Mike Solomon

Tim Jaeger, director and chief curator of galleries and exhibitions at Ringling College of Art & Design, poses next to Syd Solomon's 1982 triptych Trishades in the Lois and David Stulberg Gallery.

"Fluid Impressions: The Paintings of Syd Solomon" Opening Reception Friday, Nov. 10, 5-8 p.m. Exhibit runs through March 25, 2024. Stulberg Gallery, Ringling College of Art and Design, 1188 Dr. Martin Luther King Way. Visit RinglingCollege.Gallery.

On View November 6, 2023 – March 25, 2024 
Opening Reception + Art Walk: Friday, November 10 from 5 to 8pm 

The Ringling College Galleries + Exhibitions Department, along with the students enrolled in the Role of the Curator class within the Business of Art and Design Department, are pleased to present Fluid Impressions: The Paintings of Syd Solomon; an immersive collection featuring expressive, storytelling paintings from Abstract Impressionist, Syd Solomon.

One of Sarasota’s most influential artists, Syd Solomon, created abstract paintings that distinctly capture the essence of natural elements shaped by his surroundings and life experiences. His artistic sensibilities proved invaluable during the early days of WWII. Even years following his passing, the enduring impact of one of the city's most influential artists still persists. 

This exhibition was led by a student curatorial team who applied, and were selected, to participate in a semester-long class titled Role of the Curator. The students were provided a hands-on overview of how to successfully produce a blue-chip exhibition as well as other related arts disciplines that included business practices and entrepreneurship. This exhibition features not only Solomon’s visually stimulating paintings, but also bridges together the important stories from Sarasota’s history while preserving Solomon’s legacy in the art world.  

Fluid Impressions was made possible by the generous loan of three dozen paintings from the private collection of Dr. Richard and Pamela Mones. 

Art Talk: Mike Solomon
Arts Advocates Gallery, Sarasota, Florida
January 27, 2023
4:00 - 6:00 PM
More Information

10 x 10: Ten Slides, Ten Speakers
January 26, 2023
Reception: 5:30 - 6:00 PM
Presentations: 6:00 - 7:00 PM
Sarasota Art Museum, Florida

Chelsea to Springs

Chelsea’s Berry Campbell Gallery takes over Ashawagh Hall in Springs from today through Sunday with a large group exhibition of artists, past and present, with strong East End connections.

The show includes works by Mary Abbott, Alice Baber, Nanette Carter, Dan Christensen, Eric Dever, Elaine de Kooning, Perle Fine, Grace Hartigan, Raymond Hendler, John Opper, Charlotte Park, Betty Parsons, Mike Solomon, Syd Solomon, Hedda Sterne, Susan Vecsey, Lucia Wilcox, Frank Wimberley, and Larry Zox.

Gallery hours are today through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and noon to 6 on Sunday.

Berry Campbell: Community
August 11 - 14, 2022
Berry Campbell at Ashawagh hall
780 Springs Fireplace Road
 East Hampton, New York 11937

Preview Exhibiton

THE LANGUAGE OF ABSTRACTION
With guest artist Mike Solomon
Thursday, February 10, 4:00-5:00 PM ES

REGISTER

Sunday, October 10, 2021
2 - 3 pm

Register

Inspired by the powerful works of artists John Sims, Mike Solomon, and Kirk Ke Wang on view in Skyway 20/21: A Contemporary Collaboration, the museum is proud to host this meaningful community discussion on the impact current and historical racial trauma.

The art game has many unwritten rules. It’s a good thing that nobody wrote them down.

COVID-19 trashed the artistic rulebook as it has nearly everything else in contemporary life. Artists and visual arts institutions have been flying by the seat of their pants since the pandemic hit last year. While strange changes are far from over in the art game, here are some of the new ad hoc rules area artists and arts leaders have invented to keep playing. We’ll start with a few individual artists.

Mike Solomon: Honor the Heroes

The bulk of Mike Solomon’s work is nonrepresentational. But his latest series of colored pencil drawings holds a mirror to the real world.

“Scenes from the Pandemic” has a journalistic feel to it. The title tells you exactly what to expect. There are a few scenes of wounded journalists and protestors of all ethnic origins. But most of Solomon’s drawings celebrate Black doctors, nurses and front-line caregivers dealing with the collateral damage of the battle against COVID-19.

These heroes include Dr. James A Mahoney – a Brooklyn pulmonologist who pulled all-nighters fighting the virus, and then became a victim himself; Dr. Armen Henderson, a Miami internist who was handcuffed and detained by police outside his home; and Dr. Lisa Merritt, the founder and director of the Multicultural Health Institute in Sarasota.

“I made a connection with Lisa at the beginning of this year,” Solomon says. “She enlightened me a lot about what was going on in the African American community. Thanks to her, I became fascinated with the Black doctors and first responders serving on the front lines during the pandemic. Like all doctors, they risk their own lives to save the lives of others. But if these doctors take off their scrubs and walk outside the hospital – they’re taking a risk just because of the color of their skin. It takes an amazing amount of courage to do what they do. I wanted to find a way to honor it.”

"I just hope people see what's there," says Mike Solomon of the portraits comprising his latest exhibition, Scenes from the Pandemic, showing online this November through the Sarasota Art Museum. Drawn in colored pencil, the series captures, in part, the long terrible arc of that period in 2020, beginning as a tribute to black doctors and essential workers but ultimately spiraling into an emotional account of protesters and journalists under assault in a world caught on fire and an artist coming to terms with what he sees. Though isolated from his studio while caring for his mother during the pandemic, he couldn’t ignore the images on TV, the photographs arriving daily on the doorstep or his artist’s instinct gnawing at his inactivity.

“A dissatisfaction with being more remote than I wanted to be in terms of activism,” Solomon says. “I didn’t want to be outside of it looking in.” And in those photographs, he found himself struck by a particular aspect of the social unrest unfolding before him. “There are black doctors helping anyone who walks through the door,” he says. “Yet they take their scrubs off and walk outside and they might get shot. Can you imagine that?” So the renowned abstract artist picked up a colored pencil and tried something he hadn’t done in near 50 years: draw from a photograph. And as he did, he embarked on both an artistic and emotional journey.

Solomon admits to a certain “philosophical prejudice” against drawing from photo references, saying that he never quite understood why an artist would spend their time on such a pursuit when the photograph already exists. “Now I do,” he says. Not only did Solomon find the exercise an artistic challenge, more engaging and difficult than he had previously supposed, but he also found that, in forcing himself to absorb each image in minute detail and re-create it from his own hand, it awakened greater compassion for his subjects.

“I go down into this little world and the empathy emerges,” he says. “It’s a way of digesting it in an empathetic way you wouldn’t normally.” It’s an empathy that Solomon hopes his audience can partake in, if they just take a moment to stop and really see what has happened on their and his collective watch. And if the images in the papers didn’t get the point across, maybe seeing them in a different context will. “As soon as it becomes a ‘work of art,’ people stop a lot longer,” Solomon says. “That’s just the magic of art—it slows the moment down.” SRQ

Continuum
ERIC DEVER | MIKE SOLOMON | SUSAN VECSEY | FRANK WIMBERLEY
October 9 - 12, 2020

At the same time, quarantine has compelled artists to connect with their communities in new ways. Jeremy Dennis, a tribal member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation, is known for his photographs exploring issues of Indigenous identity and cultural assimilation. With exhibits and photoshoots cancelled, he now works with his father to restore the family’s house on the Shinnecock reservation. It will serve as his home, studio and as a communal art space for an artist residency. Roz Dimon works with the Children’s Museum of the East End to bring art to kids within the Latin American community, Zooming with them, and encouraging them to express their fears and joys. But unlike these artists, Mike Solomon had to leave town in February and head to Florida to care for his 102-year-old mom. While there, he met first responders at the Multicultural Health Institute, an organization dedicated to health care for African Americans. The gripping reality of Black physicians risking their lives—first on the pandemic’s front lines, and then again, walking along the street as people of color—moved Solomon to honor them. In a departure from his abstract paintings and sculpture, he has produced a compelling series of pencil drawings, portraits of Black physicians that unfurl the disturbing personal and political imperatives underlying this coronavirus saga.

This evolving archival project hanging on a video grid invites us into artists’ studios, to glimpse their stuff amidst their artworks, to glean the curator’s response to today’s predicament for artists and museums, and to preserve an intimate anthology of artists’ stories during the pandemic.

10 x 10
Ten Slides Ten Speakers

Art Ovation, Sarasota, Florida
October 3, 2019
5:30 - 7:00 pm

Frank Alcock, Karen Arango, Bill Buchman, Jetson Grimes, Cooper Levey-Baker, Joan Libby-Hawk, Steve Phelps, Shakira Refos, Mike Solomon, Javier Suarez

Summer may be halfway over, womp womp, but there is still time to brighten up and refresh your space with artwork. Whether you want to add pops of color to your living room or do a full-blown redo of your house, we’ve got five solid tips on how to incorporate artwork into your home to give it that new look. 

1. Add Pops of Color

To bring your home to life, swap in some light color abstract paintings for wall décor. Any pop of color will brighten the room, giving it a new, cozy and inviting feel. Colorful artwork is perfect for any neutral color walls in the home, and a simple painting can do the trick!

2. Showcase High-End Pieces

If you are an avid art collector or have wiggle room in your budget, try adding a vintage art piece to your walls in your home. Syd Solomon, who was a notable American abstract artist, shares work such as the one below which adds an extra touch to any room.

3. Travel Shots

Incorporating one’s vacation pictures on the wall is the perfect way to decorate a home while giving a more personal and natural feel. Saving your vacation photos then throwing it into a beautiful frame can look fantastic in any room, and also shows off your adventures.

4. Art Sculptures

For a livelier feel, homeowners can accessorize their homes with art sculptures that are sure to make any room pop. Art sculptures are terrific because they serve as a unique decoration, but can also be used to fill up a room.



5. Determine a Theme

From florals to bold colors to fun prints, make your home feel like a tropical getaway or a calming cottage to escape to. Landing on a theme in your summer home can help determine the type of art décor you plan to showcase. It’s crucial to incorporate bright, flashy colors to portray warmth and light.

Discussion with Mike Solomon about Syd Solomon: Views from Above
Cocktails & Collections
Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg
Thursday, November 15, 2018
5 - 7 PM
RSVP

“Please Send To: Ray Johnson” is predominently a collection of “Mail Art” Johnson sent to Ted Carey, left to the museum by Tito Spiga as part of his bequest. “Syd Solomon: Concealed and Revealed” operates as a retrospective of the artist, who died in 2004, using his archive to provide new context to his output from his early days before and after World War II, when he devised camouflage techniques for the military, to late work from the early 1990s. Finally, “Sara Mejia Kriendler: In Back of Beyond” will showcase the artist’s Colombian roots with sculptures in terra-cotta, plaster, and gold leaf that also reference today’s consumer culture. Ms. Kriendler was the recipient of top honors in the 2016 members show.

SYD SOLOMON and PLEASE SEND TO: RAY JOHNSON
Oct. 20-Dec. 17
Guild Hall

Through his New York Correspondence School in the 1950s, Ray Johnson started his own art movement — Mail Art. Johnson networked with other artists to whom he mailed drawings, poems and collages, asking them to add their touches and forward it to another member of the group. Guild Hall’s second major gallery will explore the career of Syd Solomon, self-described “Abstract Impressionist” whose paintings were inspired by the natural environment surrounding his homes in the Hamptons and Florida.

631-324-0806
guildhall.org

What made Mike Solomon’s talk about Alfonso Ossorio and the Creeks so captivating was that, as he put it, “It is a personal as well as a cultural history.” An overflow audience packed the Baldwin Family Lecture Room at the East Hampton Library to hear Mr. Solomon, an artist and founding director of the Ossorio Foundation, discuss Ossorio’s art, his generosity, and his influence in the art world of the 1950s and beyond.

The Solomon family — Syd, an important abstract painter, his wife, Annie, and their two children, Mike and Michele — lived at the Creeks, Ossorio’s 57-acre estate on Georgica Pond in East Hampton, for three months in 1959. Thirty years later, Mike returned to East Hampton with his wife and 2-year-old son to work as Ossorio’s studio assistant. After the artist’s death a year later, he became the director of the foundation established by Ted Dragon, Ossorio’s life partner and heir.

September 29, 2018 - January 20, 2019
Museum of Fine Arts
St. Petersburg, Florida

Syd Solomon’s (American, 1917–2004) gestural canvases are exemplary of the tenets of Abstract Expressionism, as seen in the large-scale painting Westcoastalscape (1968) currently on view in the Acheson Gallery.  He has stated, “I am interested in the immediate, the chance and the transitory aspects […] in my work.  The truth of the moment, I believe may frequently be the artist’s opening to permanent quality.”  His multilayered paintings, characterized by stunning sweeps of color contrasts, are inspired by nature, and specifically the Florida landscape.  This Spotlight exhibition brings together works ranging from 1945 through the 1980s, drawn from the Museum collection as well as the Estate of Syd Solomon, which has also loaned archival images and publications.

After serving in WWII, Solomon divided his time between Sarasota, where he established the Institute of Fine Art at New College, and East Hampton, New York. At his invitation, a distinguished group of artists taught at New College in the 1960s including Conrad Marca-Relli, Larry Rivers, and Philip Guston.

Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center: “The Permanent Collection: A 30-Year Survey”
August 2, 2018 through October 27, 2018

The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center presents “The Permanent Collection: A 30-Year Survey” featuring highlights such Composition with Red Arc and Horses, a 1930’s painting by Jackson Pollock, and a wooden bird house made by Pollock in the 1940s.

In addition to art by Jackson Pollock, the survey includes artworks by Lee Krasner, Mike Bidlo, Thomas Hart Benton, James Brooks, Stanley William Hayter, David Slivka and Syd Solomon. Photography by Dan Budnik, Robert Giard, Bernard Gotfryd, Barbara Kasten, Fred McDarrah, Hans Namuth, Tony Vaccaro and Wilfrid Zogbaum are also part of the show.

The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center is located at 830 Springs-Fireplace Road, East Hampton, NY 11937.

Click here for exhibition details

Along with passions for music and surfing, visual art—and his faith—have filled Solomon’s existence ever since. But, as with any artist, it’s been a complex journey to the point in his career where he stands now, with works in the permanent collections of the John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the Cantor Fitzgerald Collection in New York, the Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton and the Parrish Art Museum, among others, as well as the private collections of playwright Edward Albee, artist Dan Flavin, architect-artist Richard Meier and others.

New paintings by Mike Solomon embrace an unusual variety of formal ambiguity. Uniquely and unexpectedly reticent, his resin-constructed panels, most of which fall within easel scale, present the viewer with out of focus fields of color that are compelling while still offering resistance to optical navigation. Currently exhibited in "Mike Solomon: Immediate Splendor" at Berry Campbell in New York, these works insist instead on a viewer’s steady and indeterminate gaze. Objectively speaking, they may be said to cultivate a realization of Hans Hoffman’s push-and-pull that is frozen in time.

Mike Solomon creates beautiful, color saturated paintings that have a built-in grid reminiscent of early Larry Poons geometric accents, which contain an elegant veil of dreamlike mist. Solomon is a tastemaker if there ever was one, and coupled with his unusual acquaintances, including his experiences as a studio assistant to John Chamberlain, James Brooks and Charlotte Park, and collectors like Edward Albee, Beth DeWoody, Dan Flavin and Richard Meier, among others, this kind of professional support and relationships are simply golden, and it shows.