Artist Reception for “Art Outside the Walls: en Plein Air”

My weekend of Art & Culture began with the Artist Reception on Thursday April 10^th, 2014 for Art Outside the Walls: en Plein Air, the exhibit at the Cultural Council of Palm Beach that showcases the artwork of the group I co-founded, Plein Air Palm Beach (PAPB).  This is an exhibit I have been working on all season. 

It is runs from April 11 –June 7th, 2014 and can be seen during regular hours of the Cultural Council; Tuesday –Saturday 10 AM – 4PM.  It is a joint project with the Cultural Council and Plein Air Palm Beach showcasing the work of local area and visiting artists.

We painted out in the 10 different locations, chosen from the members’ favorite places to paint in Palm Beach County, over the course of ten weeks, between December and February, going to a different location every week.  Sometimes the weather did not cooperate but that did not stop the hard core artists.

During the course of this project, over 80 different artists participated and well over 200 paintings were produced.    Not only was I a participating artist and organizer of the paint-outs, but together with Ralph Papa, co-founder of PAPB and Nichole Hickey, Director of Artistic Services at the Cultural Council, I helped plan the actual exhibit.  So by the time the opening reception rolled around, I felt like a celebrity walking in on the red carpet. The natural high and floating feeling I got from this Artist Reception will keep me going for awhile.

The artists I work with in PAPB are tremendous and all have been very supportive and encouraging during this project. The Cultural Council of Palm Beach, as usual has been very professional and is always a pleasure to work with.  I have been an artist member of the Cultural Council for the past two years and highly encourage other artists to consider becoming members as well.  It is so nice to have professional organization working for arts and culture in our area.

The second part of my arts weekend was my participation in the Atlantis Spring Fling Art Show and Sale.  It is a very nice community event that includes an art show.  It was fun to be with a group of artists and have a chance to show my work and even made a sale.   With two other exhibits ongoing besides the above, most of my work is currently out being shown in exhibit.  Not really a bad problem.  Thus, I brought mostly artwork from my cruising travels to the Spring Fling Show.  Sometimes I feel like I’m not painting enough but when I pulled together my work for Spring Fling I realized I had quite a few paintings.  Side benefit of preparing for a show and sale like this is that it really helps to get the artwork inventory organized.  Besides it was fun to be chatting with other artists and Atlantis gave us a nice dinner to boot.

Finally, on Palm Sunday, I attended Seraphic Fire concert of Haydn: Last Seven Words.  A good friend and I have season tickets and originally we were supposed to attend on Thursday in Boca, but that turned out to be the night of Cultural Council artist reception so we decided to reschedule to Sunday in Miami.   The weather and traffic tried to thwart my plans; we encountered heavy rains and, at one point, a sign saying all lanes on I95 closed.  So we had to get off and take the scenic route to Miami Beach.  No problem, but we made it with only a minute to spare.  The anxiety of the weather and traffic melted away as soon as Seraphic Fire began to sing.  I was transported for a brief time to a place of sheer pleasure and beauty.    After the concert, we took the scenic route back part way as the traffic was still snarled on 95.  However, by now the sun was out, and we got to enjoy the ride and each other’s company.

My weekend immersion in art was complete.