Charlotte County Florida Weekly

Winners awarded at SBDAC Florida exhibition




Daniel Jensen’s “Summer Clouds Over the Pier” was awarded Best of Show. COURTESY PHOTO

Daniel Jensen’s “Summer Clouds Over the Pier” was awarded Best of Show. COURTESY PHOTO

You stare at the man.

The man stares back at you.

He’s holding a beer in his right hand and a gator in his left.

He’s wearing what looks like a T-shirt with the state of Florida on it, and a green hat that says, “Florida Man,” with a silhouette of a profile of a nude woman, an image most often seen on certain truck mud flaps.

Poinciana trees bloom riotously behind him.

Also in the background: a Skunk Ape, and, in the sky, a tiny flying saucer.

You recognize him instantly.

It’s Florida Man.

Julie Paul Obrey’s acrylic painting, “Homosapiens Floridiansis,” is part of “The Road to Florida” exhibit which was featured at the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center in downtown Fort Myers.

The juried art show asked artists to respond visually to the question, “What brought you to Florida?”

Unlike Ms. Obrey, a sixth-generation Floridian, many of the artists are transplants.

The subject matter’s what you’d expect: beach scenes, shells, birds and even some mermaids. There are also images of manatees, Disney World and a Daytona sports car race. Most are paintings or photographs, with some multi-media and three-dimensional pieces.

Sarah Kate Young’s “Piece the Egret” won the SBDAC Award. COURTESY PHOTO

Sarah Kate Young’s “Piece the Egret” won the SBDAC Award. COURTESY PHOTO

While some are conventional and just pretty, others are more creative in composition, presentation and material.

For example, Richard Plummer’s three works, “Mantanzas Passt” (sic), “Bonita Beach Entrance” and “Redleg’s Beach,” composite material on aluminum, are somewhat abstracted landscapes, a la Hockney, Diebenkorn or Thiebaud. In “Redleg’s Beach,” the three-dimensional mangroves with a red maze of roots on one side of the image contrasts with the marbleized crashing waves of the shore on the right. His unexpected use of material is creative, never gimmicky.

There’s also Randall Post’s sculptures. “Sunbathed Mother Nature,” which the artist refers to as a “steampunk/floor sculpture,” shows a nude female mannequin wearing a 1950s Coast Guard beret, standing next to a cross. She is cut in half by a motorized surfboard. Her right hand holds a gas pump whose hose is connected to her left shoulder.

Another of his pieces, “Swan-Knee River,” is the front of a Model T Ford with a chrome swan radiator cap. The hood of the car is folded up, revealing an empty wooden chest.

Jessica Osceola’s “You Are Here” is mainly textile: two colorful Seminole outfits, a man’s jacket and a woman’s dress and cape, placed on a large red dot to symbolize the dot on a map.

Daniel Jensen’s “Summer Clouds Over the Pier,” a large, almost photo-realistic oil painting, was awarded Best of Show. It depicts a typical day at the beach, with people walking on the pier, standing in the water, sitting on the sand and staring at the water.

Two-thirds of the 60-by-48-inch painting is taken with sky and water. In Mr. Jensen’s artist’s notes, he says that he used to live in Colorado and that summer clouds are Florida’s mountain ranges.

And Sarah Kate Young’s “Piece the Egret” — an egret surrounded by subtropical flowers — won the SBDAC Award.

While some of the artists present current views, some pay tribute to the past.

Christopher Tuscan’s two oil paintings, “Nature’s Beach” and “Old Florida Fish House” look like Florida scenes from the 1940s. There’s something ineffable about his light.

And Jeff McCullers paints a scene from his childhood, a picture of old Florida’s orange groves, with his “Corkscrew Grove.” Its trees, abundant with rich, round oranges, almost seem to go on for infinity, the way days seem for a child. And the Technicolor blue sky above them holds endless possibilities. The image, he says in his artist’s statement, is of an orange grove between the Estero River and Corkscrew Road.

You can barely see the top of his grandfather’s head on a ladder on the far right. That orange grove no longer exists.

The more than 100 works by over 40 artists in this exhibit presented varying views of Florida, all as individual as the artists who created them, but universal, nonetheless.

Everyone has a Florida dream. Some of us are living it. ¦

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