My first impressions of Wynwood were of urban blight. My husband Orestes Diaz ran a gallery he called ism-gallery starting in 2007 for a year or so. I got out of the car for the first time in Wynwood and saw a young, brown-skinned man dressed in women’s clothes coming towards us on the sidewalk. He was in a state of partial undress and made no eye-contact. I sensed a bottomless despondence that broke my heart.
At that time, there were galleries opening all around the neighborhood, but many lots were still abandoned and strewn with trash. Men were staring down at us from the roof of the Miami Rescue Mission building on the corner of 21st and 1st Ct, mockingly, I always thought. An auto-body shop seemed to use the entire street as its daytime storage lot. Many walls bore elaborate graffiti.
My first impressions of Wynwood were of urban blight. My husband Orestes Diaz ran a gallery he called ism-gallery starting in 2007 for a year or so. I got out of the car for the first time in Wynwood and saw a young, brown-skinned man dressed in women’s clothes coming towards us on the sidewalk. He was in a state of partial undress and made no eye-contact. I sensed a bottomless despondence that broke my heart.
At that time, there were galleries opening all around the neighborhood, but many lots were still abandoned and strewn with trash. Men were staring down at us from the roof of the Miami Rescue Mission building on the corner of 21st and 1st Ct, mockingly, I always thought. An auto-body shop seemed to use the entire street as its daytime storage lot. Many walls bore elaborate graffiti.
The other side of the duplex we were renting housed another gallery run by young, upper class Mexican brothers, one of whom was a photographer. The courtyard of our building was enchanted compared to the broken and bare concrete outside. A large tree provided shade. The yard was completely walled in. One corner had bushes and flowers where my 3-year old could catch lizards. A statue of Saint Lazarus stood in a corner. He was stolen in the next few weeks. I sat in a plastic chair, uneasily, watching my 1-year old in his stroller.
The streets were dirty. Men often passed by, eyeing us with as much suspicion as we eyed them. During 2nd Saturday Art Walks, the police would patrol, and I wondered whether they were as eager to come to this area when someone here had a domestic disturbance, or when a young person was attacked on the street, or if they showed up mostly to protect this white crowd attracted to the emerging art scene.
During the Art Walks of the day, parking was still easy to find, and nobody had to fight a crowd to get from gallery to gallery. But high heels proved a hazard. Many sidewalks were broken and potholes were common. Most galleries offered complimentary wine, and there was the occasional promotional liquor giveaway. After artwalk, plastic cups and cigarette buds would be piled on top of dumpsters (which were few and far between) as well as on any visible ledge, like window sills or large concrete lamp post bases. Bouquets of beer bottles would decorate many corners and the front of empty lots. Broken glass crunched under feet. The contrast between the art-walk’s well-dressed, fashionable, young professionals with their plastic wine glasses and the grit all around was jarring.
We exhibited local artists Nestor Arenas whose works are photos of scenes he builds featuring road kill and plastic figurines; Angel Vapor, a gifted and classically trained painter and sculptor; and Tebelio Diaz, my husband’s Cuban-born painter and multi-media artist father whose subject at the time was migration by sea. My husband recruited artists from abroad: Ana Pimental (from Brazil) whose works contrasted colors and patterns that reminded one of crocheted table-clothes and wall-coverings with cartoon characters with exaggerated eyes; Serge Lis (Russia) sent kinky photos, and Richmodis DM (Germany) brought her deep, disturbing artworks reflecting on womanhood and the relationship between man and woman. The shows were put together with an aesthetic sensitive to light and space and respect for the artwork. Meanwhile, much better known galleries featured huge pink artworks by a well-respected artist that, at least to me, looked like he put the works together in a hurry, and many places jammed so much artwork into their space that it looked more like a flea-market than an art-space. Richmodis, who traveled from Germany to be present for her show, remarked that she felt she could breathe in our space. Not so in many others.
The art walk’s late crowd skewed young and tended to tramp through the gallery in search of the booze, which we provided in the back courtyard. The early crowd usually included middle-aged visitors seriously interested in art, but we sold nothing and lived on a teacher’s salary. We closed up shop a little over a year later.
Written by Anna Vamos
