A bright and cheerful mural just brought a little extra color to sunny Miami Beach, courtesy of the city and artist Jen Stark. is the seventh work in “Elevate Española,” a public art series that launched during Miami Art Week in 2022.
The project decorates not only the walls along Española Way, but suspends art above the street, dangling between the palm trees.
“It’s beautiful, and it’s such an honor to have Jen Stark. She has strong roots here,” Lissette Garcia Arrogante, the director of the city’s Tourism and Culture Department, told me at the project’s unveiling. “Her grandfather was a resident of Miami Beach, and he was also an artist.… and now she’s come back and really left her mark with this amazing mural.”
Stark, who lives in Los Angeles but was born and raised in Miami, has added her signature psychedelic rainbow-hued designs to the street’s white walls, while creating reflective and translucent Plexiglas sculptures to hang overhead.
Jen Stark, (2024). The seventh work in “Elevate Española,” a public art series on Española Way in Miami Beach. Photo by Peter Vahan, courtesy of City of Miami Beach Tourism and Culture.
“My work is inspired by color theory and nature. I choose a lot of geometric shapes, like fractals in nature and plant growth,” Stark said. “For this one, I wanted it to seem like an abstract sundial, where the colors will change throughout the day depending on where the sun is in the sky.”
When the Miami sun shines—as it typically does—the light casts colorful shadows across the street, adding an unexpected dimension to the site-specific installation.
Jen Stark painting (2024). Photo by Peter Vahan, courtesy of City of Miami Beach Tourism and Culture.
“I’ve always wanted to do a public work on South Beach, so this was the perfect moment, and I’m glad that they picked me for it this year,” Stark added. “Public art is my favorite kind of art. It levels the playing field, and it adds beauty to the city.”
The city first installed public art on Española Way during Miami Art Week in 2021, with , a friendly installation of floating inflated clouds from FriendsWithYou.
Jen Stark, (2024). Photo by Rudy Duboué, courtesy of City of Miami Beach Tourism and Culture.
Española Way West was the first commercial development on the beach in the 1920s, and was originally home to artist studios. In 2017, the city turned it into a pedestrian-only street. The idea for “Elevate Española” was that a public art installation could help draw visitors down the corridor from the beach on Ocean Drive.
“We’re looking for work that is vibrant, that is going to help bring life and and beauty to this corridor, and spark visitors and our residents to come and hang out in this area,” Garcia Arrogante said. “When we reached out to the property owners, they were very open to having an activation from the city and presenting amazing temporary works of art on their walls. It’s the city’s first private-public partnership when it comes to contemporary art.”
Jen Stark, (2024). Photo by Rudy Duboué, courtesy of City of Miami Beach Tourism and Culture.
is just one of the ways the city of Miami Beach participates in Miami Art Week. For the fifth year, the city hosted “No Vacancy, Miami Beach,” with public artworks and site-specific installations by 12 artists, each at a different Miami Beach hotel.
Participating artists each have a shot at a $10,000 prize, selected by public vote and presented by the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, and a $25,000 juried prize.
dNASAb, (2024), on view in “No Vacancy, Miami Beach” on “The Egg” at the Betsy, Miami Beach. Photo by Monica McGivern, courtesy of Miami Beach Arts and Culture.
Among the highlights was a haunting display by [dNASAb] at the Betsy, displayed on “The Egg,” a spherical orb sculpture that connects the third floor of the hotel’s two buildings in dramatic fashion. Titled , the A.I.-powered piece is trained on the artist’s paintings. It is an imagined microscopic trip inside a water droplet, offering a message about the dangers of microplastics, with a message reading “The Climate Can’t Wait.”
The city also let residents vote to purchase one artwork from Art Basel Miami Beach for its public art collection, through the Legacy Purchase Program. The Miami Beach Art in Public Places Committee chose works by william cordova, Ximena Garrido-Lecca, and Nina Surel as this year’s finalists, with a $50,000 budget.
The winner was Miami-based, Argentine-born Surel, who is represented by local gallery Spinello Projects, and her monumental 100-piece stoneware ceramic wall relief . The work casts Florida as a goddess of feminine fertility and matriarchal figure surrounded by symbols of the local flora and fauna.
Nina Surel, . Photo courtesy of the artist and Spinello Projects, Miami.
Surel joins a select group that includes Ebony G. Patterson, Amoako Boafo, Sanford Biggers, Farah Al Qasimi, Juana Valdés—also represented by Spinello Projects—and Anneke Eussen. Each winning piece goes on permanent view in the Miami Beach Convention Center, where the fair is held each year.
“It’s my pleasure to represent and place the second work into the Legacy Collection by a woman artist,” Anthony Spinello, the artist’s dealer, said in a statement. “This acquisition and recognition hits differently considering women artists are still underrepresented, undervalued, and especially at a time when women’s rights are being challenged.”
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
