Paula Turk has enjoyed a varied career spanning both book and magazine publishing, health care marketing, owning and operating a manufacturing business and, currently, focusing on a career as an artist, specializing in metal sculpture, photography and other media.

While  largely a self-taught artist, Paula’s metalworking skills were learned and honed at the South Florida Art Center, Miami Beach, where she exhibited and sold her first piece of metal sculpture: a three-foot high tree entitled “Yearning.”

Paula’s artwork has been exhibited at The Miami Beach Botanical Garden during ArtMiami , The Miami Beach Festival of the Arts, Williams Island, the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce, the CANDO Co-Op Arts exhibit during Art Basel and many other venues in South Florida, including her private home gallery.  She was co-curator of “The Divine Debris & Glorious Trash” art show and winner of the Audience Choice Award for the “Common Roots” art exhibit.

Her artwork has been profiled in The Aventura News and The Miami Herald and she was a “Spotlight Artist” for MiamiArtZine, an online arts publication.  Four of her photographs were published  online by Parade Magazine and two of them were featured as “Photo of the Day.”

A former art teacher, Paula also conducts workshops in creativity through her company, ArtShare LLC creative arts group.
 
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Somewhere around the turn of this century, I decided to actively pursue my artistic nature, which had lain dormant owing to many of life’s necessities and interruptions.

On a whim, I took a course in metalworking at the South Florida Art Center and found unexpected happiness in welding, torching, grinding, cutting, polishing and all sorts of new experiences.  Thus, armed with my inherent creativity and freshly minted skills, I became a metal sculptor.

All of my work is designed to celebrate our natural environment and stretch the boundaries between reality and whimsy. My mission, therefore, is to capture and express the beauty and fragility of life in its most unrestricted form.  Doing it through the medium of metal allows me to manipulate and duplicate what I see and what I feel in a truly tangible way.  Because the artwork, like life, is dimensional, there are unending opportunities to portray subjects from many different viewpoints and, therefore, emotions.

There is also an element of fun in being able to discover something that seemed obscure at first and then so evident the next.  It is this interaction between the viewer and the sculpture that provokes and expands the perception of what the world offers us.

Movement and flow, color and story, conflict and calm, combine to foster the belief that we are in the midst of a situation interpreted in ways familiar, but not fully disclosed. My art, therefore, purports to bring to life everything we know, and everything we don’t.  Achieving this is what my vision is all about.

Exhibitions & Collections

• Life Member Art Students League of New York
• Artist-in-Residence: Temple Emanu-El, Miami Beach
• Artist-in-Residence, Miami Beach JCC
• Creator and owner:  PAULA’S PAINTBOX, mobile craft party for kids
• After school art teacher:  Lehrman Day School
• SPOTLIGHT ARTIST: MiamiArtzine / March 2006 (internet arts magazine)
• Feature Articles in: “Aventura News”; Miami Beach Chamber Newsletter; Aventura Sunny Isles Chamber magazine; Miami Herald ‘s Miami Beach Neighbors (Dec. 2, 2007); MiamiArtZine features on “Floral Fantasy” and “Divine Debris” exhibits
• South Florida Art Center
• The Victory School
• Bass Museum (private showing)
• The Miami Beach Botanical Garden (“Bug Ball”)
• The Miami Beach Botanical Garden (ArtMiami, 2006)
• The Kiwanis Club of Miami Beach
• Monty’s Restaurant/South Beach
• Colonial Bank/South Beach (solo show)
• Trinity Cathedral/Miami (group show)
• Ocean Bank/Miami Beach (solo show)
• Fairmont  Turnberry Isle Resort & Club
• Williams Island, “Virtu”
• Group slide show exhibition, Art & Culture Center of
• Hollywood’s “All Media Juried Biennial” (2008)
• Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center
• U.S. Century Bank, Miami Beach
• Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce
• Miami Beach Festival of the Arts (2008)
• Keller-Williams Realty (Art Basel, 2008)
• 1st Annual Women’s Conference, Miami Beach (2008)
• “Divine Debris & Glorious Trash” (2009) co-curator
• North Miami Gallery Walk (2009)
• “Common Roots” (2009) Audience Choice Award
• Arts at St. Johns Retrospective Showcase (2009)
• ArtServe Holiday Art Show (2009-10