Weird Miami Bus Tours – Knight Foundation
Arts

Weird Miami Bus Tours

We all know Miami has bizarro-world moments — in fact, that is one of our most endearing traits, if you throw out your inner irritation and learn to love the weirdness. The nonprofit gallery space Bas Fisher Invitational would like to encourage this love, with a quirky series of artist-led bus tours over the next three months, “Weird Miami.”

As the gallery explains, “there is a much more interesting — sometimes dark — and never boring side to Miami, one only known to the people who inhabit this town. For any Miamian, a typical day’s experiences could range from strange to the swampy sublime.” So on the third Sunday of each month (starting this past Sunday), 5 different artists who inhabit this town will guide a school-bus through the non-boring sides and sites of Miami.

First up, 2008 Whitney Biennial participant Adler Guerrier, whose works — photographs, video, drawings — often deal with the urban environment. He guided “Untitled (How the other half lives),” through neighborhoods west of Wynwood. But where exactly you will go next on the bus tours and what precisely you will see remains, intentionally, a mystery. “We’ll load into the big yellow school bus and be completely at the artists’ mercy!” according to BFI’s Agatha Wara.

The tours are day trips, and suggestions include wearing comfortable shoes, and packing some water and money for lunch. The August excursion will be lead by Clifton Childree and Kevin Arrow, and the September mission is called “Ripe Riparian,” headed by Christie Gast and some secret guests.

In the meanwhile, some secret and weird images and visions of Miami are on display at Bas Fisher, at the “Visitor’s Center” exhibition. Here, “artists, both Miamians and non-natives, consider their experiences with people they have come across, through mysterious topographies they have discovered, and objects they have excavated or exhumed, as a way to make sense of or share their unique findings.” The artists in the show include Arrow, Guerrier, Childree, Gast, as well as Autumn Casey, Alyse Emdur, Jason Hedges, Nicolas Lobo & Kenneth Andrew Mroczek, Justin Long, Isabel Moros, and Peggy Nolan.

“Weird Miami Visitors Center Exhibition,” through Sept. 18, at Bas Fisher Invitational, 180 NE 39th St., Ste. 210, Design District. “Weird Miami Artist-led Bus Tours,” Aug. 15 and Sept. 19; bus ticket price $16 (cash or checks); [email protected];305-879-6978.