Gonzalez' portfolio spans various photography genres and styles, ranging from shooting models to bloggers to editorials, and even the occasional wedding. However her most memorable shoot to date is one with Miami Heat player Juwan Howard, after she met him in celebratory spirits. "They had just won the championship and I made him cabbage patch with me," she laughs. "I have the picture to prove it."

We first came across Gonzalez' work when she snapped one of our favorite Miami style bloggers Annie Vasquez (a.k.a. The Fashion Poet) (below), with whom she partners frequently on shoots. "Annie and I work together on different projects and have so much fun," she says. "She has great style and we feature different locations around Miami giving them a street style twist."

Through working with one of Miami's style arbiters, Gonzalez has learned a lot about Magic City fashion. "Miami street style is very random," she says. "During the day you will see some people dressed pretty dope but then you look down at their feet and they are wearing flip-flops — fail. We are big on nightlife so that’s when you see more people dressed."

When asked about her favorite recent shoots she cites a trip to the Everglades, where her model, Kat, showed a high fashion look set against the distressed wilderness. "The trees had burned out recently in a brush fire, so I took advantage and was able to get a great shot," describes Gonzalez.

As for her next steps in photography, Gonzalez longs for a more distant location than Florida. "I want to return to Cuba," she says. "I was there years ago, and I am working on a photography book featuring street art and some of the underground culture."

And so, Gonzalez adds another layer to her photography portfolio, capturing the perfect shot in Miami, New York, Havana and wherever the road takes her.

Images by Mayleen Gonzalez

But, De La Torre notes, "I like to think that Butter Gallery has enhanced the contemporary scene by showcasing local talent that, for years, was not noticed or given the opportunity by other venues."

Butter continues to display artists who love playing with shapes. First Yuri Tuma, with his kaleidoscopic pieces that bordered on mathematical, and now with Douglas Hoekzema's upcoming show. For Hoekzema's opening during Art Walk this Saturday, they're poised to try something new — give some art away. The contest will run for one month and end June 7, and you can win two pieces from Hoekzema's Hox exhibition.

Hoekzema presented a solo exhibition during Scope Miami 2012, and his gestural language continues to evolve toward the physics of movement. He incorporates manual gestures of his over-extended paint strokes with a low-tech mechanism.

Hoekzema is a street artist, architect and designer as well, and it's apparent in his pieces, filled with thin, clean, curved lines and minimal colors. He created the pieces for Hox with nothing but a moving pendulum (as seen here). He creates "prisms of circles in a galaxy of symmetry and illumination of space." It's fascinating in its presumed simplicity, but the work isn't as easy to make as it looks.

For a chance to win a Hoekzema piece, visit Butter Gallery through June 7. When you're there, instagram a Hox piece and use the hashtag #spxartwalk and mention Hox and Butter Gallery.

"Basically, I'm just trying to break art," he explains.

The Brisbane-born artist, a pioneering force in the stencil and street art movement, is prone to speaking in a language of his own, which often involves riddles and clever axioms. He has self-diagnosed himself as suffering from "multiple creative personality disorder," for instance, and his show "Never Odd Or Even" opening at the Robert Fontaine Gallery in Miami's Wynwood Arts District this Saturday May 11, is a palindrome.

He prefers to ask questions rather than answer them, but hints that "the most common answer to what is never odd or even, is zero." And then adds, "I think the justice system is never odd or even, as well." Concerned with social conditions, the lack of guidance amongst men today, and the crime culture of his native Australia, some "Lister-isms" include, "guided missiles, misguided men" and "one man's mess is another man's message."

His latest subject is the female form as ballerina in a series of large scale paintings, smaller studies, and mural work, on display during this solo exhibition. His fluid motion paintings are saturated with color, and bold while also painterly. One can't help but see a modern reference to Degas' ballerinas. However, Lister approaches his subject as strippers who don't take their clothes off. He's more interested in breaking the barriers between highbrow and lowbrow, street art and fine art.

“His work lives on the street and bleeds harmoniously into the formal contemporary gallery setting,” says gallery director Robert Fontaine.

Some of Lister's street art can be found in Wynwood. During last year's Art Basel Miami Beach, he created a ballerina mural on the back of a building on the east side of NW 2nd Ave at NW 23rd St across the street from the Robert Fontaine Gallery. Miami New Times named it one of the top ten new murals in the neighborhood. The wall took him six hours to complete and he did it all from the ground. Working with the landscape of the wall and other nearby objects, he painted a drain pipe black to depict a pole with a dancer's leg behind it and hand wrapped around it, and a telephone pole in the foreground is also painted with bits of pink and black tutu.

He calls some of his street art "adventure painting," which he describes as owning chance and accident. This is a practice he explores through mirrored diptych murals. "The best analogy is through skateboarding. When you land a trick, it may have been a fluke, it may have been lucky, but to do it again is to own it. It’s to own it as your trick," he explains. "So it’s kind of like rubbing your hands through a bunch of wet paint and then discovering that that’s beautiful, and well, I need to do it again."

Since returning to Miami for his upcoming show, he's painted another mural at 175 NW 23rd Street resembling a masked face with ominous, leering yellow eyes and a smug smirk in the style of his maniacal super hero works. He believes street art is the "final frontier in true artistic integrity," but in the meantime he's disguising himself as a fine artist "until the revolution is fully here."

“It’s a history of the things that happen in a life, collected into one portrait,” Gentry says.

The London-based artist is in Miami in preparation of his solo exhibition XCHANGE opening at the Robert Fontaine Gallery on April 13 during Wynwood's Second Saturday Art Walk.

While the materials he works with have been rendered obsolete — most of them recent relics left behind by the ever-increasing pace of technology — Gentry's found a second use for them in his social art project. Over the last four years, through his website, he's put out a call for people to send in their old floppy disks, and most recently, x-rays and film negatives. And the packages have poured in from around the world. Through this media, he's examining today's state of identity, privacy, and security, especially in regard to the time and energy we put into curating a second digital identity online through social media.

"You look at some of these disks," Gentry says, "And the labels written on there, it’s like the first status updates. They’re the first documents out there that people were sharing. It’s private stuff, but they’re still sharing it, so it’s kind of like we were just delving into that digital life."

So what are some of the more unusual early "status updates" that he's received by way of floppy disk labels? Everything from old computer games, to baby geese, lambs, and ducks, to pornography with labels like "XXX" or "big tits." Some of the labels have even been blacked out with a permanent marker before arriving in his studio.

"I try to let the disks show through as much as possible," Gentry says of his painting process. "One of the most interesting things with the disks is all the labels and the things that are written on them."

His newest works are composed by layering collages of x-rays and film negatives between sheets of plexiglass backlit by LED strips. The amalgam of images strikes an immediate cord. There are film negatives of dogs, babies, grandmothers, family reunions. To whom they all belong is unknown. "It's funny what people take pictures of," Gentry notes.

The x-rays garner just as strong a reaction with electronic pacemakers exposed amongst organic tissue, brain scans, metal screws from surgery clearly visible in the ankle joint, and ribs composed to illustrate the subject of the portrait's hair. It's anonymous, privileged information that one is not accustomed to having access to.

Gentry recalls that gallery director Robert Fontaine was at first nervous that the use of x-rays would be "too close to the bone," literally, and make people uncomfortable, but Gentry explains that this media creates not only an emotional history, but a biological one, as well.

With the show's title XCHANGE, this notion of giving and receiving is at the very core of Gentry's work, from the materials sent to him, to the art that he creates, to the experience of the patron inside the gallery. With sensitivity of the use of x-rays and the gratitude towards people sharing them with him, he's also elected to donate ten percent of the show's sales to the Miami Children's Hospital Foundation. It's just another form of exchange between artist and community.

What were you looking for in a new space?
Daniel Fila: The space itself needed to be a place I could work collaboratively and individually, day-to-day. Being that I don't have a gallery, it also needed to be a place where I could show. But as important as the function of the space, its surroundings are vital to my growth as an Artist. Being in Little Havana is inspiring, and there is a real sense of community here. It's one of Miami's most beautiful and secret treasures.

Do you expect your life and work to change with the new move?
Both are changing, yes. Being independent like this has already enhanced the caliber of production and work. The richer the soil, the better the blossom.

What changes are you looking forward to making in your new space? What kind of a contribution do you think it will be making for your new neighborhood in Little Havana?
I just need to pump out a ton of high quality, potent artwork. Also, I need to market the work well, and reach price points high and low with the option to buy reproductions or originals. It's very much a business, but the most integral part of it remains constant. Perception is huge. If people on Brickell knew that five minutes away, for five times less the price, they could have an incredible and authentic experience, everything would balance out. The brand of Little Havana needs a bit of a revamp. Bringing more money into the area is vital to its growth, but maintaining the area’s authenticity is a win for everyone.

What do you think the future of Miami holds as a center for art?
Well, it is what we make it. I know what I'm doing. You can just ride the wave to wherever it takes you, or you can try to control your direction. In many ways, this city isn't culturally defined. And thus, its Arts movement isn't clearly spoken for. It's a melting pot. It's hot, and everyone is attracted to it. There are major arts institutions, and serious talent, but everything is a little disconnected. It's far from having the cultural resonance that New Orleans has. That's what I hope for it. I hope it doesn't turn into a Vegas.

How do you see your role in Miami’s arts scene?
I'm here to bring identity. Our arts scene, just like our town, is inundated with visitors, but we have our own movement. Being aware of that, I'm here to represent that well. Also, it's very important to me that I pave a way for the next generation. Their folks and every grown up they know tells them "Being an Artist isn't a real career choice, you can't make a living at that." I want my example to defy that. Miami loves the Arts. It has always been an incubator for the Arts, and there is money down here. It's possible! Hard, but possible.

We love your characters. Where do they come from?
Thanks! Most of my friends have favorite animals or animals they see identify with. Of course I'm the monkey. My fiancé is a panda. So, the characters I draw already have personalities to reference, making them more believable. Other than that, I was a cartoon junky as a kid, and characters pop out of me naturally. They usually depict whatever I'm feeling at the moment.

You currently live in Miami. How does this change your perception of the Basel fair?
Brookhart Jonquil: It's a topic of much discussion here. Living in Miami, there may be extra expectation to have your work up somewhere during the fair. For me it's almost a different city during that week, it's utterly unlike the rest of the year.

What brought you to Miami?  Can you talk a bit about the Miami art scene during the other 11 months of the year?
After teaching for a year at the Art Institute and other schools in Chicago, I decided to leave but hadn't made up my mind where to go. I was invited to do a three-month residency at LegalArt (now called Cannonball) and thought it would be a good transition, that I would figure it out while I was there. Besides, I had just started working with Dorsch Gallery and I wanted to get to know them better. Opportunities kept coming, so it felt like it didn't make any sense to go running off somewhere else. It's now been a little more than a year. Miami is a great place to be an artist, the quality of life is unbeatable, space is abundant and affordable, and there's real excitement about the city developing it's art scene, so it's very welcoming if you're young and making interesting work.

Have you always wanted to be an artist?  If there was another life path — did it relate somehow to the work you are doing now?
I've always been an artist, though there was a time when I could have gone in a number of different creative directions—poetry, acting, filmmaking, painting, sculpture — I even considered engineering and architecture. I studied art history thinking I was destined for an academic life. Ultimately I realized that as a visual artist, you don't have to pick one thing, it's radically open-ended. So what I do now incorporates many of those early interests, to whatever degree I need.

I think some of those tendencies, architecture for instance, show up in your work with mirrors. "Light Object #5 (Double Triangle)" which you showed at Pulse last year used mirrors to create an imagined space out of light and perspective.
In that piece, a fluorescent tube passes through mirrors set at precise angles. The result is that the reflection of the tube creates specific geometric forms. The viewer doesn't forget that they're looking at a fluorescent tube, there's no attempt at illusion, yet in that space between the mirrors something else happens at the same time — the thing dissolves into light, and that light combines with reflected light to give us an object in space that exists at the threshold of the immaterial.

Do you always use the same angle?
There’s a handful of angles that I use. Angles that divide the circle evenly create geometry. So there’s a finite number of shapes you can make – triangles, pentagons, hexagons, squares.

When you were little did you have a bathroom mirror with pivoting panels?
No! But actually before I started making these—years before—I was playing with mirrors like that, watching geometry expand. I hadn’t thought of piercing the mirror yet, to create the form between the mirrors… just looking at the way that spaces multiply. I’m kind of nerdy about math and geometry. The shapes of the mirrors are all geometric relationships that correspond to the geometry of the lightbulbs themselves.

Your Light Objects series are smaller iterations of Inverted Night, a mirrored piece you made with a globe. Which portion of the world did you choose to represent?
It’s actually a sculpture in the round. As you walk around it you get one fifth of the world at a time. It’s like five different globes.

The interesting thing is how only one fifth of it is actually there and the rest of it is implied space.
There’s the physical material. And then there’s the light bouncing around that merges with it so the form that results is kind of a hybrid between the physical and the immaterial. And the space that it creates is real physical space and it’s also this immaterial space that pierces through the floor.

I loved the mirror pieces, but noticed on your website some of the other mediums you've worked with in the past.  Can you talk about your past work?  How does it differ/relate to the piece you showed at Pulse?
Most of my work deals with the same constellation of issues, though the materials change with each project. For example, in Moisture Sample I embedded a panel of aluminum flush with the surface of the gallery wall, and behind this was a freezing mechanism. The piece itself occupies no space in the gallery, yet on the surface there was a dynamically shifting landscape of frost, which would slowly accumulate or melt and evaporate depending on the room's atmosphere. So there was a constant shifting back and forth as the space became material and visa versa.

 Was there someone you studied with who informed your current work?
There were so many incredible teachers. Claudia Hart became a close friend. Gregg Bordowitz, Kathryn Hixson, Laurie Palmer, Chris Cutrone, Gaylen Gerber, all had huge impacts. There are too many to name.

What other artists — dead or alive — do you feel connected to?
The first artist to really blow my mind was Carl Andre. That was when I first started thinking about space as equally important to matter, about striking a balance between the physical and the intangible. Yves Klein, James Turrell and Robert Smithson are all very important to me.

Where can we see you next?
My next solo show opens at Dorsch Gallery in April.

We spoke to DAIN about the art around him when he was growing up in Brooklyn, his love for old Hollywood and what will be on view in his widely anticipated upcoming solo exhibition at Avant Gallery, which opens on February 27.

You were born and raised in Brooklyn. How did growing up in New York influence your art?
DAIN: Growing up in New York City, it's like no other place. The diversity of people, the culture, the style–it can't be matched. Graffiti used to be huge here, especially in the late '70s early '80s. Trains were covered floor to ceiling. Art was all around and still is.

You started out as a graffiti writer and then moved to the street art images that you are now known for. When did you start doing work in the street?
I started graffiti years ago but began wheat-pasting about 6 years ago.

Your work definitely retains a sense of graffiti with the dripping circle around the eye. There seems to be a bit of a tension between graffiti writers and street artists, as well as a confused distinction between the two. Do you see a distinction between street art and graffiti?
Not really. I respect both art forms.

What is it like for you to move from wheat-pasting your art on the street to showing your work in galleries like Miami's Avant Gallery?
I love showing work in galleries. I want my art to maintain a street grittiness though.

In your work, you use black and white photographs of Hollywood icons such as Angelina Jolie and Audrey Hepburn as the foundation for your collage technique. What is the importance of these Hollywood icons to you and your work?
I really just love that old hollywood glam look. The big eyes, soft lips and dramatic hair styles. Women were beautiful with their clothes on. Old films made you think. Everything was not painted for you, but you had to use your imagination.

Who inspires you as an artist?
I'm not sure. I really do not follow many artists.

What can we expect at your upcoming show at Avant Gallery in Miami?
I hope to have about twenty new pieces for the show. There will be less collage and more painting. I also did three works on canvas. I mostly work on wood. There will be some old Hollywood and some new faces. There will also be some larger pieces as well.

Images courtesy the artist and Avant Gallery, Miami

This first crosswalk is located in front of Tony Goldman's Wynwood Walls' outdoor street museum. Cruz-Diez's design will be a tribute to the late developer.