The mission of the A+Art Committee of the Cultural Arts Alliance is to showcase members’ work at the South Walton Center of Northwest Florida State College, in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. I co-chair the A+Art Committee with Robin Wiesneth. Our next exhibit will be titled “One Size Fits All”. We have purchased 10? x 10? x 1.5? cradled wood panels, and we will sell them to members at the bargain price of 2 for $10. Members then may use any media to make 2 works of art which then will be offered for sale at the exhibit, each piece selling for $100.
Within our community, a group of women artists, most of them members of the Cultural Arts Alliance, meet once a month for potluck dinner and Show-and-Tell, where they each are allotted 5 minutes to talk about two pieces of their art. The creativity is astounding, everything from traditional paintings to book creation, to doll-making, to sculpture, weaving, and this past Monday, artist Nancy Williams even brought her art car, Nippy Thelma! I bought a few cradled wood panels in advance of our large order for A+Art, and offered them to a few members of the A+Art Committee to see if we could present them at Show-and-Tell as samples for the exhibit. I took two of the panels, and primed and under-painted them in preparation for a couple of sweet sunset scenes, but at the last minute, I changed my mind and decided to paint two apples. By last minute, I mean literally, under the gun, the Sunday afternoon before the Monday of the potluck dinner meeting.
I had fun and success with the first panel, and sent a picture of it to my best friend / budding artist Leslie Kolovich, to entice her to come to my studio and try her hand at oil painting, while I painted the second panel. She pretty well floored herself with her results, painting a nectarine, and her photo of it has gotten 68 “likes” on her Facebook page! I myself am thrilled! It is so rare to “teach” someone who “gets it” the first time you show them a technique, who can immediately translate it into their own expression. Below right, “Nectarine”, her first oil painting, by Leslie Kolovich!
