arts

The Foosaner Art Museum’s current main exhibit is a highlight of a local artist’s 10-year career in collage art.

“Derek Gores: Local Edition” highlights an artist whose intricate work making collage pieces is on display for visitors to the Foosaner Museum.

Pieces he’s displaying focus primarily on women, but other pieces include a hammerhead shark titled “Hammerhead Hijinx” and a perspective piece depicting an eye in frame.

The perspective piece titled “The View From Here aka Periodical Peripheral Vision” was made specifically for the museum.

Additionally, it was Gores’ first time making a 3-D installation.

There is also an interactive piece called “What Are You Doing Here?”

The piece is a wall of sticky notes where guests can add sticky notes of their own as to why they are at the museum written on it.

“I like a sensory experience,” Gores said. “I want to have my senses alive like a kid. Experience things for the first time. I try to make that happen in my pieces.”

Gores pulls inspiration for his work from various figurative art throughout history, and he mainly draws upon the works of German expressionist, Gustav Klimt.

“I’ve tried all kinds of art forms, starting with drawing and painting,” Gores said. “Collage allows me to bring new info into artwork.”

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With a modern pop-culture element from the fashion magazines he uses to make his work, Gores said, “You see something, but it falls apart when you get there.”

Using fashion magazines “Vogue”, along with other random papers like engine schematics and song lyrics, Gores gives his work an extra depth to transport people into the work.

The exhibit was the idea of Carla Funk, executive director of the Foosaner Art Museum and chief curator of university museums for Florida Tech.

“I’ve known him [Gores] for about 10 years,” Funk said. “I’ve watched him grow as an artist and get awards and commissions all over the world. He’s one of the most well-known artists in the area.”

Along with this year being the 40-year anniversary of the museum, Funk got into contact with Gores, who had not done an art show like this before, and started production on the showcase.

She brought in a guest curator, Serene Kawas McGroarty, and got the pieces on loan from different collectors and from Gores’ private collection. Funk’s favorite piece was “Hammerhead Hijinx.”

“I think it’s his most ambitious piece,” Funk said. “[It’s] so hard making so much depth with just black pages.”

Gores and Funk’s hard work left an impression on Lavanya Kumar, a first-time attendee to the museum and a first-year graduate student at Florida Tech.

“I think the artwork was fantastic,” Kumar said. “To see something so beautiful made from cutouts of magazines, construction blueprints, newspapers, wallpapers and so many other paper materials we normally discard as waste was so amazing.”

“Going into the building without any prior knowledge,” Kumar added, “I could’ve spent all day there.”

She also said that she’d come back for future exhibits.

This current exhibit is running until March 23.

The next exhibit is titled “Vision 2019”, a juried exhibition of works by members of the local Strawbridge Art League. It will run from April 6 – May 25.

The following exhibit is “Clyde Butcher: Florida’s Photographer”, featuring the titular environmentalist’s photos of Florida, running from June 8 – May 25.

From Nov. 2 – March 14, 2020 is “Cuban Contemporary Paintings from the Rodriguez Collection”, an exhibition of works by a variety of Cuban artists from the late twentieth-century.

“For Florida Tech, we want the museum to be theirs,” Funk said. “It’s free. Bring your friends and have a great experience.”