Cortada publishes in Science, wins public art commission

Artist wins public commission, brings work to Kennedy Center,
premieres drawings in NY and publishes in Science magazine

February 2011

Featured articles

Nurtuing Nature exhibit

Science publication

"Rope" @ Kennedy Center

Art from the Earth's Poles

Visit artist's studio

NEA / HUD Roundtable at

New World Symphony

On January 31st, 2011, NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman and HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims convened panelists for a Roundtable discussion on "Sustainable Communities: The Private Sector, Government and the Arts -- A New Era of Innovative Partnerships for Regional Economic Development."

Xavier Cortada joined cultural leaders Adolfo Henriques, Berton Korman, and Alan Levy (representing the cultural affairs councils of Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Broward County, respectively) on the panel at the new Frank Gehry designed campus of the New World Symphony

The event was organized by the South Florida Regional Planning Council and the South Florida Cultural Consortium to provide a platform to highlight our cultural efforts as being a model for arts and economic development in the U.S.

to read more.

Public Art news

Splash! by Xavier Cortada for Miami Gardens Public Art Commmission, 2011

Cortada wins public art commission

On January 26th, 2011, the City of Miami Gardens Council approved the recommendation of

the Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places Professional Advisory Committee members (curator Peter Boswell and architect Malik Benjamin) that Xavier Cortada be selected to create art for for the city's Betty T. Ferguson Recreational Complex Aquatic Center.

Entitled Splash!, Cortada's winning design for the municipal pool's acoustical panel system is composed of hundreds of suspended tubular shapes that are cut and formed at varying heights to simulate the formation of a water splash.

to read more.

National finalist for Fort Lauderdale Airport commission

Miami artist Xavier Cortada is one of four national finalists selected to present their proposals to the Broward County Cultural Council's Public Art and Design Committee for a major commission spanning all four terminals of the Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport.

The Broward County Public Art and Design Program was established in 1976. The purpose of the program is to contribute to the enhancement of urban design through the creation of commissioned works of art that create a sense of place, that improve the visual environment for the citizens of Broward County and that advance the missions of the County departments where the projects reside.

to read more.

Symposium:
"The Value of Public Art to a Community"

Miami artist Xavier Cortada will serve as a panelist for an upcoming public art symposium in Ft. Pierce, Florida organized by the St. Lucie County Arts in Public Places Committee.

Other panelists include:

Harriet Senie, Professor of Contemporary Art and Director of Museum Studies from City University of New York,

Barbara Luecke, a co-founder of the Fremont Solstice Parade and Art Program Manager for Sound Transit in Seattle, Washington,

Terry Olson, Director of the Florida Association of Public Art Administrators from Orlando and

Jon Ward, Florida Humanities Council Treasurer and Director of the Fort Pierce Department of Urban Redevelopment.

The event's luncheon will start at noon and be followed by the symposium from 1 to 4 pm on Saturday, March 5th, 2011 at:

Havert L. Fenn Center
2000 Virginia Avenue
Room 122
Fort Pierce, FL

For more information and or reservations call Jeanne Johansen at 772-579-1529.

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Nurturing Nature premieres 180 drawings in New York,

engages gallery visitors in eco-art project

Cortada's 180 Endangered World drawings at Nurturing Nature exhibit, 2011

Endangered World: 180 drawings of endangered species from every longitude in the Eastern Hemisphere. (Special thanks to Mitchell and Ana Bierman for loaning drawings to the exhibit.)

On February 10, 2011, the "Nurturing Nature: Artist Engage the Environment" exhibit opened in the OSilas Gallery (171 White Plains Road) at Concordia College in Bronxville, New York.

The group show co-curated by Amy Lipton and Patricia Miranda features Cortada's180 pencil drawings of endangered animals struggling to survive across the 180 degrees of our planet's Eastern Hemisphere.

Exhibit visitors are asked to take home and plant one of the 180 Atlantic White Cedar saplings from Cortada's participatory eco-art installation in the gallery. Atlantic White Cedar, once used by American pioneers to build log cabins, will be used to reclaim front lawns for nature.

Cortada's "Reclamation Project: Altantic White Cedar" installation, 2011.

Reclamation Project: Atlantic White Cedar installation, 2011.

Cortada will deliver a presentation at the exhibit on April 9, 2011. The exhibit runs through April 16th, 2011.

For more information visit http://www.xaviercortada.com/event/concordia

DNA-based work published in Science magazine

In February 2001, Science and Nature published two papers that provided the first detailed look at the nearly complete sequence of the human genome. Science is pleased to present a special month-long series celebrating the 10th anniversary of that momentous achievement, including News features and brief essays that explore the impacts of the genomics revolution on science and society.

The journal, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), invited Cortada to write an essay.

The AAAS also invited the artist to recreate "Sequentia: Genetic Sequence," the participatory art installation that invited 400 Frost Art Museum exhibit visitors to create a DNA molecule, at their annual meeting on February 19th and 20th, 2011 (Family Science Days) in Washington, D.C.

Xavier Cortada, "(The Four Nucleotides:) Guanine," 2010.

Xavier Cortada, "(The Four Nucleotides:) Guanine," acrylic on canvas, 60" x 72", 2010.

Painting the Genome for the Public

Xavier Cortada

Artist, Miami, FL, USA

Science
4 February 2011:
Vol. 331 no. 6017 p. 548
DOI: 10.1126/science.1203069

Everything that lives, has ever lived, or will ever live on planet Earth has been created using adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. Mapping how these four nucleotides arrange to create a human being helps us better understand how interconnected we are to one another and the natural world.

I recently created portraits of life's four building blocks shown below. It felt as if I were painting a relative, except that I was bringing molecular formulas, not ancestors, to life. Within each large colorful canvas, I painted imaginary subatomic landscapes with floating base-pairs.

to read full article in Science
to hear Science podcast

to read Los Angeles Times article

Cortada brings participatory art piece to Kennedy Center

Xavier Cortada performs "Rope" at Kennedy Center

Cortada presents "Rope" at Kennedy Center

Cortada sketches during Committee of Foreign Relations testimony

Cortada sketches during House Committee of Foreign Relations testimony on Human Trafficking

On January 11, 2011, Cortada collaborated with the FIU College of Architecture and the Arts and its Theatre Department in its presentation of Body & Sold at the

John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts

in Washington, DC.

The performance presented a staged reading of Body & Sold by playwright Deborah Fortson on the topic of human trafficking.

Earlier in the day, Cortada created sketches as he listened to testimony during a Committee on Foreign Affairs Congressional Forum on Human Trafficking in the Rayburn House Office Building. The sketches were projected at the Kennedy Center later that evening.

Cortada also worked with cast members to implement "Rope," a participatory piece the artist developed for the Kennedy Center performance: Audience members sat through the Body & Sold performance with a piece of rope tied to their wrist.

For more information please visit http://www.xaviercortada.com/event/kennedycenter

90 N / 90 S: North Pole & South Pole Installations

at Miami Science Museum

Miami based artist Xavier Cortada created art installations at the Earth's poles to generate awareness about global climate change:

NSF logo In 2007, as an NSF (National Science Foundation) Antarctic Artists & Writers Program grantee, the artist used the moving ice sheet beneath the South Pole as an instrument to mark time; the art piece will be completed in 150,000 years.

In 2008, as an NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts) sponsored artist, he planted a green flag at North Pole to reclaim it for nature and launch a participatory eco-art project to help reforest the world below.

Replicas and artifacts from these installations, as well as other artworks, are on exhibit at the Miami Science Museum, 3280 South Miami Avenue, Miami, FL through May 31, 2011.

For more information please visit www.xaviercortada.com/event/msm

Visit artist's studio:

Xavier Cortada studio

924 Lincoln Road
2nd Floor
Miami Beach, FL 33139

305-858-1323

For more information

please visit

www.cortada.com

Miami artist Xavier Cortada created art installations at the North Pole and South Pole to address environmental concerns at every point in between. He's been commissioned to create art for the White House, the World Bank, Miami City Hall, Miami-Dade County Hall, Florida Botanical Gardens, the Miami Art Museum, Museum of Florida History, Miami Science Museum and the Frost Art Museum. Cortada has also developed numerous collaborative art projects globally, including peace murals in Cyprus and Northern Ireland, child welfare murals in Bolivia and Panama, AIDS murals in Switzerland and South Africa, and eco-art projects in Holland, Hawaii and Latvia.