Tao Rey’s par-challenging miniature-golf hole.

	The neon sign welcoming guests to Peter Rozek’s Garden.

Miniature golf is the perfect sport,” explains Peter Rozek, motioning to the unique set of fairways he has constructed here inside his Upper Eastside Garden, a lush oasis of greenery just off a busy stretch of Biscayne Boulevard in Belle Meade. With a chuckle, he elaborates: “It’s very competitive, but it’s still a bit of a joke.”

Indeed. For all the huffing and puffing that unfolds on miniature golf’s Astroturf, it’s hard to take someone too seriously when the object of their ire is a spinning windmill blade or a seesawing pirate ship. Which may be why, since its opening last year, Rozek’s Upper Eastside Garden has become a de facto clubhouse for much of Miami’s contemporary-art scene—a milieu where the absolutely ridiculous and the truly sublime already coexist happily.

Hernan Bas in repose atop Ali Prosch’s golf hole.
Bert Rodriguez captures the mini-golf spirit at his own hole.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the Garden’s links have all been handcrafted by a who’s who of the local art world, including Daniel Arsham, Hernan Bas (who can often be spotted helping out as a bartender on particularly busy nights), Bhakti Baxter, Natalia Benedetti, Jacin Giordano, Beatriz Monteavaro, Martin Oppel, Ali Prosch, Cristina Lei Rodriguez, the TM Sisters and the duo of Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt. But don’t go looking for the traditional hazards that dot most miniature-golf ranges. After all, these are artistes.

Diego Singh and Patricia Cuello’s collaboration features the windswept beauty that marks much of the abstract patterns in Singh’s painting, with carefully arrayed fronds standing in for his traditional brushwork. (But try to keep your ball away from the animal skull.) Bert Rodriguez’s hole serves up his signature wiseacre tone, proudly introducing itself with a “KEEP OFF THE GRASS” sign. Tellingly though, once you’ve digested the punch line, Rodriguez offers the most straightforward challenge of the entire nine-hole course. (“It’s one of the only holes where you can definitely hit a hole in one,” advises Rozek. “Just imagine you’re shooting pool and go for a bank shot.”) Taking an opposite tack, Tao Rey’s hole, with its warning sign denoting absolute chaos atop a near impenetrable sea of barriers, seems designed to purposely frustrate.

“Tao angers me. His hole is just too tough,” sighs sculptor Aja Albertson—and this from someone who included Rey in her wedding party. “The hole is a bit like Tao himself,” she explains—it’s impressive and exasperating all at once. Albertson’s own hole is less inclined to send golfers madly over par. Inspired by folkloric “dreamcatchers”—webs designed to snag nightmares while their owners sleep blissfully—she hung a piece of intricate, framed netting in midair, adorning it with deer bones scavenged from a Big Pine Key graveyard.

“People get violent out here,” Albertson explains, pointing to one side of her dreamcatcher, which appears to have entered into combat against an aggressive putter. “As an artist, I’m used to showing in a gallery and saying, ‘Please be careful, don’t touch the art.’ But out here, everybody abuses it. I just had to let go and accept that it’s all part of the game. I thought golf was peaceful. Who knew?”

Dangerous putting aside, fusing art and golf isn’t wholly revolutionary. By the end of the ’80s, as miniature golf’s commercial prospects shrank (industry vets blamed video games for stealing away young customers), it was left to the art world to rediscover the joys of tiny sand traps. One traveling museum show in the ’90s even featured golf holes designed by photographer Cindy Sherman, painter Elizabeth Murray and architect Frank Gehry. But Rozek’s brow is set a tad lower.

	Aja Albertson reclines on her hole.
	Dino Felipe
	The Garden’s indoor lounge.

“Most mini-golf ‘art’ is done in a gallery context,” Rozek says. “I wanted to take it out of that world, go a little kitschier, but still keep it fun. And affordable!” By way of contrast, he points to the current nexus of Miami’s buzz-driven art burg: “Locating all the galleries in Wynwood is so bogus! The average annual income of residents in that neighborhood is $14,000,” he continues, betraying his previous career crunching numbers for the Miami-Dade County Planning Department. “The people who actually live there can’t afford to buy any of that art. It’s crazy!”

Accordingly, he prides himself on the diverse crowd his own spot caters to. Young bohos mix comfortably with the stroller-pushing set, while “plenty of people who come here have no idea of the art connection. They just like to play putt-putt.” And though the area is still on the uphill side of the gentrification curve, “the neighborhood isn’t quite as scary as it used to be,” he reassures. Which isn’t to say that sketchy vibe of yore on this stretch of Biscayne, increasingly dotted with new fashion boutiques and restaurants, has entirely vanished. Far from it. “You have helicopters flying overhead looking to arrest somebody, but the little kids love it! They look up in the sky and tell their parents, ‘Ooh! A chopper!’ ”

That cultural blend has as much appeal for musicians as it does for artists. Albertson’s husband, John Hancock, first visited the Garden to help install her golf hole. He ended up enthusiastically returning for a performance with his band, local underground rock standard-bearers Awesome New Republic. And these days, given his druthers, he’ll gladly opt for the patio at the Garden over a stage inside a dimly lit downtown club. “The whole hipster crowd is only receptive if you play exactly what they’re already expecting to hear,” Hancock grouses. “It’s like being in a bar band.

“But when we play [the Garden], it’s a more diverse crowd. People are actually thinking about the music, really listening to it, not just asking where the free drink tickets are.” Flashing a grin, Hancock brightens. He’s just decided Awesome New Republic is going to focus on a new demographic: “Forget the hipsters. We want the miniature golfers!”

Rozek strikes a similar note. This summer will see the Garden host a Hancock-curated series of concerts, accompanying barbecue cookouts courtesy of culinary artist Jason Hedges and his customized 20-foot-tall Vertical Triple Chamber Smoker, as well as an expansion into an adjoining indoor lounge. But Rozek says he already has his sights set anew: “I’d love to start booking bar-mitzvah parties here!”

Junc Ops perform at the Upper Eastside Garden, 7244 Biscayne Boulevard, on Saturday, July 26th, with Jason Hedges grilling Jamaican-style jerk chicken. The JeanMarie perform on Saturday, August 30th, with Hedges grilling traditional BBQ chicken. More info: 305-984-3231.

E-mail: brett@oceandrive.com

Summertime "Sympathy" at the Museum of Contemporary Art

The ties between artists and rock ’n’ rollers have always been intimate, not least because forming a rock band has historically been the only career option for many hapless art-school graduates. The evidence is on display through September 7th at North Miami’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) exhibition “Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock & Roll Since 1967.” If you’ve already wandered through the exhibit’s sprawling array of drawings, photos, and colorful ephemera, MoCA curators are hoping to entice you back for a return meander via a summerlong schedule of special rock-themed programming. The highlights include a July 12th screening of Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, a new documentary feature on the New York musician, whose work ranged from the dance floor to the concert chamber hall, from the tweaked-out 1979 disco classic “Kiss Me Again” (under the Dinosaur moniker) to the dub-meets-classical soundscape conjured up on his 1986 World of Echo album, and all points in between. Arthur Russell August 9th sees the screening of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1968 train wreck Sympathy for the Devil, featuring fascinating studio footage of the Rolling Stones painstakingly building up the film’s title song, transforming it from a creepy acoustic shuffle into a hypnotically churning, lyrically apocalyptic, electric growl. Unfortunately, Godard couldn’t recognize a good thing once he’d shot it: Interspersed with the Stones takes are lead-footed skits in which the director plumbs 1968’s various racial and sexual psychodramas. Where just a few years earlier he’d lovingly lampooned the Maoist rhetoric and middle-class white guilt of the then nascent New Left, here he begins to embrace its worst aspects. The end result makes for anything but engrossing viewing, but amidst the patience-trying morality tales is a valuable snapshot of both the period and the moment when Godard’s own aesthetic went off the rails.

Unfortunately, MoCA is screening Sympathy off a DVD in lieu of an actual 16-millimeter or 35-millimeter celluloid print—a move akin to slapping up some Xeroxes of Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings on the walls and calling it a bona fide Pollock show. Still, if you’ve yet to catch the main exhibit itself, time your visit accordingly and save yourself a Netflix rental. Federico Nessi, Lauren Reskin and Dominique Breard. July 31st and August 28th both feature a lineup of local bands performing outside on the museum’s plaza (the July date promises a welcome return from the appropriately Stones-y Psycho Daisies), all co-selected by Sweat Records impresaria Lauren Reskin. Finally, on August 24th a trio of local artist-musicians turns down their amps entirely for a talk on their work’s orbit around the art/rock axis. Beatriz Monteavaro, whose paintings mine vintage post-punk iconography for their visceral punch, and draftsman Manny Prieres, whose now-shuttered Box gallery hosted its share of impromptu concerts in the late ’90s, will no doubt inject a dash of history into the affair. Photographic tyro Federico Nessi, recently bitten by the multidisciplinary bug, as demonstrated in his Wire Wire Wire performance piece, provides a glimpse of what’s ahead. For a full schedule, see mocanomi.org. – Brett Sokol