Students Learn Filmmaking & Morals at Catholic Summer Camp

THE FLORIDA TIMES-UNION
By Jeff Brumley

FLORIDA - Brian Shields will tell you straight up he's all about instilling Christian values in young people and encouraging them to keep Christ at the center of their personal and professional lives. But what makes this Catholic evangelist different is the method he uses to spread the gospel and inspire youngsters to follow suit: film-making. This week he and his staff from Lumen Entertainment are hosting an eight-day film camp for high school students. He's been holding the camp since 2008. It's mission statement is "To enlighten and nourish with truth through the arts."[link]

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Collector: Phillip Brown's Spirit of Expressionism Collection

THE FLORIDA TIMES UNION
By Charlie Patton

DON BURK/The Times-Union |
Owner stands next to a bronze crucifix and a painting titled “Red Christ."

FLORIDA - Some "outsider artists," once discovered, became celebrated, artists such as Howard Finster, whose work is currently being exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville. Extend the term "outsider" to collectors and you have Phillip Brown, a Jacksonville pharmacist and art collector. Brown goes one step beyond outsider collector, however. He's an outsider art museum owner.

The Brown Art Museum, also referred to on its website as the Brown Museum of Art and the Brown Art Museum of Spirit Expressionism Peace and Art, is in a two-story house on West Eighth Street, not far from Shands Jacksonville. His museum houses about 1,500 pieces of art Brown has collected during the last two decades. He coined the term "spirit expressionism."

"That's what I'm good at, spirituality," Brown said. His museum has many pieces filled with religious signs and symbols, some realistic and obvious, some abstract and clear only to the artist and to Brown.

While Brown is a non-denominational Christian - the church he most recently attended was Mount Olive AME - his taste in religious art seems non-sectarian. [link]

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Fort Meyer's Syzygy Gallery Features Christina Jarmonlinski

LEHIGH ACRES CITIZEN

"Moses and the Burning Bush" by Christina Jarmolinski

FLORIDA - Downtown Fort Myers will host the next Art Walk on Friday, June 3. The June Art Walk will include more than a dozen art galleries and art stops including the Syzygy Gallery featuring religious and spiritual art by artist Christina Jarmolinski. [link]

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Icon Painter, Fernando Arango-Fernandez at FL Shrine

THE ST. AUGUSTINE RECORD
By Staff

Fernando Arango-Fernandez painting shrine icon

FLORIDA - The power of Byzantium is what comes to mind when one views the icons with their gold leaf, bright-colored pigments, and burnished, smooth wood. Nowhere is this more evident than at St. Photios National Shrine, 41 St. George St. Housed there is a chapel adorned with hand-painted iconography that takes the viewer back to the Byzantine culture. From Wednesday through Sept. 25, the shrine will host an exhibition of Byzantine-style icons by local iconographer Fernando Arango-Fernandez, whose works are found in St. Augustine's Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, the chapel of the Tolomato cemetery, and in private collections. The creation of icons is the culminating point in Arango-Fernandez's artistic journey, joining as they do the spiritual and the aesthetic. For Fernando, the icons are an all-absorbing experience. "The more I learn about iconography, the more I realize how little I know," the artist said. "It is a profound and mysterious art, and a portal into the Divine, a pilgrimage toward the eternal." [link]

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New Florida Art Fair Explore Spiritual Heart of Art

THE MIAMI-HERALD

Photo from wynwoodartfair.org

FLORIDA - The first Wynwood Art Fair will be held in October -- and if the city's estimates are correct, it could provide a needed boost to local businesses. During a community meeting Monday, Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado said that an estimated 120,000 people will be visiting Wynwood during the three-day festival. The fair will be paid for by private sponsors, not by the city, according to the mayor. The fair will run from 10 a.m to 6 p.m. Oct. 21-23 and will take place at Northwest 6th Avenue between 22nd and 29th streets, adjacent to the Margulies Warehouse. It will benefit the Lotus House Women's Shelter. The fair organizers hope that it will be different from any other art event in South Florida. "The response of Miami’s art community demonstrates a deep hunger to explore the spiritual heart of art, and we believe the contemporary art community in Miami is ready to expand beyond the art for-profit fairs for which Miami has become known as it blossoms into a truly year-round destination for working artists, art institutions, schools, galleries and the entire contemporary art world," adds Ms. Kimberly Marrero, a NY-based guest curator. [link]

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