Free to Connect: A Visit to Miami's Art Basel

When I booked my flight for Art Basel Week in Miami, all I knew was that I needed some inspiration. I needed some sun, some Latin-time relaxation, and to see beautiful art. I never dreamed that I would find such a deep connection to the place and to the people. But I should have. Artists are philosophers, filled with ideas on what we need for society and the creative moxie to deliver it. And, right now, the big buzz is about connecting, to ourselves and to others. We need to.

Miami Beach is the perfect place to talk about connection. There is a freedom and openness to it that is unparalleled in America. One artist captured its essence perfectly, on the beach, with ladies' nude arses high in the air, in sand. Free.

One of my first stops was to the Design Miami show to visit preeminent lighting designer Lindsey Adelman. While famous for her beautiful Branching Bubble Chandeliers, my favorite thing about Lindsey is how she cultivates creativity and calm for herself and her staff with mid-day meditations as well as classes in things like creative drawing and dance. Whenever I speak with her, I am struck by how hard she works to make sure people are tapping into their intuition and creativity. She understands this is how they will do their best work, how they will develop things that will speak to society at large.

Lindsey Adelman's "The Edge of What We Know"

Standing with Lindsey in her all-black booth, her new natural elements-based On the Edge of What We Know collection twinkling around us, she gestured to her lovely custom creations and explained her inspiration.

The work, she said, comes from what's going on in her head right now, which is figuring how to connect the dots between Carlo Rovelli's philosophy of quantum mechanics and the transcendental meditation she practices to determine what humans need.

"The pieces are less about a formula and a set of rules, less 'objects' than interactions," Lindsey said, smiling widely like she does. "They are a free-form, open-ended moment in time. One fixture will interact with another fixture. After all, grains of light and matter are just atoms working at different frequencies."

Playing with those frequencies is rewarding because it proves out a very important theory Lindsey purported when I asked how her art fits with what's going on in the world right now.

"We're not separate,” she said. “We're all one. If we could just get that, just look at our interactions and understand that if you harm someone, you're actually harming yourself..."

As I walked around the various art shows, my interactions with artists were informed by my own belief, like Lindsey's, that creative interactions and meditation are the way we need to go to bring harmony, and-no surprise- I found lots of examples.

At the Scope tent on the beach, I met Dutch artist Michael Van Emde Boas. He is a photographer whose Unpredictable Perfection series attempts to capture the very instant of connection between disparate elements.

Michael uses colorful Holy Powder from India that he blends and mixes and throws. "It took me a long time to figure how to throw it and photograph it at the same time," he said, shaking his head with the memory of the difficult feat.

"I was inspired by how people meet, and connect," Michael said. The different colors symbolize different cultural and spiritual traditions, while, he said, "the captured muddle reveals the occasional and unique gathering of those different ways."

Spanish artist and famed designer Baruc Corazon has a theory about why those “muddled” gatherings might only be occasional.

“We need to be open but we don’t trust, so we just build boundaries,” he said. “We feel that it’s safer and it gives us confidence. We are scared of letting go.”

Baruc’s JiGen series, named after his given Zen Buddhist moniker, is a practice in letting go.

Looking at JiGen #22, I asked, “Did you do this on purpose?”

He smiled, and shook his head. I was clearly on to something.

“I had no idea. I just started to paint shadows that are reflections from an old family chandelier, and what emerges from these shadows just emerges, as if from someplace else, but through me.”

He acknowledges that there is some necessity to structure and boundaries for survival, but believes “we have given all our power over to it. We have to let go of that control.”

It was the “Self Control” message in the midst of a wire sculpture that made me stand and wait for artist Spenser Little. It is a time when we need to be sending clear messages in creative ways, and he seemed just the person who might be on board. I was not disappointed. We spoke for nearly 20 minutes, beginning with the inspiration for his amazingly expressive single-wire creations (“my parents were professors and pacifists and wouldn’t allow war toys, so I had to carve them, out of wood”) and continuing on through his Masters in molecular biology to his cancer research and, finally, to now, where he has found “life purpose.”

As he bent a single wire, spelling out words deftly with his fingers as he talked, (like he does at parties, with jokes) he said, “I have a way to interact and connect with people, and make a living from it through art.”

In most countries, recently in Italy and in Mexico, he has been invited to dinner when he sits and bends wire in public parks. But not here, not in America.

“If I sit in a park in America,” he said, “people just think I’m a mad homeless man. Here, in America, I have to be in context.”

I shook my head sadly. It was the lack of trust Baruc spoke of. It was the need for clear messages about things, specifically in my mind the principles of human kindness, that I had stopped and waited to talk to Spenser about.

Spenser finished his sculpture and handed it to me: human kindness it said, a 3-D version.

We hugged, and I felt connected.

I moved on, and was stopped in my tracks by what I thought was a photograph, but was actually a pencil drawing by Nigerian artist Arinze Stanley.It is obvious he finds a way to deeply connect with his subjects.

Watch what Arinze has to say about energy, and human connection.

I was so moved by Arinze's words, I pulled him in to a close hug, in tears.

My final visit was to Aqua, to see the final installation of black tape lines created by my friend, Brazilian artist Claudia Vieira.

With a special single-line "language,"Claudia invites people inside her work to have a connection, be it physical, mental, emotional, however they choose. I spoke to her about her inspiration. Follow her line here.

It was interesting to end with Claudia because I am always struck by how her work evokes the tangle of human emotions that we all have to work through to get through our days. It is, very clearly, not a straight line. It is complicated, and intense, but greatly worthwhile. Artists make us appreciate that.

After Miami, it feels absolutely positively worth it to take the energy to connect.

Thanks for the inspiration during Art Basel week Miami!

Shalom. Inshallah. Peace be with You.

Happy holidays, from InspireCorps! May 2018 be an inspired year, a time to 'Get in Tune.' Stay tuned. It's gonna be a great, great year!