DON SHEARER

Don Shearer

Don Shearer’s spectral, scrawly angels still haunt the tricounty 30 years after the painter and sculptor bounded onto the 1980s scene, the first in a wave of South Beach’s arty trendsetters. A vivid example can be found scorching the courtyard wall at Fort Lauderdale gallery-bar Jump the Shark: a collection of crucifixes and tangled, sinister forms frame a Leonard Cohen quote, written in jagged manuscript: “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

On Oct. 14, Shearer’s paintings will likewise haunt the Box Gallery in West Palm Beach, which is hosting “The Work {of} Don Shearer, A Retrospective.” The show, curated by Shearer fan and longtime arts writer Sandra Schulman, aims to inject Palm Beach with flavors of old South Beach, in the late 1980s a hurricane of creativity, stiff cosmopolitans and new beachfront high-rises. “It was a creative explosion. South Beach had the biggest incubator of styles from South Florida and New York, all meshed together,” says Rolando Chang Barrero, whose 4,000-square-foot space will feature 70 Shearer pieces. “Shearer’s style is fresh. It’s clean. You recognize it immediately because of the angels, and in the simplicity in his lines.”

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A friend of Shearer’s from his Miami Beach heyday, Barrero describes the gothic wonder as humble, unwilling to partake in the brash, cocaine-fueled “society scene trap” that preoccupied spotlight-hungry artists of the early ‘90s. Instead, the artist grew prolific in his Design District gallery, dubbed “Of,” painting on furniture he scavenged from the street in a way that echoed Purvis Young, the legendary Overtown outsider artist who painted angels dwelling in urban decay. His works have since collected a pair of Hortt awards and found their way into the collections of actors Willem Dafoe and the late Vincent Price.

The gallery will also feature Shearer’s paintings on patent-leather sofas, upholstered chairs and on window panes, also harvested from Miami’s alleyways. His works will be accompanied by music from Cecilia Cruz. From 6-8 pm on Oct. 15, Louis Canales, Schulman, Liz Balmaseda and Manny Hernandez will discuss “The Art and Culture of South Beach.”

“The Work {of} Don Shearer, A Retrospective” will open 7-11pm, Oct. 14 at the Box Gallery, 811 Belvedere Road, in West Palm Beach. The show will close Nov. 12. 786-521-1199 or TheBoxGallery.Info.
~ Phillip Valys