Sidney and Beirne Davis Art Center

I planned to see the Festival of Trees at the art center, but the festival was over and the trees were gone.

 

Oh well.  I was able to see two large metal sculptures by Spanish-born artist Miguel Vazquez.  

One stands at each end of the art center.

In past years I have shown the tall pair of large cylindrical 2001 artworks by Jim Sanborn called The Caloosahatchee Manuscripts.  One drum contains the text of a story told by Maskoki Indian leader Tchikilli to James Oglethorpe about the migration of Native Americans into Florida. The art center is on the site of a settlement of Creek Indians that pre-dates the army fort that gave birth to Fort Myers' name.

On the other drum, Sanborn incised the Latin names of 500 botanicals that Thomas Edison tested in an effort to develop a source of latex from which to make rubber needed by his friends Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone.  

The drums are much more impressive in the evening when internal lights cast letters on the street, sidewalk and art center.  I showed them in my 2011 blog post.  It is worth a look.

Uncommon Friends

Uncommon Friends is an organization founded by a young Fort Myers businessman who befriended Thomas and Mina Edison in the 1920s.  The man wrote a book in 1989, "Uncommon Friends," about Edison, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, who all lived in Fort Myers in the 1920s.

 

The Uncommon Friends non-profit organization was started in 1993.  It is dedicated to lifelong character building among today's youth and business leaders, and the historic preservation of the James D. Newton Collection located in this historic house in downtown Fort Myers.

Christmas Golf Cart Parade

 

My Naples community had another Christmas Golf Card Parade on Sunday.

You can guess who the photographer and videographer is.

I think this year's parade had about 15 entrants, plus one person on a decorated motorcycle and two on decorated bicycles.

The couple who created this one won the "best cart" award for the third year in a row.

James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art

 Perhaps the most unexpected but pleasant discovery of our trip to Tampa/Saint Pete was the James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art in Saint Petersburg.  First, it is massive.  Second, it is loaded with great art.  I only had 90 minutes for the visit.  Got to go back another time!

John Nieto, an artist of Hispanic and Mescalero Apache descent, painted this colorful acrylic work, 

Coyote Medicine (1992).

This is John Coleman's Explorer Artists Series (2004-2010).  Coleman created this series of figurative sculptures based on 1830s paintings of Native leaders by explorer-artists Karl Bodmer and George Catlin. 

Hyrum Joe is a Native artist.  His heritage is a mixture of Diné (Navajo), Nuuchi-u (Southern Ute), Hopituh Sinom (Hopi) and Ndeé (White Mountain Apache).  This painting is My Grandfather Sings- Canyon De Chelley (2009).

This 1991 alabaster sculpture,  Death Song at Wounded Knee, is by Adam Fortunate Eagle, an Ojibwe (Chippewa).  Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota was the site of the final major clash in 1890 between the U.S. government and Plains Indians. More than 250 unarmed Lakota men, women, and children were killed in the Wounded Knee Massacre and buried in a mass grave at the site.

In 1866, one year after the Civil War ended, the U.S. Congress created six all-Black soldier regiments to help patrol and expand the Western frontier. Plains Indians called them "Buffalo Soldiers." Here, in Called to Duty (2016), Ezra Tucker embraces the name by incorporating clouds taking the form of buffalo. 

Roy Grinnell's 1994 painting, Mountain Lyin' Tales, shows cowboys sharing tall tales around the campfire after a long day in the saddle.  

The images above are all drawn from the museum's western artworks. 

 There are also many rooms with wonderful paintings and sculptures of wildlife.  I have to go back!

Over forty years of collecting, Tom James and his wife acquired more than 3,000 works of western and wildlife art.  Tom was the son of the founder of Saint Petersburg's Raymond James Financial, which grew under Tom's four decade leadership into a major international financial services firm.  After Tom left his CEO position in 2010, he planned this museum and opened it in 2018.

Heron

 

We had lunch across Central Avenue North from the Chihuly Collection.  The little deli had a colorful painting of a great blue heron on the wall across from the food service.

Morean Glass Studio

 We followed our visit to the Chihuly Collection with a trip down the block to see a glassblowing exhibition at the Morean Glass Studio in Saint Petersburg's Central Art District.

Anjali Singh was the glassblower.

Chihuly Collection

While in Saint Petersburg, we visited the Chihuly Collection.

A red chandelier was alone and beautifully lit in a small room.  The chandelier stood out, and the shadows were terrific.  The Bushnell Hall in Hartford also has a big, bright red chandelier like this one.

The glass ceiling of a corridor was full of colorful glass.  The ceiling was similar to the one at the Baker Museum in Naples.

I tried to remember how many places I have seen Chihuly glass.   I can remember Hartford and New Britain in Connecticut, Naples, Columbus and Chihuly's studios in Tacoma.  There are probably more.

A display case had a colorful and varied collection of glass.

Dale Chihuly communicates his ideas for glass objects to his team in large, fluid paintings.

The blue chandelier was the perfect companion.