Andy Sweet (1953-1982) grew up on North Bay Road, not far from South Beach. At age 12, he converted a small room in his house into a darkroom. His father, Chick, was a judge and his mother, Audrey, was the daughter of hoteliers who opened the Monte Carlo and the Royal Palm Hotels on Miami Beach. Andy went to the University of South Florida in Tampa, joining his sister Ellen. He proved to be a maestro in the darkroom, able to go in at midnight with a box of 50 sheets of photographic paper and come out in the morning with 49 perfect images.

After completing his MFA at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Andy was drawn back to South Beach, the beauty of the old faces, possibly even the sense that this world would soon be lost. The artist’s early and violent death has often overshadowed the body of work he developed in his short career. A perceptive and intuitive street photographer, Andy’s photographs of South Beach brought together in Shtetl in the Sun are a tribute to the people who lived and played there during that time, perfectly encapsulating the lively spirit and warmth that shaped their community. 

Jonah Strub (b. 1996) is a Toronto-based gay, Jewish artist with a primary focus on sculptural ceramics. Jonah’s work is a love letter to camp, kitsch, musical theatre, Yiddish humour, and drag, and explores his own femininity through the humour of traditionally queer and Jewish aesthetics. Jonah explores themes like glamorous grandmothers, cutesy creatures, and sublime self-portraiture in his work. Jonah often superimposes his face on his creations, paired with over-the-top patterns and exuberant, joyful imagery, to celebrate himself as a fully realized kitsch object. Jonah aims to create dialogue around masculinity, femininity, matzo-balls, and outrageous up-dos using humor, bright colors, animal prints, and body hair, embracing the harmony of his Jewish and queer identities.

Jonah holds a BA in Studio Art from the University of Guelph, specializing in oil painting and sculpture, and discovered ceramics during an exchange in Bremen, Germany in 2019 where he immediately fell in love with the medium. He earned a certificate in Cartooning and Illustration from George Brown College in 2022. In 2023, he participated in the Banff Emerging Artist in Residence Program. Jonah has exhibited around Canada and abroad including The Canadian Clay and Glass Museum, Art Gallery of Burlington, The Artist Project, and galleries in Germany and the USA.

My work explores an interior landscape, excavating imagery for meaning, and attempting to understand the present by examining the past. My paintings use portraiture, narrative, psychoanalytic dream imagery, and free association to examine questions of identity, family history, and the relationship between the personal and the universal. My work uses archival family photographs as a point of departure for this inquiry into the psychological patterns that under-gird family mythologies. Issues of war, survival, immigration and second-generation trauma are also explored. Echoes still remain of a childhood spent in the culturally bifurcated world of Jewish Montreal. 

I re-imagine black-and-white source material as full-colour imagery, heightening visual impact while bringing the past into the present. Through this layered exploration of family dynamics and biography, the viewer may initially see these images as benign or nostalgic, only to have their sense of comfort upended by surreal elements that are sometimes humorous, sometimes foreboding. The viewer is invited to witness the emotional specificity of someone else’s family, and then relate it to the mythologies of their own. My paintings are suffused with magic realism, and are further influenced by neoclassicism, commercial advertising, storybook art, and a design sense borne of my career in animation. 

A curtain is a tool to divide inside from outside, separating private sphere from public space. It works as the eyelid of an apartment, making a shelter for intimacy. On the one hand, it creates a hideout from the gaze of others, a temporary escape from social control.

On the other hand, in German the expression “to draw the curtains” is often used to refer to people who decide not to see, not to intervene in current events. We want to explore the field between the possibility of individual freedom and ignorance towards wider social realities.

The idea of the silent observer, the very (in-)active role of the bystander, whether in our private lives or historical events, was the idea that started this project. The person behind the curtain, who doesn’t do much else other than watch events unfold. A figure that hides and is often ignored, but crucially influences the course of history.

The curtains themselves are of different origins; donated pieces, found in abandoned buildings, and bought second-hand. They differ in fabric and pattern – but are all pieces that were once chosen as just the perfect item for someone.

Visitors are welcome to walk through and experience the installation physically. You can move one curtain aside, but you will find another one in front of you. Visitors are invited to pull them aside or draw them together, to find individual ways though the installation or create new spaces within it.