January Exhibitions Highlight the Personal Narratives of Four Artists

[Key West, Fl.] The Studios of Key West’s First Thursday event on January 2 from 6-8pm features new exhibitions that highlight the diverse personal narratives of four artists. Donna Nadeau’s highly anticipated “Dollars and Dancers: Behind the Velvet Curtain” opens in the XOJ Gallery, and an exhibition by Miami based artist Onajide Shabaka opens in the Sanger Gallery. Plus, former Artist in Residence Josefiná Cavaliná presents an inaugural exhibition of paintings on canvas in the Zabar Project Gallery, and Key West artist Jim Racchi presents a series of polychrome welded steel sculptures in the Zabar Lobby Gallery.

From drab backrooms to glittering, mirrored stages, Donna Nadeau’s documents the strip bars and gentleman’s clubs in which she worked for decades—the colorful habitués, front-line gendered power structures, and sometimes harrowing psychologies. With an insider’s eye, she unpacks those power structures, interpersonal dynamics and financial underpinnings of this little understood world in a series of exquisite watercolor paintings.

Onajide Shabaka’s exhibition “Alosúgbe: A Journey Across Time” explores ethnobotany, geology and archaeology as they relate to human history, society and culture. Through a combination of abstract, calligraphic works on paper, documentary photographs, sculpture and found objects, Alosúgbe traces Shabaka’s own family history along with the migrations of people and plants from the rice plantations of the Atlantic colonial slave era to 20th century Florida.

Best known for his cheeky pop-art stained glass creations, New York artist Josefiná Cavaliná is taking a new direction in his most recent body of work. Josefiná (aka Joseph Cavalieri) was chosen as a Studios’ Artist in Residence in 2012, and he returns to present  “Slillness,” serene and quiet oil paintings featuring ceramics, fruits and vegetables painted in his Little Italy studio in Manhattan.

An island mainstay and one of the driving forces behind the dearly missed Sculpture Key West exhibitions, Jim Racchi studied classical stone carving in Florence before settling in the Keys. His welded creations echo that training in their strong lines and impulsive flow. Racchi’s latest works illustrate the flow of an eddy—a circular current defined by its movement.

All four exhibitions will remain on view at The Studios of Key West, 533 Eaton Street, through January 30. The Studios of Key West’s galleries are open Tuesday through Saturday, 10am – 4pm. More information can be found at www.tskw.org.

[livemarket market_name="KONK Life LiveMarket" limit=3 category=“” show_signup=0 show_more=0]