St. Pete, FL

FloridaRAMA Project

Flora-Da-Scope, Mixed media interactive sculpture

Flora-Da-Scope is a huge, Florida-themed kaleidoscope created by Aleisha Prather, Alex Kaufman and George Retkes. It’s more modern and cooler than any other Kaleidoscope you’ve ever seen! Using movement, LEDs and acrylic, Flora-Da-Scope transports viewers to a psychedelic and fantastical world, leaving them speechless. Flora-Da-Scope is a gateway to a universe that you need to experience first-hand to completely understand.

Bio—
Aleisha Prather, Alex Kaufman and George Retkes are all sculpture artists based out of St. Pete, Florida. Together, they have designed and fabricated large scale public art for Mark Aeling’s MGA Studio for the past three years. They also each maintain their own individual practices: Aleisha creates sculpture based on fantasy, such as fairy lanterns, giant glass mosaics interweaving with logs and found wood or four-foot-tall mushrooms for the Blueberry Patch in Gulfport. Alex is an engineer and designer at heart and has designed everything under the sun from jewelry to houses to airplanes. George’s work is always metal, whether it be small scale maquettes as a Creative Pinellas emerging artist or a giant eight-foot lotus flower installation for Hulaween. The three have known and worked with each other for a long time, and it is this friendship combined with their variety of complementary skills that make them a unique and capable art team.