New Times Broward-Palm Beach featured an article about Instructor Neil Ramsay’s new gallery in the popular FAT Village in downtown Fort Lauderdale called ArtsUP.
ArtsUP opened in January 2016 and resides in a warehouse of more than 5,000 square feet. Ramsay opened the gallery with a vision to exhibit works that guests would look up to to analyze. In the New Times Broward-Palm Beach article, Ramsay says, “‘At first, I called this place the Art Sky Challenge,’…’The sky is always a changing work of art, so in this vast space, I thought, Why don’t we create a sky — the sky should change in here. Sometimes it’s gray; sometimes it’s blue with some puffs. It’s so large in here, it almost feels like you are outside.'”
The floor space of ArtsUP functions as a venue for special events and programming. So far, the gallery has hosted yoga classes and photography workshops. Because of the “aerial” aspect of the space, artwork does not interfere with programming, as it usually would if it were hanged on a wall.
At FIU Art + Art History, Neil Ramsay teaches ART 5853: Visual Arts Marketing, an online graduate level course for both degree and non-degree seeking students. ART 5853: Visual Arts Marketing takes the student through a process of developing their “message” as an artist. Centered on communicating ideas, one of the assignments is for the student to create a social media presence in relation to his/her studio practice. The hashtag “#ART5853FIU” is a teaching tool; students use it to track their social media presence throughout the semester. With every future class offering, new students will be able to use the same hashtag and contribute to its use. The hashtag will eventually serve as an archive of past class examples and continue to evolve as part of the course.
To read more about Neil Ramsay’s ArtsUP, click here.
Header image: Artwork by Jamey Grimes / Photography by Lauren Lightbody. The image is from the New Times Broward-Palm Beach article “ArtsUP in Fort Lauderdale: New FAT Village Gallery Doubles as an Event Space” by Andrea Richard.
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