Nov 11-14: Harrison School of the Arts presents Camelot
Thursday-Saturday at 7:30pm / Sunday at 2:00pm
Ticket Prices: $10 Adults / $8 Senior Citizens and Students
Purchase tickets online.  The box office will be open 1 hour prior to the performance.  Phone: 863-499-2939.  Harrison Arts Website.

Nov. 12-14: Architecture in Landscape Art Workshop
A three-day workshop for intermediate & advanced students of watercolor, acrylic and oils with artist Gary Gessford at Bok Tower Gardens in the setting of Pinewood Estate.  Bok Tower Gardens Website.

Nov. 12: View & Review at Polk Museum of Art
Polk Museum of Art hosts another installment of View & Review, an informal art critique for emerging artists. This View and Review is led by Rocky Bridges and Leslie Neumann, two of the artists who have work on display in the exhibition Visual Unity 2. The event starts at 6:00pm. Artists who wish to have their work critiqued by Bridges and Neumann must pre-register, but the event is also open to people who are interested in simply hearing what is said.  Admission is $15 per piece for artists who are presenting artwork, and $5 for the audience.  A cash bar will also be available.  Artists must pre-register by calling 863-688-5423 by November 9.  Polk Museum of Art Website.

Nov 13: Behind the Art of Visual Unity 2
On Saturday, November 13, Polk Museum of Art hosts a roundtable discussion of the Visual Unity 2 exhibition. At least nine artists are confirmed for the event, which delves into the experiences of the artists as they prepared their artwork for the exhibition. The event is from 1:00 – 2:00pm, and is free with regular Museum admission.  The confirmed artists to speak at Behind the Art are: Rocky Bridges (Tarpon Springs), Leslie Neumann (Aripeka), Lucia Taxdal (Winter Haven), Monica Eastman (Plant City), Monica Londono (Sarasota), Theo Wujcik (Tampa), Kirk ke Wang (Tampa), Jill Cannady (Deland), and Robert Stackhouse (St. Petersburg). Other artists may appear if their schedules allow.  Learn more at the Polk Museum of Art Website.

Nov 13: Polk County Art Teacher’s Invitational Reception
A reception for the Polk County Art Teacher’s Invitational takes place at Ridge Art Association Gallery on Saturday, November 13 from 6:30 – 8:30 pm.  The exhibition runs in the Gallery from October 26—November 17, 2010.  Visit the Ridge Art Website.

Nov 15: American Festival Pops Concert
The Lakeland Choral Society presents an American Festival Pops Concert at the Ramon Theater in Frostproof on Monday, November 15 at 7:30pm.  Tickets: Adults $10, Students $5.  Tickets are available at the door on the evening of the concert.  Click here to visit Lakeland Choral Society on the web.

Learn more about arts and cultural activities and how you can support the arts by visiting the Polk Arts Alliance Website.

Jerry Uelsmann, Untitled, 1987, Gelatin Silver Print, 16 x 20 inches, Collection of Lee and Becky Jackson

Polk Museum of Art’s upcoming exhibition, The Surreal Photography of Jerry Uelsmann, is certain to be a favorite among people who love photography or surrealism. The artist, Jerry Uelsmann, is a former University of Florida photography professor, and he’s been creating dream-like images in his darkroom longer than Photoshop has been around! He uses up to 7 enlarges to create composite images from his original negatives, and then develops the paper using traditional chemical processes.

The exhibition will be a 50 year retrospective of Uelsmann’s work, and it will be on display November 14 – January 17.

Clark Whittington, the founder of Art-O-Mat, will be at the Museum on Saturday, June 27 at 10:30am. He’s going to give a presentation about the machines and their history, and then he’ll talk to artists about how they can have their artwork sold in the nearly 100 Art-O-Mats around the world. The talk/presentation is free with Museum admission.

This Friday night, Polk Museum of Art will be hosting the opening reception for its newest exhibition, Unbelievable Transformations: Moving Sculptures by Gregory Barsamian. The artist will be talking about his work at 6:00pm and there will be light refreshments and a cash bar starting at 7:00pm. The reception is free for Museum members and $10 for non-members.

I know I’m biased, but I really can not convey in words how cool this exhibition is going to be. Once it’s finally up, I’m going to post some video to give everyone a better idea. In the meantime, here’s a link to a movie of the piece above in action. Keep watching because there’s another piece shown after the halfway mark.

Black Belt by Radcliffe Bailey. Courtesy of the artist.

Todd Behrens, the Curator of Art, will be guiding the evening in an interview format. Everyone will gather in the Dorothy Jenkins Gallery, where Mr. Bailey’s artwork is displayed, and Todd will ask him questions about his work. After the conversation, there will be a light reception with a cash bar.

Mr. Bailey’s work is often based on vintage sepia-tone photographs of African-Americans. He then creates collages around the photographs. The pieces deal with taking broad themes like history, migration, settlement, and tradition and figuring out how each of us is influenced by them.

The talk is held in conjunction with the exhibition Radcliffe Bailey: Between Two Worlds and is free for Museum Members and $10 for Non-Members. The exhibition and talk are funded in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.