A + E

GERMS

Last but not least 

Skyway's Ringling installation completes a compelling artistic trifecta.

By James Chapin

S o we've come to the end. Our survey of the locally sourced art in Skyway: A Contemporary Collaboration has brought us to the third and fifinal leg, and a strange and distant territory: Sarasota, land of beautiful sedans and welldressed retirees.

It's also the home of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the most opulent museum our area has to offer. That's no knock on the fifine institutions in Tampa and St. Pete participating in Skyway's tri-city expo; the Ringling is just a different animal, that's all. Not every museum can be founded by circus barons.

The effect is giddily disorienting. Passing through galleries fifilled with Peter Paul Rubens and Arcimboldo's famous vegetable heads, you walk toward what appears to be a gallery under construction. What you are seeing is in fact Robert Aiosa's City Beautiful, a loving interpretation of municipal median landscaping. Wrap your head around that transition, and you'll be just fifine. Matthew Wicks takes a similar angle as Aiosa's, elevating a totally mundane object (a plastic laundry basket) by carefully reproducing it in white ceramic. The fifinished object is lovely to behold. Sunshine Skyway Bridge and travel down to the surreal city at the tail end of this surreal metropolitan area. It's not a bad drive. And it's a necessary one, in order to get a grip on Skyway's grand project. The Ringling edition hosts a smaller number of artists than either of the other two museums, and if anything, the artists skew slightly younger and slightly weirder. This is impressive, because the other Skyway artists were relatively young and weird to begin with. Its transformation from domestic drudge to art object is complete. Ben Galaday's ceramic work is in a constant state of mutation. "Germs" scrambles lines — is it text, sculpture, or infection? Like much of the work in Skyway, it brings a feverish feeling to the Ringling Museum of Art. Selina Roman's almost-documentary style is a tribute to her journalism training. But her photographs, from a series of images taken in Florida motel rooms called Please Disturb, pick at the fraying edges of our surroundings, fifinding unsuspected seams of ugliness and beauty. f Much of this work takes some effort. Resist any temptation to bypass Jason Lazarus's Recordings #5 (Isabel) as a white-squares-on-a-white-wall exercise. In fact, all those squares are found photographs — with the images turned toward the wall. What's revealed are the tiny marks and notes that people have written on the back of snapshots since forever. 

The ghostly descriptors are weirdly tantalizSkyway's Ringling installation completes a compelling artistic trifecta. By James Chapin The effect is giddily disorienting. Passing VISUAL ART Skyway: A Contemporary Collaboration John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, 5401 Bay Shore Rd., Sarasota. Through Oct. 15: Fri.-Wed., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Thurs., 10 a.m.- 8 p.m. $10-$25; members, free. 941-359-5700. ringling.org. through galleries fifilled with Peter Paul Rubens and Arcimboldo's famous vegetable heads, you walk toward what appears to be a gallery under construction. What you are seeing is in fact Robert Aiosa's City Beautiful, a loving interpretation of municipal median landscaping. Wrap your head around that transition, and you'll be just fifine. Matthew Wicks takes a similar angle as Aiosa's, elevating a totally mundane object (a plastic laundry basket) by carefully reproducing it in white ceramic. The fifinished object is lovely to behold. Sunshine Skyway Bridge and travel down to the surreal city at the tail end of this surreal metropolitan area. It's not a bad drive. And it's a necessary one, in order to get a grip on Skyway's grand project. The Ringling edition hosts a smaller number of artists than either of the other two museums, and if anything, the artists skew slightly younger and slightly weirder. This is impressive, because the other Skyway artists were relatively young and weird to begin with. Its transformation from domestic drudge to art object is complete. Ben Galaday's ceramic work is in a constant state of mutation. "Germs" scrambles lines — is it text, sculpture, or infection? Like much of the work in Skyway, it brings a feverish feeling to the Ringling Museum of Art. Selina Roman's almost-documentary style is a tribute to her journalism training. But her photographs, from a series of images taken in Florida motel rooms called Please Disturb, pick at the fraying edges of our surroundings, fifinding SPREAD OUT: Selina Roman's "Draped, Bedspread and Drapes" at the Ringling. unsuspected seams of ugliness and beauty. f Much of this work takes some effort. Resist any temptation to bypass Jason Lazarus's Recordings #5 (Isabel) as a white-squares-on-a-white-wall exercise. In fact, all those squares are found photographs — with the images turned toward the wall. What's revealed are the tiny marks and notes that people have written on the back of snapshots since forever. ing and powerful. One reads: "This is Johnny proposing to me. + oh-boy am I going to say Yes. Yes. real quick. (1936)". Dying to see the actual picture? Well, you'll have to invent it yourself. Desireé Moore sure creates her own images, in her short fifilm Over and Under and Through. The fifilm presents the interior life of an adolescent girl as a beautiful phantasmagoria. And something like the work of Bruce Marsh at the Tampa Museum of Art, it also provides a rare glimpse of the granular reality outdoors, as the camera moves through bedrooms and bathrooms and suburban streets. In an exhibition entirely sourced from one geographical area, it's good to see these investigations of the home turf itself. Skyway is up until early fall at all three locations. Tampa Bay's artists, as always, have done their part. The museums have also done their part, by placing them in their beautiful spaces. Now it's your turn, dear member of the art-appreciating public. You are the third leg of this stool — and around here, that third leg has historically been a bit wobbly. Let's buy from these artists, hire them, enable them, let them fifix and transform our spaces. There are at least three museums' worth of them in our own backyard, ready to break through.