Art at the Alfond Inn in Winter Park

"Helen with the Drip" by Nina Chapel Abney

I felt like a kid in a candy store when I walked into the Alfond Inn in Winter Park. Sure, the Alfond's website said art from the Rollins College Museum was on display there. But I had envisioned a few pieces scattered around the lobby. Instead, there is a serious amount of contemporary art throughout the hotel that everyone is welcome to enjoy. 

Nina Chapel Abney's "Helen with the Drip" got my attention right away with its bright colors and graphic design. I was surprised to read that Abney used both acrylic and spray paint when creating this work. (You can see the different textures when looking at the work up close.)  She also uses stencils when "improvising" her works. It all made sense once I learned her inspirations include graffiti, animation and hip hop. 

"Helen with the Drip" comes from a series Abney painted during the pandemic entitled "The Great Escape." In the series, Abney has created a "fictional oasis" in which Black figures are seen in environments that art history depicts as being populated only by white people. The works speak to race and gender and other political issues. I love her paintings. And I'm not alone. Abney's art has been seen on everything from a cover of The New Yorker to a controversial album cover for rapper-activist Meek Mill  (whoever that is!) To read more about Abney, click here. And to see more from The Great Escape series, click here.

"Be Afraid of the Enormity of the Possible" 
by Alfred Jaar

Text art is something I've "discovered" since I started going to Art Basel. I kind of like it, and I was drawn to Alfred Jaar's "Be Afraid of the Enormity of the Possible." But we were a bit confused about the message behind Jaar's work. Did he forget the word "Don't" at the beginning? The answer is a resounding "no." 

Rather than being a positive message, Jaar's words urge viewers to contemplate the many horrors of our world, such as war and displacement. (It's worth mentioning that Jaar is from Chile, the country where Pinochet committed atrocities ranging from torture to "disappearances.") The words here were taken from a quote by Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran. Trust me when I say he is not on my reading list. Jaar apparently reads Cioran when he is feeling depressed because he likes knowing someone is more pessimistic than he is.  Moving right along...

Another example of text-based art that grabbed my attention were four works from Geoff Hargadon's "Cash for Your Warhol" series. Shown here is one of Hargadon's faux signs posted next to a real sign for a circuit court judicial election. Other works in the exhibit were a billboard offering free authentication services, a sign (posted next to a museum entrance) promising a 24-hour message service, and a hilarious transcript from one of the more than 3,000 of those messages. (The message read, in part, "What is a Warhol? Andy Warhol is dead. He's supposed to be an artist of some sort but I wasn't impressed with his work.")  What is going on? 

Hargadon is a financial planner by trade who was struck by the signs that popped up during the 2008 recession promising "cash for your home" and "cash for your gold." We've all seen them. One day the phrase "Cash for Your Warhol" popped into Hargadon's mind, and he was off to the races. The signs have been posted all over the country, including Sarasota, where the tagline offered a way to "spend your inheritance." Hargadon's work is a comment on consumerism and the way some people treat art as a symbol of wealth. (Sort of ironic given his profession, isn't it?)  In 2016 Hargadon took his project to a new level and opened a storefront in Inman Square in Cambridge.  I would love to stop in for a chat with him. For more on Cash for Your Warhols, click here and here. 

Libbie and Deb enjoying "Red Reader" by Adam Matok

I'll leave you with a work that begs to be interacted with by viewers -- "Red Reader" by Adam Matak. Somehow I think that's exactly what Matak had in mind. For his thesis project, he created a cardboard work of a life-sized male nude on a pedestal with a rope attached and invited viewers to pull the man to the ground. I can only think how exhausting it must have been for the artist or whomever was tasked with putting the work back in place throughout the evening. 

Matak's work is inspired by graphic novels and graffiti art. They're fun and don't require near as much heavy lifting as some contemporary art. I particularly like his Museum Stories works, which feature people in museums who aren't exactly captivated by the artwork they've presumably come to see. (Note that one work features a gentleman like "Red Reader" who's focused on his paper rather than the art.) Matok got the idea for this series in part by following the NBA. Coaches and owners sometimes refer to the players as "pieces" rather than by their names. Given this, it's no shock that players don't always sit at attention when the coach talks. In his work "The Value of Belief," Matak recreated the postures of his characters from a newspaper photo about the NBA. Again, nobody is paying to attention to the masterpieces that surround them. To see Matak's Museum Stories, click here.  And to learn more about Matak and his art, click here and here. 

If you're in Winter Park, be sure to stop by the Alfond Inn and check out the collection. I'd recommend having lunch, too. It's a lovely spot with good food, and all profits from the Inn go to scholarships for Rollins College students. Talk about a win-win situation!  Happy exploring.