Artist and photographer Elle Schorr likes to see everything. A visionary and culture vulture, she has worked at her photography for many years, and her latest body of work – of dual reflections in store windows – is a fascinating mirror to the Art Salons she has been curating at The Armory in West Palm Beach.
After a career in clinical social work where she “learned a lot about people” she says, she moved from New York to Lake Worth, Florida, and focused her new freedom on using her camera to capture the transitory energy of the urban environment.
She has done well in South Florida and shown her work widely, garnering critical attention for her unique ability to freeze multiple perspectives into a single image photograph.
Her sleek, glossy work was chosen in 2009 and 2013 for the “Annual All Florida Exhibition” at the Boca Raton Museum, as well as for many other juried and invitational exhibitions. This past year she had two solo exhibitions, one at the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County in Lake Worth and the other at Project Fine Art /helium creative in FAT Village / Fort Lauderdale. She was part of a two person exhibition at GardensArt in Palm Beach Gardens City Hall . Her work is in a number of private collections, and can be seen at ARTHouse 429 in Northwood, and Project Fine Art / helium creative in Ft. Lauderdale.
But working as an artist is mostly a solo effort, and in a county as spread out as Palm Beach, it’s difficult for artists to connect. “I felt I had get into the arts community,” she says over a lunch of sushi and salad at Malakor Thai in Northwood. “So I volunteered as a docent at the now closed Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art – which morphed into the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County in Lake Worth – and was seeing the need for more dialogue and networking with artists within the community. I felt the need to hold some art talks and that led to me being named the Art Salon curator at The Armory Art Center for the past three years, where I book monthly talks during season with artists across the board. I have the energy and have been bringing in artists from various fields – painting, ceramic, sculpture. I’m at all of them of course, but different people attend the different talks and it’s fascinating to see the connections being made. It really builds community as after the artists presentation we all sit in a circle and get to discuss what we just heard.”
The opening season show is Artists of Art Salon: A Collective Dialogue that will exhibit the works of 58 South Florida artists, from Miami to Martin Counties, all of whom have been presenters over the last three years at Elle Schorr’s Art Salons at the Armory. The works will fill three galleries at both the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach and the newly renovated, mural covered Armory Annex Gallery in Lake Worth, FL.
Paintings, drawings, mixed media, sculptures, installations, and a video lounge (in Lake Worth) – something that Elle is particularly excited about – will address a variety of social, cultural, and aesthetic concerns. The work has been grouped into three themes: “The Individual”, The World”, and “Beyond”. “The Individual” is in Greenfield Gallery, “The World” is in East Gallery, both at The Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, and “Beyond” is in the Armory Annex Gallery in Lake Worth. The show opened October 2nd at the Art Center in West Palm Beach, and a reception at the Annex location will be held October 23rd from 6 to 8 p.m. in Lake Worth. The show runs through October 31, 2015. Notable artists include Virginia Fifield, whose intricate black and white drawings are a marvel of powerful delicacy; and Dana Donaty, whose wildly colorful and playful paintings create entire new universes.
The first Art Salon talk is on October 6 with Kerry Phillips, who creates sculptures and installations using materials available in a given place at a given time – ranging from found objects to collected experiences and retold stories from her parents farm. Often, she’ll alter a space using architectural interventions and enlist the public’s participation in the gathering of materials or through performance based interactions. In her talk, “Happenstance & Resistance: The Shared Story of Things”, Phillips will consider the seemingly accidental nature of the materials she finds and uses and her dogged refusal/inability to look at things in ordinary ways. Phillips was just awarded one of the 2015 South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowships, and has shown extensively in Miami/South Florida including projects with Locust Projects and the Miami Art Museum. Phillips lives and works in Miami.
An Artists/Curator Talk will be held at the Armory Art Center Friday, October 16th from 6-8 p.m.Lake Worth holds its Annex Reception Friday, October 23 from 6 – 8 pm. Parking is available at both locations, and admission is free. More details here: www.Armoryart.org
Au Revoir to a Punk Queen
Living semi-quietly in South Florida for the past 2 years, French born Queen of Paris Punk and 1970s “It” Girl Edwige Belmore passed away on Tuesday, September 22nd at age 58 in Miami. She was a total Glamazon, a muse to designers Thierry Mugler and Jean Paul Gaultier, appeared on magazine covers with Andy Warhol, had hit dance club singles in the 1980s, designed jewelry, and modeled in Tokyo, Paris, New York. I had known her since the early 80s and often visited her in Miami where she was Artist in Residence at the Vagabond Hotel making art for the lobby and restaurant as well as designing and maintaining the gardens. Last year she got a new tattoo on her back from internationally known artist Kenny Scharf in a live performance piece that took place at Tonywood Gardens in Miami’s Wynwood Arts District. A wildly free spirit, her stunning beauty, kind nature and joie de vivre made a lasting impression on everyone she met. She will be greatly missed.
Art Salons: an Artist’s Artist Curates Dialogue. a fascinating mirror to the Art Salons Artist and photographer Elle Schorr has been curating at the Armory
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