Alexia Benavent\u2019s De Aqui, De All\u00e1 and Jenny Day\u2019s Happy Birthday Stinky bring a power pair of new sculptural exhibitions the Morean Center for Clay on April 11, 5-9pm.<\/p>\n
Benavent shares her ceramic dominos, relief photo tiles, and colorful banana bunches in a celebration of connecting with home and identity. Day displays an army of whimsical clay creatures surrounding an imaginary birthday party, using the fantastic and mystical to edge worry away.<\/p>\n
When you see Benavent\u2019s work, the first thing you will come to realize is its deep connection to place, exploring fragility through use of soft and hard materials.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a diaspora, often the only thing you can take from your home are memories. Suddenly everything can be a reservoir of memory,\u201d Benavent says. \u201cOld photos of a favorite restaurant, a bowl you used every day from your mother\u2019s kitchen, even rusty tools from a childhood home can become treasured keepsakes and tangible connections to places that are not the same and may only exist now in this handful of remembrances. In a world that so strongly wants to deny you a place, they take you back\u00a0to a time you didn\u2019t even realize was so precious. Anything too big to fit in a suitcase is left behind forever. Items like photos are some of the last reminders of a home now long gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Day\u2019s work, by default, holds a deep reverence for the natural world, concerns about climate change and natural disaster. Lately, however, she has created another landscape populated by an army of friendly creatures.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHere burdens are dismissed by the whimsical,\u201d Day says. \u201cHappy Birthday Stinky invites viewers to attend a birthday party for a skunk, complete with a dinosaur pi\u00f1ata, cake, ice cream, presents, balloons, and pizza.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the exhibition, the apocalyptic is supplanted by the surreal and the allegorical. Outside influences still seep in, broken ceramic windows let in a flurry of leaves, cigarettes, old tin cans, a dead bluejay. Day\u2019s work often flirts with how the world might end, while simultaneously finding ways to adapt, recreate, and live on.<\/p>\n
Enjoy both exhibitions Wednesday to Saturday,10am-5pm, on view April 11 through May 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexia Benavent\u2019s De Aqui, De All\u00e1 and Jenny Day\u2019s Happy Birthday Stinky bring a power pair of new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-227923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}