When Marina Abdo Alcantara goes for a walk,  it’s never just to get outside or to up her step count on that given day. For the studio artist at SPAACES Gallery in Sarasota, a walk around her neighborhood is evocative of her somewhat “nomadic” upbringing and eclectic practice. “I’m half-American, half-Brazilian, but grew up between Sao Paulo, Columbia and Buenos Aires until I graduated high school in the States,” says Alcantara. “I studied art at college in the U.S. and have bounced around a lot here, so I feel that I’ve lived this nomadic life—it’s a big part of the art that I make. I work with found objects and have been collecting things since I was a little girl; I always bring these materials into my work as a way of not only orienting myself in a new space, but also incorporating the other places that have shaped who I am as a person.” For Alcantara, an interdisciplinary conceptual artist, those materials and mediums can range from needle felting and ceramic sculpture to threading wire through bits of glass, steel and discarded objects. In Refugio: Matriarca de Barro (2026), which translates to Refuge: Clay Matriarch, Alcantara recreated the nest of the joão-de-barro bird of Brazil, a rust-brown bird infamous for its oven-shaped nests formed from mud, dung, clay and straw. In Refugio, the nest is cracked open and populated with tiny lights and hanging ornaments, and the outside is ringed with leaves that seem to swirl in motion. Holes permeate the nest, a nod to the insects found in the real life nests of the birds. “I wanted the piece to feel as if it was alive in a way, with lampshades and chandeliers made from seeds and flowers inside the nest,” says Alcantara. “I actually needle felted the nest underneath the egg out of my own hair—it’s meant to tie into this idea of nature, of nourishment and how these delicate beginning stages of life are critical to our long term development.” At SPAACES Gallery, Alcantara is taking full advantage of her studio space to create a stained glass work centered around the Afro-Brazilian goddess Yemanja. Yemanja, who symbolizes the ocean, fertility and family, is celebrated through the use of a decorated marble sink—which Alcantara found on one of her walks—and the incorporation of a stained glass mirror. “I wanted the piece to be a quiet reflection on the ways that we nurture ourselves. So I had the thought of making a mirror to go on top of the sink, and I’ll run water through the sink so that people can wash their faces, their hands and look at themselves in the mirror,” says Alcantara. “Yemanja has these symbols that pertain to her—a crane, a specific type of fish and a certain flower—the design of the mirror shows a wave becoming a crane and then the crane grabbing a fish from the wave, giving itself the nourishment that it needs.”  SRQ