This summer, the Art and Culture Center will delve into figurative works with the whimsical group show Personify. This family-friendly exhibition will feature sculptures, puppets and installations by renowned South Florida artists Pablo Cano and Jim Hammond, plus distinctive installations by Jeanne Jaffe, Gili Avissar and others.
The exhibition runs from June 7 through August 18, 2019. The opening reception will take place on Friday, June 7 from 6 to 9 pm. The Center is currently accepting reservations for field trips and group tours.
Gallery visitors can create their own “personified” art work in our Interactive Room while being immersed in an installation by Jim Hammond.
Admission to the opening reception is $10 and free for members. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Friday from 10 am to 5 pm and Saturday to Sunday from 12 pm to 4 pm. The gallery is closed on Mondays. Admission to the Center following the opening reception is $7 for adults, $4 for seniors and students, and free for members.
When inanimate objects reflect cultural concerns, historical narratives, and playful humor, it becomes clear that artists project their impressions of history into figurative works to better understand contemporary society. The sculptures, puppets, and installations in Personify engage new audiences and ask for participation.
Marionettes will be on view and engaged with in Pablo Cano’s work, and in an installation about the life and inventions of Nikola Tesla by Jeanne Jaffe that will hang delicately from the Immersive Gallery ceiling. Body textiles by Israeli artist Gili Avissar reflect his time spent in Miami this past spring at the Fountainhead Residency. Other local artists will include figurative works that reference the idea of personification through inanimate objects.
STEAM-Themed art-making and free admission will be offered during our Free Arts! Family Days on June 16, July 21 and August 18.
Pablo Cano is a pioneer among South Florida artists and is regarded as a premier artist in his field of puppetry. Born in Havana, Cuba in 1961, Cano was on the last flight out of the country before the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. He has lived in Miami’s Little Havana since, creating puppets, marionettes and performance sets from discarded debris he gets from trash bins, thrift shops, and admirers who support his work. His influences include Cubist bricolage, the color palette of Russian Constructivist Alexandra Exter, who assembled marionettes in the 1920s, and the mechanics of the pieces in Alexander Calder’s “Circus.”
Jim Hammond has won much-deserved acclaim in Broward County for helping popularize the annual Florida Day of the Dead celebration held each November since 2010 in downtown Fort Lauderdale. After receiving his MA in Puppetry Design from the University of Connecticut, Hammond created Sideshow Productions in 1996 and has since designed personified objects for such clients as Florida Grand Opera, New World Symphony, Florida Philharmonic, and Broward Center for the Performing Arts. In 2002, he worked in the puppet department of Disney’s The Lion Kingnational tour and is past Executive Director of the Puppet Festival of the Americas.
A multi-disciplinary artist who was born in Haifa in 1980, Gili Avissar currently lives and works in Tel Aviv. Avissar gained his B.F.A and M.F.A at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design and since then has been creating large-scale textile installations and videos. Avissar is the recipient of The Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sport Prize for Young Artists (2012); The Rabinovich Art Foundation Award (2012, 2010); and the Isracrard and Tel Aviv Museum Prize for Israeli Artist (2010).
Jeanne Jaffe is the recipient of fellowship grants from the Gottlieb Foundation, the Independence Foundation, Mino Artist Residency in Japan, and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mid Atlantic/NEA, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Leeway Foundation, and Virginia A. Groot Foundation. She was twice a sculpture discipline finalist for the Pew Fellowship in the Arts. Jaffe has had artist’s residencies fellowships at Yaddo Artists Colony, Rutgers’s Innovative Printmaking Workshop, New Jersey Printmaking Council, Schuylkill Center, Yellow Springs Institute, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is a Professor of Sculpture at the University of the Arts. She has also taught at Tyler School of Art and Swarthmore, as well as in a multi-disciplinary program at the Annenberg Center Arts in Education Program at the University of Pennsylvania.
Personify is funded in part by a Cultural Tourism Program grant from the Broward County Board of County Commissioners as recommended by the Broward Cultural Council and Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau; the Hollywood Community Redevelopment Agency; and Visit Florida.
About the Art and Culture Center/Hollywood
The Art and Culture Center/Hollywood is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization supported in part by its members, admissions, private entities, the City of Hollywood, the Broward County Board of County Commissioners as recommended by the Broward Cultural Council; and the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture. We welcome donations from all members of the community who wish to support our work.
