Roger Burleigh of Green Gloves Garden Center
By Tobin Bennison 

Twenty-seven years ago, opening a nursery and landscaping company was probably the last thing on Roger Burleigh’s mind. Back then, skateboarding and BMX occupied most of his thoughts. The half-pipe he built in the backyard of his family’s Merritt Island home attracted Cocoa Beach groms like John Mayo and the Slater brothers, so it’s no wonder he soon added surfing to his list of consuming interests.

Burleigh remembers his mother, who was then a librarian at Tropical Elementary, taking him to 2nd Light almost every day and doing her schoolwork in the car while he surfed until dark. “My parents were in the process of splitting up, so I asked Mom if we could move to the beach,” he says. “In the summer of ’86 we were beach-bound.” So began a love affair with the beach that continues to this day.

Though he still surfs with a passion, Burleigh found a new way of expressing his enthusiasm for the beachside a little over one year ago. Through Green Gloves, the multi-faceted garden center he opened in August 2010, Burleigh and his crew cater to a variety of local landscaping needs. More than just a plant nursery, Green Gloves offers a wide range of landscaping and installation services — from trees and low-voltage lighting to full irrigation systems and decorative water features — and custom-builds outdoor furniture and garden structures like pergolas, pagodas, arbors, and unique trellises.

“We also offer bulk mulch on demand to our customers,” says Burleigh. “If you need five yards of mulch, we can have it delivered. If you need decorative rock instead of mulch, we can have it delivered and install it, too. We also have access to topsoils, potting soils, and pallets of sod on demand. We do brick paver walkways, decks, and driveways, and offer installation of the plants bought from our store. If we don’t have the plant you’re in search of, we can get it for you. And we deliver free to all our local customers.”

Since opening, Green Gloves has been warmly welcomed by the community. Much of its success is due to Burleigh’s landscaping and business skills, both of which he learned relatively late in life.

After graduating from Cocoa Beach High in 1987, Burleigh went to BCC in an effort to “figure things out.” “Not much was figured out there,” he laughs. “Afterwards, I found myself in the restaurant biz bartending for a good bit of 10 years until I was approached by one of the real estate brokers in town. ‘Romo,’ they call him. He took me under his wing and taught me a lot about the business. I learned that ethics was a huge part of real estate, and I continue to use those ideas in my business today.”

The idea for Green Gloves came to Burleigh while designing and installing landscapes with friend Shelley McKinney. “We didn’t get very far because it was a lot of work for the two of us,” Burleigh remembers. “In the meantime, Shelley bought a property on Pineapple in Melbourne, with plans to open a retail nursery and gift store. She was having issues with the City to change the zoning. I mentioned to her about a property in Cocoa Beach that was available and an easy opening. It was once a nursery for 25-plus years. They sold plants and had an outdoor power equipment shop that did quite well back in the ’80s. Shelley wanted to make things work where she was and she finally got her store open. It’s now called Elbow Creek.”

“I kept thinking about how there wasn’t a plant nursery in town and how much we could use one here in Cocoa Beach. I showed my parents the property and they were more excited about it than I was. It seemed like a great idea, and wouldn’t you know it, it was. It’s a lot of work with all the different projects we have going on, but it’s an interesting way of life. We’ve had a lot of local support that we greatly appreciate. It’s tough to meet everyone’s needs, but we certainly try to go the extra mile to keep our customers happy.”

Green Gloves is also built on a solid foundation of advice and help from friends, one of whom, Jerry O’Shea, put Burleigh on his landscaping crew back in the ’80s. “That was a fun job that I actually liked doing,” Burliegh recalls. “Other than that, I didn’t have a whole lot of experience. I was fortunate enough to meet a couple who own a nursery in Lake Washington, Bryan and Colleen. They’re true horticulturists who know a heck of a lot to do with landscaping. Bryan basically took me under his wing and mentored me for the first solid
year. I still call on them every week for advice and to see if they have plants I’m in need of for a customer.”

Thanks to them, and furniture designer and artist Don E. Scroggs, Burleigh has come to regard landscaping as more of an art than a profession. “You have to have an eye for it or learn to develop the eye for it. Bryan, Colleen, and Jerry have all given me a lot of advice in this department. I also couldn’t have done this without Don. I think I’m starting to catch on,” he says modestly. “I tend to look at landscaping on a whole different level now that I’m in the business. If I see a kick-ass landscaped house, I’ll stop and take a closer look and take some pictures for future reference.”

Photos are a big part of each project’s initial approach. “We offer to come to the customer’s house to see what their property looks like, take photographs, and create what the property could look like once the landscaping is complete,” Burleigh explains. “We use the photograph with a landscape program that allows us to install plants in the areas of interest. This helps put the customer’s mind in the right direction. We offer them different ideas about Florida landscaping, but we also want to know what they think of their neighbor’s landscape. We can get pretty close to what they’re after once we’ve settled on their the likes and dislikes.”

Burleigh has also seen his fair share of challenges, something he always welcomes. “The biggest challenge was the first job, the Cocoa Beach Community Church addition. We were so very blessed to have the opportunity to tackle that job. I think there’s a challenge in all landscaping jobs. Every job calls for a different need and everyone has different taste. But we like tackling problems. We had a customer who wanted a beach in their backyard. That was a fun challenge. That one had tons of coquina rock and crushed coquina and beautiful white sand like you see on the Gulf Coast.”

Back at the nursery, Burleigh stands amid a verdant burst of herb and vegetable plants, unusual succulents, and beautiful, brief-blooming Apostle’s Iris, musing on the power of plants. “The best thing about this business would probably be the common love for plants that we all share,” he says. “They’re all around us and they are a gift from the higher power. We are so very fortunate to live in a place where we can enjoy the beautiful colors they provide us with.”

Green Gloves Garden Center is located at 160 S. Orlando Ave (just south of City Hall) in Cocoa Beach. They’re open from 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, and 9 a.m. to “2ish” on Sunday. Call 403-4390, or log on to: www.greenglovesgardencenter.com

Terri McCutchan
• Tobin Bennison •

For Cocoa Beach artist Terri McCutchan, nature is “God’s palette,” a gift to be appreciated in all its forms.

Terri was born in Miami to parents who encouraged her creativity from the start. Her mother, an artist herself, was particularly supportive of her interests, and it was she who taught Terri to see art in everything around her. To this day, Terri credits her mother with opening her eyes to the boundless beauty of nature, and her work is still informed to some extent by the landscape and architecture of Miami and the Keys.

Terri’s first after-school job was a position at the University of Miami’s Art Museum. “I was invited by the art instructor to help assist her with the pre-school art program,” she says. “This was my first up-close experience with a gallery and it was love at first sight. I knew back then that I always wanted art to be a part of my life.”

In 1984, at the age of 15, Terri and her family moved to Brevard. In college, she majored in art while working part-time in the graphic arts department at the Florida Solar Energy Center. During this period, she also found time to volunteer with an art therapist who worked with the elderly, many of whom struggled with Alzheimer’s. It was an experience that
opened Terri’s eyes to the healing properties of art, but one that also pulled her in a new direction.

“It was at that point that the spirit led me on a different career path into the nursing profession,” she says. “My art was put on hold for a time in my life when my husband and I were also blessed with the gift of parenthood and our children. Being a full-time mom and part-time nurse was the priority.”

A few years ago, Terri’s husband created a studio space for her in their garage and encouraged her to pick up her paint brush again. Once she did, she fell in love with painting all over again and knew she needed art back in her life. Now it’s the beauty of Cocoa Beach that inspires her.

“Living by the ocean and being surrounded by all the vibrant natural beauty of the barrier islands is such an inspiration for my art,” Terri tells me. “Painting is my passion. It frees my spirit to feel one with God’s abundant beauty in nature.”

“It’s still a challenge to make the choice to let go and carve time out of my busy schedule to paint,” she admits. “But when I do pick up my paint brush, I know I made the right choice. My artwork is what helps keep me balanced. It refreshes me, and I feel so connected to God and his amazing energy in our environment.”

Terri also says that once she starts painting, her mind shifts to “a very personal space” where outward distractions seem far away. “I wear hearing aids and usually remove them to enjoy the quiet. Painting to me is a lot like meditation. It enables me to slow down, center myself, and see with a different awareness.”

Many of her current paintings are acrylic or oil translations of personal photographs that capture this sense of heightened consciousness. Beginning with several rough sketches, Terri then combines them until the composition feels right. “I will do a slight sketch directly on my canvas, then just dive into the canvas with my paint. Usually, before I finish one painting I’m already throwing ideas around in my head about what to do next. The interesting part is taking an initial idea, developing your own interpretation, and then seeing if they develop and change as you work through the piece. The end result is usually somewhat different than how I first envisioned it.”

Two paintings that best represent Terri’s technique and vision also happen to be among her personal favorites. The first, called “Livin’ Easy,” was inspired by a photograph she I took of her bicycle on the boardwalk at Lori Wilson Park. “Riding my bike on Cocoa Beach has always been a great way to spend a lazy afternoon,” she explains.

The other, “Summer Breeze,” stems from a snapshot Terri took at Rockledge Gardens. “The pathway leading you into the painting is so inviting. I gave the owners of the Gardens a print as a gift and they told me that the big coconut palm in the painting actually wasn’t there anymore,” she recalls. “It had been lost to a winter frost. So I felt it was cool to have captured the palm while it was once still a part of the landscape.”

Over the past year, Terri has been honing her technique by working with Renee Decator, one of her favorite local artists. From Decator, she’s learned about using complimentary hues and working from a limited palette of color. The lessons help challenge Terri to enhance her current style. “I’ve learned that being in the presence of other artists is very important to nurture your creative side,” she says.

As a member of the Brevard Cultural Alliance and part of their ongoing “Art in Public Places” initiative, Terri has displayed her work at Holmes Regional Medical Center and Space Coast Cancer Centers in Merritt Island and Titusville. Recently, she was also invited to participate in the Fifth Ave. Art Gallery’s “All 4 Love” charity exhibit, the proceeds from which went to the local Sentinels for Freedom, which provides assistance to soldiers returning home with life changing injuries. Throughout November, a collection of Terri’s work will be on display in the Cocoa Beach Library.

To view more of Terri’s work, visit www.terriartwork.com

Ryan Speer
Tobin Bennison 

Unlike most artists who adopt aliases, Ryan Speer came up with his “Speerbot” character as a way to unite rather than separate his creative and private selves.

Conceived, according to legend, after Speer decapitated himself in a freak X-Acto blade accident while racing to complete an art project at UF, Speerbot is a capsule-like robot outfitted with Speer’s fortuitously preserved head.

But for the Satellite Beach-based artist, the character is neither a clever marketing gimmick nor an alter ego he feels safe hiding behind. Speer is Speerbot, and vice versa, and the human-machine hybrid was born out of Speer’s desire to embrace a pursuit he’d long resisted.

“As a kid I used to draw comic book characters, build animals out of clay, and basically anything else creative I could get my hands on,” Speer says, “but I didn’t really have much of an awareness of myself as an ‘artist.’ It wasn’t until I enrolled in the Fine Arts program at the University of Florida that I started to gradually become aware of this whole different world where you could sit around and take this sort of thing seriously.”

Even then, however, Speer existed on the periphery of the arts scene there due to a keener interest in partying. “Even though I was starting to explore my identity as an artist, I was never fully immersed,” he admits.

After graduating and moving back to Brevard, Speer became the creative director for 321 Agency, a Melbourne-based marketing firm. During this period, he describes himself as having “stumbled” back into art — that is, the kind of art Speer defines as “a direct reflection of self,” as opposed to the more detached approach graphic design requires.

“I loved the idea of being an artist, but I didn’t consider myself one,” Speer tells me. “Over the years, we (321) produced several art shows and the first, ‘The Fine Line,’ is when I started meeting a lot of the local artists around town — Derek Gores, Cliffton Chandler, Christopher Maslow, Jeffrey Noble, Matt Noble, Casey DeCotis, John Sluder, Dave Burton. The time period between ‘The Fine Line’ and the two subsequent ‘Robot Love’ art shows was when I first really started exploring art as much more than just class assignments.”

“Before I met those artists, art was something ‘other’ people did,” Speer continues. “As a kid and into my teens, I hardly showed anyone the art I produced. I wouldn’t say I was embarrassed of being creative, but I guess there was some sort of realization that something was somehow different about how my brain processed information. Meeting other people who were just as bizarre as me was what really unlocked the desire to take the creative things I had always been doing out of compulsion and to assign a purpose to art, which is for the artist to share his or her own uniquely screwed up way of looking at the world. That’s what makes art interesting to me — sharing your subconscious and being brave enough to admit how screwed up the stuff going on inside there is. We all know we have this repressed chaos hiding inside us; artists just have the guts to admit it, and even beyond that, to turn it into something they are actually proud of.”

For Speer, that proud moment came in 2010, when he created an intricate sculpture of Speerbot for the well-received “Robot Love v.2.0″ exhibition. Called “Speerbot in Its Natural Habitat,” it’s a piece Speer considers to be one of his crowning artistic achievements, and one he now regards as the physical manifestation of a strained time for him, both as an artist and professional designer.

“That Speerbot sculpture is a very important piece for me personally,” he tells me. “‘Robot Love v.2.0′ was an interesting time for me and everyone else involved. For many reasons it was a very tumultuous time, but it was also a huge turning point in my life. To be quite melodramatic, the Speerbot sculpture is a physical manifestation of this turning point.”

Up to that point, Speerbot was simply a sketch he’d doodle from time to time. After parting ways with 321 Agency, the character became something much more. Recalling the sculpture, Speer describes the “nature-meets-warehouse” scenery surrounding Speerbot. “(There were) little birds made out of newspaper and metal wire suspended high up in the air, grass and sticks I found in the back alley, and a dead tree. We used a massive scissor lift to suspend the tree from the concrete walls and ceiling beams … it must have been 20 to 30 feet tall once it was done. In a very weird way, the sculpture itself became like a living thing. My girlfriend’s daughter used to put a blanket over him at night to keep him warm!”

Now a freelance creative director, Speer uses “Speerbot” as the name for his graphic design company. It’s also the alias under which he creates the imaginative art he once kept separate from his professional life. As Speerbot then, Speer has come full circle with a diverse range of skills at his disposal. As well as being a talented illustrator, designer and musician, he’s also adept with photography, videography and music production, making him well suited to approach design problems from several different angles.

“A vague solution to a problem can sometimes be seen through the haze,” Speer says, “but usually by the time I’ve reached the final destination, I’m surprised by what I find. Each project is a brand new start, and because I never limit myself to certain materials or artistic style, the process is usually a unique process of excruciatingly rewarding trial by error. Each creation is a completely fresh challenge.”

See Ryan Speer’s work online at: www.speerbot.com. You can also see some of his art in the flesh at The Standard Collective in Melbourne Square Mall.

Dr. Donna Ragona
Tobin Bennison

For many, medicine and art reside at opposite ends of the disciplinary spectrum. For Donna Ragona, the two share more natural similarities than dictated differences.

As a veterinarian, Dr. Ragona practices integrative medicine at her newly opened Animal Wellness Center in Cocoa Village. By blending conventional Western techniques with holistic Eastern alternative therapies like acupuncture, massage, Reiki, and nutritional-based treatment, she’s set a new standard for local vets.

As an accomplished artist, Donna is just as inclusive, combining classical composition with Native American symbology and a decidedly spiritual frame of reference. With animals as her principal subjects, Donna further melds her professional and artistic lives into an integral whole, one that compliments aspects of both to dissolve their limiting distinctions.

Born in Elmwood Park, Illinois, Donna always dabbled in the arts, but was especially drawn to animals and science from an early age. “The thought of becoming a veterinarian was always a dream I had,” she tells me, “however, I never pursued it until I tried other professions.”

After financing her undergraduate education by working as a sheet metal worker for the Air Force, Donna went on to become a successful kitchen and interior designer. “I enjoyed those jobs,” she says, “but they didn’t stir my spirit. I needed to to be fulfilled, and I realized that working with animals was my only true professional goal.”

Her early interest in art served her well. Financing her veterinary studies at the University of Madison by painting commissioned pieces and limited edition prints, Donna was at last able to see her dream come to fruition.

“I always turned to art as a child to fill my time,” she says. But it wasn’t until the eighth grade, under the tutelage of her abiding inspiration, art teacher Barb Wheeler. that her talents fully blossomed. “No longer did my artwork mirror the work of my fellow students. I lost myself in my work and it truly made me happy to draw. It brought me to a place where I could feel totally at ease.”

Then, as now, inspiration for Donna’s art usually begins during the wee hours of the morning. Though she admits that she has more experience with pencils and pastels, she began painting with acrylics just four years ago. “At first,” she recalls, “switching mediums terrified me. But the words of my art teacher and my children were encouraging. I try to set an example for my children. If I expect them to try new things, then I had better do it too!”

Explaining her approach to a new piece, Donna says that she first tries to conceptualize what she wants her finished product to look like. She begins by searching for reference photos and live models for source material, then pencil sketches the form before transferring it to a workable substrate. “I always start with the eyes,” she says, “because if I don’t have them right, I can’t move on.”

Ultimately, Donna is most devoted to bringing to light all the nuances of life around us we so often ignore. “The detail of a feather, the soft muzzle of a horse… This is what I think of when I have my brush on the canvas,” she tells me. “How can I bring this beauty forth?”

As far as other challenges are concerned, having enough time to devote to her practice and raising her children is the most trying. “I try to find a balance between the two because of my strong love for both. I do need to squeeze in time for my artwork too.”

“I’ve tried in the past to give up my art because sometimes it’s too much to handle everything,” she reflects. “But if I haven’t used my creative side or worked on something creative in a couple of months, I start feeling that something is missing”

Through both her veterinary practice and her art, Donna Ragona celebrates the unique human-to-animal connection. At her Animal Wellness Center in Cocoa Village (224 Forrest Ave.), Donna employs a mixture of both Western and Eastern treatments. In addition to caring for shelter animals from the Central Brevard Humane Society, she operates a mobile practice and offers client-patient educational seminars throughout the year. Call 684-7060 to schedule a visit, or log onto: www.cocoavillageawc.com. Dr. Donna is available for commissioned, original artwork through www.vetmedart.com, where you can view an extensive gallery of her creations. As an avid surfer, ocean lover, and Surfrider member, Dr. Donna will be be giving presentations on natural alternatives to animal healthcare and her paperless business practices at the Surfrider-sponsored “Green Living Fest” set to take place September 17. Check this issue’s “Word on the Street” section or visit www.spacecoastgreenlivingfest.org to learn more.

Juan Arboleda
Tobin Bennison

You wouldn’t guess it from looking at the elegant, hand-carved signs he makes, but one of Juan Arboleda’s strongest influences is French graffiti artist Christian Guémy, more popularly known by his “tag,” C125.

Granted, Guémy’s intriguing use of stencils informs Arbodela’s separate series of pop art-inspired images, but Arbodela’s interest in the visual immediacy of graffiti and traditional signage fashions an unlikely arc between the two poles.

Born in Colombia, Arbodela and his family moved to Jersey City, NJ when he was seven. He remembers always having doodled from a young age, and took up painting in high school, where he first came into contact with the abstract work of Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. “My art teacher was an abstract artist himself and introduced me to other artists he knew in SoHo,” he reflects.

While continuing to paint, Arboleda began carving decoys and shorebirds with his father-in-law in 1988 and soon after entered into an apprenticeship with sign carver Martin McNulty in Wildwood, NJ. After college, Arboleda joined the Coast Guard as a mechanic and was assigned to an icebreaker stationed in Virginia City, NC. He traveled extensively throughout his two-year stint, often sketching sights and subjects in his cabin. “When I wasn’t working, eating, or sleeping I was drawing,” he says. “It helped kill the time.”

Arboleda particularly relished visiting European ports of call, where he picked up art books on the Old Masters and contemporary movements. “I’d get back on the boat and try to emulate the different techniques,” he tells me. It was after visiting these cities that he developed an affinity for Paul Klee and Cuban abstract artist Wilfredo Lam.

Settling back in Wildwood after being discharged, Arboleda continued making signs on the side to supplement his income as a mechanic. After his teacher McNulty passed away, Aroboleda took on his sign business part-time, honing the techniques that make the North Eastern varieties such distinct examples of a long and august tradition.

Since he moved to Merritt Island in 2004 with his wife Sherry and sons Corban and Nick, Arboleda has continued to create the hand-carved, gold-leaf signs that first earned him fame in back in New Jersey. Go to places like Nutley, Arboleda advises, and you’ll see why these gilded Victorian signs are considered art forms unto themselves. Often, the signs are just as important a part of the urban landscape as the old restaurants and bed and breakfast inns they indicate.

Working with prized wood like mahogany an d redwood, which he sandblasts to bring the natural grains to the forefront, Arboleda consults with customers to develop a hand-chiseled logo before embellishing it with 23-karat gold leaf. The results of 20 years of experience have earned him a wealth of local clientele. He’s made signs for Café Surfinista, R&D Surfboards, and celebrated painters Frits Van Eeden and Heather Everett.

When he’s not juggling sign work and a position with Brevard County, Arboleda’s busy working on a new series of black-and-white stencil silhouettes of famous subjects such as Picasso and Basquiat, along with images of musicians like Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane. The bold simplicity of their form harks back to another of Arboleda’s curious influences, caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. You can see a selection of these at the Pizza Gallery in Viera starting July 24.

The opening night reception for Juan Arboleda’s black-and-white series takes place at 8 p.m., Sunday, July 24 at the Pizza Gallery (the Avenue, Viera). To commission a hand-chiseled sign from him, email: juansignart@yahoo.com

Chris McCall comes from a long line of brewers and beer enthusiasts.

Born in Phoenix, Arizona, McCall put Cocoa Beach on the microbrew map when he and his wife Tracy opened the Cocoa Beach Brewing Company here in the summer of 2008. With solid roots in the South- and Midwest, he could have easily overlooked this humble beachside town as the spot for his popular brewpub. But like so many other visitors who fall for its charms, McCall instinctively felt that Cocoa Beach was the perfect place to live out his dream.

“I’ve always liked Florida,” he says. “I came to Cocoa Beach on a side trip when I was on a family vacation to Disney World. My wife and I both immediately felt like this was home. Cocoa Beach is just different than the stereotypical Florida beach town.”

McCall, who first began brewing beer at home in 1996, had been kicking around the idea of starting his own brewpub for several years before that first visit. “When I came to Cocoa Beach everything just clicked, and I said to myself that this was the time and place to pursue my dream.”

He and Tracy had come back to Cocoa Beach several times after their first visit, checking things out and looking for the perfect place to build their brewery. Ironically, the very first building they looked at was where they ultimately opened up. However, it took about a year of looking and negotiating on other properties before the McCalls finally came full circle and chose their current location.

“My favorite beers in college were Samuel Adams and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale,” McCall reflects. “I had developed a taste for craft beers, and the idea of brewing a beer that was exactly what I wanted to drink really appealed to me. I had seen those ‘Mr. Beer’ kits and given the idea a lot of thought, but I wanted to do more than just mix some ingredients together out of cans.”

It was the passionate owner of a small homebrew shop called What Ale’s Ya in Glendale, Arizona who first helped McCall put together a recipe for a pale ale. “For being my first batch of home-brewed beer, it was pretty fantastic,” he admits. “I went back a week or so later and wanted to brew the same batch of beer again, but the owner refused to sell me the same ingredients and forced me to start experimenting with recipes. After that, I learned pretty quickly how little changes could produce different qualities in your beer and started perfecting beers to taste exactly the way I wanted them to.”

Years on, McCall’s cozy beachside brewpub offers three finely crafted beers on tap — one of which, the flagship Cocoa Beach Pale Ale, is a direct descendant of that very first specimen he brewed at home. That Pale Ale recently came away with a gold medal from the Best Florida Beer Championship, which is held yearly in Tampa. McCall’s two other entries, Not Just Some Oatmeal Stout and 888 India Pale Ale, both won silvers at the event, which judged over 100 beers in 12 categories from 30 different Florida breweries. Last year, the Cocoa Beach Brewing Co. produced 1,441 gallons of beer, and they’ve already brewed more than 1,000 gallons so far in 2011. With their recent expansion, McCall and his crew have the capacity to produce about 10,000 gallons of beer annually. All their beer is handcrafted on site.

Brewing is a very simple process that is several thousand years old. We asked McCall to explain his technique — without giving away any secrets. “Basically, malted barley is soaked and then rinsed in hot water — around 155 degrees or so. This make a very sweet, molasses-like tea which is then boiled for around an hour. During the boil, hops are added to temper the sweetness as well as add hop aroma and flavor, which can range from floral to pine or citrus-like. After that, the liquid called wort is cooled and yeast is added. Yeast eats sugar and produces alcohol and carbon dioxide. Depending on the beer style, this takes from a week to several months. After that, the beer is then basically ready to keg or bottle and serve.”

“Our recipes are always kind of in flux,” McCall tells us. “We have about 15 of them right now that we serve from time to time. We try to maintain consistency in our Cocoa Beach Pale Ale, Not Just Some Oatmeal Stout, and 888 India Pale Ale, however. All of our beers are a little bolder and hoppier than other beers. Our Cocoa Beach Pale Ale, for example, is a little too bold and hoppy to fit into the traditional guidelines for an American Pale Ale. Our India Pale Ales are off the chart. But we find that is what brings ‘hop heads’ and beer connoisseurs to us from around the world.”

And come to the Cocoa Beach Brewing Co. they do — in droves. The brewery also currently distributes bottles of Cocoa Beach Pale Ale and Not Just Some Oatmeal Stout. They’re available at ABC Fine Wine and Spirits, Total Wine and More, Downtown Produce, Sunseed Coop, the Green Turtle Market, and several other independent stores around Florida. The best way to try McCall’s beer, however, is to drop in and order one straight from the tap. Talk with other aficionados and the McCalls themselves. When you meet them, thank them profusely for making Cocoa Beach a force to be reckoned with in the world of beer.

The Cocoa Beach Brewing Company is located at 150 N. Atlantic Ave. Pub hours are Tuesday through Thursday from 1 p.m. to 9 p.m., and Fridays and Saturdays from 1 p.m. to 11 p.m. (Closed Sunday and Monday.) Call 613-2491, or visit them online at www.cocoabeachbrewingcompany.com

CHRIS BREWER

When you see Chris Brewer’s paintings for the first time, it makes perfect sense that one of his primary influences is Andy Warhol, an artist who redefined portaiture for a new generation with his affinity for deconstructing his subjects with bold swaths of color.

It makes sense, too, that Brewer borrows elements of other boundary-challenging “pop” artists like Mark Rothko, Roy Lichtenstein, Keith Haring, and Jeff Koons.

But a far more interesting influence at play in Brewer’s art comes in the form of Georgia O’Keefe. You may not detect her touch as readily as the others, but close study will reveal that Brewer learned much from her mastery of composition and color.

Originally from Ohio, Brewer, now a Cocoa Beach resident, started reproductions of O’Keefe’s work during a stint in New Mexico in the late ’90s. “There’s a buzz in the air out there that you can’t explain,” Brewer says. “It’s magical and it jump started my interest in painting.”

This time in the Southwest saw him producing abstract portraits and nudes on canvas for the first time, but Brewer says he didn’t take painting seriously until he moved to Florida a few years later. “Before, painting had been a stress reliever and hobby,” he admits. “It wasn’t until a few years ago that I really started taking it to the next level and decided I should maybe concentrate on this ‘hobby’ a little stronger.”

A chance casual acquaintance of Brewer’s got him involved in a well-received local exhibition called Robot Love 2.0. Since then, he’s been a part of several shows organized by Daytona’s Art Official Group, a collective Brewer says he’s also indebted to for discovering his work and nurturing his artistic development.

Going back further, Brewer cites his supportive grandparents and his mother — a talented photographer in her own right — for encouraging his creativity. He remembers accompanying her on hiking trips through many Ohio parks and this is where he first discovered his interest in creativity and self expression.

Brewer’s current style of painting, however, is largely influenced by photorealist portaitist Chuck Close. For Brewer’s series of music and entertainment icons, he, like Close, deconstructs the image of his subject into individual squares and organizes them into a mosaic-like grid.

“When I begin a piece with sometimes 200 squares to paint, it’s a little overwhelming,” he explains. “I paint each square individually and never two side-by-side. I don’t follow a particular pattern when painting these either. I like to work all over the canvas at first and gradually start to bring the squares together. This way, I don’t not see exactly how the painting will come together. Without following a pattern, my mind’s eye does not put the pieces together immediately, which allows the effect to be more random as opposed to following a pattern. In the end, I have one cohesive image that looks fragmented at first but once your eyes adjust, it becomes one singular focus.”

Music and my surroundings also play an integral role in Brewer’s painting process. “I usually listen to the specific music of the artist I’m painting or a particular genre of music that relates to my subject. It almost puts me in a trance and takes me into a different mindset,” he says.

Brewer’s feelings about art in general are similarly receptive. “Only the one looking at it can really describe what they’re seeing. A hundred people could look at the same painting and each describe enormous differences in what they saw or interpreted individually. My paintings are pretty explanatory, but how someone may interpret my stroke technique or my choice of color palettes could be, and I hope, are totally different. One person’s stick figure could be another person’s ‘Starry Night.’ It’s a privilege of self expression that everyone should enjoy.”

View Chris Brewer’s portfolio can be viewed online through his Facebook page. Search for “Christopher Brewer Original Art.” To contact him regarding availability and commissions email: christopherbrewer.artist@gmail.com

Boone Williams
Tobin Bennison

Recycled art is enjoying a vogue right now, but artist Boone Williams has been riding it long before it was fashionable.

Constructed from scavenged parts of destroyed and retired skateboards, Boone’s raptor-like “skate creatures” have intrigued locals since they first appeared last year at shows and events like “Robot Love,” the Close to the Edge music festival, and the traveling Bandwagon Roadshow, of which he is an active member.

A native Floridian raised in Merritt Island, Boone grew up in an artistic family. “Ever since I can remember, I’ve been exposed to art and music,” he says. “Creating and using my artistic ability has always come naturally to me.”

But Boone credits his grandmother as a primary influence. “She is one eccentric soul,” he tells me. “I always watched her artistic expressions closely growing up as a child. She is 90-years-old and still painting, and she gives me the motivation that anything is possible if you put your mind to it.”

Other inspirations include his crew at Eastwood Skate Park, particularly the supportive Chris Chambers, who Boone says collected endless amounts of broken boards to make his skate creatures come alive. Several of Boone’s donated creations have served as one-of-a-kind trophies at skate contests held at Eastwood.

Boone has been skateboarding passionately for over 25 years, but for him the sport always involved a mixture of achievement and disappointment. “Skating was always rewarding, but also quite a bummer at the same time when I’d break a skateboard from doing a trick,” he muses. “I hated to see broken boards go to waste, and being an artistic person I am, I felt the urge to come up with a way to resuscitate these broken boards to show appreciation for my passion.”

Currently, Boone reckons he has a collection of over 400 broken boards stacked up his house waiting for their transformative moment. Working as if he were piecing together a puzzle, he grabs parts and simply lets his inspiration guide him. “I just go with the flow,” he says. “If something looks good, I screw it on.”

Yet their character and the duration of their construction is also dictated by Boone’s mindset at the time. “It really depends upon my mood and whats going on in my current life. Sometimes it can take me months to really brew up an idea for a skate creature… But I also have my sporadic moments where a creature just comes to mind without even thinking of it. Generally, once I start building a sculpture it always comes together regardless within a few hours or a day or so.”

As a featured artist for the Bandwagon Roadshow, a collective of artists, musicians, and performers, Boone will be displaying his latest pieces and some old favorites at seven festivals in various cities throughout the year. He’s also shown work locally at the 321 Local art space/venue, and further north in Daytona Beach for several Art Official Group shows.

To purchase some of Boone’s skate creatures, contact him at: boonwilliams@yahoo.com. To learn more about upcoming events and shows, visit him on Facebook (www.facebook.com/pages/Artist-Boone-Williams/113670892046690?sk=info). Learn more about the Bandwagon Roadshow at: www.radiobandwagon.com

David Hale

To David Hale’s way of thinking, many of us use only a small fraction of our sensory powers.

As children, he says, we were more attuned to the language of experience. As time progresses and our lives grow busier, our perceptive abilities atrophy from neglect, and “listening” to the world around us becomes more of a chore than it should be.

For multi-talented artist Hale, listening connotes an openness to a variety of stimuli that’s unbound by aural limitations, and is a faculty that is as active as it is passive. Speaking back to life’s mysteries, Hale claims, has likewise been forgotten, and his art is his way of responding, of “thanking the mystery” for the blessings that have guided and shaped him.

“My work is about our longing for connection, to all things, and our beautiful ability to do just that, in every moment,” Hale tells me. ”Some of my works are very much personal and tell of my way of connecting… What is important is taking time to speak to the Mystery, and I hope my work reminds you how to speak, how to sing, and how to dance. We all are the children of Mother Earth and Father Sky.”

Raised in a suburb of Atlanta, Hale moved to Cocoa Beach after graduating from the University of Georgia in Athens to pursue a one-year apprenticeship with Mark Longenecker of Endless Summer Tattoo. Though currently based in Athens, Hale still has a strong connection to area, one that took root during his first visit at the age of 12. “It was the first place I ever surfed,” he recalls. “I fell in love with it immediately. I still come back a couple of times a year to do guest spots at Endless Summer, see old friends, surf if there’s swell, and enjoy the beach.” This March 12 sees the opening of a collaborative show with local artist Bruce Reynolds at Café Surfinista in downtown Cocoa Beach.

A self-described seer, Hale often depicts totemic symbols, figures, and animals (frequently birds) surrounded by tendril-like flourishes reminiscent of illuminated Moorish and East Indian texts. Through them, seeing melds with listening to create an all-inclusive sense of heightened awareness, and their mystical elements stem from his deep interest in “unseen realms.”

“When I say that I am a ‘seer,’” Hale explains, “what I mean is that rather than just looking at the world, I take time to truly see the world and worlds that are around us. It is not that I find seeing to be at all superior to looking, but I think people are wasting a vast potential by not taking the time to do so, and I am confident that we all have a gateway to that ability. That is what I hope my art can be for others. In my art, I am attempting to reclaim the sacred and the power which lies within the deepest belief in love and connectivity.”

If pressed to identify with some form of religion or belief system, Hale would define his as mysticism. ”I believe fully that there is a massive part of existence that is shut out or ignored by a large portion of the human population,” he says. “I believe that this is largely do to a educated effort to do so. I believe it has been and it continues to be the role of the artist to expose these realms and help others discover the true beauty that exist in this world and the next.”

Hale also remembers having had “psychic or prophetic dreams or visions” since a young age, something he doesn’t find to be particularly unusual. “If others would take time to recognize the potentiality of their dreams and visions, they would see the synchronicity between them and their future lives,” he says.

These ideas and beliefs are borne out in a stunning array of paintings, sketches, and tattoo designs, as well as through the resurgent medium of performance painting, which Hale has since embraced thanks to friend and colleague Kris Davidson. “Kris introduced me to performance painting… painting on stage with bands while they perform,” Hale tells me. “This also led me to working with bands on things like album art, poster design, and merchandise design, and all these are things I continue to do today.” Hale also co-owns Anchor Tattoo in Athens while maintaining careers as an illustrator, designer, and studio painter.

When asked to define his creative process, Hale has difficulty pinpointing where his art and his life diverge. “My creative process is my life,” he explains. “There is no way to really chart where the art begins and ends. I live my art every day fully, and am inspired by the world around me daily… But there are certain wells of inspiration that I can always tap, such as love, my son Crow, my wife Emily, birds, trees, animals, and the stars. Life, and death for that matter, are bubbling with inspiration and I see it impossible to remain uninspired in this mystical world we live in.”

David Hale’s artwork can be seen locally at Café Surfinista (86 N. Orlando Ave. in Cocoa Beach; 613-3864) on March 12 for a collaborative opening with Bruce Reynolds. You can view more of his work online at: www.davidhale.org

CHRIS HAMER

Asking an artist to define his or her aims can be a touchy business. Those who don’t resist an outright verbalization of what, to their minds, should remain an open-ended mystery tend to clothe their principles in layers of academic terminology, technical obfuscation, and theoretical mumbo jumbo.

So it’s refreshing to hear Chris Hamer jump joyously at the chance to share his artistic statement and the experiences that helped shape it. Even more refreshing is the simplicity of his statement, one that is driven as much by his own need for laughter as his desire to spread it.

“I attempted art school in college and ended up an art school drop out,” Hamer recalls. “But during that time, my art teacher would get upset with me because I would fight drawing fruit bowls or serious stuff; I wanted to make my self laugh. So when she asked me what my artist statement was, I told her, ‘I need to laugh.’ I want people to know that art can be fun… it can be intended to make you laugh and think at the same time.”

Though based near Atlanta, Georgia, Hamer has a close connection to the beachside, having vacationed here throughout his youth. “Just about every year as a kid, my folks would take a vacation to Orlando, or the beaches in Florida on the east coast. I was submerged in theme parks. I think this is what started my love for cartoons, which turned into comic books (and then) then art. I look back, and visiting places like Disney at three- and four-years-old, I know that it was there that a love for this medium was born.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Tex Avery and Walt Disney are prime influences on Hamer’s work. He also draws inspiration from comic book artists like Art Adams, John Byrne, and George Perez, along with Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jasper Johns, and long list of graffiti artists and toy designers. Though they make for a pretty varied group, they all share one thing in common: a reverence for the more light-hearted emotions art can convey.

Hamer’s own artistic approach also favors cheerful happenstance over the brow-furrowing conceptualization you associate of common lore. “My creative process is a lot of staring and junk collecting,” Hamer explains. “What inspires me is everything from sounds — loud music or complete silence) — to trash. I take a day each week and go out to thrift stores and antique stores and purchase items that make me laugh, intrigue me or make me curious about them. Many times, I don’t know what I’ll be doing with them, so they sit around till I see something. Other times I have an idea in mind and I just need to find the perfect piece.”

The origins of Hamer’s career are just as unconventional, his first formal show having been arranged by his tattoo artist when the subject came up in conversation. “He asked me to take part in a art show, and for some reason, I said yes,” Hamer remembers. “I look back and find this to be a turning point, because before that I would have never just casually said yes to showing off my art. The art show was at a local bar, and my pieces were all the way at the top of the wall, and you could barley see them, but I was like a kid in a candy store. I’d done it, people had seen my art and it was like a rush.”

From there Hamer did a few more shows, but by his own admission wasn’t really applying himself. “I was working dead-end jobs and hating them,” he says. “The best way to say how I felt was that (it was like) my face was melting day in and day out. I was slowly losing my identity. The only thing that was keeping me sane was drawing… I used to draw on the corner of notebooks, calendars. That turned into me taking my lunch break in my car and drawing. (Later) the economy took a header, and being the new guy at this one job and the low man on the totem pole, I was let go, so the idea of starting my own business began. A few jobs later, I got laid off again and I knew someone was telling me that this wasn’t the way my life should be. I sat down with my wife and told her of my plan to be and artist.”

After creating a detailed, goal-oriented plan with his wife, Sally, Hamer fell back on his love of cartoons and comics. “I looked in to the comic book convention… and I set forth to getting involved in as many as I could. Then I looked in to the music festivals and then live painting for bands, and then things spread like wildfire and I was popping up more and more. So here I am, almost four years as a professional full-time artist, and I now have the confidence I never had and the drive to keep going.”

We first became acquainted with Hamer’s work during a recent event at the new collective, community art space Brick & Mortar in downtown Cocoa Village. He’d created a series of pieces inspired by AMC’s hit show “Mad Men” for the New Year’s Event, but it wasn’t the first time he’d been to the area. He has working, symbiotic relationships with many artists and musicians in the area, and he’s often here in his “second home” five to six times throughout the year.

This February 26-27, Hamer will be a featured guest artist at the Wizard World Comic Convention in Miami, and will then make a March 25-26 appearance at the Megacon Comic Convention in Orlando. In between these shows, he’ll be busy traveling to Salt Lake City, New Orleans, and Chicago. April in Atlanta sees his third solo show called “Big in Japan,” a collection of works inspired by the music of Tom Waits.

With all the inroads he’s made in the comic and graphic art scene, I wonder if Hamer sees any difference between those genres and fine art. “The more I’m in this field the more it confuses me,” he avers. “You can talk to one person and they can have a different view of what fine art is. I’ve heard people claim that you’re not a ‘real’ artist if you didn’t go to school. But I can create something and connect with another person without having gone to school then I am? I think the graphic arts have a place and I think that fine art and any other art style does as well. I heard an Andy Warhol quote once — ‘Art is anything you do not have to explain.’ So that’s where I am…”

View more of Chris Hamer’s work online at: www.urbnpop.com. You can purchase some of his pieces through his Etsy page at: www.etsy.com/shop/urbnpop. Follow his blog and updated show schedules at: http://urbnpop.tumblr.com. Find out more about Brick & Mortar by visiting www.brickandmortarbuilt.com

Becky Beerensson

Referring to her painting style as “photo-, or possibly enhanced realism,” Merritt Island artist Becky Beerenson finds inspiration in the mundane objects she sees each day.

“I have to see it to draw it,” she says. “I cannot work in the abstract, intuitively dredging a composition up from within. I just don’t function that way.”

But Beerenson, who is originally from Wichita, Kansas, credits intuition for her impressive compositional skills, which are evident in her vast body of black-and-white studies. Though many at first seem chaotic, further inspection reveals a delicately balanced, almost Baroque, sense of order. It’s a skill that bleeds over into her other occupation as a piano technician. “Over the years, I’ve realized that when I tuning a piano, I’m doing aurally pretty much the same thing I do visually with a painting — manipulating what I hear/see in a way that leads me to the desirable harmony/compostion.”

Beerenson was first exposed to art at the age of 6, when she began taking art classes at the Wichita Art Association. Though she kept up with art through high school, she later abandoned it for other academic pursuits in college, graduating from St. Louis’ Washington University with a BA in political science and a Masters in French. She moved to Melbourne in 1968 and taught French at Melbourne High for four years before returning to art, focusing primarily on pen and ink drawing.

Though her initial studies were rooted in representational watercolors, Beerenson’s preferred current medium is dry-brushed ink, which entails dipping a small brush into stamp pad ink and applying it in layers. Through the technique, she’s able to achieve deep black tones and a wide range of grays. “I love high contrast and detail,” she explains. “I work from photographs I take. My subject matter can be anything. What I look for is composition — interesting shapes and patterns of light and dark. I look really close at things… all kinds of things. It’s there that you’ll find interesting forms that are usually not noticed at first.”

This is borne out in her Urban Landscape, Natural Florida, and Environmental/Recycling series of paintings, all of which feature otherwise mundane objects arranged into things of subtle beauty. The dry-brush approach is an ideal way of achieving this surprisingly harmonious effect, but it’s also a painstaking one; some take as much as 150 hours to complete. “I only work on one piece at a time, only evenings” Beerenson says. “I spend most of my days tuning and working on pianos. Of course, in painting I’m much more free to do what I want, unlike tuning a piano, which must conform to mechanical and technical limitations, and each piano definitely has its own unique set of limitations. In painting, there are no rules… only those that the artist decides upon.”

Along with the teachers of her youth, good friend and fellow artist Susan Martin exerts a strong influence on Beerenson’s work. Martin, who creates brilliant-hued acrylic images, is also one of the original members of Ten Women in Art, a collective Beerenson has been a part of since the early ’90s. Formed in 1983, the diverse group — also comprised of other Central Florida artists Nancy Baur Dillen, Lydia Friedland, Carol Garutti, Grace Leal, Nancy Seib, Ellen Pavlakos, Marilyn Cook, and Marg Kuhl — provides multiple perspectives while promoting and educating the public on art and art-related issues.

When she’s not painting, exhibiting, or tuning, Beerenson teaches piano privately, and is also a talented musician in her own right, having played both piano and harpsichord since 1982.

To see more of her work, visit her page on www.tenwomeninart.com.

Stephen Wilson
By Tobin Bennison

Since our last major redesign two years ago, photographer Stephen Wilson has supplied The Resident with five cover images.

Though we didn’t rework the cover layout with Wilson’s pictures specifically in mind, the match has worked perfectly each time. His photos appeal to us for many reasons — their minimalism and muted colors; their sense of quietude — but above all for their dreamlike qualities, which are rooted as much in reality as they are in imagined ideal.

They also frequently make us feel as if we’d found, buried at the bottom of a box of unsorted family snapshots, a cache of faded images, ones that should have been discarded for being too out of focus or not symmetrically composed.

Whichever way you choose to describe them, Wilson’s shots capture the feeling of having been there — the taste, the smell, and the sounds that linger long after you’ve left the moment behind.

Born in Memphis, Wilson moved to Jacksonville with his family in his early childhood. Though he and his wife have lived in Cocoa Beach for two years now, Florida’s forested interior still informs a good portion of his output.

“I love still/nature photography,” Wilson tells me. “I’d say that I look for specific shots or themes more often, though. I really love shooting alone in quiet places — I love creation. I spend a lot of time in the ocean and out in the forests when I can. My brother and I mess around with waterproof cams while surfing — those are the times when I just shoot whatever comes into view.”

“So much of my creative process is driven by inspiration. I see/feel something with my eyes/heart/mind and I want to express it in my own way. Photography is still so much of a mystery to me, and that’s what I love about it. It’s funny how many books there are out there that try and tell you how to take good pictures… The reality is that once you delve in, there really are no rules.”

“So I experiment a lot — I use all sorts of film and all sorts of cameras. Most of my work is done with medium format film cameras, pinhole cameras, toy cameras, cheap waterproof disposables, 35mm cameras… Some digital.”

I ask Wilson what, if anything, he’d like to convey through his work. “Just embrace the mystery,” he responds. “Protect wild places. Dream. I would say to any other artist starting out to not worry about what everyone else is doing. Consider doing what feels right to you.”

You can see more of Stephen Wilson’s photos at: www.flickr.com/decaturwilson. Check back with the Resident for news about a local showing of his work in the new year.

Michael Gray

Multi-talented artist Michael Gray is part of a highly influential cadre of beachside artists who were at the forefront of the east coast surf art scene during the ’70s.

Over the years, The Resident has met with many of the other major players in that scene, all of whom are still active — people like Henry Lund, Mike “Nemo” Nemnich, Bruce Williamson, Fred Cheney, and Joe Twombly. Though they all continue to work in a range of different styles with different media, they all surfed — and still surf — with as much passion as they created.

The Cocoa Beach-based Gray got his first exposure to art through the work of an earlier, equally influential cadre of artists known collectively as “The Highwaymen.” Several of their works hung in his aunt’s realty office, and seeing them was what first made the 7-year-old Gray want to be a painter. But for some high school art classes and some private instruction encouraged by his supportive grandparents, Gray is largely self-taught in a number of disciplines, including oil and acrylic painting, sculpture, glass etching, and airbrushing.

It was after graduating from Merritt Island High in 1970 that Gray first got into airbrushing. “Right around that time I started seeing vans with airbrushed murals on the sides of them,” he recalls. “I knew as soon as I saw them that airbrushing is what I wanted to do.” But the field was then wide open, and there was hardly a soul around who could teach Gray the technique. Luckily, Henry Lund, a longtime friend of Gray’s, had begun dabbling in airbrushing, and together the two picked it up before going on to airbrush surfboards for local shops and shapers. “I loved it,” Gray says. “I was painting on every surface I could find.”

In 1984, at the prodding of Wayne Coombs, who saw Gray’s natural talents and admired his hands-on work ethic, Gray began sculpting fiberglass marine life wall hangings — porpoises, manatees, dolphins, and replicas of locally caught fish. When Steve Cayer began work on the first incarnation of his Dinosaur Store, he enlisted Gray to fashion large-scale, three-dimensional replicas of, among others, Icthyosaurs, sunfish, narwhals, whale sharks, and, what proved to be the largest of Gray’s sculptures, a 20-foot blue whale.

Impressively, Gray taught himself, by trial and error, the finer points of anatomy, musculature, scale, and lifelike coloring, which he airbrushed on after their completion. Many of those original molds still reside in his Merritt Island studio, eventually cast aside in favor of what was to be a new focus that has ultimately earned Gray such broad local acclaim.

Applied free-hand and often based on his popular tropical motifs, Gray’s glass etchings, which grace the windows and doors of many area homes, are sandblasted on after a painstaking, two-day process he’s helped perfect.

As with everything he does, Gray tries to make them agree as closely with his own vision as with that of the customers who commissioned them. “You could spend a month on them,” he says, “but like my paintings, I try to make them as perfect as I possibly can, and at some point you have to let them go.” Hundreds of customers are more than happy with the results, and Gray is regarded highly for both the professionalism and inspired spirit of his work.

Decades have past since Gray first began driving up and down the coast to sell original pieces from the trunk of his car, but his public’s taste doesn’t seem to have strayed very far from that time.

And with a new, younger generation beginning to rediscover his and his compatriots’ art, it’s a good bet that Gray will help usher in yet another renaissance of east coast surf art.

Michael Gray is available for a variety of custom work, including etched glass designs for doors, windows, and mirrors. You can reach him at 459-0902. Call to make an appointment to visit his Merritt Island studio, located at 627 Gladiola Drive.

Rick Piper
• Tobin Bennison •

Most discussions about Rick Piper’s paintings tend to revolve around their distinctive visual characteristics — elastic vistas, contorted perspectives, and acutely colorful tropical backdrops.

These facets are what have made him one of the most recognizable and cherished artists in the area. Piper’s unique vision, in many ways, has become our own, and legions of residents have come to view their environs with similarly heightened perception.

But few get beyond the spectacle to look for the meaning (if it can be called that) behind all this explosive imagery.

On the surface, Piper’s best work appeals to the paradise-seeker in all of us. These are the oases we yearn for, if even momentarily — hidden pockets of paradise untouched by an increasingly confusing and hostile reality; one that tells us that our horizons are stiffly linear, or that gravity obeys a man named Newton’s rules.

Yet upon closer inspection — which, oddly, requires several steps back — these pieces also suggest the unseen darkness that makes such overwhelming light possible.

What’s not rendered is just as important in Piper’s work — the idea that these are merely refuges in the truest sense, places that are only welcoming within their frame of reference. What lies outside that frame is what intrigues many Piper collectors.

An avid fan once called Piper’s paintings depictions of “Truth,” and though that might sound far-reaching at first, it also happens to be a pretty clear assessment of their aim and design.

They’re about those “good days” Piper has spent out fishing on the water, walking the beach, or riding the surf in what he calls this “beautiful barrier island world in which we live.”

Tally all of his paintings in this vein and you might think that Piper has had an unusually lucky run of “good days.” But he dubs them so not because of their frequency, but rather their scarcity. Anyone who’s spent an idyllic day out on the water will confirm that even a few minutes bathed in sunlight and awash with salt spray can translate into an eternity in the grand scheme of things. What else do we do that’s worthwhile but revisit these fleeting moments or attempt to replicate them to create our own eternities?

Another admirer put it even better: that Piper’s paintings “look like what it feels to be out on the water.”

Paradoxically, what feels resembles visually. What’s seen is unseen. What’s up is down. What matters most is what’s given such short shrift by society.

However you define it, it’s what gets us up in the morning. It’s what makes life worth living.

These, in effect, are our most valued possessions: our intangible assets.

Take a look.

Rick Piper is inviting the public to join him for a premiering of his new artwork on Friday, October 22 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at Juice N’ Java in downtown Cocoa Beach. “Intangible Assets” features over 15 new originals exploring an exciting mixture of mediums, style, and scale. Visitors can also enjoy live music, a wine and beer bar, and a food tasting special. The art show is free, but the “Artful Starters” food tasting special is $15, which includes a selection of tasters and two glasses of wine or two beers. Tickets for the tasting can be purchased in advance at Juice n’ Java, 75 N. Orlando Ave. (784-4044). Check out Rick’s art at: www.piperart.com. Rick can also be reached at (321) 604-0817.

Satellite Beach artist Heather Everett took to painting relatively late in her life, but that hasn’t stopped her from making up for supposedly “lost” time with a densely creative portfolio scores of other Florida artists could only dream of producing.

A South Dakotan by birth, Everett could be said to have stumbled on her new calling while visiting a friend in Manhattan after leaving her position as a Chanel executive. At that time she and her husband Mike were already parents to two children, son Jack and daughter Hannah.

“We moved to Paris when Jack was a baby and Hannah was two,” she recalls. “After my maternity leave, it took one day back and away from Hannah to know that that life was over. I quit my job, and a few months later was exposed to ‘the painting game’ while visiting a friend in NYC.”

“I don’t think that I’ve stopped playing, experimenting, creating — or at least thinking about art — since that weekend,” she says. “I loved my first attempts at art… it felt so good to surprise myself whether anyone else ‘got it’ or not.”

Discerning art lovers both near and far have certainly “got it,” judging from the accolades — both professional and populist — she’s garnered since starting out. Marked by deep, rich hues and an uncanny sense of captured motion, Everett’s paintings, as varied as they are, all share an emblematic quality, one that’s made her one of the more recognizable painters within the vast and highly competitive Florida art circle.

When asked to define her elusory watermark, Everett cites (with a cringe) one of her more recognizable works, “Marbanian Palms,” a quintet of royal palms offset by a striking scarlet background. There are similar paintings in this vein and theme, but being known simply as “the Palm Lady” misses the point, she finds.

“Although my techniques and styles may vary widely, my themes of nature, motion, and light remain a constant. I’ve been told it’s my color palette — but even that is changing. Or it’s the drip paintings and knifed-on flowers… Whatever it is, people tell me they just knew it was mine before they got up close and read the signature.”

As for her influences, Everett leans heavily toward the masters — Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Picasso — not so much for their technique and output, but for the message they intimate. To her, that message speaks of what can be accomplished with a devotion to artistic passion. “With a persistence in your passion, methods to your madness, and that it’s okay to be a successful artist while you are living,” she explains.

In keeping with this midset, Everett says she’s inspired by all artists, but she also counts teaching as another strong impetus. “It makes me reach,” she says. “If I’m going to teach perspective, I’d better learn perspective!” She’s currently teaching art to children at the Indian Harbour Montessori School, hosts summer art camps and classes through the Satellite Beach Community Center, and leads painting groups for adults and children at Art on Fifth in Indialantic. Starting this fall, she’ll be offering weekly classes at the Art Gallery of Viera in their new location at The Avenues in Viera.

“But mostly,” she adds, “I’m inspired by my observations. I feel as though I spent the first quarter of my life observing, enjoying, and learning about myself, my life… the earth. In that was born an absolute love affair with nature that I can now express outwardly through painting. …Honoring nature, color, and the feelings they can inspire. So now, in this second quarter of my life, I have found a way to express much of what I see, how I feel about this world, and how things are looking for us — through my eyes.”

I’m curious as to what makes her paintings so popular. What is it about them that has struck such a strong, common chord with people? “That’s a hard question to answer because I really do create for me,” she tells me. “I love the process, and the beautiful things that occur while the painting is evolving that the viewer will undoubtedly never see. I want other people to connect with the piece, I want them to love it as much as I do (if possible), and appreciate the way it makes them feel.”

“My aim is to evoke joy in the viewer and do this individually and to all,” Everett continues. “Art can connect people from all parts of the world, and even a person to herself. I feel as though my work depicts light and the natural world. Whether in an expressionistic landscape or abstract, they are delivered in rich, vibrant colors and infused with an optimism that forces you to honor nature.”

View more of Heather Everett’s work at www.heathereverettart.com. October 21 sees a showing of her paintings at the Pizza Gallery & Grill in Viera (2250 Town Center Ave.; 633-0397). In November (date TBA), she’ll be showing some of her work at the grand opening of the Art Gallery of Viera’s new location. Aditonally, she’ll be having shows at Edgewater’s Close to the Edge in December and at the Agora Gallery in New York City in February 2011. To keep abreast of events and showings, log onto her website or look for her on Facebook.

Jeff “Cynic” Noble
• Tobin Bennison •

Most visual artists will tell you that their most precious creative tool is imagination, the ability to give shape to formless thoughts and emotions.

Imagination certainly plays a major role in artist Jeff Noble’s eye-popping, graffiti-informed work, but he’s more likely to cite everyday observation as the true mother of creation. “I’m constantly observing,” he says, “and not just visually, but listening, feeling, trying to record in my brain all of my emotions tied to a specific instance or circumstance, whether good or bad. From there I usually compare and contrast the way I interpreted or felt about something as opposed to what social norms dictate, and then I determine the factors upon which my ideas differ from those norms. That’s usually the birth of a concept.

It’s only after observing that Noble, a.k.a. Cynic, lets imagination take over in an effort to translate a concept into something visual, and sometimes even tangible. “That’s why I’ve always had the desire to be as well-versed in as many different mediums as possible, because there have been times where my concept has been called to manifest itself in the form of sculpture or performance rather than just paint on canvas. Once I decide how to best execute my idea, it usually turns into a race to finish it so I can move onto the next idea. I tend to have about ten pieces on the back burner for every piece I’m working on.”

The eldest of five children raised Melbourne Beach, Noble claims to have been drawing compulsively since he was in diapers. If true, then Noble has been creating in some form for at least 21 of his 22 years. “My mother is an artist and my father is a carpenter, so from a very early age I was always given hands-on things to do,” he explains. “Drawing was definitely my favorite activity. I’d sit in front of the television on Saturday mornings and try to quickly copy my favorite cartoon characters onto paper.”

By the time he reached elementary school, Noble began to realize that his drawing skills were distinctly different from those of his peers. “My mom recalls that in fourth grade I started coming home from school with an extra two or three dollars and was curious as to where I got them. I’d started selling my drawings of race cars to other kids in school for their lunch money.”

But even then, remuneration was just a bonus for Noble. His true reward was, and remains, the excitement of self-discovery. “When I’m creating, I’m learning about myself in the process. I can create or destroy whatever ideas, textures or imagery I want depending upon what I like or dislike. Painting is my time to reflect on my life and the world around me and where I form a lot of the opinions that define who I am.”

Likewise, Noble’s artistic tenets are still evolving thanks to his receptivity to change and to Miami’s New World School of the Arts, where he’s currently enrolled. “I was never super enthusiastic about school,” he tells me, “but New World is a pretty unique place, so it’s been a relief this past year, taking time away from working to focus on school and a little bit of self definition. Back in Melbourne my work was heavily motivated by making sure I could pay my bills, and when I started school I was lucky enough to receive some grants and scholarships that let me really spend the time creating the work I wanted to make.”

Noble counts his most recent, New World-inspired art as his most cohesive and thoughtful to date. “In the past, I’ve always struggled to define my work as one thing or another because I find creative outlets in so many different forms,” he says.

So what is art to him? How does he define it as a whole? “It’s everything,” he answers confidently, “from my first drawing to this interview, it’s all about the context. I’ve done everything from silkscreening shirts and airbrushing helmets to painting graffiti murals and serving at the Hilton. I’ve found a unique expression in all of them.”

“I think art is about being conscious of who you are, what you are doing, and the impact it’s having on others and your surroundings,” he continues. “If I’m a mailman, but conscious of my role, my importance, and the formalities that accompany my duties, then that’s art in my book. And I’d say that this sort of consciousness is the most prevalent theme in my latest work.”

Yet the piece Noble’s most proud of is a 6 x 1,011 ft. mural he helped paint in 2006, when he was a senior at Melbourne High. Along with English teacher Tamara Doehring, Noble organized a team of six artists to break the Guinness World Record for the longest graffiti scroll. Since then he’s taken on many challenging projects, but he’s never had so many people tell him he couldn’t see a vision through. ”The principal didn’t approve of it, my peers didn’t take it seriously, and at one point my own mom said she didn’t think we would finish it,” he remembers. ”It was definitely one of the most fun and memorable times of my life, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the determination and spirit of my crew.”

Noble also acknowledges the debt he owes to his elders, people like Damien Share, Jeff Filipski, Fritz Van Eeden, Chris Maslow, Derek Gores, a host of instructors and tutors, and of course, his supportive parents for igniting in him that initial creative spark. He sees the relationship between generations as the key to Brevard County’s burgeoning art scene. “I get most excited by the interaction between the older and younger communities in Brevard,” he says. “When I go to an exhibition and see people of all ages appreciating art together, I think of that as the catalyst that will keep the art scene progressing here. It’s old wisdom applied to new ideas.”

You can see this commingling of old and new in an incredibly varied portfolio that includes commissioned pieces, aerosol murals, mixed media collages, paintings, airbrushed works, and found object sculptures. This past year has seen Noble working predominately in oils, a mode he’s found to be particularly rewarding and suggestive of a new direction and evolutionary path.

Wherever his newer work takes him, Noble will continue to gather those first glimmers of inspiration not so much from an inner world of abstract imagination, but from the tangible outer world that surrounds him. “At the end of the day,” he declares, “life experience is probably the largest generator of my inspiration. Without any more interesting experiences I wouldn’t have anything to paint about.”

Jeff Noble’s first solo show opens August 15 at downtown Melbourne’s SLOW Gallery (1905 Municipal Lane; 676-4517). The collection will feature 12 new paintings and an installation.

There’s a good chance you’ve seen some of Derek Gore’s work without realizing it.

Having spent more than a decade in the corporate art world after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design, the Melbourne-based artist has produced designs for clients like Lucasfilm, U2, Sublime, the NFL, ESPN, Major League Baseball, and Reebok, to name a scant few. Gores was also one of fifteen artists selected for the 2009 Manifest Hope exhibition prior to the presidential inauguration in Washington, D.C., and has since earned commissions from Pfizer and SEIU’s health care reform campaign. He’s currently at work on five of his signature collage pieces for the new Orlando Magic arena due to open in September, and several of his originals feature prominently in the “New Contemporary Movement” exhibition being showcased at the London Miles Gallery.

But while Gores is principally known for his impressive professional credentials, the sheer variety of his work — the art nouveau romanticism of several Schiele and Klimt-inspired line drawings, a series of muted abstracts, and scores of mixed media collages — renders easy labels like mere “graphic artist” wholly insufficient. If there’s one binding theme running through Gores’ vast portfolio, it’s the blurring of several borders separating commercial graphics from fine art, an ethos that also informs the work of another of his influences, Toulouse-Lautrec.

I ask him if he finds an inherent difference between the two disciplines. “Graphic design can be art surely; maybe it’s a scale thing. There’s plenty of graphic design that is moving, just as there is plenty of traditional art that is not. Way, way back, someone like Toulouse-Lautrec would have been considered a graphic designer with his burlesque posters, and yet those are indeed art.”

Gores admits to having waged “a healthy inner and outer battle” between commercial art and dreamy abstract painting while pursuing an illustration major at RISD. “Each helped the other in my case,” he says. “I came into RISD very precise and controlled, and was introduced to faster and wilder alternatives, like drawing with both hands at once or using lots of gushing water to make everything just beyond my control.”

Many of Gores’ abstracts and distinctive collages incorporate angular elements of fashion and machinery design. “I enjoy the contrast between living beauty and man-made beauty, such as buildings, engines, typography, hard-edged creations. In my collage art, I hand-rip recycled magazines, maps, and schematics to build the figures. Fashion design utilizes a similar idea, where very angular and sharp compositional shapes are used to accentuate the feminine qualities of the figure. By using fashion magazines in much of my collage artwork, I’ve been able to combine several of my influences and interests into one piece of art. Lately I’ve made a series of collaged high-heeled shoes.”

Gores, who is originally from New York, also cites the backdrop of his New England youth as a strong influence. “My young years were spent in Massachusetts, with little vacations to Cape Cod,” he tells me. “The whole ‘roots of the nation’ thing in New England is a tangible and a big part of my inspiration… as well as big stuff like how the man-made structures harmonize with the woods, ocean, sea grass and the slate-rock walkways.” After moving with his family to Florida, Gores came to embrace a different kind of simplicity and minimalism.

“I like the conditions here,” Gores says, before describing the Brevard arts scene as “nicely percolating.” “We have unique conditions, such as the smarts fostered around the Space Program, which sparked all sorts of innovative companies. We have a great educational system, including an internationally respected tech school. Complement that with beach culture, bike culture, bold youth, a hungry art museum, and here we go,” he says. “I love that we have people willing to make their town more cool. I don’t hear ‘Melboring’ like you used to, like a victim. Artists are out there concocting shows, music festivals, and partnering with developers. The fashion boutiques are creating spectacles. I think more artists are standing on each other’s shoulders and shouting louder. We’re getting past just hanging our little rectangle paintings on someone’s wall and hoping it will sell. More and more artists are curating — curating a space, a room, a show, their town. These are the qualities you want from a strong art scene.”

As an extension of those beliefs, Gores is known for promoting other local artists. “I try to be aware of all our artistic resources… just because I love art and I want to see all of it. And then once it is in my head, I do pass on leads to people, such as the Sports and the Arts organization who commissioned me to do several pieces for the new Orlando Magic Arena. I asked to hear their big picture, and then suggested about ten Brevard artists they ought to get involved to fill the particular needs. Locally, I love seeing the work of Jeff Filipski, SONE, certainly Chris Maslow who is just on fire, also Marg Kuhl, David Burton, Larry Buist. Casey Decotis’ photos. Always Cliff Chandler’s big plans. Ryan Speer of Speerbot made my website, and he is able to take graphic design to that higher level. ”

Arts education within the local community is another issue Gores is passionate about. “We have to make sure not to butcher our arts programs in the public school system. Here’s why: Firstly, Arts education isn’t just for future artists. It is the most pure version of fostering creative problem-solving skills for young minds. Achievers in any field need those problem-solving skills, whether kids eventually become doctors, lawyers, chefs, engineers or policemen and women. Secondly, a big chunk of the population respond more to arts-based education than they do to the linear logic in old-school math, for example. So, voters and parents and the school board need to recognize that art isn’t ‘pretty pictures’ and a ‘nice to have’ in between the hard stuff. Art is essential in education.”

I ask Gores about his first exposure to art and how, if at all, his views have changed since he first began sketching invented “Star Wars” characters. “I think everything I’ve done has always been about people,” he responds. “The living, moving, pulsing energy of the human being. At age 7, it was those made-up fantasy characters and their worlds. Later, it fit under the name ‘figure study,’ but that somehow limited it to just the physical body. Now I hope I go after the beauty of what it is like to be alive, with all the intuitions and the peripheral vision and distractions and intense passions and butterflies in the stomach that go with really living.”

View some of Derek Gores’ work online at www.derekgores.com. He can be reached at 258-2119. Here in Florida, Gores will have a solo exhibition at Tampa’s Baisden Gallery on September 11. In October, Gores’ work will be at SLOW Gallery and Downtown Divas Boutique in Melbourne. Gores was recently chosen to design the poster for fall’s Space Coast Art Festival.

Bruce Williamson
• Tobin Bennison •

Give enough time, everything comes back around again.

It’s one of the more vague maxims out there, but it holds particular relevance for Bruce Williamson, a Cocoa Beach-based surf artist whose incredible 40-year career has recently come full circle.

Known during the ’70s — as now — for the dreamlike qualities of his colorful airbrushed designs, Williamson got his start custom painting cars with fantastical tableaux and accents, so it’s rather fitting that he first came to these shores from Arlington, VA, riding in one of his early masterpieces. Even without the benefit of photographic evidence, his description of the van’s intricately laced, cobwebbed panels is enough to burn its image onto my brain. And the idyllic backdrop of that first summer road trip he made back in 1971 brands the image even deeper.

“It was me and a buddy of mine, Mike, and his dog. We had no real destination — we were 18, just taking a road trip — and we ended up in Cocoa Beach,” Williamson recalls. “We parked up at Gadsden Lane… There was nothing but trees there at the time. We were hanging out on the beach and some surfers who’d been admiring the van just came up and started talking to us. I didn’t surf then — my buddy did — and we just got to talking with these guys.” A few days later, now staying with some of the friendly surfers in their Merritt Island home, Williamson woke his friend and made a decision. “It was just a beautiful morning and I said to Mike, ‘I gotta go back to Virginia,’ and he says ‘What for?’ ‘I gotta get my stuff, man,’ I told him.” Three months later, Williamson was back in Cocoa Beach, and he’s been here ever since.

He found work in a paint and body shop and enrolled in Brevard Junior College, but his new-found love of surfing was pulling him in another direction. “One day I was looking through Surfer Magazine and I saw this little picture of an airbrushed seagull flying in front of the sun. And I thought, ‘Well, I can do that.’” Crafting a stenciled design inspired by that seagull image and airbrushing it onto some shirts, Williamson now had a way of making his dream reality. “There were some other people around here doing airbrushing, so I thought I’d just start making more designs. Slowly but surely, I built up a repertoire of different designs, and people really liked them,” he says. “The whole reason for doing it was that I wanted to drop out of school and surf. The t-shirts gave me the means to do it.”

His trunk filled with t-shirts and airbrushed surf paintings, Williamson drove up and down the east coast selling his popular, sea shell tank tops and shirts to surfer girls and retail shops by the dozens. “I was selling them as fast as I could make them,” he tells me, “but more than anything, I just loved making them. Friends would come over to my house and hang out while I airbrushed. I could do two dozen in an evening, and get up the next morning and surf all day. It was blast.” Williamson also branched out into airbrushing surfboards, and worked in board factories all through the County.

By this time, Williamson had earned an enviable reputation as one of the hottest surf artists around. Noted for the clean, sharp lines of their bordered tropical vistas and dyed, front-to-back patterns, his t-shirts became a must-have fashion item. Wave shirts were particularly popular for their dreamlike contours and otherworldly colors. “I just wanted the waves to be dreamy, you know?” Williamson laughs. “I wasn’t as concerned as other artists were with them being super-realistic. I just wanted people to look at them and smile. I wanted them to give people a good feeling.” Sedate blue and green designs enjoyed popularity in the Carolinas, while Floridians clamored for wilder, more colorful versions, and Williamson’s success continued apace.

But by 1984, cheaper, more slapdash designs conspired to push him out of the market, and one day he decided he’d had it with airbrushing. “I said, ‘To hell with it,’ and I put everything into a box and put the box away,” he says, recounting the event. But Williamson soon found another lucrative outlet when he and local artist Mike Gray began carving fiberglass dolphins out of surfboard blanks. “Mike carved the first one, but he just didn’t like dealing with the fiberglass,” Williamson remembers. “He saw that mine were good, that I’d had a technique down, and he just told me to run with it.”

Sea World, one of Williamson’s earliest and steadiest clients, became interested after seeing some prototypes and sketches he brought to a surf expo, quite by chance. “A friend had a booth set up there,” says Williamson, “and his product got held up in customs, so he asked me if I’d like the space. People were lined up to make orders for dolphins, including a guy from Sea World who pulled me aside with a request for a number of them.” Known as Xeno Art dolphins, Williamson’s sleek, expertly glassed sculptures became an even bigger hit than his shirts, with larger three-dimensional pieces finding their way into homes, businesses, restaurants, retail stores, and marine theme parks throughout Florida and the Bahamas. Two of the more well-known examples still greet visitors to the Cocoa Beach Country Club.

As time went on, Williamson found it harder to keep up with increased demand, and some life changes, coupled with his growing displeasure for fiberglass, saw him retire Xeno Art dolphins in 2004. A three-year stint with Disney Cruise Lines took its physical toll on Williamson, and he found himself at loose ends. But he had a plan. “After cashing out with Disney I went home, and my son said, ‘Dad, what are you going to do now?’ And I said, ‘Son, I want show you something.’” Taking out his box of old stencils and designs, Williamson and his son carefully peeled the protective wax paper off the cardboard forms with the aid of a hair dryer. “They’d been stuck together and compounded on top of each other for 30 years,” he chuckles.

Last November, Williamson opened She Shells as a showcase for his revived line of classic ’70s airbrushed t-shirts and tank tops, as well some new animal-print beach blouses and wraparounds. The studio/boutique, located in downtown Cocoa Beach, also features handmade wormwood frames, small, mountable plywood surfboards (airbrushed and finished to his exacting standards), and framed reproductions of some vintage Bruce Williamson art. Their retro feel of these designs has proved popular once again, and Williamson, in his own words, is “lovin’ life.” “I love seeing on of my shirts on a good-lookin’ girl,” he says. “I feel like I’m making a contribution.” What’s more, people still call him in search of his Xeno Art dolphins, and he’s ready to get back into churning them out.

After our meeting, I’m drawn back once again to the van that brought Williamson here 39 years ago. It’s rare to find an artist with that kind of talent for description, one that relies less on actual words than soulful evocation. This skill bleeds over into his work, I find, and as unreal and unchartable as some of his designs seem, they’re also couched in solid experience and the rich feelings it engenders. It’s what made them popular in the ’70s and what gives them the charm they enjoy today. As far as many fans are concerned, Williamson’s art never really fell out of fashion, and likely never will.

Bruce Williamson’s She Shells is located at 116 N. Orlando Ave. in downtown Cocoa Beach. She Shells is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Call 368-8828 for more information, or visit www.brucewilliamsonsurfart.com.

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The Space Coast Art of Sand Festival

Throughout the month of April, the Radisson Resort at the Port will host the Space Coast Art of Sand Festival, a showcase of family-friendly activities, entertainment, and competitions centered around breathtaking creations by some of the most renowned sand sculptors in the world.

Many of these masterpieces, some reaching over 15 feet high, will be completed by April 2 for public viewing, but a series of planned events and contests will transform the area into a sculpture park formed from over 700 tons of white sand by month’s end. During the three-day opening weekend Festival, April 2-4, visitors can enjoy a wide range of food and beverages, vendors, and entertainment options all while taking in some 15 sculptures by a core roster of chosen exhibition sculptors.

Conceived by the Brevard Cultural Alliance, a non-profit collection of community arts organizations whose mission is to foster a dynamic cultural sector within the county, and organized with the help of sand sculptors Jill Harris and Thomas Koet of Sandsational Sand Sculpting, the Festival brings together award-winning sculptors from around the world — several from Florida — working with various artistic themes.

Exhibition sculptors include Katsuhiko Chaen of Japan; multimedia sculptor Karen Fralich; Kentuckian Damon Farmer; Ilya Filimontsev of Russia; Dutch artist Marjon Katerberg; Canadian Michel Lepire; Leonardo Ugolini of Jesolo, Italy; and both Harris and Koet.

Together, Harris and Koet founded Sandsational as a way to promote their love of this stunning art form. As a team, they’ve traveled all over the globe and have earned numerous prizes for their mind-bending creations. We asked Satellite Beach native Harris how she first got into the discipline.

“A friend of mine is a part-time sand sculptor. For years I saw photos of his work,” she explains. “I got a chance to tag along on a project once, and he asked if I wanted to give it a try. I did, and I was hooked. He and his wife encouraged me to enter contests and to get involved in other events. A year later I quit my job and started Sandsational. That was about 14 years ago.”

An art form practiced by Egyptians as early as 4000 B.C., sand sculpture has changed little since, and is, put simply, the construction of a variety of forms comprised entirely of sand and water. Viewers will notice sculptors occasionally spraying a mixture of water and glue to create a thin, protective crust on their sculptures. Though the sand used for the Festival is a special formulation shipped from a Winter Haven quarry, no additives are introduced to prevent their creations toppling.

Harris described the sculpture process for us. “First you make a hard block of sand out of loose sand by compressing layer upon layer of the moistened sculpture sand in a rough shape, or a mold. We keep filling the different-sized molds until we’ve reached the right height and then start cutting shapes in the hard block of sand. This is always done from the top down.”

“Special tools are used to cut the sand. For the detailed work, palette knives are used. Larger tools such as cement trowels are used for the coarser work. From a cranes and shovels to straws and paintbrushes… they all can be used as tools. Tips are exchanged by builders, and tools are a common subject of discussion. Every builder has his or her own favorite tools depending on their chosen specialty and field of sculpture.”

Wires are placed in the uppermost part of many sculptures to prevent interference from birds, but nothing guarantees complete protection from outside forces. Most rain will not do serious damage to sculptures, though torrential downpours can cause total collapse of several-tiered pieces. Regardless of weather conditions, dedicated sculptors press on — often against the clock in competitions — to make their vision a reality for all to enjoy.

Before the process is even begun, says Harris, “a sculptor must be able to imagine what the sculpture will look like and what dimensions the design should have. With much practice, one gains experience. One carver may like an architectural tour de force, while another prefers figures. The same skills are necessary for both disciplines. They involve carving steadily and straight and an eye for anatomical proportions. It is not necessary to have attended art school to make sand sculptures. But the master sculptors are regarded as true artists in their chosen medium.”

Harris tells us that there are perhaps one hundred professional, full-time sand sculptors in the world. Out of this group, BCA and organizers like Harris chose sculptors with a variety of styles, each renowned for creating beautiful, crowd-pleasing works. “We also wanted to have sculptors from different countries come to the Space Coast,” Harris says. “We hope when they go home they will be like ambassadors, telling other people what a nice place it is here.”

As the month continues, other sculptures will take shape thanks to amateurs, students, and youth and corporate teams. Saturday, April 10 sees the Festival’s Corporate Challenge, and Friday the 16th through Sunday the 18th will present the Space Coast Open Master & Professional Sculptors Challenge. A Student Challenge takes place on Saturday the 24th, and the Festival winds down April 30 and May 1 with Family Days & Nights. Throughout the event there will be a hands-on Youth Pavilion, where kids can experiment with their own sand sculptures and learn about the environment as well as many other activities for the entire family.

The Space Coast Art of Sand Festival runs April 2 through May 1 at the Radisson at the Port, 8701 Cape Canaveral, where 528 and A1A meet. Event hours are Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Friday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Saturday 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Admission is $8 for adults and $4 for children under 12, seniors and military personnel. Visit www.artofsandus.com to find out more details and check out Jill Harris and Thomas Koet’s Sandsational Sand Sculpting at www.sandsational.com.

Born and raised on the beaches of Ft. Lauderdale, Monique moved to Melbourne five years ago, and now, at the young age of 26, she’s already spent more time on the water than many salts twice her age. A seasoned traveler and lifelong water worshipper, Monique prefers plunging headfirst into the ocean where others seem content to dip their toes into a mere fraction of its vastness.

Armed with an innate love of art and an enviable skill with a wide range of watersports — surfing, wakeboarding, wakeskating, freediving, and spearfishing — Monique has traveled extensively to feed an insatiable passion for her chosen muse. She’s traveled as a professional wakeboarder for competitions all over the world, to places like Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the Philippines, Europe, the Caribbean, and South and Central America, and recently worked as a first mate aboard a sport fishing boat that through the British Virgin Islands, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas, and Cuba.

Wherever Monique goes, she’s always in search of new inspirations. “It is important for me to go deeply into life and not be content to skim merrily along on its surface,” she explains. “Traveling has expanded my horizons beyond the material aspects of life, such as clothing, fancy cars, and money. I love getting lost in different parts of the world.”

These voyages have also informed every facet of her artwork. Whether acrylic or oil paintings, welded steel sculptures, or delicate blown glass pieces, Monique’s all of creations bear the unmistakable impress of the sea. Time spent in the British Virgin Islands inspired her with its sublime scenery and brilliantly-hued tropical reefs. “The unbelievable sunsets and sunrises over looking the peaks of each island was breathtaking,” she recalls.

But one of her favorite trips was to Naga, an island in the Philippines where she competed in the women’s wakeboarding world championship and placed 7th out of 68 in the world. “I went on a tour to swim with whale sharks on a canoe-type boat with bamboo outriggers and an old crusty engine, one day,” Monique tells me. “The local guy steering the boat looked down in the water and yelled in his language to jump in. As I went underwater I saw an 80-foot whale shark gracefully swimming along the surface. I swam with it for about fifteen minutes and it was one of the greatest experiences of my life.”

As a child, Monique was always interested crafts and started making her first pieces at the age of three. “My mom was always creative and buying my sister and I paints and other crafts to make at a very young age.” Taking her first art class in took my first art class in 11th grade, Monique learned the learned the basics of art and went on to attend WheatonArts in Millville, New Jersey where she first learned how to blow glass and took her certifications for welding. Using these skills, she’s made trophies for Bahamian and South Florida fishing tournaments and has completed large sculptures both in steel and in glass, which can be found in many public parks throughout the southern part of the state. The glass pieces she fashions today are generally freeform sea creatures, ones inspired by the stillness of the reefs she loves so much. Freediving and spearfishing lure her down in search of that stillness, but the pieces born out of those moments speak volumes about Monique’s artistic vision.

As for her paintings, Monique credits the variety of classes she took while at Wheaton. “I got the chance to apprentice under many amazing artists from around the country and learned a new technique on each painting I did. For me its all about layers of paint.” Amazingly, Monique doesn’t paint her subjects from photographs. Working from a dream/travel journal she adds to each day, she takes those sketches and transfers them to canvas. “It’s all out of my mind and the way I want to see them,” she admits.

She counts the elastic perception of Salvador Dali and M.C. Escher as strong influences, but she’s just as fond of famed aquatic artist Wyland. Whatever the reference point, each of Monique’s pieces is different and the time it takes to complete them varies greatly. “I’ve done a mural on a three-story building in four days from start to finish, but some canvas pieces take me a couple of weeks to complete.” Her personal favorite? “I did this painting with an underwater shot of a surfer getting barreled with his hand trailing in the wave. The colors were different shades of blues with the surfer’s shadow running through them.” Monique has just made a shirt emblazoned with this image for Indialantic’s famed Spectrum Surf Shop, which she owns with her fiancé, Benjamin. Apart from being one of a major influence on the east coast surf scene for over 30 years, Spectrum also serves as studio for Monique’s work.

Currently, Monique is in the process of designing her own line of screen-printed bikinis bearing her pieces, called Richter Bikinis, and is also developing her own clothing line. As far as the future goes, she hopes to organize more solo shows of her work while expanding both the gallery and surf shop. Now that she’s back home after a spate of recent overseas travel, Monique has also set to work on a new series of paintings. “I feel that my feet are planted on the ground and now I can be productive,” she says. “I live my life day by day with no regrets. If I ever fall down, I’ll get up and try again.”

You can see Monique Richter’s paintings at Spectrum Surf Shop, located at 130 Fifth Avenue in Indialantic. Call them at (321) 768-7873, or visit them online at www.spectrumsurfshop.com. Monique also has work on display at Pure Art in the Cayman Islands. She welcomes commissioned pieces — everything from indoor/outdoor murals and landscapes to portraits on canvas.

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At least that’s how the self-taught Merritt Island artist sees it. “I truly believe that whatever talent I have comes from God,” he tells me. “In many ways, He’s been pushing me to paint throughout my whole life. I think that 90% of it is Him and the other 10% of it is just me getting up in the morning to pick up my brushes.”

Sibert says this with a curious mixture of steely confidence and disarming humility, a trait he might share with his creative idol, Michelangelo. And though he’s quick to invoke both the Italian master and the Supreme Being as prime artistic inspirations, Sibert is no wide-eyed holy roller. Because as willing as he is to attribute his success to divine intervention, he’s also just as indebted to some very earthly instigators for his relatively late and very impressive appearance on the local art scene.

Born in Virginia and raised in California until the age of 16, Sibert moved to Brevard in 1988. By the time of his relocation, he’d already dabbled in sketching, recalling that one of his first pictures had potential as soon as he’d finished it. “But the more I refined it and worked on it,” he adds, “the better it looked. I worked on it some more and it looked really, really good. After that, my pictures just started to get better the more I worked on them. I knew I had something right from the beginning.”

With very little formal training, apart from some rudimentary high school art classes he did passably well in, Sibert abandoned art for more reliable work — and steadier paychecks. “Around the ages of 18 and 19, I stopped caring as much about art. I never thought I’d be able to make anything out of it. I didn’t see much of a future in it at the time.” As a result, he says he still has a modest collection of “name tags and hairnets” to prove that other more traditional occupational options didn’t offer much else in the way of financial stability.

After working on and off for his extended family’s construction business, Sibert, at the behest of his wife Lisa (an accomplished artist in her own right), took up his pens, pencils, and brushes just four years ago for another stab at his heart’s passion. “Before that, I’d sketched from time to time and would often see striking images in my dreams. Whenever I put pen to paper I was amazed that I hadn’t lost it. I was in the middle of doing a picture of Superman and I remember thinking that if anyone can make any money out of doing art, I’m going to find a way to do it.”

Sibert’s first formal personal challenge was a painstaking acrylic amalgam of some 23 different frogs, culled from various photos cut from magazines. “I really just wanted to see what I could do if I got serious about painting,” he remembers. “The first frog came out impressively, but both my wife and I thought that it may have been some kind of fluke. ‘Keep going,’ Lisa told me. ‘If the rest of the frogs look that good, then you’ve definitely got it.’” Seeking still more confirmation, Sibert approached two artists in booths at the Space Coast Art Festival in Cocoa Beach back in 2005 for their advice.

“I figured I needed to get some guidance from someone in the business; someone who’d made it work for them,” Sibert recounts. “I went up to one of the best I’d seen that day and asked him if it was really his full-time job. He told me he’d put four kids through college with his paintings and encouraged me based on the work I showed him.” The second artist wasn’t quite as encouraging, but still offered Sibert a grain of hope. “He gave me some really solid, sound advice, but told me not to quit my day job.” But after adding that he’d only made about $125,000 during the prior year, Sibert didn’t need much more convincing. He’d heard enough to make the leap into art full time. “‘Sign me up,’ I remember thinking.”

Since his re-induction into the art world, Sibert seems to be making up for lost time. Within four short years, he’s amassed a huge portfolio of canvases, murals, sign work, drawing, sketches, and interior design pieces.

And while their number is impressive, considering the short time it’s taken him to produce them, even more startling is the diversity of their visionary subject matter. Comic book-inspired imagery holds some sway, but each is matched by an even larger number of inventive abstracts, impressionistic studies, still lifes, portraits, and works of uncanny photorealism.

Still though, Sibert is always ready to deflate any perceived pretensions in his work. “I don’t consider myself so much of an artist as much as a human Xerox machine,” he says. “Real art is in the beauty God has already created. I just try to mirror it.”

When he’s not busy building up his portfolio and increasing his output at an alarming rate, Sibert is busy setting higher and more demanding goals for himself. “If I haven’t painted it yet,” he avows, “I will.”

You can see some of Jessie Sibert’s art online at: www.sibertart.com. He’s also available for commissioned work, including murals and signs. Contact him by calling (321) 987-6107 or by emailing jessiesibert@yahoo.com.

Surf artist Phil Goodrich, an Indialantic native now based in Fork, SC, began drawing in high school to express his frustration with the status quo.

During the late ’80s, Melbourne High was focused almost completely on its football program, Goodrich remembers. “We tried to start a surf club and the school wouldn’t help us out at all,” he says. “Instead of fighting them, I made little cartoons and caricatures of the people who were working against us.”

Starting by sketching the reflection of his own eyes in the mirror, Goodrich practiced his craft daily, still finding time to compete in the first of many surf contests in 1985. To this date, he counts his best result as a 4th place in the 1988 East Coast Championship, one year before setting off for college.

Enrolling in San Diego’s Point Loma University, chosen in part for the ocean view from the freshmen dorms, Goodrich began pursuing a Graphic Communications major, but soon switched to straight Studio Art after developing an aversion to staring at computer screens. It was during this time that he first began using pastels and watercolors, developing his style into a more realistic one inspired by Klimt, Lipking, Degas, and Manet.

Goodrich started using wood as a painting surface during his senior year at Point Loma. “I had to put on my senior art show,” he recalls, “and I basically had nothing to show that I liked.” Peeking into the back closet of the art department, he found a stack of plywood and a box of discarded pastels. “I just had a creative flurry and I stuck with that method for years to follow.”

After graduation, Goodrich created a series of cartoonish watercolors for Transworld Snowboard and Surfer magazines before co-founding San Diego’s Soul Grind skate shop with a friend. “He owned the product,” Goodrich says, “and I designed the logos, t-shirts, and skate graphics. Whenever I earned a little extra money, I’d take off on a surf trip.”

Along with surfing, travel has provided some of the strongest inspirations for his work, and Goodrich still counts exotic locals from around the globe as his preferred subjects — people from Mexico; Barbados; Costa Rica; Panama; Ecuador; Nicaragua; Peru; Haiti, and his favourite destination, Indonesia, where he’s logged some 22 months travel experience over the past 9 years. “No matter how many times I go back, I still find it inspiring,” he tells me.

Of his ethnic portraits, Goodrich says: “I like to capture a moment. I begin with a photo or group of photos. I stare at a blank piece of wood, flipping it around until I start to see some of the shapes from the photo within the wood grain.” Making a quick sketch in charcoal, he then fills in some of the color values with pastels, employed as much for their compactness as for their low cost. The final stage sees Goodrich painting over the whole image with oils, a relatively new medium for him.

“Whenever I’d have an art show, people responded well, but the general comment kept surfacing — ‘I really like your work, but what would it look like in oils?’” Since doing a series of his first in 2005, Goodrich has been using oil on wood regularly. He’s also expanded his repertoire to include likenesses of obscure Blues musicians. “I like to paint the ones people may have forgotten about. I associate myself with a lot of them because they weren’t concerned with fame or fortune — they just loved the music.”

Goodrich finds himself feeling the same way about his two main passions: art and surfing. “I have a high level of skill when it comes to tube riding, but put me in a contest jersey and I’m hopeless. It’s the same with my art; people seem to enjoy my work, but when it comes to the business of promoting and selling it, I’m similarly at a loss.”

But is Phil Goodrich unhappy with his current, often penniless, lot? Not at all. “I really enjoy the way things are. I always feel that success and recognition are right around the corner.”

View Phil Goodrich’s work at several sites online: http://philgoodrich.imagekind.com; www.freewebs.com/philgoodrich; www.absoluteart.com/portfolios/p/philgoodrich; Contact him through any of them to purchase pieces or to commission new paintings.

One of music’s most extraordinary qualities is the way it can conjure images through seemingly unrelated sensory organs. That it inspired Goldacker to invest in a quiver of pens and pencils and a drawing pad, rather than the expected source instruments, is even more extraordinary.

At first reckoning, events in Goldacker’s New Jersey early childhood might have seen him adopting a wholly different artistic path. He remembers his father drawing cartoons for him as a kid, ones peopled with characters like Popeye and Superman, and Goldacker recalls tracing some of these images as early as 4 or 5. “I don’t ever remember art not being a part of my life,” he says. “I used to go straight to the art section of the library whenever I went there. Books on the masters, graphic design manuals, lettering books — anything and everything to do with art was what I went for.”

But by the time he turned 10 around 1970, Goldacker became hooked on music and, by extension, that era’s exemplar of music-inspired poster art, Peter Max. Emulating Max’s clear, meandering lines for renditions of his own favorite musicians, Goldacker began sowing the seeds of a style he now recognizes as “contemporary retro.” Around the same time, the Goldacker family relocated to Florida, and after a brief spell in Miami, Goldacker himself moved to Brevard County, where he opened a café called Java The Hut in Indian Harbour Beach. This venture, and another called Kool Beanz he ran in Cocoa Village until 1998, earned him his “Java” sobriquet. Both cafés were bohemian havens for local art and coffee lovers, and through them, Goldacker and his wife sold handcrafted jewelry and t-shirts he designed along with prints of his pen-and-ink drawings. It was then that he made a name for himself doing graphic design side work for businesses and individuals, all while paying homage to his idol, Max.

An avid concertgoer, Goldacker has, through the years, created a series of portraits of rock musicians based on iconic photographs that are unique for the way in which they came about. Working his way backstage to famous performers (either legitimately or otherwise), he presented his heroes with their likenesses for autographing along with another copy to keep as their own. The practice proved successful, if nerve-wracking, as an ’87 meeting with Elvin Bishop in Miami illustrates.

Showing Bishop his portrait, Goldacker remembers him scratching his chin doubtfully and passing the image back before uttering: “Welp. I’ll tell you what, son. I’m not quite sure about the likeness. Looks more like Rod Stewart.” Undeterred, Goldacker, with the help of some “liquid courage,” approached Bishop again with his portfolio after the show, and by evening’s end, Bishop had accepted the offer and the two became quick friends. Among the many Goldacker’s done (he’s collected over 100 autographs on original pieces) are likenesses of Ringo Starr, Alice Cooper, George Carlin, Joe Cocker, and Wolfman Jack.

But a recent meeting with Peter Max in Boca Raton eclipses all every one of these backstage run-ins. Ever the music fanatic, Goldacker interviewed Max for his own recently resurrected radio show, now available worldwide on the Tropic Wave Radio Network. Max enjoyed the discussion so much and was so impressed with Goldacker’s ability that he invited he and his wife up to his New York home/studio. There, Max presented Goldacker with a double portrait that features both artists’ respective images of each other. It’s Goldacker’s prized possession and one that echoes the mind-bending themes of much of his work, particularly a 30-foot indoor trompe l’oeil mural of rock royalty at Dalino’s Pizza in Merritt Island. Along with some clever visual tricks, the mural is also packed with allegorical symbols and inside references that continue to stump even the most devoted music fans.

Goldacker’s swirling, intricate designs have garnered him a strong local following, and over the past 12 years he’s designed three official t-shirts and accompanying posters for the South Florida Folk Festival and two for the Cocoa Village Jazz Fest. He’s also designed dozens of band logos and CD covers for groups like Acoustic Alliance and Taylor Made, and he most recently created a striking poster for the classic ’60s psychedelic band The Electric Prunes. The image is currently being sold at their live performances and was featured as a standout in PhotoShop Creative Magazine last year. Other Goldacker works are featured in two mass-market books: “PhanArt: The Art of Phish Phans” and “HOPE: A Collection of Obama Posters and Prints.” Goldacker also illustrated local author Diane Carr’s “River Dragon,” a children’s book based on the crumbling Merritt Island landmark, and he’s just been contracted to illustrate another, “Bud The Spud” by Adam Byrn Tritt, set for national release in 2010.

Local music lovers and radio show junkies may know Goldacker as host of “An Acoustic Record,” which airs Monday nights on WFIT. Now set to host “On The Flipside” on Tropic Wave Radio Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Goldacker will draw from a three-year archive of interviews he conducted with international recording artists, regional performers, and pop culture icons, including Jewel; Ian McLagan of The Faces; Ray Manzarek; Ian Gillan; Dave Davies; Larry Coryell; Charlie Daniels, and Peter Max himself. “On The Flipside” will also feature themed programs built around the music of artists like Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie.

As with everything Goldacker creates, the thematic thread leads back to the music he loves. It’s a source of unending inspiration for his drawings, paintings, graphic designs, logos, and a stellar radio show. It’s also one that continues to feed both the eyes and the ears.

Visit “Java” John Goldacker online at these sites: www.koolbeanz.com; www.splitbeanz.blogspot.com; www.myspace.com/acousticrecord; www.javajohn.etsy.com. Beginning December 1, tune into “On The Flipside” Monday-Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tropic Wave Radio — www.tropicwaveradio.net.

Along with an abundance of fall celebrations and community food drives, the Space Coast Art Festival has become synonymous with the Thanksgiving season, and many families find themselves organizing their feasts around the annual show. For thousands of locals, convincing out-of-state relatives to spend the holiday beachside is never much of a problem thanks to the Festival, which has become a Thanksgiving tradition in and of itself.

A definitive seasonal milestone since its 1963 inception, November’s 46th Annual Space Coast Art Festival is expected to draw some 30,000 art lovers to downtown Cocoa Beach. The 235 participating artists selected by the discerning board will compete in nine distinct categories — oils and acrylics; watercolors; drawings, graphics, collages and printmaking; clay; sculpture; photography; glass; jewelry; and leather, fiber, paper and wood — for about $50,000 in cash. This November’s Festival also promises to be one of the strongest showings of local artists in recent years, with 36 of them hailing from Brevard County alone.

Cocoa Beach brings no less than eight artists to the Festival; among them: John and Gertrude Pointek, Carolyn Terrell, Brian Horan, David Armacost, Claudia Beckwith, Leon Applebaum and sculptor Jim Lasley.

Lasley’s primitivistic yet ultra-modern metal sculptures are poised to be some of the most thought-provoking creations of the weekend. Avowing that his art has been swept along in the madness of a world in a heightened state of spasmatic convolution, Lasley’s work is spurred by a strong, primal desire to translate conflicting images, sounds and feelings into pieces that are simple and concretely clear. “I work in metal because it has the endurance necessary to release my ‘news’ into the outside space,” he says. “With my immigration into simplicity, I dream of leaving the United States of Amnesia behind and joining the march of the new Neanderthals.”

Lasley’s pieces also serve as abstract counterpoints to the ethereal, delicate beauty of fused glass artist Jamille Haddad, who along with Charles Hazelaar and Jeff King, represents Cape Canaveral with some strong and highly individualistic entries. Back in 1977, Haddad became intrigued by the demanding discipline after reading an article in a stained glass journal. One of the recognized pioneers of the resurgent glass art movement in the U.S., Haddad was also one of the first to display pieces in highly-regarded galleries and exhibits, including New York’s Corning Museum of Glass and the Galerie du Vitrail in Chartres, France. His current passion is designing brilliantly-colored Hawaiian tropical reef fish, subjects that convey deeply spiritual themes and his search for light amid an ever-increasing darkness.

Local art enthusiasts should be no strangers to the work of Indialantic’s Mike “Nemo” Nemnich, 3-D artist David Burton and Sloane Keats, nor to that of Satellite Beach’s John Kopf, seascape painter Fred Cheney or stained glass artist Julie Murphy, who is also adept with all manner of decorative forms, from detailed mosaics to broadly-scoped murals. A Satellite Beach resident for over 20 years, Murphy counts sea life as one of her favorite subjects, and her devotion to diving and snorkeling informs many of her pieces with the diaphanous beauty of the aquatic world.

Cocoa’s Paul Lamontagne joins Merritt Island’s Egle Bredikis, Richard Ficker, Noah Hosburgh, Roy Schallenberg and Jackie Walker for the weekend’s journey of artistic discovery, in addition to Palm Bay’s Jens Bisgaard and Lloyd Cheney and Malabar’s Mike Meyer. Viera favorite Witha LaCuesta was encouraged by her father from an early age to paint and draw. Regular visits to art museums in Europe and the United States built a solid foundation in art history and familiarity with famous artists and their philosophies and techniques. Always fascinated with the transparent quality of watercolors, LaCuesta also embraces oils, concentrating on the play of light that is either shining on the subject or reflecting off it.

The same holds true of naturalistic painter Kay Halpern, who along with Lori Pitten-Jenkins, Mark Mittleman, Marsha Sea and wood artist/photographer Kat Reichard represents the city of Melbourne. Titusville brings James Richmond, and Mims provides attendees with the talents of Jimsong Kim and Carol Kim.

Abstract ceramicist Charles Nalle designs playful, yet functional pieces from a melding of techniques culled from both studio and industrial work experiences. In addition to gallery-quality wall art, Nalle has created teapots, mugs and vases that are as artistically pleasing as they are durable. Like Bob Lehman and popular jewelry artist Peggy Miller, Nalle is a Melbourne Beach resident.

Other artists from as far away as New York, Wisconsin and Iowa help bolster the SCAF’s reputation as one of the finest public art shows in the Southeast, if not the nation.

The Space Coast Art Festival also happens to be the best excuse for leaving the Thanksgiving table early. Turkey still tastes good cold, but the region’s most fabulous selection of art always demands immediate attention.

The 46th Annual Space Coast Art Festival takes place Thursday, November 26 through Sunday, November 29. Check this issue’s SCAF Program insert for more details, or log on to www.spacecoastartfestival.com to learn more about the weekend’s events.

Most of the conflict is tied directly to the country’s vast natural resources. These resources are both a blessing and a curse, making the DR Congo a country of great potential and a frequent victim of exploitation. The minerals found there are used in consumer electronics, including laptops and cell phones. While many benefit from the mineral trade, it is the Congolese people who bear the consequences of a conflict that sustains profitable mining enterprise. A combination of unstable governance, a history of bitterness between local groups, and international interest in DR Congo makes this situation one of the most complicated on the planet. A Venice, CA-based non-profit called Falling Whistles is trying to make order out of chaos, one whistle at a time.

It was during a 2007 trip to the DRC that philanthropist and Falling Whistles founder Sean Carasso learned of the “whistle blowers,” Congolese children abducted and conscripted by rebel factions. Too young to hold guns, these children are given merely a whistle and put on the front lines of battle, their sole duty to frighten the enemy with their blowing before receiving the first round of bullets. Those who attempt to flee are shot in the back as encouragement for the others to march forward courageously. Proceeds from the whistles Falling Whistles sell go toward restoring the lives of war-affected children by developing partnerships with Congolese community leaders who are rehabilitating victims through education, art, sports, medical treatment and nutritional services.

Inspired by Falling Whistles’ efforts, Cocoa Beach brothers Ben (21) and Tony Sasso, Jr. (22) and San Diego resident Seth Williams (21), all students at Flagler College in St. Augustine, undertook a grueling, 2,300-mile bike tour across America to help spread the story of the young whistle blowers. The trio began the Falling Whistles Bike Tour in St. Augustine on July 1, weaving through the south with their message of peace to arrive in San Diego, CA on August 14.

Tony, Ben and Seth shared some of their incredible experiences with us upon their return to Florida, inspiring all of us to blow the whistle on the horrific tragedy facing the Congolese people.

How did you guys come up with the idea for the Falling Whistles Bike Tour?

Tony: I had the idea to ride to California for fun, but when I brought the idea to Ben and Seth we all decided it would be a great opportunity to network for Falling Whistles. They had met the organization’s founder in San Diego while they were working with another non-profit. So the trip became a networking tour, pretty much just making friends and spreading awareness about the cause. We wanted to help create a larger network for Falling Whistles and spread awareness about what’s going on in the DR Congo.

How did others in the organization react to your idea for the bike tour?

Ben: they were so inspired by the idea of two wheels that they seriously contemplated launching a scooter tour. They hung a 4′ x 8′ map of the U.S. in the office with cut-out paper bikes which they moved in conjunction with our trip.

How did you decide on the route you’d take?

Seth: The main goal was San Diego, but we pretty much set up stops according to what we could ride each day. We also made stops in cities where we had some contacts already set up.

Tony: The route also changed along the way as we learned more about our riding and by talking to local folks who knew the area.

How did you prepare physically for the tour? Before this, what was the furthest you’d ever ridden?

Seth: We didn’t really prepare that much. The longest I’d ridden before the tour was 40 miles. Both Tony and Ben had ridden about 25 miles before the trip.

What kinds of bikes were you riding? How often did you break down?

Tony: We rode touring frames, which are pretty much a longer and sturdier version of a road bike. I had a great deal of trouble with flats, probably four a week. Ridiculous. We did our own repairs; I carried the bike tools and extra equipment.

Seth: My rack buckled under the weight of my bag and nearly caused an accident on the side of the road at 2:30 a.m. one in morning. Tony found a pole in the woods and used his Eagle Scout skills to lash the rack back together. It was good as new.

Did you any other major problems during the trip?

Seth: Not really. We were all surprised how smoothly it all went.

Tony: We learned that just because a GPS says there is a road doesn’t always mean there is one.

Ben: While riding from a deli to a Hardee’s my front tire hit a pothole and I re-injured my knee. As soon as I hit the hole, I couldn’t bend it, and Seth and Tony had to help me into the Hardee’s. After that, I flew out to work in the Falling Whistles office.

What were some of your most memorable experiences during the tour?

Seth: Early in the trip we stayed the night behind a church and the priest suggested we ride to Washington, D.C. to get Obama out of there. We also ate a great deal of lucky charms.

Ben: Yelling at every farm animal we passed — until one looked at us with a terribly sad face. I felt bad and never yelled at another farm animal.

Tony: Riding through the early dawn dew of North Florida and Alabama. Getting closer to my brother and Seth was great as well.

What was the most arduous leg of the tour?

Tony: Ben’s leg was the most difficult (laughs). On the last day we did 25 straight hours through ridiculous California mountains. We rode from Yuma, Arizona to Pacific Beach, California. It was about 170 miles, by far the hardest day of my life. That was the furthest we traveled in one day without stopping.

Isn’t it true that Texas seems never to end?

Seth: Yes, that’s correct.

Tony: Texas is weird.

Ben: Flying over Texas was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

What did you miss most during the tour?

Tony: Waves and friends.

Seth: California burritos and San Diego weather.

Ben: My girlfriend, Veronica. I wore spandex shorts the whole time, so I missed wearing regular shorts.

What were you eating during the journey — and where were you sleeping?

Tony: We ate a lot of couscous and Nutella on bagels.

Seth: … and Subway.

Tony: We stayed with friends, camped anywhere we could and stayed in cheapo motels.

Seth: We spent one night at a city playground and I slept on the jungle gym. It was terrible.

Which city stop left the fondest memories for you?

Seth: Bogalusa, Louisiana. We stayed with a great couple, Boris and Amy. Boris is a chef and we got some badass home cookin’.

Tony: Austin, Texas. We met some great people and were really taken care of. That city is pretty rad and has a great music scene. Plus, my girlfriend flew out to see me while we were there.

In general, how were you and your message received?

Tony: People along the way were incredible. We were offered free meals and places to stay from complete strangers who supported what we were doing.

What do you find is one of the most misunderstood facets of the strife in the DR Congo?

Seth: It’s not a fight against “good guys” and “bad guys,” it’s a fight between various groups with multiple motives, including political power, control of natural resources and self defense.

Have you ever met any of the children whose stories inspired Falling Whistles?

Seth: I haven’t met any children from DRC, but I have met child soldiers from Northern Uganda, and their struggle is very similar. The situation in the DRC isn’t really improving, just going through cycles. Hopefully, with the work Falling Whistles and other organizations are doing, that will change soon.

Do you feel you’ve achieved what you set out to do, now that it’s over?

Seth: The route didn’t really provide the best networking opportunities, so tying a tour in with a bike trip proved more difficult than we thought.

Tony: As our first try at something like this, I think it went well.

What kind of progress has Falling Whistles made since you finished the tour?

Ben: While we were actually on tour they were able to launch their first program — basically a micro-economic program teaching vocational skills in the DRC. They’re making more progress every day.

Has this tour inspired you to conceive of any other trips to help spread the Falling Whistles message?

Tony: It definitely helped open our minds to the possibilities of touring, but not with Falling Whistles exclusively. I think we learned that getting involved doesn’t necesarily mean working for or donating to an organization. Just doing what you’re good at to benefit others can be just as powerful.

What was the first thing you did once you finally reached the end of the journey?

Seth: (Laughs.) Ate a huge sandwich on my porch in gorgeous San Diego weather.

Tony: Booked a flight back.

What can people do to help Falling Whistles?

Ben: Visit the site — www.fallingwhistles.com — and you’ll see various opportunities to help the organization move forward, including internships and hosting speaking events.

Tony: It’s really easy to get involved; you just need be creative.

Learn more about Falling Whistles at www.fallingwhistles.com, and read Seth’s blog of the tour archived at www.fallingwhistlesbiketour.com.

Nancy Dillen
What constitutes a “Florida Artist”?

If you say that, foremost, one has to be from Florida, then you ignore the many artists who’ve been born elsewhere and have moved here to create. It also might discount a number of artists who live beyond our borders, yet still draw inspiration from Florida environs from afar. The answer, then, might lie in the landscape of the State itself as a prominent subject. But is it enough to have rendered the beach, a ramshackle shack, the swaying palms, or that particular orange hue of sunlight on canvas to earn the “Florida Artist” distinction?

There’s a common visual language all Florida artists employ, a wholly different vocabulary of images than that of, say, Michigan, but it can be argued that the true Florida artists use it to convey the often contentious relationship between nature and urban development. At the heart of all of our best regional art is that struggle, so unique to Floridians, and whether overtly addressed or suggested symbolically, it’s a conflict that’s rarely resolved without descending into kitsch. Too often, Florida art avoids depicting the existence of encroaching condominiums in favor of showing untouched pockets of pristine beauty. Other times, the problem is addressed baldly, with an almost pessimistic resignation to the onslaught of uglifying progress.

Eau Gallie-based artist Nancy Dillen approaches the issue in an altogether different way. Through the use of what many call “magic realism,” Dillen, who was born in Quincy, just shy of the Georgia border, depicts Florida’s constant state of flux as part of a necessary, though sometimes painful aspect of a greater evolution. Though Dillen is honest about the absence of any intended “hidden meaning” in her highly original paintings, each appears to comment on the adaptable nature of both Florida’s environment and its inhabitants. It’s a refreshingly new approach that imbues her designation as one of the preeminent Florida artists working today with deeper significance.

A retrospective of Nancy Dillen’s intense and colorful work this month at Highway Grrls Gallery and Studio in downtown Eau Gallie will provide art lovers with an overview of some of her finest pieces, some of them her most recent. Peopled with fantastical creatures and shapes from a surreal world in a heightened state of flux of its own, each is informed by the magical facets driving every instance of change and adaptation, however minor. Even ones as fanciful as the striking “Cuckoo Land” hint that no matter how weird things can get, life — in even the strangest, most inscrutable of forms — will continue on. Even the woodchucks (a favorite wildlife subject) popping up in the comparatively realistic landscape of “Chuck Talk Qua” seem proud of the underground existence they’ve eked out safely below our confused and deluded world. Though dwarfed by the sweeping vista of rolling hills behind them, the chucks exude a kind of dignified resilience — an encapsulation of the idea that seemingly insignificant things will always find a way to endure.

All this transformative magic unfolds in the 1926 Florida cracker house Dillen has painstakingly restored over the years with her husband Rick. Within spitting distance of the Eau Gallie Causeway, the house itself is a testament to Dillen’s love of the indomitable. In her studio, which looks out over the Indian River, everyday objects twist themselves into elastic, exaggerated shapes. With several swathes of vibrant color, a tape dispenser becomes a cartoonish jester, a bottle a writhing weasel. But this current magic realism phase is just one of many Dillen’s enjoyed dwelling in.

After graduating from FSU with an M.A. in Art Education and Constructive Design in 1971, Dillen settled in Melbourne, where she became the lone art instructor at BCC, teaching everything from drawing to ceramics. During her 35 years on the faculty there, she oversaw the art program’s expansion into a more efficient and effective eight-person department. Apart from brief yet pivotal stints teaching on Vancouver Island, BC and studying in Gatlinburg, TN, Dillen has lived and breathed Florida life to the hilt, and like every true Floridian, has accepted the rough of hurricanes and construction with the smooth of river rhythms and warm afternoon rain showers.

As a guest lecturer, juror, exchange instructor and art consultant who is recognized both nationally and internationally, Dillen gives back to the art community she’s so devoted to. As a painter, she’s explored the themes of nature, wildlife, and still-life subjects from a variety of inventive thematic angles. The mid-’80s saw her dealing with the the passage of time, memories, and loss in paintings like “Red Trees.” Environmental concerns rear their heads in her “Barrier Series” of the late ’80s, a collection of both real and imaginary landscapes that reflect a rural life at odds with encroaching urbanism. After teaching a plein-air class at Gatlinburg’s Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in 1991, Dillen began her “Woodchuck Series,” chronicling the creatures’ search for a place of their own.

Now recently retired from teaching, Dillen is painting full-time, exhibiting, creating art for public places (like the mosaic plinth she helped design for the Eau Gallie Redevelopment Association), and hosting workshops both locally and internationally. But to her, art and teaching are one in the same, and each offers exciting opportunities for new challenges and discoveries. Armed only with a brush and an active imagination, Nancy Dillen teaches all of us to look at every change we see not as a potential extinction, but an enduring evolution. And while it might seem like a revolutionary idea, it’s one every Floridian should embrace with similarly imaginative fervor.

Robin Rothrock’s Highway Grrls Gallery and Studio (1414 Highland Ave., in the heart of the Eau Gallie Arts District) celebrates Nancy Dillen’s 30 Years of Art in Brevard County with a retrospective of her work on October 2 from 5:30 to 9 p.m. during the area’s “First Friday Art Walk.” The opening, which is free and open to the public, ushers in the show planned to run through November 5. Enjoy refreshments, live music, and wonderful art. To find out more, visit www.robinrothrock.com or call the gallery at 777-9420. Nancy Dillen will also be teaching a two-day painting workshop at the Brevard Art Museum (1463 Highland Ave. in the Eau Gallie Arts District), October 17 and 18 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The class is open to beginners through advanced levels. Call 254-7782 to register. Her work can also be seen at the LoPressionism Gallery in downtown Melbourne (101-B E. New Haven Ave.; 722-6000). More information on Nancy Dillen, including a large portfolio of her paintings, can be found at www.dillenart.com

If you were to compile a list of essential stops and sights for a guidebook called “The East Coast Surfer’s Pilgrimage Route,” you might have a hard time justifying the inclusion of Twombly’s Nautical Furniture in Cocoa Beach. Barring the weathered pirate statue standing out front, it’s a pretty innocuous looking edifice, one that offers scant indication of the treasures amassed within its walls. Plus, it’s a furniture shop.

Yet like a nondescript chapel that sleeps in the shadows cast by the larger, more imposing cathedrals that surround it, Twombly’s rewards visitors seeking the true spirit of surfing with forgotten relics, curios and stories, all tended loyally by an unassuming archivist in its owner, artist Joe Twombly.

Now Twombly would be the first to scoff at the notion that what he creates is art, yet after some gentle prodding, he concedes that the trade he began so prosaically involves something more than mindless assemblage. To him, all his work stems from surfing — the sport itself and the ideas and culture that encompass it — and it’s hard to steer him away from the subject toward the one we’d come to discuss. After a few hours of talking and scanning photos and clippings of his early days surfing the east coast, I returned to my shabby office to transcribe my collected notes. Here were accounts of trips and both minor and epic tales about Mike Tabeling, Dick Catri, Claude Codgen, Gary Propper, Mimi Munro, Gary Propper, and Bruce Valluzzi, along with intertwining chronologies of each character’s careers — and hardly a page about the sea-themed tables he fashions in his studio-cum-factory. This interview, I figured, would surely put my skills as a writer to the test.

But much like a pilgrim in search of the gilded, gleaming reliquary who’s finally faced with an ordinary wooden box after an arduous trek, I soon discovered that I’d stumbled upon something far more precious than the obvious grail. Giving my notes a closer look, each disparate episode and footnote swirled about magically to form the image I’d been seeking. Whether by accident or design, Twombly, a kind of befuddling surf mystic, had actually answered each of my pointed questions about what he does with refreshing candor. The greater questions for any artist, it turns out, shouldn’t focus on what they create, but where each creation springs from. To get my answer, I had to understand Twombly himself.

As soon as we arrive in the small showroom that greets visitors to his shop, Twombly sits down to regale us with an effusive account of his life on the water. What develops is a conversation filled with riotous laughter, silence for those who’ve passed, and inventive non sequiturs that, while at first confusing, shed brilliant light on dusty legends. Cabinets are opened, and attention is drawn to faded clippings, crinkled photos, and framed portraits of old friends. On paper, the facts read like a Bulfinch’s Mythology entry on surfing luminaries, but not once does the engaging Twombly fall back on empty name-dropping or deluded “when I was your age”-didacticism.

These stories and moments are as alive today in Twombly’s mind as they were 20 years ago, and like a shaman, he imbues them with warm breath for privileged listeners. Never coming across as the retired general who pulls out old medals, the better to see his reflection in their polished surface, Twombly’s modest speech is full of praise for others. Tabeling, Catri, Propper — they’re not untouchable idols here, but real people. Where a lesser chronicler would simply lump them all into an indistinguishable pile of “The Best,” Twombly enumerates all their finest qualities as only a true friend could. Tabeling? The most adventurous and courageous, convincing Twombly to take his first terrified night surf. Propper? The most encouraging and enthusiastic, like the time he grabbed a 13-year-old Twombly by the arm during a session to tell onlookers that Joe would be a surfer someday. There are hilarious tales of Catri and countless others that arise. But Twombly himself? He just happened to be there.

At one point, he shows us a photo album of a 1969 trip to Martinique with some friends. Several timeless shots elicit more uproarious laughter, a few others some sadness for friends who’ve since died. “Here’s some of the kids there paddling out on poles,” he indicates. “They had long pieces of rubber as leashes. They were way ahead of their time!” Another National Geographic-worthy photo shows some small figures looking out at the surf in beaming afternoon sunlight. “They let those kids out of school to watch us surf,” he recalls. Setting it back into a cabinet drawer, Twombly says: “It was the time of our lives” without a trace of the mournfulness you’d expect. While he’s understandably wistful about an idyllic era that ended, it seems to inject him with uncontainable enthusiasm rather than melancholy. Just having lived it informs the present, a present still filled with discovery, creativity and fun.

Twombly’s induction into the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame in 2000 and his current Vice Presidency of the institution already speaks volumes about his dedication to the sport’s ethos, but still he reserves special credit for friends who helped make the East Coast surfer such a unique cultural force. They’re friends he met when his family settled in the area in back in 1963 after following the Twombly patriarch (who worked in military intelligence) from jobs in Tokyo, California, Baltimore, New York and Panama. “Baseball was my thing,” he says of those years. “I didn’t get into surfing until later.”

His older sister Betsy gave him his first real introduction to surfing shortly after they arrived in Florida, and the two shared his first board, a James & O’Hare. After a few years of honing his innate surfing skills up and down the coast, Twombly earned early fame helping the Surfboards Hawaii team rise to prominence. In 1967, Twombly caught the eye of Hobie Alter, who recruited him to his team and helped pay his college tuition. While at Florida Tech, Twombly, now on the cusp of marriage (he and wife Sue have been married for 37 years), studied political science, vaguely thinking that he’d go into public relations. “Look up the word ‘ambiguous’,” he says, “and that’s me.” With the help of some skills acquired while working local construction, he made his first tables out of some recovered materials as a hobby. “We needed a coffee table,” he remembers, laughing. “I built one in the apartment and resined the top in the living room. I destroyed the carpet, of course, and the lady who lived downstairs came up bitching about the smell.”

Inspired by the aquatic environment he’d come to love, Twombly began making tables, stools and other pieces for people who’d heard about them from friends. Starting with deep, curved wooden frames as vessels, as he’s done here since 1972, Twombly arranges indigenous shells, coral, small fish, crustaceans and flotsam into three-dimensional “mosaics” of color and form. Customers can choose to employ Twombly’s shells and minutiae (bought from local divers), their own, or a mixture of both. It takes an instinctively artistic eye to place them in a way that disguises their having been touched by human hands. Successfully replicating the randomness of nature and capricious tides as only a devoted waterman could, Twombly then covers each seascape with layers of clear epoxy resin to create the illusion of water.

Helped by friend and store manager Mike Meyer here in the back shop room (“The Nexus,” they call it), Twombly has made pieces for more than 30 Carnival Cruise ships, over 250 restaurants, and thousands of private customers, including a sultan from Dubai who hired him to make some railings for his yacht. Trying to count the number of pieces he’s done proves difficult (“hundreds of thousands”); reciting the roster of restaurants even more so (“Honestly, I can’t remember them all”). Twombly’s first piece was for the now defunct Captain Ed’s at the Port, and he’s since made gorgeous resin-coated tables for Ron Jon’s Cape Caribe Resort, Cocoa Beach Surf Company’s Shark Pit, Breakfast At Lily’s, Bernard’s Surf, Makoto’s, Roberto’s, Taco City, Florida Seafood Bar & Grill, Canaveral Pier, Dixie Crossroads, Grills, and the PAFB Officer’s Club, as well as many decorative pieces for Disney and EPCOT’s Chinese Pavilion.

Smaller pieces like end tables can take up to five or six weeks to complete, while larger pieces require about two months’ work, some of which incorporate vintage nautical items like compasses, coils of rope, small portholes, hatch covers and brass panels recovered from WWII ships — even capstan bases. Crouching down to look at a particularly wide oceanscape table from a child’s vantage point offers a seabed view of the scene within. Behind a leaf of fan coral lurks a blue crab, a few minute grains of sand floating near his carapace suggesting movement frozen in time. To the right, two quarter-sized fish veer vertically over a spiky pink conch and a small scattering of sand dollars and ray egg casings. It’s the kind of view usually only divers are privy to, but one Twombly seems to conjure up intuitively from years of being out on the water.

You could say that it’s this quality — this marriage of beauty and functionality — that brings people the world over to Twombly’s shop. That it also happens to be an important spot in local history, however unlikely, seems lost on many of them. But to a lucky few, Twombly’s tables aren’t just furniture, but talismans of a soul touched indelibly by the ocean.

And knowing someone like Joe Twombly made them only increases their value even more.

Twombly’s Nautical Furniture is located at 101 Manatee Lane in Cocoa Beach. To find out more about Joe Twombly’s tables, stop by the showroom, call 783-8610, or visit www.twomblysnauticalfurniture.com

Local artist and gallery owner Karen McDonald describes herself as always having been “artsy-craftsy,” dabbling in disciplines like batik, stained glass, decoupage, candle making and tole painting since her teens. But she always thought she couldn’t draw and wasn’t “good at art.” All that changed when she enrolled in a night class about 15 years ago while living in San Diego.

“I had an urge to take a night class and wanted something artistic,” she recalls. “Believing I couldn’t handle paint and a brush, but loving color, I chose a colored pencil class. I surprised myself by actually doing a pretty good job at it, so then I took a watercolor class. Well, I was hooked.” Karen describes loving the process from the first stroke, and when her yellow and orange dabs blended into each other, she found they’d formed a beautiful pear. It’s on that ebullient sense of discovery art holds that she founded her bright and wonderfully eclectic Art on Fifth Gallery in downtown Indialantic this past March, and the inspiring story of its conception is filled with similar serendipitous moments.

After creating that first pear, she continued taking watercolor classes, and after a few years, began to feel comfortable enough with drawing to consider pursuing an art-oriented career. To that end, she began teaching art in after-school classes at local elementary schools, to groups of home schoolers out of a garage, and in several small private studios.

Seven years ago, when Karen and her husband relocated to Brevard with their two sons, she continued taking watercolor classes, unaware that a new discovery was waiting for her just around the corner. “I never thought I would venture into any other medium because I loved the magic of watercolor so much, but one day I saw an acrylic painting of tulips by Fritz Van Eeden,” she tells me. “It was so exciting and different from what watercolor could do. I just had to learn how to paint like that.” She soon signed up for her first acrylic class with  beloved Satellite Beach artist Heather Everett, who at the time ran a studio on South Patrick. “Heather was so much fun and so encouraging,” Karen says. “She introduced me to the fun of acrylic painting with splattering and dripping and texture building techniques. I did a painting of tulips that really didn’t look anything like Fritz’s, but I loved it anyway.”

Excited to find that Van Eeden taught classes of his own, Karen enrolled in several workshops, learning to coax rich, bold and wild effects from acrylics in the style she so admired. She continued painting in both watercolor and acrylics, but couldn’t resist other classes being offered at the Brevard Art Museum — stained glass, fused glass, PMC (precious metal clay) and pottery. “By then,” says Karen, “I felt like I was so spoiled and having so much fun delving into all of this art, that I felt like I should be making some money to fund my art habit.”

Using her degree in secondary education, Karen, who’s held a variety of jobs over the years (including civil draftsman and real estate appraiser), started teaching art to 1st through 8th-graders at a small parochial school in Rockledge, something she regards as “a huge challenge.” “It was also lots of fun, and a great learning experience for me, but the stress of handling everything that goes with that job was tremendous,” she tells me. After a year there, Karen began teaching classes at Akademia in Indialantic before opening her own studio, Art ‘n Soul, in the Lori Laine Center on South Patrick.

“It was a pretty small space and not very visible as far as a business location, but I just wanted a studio where I could do my own art and teach some classes,” she explains. “It turned out that I loved it so much and I had became involved in offering classes in so many different media that I felt like I was being squeezed out of that space, so I decided I needed to either scale back or expand. When I found the space on Fifth Avenue, I knew that was where I wanted to be.”

The location turned out to be the perfect place for Art on Fifth. Only few blocks from the beach, the gallery boasts a well-lit front area and a large studio space at the rear where Karen and other artists teach workshops and where openings and special events are held. “When I opened, the only pieces in here besides mine were a few of Heather’s dramatic acrylic paintings and some of Alice Ahrens’ whimsically colorful watercolors. There are so many wonderfully talented artists in this area. It’s amazing,” Karen beams. “Every few days, another artist comes through the door to see what’s going on in the gallery, and they end up bringing their artwork in.” Thanks to Art on Fifth’s inclusive, open-minded ethos, over 40 artists are represented in the gallery, among them: Damien Share, Frank Palmieri, Jeff Leppard, Mary Moon, Paul Ero, and Viola Pace Knudsen.

During the summer, Karen offers multi-media camps in the afternoon, and mini-camps in the mornings taught by some of the gallery’s artists, including Mike Bryan, who taught caricatures, Heather Everett (painting), Alice Ahrens (tiki carving), and Panther Staton who taught charcoal drawing. Staton’s courses proved so popular that she’ll be returning to teach next month, along with New Smyrna Beach’s Carolyn Land, who’ll be hosting collage workshops September 14th and 15th and again on the 21st and 22nd. Weekly after-school classes are divided by age group at Art on Fifth, and are designed to be malleable according to the ever-changing nature of kids’ and parents’ schedules.

Karen explains. “I do 10 week packages, but they’re flexible as far as not being required to be attended consecutively. You pay for ten classes, and come ten times, so kids don’t have to lose a class because they want to go to the beach or have a dentist appointment. I want them to be glad they can come to class, and not have to miss another fun opportunity because they ‘have to go’ to art class.” This welcome adaptability extends to other aspects of the classes. “I do have a daily project for each class, but the kids are always welcome to choose another project. The classes are for their enjoyment and learning. I’m there to encourage, support, and inspire them to get to where they want to be with their art. One thing I’ve learned is that there are guidelines in art,” Karen continues, “but there are certainly no rules. Just because one technique or method works for one person, doesn’t mean it’s the only way to get to a successful result. And it’s successful if the artist likes it.”

Each month, Karen transforms the studio area into an extension of the gallery for openings and shows. In July, the brightly colorful paintings of Jeff Leppard inspired Art On Fifth’s fun-filled “Life’s a Beach” show, which featured beach-related art by 20 local artists. Due to its overwhelming success, August’s show, entitled “Jewels of the Sea” and slated for Saturday, August 22nd from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., will feature beach-inspired hand-made jewelry and accessories.

Despite its great location, Art on Fifth is somewhat hard to find. “I do have a visibility issue,” Karen admits. “I feel like we’re kind of invisible in between these two big buildings, but several artists are working on ideas for sculptures we could install to at least draw attention to the gallery.”

Until that time, regard Art on Fifth as a hidden treasure that’s well worth the hunt.

Art on Fifth is located at 425 Fifth Avenue in downtown Indialantic between Riverside Bank and the ReMax office. Parking is in the rear, so if you’re driving, enter from Sixth Avenue to the parking behind the building. You’ll be amazed not only by both the variety and the quality of artwork, but by their reasonable prices as well. Expect an eclectic collection of watercolors, acrylic and oil paintings, pottery, jewelry, baskets, fabric art, wood carvings, and tikis. To find out more about monthly classes and events, call 724-4490. Check back with the Resident next month for gallery-related announcements.

It’s said you can tell a lot about a person by the car they drive. If that’s the case, then surely the woodie owner rides in the most revealing and loquacious of biographers.

The woodie is undeniably fetching, yet it exudes the kind of understated and approachable attractiveness you find in the girl next door, the one you’ve had your eye on since first grade. It whispers the sort of comfortable affluence earned by dint of hard work and deep appreciation for days off rather than the inherited, windfallen wealth other vintage roadsters seem to shout as they pass. Even when parked, with no driver in sight, it tells you that its owner is down-to-earth, laid-back, and respectful of history, more at ease on the simpler, scenic roads of life than on the crowded freeways of modernity. Not that he’ll completely avoid them though, because they’re often the fastest way to the beach — and the woodie owner is at heart a surfer. His car is as indispensable as his board, and the road that takes him to the wave just as worthy of riding.

I’m sure if you listen closely, you can hear the five models woodie builder Erik Johnson owns singing a chorus of praise to their guardian and caretaker, but it’s hard to make out beneath the din made by thousands of his other children — spread out from Florida to Hawaii — who have plenty to say about their beloved father. It’s in Treehouse Woods, Johnson’s cluttered Cocoa Beach woodworking shop-cum-garage, that many of the country’s woodies saw the first light of day or were nursed back to health, thanks to his abiding love for this quintessentially American car.

As Johnson sees it, woodies symbolize “lost youth, freedom and fun.” He saw his first specimens while surfing in the New England of his own youth and never forgot the impact they made on him, nor the emotions they still conjure. “Nowadays,” Johnson says, “a lot of baby boomers have grown up thinking back on the carefree summers of their childhood. And now that their own kids have grown up and gone off to college, they need a toy of their own.” While most customers are doctors, lawyers, and businessmen, Johnson is quick to dispel any notion that woodies are simply exclusive collectibles for the well-heeled. “Woodie lovers come from all backgrounds, really. Everyone can appreciate and relate to them.”

It’s democratic qualities like these that attract woodie enthusiasts to their charges, vehicles that were originally built less for their aesthetic appeal than for their economy and practicality. The first prototypes appeared in 1910 and were known as “depot hacks,” favored for their spaciousness and the efficiency with which they shuttled encumbered travelers back and forth between hotels and train stations, hence the origin of their other name, “station wagons.” In the ’20s, more refined versions were being fashioned as chauffeured conveyances for Henry Ford’s illustrious cronies, men like Edison and DuPont, who reveled in the rare, bird’s-eye maple panels that adorned them. Subsequent decades saw them serving as America’s early SUV, with nearly every major car manufacturer in the country producing models with panels hewn from cheaper more prevalent woods like birch, ash, mahogany and common maple.

Woodies began their decline during the ’50s and ’60s when manufacturers realized pure steel bodies were less costly and labor-intensive to produce. Owners found them to be labor-intensive, too; without proper care, most succumbed quickly to the elements and were abandoned roadside or left to moulder in scrapyards. Surfers, then enjoying their heyday and just on the cusp of an excited diaspora, found them to be cheap workhorses, ideal for carrying boards and friends and duly expressive of their resourceful, individualistic attitudes. Today, woodies are usually associated with the California lifestyle, Funicello and Avalon films, and, of course, the Beach Boys.

But the ones that first spoke to Johnson were seen on the East Coast where he learned to surf. He made his first trip to Cocoa Beach from Massachusetts in 1969 before serving in Vietnam and returned to settle here in 1974, drawn by the Southeast Asian-like climate and lifestyle to which he’d grown accustomed. It was while living across from the ocean at 6th Street South that the self-taught Johnson began collecting driftwood and making furniture for his woefully bare second-floor apartment. “People were coming over and taking notice of some of these pieces and asked me to start building things for them,” he remembers. “I worked on my porch with this great view out over the trees, and that’s how I came up with the name, ‘Treehouse Woods.’”

Woodies came back into Johnson’s life serendipitously in 1975, when a friend told him about two rusting 1940 models he’d seen for sale in Orlando for $7,000. “Of course, I didn’t have the money for them then and I was trying to start a wood shop,” he tells me, “but it stayed in the back of my mind. A few years later they were still there, and I couldn’t pass them up again. I got both for $3,000.” Johnson’s woodworking and carpentry skills came in handy at this stage, as did earlier experience building hot rods in high school. “I had to teach myself how to repair them, but I restored those first two and bought some more. Now it’s a passion that’s just gotten way out of control,” he laughs.

Now nearly 30 years at his shop on Brevard Avenue, Johnson combines a variety of impressive skills with that passion to refurbish, restore and build custom and vintage woodies from scratch. Few shops in the country specialize in this type of work; even fewer do it as well as Johnson. When he can’t find parts — everything down to brackets and miniscule hinges — he makes them himself, often working from molds he had the foresight and ingenuity to fashion over the years. Though Ford wagons from 1935-1951 are closest to his heart, Johnson is also adept at repairing and creating models of all makes and years from chassis and molds he’s made of frames. Apart from planing, sanding and shaping wood into doors, tailgates, window moldings and roofs, he also does the varnishing, interior work, wiring, and engine repairs, all painstaking processes that involve a fantastic eye for detail.

Often working on several projects at a time, Johnson still finds time to do the unique woodworking that first brought him success. “We are refusing to participate in this recession,” he says matter-of-factly. “The country needs to learn to get up in the morning and go to work.” To that end, Johnson is devoting more time to doing custom woodwork, from made-to-specification furniture to fit odd spots in customers’ homes to repairing broken pieces that might otherwise be thrown out. His portfolio reveals a wide variety of creations: boat interiors, architectural flourishes and ornaments, cabinets, bookcases, entertainment centers, full kitchens, bed frames and sofas.

Still though, you get the feeling that what really gets Johnson up in the morning is that passion woodies first kindled in him all those years ago, one that’s as warm and organic as the very substance they’re made from. “It never fails to amuse me that when a person sees a woodie, the first thing they do is smile.”

“I feel like I’m helping make the world a better place,” he says, with just the sort of selfless cheer you’d expect from a proud woodie owner.

Treehouse Woods is located at 112 N. Brevard Ave. in Cocoa Beach. Call 783-6781, or visit www.woodiewood.com

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Its light weight and forgiving nature have also made it the material of choice for many Florida theme parks, with their emphasis on eye-catching, three-dimensional signage and whimsical structural effects. Disney alone is a virtual museum of architectural foam’s fantastic potential. During a brief stroll, you can see foam rocks and trees, embossed ceilings and fantastic friezes, many designed to create the illusion of antiquity.

In her roughly seven years as President and principal Designer for Rockledge’s Architectural FOAM & Art, Sharon Dixon has made her share of odd sculptures. But when I ask her to name her most unusual project, she’s simply stumped.

“What’s unusual?,” she responds. “A whale’s tail coming out of a porthole, a logo that spans 55 feet, an exploding car, a gargoyle, an Indian temple? I really don’t see any of them as unusual, I see them as challenging, and I love to figure out how to engineer something I’ve never done before.”

Sharon remembers that she was always working on some kind of art project during her Ohio childhood, often shaping her mother’s aluminum foil into roses she later painted. “Getting art supplies was always at the top of my Christmas wish list,” she tells me. Before receiving her graphic design degree and moving to Cocoa Beach in 1989, Sharon worked with Disney, Universal, SeaWorld and Kennedy Space Center, helping them create custom gift and stationery items for their retail locations. But it was while working on her design degree she began studying sculpture techniques in a fine arts class, something she continued to dabble in long after graduation. “I had a project that I was working on that required a mold to be made,” Sharon says. “I didn’t have any experience in mold making, so I stopped in at a local graphic shop. While I was there, I noticed a partially carved piece of foam. I thought, ‘Hmmm this is very interesting’.”

Sharon found out where to purchase the raw material and started experimenting with it. ”My original thought was to offer custom freelance services to the foam shops in the area, but after a very short time I realized that if I was going to make it work, I needed to invest in the equipment and learn the engineering program to be able to run some of the equipment that would be needed.” To that end, she founded Architectural FOAM & Art, which offers clients design, drawing and production services for custom architectural projects. “I guess you could say my exact title is: President, CEO, Director of Marketing, Artistic Designer, CAD Technician, Painter, Finisher and Shipping and Receiving Manager,” she says breathlessly. She employs a variety of architectural products, from hand-carved custom relief medallions and other architectural details to machine-cut forms such as crown moldings, capitals, corbels, relief carvings, columns, and medallions. Sharon’s 30-plus years of design experience provides customers with an unparalleled opportunity to create custom accents found nowhere else.

When she’s designing architectural elements for houses and buildings, Sharon draws inspiration from the Old Masters and history to evoke a time-worn style. Often, clients already have an idea of what they’re looking for, sometimes bringing in pictures she can work from. Sharon starts out with a design concept and “draws” it with the aid of CAD (computer aided drafting), which converts the image into a code that can be read by one of her computer controlled hotwire machines and begins cutting the expanded polystyrene foam, or EPS. In the case of  a hand-carved piece, the hotwire machine can help cut out a cookie cutter-type shape for further dimensional manipulation, which is completed with special hand tools. Once cut, the pieces are finished and hard coated for the the environment in which they’ll appear, each can be further finished and painted with a variety of products that can approximate the appearance of wood or metal or stone. Expanded polystyrene is incredibly durable, economical, long-lasting and doesn’t rot or decay, making it the ideal material for exterior architectural elements and details.

But it’s those unusual products that are likely to intrigue people the most. Locals will recognize her work on The Brevard Museum Of History and Natural Science and the newly-opened Dinosaur Store and Museum in Cocoa Beach, with its impressive Egyptian and Mayan-themed decorations. Others include the colorful “Paws On” sign for the expanded section of the Brevard Zoo, which includes a new petting area, a large water play zone, and a 20,000-gallon aquarium reflecting the wildlife of the Indian River Lagoon.  Also at the zoo, is her whale tail sign for a snack and sundries shop in the expanded section. And that exploding car? It was designed for Cocoa Beach High School’s performance of “Grease.” Currently, Sharon’s largest piece is the 55-foot high logo for Michelina condominiums in Cape Canaveral.

Regardless of whether they’re capricious sculptures based on cartoon imagery or stately cornices inspired by fin de siècle decor, each of her creations appeals to both aesthetic sensibilities and practical design. “Unless I’m working from an actual architectural rendering,” she explains, “it seems that most times clients may have an general idea of what they’re looking for, so in most cases, I have the ability to create custom designs for for them. Knowing the parameters of my material and equipment allows me to design to achieve maximum results. I love hearing a client say ‘That’s exactly what I had in mind.’ My goal is to to aways try to achieve more than what’s expected.”

Contact Sharon Dixon at 795-4533 for all your architectural design and accent needs, including custom design, fabrication and installation. Architectural FOAM & Art is located at 419 Hawk Street in Rockledge. She also has a small display in The Home Center , at the corner of Murrell Road and Viera Blvd. in Viera. Having recently installed machinery to recycle waste foam into packing material, Sharon has gone to great lengths to maintain a proper balance between her work and the environment. Visit her website at: www.architecturalfoamandart.com

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