Artists’ Reception Friday, June 12

Born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Wayne White is an Emmy-winning, L.A.-based artist who uses his memories of the South to create inspired works for film, television, and the fine art world. For his first solo show in Florida, Art is Supposed to Hypnotize You or Something, White will display new mixed-media work and a selection of previously produced pieces. In conjunction with Broward 100 – the 100-year centennial celebration of Broward County – the artist will create one of his iconic, supersized puppet heads, this time depicting county namesake, Napoleon Bonaparte Broward. Napoleon Broward was the governor of Florida from 1905-09 and encouraged development in the region by initiating the drainage and channeling of the Everglades. The County was named for him by the state upon its incorporation in 1915.

The art of puppetry in various forms has been a staple of White’s ongoing practice dating to the 1980s, when he built puppets and sets on the seminal children’s show Pee-wee’s Playhouse. His puppets included Randy, Cool Cat, Dirty Dog, Chicky Baby, Roger the Monster, Mr. Kite, and Cowntess the Cow. White’s recent work in this medium typically lampoons a person, place or thing with a sense of showmanship and sly humor. His subjects include puppet heads of Elvis Presley, George Jones, and Lyndon Johnson, and gallery installations of a train station and a cubist cowboy rodeo.

In addition to his three-dimensional works, White is renowned in the fine art world for his “word paintings.” White repurposes vintage offset lithographs often found in thrift stores, and integrates them visually with painted phrases such as “Drop the Country Boy Act,” “Dude Started Freaking Out,” and “Art is Supposed to Hypnotize You or Something.” White will also exhibit a selection of works on paper, many of which have been reproduced in the monumental monograph designed by Todd Oldham, “Maybe Now I’ll Get the Respect I So Richly Deserve.”

The inspiring trajectory of White’s life and art are the subject of the acclaimed documentary Beauty is Embarrassing, directed by Neil Berkeley. Los Angeles Magazine wrote that the film should be required viewing, “for every aspiring artist wondering how to build a life doing what they love … It’s a snapshot of the ways in which creativity and the business of daily living can be inseparably fused.”

White won three Emmy Awards on Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and has earned accolades as the art director on landmark music videos by Peter Gabriel (“Big Time”) and Smashing Pumpkins (“Tonight, Tonight”), for which he won Billboard and MTV Music Video awards, respectively. White’s art is in the public collections of New Museum of Contemporary Art (New York); Detroit Institute of the Arts; Frederick R. Weissman’s Art Foundation (Los Angeles); and Laguna Art Museum.