It’s a peek behind the artistic curtain, a look into the mind of the artist – all while showcasing Broward artists of color and of multicultural origins. That’s the vision behind “HiBrow,” a six-part mini docuseries conceived by Brianna Jimenez, founder of Cielo Creative Co., a marketing and branding agency.
The name HiBrow is a playful mashup of “Highlight Broward” and the “highbrow” concept of art, an image Jimenez wants to dispel with her series, she says. In each 10- to 12-minute episode, a different artist is interviewed..
Two of the artists, Kandy Lopez, a painter, fiber and stained-glass artist, and Jacoub Reyes, a printmaker who creates large-scale installations, joined Jimenez for a conversation about the arts in “A Conversation on the Arts” on Thursday, Aug. 1 at the Alibi Room at Midtown 24 in Plantation. The two artists are featured in the “HiBrow” series.
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“I wanted this docuseries to be about things you don’t normally get to ask artists, a way to hear about their daily lives,” says Jimenez. “That was part of my project, wanting to bring the arts to my community, to people like me who are curious about the arts.”
She also wants to put the spotlight on Broward’s art scene, she told the audience. “Broward is close to a city that’s known as a mecca for art – Miami – but Broward has wonderful art and artists,” she says.
At the “Conversations” gathering, Jimenez interacted with Lopez and Reyes, giving them a chance to speak about their inspirations and how they engage with the community.
Reyes of Plantation, who works as artistic director for the City of Boynton Beach’s Quantum Eco-Park, says he intertwines his knowledge of plants and his multicultural heritage of Caribbean, Cuban and Pakastani influences to tell stories. He makes wood carvings and uses them to make prints.
“I take found wood, and I carve into it images of native and invasive plant species,” Reyes told the audience.
To him, the plants choking each other out are symbolic of colonialism in areas like India and Puerto Rico..
“I combine nature and its ecosystem with people and their ecosystem,” says Reyes. “My work tries to depict that nuanced relationship, like when colonizers came in and gave us nice buildings, and now our quality of life is different. Should I celebrate that? Or should I be sad?”
Sometimes, you’re all those things, he ponders.
“That’s what I try to depict in my work through these plants.”
Lopez is an Afro-Caribbean multimedia artist who paints and creates collages, but also crafts large-scale portraits, sometimes from fiber, and sometimes from stained glass. She is an associate professor in the Department of Communication, Media and Arts at the Halmos College of Art and Sciences at Nova Southeastern University.
“I’ve always been interested in people and their stories, and the way that they present themselves in certain spaces,” says Lopez. “I think a lot of that has to do with growing up in city spaces and trying to survive in those kinds of spaces, with people performing for each other all the time.”
Originally a painter, she told the audience that the move to create portraits with small strands of threads and yarn in a painterly way happened by accident. “A piece of string fell on one of my collages in the studio. And I was like, ‘Oh, I could just make power lines, because most of my work also has these things in the background with just a thread.’ And then I thought about the idea of thread and connections and generational connections,” says Lopez. “The idea of fiber became a more metaphoric connection to the work, instead of just being pretty.”
USING SOCIAL MEDIA
Jimenez posed the question to the artists about how they use social media platforms, such as Instagram, to share the artistic process with the community.
Lopez says she likes the idea of letting people see how she creates behind the scenes and how that offers deeper insight.
“I think there’s this idea of magical artists, like you’re just born with the gift. But I wasn’t,” she told the group. “My teachers taught me how to create things technically, but reading and wanting to learn and educate myself are where the messages come from in my work.”
Reyes says growing up in an inner city in New Jersey, he had access to free museums and libraries, and a mother who made the effort to take him to places where he was exposed to new ideas.
“It was so impactful, so basically I want to be a part of that for someone else,” he says. Reyes told the audience Instagram also lets him show off the tools he uses and “let people into his world” as he creates.
THE AUDIENCE
Howard Binkow of Plantation, author of the children’s book series “Howard B. Wigglebottom,” came to the talk because he has taken Reyes’ community art classes.
“What is fascinating is (the artists’) range; their body of work – it’s tremendous,” says Binkow. “I’m in awe of how they do it and how they approach it. They like to go to a place they’ve never been before.”
In hosting the conversation, Jimenez says she was interested to hear how artists interact with each other, and the energy that’s created when the community bears witness to it.
“You might not have a lot of information, maybe you were invited to come here or saw a flier and you say, ‘I don’t know anything about that, but I want to know more,’” says Jimenez. “It’s exciting to me that people are also excited about the things that I’m excited about. It means that we are not alone, that others are curious and want to be a part of something.”
