Bird Road Arts Walk set for Saturday night

A growing arts scene attracts visitors to the Bird Road area near South Miami for monthly arts walks.

Artist Manny Nogueira, better known as MANO, with his unfinished piece "Friend Me" at his studio. PHOTO: Daniel Bock.

Bird Road Art Walk
Most of the studios are located just off of Southwest 75th Avenue between 41st and 48th streets. The starting point is at the Aperture Studios, 7360 SW 41st St.
7 to 10 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 18
Cost & Parking: Parking is free, as is a shuttle bus service between galleries.
For more information: www.thebirdroadartdistrict.com or call 305-467-6819.

By Alex Prada 2/15/2012

In the summer of 2010, MANO, the Accent Alternative Art Space Studio and several other contributing artists, organized the “Soft Walk,” a small monthly event that later became the Bird Road Art Walk.

Since then, the walk expanded from 18 participating artists to 45 as it became more popular.

“It’s grown significantly,” said Cuqui Beguiristain, a member of the BRAD steering committee. “The volume of artists has increased. The audience has increased. The artwork variety has grown,” she said.

Beguiristain said more than 1,000 guests attend the art walk every month, compared to the several hundred that attended the first walks.

For this month’s art walk, the artists of the district will have a different array of works and themes for visitors.

At the art walk, Manny Nogueira will unveil a social media theme to the guests of his studio – MANO Fine Art Project Space. As a figurative artist, his theme will consist of two primary works titled “Find Me” and “People You May Know.”

“Find Me” is a life-size female sculpture approximately six feet tall, which portrays people’s interconnection to Facebook.
The sculpture will have a skirt comprised of 200 images of the Facebook pages of art collectors.

“People You May Know” will consist of 25 to 30 paper sketches. The people sketches will be drawn on 11-by-14-inch paper. Once completed, the sketches will be grouped and pinned to the wall.

Today, the Bird Road Art District is home to a variety of artists, three art schools and two live stages.

The district first began to attract artists in the 1980s, Beguiristain said. As artists migrated to the district, empty warehouses were converted into art studios. By the year 2000 the former warehouse region was designated as an art district by Miami-Dade County.

Nestor Arenas, 47, a postmodern artist from Holguin, Cuba, is one of the artists in the district. Arenas moved to BRAD in 2006 after being attracted to the diverse and comfortable artistic community.

“I love the variety of people with different tastes,” he said. “There is always someone new.”

Cuban painter Jose Lambertini agrees. He said the artists working together make the art walk special. They are trying to have the city embrace the world of art.

“It’s all the artists working together to achieve something wonderful for the community,” he said.