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Artists contribute for the sake of music
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But when you combine all three, you get local artists creating unique works – themed on music and wine – that will be auctioned at the 16th Annual Wines of the World event on Friday, Nov. 4 to benefit the Symphony of the Americas.
The Wines of the World Vintner’s Tasting Tour, Dinner and Auction begins at 6 p.m. at Bahia Mar Beach Resort & Yachting Center, 801 Seabreeze Boulevard Fort Lauderdale. Cost is $55 per person for the tasting only, $200 for the tasting, dinner (prepared by prominent local chefs), the auction and dancing.
For tickets and registration, go to:
http://winesoftheworld.org/event-ticket-purchase.html.
If you have questions about these events, please call 954-335-7002 or email: Judymarini@aol.com
Here’s a look at the artists who gave of their time and creativity:
Janie Casario
Janie’s zest for life has prompted her to devote her time to art. Her happy, whimsical furniture will make you smile. Her artwork can be found in upscale art galleries, in design centers, and through designers an by custom order.
She works in a variety of mediums from old furniture (yours or hers), murals, mixed mosaics, and whimsical rounds (painted canvases). Her most recent art is semi-sculptures where she uses old doors, and re-sculpts other elements to create an imaginative work of art.
Janie received the prestigious Artist of the Year Award for 2006. Through her artwork, she has donated thousands of hours to her community and not for profit organizations.
Whether it’s painting a 4,000 square foot mural for a children’s center or donating a valuable work of art for fundraising, she continues to be thrilled that her art work can do so much good in the community.
"I feel everything on this Earth has a Spirit and Soul. From the chirping birds, to the rippling waters, even the rustling of the leaves through the trees. The Earth sings... Listen to the Music," she said.
"If you like the bottle maybe you’d like a matching custom door to lead friends into your bar or powder room? My doors can be strictly decorative and hang or lean on a wall, or functional. I’ll remove your door, sculpt it, then re-install it, so it can be completely functional."
A percentage of the sale of a custom door will be donated to Symphony of the Americas.
Melanie Camp
A resident of Fort Lauderdale since 1976, civic activist, volunteer and patron of the arts, Melanie Camp started to paint just ten years ago.
Her work has been displayed in the “Annual Atelier de la mer Show” in Fort Lauderdale and sold in the Artist Haven Gallery and ArtServe Gallery in Fort Lauderdale.
One of her first images was used as a Holiday Card by PJ Clarkes, a noted eatery in New York City. Melanie’s original oil paintings are in private collections throughout the world.
Melanie studied photography at Parsons in NYC and was selected to study privately with Philippe Halsman, renowned Life Magazine photographer, while he was at the New School in NYC.
Melanie’s abstract commission from Park City resident, Kenneth Greenberg, resulted in several invitations to show future abstract art in South Florida Galleries. The Chakra Explosion series was shown this month in the Coconut Grove Art Stroll at Dharma Studio.
Camp is the author of Artful Yoga, an upcoming book incorporating her art and yoga tips from her world travels. Her abstract expressions of yoga postures will be prominent in the book.
“When at the easel, I am in a space of peace and sweet serenity. This is the place where my imagination meets the brush and in the realization of that moment, I paint.”
Julie Finch
Born in Connecticut, she has lived in southern Florida since early childhood.
Julie’s background includes a Bachelor’s of Art from Florida State University and graduate work from Florida Atlantic University. She taught Ceramics and Art history at the University School of Nova University for seven years and received a Fulbright Scholarship in Art and Architecture. She has studied under such notable artists in the ceramic field such as Richard Shaw, Paul Soldner, Daniel Rhodes and Rudy Audio.
Through her travels and studies, Julie developed the unique style for the past 30 years that is Fired Fantasies. It combines the time-tested techniques developed over thousands of years with the modern whimsical approach that is Julie’s own. Each piece begins as flat rolled clay that is hand shaped over a form for general design. Then, it is personally reshaped, fashioned, and embellished.
After a week of drying time, the sculpture is low-fired. The piece is then meticulously glazed and re-fired to a temperature of 2300 degrees. The finished piece is sometimes fired again with 22 karat gold and luster’s applications.
Besides Fired Fantasies, which is marketed in craft galleries throughout the U.S., Julie also creates large scale architectural pieces that are incorporated into buildings or homes.
You can visit her web site at www.FIREDFANTASIES.COM.
Nadine Egan Floyd
Nadine Egan Floyd is a business woman by day and an artist during every other moment of her life.
She is a staple in the Fort Lauderdale community. Recognized for her business savvy, community participation and philanthropic endeavors, she also can be identified through her artistry – a talent she has nurtured for more than four decades.
Whether oil acrylic, pastels, among other genres, her artistic career has afforded her the opportunity to work in various mediums. She specializes in creating original one of a kind designs and has recently concentrated a greater portion of her time working in stained glass, mosaic glass and glass jewelry.
She has been commissioned to create many murals and works in glass and painting. She has also been able to adapt her visual art work into words, publishing several glass articles in an international magazine.
During the day she is President of The Media Lab, Inc./Power Images, a multi-media firm specializing in video production, digital photography, printing and web design.
In June 2007, she was named “Woman of the Year in Communications” and in 2008, Woman Entrepreneur, selected by the Women’s Circle of Excellence of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce.
A small business owner, she was also the recipient of the 2005 “Salute to Business” award given by the Greater Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce.
She majored in fine arts at New Jersey State University. A participant in many juried art shows, she has won various awards, including the coveted ‘Artist of the Year” Encore Award 2005. She is a member of ArtServe, Broward Art Guild, Bonnet House of Fine Artists, The Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art.
Lourdes Gurrea
My love for photography began at the age of 7 when my parents let me take pictures with their Kodak 127 camera.
At the age of 15 I bought my first professional camera and haven’t stopped taking pictures since.
I continued to study and practice photography while I studied and received my Bachelor of Architecture from North Carolina State University. Having focused my work for 17 years in the Architectural field, I continue to photograph buildings, colleagues and the simple joys of life.
Recently I have been honored to have one of my photographs chosen to be part of the Be Inspired! Exhibition at the Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, which will be open to the general public for viewing beginning October 1, 2011.
What I most enjoy about photography is what a photograph continues to give long after it is taken.
I truly believe that a picture is worth a thousand words.
Marilyn Phillips Johansen
Marilyn brings her life experiences to her art, having lived from Belgium to Okinawa and places in between.
Her artistic studies began at age 10 and her talent has been enhanced through instruction at Bonnet House Museum and Gardens, Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, The Morikami Museum and Cornell Museum of Art at Old School Square.
She enjoys painting in all mediums. She is a member of the Gold Coast Watercolor Society, Florida Watercolor Society and the National Watercolor Society.
Her most recent award was at the 2009 Bonnet House Impressions Art Competition. Marilyn was voted and awarded the People’s Choice Award. She exhibits, donates and sells her award-winning artwork.
Michael Joseph
Michael Joseph was born June 12, 1962 in the industrial town of Methuen, Massachusetts, and raised in Southington, Connecticut.
He is a self-taught American fine art photographer who works with 35mm film and is best known for his black-and-white photographs of urban cityscapes, highlighting distinctive angles in architecture.
He has traveled to all 48 contiguous United States, many international cities, and he continues to make interesting photographs of subjects that otherwise gone unnoticed.
His work has appeared in many solo and group exhibitions throughout the country, and has been honored in a number of juried art shows. His award-winning photographs are held in several important private, public, and museum collections.
Jorge Leon Montero
Born and raised in Havana, Cuba, I arrived to the United States in 1980, where I matured professionally and artistically.
An architect by training but an artist by heart, I was always inclined toward the Fine Arts.
I started attending the Art School in Havana, Cuba, at the age of 15.
In the USA, I worked and developed my profession as Architectural Project Manager, and painting as a hobby. Now, I am a full time artist living and working, part of the year, in lovely Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and the other half (the hot one) in the also lovely Mediterranean town of Sitges, near Barcelona, Spain.
My work has been exhibited in Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Palm Beach, and the rest of Florida, and in Sitges, Spain.
Mainly working in watercolor, but also in acrylics and pen and ink, my work has been bestowed awards in art competitions throughout South Florida.
Member of:
Broward Art Guild
Gold Coast Watercolor Society
Miami Watercolor Society
Palm Beach Watercolor Society
Florida Watercolor Society
American Watercolor Society
Southern Watercolor Society
Judy Polstra
I’ve been a visual artist all of my life and a pianist since age seven.
My artwork may be found in private and corporate collections from New York to Los Angeles.
I’m a Hospice volunteer, a piano teacher, and of course, an artist.
My passions include great food and wine, the visual arts, and classical music.
This piece is titled “Unfinished Wine Symphony No. 2” and is part of my “Conductor” series.
It’s my way of combining the magic of music and wine. In addition to wine, this series will also include symphonies of cheese, produce, prosciutto, chocolate and the other bounties of life.
Tom Rossetti
Tom Rossetti is a native Floridian, born in Fort Lauderdale in 1963. He graduated from Florida Atlantic University in 1986 with B.F.A degrees in Fine Art and Art History. His career has been divided as both professional artist and art dealer.
Artistically, Rossetti is classically trained and has developed into an Abstract Expressionist.
Rossetti states: “I have always loved the Expressionists! Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem de Kooning and Francis Bacon, who have definitely influenced my current style. I love the freedom of expressing emotions as I paint, however, most of the time I let the paint itself direct the mood and composition of my canvases.”
Rossetti is also gifted in the area of Interior and Landscape Design and is an accomplished pianist and published poet, a contemporary Renaissance Man of sorts.
His ancestors can be traced to the famous Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabrielle Rossetti and his poet sister, Christina Georgina Rossetti.
As an art dealer, Mr. Rossetti has directed several of the most prestigious galleries in South Florida and is the current owner and director of Rossetti Fine Art located in Pompano Beach, FL.
Rossetti has sold major works of art by Pablo Picasso, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Salvador Dali.
He is also a sought after and respected juror for many of the South Florida art exhibitions and shows. His works are in private collections in the United States and in Europe.
Kris Smith
Kris Smith graduated from DePauw University in 1964, and began her artistic career in the Washington D.C. area, by doing over 3,500 painted and sculpted portraits of sports figures, politicians, and the famous, as well as private citizens.
Two of her portraits hung in The White House during the Ford and Carter administrations. Her sculpted portrait marionettes were chosen to be one of Neiman Marcus’s “10 Most Unusual Gifts in the World” for their Christmas Catalog in 1997, resulting in guest appearances on Oprah, MSNBC, and Good Morning America, and a 3-page article in People magazine in 1998.
She is a former officer and an active member of the Artists’ Guild of the Boca Museum. This is her eighth year of teaching a portrait painting class at the Boca Raton Museum Art School.
She is currently working on a 10-foot wooden sculpture for the new Women in Distress Center in Pompano Beach.
Steven Sylvester
In my contemporary art series of ladies dresses made from clay, wire and other materials, I use the unexpected medium of clay, commonly fashioned into utilitarian vessels and dinnerware, to symbolize the diversity of roles assumed by women in the 21st Century.
From the safe harbor of home to an arena of mass appeal, women, what they pursue and where they find themselves in the world are reflected by this series of dresses. My observation of female identity ranges from the private domain of a gardener who lovingly nurtures plants to the nationally televised public humiliation of pop singer Janet Jackson during the country’s most widely watched sports event.
Ceramics, wire and other materials are manipulated into representations of what woman accomplish in and out of the public eye. As fantasy abstractions of this form, my dresses respectfully acknowledge all that women accomplish, whether they are connecting with nature or dancing onstage.
In addition, my pursuit of the uncommon application of clay in an architectural form allows me to create free-standing and wall-mounted two- and three-dimensional art forms. These art forms are both large scale and permanent in their nature.
I am an associate of world-renowned architectural ceramicist Peter King, and I am honored to employ my skills and knowledge of the ancient art form known as architectural ceramics both independently and in collaboration with King.
I view myself as being one half clay artist and the other half a social worker, which harkens to my prior profession. I revel in creating clay art projects that are therapeutic in nature, build personal relationship skills and address community needs. I love it when I am able to involve my art in taking an active role in addressing society’s needs.
Ellen Weiss
Expressing creativity in her classroom and on her canvas keeps artist Ellen Weiss engaged and challenged.
There is no greater joy to her than to see her students passionate about their own work.
As an artist, she loves both the adventures of painting en plein air and the serenity of studio painting.
Ellen has exhibited her oil paintings in numerous juried shows throughout South Florida.
Formerly a docent at the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, Ellen is currently a member of Brushstrokes Studio at Galleria, the Bonnet House Fine Artists and Plein Air Florida.
She is an art teacher at Pine Crest School.
About the SOA
Fort Lauderdale’s own professional Symphony of the Americas, under the direction of its award-winning Maestro James Brooks-Bruzzese, recently celebrated a 24-year milestone of bringing the best of classical music to the multi-cultural population of South Florida. Its International Guest Artist Series is presented in its performance home at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, outreach concerts reach audiences throughout South Florida, as well as a myriad of educational programs with ensembles and full orchestra.
The internationally renowned Summerfest, celebrating its 20th years in 2011, hosts an acclaimed European chamber orchestra each summer, joined by selected members of the Symphony of the Americas.
The Symphony takes a leadership role in fostering cultural relations with the Americas, initiating musical exchanges throughout Europe, the US, Central and South America. As a collaborator with community organizations and various South Florida cities, the Symphony performs outreach concerts throughout Palm Beach County, as well as in Weston, Boca Raton, Deerfield Beach, Pembroke Pines, Hollywood and Miami – all woven into the fabric of our community in parks, museums and libraries. Performances are captured on compact discs distributed nationally and internationally.
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