Get your steps in at Delray’s First Friday Art Walk, explore art from a New York multimedia master at the Boca Museum, and see a jazz trio level up at Funky Biscuit. Plus, Gutenberg! The Musical! and more in your week ahead.
WEDNESDAY
What: “Blazing Light: Photographs by Mimi Plumb”
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Norton Museum of Art, 1450 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach
Cost: $18 general, $15 seniors for museum admission
Contact: 561/832-5196, norton.org
“Blazing Light” marks the first solo exhibition for this California photographer, but Mimi Plumb, now 72, is no newbie to the art world. She shot her first pictures, some of which are on display in this career-spanning survey, as a teenager in the 1970s, chronicling the fissures beginning to form in the idyllic landscapes of the American west. Her photography series, clustered around seemingly benign titles such as “The Golden City,” “The White Sky,” “Landfall,” and “Reservoir,” capture chasms of change in stark black and white, from the ravages of climate change to the victims of unfettered capitalism to the effects of endless military conflict on the home front. These ideas rise to the fore not through any forced didacticism on Plumb’s part, but through the places and individuals filling her frames, from boys playing amid a mountain of discarded tires, to a crowd gathering in front of a strip mall to gaze at a not-so-distant fire, to a girl in a polka-dot dress burying her head in her hands—images of witnessing, coping with, and adapting to a world out of balance. “Blazing Light” runs through March 14.
FRIDAY
What: First Friday Art Walk
When: 6 to 9 p.m.
Where: Downtown Delray Beach
Cost: Free
Contact: downtowndelraybeach.com
Lace up the walking shoes, because it’s time once again for Delray art lovers’ favorite monthly gathering, in which 14 galleries and cultural centers clustered around downtown will stay open after hours, complete with workshops, artist meet-and-greets, live entertainment, and select wine and cheese samples. At Cornell Art Museum, explore four exhibitions, including the Everglades-themed textiles of “River of Grass” and expressionist nature paintings from world traveler Marleen De Waele-De Bock. Stop into Arts Garage for “Beyond the Frame,” a group exhibition whose artists work outside the boundaries of conventional framing and materials. Arts Warehouse is exhibiting “Endings to Beginnings,” showcasing the work of 11 of its resident artists, and “Interstitial,” showing the art of six second-year MFA candidates from FAU. Other participating locations include Gallery 255, Delray Beach Kollective, Visual Adjectives, Blue Gallery, MAC Fine Art, and more.
What: Opening night of Gutenberg! The Musical!
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Pompano Beach Cultural Center, 50 W. Atlantic Blvd., Pompano Beach
Cost: $55-$65
Contact: 844/672-2849, pompanobeacharts.org
Poking fun at the very process of contriving new musicals from historical figures (our first treasury secretary comes to mind), Gutenberg! The Musical! follows a pair of wannabe musical-theater composers seeking funding for their unorthodox project: a musical based on the life of Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press. But with only a hasty Google visit for research, the two writers, Bud Davenport and Doug Simon, simply make up the dramatic details of Gutenberg’s life and work, from his love affair with a dim-witted assistant named Helvetica to his chief antagonist, a Satan-worshipping monk. The joy of Gutenberg! The Musical! is watching two comic actors play all of the parts in their proposed musical. As with such meta forbears The Producers and Something Rotten!, the more you know about musicals, the more of the rapid-fire jokes you’re likely to appreciate. The show runs through Nov. 15.
SATURDAY
What: Opening day of Tobi Kahn: “Quest for the Essence”
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Boca Raton Museum of Art, 501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton
Cost: $12-$16 museum admission
Contact: 561/392-2500, bocamuseum.org
Multimedia artist Tobi Kahn was born in the shadow of a genocide, having been raised by Holocaust survivors in New York City. Even his name is a tribute to Arthur Kahn, who is believed to be the first Jew murdered by the Nazi regime. His reaction, through nearly 50 years of artmaking, has been to focus on healing, creating works that blur distinctions between figural and abstract, decorative and functional, and that are designed for settings of convalescence and tribute: meditative rooms for healthcare workers, sculptural lights for mothers of miscarriage, carpentry works for pediatric cancer patients. “Quest for the Essence,” Kahn’s first major career survey in Boca Raton, features 88 works divided into three main segments—landscape paintings, figurative paintings, and liturgical art, which includes ritual objects such as seder plates and Tzedek Boxes, that honors his Jewish heritage. The exhibition runs through April 24.
What: Beast Mode Trio
When: 6 and 9 p.m.
Where: Funky Biscuit, 303 S.E. Mizner Blvd., #59, Boca Raton
Cost: $44.40-$55.24
Contact: 561/395-2929, funkybiscuit.com
If you played many video games in the 1980s, you’re likely to be familiar with the term “beast mode”—slang parlance for powering up one’s game to new levels of energy and focus in order to best the competition. In the jazz world, the trio known as Beast Mode accomplishes this feat every time it plays a gig. The group, which released its debut album, Something Like a Picture, last year, consists of Israeli-Australian pianist Tal Cohen, who has lent his mellifluous tone to performances with brass titans Terence Blanchard and Joe Lovano; Jose Armando Gola, a Havana-born bassist who has performed with such Latin music giants as Arturo Sandoval and Jennifer Lopez; and drummer jjHollywood, aka Jonathan Joseph, whose resume includes tours with Jeff Beck, Pat Metheny, and The Yellowjackets. Together, the music they play fuses their global music influences with the language of hard bop jazz, creating improv-heavy compositions that call to mind the 1960s’ pinnacle of Blue Note Records.
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