Once again Gallery 14 in downtown Vero presents “Our Beautiful Waters,” a juried exhibition with a theme that includes everything people like about Florida: its beaches, birds and sea life.
This year’s show was organized by two of the gallery’s 14 owner-artists, Barbara Landry and Shelley Weltman; the full contingent of owner-artists juried the exhibition. The quality of the work submitted suggests that the jurors’ job was pretty easy. Out of 93 artworks submitted, some 85 made the cut for display; of those, eight were awarded prizes by two invited judges. This year’s prize winners were selected by Emily and Paul Kubica. The couple own Laserchrome Technologies, a digital printing company in Melbourne.
“We have been doing a show about Florida’s waters for approximately six years,” says Dorothy Napp Schindel, an artist-owner who handles the gallery’s PR.
The annual event began as Our Beautiful Ocean, but the title changed a couple years ago to Our Beautiful Waters to include not only Florida’s ocean and gulf, marshes, rivers and lagoons, but also the lakes and springs of the state’s interior. The wildlife dependent on those habitats is often featured.
In the past the show has been a fundraiser for charities that included Harbor Branch Oceanographic, ORCA (Ocean Research Conservation Association) and the Environmental Learning Center. Artists have turned over part of the proceeds of any sales of their works to those efforts.
This year, however, marks the first that Our Beautiful Waters is not being presented as a fundraiser. The competitive exhibition will instead be a way for Gallery 14 “to give more back to the artists who look forward to showing their work at Gallery 14,” says Beautiful Waters chairperson Barbara Landry.
Landry notes that the prizes awarded by the judges are a bit more interesting this year. Best in Show honored its winner with a Laserchrome digital capture and reproduction of the artist’s work, a prize Landry says is worth an estimated $250. First-, second- and third-place awardees respectively earned checks for $200, $100 and $75. In addition, merit awards of $50 were awarded to three artists this year.
In addition to distributing prizes at the Nov. 2 reception, this year the judges presented their points of view on the award selections to the assembled throng.
“These moments were very meaningful to the artists and well received by attendees,” says Landry.
For Shelley Weltman, one of those moments was tearful.
“My heart took a leap when they announced a merit award for Kathleen Staiger,” she says.
Gravely ill, Staiger was not present to receive the award, which was her last. The highly-regarded artist and teacher died two days later, on Dec. 4. She learned of the award in her final hours.
Staiger is represented in the current show by two abstract oil paintings. “Dawn Reef,” with its shining palette of translucent blues, pink, orange and yellow was the prizewinner. “Celebration,” painted in similar colors and the more abstract of the two, is a breezier composition whose gestural markings – comet-like streaks of cadmium orange – fly through a patchwork atmosphere of blue on blue.
Landry says the judges, for whom the artworks were identified by entry numbers and not the artists’ names, were particularly moved by the ethereal “Dawn Reef.”
“It really evokes emotion,” they told her.
The jurors Kubica awarded Best in Show to Paul Davis for his oil painting “Tidal Water Rest.” Executed in Davis’ signature glazing technique, the work depicts a spectral sailboat gliding through deep water.
First place went to Melbourne artist Sandy Johnson for her pastel painting “An Indian River Morning.” The atmospheric work shows orange clouds towering above the Indian River; distant condos glint redly on the lagoon’s far edge. A member of the Pastel Society of America, Johnson has two other works in the show.
Marie Morrisey took second place for “The Hunt,” a sculpture created from a large carved and painted gourd. It depicts a soaring osprey homing in on some tasty fish that appear just over the gourd’s horizon. The ingenuity of the design, which incorporates sculpted clay for the 3-D details in bird and fish, has to be seen to be properly appreciated. Another of Morrow’s gourd sculptures, “Night Dive” shows an octopus clinging to a whimsically painted “coral” gourd whose surface, punctuated with tiny holes, emits light from a bulb hidden within it. Coral skeletons, driftwood and shells complete the underwater tableau.
The watercolor “Manatee Heaven II” earned Port St. Lucie’s Luduine Bekmann third place. In that composition, a lone angelfish plays hide and seek in a crowd of manatees. The somber gray mass is enlivened by red ribbons of seagrass that snake through the group.
In addition to Kathleen Staiger, merit awards honored Diane Feuer for her green-white-and-blue-striated glass charger, and Mike Ricciardi for “Beauty and the Beast,” a photograph of a bristling lionfish before a living branch of coral.
An additional prize judged by the artist-owners of Gallery 14 was also presented. The Gallery Choice Award went to Eduardo Uttridge for his bentwood kinetic sculpture “Infinity.”
Like previous juried shows at Gallery 14, this one is chock full of delightful artworks.
Brent Greene’s “Stan the Lagoon Keeper” is a fishy-looking personage made of palm frond ribs and bases with detritus details culled from Greene’s yard. Mounted head-high on a metal stand, Stan looks you straight in the eye and dares you not to laugh first.
Margaret Goembel, celebrated in these parts for her assemblages of feathers, shells, coral, driftwood and jetsam that she finds on the beach, has two works in the show. “Beach Blondes II” is named for the sun-bleached objects she used in it, including bamboo, a length of sisal rope, sand and surf-battered seashells. Her “Folkestone” is more of the same, in rosy tones. Nestled among the sand and shells in that one are such items as a pair of old-fashioned faucet handles, a weathered wood clothespin and, at the composition’s center, a small skeleton key and a gull’s feather.
Animal subjects abound in the show. Of particular note are “Pelican Prince” by Christopher Domis, whose lovingly-detailed bird is limned in scratchboard; and “Ocean Embrace” by Susan Todd Martin, a pointillist painting of a sea turtle baby afloat in curlicue waves is irresistibly cute. Lora Ann Connelly’s oil painting “My Buddies” depicts five royal terns standing on the sand; their stern expressions might remind you of a disgruntled family on a day too chilly for the beach.
For sheer beauty, Susan Hale’s watercolors “Quiet Storm” and “Of Two Worlds” were remarkable, as was Elise Weinrich Geary’s oil painting “Moonlight Water.” The fluidity with which these artists handle their respective media is a natural as the rhythm of the tides.
Our Beautiful Waters continues through December.