VERO BEACH — The Main Street Vero Beach (MSVB) Gallery has Dual Featured Artists for September premiering at the First Friday Gallery Stroll on Sept. 6 from 5-8 p.m.
“Husband and wife team Marcia and Dick Robertson have dynamically different art forms and techniques that will make for a doubly great show,” explained Tammy Adams, MSVB Executive Director.
The First Friday Gallery Stroll is one of historic downtown’s regular events helping to rekindle community pride and focus on the ever more exciting downtown environment.
The galleries along 14th Ave. in the Arts District provide refreshments and nibbles and feature the creativity of numerous local artists.
“It’s a great evening to see fresh, new art, meet the artists, visit with friends, and have a delicious dinner at any number of fine restaurants located downtown,” Adams said.
Marcia and Dick owned a high quality portrait studio, “ING-JOHN PORTRAITURE” in Stamford, CT, for 42 years. Dick specialized in family groups on location, children, executive portraits, and exquisite black and white prebridal portraits. Marcia did all the retouching and finishing of the portraits.
After 42 years, Dick retired. They moved to Florida, but he never gave up his love of photography and helping others. He gives back by helping the Indian River Camera Club with judging and giving programs and volunteers at the Palm Beach Photo Center in West Palm Beach.
While enjoying the challenge of Fine Art Photography in the digital world now, Dick’s latest venture is producing carbon transfer prints using the process that was brought to America in 1864 from England during the Civil War.
He learned the process while attending The Large Format Photographers of New England Collective.
“It is one of the most beautiful of all photographic processes. Carbon prints are capable of a wide range of image characteristics; they can be virtually any color or tone, and the image can be placed on a variety of surfaces.
It is the most stable of all photographic processes made today. The process uses India ink, sugar, Knox gelatin, alcohol, hot water develops the picture, and cold water fixes it. It is all done without a darkroom, over the kitchen sink,” Dick explained.
He has taken pictures at various Civil War Sites and made carbon prints of them, in keeping with the times of the process.
After their seven children left the nest, Marcia was able to focus on her art taking classes in botanical illustration and wildlife art from the New York Botanical Gardens and from various, wonderful teachers in Vero Beach.
Enjoying various mediums, flowers are still her favorite subjects to paint either in bold oils or watercolors and scratchboard. Scratchboard is a technique to create a drawing using sharp tools, including straight pins and Exacto knives, to scratch and etch through to white clay board covered with India Ink.
Shadows and highlights are created through the removal process rather than adding color or ink. Once the image is created, then colored ink can be added, and you repeat the scratching process to redo the highlights.
“I took 2nd place from the Cultural Council at the old government headquarters, and a 1st in the 2011 Art by the Sea from the Vero Beach Art Club for my scratchboard of ‘The Hunter,’ a leopard hiding under foliage,” Marcia said proudly.
“My entry for 2012 is a much more complex design of four jaguars going for their “Morning Swim” on a white clay board instead of an all black clay board,” she added.
Main Street Vero Beach Studios & Gallery is a collective leasing space for artists to create, feature, and sell their work.
Artists presently include Leigh Bennett, Zentangle Meditative Drawing/Intuitive Painting; Bob “Laff” & Leslie Lafferandre, Etchings & Calligraphy; Alice McKenna, Fun Jewelry Design; Ned Noland, Old Florida Landscapes; and Sharon Wilson, Fine Jewelry Design.
