Newell Book # 9 Stiltsville

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Stiltsville comes from a collection of 600 paintings: Miami Serie, created in Florida in 2020-2021. Inspired by the elements Newell creates a graphic and colorful universe representative of the city of Miami. He plays with techniques to create illusion, and deals with realistic, abstract, and minimalist subjects.

“First comes the look, the framing, the shapes, the colors, the photo shots. Then follows the transformation, the reinterpretation, the painting, the lights, the materials, the contrast, the impression. Then come the association, the composition, the dialogue of forms and subjects that tells a story between memory and abstract forms.”

Stiltsville is a group of wood stilt houses located one mile south of Cape Florida, on sand banks on the edge of Biscayne Bay in Miami-Dade County. The structures stand on wood generally ten feet above the shallow water. “Crawfish” Eddie Walker built a shack on stilts in 1933, toward the end of the prohibition era, allegedly to facilitate gambling, which was legal at one mile offshore. Crawfish Eddie sold bait and beer from his shack and was known for a dish he called chilau, a crawfish chowder made with crawfish he caught under his shack. Thomas Grady and Leo Edward, two of Eddie’s fishing buddies, built their own shack in 1937. Shipwrecking and channel dredging brought many people to the area and more shacks were constructed, some by boating and fishing clubs. Local newspapers called the area “the shacks” and “shack colony”. Crawfish Eddie’s original shack was destroyed by the late-season Hurricane King of 1950.

The first social club built at Stiltsville was constructed during the late 1930s and named the Calvert Club. The Miami Beach Rod & Reel Club was organized in 1929 and held its first official outing at the Stiltsville Calvert Club in August 1938. A club picture was taken in front of the club, which was popular enough to have picture postcards printed with its image.”

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