Portlanders at Art Basel Miami Beach

PICA, Elizabeth Leach, Adam Sorensen and other art lights, in the sun

Palm trees outside Pulse art fair in Miami, temporary home to the Elizabeth Leach Gallery

Temperatures may have plummeted in Portland, but down in “Portland South” (that would be Miami, Florida) it’s 83 degrees. There’s a big Portland presence in Miami this week for the annual mega-art-festival known as Art Basel Miami Beach

On South Beach, Collins Avenue and Lincoln Road are crawling with Stumptowners. Artist Eugenia Pardue was spotted en route to the Context art fair; Jane Kate Wood, former director of Victory Gallery and current development manager for the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, made the rounds at the fairs and parties, as did Upfor Gallery director Theo Downes-LeGuin. PICA’s executive director Victoria Frey chatted with Elizabeth Leach at Leach’s gallery booth at Pulse, one of dozens of satellite fairs complementing Art Basel. Another Portland gallery, PDX Contemporary Art, is showing at The Miami Project

PICA's Victoria Frey (left) and Elizabeth Leach (right) at Leach's gallery booth at Pulse art fair, Miami
Richard Speer

Meantime, one of PDX Contemporary’s best-known painters, Adam Sorensen, had work at Pulse in the booth of Seattle’s James Harris Gallery. Portland gallery-goers will also recognize the work of two artists showing at Toomey-Tourell Gallery (San Francisco) at Aqua Art Miami: Matthew Picton, who has shown in Portland at Mark Woolley Gallery and Pulliam Gallery; and Monica Lundy, whose drawings and sculptural installations were a fixture at Ogle Gallery. 

Artist Matthew Picton, familiar to Portland art-goers from his previous shows at Mark Woolley and Pulliam, beside his piece, "Cairo," at Toomey-Tourell Gallery's room, Aqua Art Miami
Richard Speer
Artist Monica Lundy talks with a collector at Toomey-Tourell Gallery's room at Aqua Art Miami. Lundy was a fixture at Portland's Ogle Gallery (now closed).
Richard Speer


It’s a sexy, see-and-be-seen atmosphere as artists, gallerists, and curators dish, drink, nosh, and network, all with the aim of raising profiles and selling work. 

For more, see my recap in this coming Wednesday’s WW.

WWeek 2015

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