Friday, January 17, 2025

Thursday, January 16, 2025

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

Bonita Springs National Art Festival

Bonita Springs hosts several art shows at Riverside Park in season.  The show last weekend was one of the best, with artists from all over the country.


Glenn Woods and Keith Herbrand are ceramicists who work and exhibit together.  I think this is Glenn, but the works are by Keith.  Glenn's works are based on gourds and other organic forms with matte surfaces.  Keith's are more functional in nature and have glossy crystalline glazes.


Candace happily showed the print she bought.



Billie Barthelmy exhibited women's clothing in muted colors (except for the red dress on the right).


Steven Olszewski's sculptures captured my attention a week earlier at a Naples show.  I liked them again at the Bonita Springs show.


Ronia Grillos learned how to make hats from her brother in the 1980’s in Santa Cruz California. Ronia’s hats are hand-cut and sewn using American leather wetting and folding to create unique and whimsical bands. Old coins, gemstones, and glass beads serve as embellishments.


Gyotaku is the Japanese art of making fish prints on rice paper.  I have seen Linda Heath's works at past shows, but her gyotaku this year is more colorful and defined.  Linda said that this show was an exceptionally strong one for her.  Big smiles.


Oops.  I misplaced this ceramicist's card.


John Mascoll creates wood-turned vessels with a lathe and specialty handheld tools.  
He works with American woods -- mainly burls -- and some international exotics.

Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Renaissance Faire

 







Just a bunch of portraits at Renaissance Faire.

I talked with Genesis for a while.  She is a hatmaker for performers at Renaissance Faires.  But, when a Faire is in Southwest Florida, she likes to spend time in the tent of a friend who shows a dozen or so eagles, falcons, and other big birds of prey, like the caracara below.

Monday, January 13, 2025

Mandala

Tibetan monks from the historic Gaden Shartse Monastery are touring the USA to showcase their culture and demonstrate their practices of meditation and paths to inner peace and compassion.  


They also demonstrate how they construct a sacred mandala from colored sand, and they raise funds to build more dormitory space for their monastery.



I watched them work on Thursday, after they had been working for four days.  Yesterday, to uphold the principle that all phenomena are transient, the monks were going to sweep up the mandala and place the sand in a nearby lake to purify the surrounding environment.

Sunday, January 12, 2025

Panoz

 My friend Pat has long wanted a Panoz, a rare racing car manufactured in Atlanta.  He bought a 1998 Panoz at auction a few weeks ago.  It has only 8,000 miles.  Only 176 were made.

Pat tells me that his Panoz AIV (Aluminum Intensive Vehicle) roadster has a Ford drivetrain and lots of internal Ford parts, so in a way it is a unique, custom Ford Mustang.  It is a completely impractical vehicle.  Too low to get in easily.  Uncomfortable for a passenger.  But fun . . . for a while.

Saturday, January 11, 2025

Surf

A boy practiced surfing at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico near the Naples Pier.