Caribbean. And because it was performed by local musicians, black and white, but also players from Alabama and Georgia but also Jamaica and the Bahamas, it had an accent all of its own. It was the sound of Miami  — and Deep City Records was its Motown. “Deep City: Birth of the Miami Sound,” a documentary film directed and produced by local filmmakers Marlon Johnson and Chad Tingle and Dennis Scholl, is a valentine to the people, and the community, that created that music. It premieres in South Florida at the Miami International Film Festival on Friday, March 14, at 8:30 p.m. at the Olympia Theater. “I’m a native of Miami, born and raised,” says Johnson. “Dennis is from here; Chad has been living here for the better part of two decades now. These are stories told by Miamians, about Miamians for the world at large, and we felt this was an important story to tell. For me, it was an affirmation of some of the things I’ve always known about the city.”
  • Article

    Open house at the McColl Center

    Published March 13, 2014 by

    The McColl Center for Visual Art. The McColl Center for Visual Art’s winter session is coming to a close, which means that current Artists-in-Residence (Alix Lambert, Elizabeth Lasure, Crystal Am Nelson, Ivan Toth Depeňa and Jason Watson, as well as Affiliate Artist Linda Luise Brown) will...
  • Article

    “The History House” by Niurca Márquez

    Published March 13, 2014 by

    History, whatever we may think of it, is always a fragile and fractured amalgamation of facts and fictions that we construct in an attempt to explain where we come from and where we will go. Dancer and choreographer Niurca Márquez takes on history in her new work, “The History House,”...
  • Article

    Skate-of-the-art vibes at Space 1026

    Published March 13, 2014 by

    Chunky bubble letters reading “ginuwine” — in quoation marks — offer the best overall synopsis of the “Art 'N' Skate Zone” at Space 1026. The paint looks lifted straight from a box car or a rusty bridge abutment, and the curved surface it's on might make a great ramp if...