At World of Water Show - Cornell Museum, Delray Beach, FL
At Artist Gallery and Print studio
At Spotlight Gallery - Cornell Museum
At Highland Beach Library Gallery
At the Elliott Museum
At Biscayne National Park
At World of Water Show - Cornell Museum, Delray Beach, FL
At Artist Gallery and Print studio
At Spotlight Gallery - Cornell Museum
At Highland Beach Library Gallery
At the Elliott Museum
At Biscayne National Park
Stop by the Lighthouse ArtCenter located at 373 Tequesta Dr to view and purchase 11 of Ron Garrett's prints specially curated for this show, together with works from talented artists from Miami to Stuart, FL
Etchings on this wall highlight Garrett’s love of living by the coast, playfully reaching for the Beachcomber in all of us! He cleverly uses traditional printmaking approaches, infused with bits and pieces of satire. His love for the everyday ‘fisher folk’ and their lifestyles is apparent throughout his narrative storyboard etchings of life along the water’s edge. These deeply etched images on zinc harken back to the days of Callot, Goya and Rembrandt.
"Okeechobee Joe" is a large 48" x 60" Multi Image Oil/Mixed Media/Linocut on canvas. Garrett’s multi-media relief block storyboard style-often depicts a “Pop” art approach, reminiscent of the days of Warhol and late 20th Century movements.
This ‘tearful’ life size gentle giant of South Florida waterways has recently been under attack by green algae proliferation, starvation from lack of its food source - seagrass, boat motor lacerations and plastic waste.
#1: Manatee Lament – 84” x 32” x 26”
(Sculpture - Mixed-Media Upcycled Materials Assemblage)
#2: Fate – Installation piece (Sculpture - Found Objects/Upcycled debris)
#3: Red Tide – 38” x 42”
(Mixed-Media Oil Painting on Canvas with Recycled wood frame)
This satirical textured oil painting, is inspired by “red tide”, an algae bloom triggered in coastal waters. Schools of fish get caught up in the Gulf Stream waters, and our beaches regularly encounter bloated fish that wash ashore.
#4: Manatee Lagoon – 49” x 37”
(Oil Painting on Canvas)
Inspired by a tranquil hidden lagoon where manatees gather to rest in waters bathe in moonlight above, this painting uses layers of glazes and draws the viewer in at eye level, as if looking into an aquarium of manatees or snorkeling the canals with them.
"But if I could name a personal “Best in Show,” it would be the suite of works from Ron Garrett, a Boca Ratonian whose hanging sculpture “Manatee’s Lament” provided the DDA’s cultural arts director, Marusca Gatto, and co-curator Debby Coles-Dobay with the spark for this exhibition. Garrett’s multimedia art mourns the defiled beauty of ocean life. “Manatee’s Lament” suspends from the gallery ceiling as a life-size reminder of our impact on these charismatic megafauna, its fin sliced by a propeller, its body sculpted entirely from the up-cycled debris that has crept into its polluted home.
Man’s unthinking destruction of marine life is rendered even more explicitly on “Fate,” a grimly titled site-specific sculpture of a hammerhead shark, its body dragging a motley assemblage of deadly detritus—a tire, a giant hook, bubble wrap, netting, rope, Styrofoam, plastic bottles, a broken surfboard. The sculpture puts into stark relief the statistics we hear, and then usually disregard, about our garbage’s effect on ocean habitats.
Garrett’s paintings are no less consumed with issues of ocean conservation. The somewhat cartoonish imagery of “Red Tide”—a series of identical fish, dead and upside down and eyes wide open, against a blood-red backdrop—does little to ease its constructive anger. Like the best of Garrett’s work, it’s the watery equivalent of the roadside car wreck: both difficult to see and difficult to look away." John Thomason
"Boca Raton-based artist and printmaker Ron Garrett’s Manatee Lament, is a 84 x 32 x 26 mixed-media sculpture of a “tearful, life-sized gentle giant.” The manatee, created with recycled materials, ocean debris and detritus, depicts a manatee with visible motor boat scars on his back. “I hope to bring attention to the plight of the manatees by creating her from the threats she faces,” says Garrett, founder of RagaPress, a fine art printmaking atelier in Boca Raton.
Also on display is his found objects/upcycled debris sculpture of a hammerhead shark entangled in debris, meant to jar our subconscious about threatened marine life. The word “fate” is emblazoned on the side of the shark. Inspired by surrealists such as Max Ernst, Garrett also gives credit to Dr. Seuss for the whimsical elements in his work. “He was very important to me as a child,” he says.
Growing up in Florida, Garrett remembers the days of farms and dirt roads, before development and gated communities took over the area. Never at a shortage for ideas, he says they’re triggered by objects he sees that morph into ideas which then become a “well of ideas.” His series of sunken ships, done in celebration of Biscayne National Park’s 50th anniversary in 2018, brings to life many of the underwater shipwrecks and tales of ancient mariners, now preserved as the Maritime Heritage Trail. For his next project, he hopes to visit some or all of Florida’s 175 state parks and create a printmaking portfolio to be titled Florida the Beautiful. “I feel a connection to primordial Florida,” he says. “I can attest to the last minutes of pioneer Florida and want to create an awareness that we are all part of the ecology and environment in Florida and we need to preserve it.”" Jan Engoren Apr 24
"Canoe Trip" an animated playful painting, represents many journeys taken on Florida's rivers and waterways. Growing up along Jupiter's canals created a deep sense of place for me as an artist. Its steamy environments decorated my childhood, vividly etching lush landscapes and wildlife into my imagination. With each stroke of the paddle and brush, I hope to take the viewer through enchanted river banks peppered with cabbage palm, live oak, and "playful elements" like canoes and fallen logs - extending our experience of a leisure odyssey along a river's meanderings.
The Gallery is centrally located on level 2 in the atrium near the putting green. Its pre-security location encourages passengers and locals to discover these exceptional artworks. So stop by and check out my painting when flying through the Palm Beaches.
Exploring Climate issues for me as an artist, is profoundly influenced by maritime events, and the power of storms. Earth's surface is routinely reshaped by hurricanes, which merges at-risk environments, including many human endeavors.
The 3 Works featured in this show - "Spillway", "Spiral Jetty" and "Aftermath" are oil paintings built on canvas layering the surface with debris and found objects, then painting over them in layers, finally adding a patina of graphite to highlight the work. The absence of color is meant to jar our imagination to signify the threats of man’s encroachment on land and sea.
"Three selections from Ron Garrett inspire a similar sense of awe at Gaia’s reaction to anthropogenic climate disruption. Mixing media with salvaged objects, his staggering “Aftermath” assesses the carnage left by a superstorm. A futile 3D life preserver catches the eye first, and below it, canoes, small ships and other vessels rest in a post-apocalyptic harbor, buried and splintering amid tangles of branches and rope. If Robert Rauschenberg were still alive and made activist art, it might look something this like. “Aftermath” hangs next to Garrett’s more uncluttered, but perhaps even more dangerous, “Spillway,” in which an oil tanker’s toxic cargo tumbles into the water like colorful Lego blocks—an almost pretty, childlike aerial vista juxtaposed against the work’s hazardous implications." John Thomason
Created by artist Ron Garrett in 1997 serenaded the Rovers and Martians celebrating on the Red Planet. Fast forward 24 years and on Feb 18, 2021 Perseverance and Ingenuity completed their 290 million mile and 7 month journey after blasting off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on the Atlas V Rocket. Hope you got to watch Mars Landing live – we did!! Enjoy our Universe!
Used extensively by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, I used a single piece of wood carved in stages, to provide color within the print. This reductive method relies on cutting away each color in the image, printing it, and then cutting back the next color - a layering process of one color on top of another, until the entire surface of the wood block has been exhausted.
Only 3 Prints available at $1,450 each
Garrett brings a selection of Reductive Woodcuts from his show highlighting Biscayne National Parks 50th Anniversary celebration. These pieces hang in Highland Beach City Hall. Monoprints of sunken ships off Hutchinson Island are also featured in the Building Department.
The entire show featuring the sunken ships of the Maritime Heritage Trail are on sale at the Elliott Museum in Hutchinson Island till Dec. 1st
The main Community Center Room in the Library features bold, playful satirical work, and spans several decades of Garrett’s love of the sea, reaching for the Beachcomber in all of us! He cleverly uses traditional etching and woodcut approaches, infused with bits and pieces of humor. His love for the everyday ‘fisher folk’ and their lifestyles is apparent throughout his narrative storyboard etchings of life along the water’s edge. Garrett’s style-often depicts a “Pop” art approach, and the show includes vibrant watercolors, drawings and textured paintings.
Finally, in the Rotunda on the west side of the Library and in the hallways, Garrett has large Graphite/Mixed Media Assemblage paintings of natural disasters, and sculptures of sunken ships. Each piece sings its own special song of the tragedy of lives lost and the bravery of the human spirit. The focus is on the poetry of the forces of nature, decay, as well as the corrosive power of saltwater on human endeavors
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