Art Lovers Forum Podcast

I’m grateful that Yiwei Lu agreed to be interviewed by Art Lovers Forum during this difficult time in Los Angeles. Her galleries are in Venice Beach and Wuhan, China. 
We officially met during the Art Fairs in Miami last month.   Miami friends of mine, Emily and Chris Campbell, bought art from Yiwei more than a year ago and they now have a close relationship.
I wanted to hear what it was like being an art dealer in Los Angeles during the recent horrific wildfires.  I knew Yiwei would talk from the heart. While she plans to forge forward, she is taking a little time for herself to absorb the destruction of her adopted town.   
To date, the fires have killed at least 27 people, destroyed more than 12,000 structures and charred more than 60 square miles. You have to be very strong to stay upbeat when so many folks around her are suffering from tremendous losses. While art isn’t the number one item on your wish list when everything you own is gone, it certainly can bring great joy to those who find paintings, sculptures, assemblages, etc., therapeutic.  Yiwei wants to support the community through this rebuild era.
Yiwei opened her gallery in Venice Beach in 2019. One of her clients is actor Billy Zane who she says is also a terrific artist as well. She loves living in Los Angeles and says despite many of the challenges ahead, most folks plan to stay. Part of her mission is to bring joy into the lives of people who are in limbo now.  She will work to discover and promote unique and underrepresented voices, fostering cross-cultural understanding through art with the mission of integrating art into everyday life. 
Yiwei will continue to be highly active in the art fair circuit, participating in notable fairs such as Photofairs New York, Intersect Palm Springs, San Francisco Art Fair, Future Fair New York, Spring Break Los Angeles, and Beijing Dangdai Art Fair. The gallery is also set to attend Intersect Aspen, Art 021 Shanghai, and Untitled Miami. Additionally, Yiwei Gallery collaborates with nonprofit art organizations and art festivals globally, including Casa Reigs in Italy and the Shenyang International Localized Art Festival.

 
I just want to say that I love Carmin Kilpatrick’s artwork. She is only a freshman in college and yet she has mastered creating art that is filled with mystery, intrigue, secrets, fascination and new shapes and designs. I can stare at her work forever.
I have shown her work to a few experts who like what they see and are now waiting anxiously to see what she produces over the next few years. I am going to collect a few of her paintings now because I believe she is going to embrace new trends and opportunities in the future.When you listen to her podcast interview, you will hear she has the right, genuine attitude, interest and natural desire to make her mark in the art world.
Carmin feels that through her work, she can provoke thought, spark dialogue, and illuminate important personal and social issues. Her art delves into the intertwined concepts of truth, judgment, and change, exploring how they shape identity in a rapidly evolving world.
She was born in California but grew up in South Florida and attended the Arts Academy at North Broward Preparatory School for high school (as their first scholarship recipient). Carmin traveled to Italy and received a grant to spend 6 weeks in Wexford, Ireland, practicing art with a small group of students. Besides art, she loves fashion and creative direction—from mood boards, to styling, to photoshoots. Carmin hopes to work with fashion as another medium of art. She is currently a Studio Art BFA major at Florida State University.

  
When Liz Berman Sklaw ran the New York Marathon this past November she unequivocally felt like she was viewing a kaleidoscope of paintings in every borough she passed through.  “It may have been the diversity of the street crowds, or the change in architecture every few miles,” Liz said. She felt like she was in an art trance. The fact that she was totally focused on the beauty of the city, Liz found the energy needed to finish the race.
 
Liz started running a number of years ago because it enabled her to experience different worlds. Being on foot you get to see life from different perspectives and she felt it helped her become a better wife and mother by  broadening  her horizons. She doesn’t look at the world through one lens anymore. She is able to see and understand different perspectives.
 
Liz runs at home and when she travels. She gets more creative when she runs. Painters create on canvas; she creates when her feet hit the ground running. She also needs that time to help her come up with new ideas for her promotion business and fundraising for various charities. She gets more daring, more spiritual and definitely more fearless. It’s wonderful to become more liberated when you have to be so many things to so many people day.

 
When I found out that Laura Shabott, the artist, the lecturer, the actress, gave talks about the book, Ninth Street Women, I knew she had to do a second interview with me on Art Lovers Forum.  I wanted Laura to tell folks who are interested in art why the Ninth Street Women is so important. 
 
The book was published in 2018 and while it was a best seller there are still so many people who are interested in art who still haven’t read it. It’s about five women painters who elevated that status of women in the modern art world during the post WWII time period. Women artists were simply not taken seriously by art critics or historians. They focused most of their attention on male artists. 
 
Author Mary Gabriel explains, in Ninth Street Women, how Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler changed all that. It took Mary 20 years to write her book but, in the end, she told a remarkable and inspiring story about the power of art and the female artists who played a major role in shaping the postwar American art world.
 
Be sure to refer to episode 23 of Art Lovers Forum to learn more about Laura Shabott. She lives in Provincetown (PTown), which is three miles long yet regarded to be “America's Oldest Working Art Colony in the United States since 1850. There are now 60 art galleries, a major regional art museum, and many other organizations that provide opportunities for artists including residencies and educational programs.

 
Deborah Mitchell is a conservation artist. I met Deborah years ago when she took members of Fountainhead Arts on a hike through the muddy waters of the Everglades. It was an exhilarating experience.  Her interview on Art Lovers Forum is exactly that. She is going to take you away from your daily busy life, which is probably indoors, and tell you what’s happening on the outside. 
 
Deborah recently made a trip to Venice for a project called Waterscapes. I think you should watch the video first which documents her ARTSail Waterscapes Residency. The project uses art to deepen the understanding of climate changes which impacts The Venice Lagoon and Florida Wetlands. The Everglades in South Florida and the Lagoon in Venice are critical estuaries that provide essential services such as water purification and habitat for diverse species. Their preservation is vital for maintaining ecological balance, environmental health, and economic stability in their regions.
 
Here the video - https://youtu.be/jDnPZDQA58Y
 
Deborah resides in Miami Beach. Her passion for environmental exploration is deeply rooted in her certification as a Master Naturalist from the esteemed University of Florida. This educational background ignites her unquenchable thirst for knowledge and understanding of the natural world. Through immersive fieldwork experiences, Deborah gathers invaluable observations that serve as the catalyst for her creative process. Transitioning from photography, her primary medium, she skillfully transforms her captured moments into captivating collages, employing elements such as paint, fabric, and installations. The culmination of her experience-based approach breathes life into her evocative artistic creations. 
 
Visit her website to learn more - http://www.debmitchellart.com
 
Here are links that can help you increase awareness, both locally and beyond.
 
artsail
Institute of Marine Science (Venice, IT)
Archbold Biological Station
Friends of the Everglades
Big Cypress National Preserve
Fountainhead
Deborah Mitchell
Everglades NP
AERIE
inaturalist

Charo Oquet is one of the most popular artists in the city of Miami. Everyone loves her because she has been able to maintain a thriving art practice while helping others from foreign countries get expose for their creative work. She is also admired because her work has always remained relevant through the years. Her interview reveals how she does it all which is a good life lesson for all of us.
Charo, a Dominican-born, Miami-based artist, is celebrated for her interdisciplinary work encompassing painting, photography, performance, and installation. Her art explores displacement, identity, migration, gender, and sociopolitical issues with a focus on decolonial aesthetics and contemporary culture. Charo’s extensive career includes solo exhibitions and international participation in significant art events. 
Her work is featured in various museum collections, such as the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art and the Bass Museum of Art, and she has been the recipient of multiple fellowships and grants. Additionally, she is an arts activist, having founded Miami Arts Collaborative, which later became Edge Zones, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the arts and artists, especially within marginalized communities.
As an artist, curator, and cultural producer, Charo is recognized for her contributions to the global art landscape, fostering dialogue and creativity across borders and cultures. She holds a BFA from Florida International University and continues to play a vital role in advancing contemporary art through her artwork, curation, and mentorship.

I just got back from visiting my long time (Guatemala, Madrid, Miami) artist friend Veronica Riedel at her Mycelium Garden exhibit. She was showing how the world of nature, artificial intelligence, and art come together. Her exhibit is at idartlab, 676 NW 23rd St, Miami. I know Veronica and her mother Ana Westermann and Ana’s husband for several decades. We all met on one of our travel trips we took with Smart Tours.
Veronica is a screenwriter, director, producer and multimedia artist. Her second feature film Gallo Gallina has been awarded with Ibermedia coproduction grant and will be soon in production. Gallo Gallina has the support from the Guatemalan Government.
Veronica has dedicated her life to creating artwork about social justice, ecological awareness, and equality. She observes human behavior, weaving them into visual narratives. Creation is her life – a way of living that defines her very essence.
Books & Books will be debuting Veronica’s art book next Saturday. It’s a masterpiece.
I wanted to interview Veronica because she really observes everything around her, human behavior mostly.  She reinvents her conclusions creating stories, works of art, films, designs, moods, food, spaces, furniture, houses… you name it. She says her life without creation would be nothing. “It is a lifestyle, a way of being, It just is. There is never a dull moment in my life.”
Veronica’s works of art have been exhibited in museums and international art fairs and belong to important private and public collections in Guatemala, Latin America, Europe and the United States. 
In 2023, she published her 300-page book All The Worlds That Are In This One at the Pinta Art Fair in Miami and presented her immersive video installation at Miami International Fine Arts (MIFA). In 2024, Riedel continued exploring the use of mycelium in her art, exhibiting at La Mecha Contemporary Gallery in El Paso, Texas. Her work was also featured at the JUANNIO Latin American Art Auction and the Rozas-Botrán Gallery and Foundation in Guatemala. Additionally, she won the prestigious Karstica residency in Cañada del Hoyo, Spain for September 2024.  In parallel with her artistic work, Veronica has developed an important cinematographic career as director, screenwriter, and producer. Her fiction feature film, and Opera Prima, Capsules (2011), won many awards at important international film festivals. She also created, directed and produced the docuseries Strange Medicine (2013-2014) for Fusion TV and Univision.  She also recently wrote and directed an experimental short film “MY DARKNESS IS MY LIGHT”, which will be showcased at the Icaro National Film Festival in 2024. She was born in Guatemala City, Guatemala. She went to the American School of Guatemala, coursed undergraduate studies at Francisco Marroquin University in Guatemala City. She studied Photojournalism at the University of Columbia, South Carolina and Art and New Media at Anderson Ranch Art Center, Colorado.  She earned a B.F.A. in Communications, Film and Photography at the University of Miami, Florida, and Screenwriting at the University of California, Santa Monica. 
 

Welcome To Art Lovers Forum.  Brook Dorsch, the founder of the Emerson Dorsch Gallery in Miami, was at his home in Asheville, North Carolina when Hurricane Helene stormed through the beloved city known  as an art colony, a healing resort and a home to notable luminaries, statesmen and bohemians. 
In this episode of Art Lovers Forum, Brook describes the force of the hurricane, the destruction, and the fast action efforts to save his house. With him at the time was of his wife and business partner Tyler, their young daughters and coincidentally their gallery director, Ibett Yanez del Castillo, who was visiting on that day with her family. 
Everyone pitched in to place buckets where water was pouring in after hundred year old trees fell on their house. Together they limited the damage and when the rain stopped they ran out to help neighbors. That’s the way it has been ever since. Brook says Asheville has shown its true colors. Everyday the citizens of the city are devoting time to get everyone back home and rebuild their businesses. So many of the arts and crafts work have been destroyed forever. You cry when you hear him describe what happened to the art community.
One statement Brook made that is very important to convey in writing as well as to hear from him is …. FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) has been doing exceptional work in Asheville with both finances and people on the ground. Any news information to the contrary is just not true. FEMA is working side by side with Asheville, a city Brook says will be in full swing a few months from now. Yes, there will always be residents that need help. The community will continue to support  each other.   
Brook founded Dorsch Gallery in 1991, in his walk-up apartment just east of Coral Gables. At the time, the Miami art scene was concentrated in Coral Gables; Brook noticed a need for a venue for the contemporary artists living in Miami. From 1991-2007, he built the program from his small 900 square foot apartment until December of 1999 he purchased a 7000 square foot warehouse in Wynwood becoming the one of the first commercial galleries to open in the neighborhood. Brook ran the gallery alone with help from the artists and interns and his mother while also working a full-time job in the Satellite Communications industry.
Brook’s Gallery grew and changed along with the Miami art scene and his own experience of the art world. When he moved the gallery to Wynwood in 2000, the neighborhood was still very raw. Brook curated a number of shows in the abandoned crack house next door to the warehouse. At the same time,
Martin Z. Margulies had just purchased his warehouse in the neighborhood, the Rubell Family Collection was open only by invitation, and Locust Projects was still an artist-run alternative space one block away. From 2000-2014, Brook Gallery witnessed a boom of art spaces in the area. For his role as one of the founding members and president of the Wynwood Arts District, Brook has been lauded as the pioneer. 
In 2017 the Gallery moved again to its current location in the Little Haiti neighborhood in what was the Porto Prince market.  The new location has a rooftop patio that has been used for small concerts and events. In the first years of the gallery, Dorsch showcased work by mainly local emerging artists; building a strong local following, a number of the exhibitions were reviewed in Art in America and other national publications. Many shows had a co-op spirit, and some were like happenings. Dorsch also showed established figures, including Robert Miller and Arnold Mesches. Dorsch hosted concerts and music events.
Brook’s reputation for trailblazing an art district and for paving the way for young artists has made him the man to consult about questions concerning the Miami art scene. The Gallery, now called Emerson Dorsch, carries on the spirit of Dorsch Gallery’s early days by fostering long-term relationships with artists, with events and with hospitality and, always, ambitious shows. In 2023 he and his wife founded the Metcalf Creek Holler, a 68 Acre mountain Artist Residency in the Mountains of Western North Carolina. metcalfcreekholler.org

 
Welcome To Art Lovers Forum.  Make note of the two women I’m introducing you to today. Not only will artists/explorers Randi Renate and Beatriz Chachamovits be world famous in the not too distant future, but they will be instrumental in helping to save the planet. The work they are doing to preserve and restore coral reefs are also leading them to publicly expose other areas of the ocean that are deteriorating. They are extremely passionate about their mission, and they will not stop until the whole world makes saving the earth a priority.
 
Beatriz Bio:
 
As an environmental artist and educator from São Paulo, Brazil, Beatriz’s work is rooted in interactive experiences. She has had three major interactive pieces at MoCA NOMI, Faena Art and the Art and Cultural Center of Hollywood. 
 
She just opened an early career survey exhibition at a renowned venue inside Miami Design District with works from the last decade of her career. 
 
She was commissioned this year by The City of Miami Beach for a large-scale public art installation for their Elevate Española series of site-specific installations over Española Way. Her work had been featured in prestigious magazines like Vogue (written by Salome Gómez-Upegui), National Geographic, Arte al día, Jewish Currents, Resurgent and Ecologist (UK) as the cover and Florida Design. She is the recipient of numerous grants including The Ellie’s Creator Awards, Miami individual Artist and Artist access grant. 
 
She is a resident artist at Bakehouse Art Complex and super well connected to everybody in the Miami art scene as well as the coral restoration scene in Miami. She works with the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel school of marine and atmospheric science. 
 
Randi Bio:
Randi has been invoked in major sculpture projects. At Yale, she learned how to execute large scale commissions. She's had the largest work on display at Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens.  Her work has been featured in Sculpture Magazine and Interior Design. She's doing a TED talk on her public sculpture and science research in October. Randi has worked with coral scientists in the Bahamas and Florida and is a Fountainhead alum.

Everyone in the art world needs to know Leslie Weissman. She knows the ins and outs of the creative and business side of art better than most. She is an artist, collector, advisor, curator, pop-up gallerist, lecturer, educator, networker, and avid reader. What’s more, she is very close to her husband Michael and children.
None of this is an exaggeration. I’m a friend of hers and I see her in action. She has boundless energy for everything she is passionate about. She has helped me so many times it’s almost embarrassing. That’s why I wanted to do a podcast with her. Listen to this episode and you decide for yourself. Leslie B. Weissman received her training at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School focusing on Interactive Art and was graduated from Hobart and William Smith College with a B.A. in Art History/Art/Religion.
Leslie co-founded Presents For Purpose which was a socially conscious gift company where the sales benefited cancer and health charities. Currently she is the director of Loft Projects NY, a physical gallery and project space in Chappaqua NY that she founded in 2017. Under the Loft Projects banner, she is a guest curator in other galleries, at Art Fairs and at venues around NYC. Loft Projects focuses on bringing works of underrepresented artists to a gallery setting. 2024 Curatorial projects have included All The Small Things at Marinaro Gallery and the Future Fair presentation of Female Identifying Artists at The Salon at 13th Storey. 
Earlier this month she opened Pluperfect: an action of continued relevance at 81 Leonard, and has upcoming projects with Dimin Gallery, Marinaro, and Eyes Never Sleep Gallery.
In addition to her curatorial projects Leslie is an Art Advisor educating and assisting collectors to build and develop their personal collections. As a working artist and teacher, she has taught neuro typical children and adults, and within facilities that service cognitively impaired patients to help them express themselves with art.
Later this fall she will be a guest critic with the NY CritClub.
Her work has been in shows at The Hole Gallery in NYC, The Zwerner presentation to support the Children’s Museum of NY, and M+B in Los Angeles, Neighbors Gallery, as well as a contributor to the Rema Hort Mann Foundation’s Buy What You Love Event.
Leslie was with Philips Electronics as a member of their research staff and later serving as the Vice President of Marketing for their Internet division. Leslie is responsible for having launched some of the first internet sites built for the recorded music industry during her time at Philips Electronics and Polygram Records. She spent several years at Prodigy Communications, both full time and as a consultant where she explored the business-to-business applications available in the early stages of online technology. 
As a consultant, she worked for Jack Welch at GE in his best practices group to identify technology and applications for consumer use. In addition, she consulted to OMNICOM Media Group and their subsidiary agencies on interface design and marketing strategy related to the speed of internet application development.
Leslie currently sits on the board of Fountainhead Residency in Miami, FL and The Advisory and Acquisition Committee for the Ogunquit Museum in Ogunquit, Maine. 
She is a past Trustee of Blythdale Children’s Hospital in Valhalla, NY, where she served for nine years focusing on expanding their fundraising and development efforts and is now on the advisory fundraising.