The Arts Advocates Gallery is located inside the Crossings at Siesta Key mall, 3501 S. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Enter the mall through the doors next to Connors Steak & Seafood and turn left.

"Revise Assumptions/Libby Hawk Paintings" challenges norms about two- and three-dimensional art, daring viewers to engage differently, slowing down the exhibit experience. Hawk creates provocative abstracts on paper and canvas vibrating with color and texture, at once subtle and bold.

Kinetic two-sided paintings, like vintage 45 rpm records, express different visual moods as the viewer moves around and the painting surfaces catch and play back the invisible air currents. Stiffened and sculpted canvasses turn into dynamic visual adventures shaped in distinctive terrains. Paper — rough-edged, torn and folded — capture mood-striking images.

Hawk will talk about her work on  March 1 and March 15 at 3:00 pm.

Libby Hawk, a multi-disciplinary artist, explores various mediums — paper, clay, canvas — marrying form to color in contemporary works that claim and may move in space. Her work engages viewers as they explore multiple points of view, altering and slowing down the visual experience. The artist’s recent solo installation, What She Could See, exhibited at the Ringling College Englewood Art Center from January – March 2024, created a visual and spatial experience that invited viewers to move with and through the art. 

The artist has been included in national and regional shows receiving multiple awards, including the Halo Arts Fellowship in 2021. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College, studied at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford, England and earned an MFA from the City University of New York. Her paintings and ceramics have been shown at Art Center Sarasota, Manatee Art Center, Gainesville Fine Arts Association, Florida Craft/Art, Mara Gallery + Studio, Define Art Gallery among others. She teaches ceramics at Suncoast Technical College and is a member of Women Contemporary Artists (WCA).

After a career in New York advancing human rights and women’s equality including at the United Nations Women’s Fund, in 2017, she resumed her art practice. Currently, she makes her studio home at SPAACES (2051 Princeton Street, Sarasota, FL 34237) a nonprofit artist and cultural organization that promotes contemporary and social practice art.