Miami-Dade Public Library and “Out of Chrysalis,” an art exhibit curated by Tesoro Carolina presents Influential Women at Work: A Panel Discussion & Presentation on Saturday, May 23, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Main Library 2^nd floor exhibition space located at 101 West Flagler Street in Miami.  

This exhibition event is moderated by local poet and fiction writer, Julie Tyler and features an all-star panel of influential women including Tesoro Carolina, Maria Lino, Ellen Kanner, Glenda Galan, Juana Meneses, Laila Leder Kremer, Aquarela Sabol, Kat King and Leah Guzman. The event will also host a special flamenco performance by experimental flamenco artist Niurca Marquez and live painting by the “Out of Chrysalis” artists.

 “Out of Chrysalis” runs from January 31^st to May 30^th at the Main Library’s 1st & 2nd Floor Exhibition Spaces and highlights the works of selected female artists from MDPLS’ Permanent Art Collection, as well as the works from five female artists that have been making a name for themselves in the local Miami Art scene.

Guest artists include Tesoro Carolina (street artist & photographer), Aquarela Sabol (street artist & oil painter), Leah Guzman (painter inspired by the brain & heart), Kat King (artist and book maker) and Deming King Harriman (paper collage artist). Female artists from the Library’s Permanent Art Collection featured in this exhibition include Carol Todaro, Faith Ringgold, Charo Oquet, Pamela Vander Zwan, Kathleen Hudspeth, Vanessa Tomchik, Michelle Weinberg, Vera Arias, Karla Turcios, Margarita Cano and many more.

About the Miami‑Dade Public Library System

The Miami-Dade Public Library System (MDPLS), a recipient of the National Medal for Museum and Library Service, serves as a community center and learning place where the Miami-Dade community meets to exchange ideas, learn, share, and create.  The Library strives to ensure that all residents, regardless of socioeconomics, will be enriched through access to materials, technology, art and culture and programs so that they may develop the skills they need to create and produce innovations for the 21^st century. Through its 48 locations, bookmobiles, special services, website (www.mdpls.org) and MDPLS iLibrary app, the library proudly serves more than 7 million annual visitors. In the more than 40 years of serving the community, the MDPLS continues to experience tremendous change and growth, evolving with the technological needs and requirements of its diverse community.

Tesoro Carolina

Tesoro Carolina is a local Miami artist and guest curator for “Out of Chrysalis” an all women artists show opening at the Main Library January 31st. With “Magical like a Unicorn with a Diamond Glass Horn” as here slogan Tesoro Carolina’s chases her one true goal in life; to open a non-profit organization that allows different artist to travel to low income cities and repaint walls in an effort to inspire a positive future through mural art. Working in multiple fields within the arts as well as playing with mixed mediums she hopes to inspire through her use of whim.
www.tesorocarolina.squarespace.com

Leah Guzman

Leah Guzman is a dynamic, contemporary oil painter and sculptor. Her abstract and figurative works are richly symbolic, spiritual and organic. She counts the Art Nouveau style and artists Alphonse Mucha and Gustav Klimt among her influences. Her work, however, carries an energy that is uniquely hers. Each canvas reflects Leah’s curious, explorative, youthful and novel view on the world; each embodies an inquiry – soulful, scientific, existential or otherwise. She draws on the mythological, the biological and the visceral for inspiration and guidance.
www.leahguzman.com

Julie Tyler

Julie Tyler is a Miami-based poet, fiction writer, performer, dancer, educator, and entrepreneur. In addition to involving herself in Miami’s literary and arts communities, she is currently working on a short story collection and a novel. Tyler has a Ph.D. in English, teaches writing at Miami Dade College, and operates [Tyler]: Re-Tailored, Inc., a professional writing and editing company. Tyler’s creative philosophy is that art of all kinds must advocate for social justice, as well as participate in commerce, politics, education, and culture. And rather than being closed off in museums, art must combine its forms with those of other disciplines, such as the sciences and humanities, and even health and medicine. Tyler puts these philosophies into practice by giving her all each creative expression. Otherwise, she says, art will miss its point.

Ellen Kanner

Ellen Kanner is the award-winning author of Feeding the Hungry Ghost: Life, Faith and What to Eat for Dinner (VegNews’ 2013 Book of the Year, PETA’s debut Book of the Month Club pick), Huffington Post’s Meatless Monday blogger, Miami Herald syndicated columnist the Edgy Veggie and vegan writer for numerous publications. She runs the personal food consulting service Veg Therapy. An ardent advocate for sustainable, accessible food, Ellen serves on multiple Miami boards.

www.ellen-ink.com

Maria Lino

Maria Lino was born in Havana, Cuba, and immigrated to the United States as achild with her family. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Studio Art from New YorkUniversity, and graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from Florida InternationalUniversity.

Lino, a two-time Cintas Fellow, was awarded a Fulbright US Scholar Grant in 2011, and spent eight months in Peru developing Manos Trabajadoras/Working Hands, a series of video portraits focusing on the rhythms and daily routines of women who engage in repetitive manual labor. Presented as synchronized multi-channel video installations, Manos Trabajadoras/Working Hands expands the definition of individual and collective portraiture, portraying Lino’s interest in repetition, rhythm, and how we communicate with each other, both verbally and through body language.

Besides her video work, Ms. Lino is currently working on two series of drawings and prints with the continued concept of manual labor and the relationship between the figures. Ms. Lino has taught art, digital media and video production at university, college and high school levels to students of diverse multicultural and multiethnic backgrounds.

Meneses + Leder Kremer

Leila and Juana are interdisciplinary artists, and curators. Since 2013, they have been working together a collaborative duo Meneses + Leder Kremer, their socially engaged practice ranges from curatorial productions and participatory art projects. They have founded Portable Editions, a micro-publishing operation based in Miami.

At the end of 2013 they produced Portable Editions Vol. 1 a curated, movable installation and exhibition space that showcased limited editions artworks by ArtCenter / South Florida resident artists and alumni. During the month of April 2014 they produced Home Beyond Geography a participatory writing project to explore the identity of our port city, mapping Miami’s residents’ personal histories. The project was part of O Miami Poetry Festival and funded by O Miami.

They recently co-curated Self Published: Artists Making Books, Editions and Zines at Florida Gulf Coast University. Under Portable Editions they self-published the first cycle of Artists Making Books Project: four digitally printed artist’ book edition of 50, produced with funds by FGCU. The books are available for viewing and purchase at http://portableeditions.com/ Leila & Juana are recipients of Cannonball’s WaveMaker grant. They are currently planning an exhibition at the Miami-Dade Main Public Library for the spring of 2015.

Deming King Harriman

Deming King Harriman is a Miami Beach raised artist and graduate from Maryland Institute College of Art with a BFA in Illustration and a concentration in Book Arts. Deming’s work explores fantasy while she creates her own mythology of empowered Goddesses, spirits, and other mystical beings. Her art is process based, focusing on arranging color, texture, and design to create a cohesive narrative. Surreal themes influence her work, evoking mystery and whimsy.
www.Demingkingharriman.com

 Kat King

Kat King’s ongoing work rearranges old forgotten books into intimate art objects by meticulously hollowing out, ripping, and gluing pages back together. With her collection of found material and mixed media, she tells stories of events, issues, and struggles she has faced in both her life and dreams. By translating these stories into tangible objects, she turns the chapters of her own life into a distorted fairy tale. Kat King graduated from Florida International University with a Bachelors

in Fine Arts in 2012.
www.katkingarts.com

Aquarela Sabol

Aquarela Sabol is a Miami-based fine artist and street muralist focusing mostly on portraiture. Influenced by her Slovakian and Irish heritage, Aquarela draws inspiration from textures mythology and spirituality which bring to her work an intangible quality that is felt rather than described.  Stylistically, her portraits are multi-faceted with haunting undertones of sensuality, vulnerability, nostalgia, freedom and belonging.  Although receiving some schooling in fine arts, she is primarily a self-taught artist. Her preferred medium is oils combined with non-traditional fine art mediums such as fabric and textiles, spray paint and epoxy. She resides in Little Havana with her boyfriend where she has a studio and a house with a small garden.
www.aquarelasabol.com

Glenda Galan

Journalist, poet and Dominican-American writer.  Graduated from the School of Communication and UNIBE . Certificated in Journalism from KC, University of Miami.  Emmy Award winner as TV producer (2011)  and Emmy Award-nominated as screenwriter (2011). First finalist in in the competition  “Nuevos valores de la poesía hispana” (2011) of the Baquiana Magazine and Centro Cultural Español in  Miami. and Honorable Mention in the contest “Florida tierra de poetas” (2012). His stories and poems have been published in several literary magazines. He has written the books Mar de fugas (2011), Guayabas y fresas (2012) and “Tsunami” (2014) will be publish in Spain this autumn. She has been an investigative reporter and producer for America TeVe and Mundo Fox. She is currently the editor of the cultural magazine Dominicana en Miami.

Niurca Márquez

Niurca Márquez is an experimental flamenco artist, writer and advocate. She is part of an international movement addressing extended forms in flamenco and reclaiming the form’s liaisons with political and social discourse. In 2014, she was the Community Artist in Residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts where she completed an interdisciplinary project that included local history, personal narratives from the community and the town’s natural geography to create a performative installation in a 100 year-old house that challenged audiences to create their own personal performance experience and gave voice to forgotten cultures of the area.