Claudio Picasso
My memories of the stadium begin in the eighties, when as a child my parents took me to see the Beach Boys perform there. We watched and listened from the bow of my family’s small Sea Ray. Over a decade later, I returned to the stadium when it had been transformed into a massive urban canvas by local graffiti artists. This was about the time that I first experimenting with spray paint, and my friends and I hopped fences in order to look inside and to take photos.
I wanted the work I completed on the seat provided to show a bit of both eras. I included bright, tropical colors that defined Miami during the eighties, along with green to represent the lush vegetation that surrounded the stadium on three sides and white, puffy clouds I remember above. The seat is painted with aerosol, and in a style indicative of Miami graffiti art from the late eighties and early nineties, as if the chair itself is a small part of a large mural from that time.
I am happy to note that the chair has found a home in my parents backyard, alongside flotsam collected throughout the decades of boating in South Florida. It holds special significance to them and to me.