Mally Khorasantchi

 

German-born artist Mally Khorasantchi has lived in Florida for more than 30 years.  She produces large-scale paintings that are influenced by this region's flora and fauna, from mangrove roots to honeycombs to palm fronds.

Artis Naples has a first floor gallery in which the work of a local artist is displayed for a year.  

For 2026, Ms. Khorasantchi has been chosen to exhibit her works.

They are appealing and encourage a viewer to spend time looking at the details.  I photographed the exhibition during the day when Artis Naples was pretty empty.  A few days ago I attended a concert (with the fabulous violinist Joshua Bell the featured soloist) and this gallery was so packed I couldn't get in.

Golf

I play golf five or six times per season (November through April).  I played recently.

 The plantings near the putting practice green are pretty.

As are the plantings near the first tee.

The clouds above the fourth hole were great.  (I only play nine holes these days.)

I carry my camera with me, just in case.  A gopher tortoise crossed the seventh fairway.

Osprey Family

 I do a lot of wildlife photography in Naples.  My community is an Audubon Certified Sanctuary, so we have lots of birds, alligators, gopher tortoises and other animals.

I have been watching an osprey nest.  I saw one chick about two weeks ago, and a second one maybe one week ago.  I have been hoping to get Mama, Papa and the two chicks in a single frame.

Yesterday was the day.  Mama and her two chicks were chirping loudly and hungrily.  Papa returned to the nest with lunch.  Got it!

Chihuly

Artis Naples and its art museum, Baker Museum, have four exquisite examples of glass works by Dale Chihuly and his studio.  I have shown some separately in the past.  Here they are in one post. 

The newest Chihuly installation is Red Reeds.  The 145 reed-like glass forms were installed in the Norris Garden outside Baker Museum, against the concert hall of Artis Naples, as part of an exhibition from the Chihuly studio in 2020-2021.  After the exhibition closed, noted Naples philanthropists Jay and Patty Baker collaborated with their friends Jeannette and Herbert Evert to buy the installation and donate it.

The ceiling of a third floor, 51 foot long, hallway between two galleries shows 1,028 brightly colored Chihuly blown glass works called Persians, lighted and above glass.   Persian Seaform Ceiling was installed in 2000.  Like so many other works here, they were bought and donated by Jay and Patty Baker.

Blue icicle is a three-story, thousand pound, 35 foot long Chihuly chandelier consisting of 377 blown glass pieces hung in the center of Baker Museum.  

Finally Chihuly's 19-1/2 foot tall, 2,000 pound, red chandelier hangs across the courtyard in a gallery off the lobby of Hayes Hall in Artis Naples.

The Fiddler

Bruce Greene, an American sculptor, created A Cowboy's Carnegie Hall in 2007.   Far from New York City, this bronze shows a simpler, more intimate concert from a down-to-earth cowboy to his companions. 

I saw this last December in St. Petersburg during my visit to the James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art.  Today some participants in City Daily Photo will show photographs illustrating the theme of "entertainment."  Click here to see some.

Glass and Ceramics

 Baker Museum is hosting an exhibition of glass and ceramics that were donated to the museum by longtime local supporters of the museum.  Over 30 years this couple collected hundreds of museum worthy pieces; the current show presents 74 works by 60 different artists.  I saw this two weeks ago with a docent and went back to see the individual pieces more slowly.

This is one of my favorites, 21st Century Guernica by glass artist Tim Tate.  It has images of boats in the center, with two-way mirrors and LED lighting, and figures from Picasso's Guernica around the edges.  The mirrors let a viewer peer inward, seemingly to infinity.

These are two beautifully executed ceramic figures by Kirsten Stingle.

This is The Boxer, a 2017 cast glass work by Dean Allison.  She looks totally exhausted.

This is just part of a very big 2013 stained glass work by Judith Schaechter.  A Play About Snakes.

This is Ring R1931, White, Black, Red, a 2018 work of fused kiln-formed glass by Colin Reid.

Another favorite work is Robert Mickelsen's 2008 piece, Shake, made from difficult to execute flame-worked borosilicate glass, set in sandblasted assembled steel.  Here, five clear human hands reach out toward a group of sandblasted hands, preparing for a handshake.  Mikelsen writes in part, "Look beyond differences and see what we have in common. Rejoice in our shared experience instead of fighting over small differences.  What do you say? Let's shake on it."

  Mandalino, a 2015 work in blown and sculpted glass, is by Italian glassworker Davide Salvadore.

And here is Serpente, a 2012 work in hot-formed, sculpted, carved and blown glass.  It is the product of a collaboration between Davide Salvatore (the Italian artist who created Mandolino, above) and Canadian artist Shelly Muzylowski Allen.

Finally, here are two of the walls where the glass and ceramic works are displayed.

Ansel Adams

The University of Arizona'a Center for Creative Photography holds a large collection of photographs and other memorabilia of the famous Western photographer, Ansel Adams.  Some pieces are displayed at Artis Naples' Baker Museum through August 2.

 

I toured the exhibition quickly with a docent two weeks ago, soon after the exhibition opened. This week I went back alone to look at the pieces more carefully by myself.

Both of these images of vertically aligned trees are crisp and clean and invite attention.

Jeffrey Pine, Sentinel Dome, Yosemite National Park (1945).  I would have liked to see this in a larger format.

I especially liked Adams' portrait Man of Taos.  The man is a friend of Adams, but Adams named it more generically to give the portrait symbolism and timeliness.

The large Grand Canyon photograph makes a bigger impression than the small images of the Grand Canyon to the right.

In this portrait of Adams' friend, the artist Georgia O'Keefe, with a mutual friend, O'Keefe has a wonderfully mischievous expression. 

This image of ferns in Hawaii National Park (1949) is a favorite.