PALMER helped kick-off Palm Beach’s New Wave Art Wknd with a toast to artist-in-residence Tiffany Alfonseca at The Miami Beach EDITION during Art Basel. Hosted by Editorial Director Stefano Tonchi, guests including Calida Rawles, David Maupin, Ghislain d’Humières and Nicolas Raubertas, Stacie Henderson Capece Minutolo, Barry Blumberg, Paola Antonelli, Simone Ferresin, Alejandro Jassan, Inii and Tony King, Allie Prein, Caroline Afonso, Andrea Franchini, Jen Lozada, and Katherine Rothman enjoyed an evening of cocktails, connection and celebration. The event was co-sponsored by TOD’S and Tradewind.

“We’re excited to be here with PALMER as they represent the new, more contemporary Palm Beach,” said Sarah Gavlak, founder of West Palm Beach-based New Wave, a non-profit that offers thought-provoking programming and an artist residency supporting emerging and under-represented artists. “Editorial Director Stefano Tonchi really understands the visual art form,” said Gavlak, who also owns the GAVLAK gallery. “And PALMER is just beautiful — it proves a magazine can be art.”

For Alfonseca, a painter and illustrator born and raised in New York City but of Dominican descent, the two-month New Wave artist residency has given her “a home and space to do my art without any confines.” Her vibrantly-colored work is taken from both family archive photos and her own photos of her current community. “It’s about Dominicans in New York,” she said, “but also about the ones back on the island, too.”

Other artists in attendance included Miami-native Naomi Fisher, who is the next artist in residency, Lita Albuquerque from Southern California, whose work is shown at GAVLAK, and Anastasia Samoylova, the Russian-American artisit whose photography is currently on exhibit in Floridas: Anastasia Samoylova and Walker Evans at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Fisher’s photography and video installation of plant imagery in large-scale formats aim to “inspire folks to love nature” through public art. “The magic of South Florida is very much represented in Palm Beach with its Art Deco feel and beautiful environment,” she said. “It’s what people think of when they think of Florida.”

Albuquerque, an environmental artist whose self-proclaimed “land art” mixes the wonders of light and space to create a deep relationship between the body, the earth and the cosmos, appreciates how art helps keep the focus on the present. “It’s all about alignment and grounding and being aware of context,” she said.

For Samoylova, it is the connection art offers to people, regardless of their language, that inspires her. She confessed to being a “ghost in the gallery” at The Met, where she watches those viewing her work. “It’s an incredible experience, a real honor,” she offered.

Isolde Brielmaier, whose new venture Woah (Work of Art Holdings), a New York-based, female-founded global art and culture firm, believes that when properly supported, art can have an impact far beyond what is imaginable.

Alfonseca agrees. “It’s an incredible opportunity to be given the space to do whatever I want,” she said, “that kind of chance to explore is very freeing as an artist.”

Click through the gallery below to see more photos from the party.