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Kevin Dean
Director, Selby Gallery
Ringling College of Art & Design
Once a year the Florida Artist Group, an organization of painters, sculptors, printmakers and photographers from around the state, come together for an exhibition that is open to all of its members. This year the host for the show is the Ringling College of Art and Design. Because of the number of members, the organizers wisely decided to use two of our galleries in order to accommodate the number of expected entries. The number and styles of the art we received provided us a way to put together one cohesive exhibition in two
spaces, by using Selby Gallery to display the work that was based on the observable world, and went from the most objective depiction of reality to the most subjective/expressive depictions of reality. Photographs were placed in groups as were most of the paintings and collages that subtly included photographs, used real objects, numbers, letters or words.
The Christ-Janer Illustration Gallery, which is located 30 yards to the south of Selby Gallery, holds the paintings that are abstractions that may or may not have their inspiration in what can be seen or center on the non- objective use of line, shape, color, texture and value. (What do these words actually mean?) The paintings were arranged from images with geometric or curvilinear forms, clean edges and flat colors to the most painterly to once again show the range of the members of the Florida Artist Group.
We would like to thank the 85 members of FLAG for their participation in the exhibition and hope you enjoy the results of their labor and dedication to their art.
Kevin Dean
Kevin Dean has been director of Selby Gallery since July 1994. Mr. Dean has served as a full-time faculty member at Ringling School of Art and Design since 1985. He teaches in Ringling's Liberal Arts and Art History programs. He was a columnist for the Sarasota Arts Review, and has been a contributor to the New Art Examiner, Art Voices South, the Bradenton Herald, and Sarasota Magazine. He has written catalog essays about Sarasota artist Syd Solomon for the Ringling Museum of Art as well as essays on Aripeka artist Arlene Erdrich for a traveling exhibition. From 1977-79, Mr. Dean served as Executive Director of the Galesburg Art Center in Galesburg, Illinois, and prior to that, taught art in primary and secondary schools in Illinois. He holds an M.A. and a B.A. from Western Illinois University.
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