Jon Ellis

from the Art festival in Ft. Lauderdale

Jon Ellis is entertaining colorful work, often compared to a modern day Rockwell with a twist, is both highly detailed and imaginative.
All his paintings are embodied with vegetables, fruits and any other kind of food. It is not appealing to my taste, but I have chosen to publish his work on my blog’ because of the originality of his thoughts.

Sandra Halpern-Stein

from  the Art festival in Ft. Lauderdale

Sandra Halpern-Stein’s use of color, balance, and design comes from Sandra’s many years of experiencing nature in Chicago, Alaska, and Florida. These impressions allow her to create whimsical as well as intricate nature paintings.
This new work of icon portrait paintings represents a combination of representational and abstract techniques.

Nancy Tilles

from the Art festival in Ft. Lauderdale

Nancy Tilles’ oil paintings have joyful expressions of the interconnections between living things. Her images explore the positive emotional connections through color and form. I push these boundaries in my paintings.
The rich colors of South Florida in its tropical environment influence the subject matter of the artict.

Ron Olson

from the Art festival in Ft. Lauderdale

 Olson enjoys the challenge of taking hard, unyielding steel and turning it into flowing shapes. Whether it is a horse, a dragon or a painting of koi, the ribbons and curves are always there. Currently Ron Olson does all his work in stainless steel. The material is cut with a plasma torch. Pieces are buffed and polished before assembly. The work is welded with a TIG torch. The sculpture can be displayed outside without rusting. Bases are usually granite or marble. At times wood components are added to give the piece additional flair.
New pieces are stainless and barbed wire.

Gregory Hubbard

from the Art festival in Ft. Lauderdale

Color plays an important part in all Hubbard’s work for it expresses, like a word in a poem, so much.
His works are inspirited by Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, the Caribbean and other exotic cultures.

  

His fascination with nature is obvious. Birds and fish and all sorts of creatures make their way through many pieces.

          

Jim Lewk

from the Art festival in Ft. Lauderdale

Today I was visiting the art festival on Las Olas. Las Olas Boulevard is the ideal backdrop for this festival, blending an eclectic mix of artists, great weather and fantastic energy. Life-size sculptures, spectacular paintings, one-of-a-kind jewels, photography, ceramics, and much more make for one fabulous weekend.

I am not an art critic, but I am publishing pictures of those arts that I liked most.
I can tell you that in many cases it was difficult to take pictures due to artists’ unwillingness. They thought that I am going to steal their ideas. I just want to introduce their lovely pieces to You my readers! Enjoy!

He is my favorite!

Jim Lewk’s sculptures are made of copper, welded, with patina and polychrome finish. The base is fossil coral from Key Largo formed at the beginning of the Ice Age 125,000 years ago. The beauty of this ancient stone is its fossil imperfections.

The balloons are hand-blown glass.

                                  

The joyful moments

This night I had a splendid dinner with my friends. For a change, which I appreciated very much, we had the dinner at my friend house. I don’t like so much dinning out in a loud and sonorous environment of American’s restaurants. In many places, the music is so thundering that you need to cry out to be heard. In general it is difficult to talk to others in such tiresome surrounding and to lead a conversation it is almost impossible. So I was really pleased to know that we were invited to our lovely friend Amina.

I have never been at her place before and I was a little bit curious. I have found myself in very warm, stylish and elegant living room. I liked the present of old furniture with a sensible combination of modern style. Many fragments and pieces of the inter decor were brought from different countries. Despite of presence of the old massive dinner table, ponderous chiffonier and bulky bureaus, I felt the lightness in the rum and I noticed the peculiar attachment to small detailers. The dinner was well served and the food was homemade, which is not common in the USA.

After the wonderful conversation and enjoyable dinner, we got acquainted with Amina’s neighbors and his two slaphappy, hilarious dogs. The dogs were playing and jumping around all the time, inviting us, human, to share their happiness.

Unfortunately, I don’t have pets, but I always enjoy playing with them, it gives me pleasure and moments of a joyful relaxation. What I appreciate the most in any animals’ is their authenticity and genuineness. Pets do not pretend to be something that they are not. They show the real feeling of happiness, playfulness, jocosity, friskiness or sadness with an intensive sincerity.

Pets are not able to fool you with their natural emotions, fancy and spontaneous approbation of people around them. You can never force a cat to jump on your knees if it doesn’t want to do it. Pets’ joyfulness and especially when it comes to dogs is really catching and infectious. I always get excited when they jump on my knees and lick my face, by that inviting me to play with them. Just like that! I wish people would be so genuine in their behavior.