MIAMI -- When Rachel Feinstein thinks of her old life, she thinks of a “dark fairy tale.”

There’s the heavy sway of the banyan trees on Old Cutler Road. Alligator-infested swimming holes. A towering king cobra statue advertising a tragic tourist attraction. Bridesmaids in frilly dresses at her Parrot Jungle wedding. And her parents’ house in Coral Gables, now slated to be demolished.

Feinstein, 53, made a name for herself as an artist by creating whimsical works in many ways inspired by a South Floridian childhood. The New York-based artist has collaborated with Marc Jacobs, exhibited her sculptures in Florence alongside Renaissance masters, been featured in major publications like Vogue and marked the last 30 years of her career with a solo show at New York’s Jewish Museum.

Her parents used to ask her when she’ll have a solo show in her beloved hometown of Miami, but for one reason or another, she never did. Until now.

Recently, The Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach opened “Rachel Feinstein: The Miami Years,” a solo exhibition of works spanning nearly three decades that thematically focus on Feinstein’s childhood in the fabulous yet seedy world of Miami in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

“It was a really amazing, lawless, fantastic time,” she said. “I could not have made any of this if I grew up anywhere else. I’m 100% certain of it.”

As an artist who grew up in the Magic City, where nothing seems to last forever, let alone a few years, Feinstein examines architecture, luxury, gender, memory, nature, nostalgia and facade with theatrical sculptures and eccentric paintings. The show’s crown jewel: “Panorama of Miami,” a mishmash of iconic Miami hotels, attractions, waterways and spectacles, some of which are long gone, all painted on a 30-foot-long mirror.

“The whole thing is not only a metaphor of my life never being like this again, but Miami as well,” she said.

The “Miami Years” exhibition at the Bass comes at a particularly exciting moment in Feinstein’s career, said Chrissie Erpf, the senior gallery director at Gagosian, the prestigious global gallery that represents the artist. Feinstein’s bold, brave artworks, like her jarring and glamourous sculptures of Victoria Secret models, set her apart, Erpf said.

“Now to have this at The Bass in Miami is incredibly exciting,” Erpf said. “She’s getting a lot of attention, well deserved. She’s a powerhouse.”

Her latest show is a loving homage to a version of Miami that simply doesn’t exist anymore. And, Feinstein said, it’s a joyous homecoming she wishes her parents got to see.

Love in Parrot Jungle

Like all great fairy tales, this one has a dark, magical forest.

Visitors enter Feinstein’s show through a small hallway (or tunnel, or forest path) wallpapered in a pattern of deep green and black banyan trees the artist drew herself. She wanted to mimic the same intense feeling she got as a child underneath the banyan trees that lead to her parents’ house off Old Cutler Road.

She remembered how odd it felt to see those mighty trees destroyed after Hurricane Andrew. “It was like my childhood was all gone,” she said. “Something can happen at any moment that changes everything.”

Born in Arizona to a Jewish father and Catholic mother, Feinstein spent her formative years in Miami during a tumultuous yet carefree time. It was an era of “Miami Vice,” crime, all-night parties and social unrest. Miami was (and in some ways, still is) a deeply unserious place.

Feinstein, who was baptized in a church and sent to Hebrew school, appreciates the dichotomy of life down here. She’s a Gemini, after all.

It wasn’t easy to find her calling. Her father was a dermatologist, her mother a nurse, her sister a veterinarian. But Feinstein didn’t mesh with STEM. Her parents wanted her to work for an advertising company, but to no avail. She tried working as a receptionist at a hospital, but a patient died on her first day, so that was a bust.

In the meantime, Feinstein worked as a model, forging deep fashion world connections. A true Miami girl, she excitedly scrolled through her phone to find photos of herself modeling in the print pages of the Miami Herald. She even was on “Miami Vice” twice as an extra. Acting wasn’t her strong suit, so she had no lines.

She got her bachelors from Columbia University in 1993 and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture residency that same year. She spent her adult years in New York City, and in the mid-’90s, she met her husband, fellow artist John Currin.

In the hallway leading into the exhibition, music plays from a small, side gallery. Inside, a projector plays Feinstein and Currin’s wedding video. They were married on Valentine’s Day 1998 at the original Parrot Jungle, a quintessential Miami location. The rehearsal dinner was at The Venetian Pool with a performance by synchronized swimmers called The Sharkettes, she added.

The wedding itself was something of an art performance. Feinstein had her bridesmaids dressed as Stepford Wives, wearing brimmed hats and pastel dresses laced in frills. She smiled as she pointed out her grandmother’s car and her husband’s friends.

“There’s so many people in this video that are not alive anymore. That’s what’s really incredible,” Feinstein said.

“It’s the idea of nostalgia for a time of Miami that doesn’t exist at all anymore. None of this exists for me anymore, either,” she said. “Miami weirdly coincides with my youth as a wild place. Miami’s not that way anymore.”

While working on the show, museum curator James Voorhies told Feinstein that this particular room was well-suited for video art, she said. None of her own art films fit the show’s theme quite right, so she showed Voorhies the wedding video her friends made her as a gift. It was perfect.

“There’s almost a suspension of disbelief, of not understanding if it’s a real video, or a documentary, or if it’s a work,” Voorhies said. “Aesthetically, it’s a work of art in that way. It brilliantly brings in the personal element but in a way that connects with the rest of the exhibition.”

Sun, fun and alligators

The large windows in the main gallery douse the space in light, a sharp contrast from the dark banyan tree forest.

The artworks here are bright, bold, playful and shiny. In one corner, a white abstract sculpture called “Model” resembles a tree with mirrors at the end of each branch. The mirrors reflect everything: the viewer, the walls, the ceiling, the other mirrors.

“We’re all souls reflecting each other. It’s a weird, metaphorical, beautiful piece,” she said while peering into it. “I love this piece so much, I bought it back from the collector.”

Several of the works lean into Miami’s duality: sun and fun on one side, and grime on the other. Underneath all the glitz and glamour is a dark underbelly.

The sculptures look like stage flats, the lightweight plywood frames and pieces theaters use as backdrops and settings for plays. In fact, Feinstein said, she wants people to walk around the flats to see the unpainted wood on the backside.

Each artwork comes with a story built-in, some good and some bad. Feinstein walked up to one work she made in 1999 called “Little Man.” Made to look like a stage prop of a van, the work references a story that terrified the artist as a child in South Florida: the 1981 kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh in Hollywood, Florida.

The work next to it, called “Jazz Brunch,” elicits fonder memories. The red silhouette of a perched parrot leans next to a sleek black piano and palm tree.

Back in the ‘80s, after finishing a modeling job, Feinstein and her friends would go out until the wee hours of the morning and then eat brunch at the same place. At night, she recalled, the club’s black wall looked normal, but it looked disgusting in daylight. “The reality and the fantasy,” she said.

“I would go swimming in between [going out] on South Beach, and I had my clothes stolen more than once,” she said.

Sometimes the smallest details bring back the craziest memories. Ask Feinstein about the grinning alligator in the corner of her epic “Panorama” painting, and you’ll unlock a true “only-in-Miami” story.

Her parents’ friends dug a small lake behind their house by Red Road. Feinstein and the other kids had a blast tying a rope to a tree and jumping into the lake. One day while swimming, she could’ve sworn she felt something bumpy brush against her leg. Some time later, someone’s dog went missing.

The family called a pick-up truck driving, cowboy boot-wearing “animal control guy” to handle the gator, she said. He tossed the bait — a frozen turkey with a hook inside — into the lake and said he’ll come back in a week. Sure enough, the man returned and pulled out a hooked, angry six-foot-long alligator thrashing its tail.

“What are you going to do?” the spectators asked.

The man taped the gator’s mouth closed and replied, “I’m gonna make some good boots out of this.”

‘Total completeness’

A few weeks ago, as she walked from her hotel to The Bass, Feinstein reflected on the last two years of her life. She’s lost a lot.

Her mother, Daria Feinstein, died January 2023. A couple months, later the artist suffered a severe skiing accident that shattered her leg. In May of this year, as Feinstein prepared for The Bass show, her 19-year-old niece Kate Sarah Kaplan died of a rare form of ovarian cancer.

This time, she returned to Miami not to grieve.

“To come home for a different reason was just, wow,” she said. “It started to dawn on me, ‘Oh my gosh. I’m here because my art is here, and my art is all based on Miami.’ And as I started walking up to The Bass, I just got a crazy, amazing feeling of total completeness. It’s what you dream of when you’re a little kid.”

The centerpiece of the exhibition is Feinstein’s “Panorama of Miami,” consisting of 30-feet of heavy mirrored panels. The Bass commissioned the work, which fits perfectly on the wall in the exhibition’s gallery.

The panorama was a huge undertaking. Feinstein started by collecting images of iconic or important places in Miami and creating a collage. She started painting in April and finished just before it had to leave her studio to be installed at The Bass.

Every detail has a wacky story, memory or personal meaning. The painting can serve as a Where’s Waldo-esque game for longtime Miamians. The Versailles sign towers over a swampy marsh. Pinky the Parrot, a cocktaoo that performed at Parrot Jungle, rides a tiny bicycle on a tightrope between palm trees. There’s Vizcaya, The Bass, a classic Art Deco hotel.

The painting also immortalizes parts of Miami that no longer exist, like the Miami Serpentarium, a reptile-themed tourist attraction. Feinstein remembered visiting all the time as a kid, but tragedy struck in 1977 when a little boy was killed by a crocodile. The Serpentarium closed seven years later.

The panorama inadvertently became an example of how fast things can change in Miami. As Feinstein worked on the piece and painted the Seaquarium, Miami-Dade County filed to evict the theme park.

Feinstein pointed out parts of the painting that mean the most to her. There’s her parents’ quaint house with a parrot mailbox out front. Sitting in a waterway is an airboat, the name “Kate” painted on the side for her niece. A woman smiles brightly carrying parrots on both arms and her head, a nod to Feinstein’s mother who was a parrot conservationist.

Maybe, Feinstein said, this solo exhibition in Miami came at the right time.

“It’s amazing how when you are not ready for it or when you’re not thinking about it, that’s when things happen,” she said. “Now it’s even more poignant and more emotional. I feel very grateful.”

“Rachel Feinstein: The Miami Years”

Where:The Bass Museum of Art, 2100 Collins Ave., Miami Beach

When:On view until Aug. 17, 2025

Info:$15 for general admission. https://thebass.org/art/rachel-feinstein-the-miami-years/

This story was produced with financial support from individuals and Berkowitz Contemporary Arts in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The Miami Herald maintains full editorial control of this work.

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