Museum of Florida Art
My husband and I just moved here in November and the Museum of Florida Art was on our "gotta see and do" list. I am an artist and I love anything to do with art. Having the opportunity to go through a museum and seeing the work of other artists is a great inspiration to me.

I love abstracts so I was immediately drawn to the beautiful pastels that hung in the lobby. I loved the colors and details and the way fabric was incorporated. We were told they were on loan from the artist with the hopes they will be part of the museum's permanent collection.

When we walked into the Chris Harris Gallery the huge panels of the exhibit "Iconeclass" by Harold Garde immediately caught my attention. It is part of the museums permanent collection and I really enjoyed the video that showed how they actually created the signage as part of the museums outside façade.

When I go to exhibits, I enjoy to get up close and see if I can figure out how they did it. Studying the Strappo Exhibit, at first look, I thought it was encaustic, which is painting with hot wax, because it was translucent and you could see the layers and it was kind of crackly. When I watched the video, it turns out the artist was using acrylic paint on glass and it doesn't adhere to glass so it peels off and makes it look like glaze. It was really cool and I love that he shared his process.

My favorite piece, especially now knowing too how it was done, was one of the faces using the Strappo method. It was really expressive and to think it's just paint blobs that got squished between glass and paper; maintaining the expression was just awesome.

There was a lot of mixed media in the Dorothy Johnson Gallery upstairs. There were giant mobiles hanging from the ceiling that looked like water color wind chimes.

The museum is a fun way to learn about art and a great place to go and get inspired. Some pieces are part of their permanent collection, but many pieces will be changed from time to time so you can always see something new.

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Melissa Sherbon
DeLand, FL

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