Sheena Easton brings soaring pop hits to Boca, the Morikami celebrates the “Art of Peace,” and Arts Warehouse unveils three new exhibitions. Plus, Wilco and more in your week ahead.
TUESDAY
What: Opening day of “The Art of Peace: Jizai Okimono”
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, 4000 Morikami Park Road, Delray Beach
Cost: $10-$16 museum admission
Contact: 561/495-0233, morikami.org
Like the famous Bible passage about swords forged into plowshares and spears into pruning knives, the Japanese sculptures known collectively as jizai okimono are the result of wartime applications rerouted to the preferred machinery of peace. Translating as “articulated decorative objects,” jizai okimono flourished in domestic life and, soon enough, the tourist economy, during the country’s mid-Edo period in the 18th and 19th centuries, when decades of stability left the nation’s many armorers without jobs. So they channeled their skills into artistry, creating finely detailed, often life-sized sculptures out of resin and metals such as copper, iron, gold and silver. Typically focusing on animal and insect life, common jizai okimono subjects include butterflies, praying mantises, snakes, eagles and dragons with movable bodies, arms, legs and antennae. Drawn from a private collection, “The Art of Peace” gathers 19 examples of this remarkably realistic art form, and it runs through Sept. 28.
What: Wilco
When: 7:30 p.m.
Where: Fillmore Miami Beach, 1700 Washington Ave., Miami Beach
Cost: $64 and up
Contact: 305/938-2509, fillmore-miami.com
This South Florida appearance from the venerable alt-rock staples is a rare one indeed. Though frontman Jeff Tweedy has performed twice in the tri-county area in recent years as a solo performer, his full band hasn’t played here since 2015, in a legendary SunFest headlining show that we still remember fondly. The group has released four albums since then, each with its unique flavor—from the arty Ode to Joy to the Americana tinge of Cruel Country—but each also connected to the group’s 30-year tapestry of American song, a corpus where barn-burning rockers, aching ballads, folky sing-alongs and experiments in sound collage happily coexist. Tweedy is a dynamic singer-songwriter on his own, but with Nels Cline’s guitar wizardry, and Mikael Jorgensen and Pat Sansone’s multi-instrumental dexterity, there’s nothing quite like seeing the entire band cooking.
THURSDAY
What: Jamie Kennedy
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Boca Black Box, 8221 Glades Road, Suite 10, Boca Raton
Cost: $43-$63
Contact: 561/483-9036, bocablackbox.com
Prolific character actor Jamie Kennedy has dozens of credits in film and television, but like most of my generation, I remember him most fondly as Randy Meeks, the smart-alecky horror-movie cinephile of Wes Craven’s “Scream” franchise, and the character whom my high-school self most wanted to be in those movies. Though he’s appeared in a bevy of horror and science-fiction projects, it wasn’t until the top-rated hidden-camera series “The Jamie Kennedy Experiment,” in the early 2000s, that he was able to fully unleash his comic id, creating at least eight different characters, Sasha Baron Cohen-style, including the white rapper Brad Gluckman, whom Kennedy went on to portray in a feature film. The good news for us: Kennedy is as gifted a comedian on the standup stage as he is in front of cameras, as this appearance will doubtless confirm.
FRIDAY
What: Opening night of new exhibitions
When: 6 to 9 p.m.
Where: Arts Warehouse, 313 N.E. Third St., Delray Beach
Cost: Free
Contact: 561/330-9614, artswarehouse.org
This Friday marks the monthly First Friday Art Walk throughout downtown Delray Beach, and Arts Warehouse is marking the occasion with the opening of three new exhibitions. “Grace in Bloom” features the latest paintings of Tracy Guiteau, a Haitian American artist with a bold, stirring and psychedelic approach to portrait painting. “Kilti: Revisited” offers up colorful, historically grounded and spiritually enriching selections from the Dr. Jacques Bartoli Collection of Haitian Art—a sequel of sorts to the acclaimed 2023 Arts Warehouse exhibition “Kilti”—with contributions spanning from paintings and metal sculptures to voodoo flags. Finally, in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, “The Mind and Making: A Creative Hand’s Reflection of a Changing Mind” showcases myriad paintings and drawings from the late Jeanette Vogel, a Boca Raton artist who first approached the canvas in her ‘90s, and whose late-blooming journey of creating art while affected by Alzheimer’s disease offers a moving subtext to the works on display.
SATURDAY
What: Sheena Easton
When: The Studio at Mizner Park, 201 Plaza Real, Boca Raton
Where: 6 and 8:30 p.m.
Cost: $45-$99
Contact: 561/203-3742, thestudioatmiznerpark.com
In her 1980s peak, Sheena Easton defined the concept of the widespread hitmaker, becoming the first artist to land a top-five hit on each of Billboard’s primary singles charts, from Pop to Country to R&B. Easton was discovered in 1980 by “The Big Time”—a BBC docuseries somewhat akin to “The Voice” today—in which she was plucked from obscurity and mentored by similar genre-crossing chanteuses Lulu and Dusty Springfield. The publicity paved the way for a more than 40-year career that has included 15 studio albums, 55 singles and 15 Top 40 hits—one of which became the iconic theme for a James Bond movie (“For Your Eyes Only”)—not to mention a lucrative career in voiceover work for animated films. You’ll know a good chunk of her soaring earworms, even if you don’t know you know them, and Boca is lucky to have booked her in such an intimate venue.
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