CHARLES TRAINOR JR. /HERALD STAFF

LIFE AS ART: Michael Vasquez, 22, is an emerging artist in miami. His work, like that behind him, portrays the hustlers and dealers who were part of his past. 'Miami is a pretty tough city,' he says.

Miami art gallery owner Fred Snitzer can't help but grin when he talks about one of his newest discoveries, Michael Vasquez, a former gang member of Polish and Puerto Rican parentage who was Snitzer's student at New World School of the Arts.

The 22-year-old artist's work reflects his experience growing up working-class, raised by his single mother. One of his paintings, Friendly Fatherly Figures, portrays the sinister street hustlers and dealers who were Vasquez's role models growing up. ''Miami is a pretty tough city,'' he said.

Like local rapper Pitbull, Vasquez, in the hip-hop language of his contemporaries, represents. And he's among a growing number of local artists -- many of them young and, like Vasquez, New World graduates -- whose work is uniquely Miami. While Art Basel Miami Beach is luring thousands of international collectors to South Florida this week, Miami's own art scene is now solid year round, with artists like Hernan Bas, Naomi Fischer and Vasquez creating works that have caught the attention of art aficionados well beyond the region.

Influenced by New York minimalism and Latin American/Caribbean ritualism, the new Miami artists are also shaped by the Miami mix: Waves of immigration. The hot pulse of South Beach.

While Miami's visual arts scene has been evolving for decades, North America's most important contemporary art fair cemented it. 'Art Basel said, `Miami is the place,' '' said Elizabeth Cerejido, the curator at Florida International University's Frost Museum.

The new art scene traces its roots to the arrival of a group of Cuban artists who arrived in South Florida in the 1980s.

''An entire country was emptied of its greatest artists,'' said Snitzer, who represents Bas, Fischer and José Bedia, the most important member of that Cuban '' '80s Generation.'' Bedia's minimalist renderings, which draw from Afro-Cuban religion, have had a profound influence on younger Miami artists of all backgrounds.

''The kids grew up with [Bedia's] shows,'' Snitzer said.

Bonnie Clearwater, who heads the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, agrees. ''He was very influential on young artists, like William Cordova, Gean Moreno and John Espinosa,'' she said. ``Their work has elements of minimalism, as well as ritual and spirituality, they got from Bedia.''

Do these young artists form a Miami school?

''We're not like the New York school [the abstract expressionists of the '50s, like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning],'' Bas said. ``But there are nine artists working in my block in Wynwood, and we are all friends.''

Snitzer prefers to talk of a Miami generation. ''School implies a philosophical position toward art, and I don't think that's the case,'' he said. 'But there's no question that we have a generation of artists shaped by Andrew, Mariel, Elián, Christos' Islands.''

A devastating hurricane, a massive wave of Cuban refugees, a community divided over the fate of young boy, Biscayne Bay's tiny islands surrounded by plastic. This has been the Miami experience.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Missing was that Greenwich Village-in-the-'50s camaraderie Bas now enjoys with his neighbors. By the beginning of this decade, that camaraderie had a name, Wynwood, a run-down mix of housing and warehouses that has become Miami's newest art district.

Cerejido noted another important change. ''The power shifted from galleries to artists with the creation of alternative spaces'' -- artists' collectives controlled not by gallery owners but by the artists themselves.

If galleries no longer call the tune, collectors do.

''Ten years ago there were few Miami collectors who bought Miami art,'' said North Miami gallery owner Genaro Ambrosino. ``Works had to have a seal of approval from the outside. No longer.''

Major collectors like Rosa de la Cruz and the Rubells have a tremendous influence, Ambrosino explained. 'Today if you say, `Rosa de la Cruz bought 10 works by this artist,' a buyer is much more likely to make out a check.''

Like others in the art scene, Cerejido sees Miami as ''more of an opportunity than a sense of place.'' Miami is such a clean slate that ``it allowed some of these artists to graduate and become instant stars.''

She does not see the tropical environment affecting the new artists.

Generations ago, artists came to South Florida lured by its sunshine. But Clearwater said today's Miami artists spend all the time in their studios and seldom see light. ''I've never seen any of them sporting a tan,'' she quipped.

Added Snitzer: ``Their day begins at 11 at night.''

`SUNSHINE NOIR'

It's this nocturnal vision that prompted one of the new artists, Cooper, to playfully coin the term ''sunshine noir'' for Miami art.

Ambrosino, however, disagrees with the notion that tropical color means nothing to the new artists. William Cordova, whom Ambrosino represents, studied in Chicago. When he moved back to Miami, his work acquired more color, Ambrosino said.

Another one of Ambrosino's artists, Vickie Pierre, born and raised in New York of Haitian parents, used to show work in ``brown, ochre, black, gray.''

Five years ago, she moved to Miami. ''After three years here,'' Ambrosino recalled, ``her work was yellow, red, green, blue. The tropical light and colors begins to seep inside the artists.''

In the end, a Miami identity is hard to define.

Artists like Bedia and Arturo Rodríguez continue, even in exile, to be closely identified with Cuba. But it's less clear with 41-year old Glexis Novoa, who said he was influenced by ``the nature of this city where you meet people from all over the world.''

The Cuban team of Elsoca & Fabián show affinities with their younger Miami contemporaries in their extreme vanguardism touched by a whiff of goth -- their latest medium is ink made from ground-up mosquitoes and flies, studded with the insects' wings and legs.

Carlos Betancourt, who is making a big splash this year at Art Basel, was born in Puerto Rico to Cuban parents and moved to Miami when he was 13. He identifies with Bas and Fischer, but his tropicalism is as ardent as that of any Caribbean artist.

NO AVOIDING COLOR

''You cannot avoid color here,'' the Betancourt, 39, said. ``Everything is color.''

It's all about narrative, gallery owner Bernice Steinbaum said. For her, what makes Miami art is not about where people were born or raised or studied.

''There is no history,'' she said, comparing Miami to the Wild West. ``I can't identify a school here . . . because everybody has their place, all the people coming here and telling their story.''

These days, FIU is trying to catch up with New World as the cradle of Miami art, and a show of graduate students and faculty, off the map, will be shown at Atlas Plaza, 130 NE 40th St., during Art Basel.

Hugo Moro, a graduate student in the show, pondered the relation of Miami to its artists. ''It's something we ask ourselves every day.'' he said. ``What does it mean to be in this city?''

The answer may be in an observation by Cerejido.

''The city,'' she said, ``is up for grabs.''

Herald art critic Elisa Turner contributed to this story.

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