The Plant is excited to announce The Appalachia of Florida: Welcome to Bithlo by the Water, a solo show by Serena Viola Corson. The show’s opening reception will be on Friday, June 18th from 5 to 9pm and include music and snacks. The show will run from June 18-27th. Serena has attended and hosted many happenings at the Plant, including a panel discussion on feminism reviewed by FSU News and an art market that featured live music and dancing with the Mystic Moon Mamas, a local collective.

In this new body of work, Serena reflects on how her upbringing has influenced her art-making and explores the nuances of living in a small and predominantly white, Southern tourist town. The show’s title was inspired by comments she found in both online chatrooms and on her hometown’s Facebook group, Wake Up Cocoa Beach. Serena’s artwork is reminiscent of airbrushed T-shirts or other items with obnoxious patterns and bright colors that you might find for sale in a beach supply store. A few works zoom in on tattooed body parts, such as her Beach Bum series which features sunburnt buns. These expressionistic and crude paintings are cheeky and honest and depict her neighbors in their most vivacious moments, usually with a beer in hand or riding on the back of mud-covered truck beds. Some are more tongue-in-cheek than others, such as Catchin’ Coins, which illustrates beach-goers distracted by the opportunity of money falling from the sky, while failing to recognize a surging tidal wave as it approaches. Though the subject matter differs from her usual content, mainly group portraiture, Serena continues to use feminist motifs, painting muscular female surfers and feminine hunters making a duck face with their prey. The Bathers references the longstanding tradition in the fine art of painting nude women bathing together outside in nature. Serena’s rendition differs from Matisse’s or Cezanne’s in that it’s painted with a feminist gaze rather than the objectifying male gaze. The series grapples with the love-hate relationship Serena has with her hometown and references Florida’s troubling political landscape.

www.serenaviolacorson.com @serenaviolaart serenacorson@gmail.comThe Plant, 517 W Gaines St. Tallahassee, FL Paul Rutkovsky 850-597-4942