SEBASTIAN — Roberto “Pasta” Pantaleo knows that forging a thriving arts community is about more than offering great paintings for collectors to buy, so he hopes to create an “artsy vibe” in the heart of historic downtown Sebastian with his new gallery of marine life art.
Just like fishing the deep blue waters for the sailfish and tarpon that he paints, Pantaleo said being a successful full-time artist is a matter of timing.
He hopes his arrival in Sebastian is part of the area’s economic revival.
Across the parking lot, a new pub, the Beach House, is set to open soon.
Good things are happening, he said, because Sebastian is ripe for it.
“Everything is in cycles. Sebastian, like any waterfront community has had its low points, but I might be catching it at the right time,” Pantaleo said. “You can’t hold waterfront property down for long.”
Sebastian was a natural fit for this award-winning artist.
He opened his first gallery, “Keys to Life” in Islamorada a decade ago, and his first signature gallery in Islamorada’s Morada Way Arts and Cultural District in September 2010.
Not only is Sebastian a commercial fishing community with a burgeoning arts scene, it’s also the home of Pantaleo’s long-time chum John Klein who manages the Sebastian gallery.
“John lives here in Sebastian. He is my fishing buddy and a really good friend, we’re like brothers and he had been asking me to come up here and see Sebastian,” Pantaleo said. “I like it here, with the riverfront and it’s a little bit honky-tonk. I ride motorcycles and I like Earl’s and the atmosphere here in Sebastian.”
For the record, the nickname Pasta has nothing to do with his art, or even with food for that matter. It goes way back to Pantaleo’s childhood, back to when he first became fascinated with fish and other marine life.
“Growing up as a kid in Brooklyn with a name like Pantaleo, they just started calling him Pasta and it stuck,”
said friend Daniela Woody, who drove up from the Keys to help Pantaleo celebrate. Klein and Pantaleo hosted about 150 people – including a loyal contingent of Islamorada artists and the Village Vice Mayor Ted Blackburn and his wife, Sara.
The party was still going strong at its scheduled end time of 9:30 p.m. and ran about another hour until guests began to turn in for the night.
The event brought together live music, wine, a sampling of cuisine from local restaurants and, of course, the gallery’s paintings and sculpture as well as art-crafted collectors’ knives.
Woody works with dozens of artists throughout the Florida Keys to market their art.
She said Pantaleo has a national following, but that his paintings are especially coveted by Floridians who love to fish and want high-quality depictions of marine life gracing the walls of their homes and offices.
“He turns marine life into fine art, and it’s rare for an artist to have so many different styles of painting. He paints according to his mood,” she said, adding that she thinks Sebastian and Vero Beach art enthusiasts who have not yet discovered Pantaleo’s art while on holiday to the Keys will appreciate it and become collectors when they visit their new neighborhood gallery.
The Oct. 6 opening was only the beginning of this month’s excitement for Pantaleo, as he last week was honored at Sea World Orlando by the Coastal Conservation Association as the organization’s Artist of the Year at its annual banquet.
Recently, Pantaleo was also recognized by artists Wyland and Guy Harvey and photographer Bob Talbot with a spot on their Ocean Artists’ Society Top 100 Artists list.
For the past four years running he’s been Inshore Artist of the Year by the International Game Fish Association.
Woody said those accolades are well deserved, as the quality of Pantaleo’s paintings have earned him a large following, even among the toughest marine- life art customers.
“The fishermen collect his art, because he gets it exactly right, the turn of the mouth on that tarpon,” she said, pointing at a painting in the gallery. “The fishermen would know if that didn’t look exactly right.”
Pantaleo doesn’t paint from photographs of game fish, but instead from his own mental images of the real thing.
He researches the various species by getting in a boat and tossing out a line with some of the best fishing guides in the Florida Keys.
He knows what the fish look like because he catches them and sees them caught.
He said the colors, the light and the natural beauty of the Keys inspire not only him, but many other artists to paint the wildlife.
“It’s a game fish Mecca,” Pantaleo said in a video interview in August. “Myself and a dozen other artists have spent our life producing game fish art.”
What makes Pantaleo’s paintings unique is that most of them do not simply depict a static image of the marine life, but instead they seem to capture the fish in action.
The interplay of the color and refracted light give the impression that the fish is alive and swimming underwater.
Twenty-two large-scale paintings and Giclée prints hang in the Sebastian gallery, with original paintings running in the neighborhood of $3,000 to $7,500, Glicée prints are available for $750 to $3,000 and smaller art prints are more affordable at $150 to $200.
Located in the Village Square cluster of shops, offices and restaurants, the gallery is set in a place where it’s almost impossible not to peek in the windows and take a leisurely walk to see what’s around the corner.
The plaza already lists a photographer and an interior design studio among its shopkeepers.
If Pantaleo’s gallery encourages other artists to set up shop there, Village Square would be ideal for the type of art strolls Pantaleo started in Islamorada.
“It looks like it has a lot of potential to be the next vibey little community,” Pantaleo said.
The quaint shopping district is ready-made and just needs the artists to move in. In Islamorada, Pantaleo and his artist friends created an arts district the other way around – basically from scratch with three existing art galleries on a stretch of the Overseas Highway.
“Now the artists want to come to the area because we brought a vibe,” Pantaleo said.
He and a handful of compatriots founded the Morada Way Arts and Cultural District, which hosts successful monthly events called Third Thursday Walkabouts, which attract up to 2,000 people during high season.
They built it by changing the mindset of the local artists, investing in advertising and having the faith to stick with it through thick and thin.
“No one was open late, but that’s when the restaurants were open. I’m a big proponent of opening late,” he said. “You can sit there all day on a pretty day and not see anyone because that’s when people are outside or out on the water.”
So they opened up one Thursday evening a month and invited the locals and tourists alike to stop by.
“I told them we have to do this for a whole 12 months, that we do it ‘till it hurts, in and out of season even if it kills us. There’s no crying in art,” he said. “You have to do it initially with a small group of dedicated people and you have to invest some time and some money. We each put $100 per month for advertising, road signs and some good bands and over time it caught on.”
In October, Woody said the walkabout event will feature a live painting demonstration by Pantaleo where he will paint marine life on an automobile.
In January, Morada Way will host its second juried art show with paid admission.
For now, Pantaleo said he’s in Sebastian to join what’s already going on in the arts scene, to get to know the artists and to learn about what possibilities may be out there for Sebastian to raise awareness about its fine arts community.
He’s already joined the Sebastian River Area Chamber of Commerce, the Cultural Council of Indian River County and the Brevard Cultural Alliance.
“I have talked to a lot of people who are glad we’re here and I’ve made a lot of good connections,” Pantaleo said. “Any time you have a team and you get another good player, everybody else wants to play better. Everyone chips in with ideas, with time and with money.”
Woody said some aspect of art education might be in the plan for Pantaleo’s new gallery.
“He loves to teach children,” she said.
The Pasta Pantaleo Signature Gallery is located at 930 Village Square Dr. just off U.S. 1 in Sebastian.
Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays and by appointment.
For more information, call John Klein at (772) 913-2580.