Vero’s Lego lovers are going to be experts on the subject of Lego sculpture. After this past spring’s exhibit of Sean Kenney’s creations at McKee Botanical Garden, the Museum of Art is exhibiting the sticking brick sculptures of another New York artist, Nathan Sawaya.
Starting this weekend, Sawaya’s “The Art of the Brick” opens after a tour that has spanned the UK to South Africa. He’s the guy who presented Stephen Colbert with a life-size sculpture of – what else? – Stephen Colbert.
Sawaya quit his job as a lawyer to build Lego sculptures full time in 2004. By 2012, ArtNet ranked him the 8th most popular artist in the world. His most famous work is a seven-foot replica of the Brooklyn Bridge. This show continues through Jan. 3.
The comedy of radio personality Bobby Bones and the Raging Idiots, appearing at the Sunrise Theatre Saturday night, are country’s answer to folk art. Born to a 15-year-old and raised on welfare in a segregated Arkansas sawmill town of 800, Bones started phoning in song introductions to a pop radio station when he was only 10. Today he has more than 3 million listeners; his weekday radio show is in 80 markets (including Vero’s WAVW 92.7). And now he’s breaking into television.
If he himself could have been the recipient of a Thanksgiving basket of canned goods, today, he raises vast sums for charity himself. Now 35 and a Nashvillean, he recently formed a partnership with IHeartMedia, syndicators of his radio show, to develop content for TV, including plans for a Nashville-based talk show. His heart is set on developing young talent as well. In the meantime, he continues to develop his own comedic skills, manifested in song parodies.
If Bones has the look of a Gap ad, with his black-framed glasses and preppy style, it’s because country didn’t come to him until recently in his career. He started off in pop radio in Arkansas, and when he moved to an Austin top-40 station, he became a celebrity. It wasn’t until 2013 that he turned country and moved to Nashville. And now he’s got the top-rated country music morning drive time show in the nation.
His act has been called brash, but it is not beer-fueled; with his mom an alcoholic who progressed to meth addict until her death four years ago, Bones has never had a drink, never done drugs and never will, he says. A self-avowed introvert who relies on regular therapy to get over life’s disappointments, he told the Tennessean newspaper last year: “I can open up easy because it doesn’t feel real.”
It will definitely be real after the show: the tour’s $50 tickets include a meet and greet. Otherwise, they’re $25.
Another Nashville native, Luke Bryan, is going to be around this weekend, playing Saturday and Sunday at Perfect Vodka Amphitheatre (formerly Cruzan and Coral Sky) in West Palm. The stop is part of his annual Farm Tour, where he plays in agricultural areas in the Midwest and South.
Bryan’s is a very different act from Bones’ coming from a very different man, the kind who gets his hunting dog groomed, yet gives quotes with words like “dadgum” and “sombitch.”
Though he may sound country, his critics say his music doesn’t sound country enough, though his new album “Kill the Lights” just debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 last month.
Bryan is controversial in the country music scene for his music being pop-influenced, destined for the dance floor or as backdrop to a party. Zac Brown called his single “That’s My Kind of Night” the worst song he’d ever heard. Bryan’s ballads are what make it up the charts. Rolling Stone says his current single “Strip it Down” is his best yet.
And there is no disputing his coping with tragedy: last year he took in his late sister’s three children following the death of her husband; his own brother died in 1996.
The weekend concerts in West Palm start at 7 p.m.
This is the last weekend to see the Japanese robot exhibit at the Morikami Museum in Delray Beach. Japan’s Robot Kingdom offers a look at the country’s fascination with robotics from the androids and cyborgs in toys, anime and manga to the medical industry’s use of prostheses and implants.
The Morikami has a fascinating history: Japanese influence in Palm Beach County dates back to 1903, when an immigrant from Japan and NYU graduate proposed to revolutionize Florida agriculture by forming a colony of Japanese farmers to grow pineapple in the Boca area. The Yamato colony became a model of diversity, with the existing white residents and later a group of Bahamian immigrants living side by side, sending their kids to the same one-room schoolhouse. In the end, the experiment came to a close when the U.S. government confiscated the land in 1942 and turned the 6,000 acres into an Army Air Corps training facility. The museum built in the 1970s called Yamato-kan is still part of the Morikami today.
If you missed out on the 2015 Lantern Festival, already sold out for Oct. 17, think ahead and consider buying a ticket to Oshogatsu, the New Year’s celebration on Jan. 10. The party welcomes the Year of the Monkey (and the museum’s 39th year) that includes a VIP tasting room of rare, high-end sake and Japanese craft beer. Just the remedy for those pesky Western 10-day hangovers.
