Drive east or west bound on 125 Street in North Miami and it is easy to miss Bridge Red Studios. And that would be a mistake.
Turn Instead on NE 13 Avenue. If you are headed eastbound, make a right and a left. If you are westbound, simply travel one block from the railroad tracks, down a street with nondescript warehouses, except for a few red doors. See those and you have arrived.
Behind those red doors is a North Miami artists’ complex with 10 studio spaces and an exhibition/project space where there are eight working artists. The current lineup includes sculptor and painter Robert Thiele and his daughter, painter Kristen Thiele, who run Bridge Red and bought the building from another resident artist, Carol K. Brown; multi-media artists LouAnne Colodny, who converted her studio into an exhibition space she calls Under the Bridge; and William Cordova, who works as Colodny’s co-director curating shows in that space. Rounding out the group are multidisciplinary artists Yanira Collado and Stephan Tugrul and painter Luisa Basnuevo. The space has existed since the late 1990s when Brown owned the building. Brown and Colodny are longtime friends.
(Francesco Casale)
Guerra de la Paz: Transcendental / Transmutation, a November 2023 exhibition at Bridge Red Studios in North Miami.
Colodny is a fixture in North Miami’s arts community as director of the Center of Contemporary Art (COCA) on NE 8 Avenue and then founding director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), which opened in 1996.
“Carol showed me the space back when she owned it and I immediately knew how I would utilize the space,” said Colodny. “For the first few years I showed my own work in 2010 when it was called Bridge Red Art Projects and in 2011, I opened Under the Bridge Art Space downstairs.”
A decade later, in 2021 she asked William Cordova to be her co-director. Colodny’s concept for Under the Bridge is always to work with artists not affiliated with a gallery. Her mission is to create a space where they can experiment, create, and explore new avenues.
(Francesco Casale)
“Ghosts," the first exhibition dedicated solely to Duane Hanson's castings in 2015 at Bridge Red Studios. /
“It is a great space to allow artists to evolve. I never take a percentage and I offer them publicity and marketing,” she said. She began by showing artists who had exhibited at COCA and MOCA but had no representation and she continues to display works by a very eclectic group of artists.
For each show, the artists come in and install at Under the Bridge for free. They curate the shows, hang the works, and then return the space to the way it was.
“I’ve seen so many artists create in ways they never had before,” said Colodny. “I’m proud of the artists we’ve shown and how they have experimented in the space.”
Co-Director Cordova has been a great partner to Colodny, taking on a bigger role at Under the Bridge. He is currently creating new work he calls the Flag Project, where artists create flags that fly above the building.
“He is also doing a much stronger curatorial selection of the works in the exhibitions than I was. We work well together,” said Colodny.
(LouAnne Colodny)
“Circa" by LouAnne Colodny, director of Under the Bridge at Bridge Red Studios in North Miami.
Operating and managing the remainder of the studios are father/daughter team Robert and Kristen Thiele with Kristen taking on most of that role. When her father bought the building around 16 years ago, his intent was to find a permanent home for his massive and extensive collection of works.
“He was hoping to find a partner and although he didn’t find one, he was able to purchase the building solo,” said Thiele. The inspiration for the name came from Robert Thiele’s studio in Brooklyn, New York, where he spends half the year.
“My father’s view when he works in Brooklyn is of the Manhattan Bridge and red is a very prominent color in art, so he blended the two together,” said Thiele. “Also, our mission is to create a bridge between artists and community.”
Thiele sees the space as a necessity in Miami where “we need more art studios, it is a need that isn’t being met and people are leaving,” she said. “If I could build on top of this building I would do it in a heartbeat. We have even considered putting containers to address the problem of unaffordable studio space for artists, but that is not happening.”
(Francesco Casale)
“Palm Springs Pool," by Kristen Thiele on display at Bridge Red Studios.
Like Colodny, Thiele’s mission at Bridge Red Studios has always been to show artists who have been working quietly away in their Miami home studios and haven’t been seen.
“We try to show people who have a discipline and a developed body of work. These are artists that do not get seen right here in their home city of Miami,” said Thiele.
It is their dedication to the artists that keeps their rotation infrequent. The group of artists working at Bridge Red Studios has been very consistent since they opened the space.
“My Dad wants to call them ‘lifers.’ We get calls daily on if studio space is available. We also really have not raised our rent and we are very under market value. We love keeping our artists here. These people have become like family,” said Thiele.
She praises William and LouAnne’s generosity and what they provide to artists in their space and how Collado even “watches my cats when I’m out of town.” Although she is busy managing Bridge Red, Kristen Thiele makes time to create work, too, and like her father, they are massive works, except hers are colorful paintings rooted in her love for old Hollywood movies.
Although she says the warehouse space is “a little bit alone up here in North Miami,” Thiele feels that it is growing, especially with Under the Bridge becoming a regular stop during the Artists Open, a series of open houses with more than 300 studios around Miami presented by Fountainhead.
They also hold simultaneous Sunday evening exhibition openings and Sunday closings they call “closing brunches” at Bridge Red Studios and Under the Bridge. Visit Bridge Red Studios at 12425 NE 13 Ave., North Miami, during the week by appointment and browse their website to learn more about the artists at bridgeredstudios.com.