INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — For an artist, rain can be a muse. But it can also be a pain in the paintbrush. By Thursday afternoon, vans and campers had begun to cluster on the far side of the “beanfield” at Riverside Park, as artists arrived to participate in the 61st annual Under the Oaks Fine Art and Craft Show. Even though opening day Friday was gloomy and a bit drippy, an estimated 16,000 people had attended, but, by Friday evening, rain, lightning and rumbling thunder threatened to further dampen the weekend. Spring weather in Florida, however, can turn on a dime and, by opening time Saturday, it had – and the sun shone.
The Under the Oaks Show continues Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Riverside Park in Vero Beach. According to Weather.com, the forecast calls for a 50 percent chance of showers with a high of 75 degrees.
Presented by the Vero Beach Art Club, and located “Under the Oaks” on the grounds of Riverside Park, the juried show is one of the largest public events in the Southeast and can draw more than 80,000 visitors over its 3-day run. It is dizzyingly well organized – Chris Pierce is Show Chair this year, and her committee and volunteers know their business down to the last teeny detail.
Hospitality Chair Alicia Quinn explained that this year’s troop of volunteers included 82 students from the Charter High School who, among them, put in some 400 hours working the show.
As Alicia talked about the various areas of effort into which the volunteers are assigned, Kathy Staiger approached and exclaimed, with great enthusiasm, “It’s the best show ever! I need more walls in my house! You all should be running a corporation. Really!”
This year, 219 artists and crafts people – from all over the US and one artist from Israel – were chosen from the 750 applicants, and displayed their works in rows of tidy white tents lining either side of the walkways which circled beneath the trees, the food vendors set up in the central area.
This year’s judges: co-owner of Tiger Lily Studios and Gallery in Vero Beach, head of the Ceramics Department at the Vero Beach Museum of Art and a clay artist whose work is displayed in many collections, including the White House; and Jane B. Howard, Professor Emerita of Arts and Humanities at Indian River State College and an accomplished artist in several areas, as well as an art educator.
Award ribbons were prominently displayed on the tents of the winners in eight categories – Creative Crafts, Graphics/Pastels; Oil/Acrylics; Photography/Mixed Media/Digital Art; Pottery; Jewelry; Sculpture; and Watercolor.
Show Chair Chris Pierce was delighted that the opening day crowd had been so robust in spite of the gloomy weather.
People don’t mind bringing their umbrellas, she said.
“They just don’t want to miss the show.”
She was also pleasantly surprised when Vero Mayor Pilar Turner turned up Friday, unexpectedly, introduced herself to the artists and thanked them for participating.
“The artists really got a big kick out of that,” said Chris.
Garry Seidel is a photographic artist and first place winner in the Photography category. Originally from Berlin, the Davie, Fla., resident’s work is “traditional film, no digital,” and it is colored with translucent paint using an old technique employed in the era before color photography.
“I learned it from my mother,” said Seidel.
One photo, “Man Walking Along the Berlin Wall” is a striking example of this color process and has, Seidel noted, a strong emotional meaning for him. He has been showing at Under the Oaks “off and on for many years. We love this show. At some shows, the people can be real jerks, but here, everybody here is so nice.”
First place in the Pottery category went to Michigan artists Sally and John Herbon, whose clean, graceful pieces have, at first glance, the look of metal. Hebron explained that there is, indeed, metal in the glaze. The plates and bowls are adorned with delicate, charming birds, dragonflies, lobsters and fish, all wearing the same greenish gray hue as the pieces on which they sit. Except for one bowl, atop which swims a pair of brightly colored brook trout.
“My favorite fish,” Herbon explains.
The Best of Show award went to sculptor Jack Hill, who sat on a stool under a tree across from his booth, working on a clay bust and chatting up visitors. His works were cast bronze and his concept and execution were some of the most interesting and original. The pieces looked like ancient, broken statues, graceful but in ruins, missing various body parts.
Reading the artist’s statement, visitors learn that, in this new body of work, Hill is experimenting, using a “body armor” approach, seeking to create the “feeling of antiquity, of old stone or metal that has been submerged.”
Hill was intrigued by “the idea of our skins as protective armor and how it might look after time, being put on and taken off – I imagined exoskeletons that have been shed on the battlefield of our everyday struggle for survival.”
Upon closer inspection, the viewer sees that each piece has fasteners – as real armor would – leather ties, hooks, hinges – and looks just as it would after having been cast off and left to rust on a battlefield.
Susan Livingston took first place in Sculpture category with her striking pieces, “Clay and Fossils.” They feature various fossilized mammoth bones – pieces of skull, rib bones – from the Crystal River area and the Withlacoochee River, a baline whale jawbone from the North Sea and fossilized shells, each displayed on or incorporated into elegant, deep oxblood-hued clay shapes and bases. (The list of owners of Livingston’s work include Steven Spielberg.)
In case you thought you’d seen it all – there is Bonnie Warecki’s booth. Warecki is a master at Gyotaku – which is not a martial art. It is the ancient art of fish rubbing. Acrylics or ink are used to create these pieces. If you wish to use your OWN fish, there are guidelines: Do not cut the fish. Put in plastic bag. Chill or freeze. “Phone Bonnie ASAP, from the boat if possible.”
When she gets the fish, she puts the paint on the fish and rubs the fish on the paper. And the pieces are quite beautiful.
First place in Creative Crafts went to John Mascoll, of Safety Harbor. Using a lathe and four tools – two gouges and two hollowing tools, John takes citrus wood, mahogany and other woods and creates lovely vases. There is, he smiles, a LOT of sanding involved. He finishes with several coats of lacquer, allowing the wood’s natural color to glow through.
Micco artists Richard and Susan Currier met when they were students at the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota. Richard won Best in Show last year for his oil painting and captured First Place this year in the Oil/Acrylic category. His series of surreal landscapes seemed to generate light, with layer upon layer, hue upon hue, golden, subtly defined shapes.
In the booth next to Currier, his wife, Susan, displayed her work and the First Place award she had received in the Jewelry category, in her first outing at the Vero show.
Susan started as an abstract painter and came to jewelry making only recently. Her pieces often feature discs about an inch in diameter, of metal, enamel or semi-precious stones, presented singly or several in a neck piece, each disk embellished, like the delicate center of a flower, with curved silver droplets. She also makes the chains, of sterling silver, and other pieces are long, curving leaf forms.
“I like the organic, the natural textures.”
With a good day Friday, and a big crowd Saturday, sales, so far, seem pretty good, the artists say.
Why do people – the visitors and the artists, return to this show year after year, The answers, again and again, include words such as quality, diversity, imagination, creativity, artistry, location, organization. The artists appreciate the way they are treated. The visitors like the art and greatly appreciate – and are often surprised – that the show is free of charge.
“There is so much variety and I enjoy being out in nature, in this place,” show visitor and Vero resident Anne Talbot said. “I have several friends who are displaying here, as well, and I like to support the community. And, Up North, they’d charge for this. Here – it’s free.”
Another local, Joan Fox, has been coming to Under the Oaks for years and says it just seems to keep getting better.
“This is one of the best. (The exhibits) really have the quality,” she said.
As the show has grown in popularity and size over the years, so has the challenge of traffic and parking, especially when other park and Riverside Theatre events are also taking place. Vero Beach Police Department officers are assigned to direct the flow and, this year for the first time the Art Club had the entire beanfield “striped” to help the parking staff neatly stuff as many vehicles as possibly into the grassy expanse. At 9:30 Saturday morning, the paved lot along the park road was full and 100 or so cars had been parked in the beanfield. Officer Chuck Moran said the striping seemed to help, and, by noon, the field was full, with hundreds of cars in neat, space-conserving rows. The midday art show traffic arriving and leaving, was heavy but moving along. The challenge would come Sunday, with a scheduled matinee of “The Music Man.”
