{"id":73015,"date":"2025-11-28T07:12:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T07:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/73015\/"},"modified":"2025-11-28T07:12:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-28T07:12:09","slug":"woody-de-othello-opens-the-door-of-his-california-studio-as-he-prepares-for-two-major-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/73015\/","title":{"rendered":"Woody De Othello Opens the Door of His California Studio As He Prepares for Two Major Shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

A self-described \u201990s kid from North Miami Beach, Woody De Othello<\/a> grew up bingeing the Nickelodeon shows Rocko\u2019s Modern Life and Doug while gaming on Nintendo and PlayStation. \u201cA lot of those aesthetics are still ruminating around in my subconscious,\u201d says the artist, who is based in Oakland, California.<\/p>\n

Nickelodeon\u2019s motto, after all, is \u201cWe make fun,\u201d and there is plenty of fun to be had experiencing Othello\u2019s Funk Art\u2013inflected, cartoonishly styled sculptures and Expressionistic paintings. With collectors and curators taking notice, his work has been featured in recent biennials at the Whitney Museum of American Art<\/a> and at the Orange County Museum of Art. Now Othello is having a full-circle homecoming moment, as the P\u00e9rez Art Museum Miami<\/a> (PAMM) presents his largest museum exhibition to date, on view through June 28, 2026.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Colorful\"Colorful<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t A collection of
\nglaze samples. \t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Person\"Person<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOthello\u2019s show at the P\u00e9rez Art
\nMuseum Miami includes Coming
\nForth by Day (2025), an altar-like
\npyramidal installation filled with
\nceramics.\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\u201cMiami is central to Woody\u2019s story, as he was raised here surrounded by a vibrant Haitian community that shaped his worldview and sense of identity,\u201d says PAMM curator Jennifer Inacio. \u201cIn this exhibition, that comes through not only in the works themselves\u2014objects infused with an emotional, spiritual, and cultural resonance\u2014but also through the installation, which creates an environment that feels both intimate and contemplative.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Art\"Art<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA selection of
\npieces from the exhibition.\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Best known for his ceramic and bronze sculptures of seemingly animated telephones, clocks, fans, and musical instruments, Othello breathes life and feeling into these quotidian household objects, often embellishing their surfaces with hands, ears, and limbs, transforming them into anthropomorphic totems. His still lifes and interiors paintings, often vibrantly hued and surreally stylized, have a similarly charged effect.<\/p>\n

Othello works out of two East Bay studios about ten miles apart: One is in a former gym where he paints and sculpts and fires his ceramics, while the other is a woodshop for making pedestals and the rhythmically carved frames he recently began adding to his paintings. \u201cThe frames, which I carve intuitively, are an extension of my thinking around the bases in my sculptural work,\u201d he says of his stack pieces, which were influenced by pioneering West Coast Expressionist ceramist Peter Voulkos. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Ceramic\"Ceramic<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tTruth doesn\u2019t come through thinking (maquette) (2025).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Man\"Man<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOthello with his dog, Mia, and recent work Memory (2025).<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a real generosity in his practice\u201d<\/p>\n

Jennifer Inacio<\/p>\n

His earliest art-making efforts weren\u2019t so much an expression of formal or spiritual concerns as they were a response to being bullied in elementary school as a bookish first-generation American born to working-class Haitian immigrant parents. \u201cSomething that helped me deal with those feelings was just drawing myself as a superhero beating up all the people who were tormenting me,\u201d he says, with a laugh. \u201cI also used to make these cityscapes and figures out of aluminum foil. Maybe what I\u2019m doing now is a continuation of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

1.1<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Person\"Person<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe
\nartist applying glazes.\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Othello\u2019s first turn with clay came at Florida Atlantic University, but it wasn\u2019t until he was working toward his MFA at California College of the Arts, then in Oakland\u2014the birthplace of the California Clay Movement\u2014that he began fusing the Nickelodeon visual language and his aluminum foil world-building with broader, more academic references while reaching into his personal narrative. \u201cCalifornia had this magnetic pull, the history but also in terms of the potential of what clay can do and what clay can be,\u201d says Othello, who has worked with San Francisco dealer Jessica Silverman since 2018, which, he adds, \u201ckind of kept me here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Expanding beyond individual objects, Othello began to experiment with incorporating them into immersive environments. He has complemented some with soundscapes composed by Oakland musician Cheflee and others with sulfuric lighting or sand-covered floors. At PAMM, he limewashed the walls in a vermilion hue recalling the brightly painted cinder block walls he saw on a trip to Senegal with his wife, the artist explains.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Shelves\"Shelves<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSupplies in the studio. \t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Sculpture\"Sculpture<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIn praise (2025). \t\t\t<\/p>\n

The exhibition\u2019s title, \u201cComing Forth by Day,\u201d is from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and the show pulls in a number of ancient references\u2014Egyptian funerary architecture, Central African nkisi figures\u2014as well as New Age mysticism. The show\u2019s titular work is a ten-foot-high, pyramid-shaped, openwork altar in wood that Othello blackened and then filled with sculptural ceramic offerings. The structure suggests a kind of spiritual progression: tension at the base (represented by elements such as a ceramic head on its side) and acceptance at the apex (a sculpture of four hands facing upward toward the sky).<\/p>\n

Inspiration for the monumental work was sparked by reading Eugene Fersen\u2019s Science of Being. \u201cHe has this pyramid chart that graphs a path between life, mind, truth, and love, all forming this center point for spiritual evolution,\u201d he says. \u201cIn order to experience love, you must first have a life. You must first have a mind; you must seek truth to find love, to find your spirit. It gave me goose bumps.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Man\"Man<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOthello in his studio. \t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Pottery\"Pottery<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRecently
\nfired works drying in the kiln. \t\t\t<\/p>\n

As Inacio notes, Othello\u2019s works \u201cnot only hold his own experiences but also create space for viewers to reflect on theirs,\u201d adding, \u201cThere\u2019s a real generosity in his practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2025 Winter issue under the headline \u201cFinding His Groove.\u201d\u00a0Subscribe to the magazine.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A self-described \u201990s kid from North Miami Beach, Woody De Othello grew up bingeing the Nickelodeon shows Rocko\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,42779,42780,42781,42782],"class_list":{"0":"post-73015","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-perez-art-museum-miami","12":"tag-studio-visit","13":"tag-whitney-museum-of-art","14":"tag-woody-de-othello"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}