Miami Art Critic Elisa Turner Concludes First Chapter of Memoir

Okay, so after this blog post I will take myself out of the headlines for the forseeable future, and return to more of my "vintage" blogging.  Meanwhile (back at the ranch??!! no, I don't think so! I am a city girl through and through, except of course when I go back to Shelbyville, Illinois to see my VERY DEAR high school buddies!!). . . .I am going to be working away on my memoir. And of course teaching and tutoring at Miami Dade College, Kendall campus. Want to say THANKS SO MUCH to my dear friends, current colleagues, and former esteemed colleagues (one for whom I am sorry I never got to work for that much time because now in our post-Herald life he is exceptionally thoughtful) who have taken the time to read some or most of what I have written so far, and to offer helpful encouragement. Yes, I know very well I am in for a LONG haul . . . . and it may never see the light of day as a published book.

FIRST THINGS FIRST: MORE VISUAL ART NEWS RELATED TO MIAMI

Thanks to my terrific artcentric buddy Sergio Garcia for this news:  The website for Triennial Miami is now up and running. Visit www.triennialmiami.org

From Miami gallery Spinello Projects, this news: Congrats to Manny Prieres as his "Black Book" series is now on view in the summer show "HELP/LESS" (opened July 14, up through Sept. 29) at Printed Matter, Inc., 195 Tenth Ave., NYC, ph. 212-925-0325. As the press release tells us: This show is curated by Chris Habib, hosted by Printed Matter. The store-wide show includes over 180 books "that explore the fluidity of authorship in artists' books and multiples. . . .In the spirit of books, ephemera and multiples it presents, HELP/LESS reconsiders the exhibition space as an object to upset. It considers its viewers and featured artists accomplices."

The "Black Book" series by Manny Prieres comprises book cover reproductions of novels that have been censored or marginalized.  The covers are intricately rendered by hand with black graphite and gouache on paper. Among the books: The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, Ulysses by James Joyce, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

Another book-related show, this time in Miami: "Summer Reading" at Black Square Gallery, 2248 NW 1st Place, Miami, Wynwood Art District. See www.blacksquaregallery.com or call 305-424-5002.  It features text-based art, now on view and up through Sept. 5. Includes work by artists from USA, Italy, Argentina, and Korea, with various work including objects and installations. Artists are Claire Satin, Kyu Hak Lee, Pablo Lehmann, Patrizia Giambi, Ryan McCann, Tony Vazquez. (I've known Claire's remarkable work for years.)

Odalys Valdivieso, a terrific photographic artist and curator, tells me via email that she is partnering with her friend Gady Alroy, widely known in Venezuela for his services in high quality image related processes. Together they offer scanning, retouching, and printing services at the ArtMedia Studio in The Wynwood Building, 2750 NW 3rd Ave., Suite 12.  Stop by during business hours or call 786-210-3535. Their website is in progress but can be surfed now: http://www.artmediaus.com/site/

Calling all digital dinosaurs!! Mark your calendar for screening of film "Linotype" and talk with director at Wolfsonian-FIU on July 27 at 7 pm. Museum promises an engaging evening re the once-revolutionary Linotype type casting machine, which is now practially an endangered species, even though it was once called the "Eighth Wonder of the World" by Thomas Edison.   The Linotype type casting machine revolutionized printing, communication, and, yes, even society.  But now we must ask, especially those digital dinosaurs who surely scratch their heads in total puzzlement, what place does this machine possibly have in today's world?? Maybe this event will help answer those questions. . . . On  Friday, July 27 at 7 pm The Wolfsonian will screen the new documentary "Linotype: The Film" (75 mins), followed by a talk with film's director Doug Wilson. After the talk there's reception at the nearby hotel Betsy-South Beach.  This, as the press release tells us, is surely a rare chance  to view the film on a large screen; after a limited run, it will be  released digitally and on DVD in October.

Event is free and open to the public.  Due to limited seating,  RSVP suggested at www.tinyurl.com/linotypeMIAMI   The Wolfsonian-FIU is located at 1001 Washington Ave., Miami Beach. For more info, see www.wolfsonian.org

Some background info on this machine, courtesy of The Wolfsonian's press release: Before the Linotype machine, typesetting for newspapers and books was a time-consuming  process done by hand.  The Linotype casts an entire line of type at one time, producing printable type six times faster than a person.  The invention of the Linotype galvanized the printing of newspapers [hey, remember those??] and books, quickly became an indispensable part of the printing industry, and dramatically changed journalism and society [and now so much is changing AGAIN!!] as a whole. . . .  However, in the 1950s photo-typesetting technology began to take over the industry.  By the 1970s, the Linotype was no longer state-of-the-art and the machines were scrapped and melted down by the thousands.  Today, very few machines exist and even few are in operation.

Cool show coming soon, with related panel discussion happening even sooner: Note that "Trading Places 2" will be on view in North Miami at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), from Sept. 13 to Nov. 11, 2012. In this promising exhibit, South Florida artists swap their studio spaces for the museum's galleries for a period of two months.  Artists taking part:  Dona Altemus, Onajide Shabaka, Magnus Sigurdson, Rick Ulysse, Antonia Wright.

On Wednesday, July 25 at 7 pm Magnus Sigurdson and Rick Ulysse will speak in panel discussion about the upcoming exhibit. Discussion moderated by MOCA Executive Director and Chief Curator Bonnie Clearwater.  Admission is free for MOCA members, North Miami residents and City of North Miami employees. Cost is $3 for seniors and students with ID.   To reserve a seat, visit www.mocanomi.org or call 305-893-6211. MOCA is located at 770 NE 125th St., North Miami, FL.

This fascinating series was launched in  2005, when I was still writing for The Miami Herald.  Artists then were Salvatore La Rosa, Maria Martinez-Canas in collaboration with Alaskan artist Kim Brown, and Frances Trombly.

Cool websites for the co-authors Paul Clemence and Julie Davidow of that essential book Miami Contemporary Artists with my foreword:  www.paulclemence.com and www.juliedavidow.com


WHERE IS THE GIRL I USED TO KNOW: A MEMOIR BY ELISA TURNER (Totally my working title!!) (this is second half of my first chapter; to read first  half, see previous blog post)


There was nothing I did not like about living in New York.  I loved exploring Manhattan's many neighborhoods, discovering Gotham Book Mart amid stores lining West 47th Street in the Diamond Distric, poking among shops selling buttons and sequins in the Garment District, catching a glimpse of Toni Morrison in the elevator when we both had jobs at Random House, even though she worked in the far more glamorous Trade Division while I toiled away in the College Textbook Division. 

Often I would meet Eric after work on the plaza at Lincoln Center so that we could see a performance of the New York City Ballet or American Ballet Theater.  Such a good sport but exhausted after driving to Manhattan while he completed his medical training in Brooklyn or after working in a clinic in Paterson, New Jersey, he sometimes settled into his seat and began to snore soon after the lights dimmed and the curtains opened.

I didn't mind, really, because I knew he had battled heavy traffic to get there that night, plus I was thrilled to see performances by now legendary dancers:  Mikhail Baryshnikov, Suzanne Farrell, Peter Martins.  And I knew it was too much to expect my husband to be as nuts about ballet as I was--he grew up boating and watching football in sunny Miami, while I grew up studying ballet and reading tons of books in the Midwest, where for many days it was just too cold or rainy to do anything outside.

But was I really ready to leave New York?

I was not so sure. Yes, I had finally quit my job in textbook publishing at Random House several months ago, disilllusioned with the grind it had become, thinking I would follow my dream of becoming a writer.  After all, even as a cadet Girl Scout eager to earn as many badges as she could to decorate that geeky forest green sash, I had rushed to earn the "Writer" badge right away.  Somehow, I found its delicately embroidered black and white scrolls curiously appealing.  But as anyone who knows who's tried it, being a free-lance writer in New York is a lonely feast-or-famine kind of occupation.  Already I had published at least one art book review in the magazine ARTnews, thanks to a connection I had made through a former colleague at Random House, and other jobs had come my way, but it was still a frustrating and solitary endeavor.

I had even paid good money to attend a conference for professional journalists and authors at a swanky hotel in Manhattan.  I remember going to a session on conducting an interview, and that a journalist explained how she always got her best comments at the end of the interview and that a good strategy to elicit more comments was simply to wait after a particularly revealing remark and invariably more would follow to fill in the silence.  Little did I know then that I would use the same strategy about a decade later in Miami, when I was interviewing internationally-known artists describing how horrific experiences in Argentina and Rwanda had shaped their riveting art.

No doubt about it, however, in the early 1980s I was intimidated by the dazzling talent already active in New York and did not see how I could ever acquire the many editorial connections and writing assignments that "real writers" seemed to have in such abundance.  Once again, I was sure I had traveled to a dead-end in my so-called career.  For sure, I had run out of things I was not good at.

Worst of all, my biological clock was ticking louder all the time.  We knew we could not finally swing the challenges of raising children in Brooklyn, let alone Manhattan, and life in bedroom communities outside the city didn't appeal to us at all.

So whether or not I was truly on board, we were bound for Miami.  Eric had already lined  up a job there and found us a darling wood-frame cottage with a fireplace, built about a decade after Miami was incorporated in 1896.  A key lime tree and grapefruit tree grew in the yard.  Dozens of folks from his Cuban-American family were thrilled that he was returning home, especially his Cuban grandmother we all called Mama.  She lived with his father Fred and Fred's charming second wife, Gerry, in the pink house were Eric grew up on Natoma Street in Coconut Grove--a quaint, leafy neighborhood near downtown Miami.

In Miami, Eric had childhood friends still living in the city who shared his love of boating and watching football, adoring relatives who could make his favorite Cuban dishes with a skill I could never match.  He had many threads from a life there to pick up and fashion into a promising future.

But what would my future be in Miami? I knew I would never be happy being known solely as "Eric's wife" or worse, as my defiantly feminist self grumbled quietly, "a doctor's wife."   To the ever-so-polite consternation of my parents and in-laws, I had refused to drop my maiden name and become Mrs. Smith when we tied the knot in 1979.  Everyone had pretty much gotten used to this when we picked up and settled in Miami for good in 1984.  Yet even then I knew I was not willing to be identified as simply someone's wife or someone's mom.
[Blogger's Note:  Yes, even unpaid bloggers need to take a break. I don't expect to blog again until the first Thursday in September or October, 2012. Really need a big chunk of time now to work on my book-length memoir.]