Oh, Florida. That’s a common reaction to seemingly any horrifying local news headline out of the Sunshine State—one that local art students have embraced in a group art show at Locust Projects in Miami.

Every summer, the Locust Arts Builders program invites South Florida high school students to stage a collaborative art exhibition at the space.

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This year, the 20 students took their inspiration for the @_FloridaMan Twitter account, which aggregates the seemingly never-ending stream of you-can’t-make-this-up headlines such as “Florida Man Poses as Doctor, Leaves Patient with Deformed, 1-Inch Penis” and “Police Catch Florida Man Trying to Chew Off Own Fingerprints.”

“Florida Man Pulls Kid’s Tooth by Tying It To Chevy Camaro, Speeding Away.”
Photo: screenshot of a Florida Man’s Twitter account.

“I hear all these [Florida Man stories] and I’m like: bring it on,” Catherine Camargo, one of the participating students, told WLRN. “This is where I’m from. Like, it’s crazy, it’s fun. And I completely prefer it over living somewhere boring.”

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For her contribution to the exhibition, Camargo responded to the article “Florida Man Pulls Kid’s Tooth by Tying It to Chevy Camaro, Speeding Away,” covering a canvas with real teeth sourced from her friends and classmates, and pairing it with a car tire displayed in a Plexiglas and plywood box.

Catherine Camargo, Florida Man Pulls Kid’s Tooth by Tying It To Chevy Camaro, Speeding Away, in the “LAB (Locus Arts Builders” exhibition at Locust Projects.
Photo: courtesy Locust Projects, Miami.

An entire wall of the exhibition space is covered with tweets from the Florida Man Twitter account. The students began printing them out for inspiration, before deciding the show could only be enhanced by a 15-foot-tall wall papered with additional headlines such as “Florida Man Calls 911 to Check Status of Tax Return” and “Florida Man Says That He Danced on Patrol Car in Order to Escape Vampires.”

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While installing the Tweet wall was a time-consuming process, Glenn Espinosa told WLRN, “it was fun because while we were doing it we were always reading and getting new inspiration because it’s wild!”