Miami Indulge Magazine
Global aficionados may come to Miami for the Big Tent art shows, but many also take time to check out locally based talent. We give you a glimpse into the studios of a few buzz-worthy South Florida artists.
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“Bringing the Outdoors in”
ONAJIDE SHABAKA
“If you are seeking creative ideas go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes or a walk.”
– Raymond InmonFort Lauderdale artist Onajide Shabaka has been following that advice on walking since he was a teen.
“In high school I used to take pictures of dead animals and bones and weeds, and I’m still doing the same thing,” he says of his early photo essays taken while walking around his neighborhood. “That was the beginning of my art practice.” He went on to obtain a BFA in photography at Florida Atlantic University and a MFA from Vermont College (now Vermont College of Fine Arts).
Shabaka, 66, often begins his creative process with a nature walk. [Walking is a primary form of his art practice.] A large part of his art — whether sculpting, painting, photography or creating works on paper — begins with what he photographs on his walks. That photograph can either stand alone or become the foundation for another art form to capture the alternating stillness and vibrancy found in nature.
Often the walks become the essence of his exhibitions. A series of walks — mainly in South Florida and Northern Minnesota from 2004 and 2007 — resulted in Mangrove Walk at Greynolds Park in North Miami Beach and the Lake Superior – North Shore Walk and the Low Lake Trail Walk in Minnesota. In 2006 he presented the Lake Burntside Walk in Ely, Minnesota. In 2005 he featured work from the Logging Trail Walk in a wilderness area in Northern Minnesota. A year earlier, he had produced work from his Bass Lake Trail Walk in the same region.
Shabaka has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Florida, including the Miami Art Museum, the Orlando Museum of Art and the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts in Eatonville. He also had a stint as interim facilities manager at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami in the mid-1990s.
Just as he recreates nature in his paintings, photographs and collages, Shabaka also recreated himself, legally changing his name in the 1970s. His official biography lists his first show as Onajide Shabaka in [1968] at the Watts Towers Art Center Gallery in Los Angeles. He won’t divulge his birth name, but says his adopted first name [was given to him by] a Nigerian boxing champion and means “the artist returns.” His last name is that of the [last black] pharaoh who united Upper and Lower Egypt.
Originally from Cincinnati, Shabaka was raised in California, where, for a while, he studied [fine art and fashion] design in the mid-1970s. By 1977, he was in Florida, exploring his family’s history in Fort Pierce. Today he works from his Fort Lauderdale home, using his bedroom, the Florida room or backyard as his work space.
His art often incorporates organic elements, such as when he transforms iron-rich dirt from Minnesota into a reddish-brown finger paint or retells his family history through his paintings.
(article as posted here contains several edited corrections and clarifications)