Art & Culture Features
Q&A with Theatre Jacksonville Executive Director Sarah Boone
It’s always a treat when an original show comes to town. This February, Theatre Jacksonville patrons will be only the second audience (the other being in New York in January) to see the debut of Mom Before Dad: A Young Woman of the Greatest Generation, a production written and performed by Theatre Jacksonville’s own Executive Director Sarah Boone. Inspired by a diary and letters found after her mother’s death, Mom Before Dad has been a highly personal and rewarding undertaking for Boone as she has developed a living story about the hopes, dreams, challenges, and heartbreaks of a young girl during WWII. We sat down with Boone to hear about the show and discuss her remarkable creative journey.
read moreExperience Chihuly
Dale Chihulyis perhaps the most well-known glass artist in the world. Outside of the artist’s hometown of Tacoma, Washington, the sole museum devoted to his work is in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Morean Arts Center opened a permanent Chihuly collection display in 2010, along with a glass studio that is the brainchild of Chihuly himself. The presentation of this groundbreaking, large-scale glass work, housed in a building and garden designed specifically for the purpose of its viewing, is unlike any other.
read moreThe Strategy For What You See
What role do exhibitions serve at an art museum? Museums, after all, are a particular type of institution defined in large part by the presence of a permanent collection. There are institutions without (or with limited) collections that focus exclusively on exhibitions. Known as kunsthalles (literally, “art halls” in German), these spaces are more popular in Europe, although there are some notable examples in this country.
read moreA Single Flower Of Many
Susan Ober has long been a painter of portraits and figures. Recently, she made a marked shift toward close-up florals, but Ober’s figurative background is still alive in her flowers. One can see the attention to detail, but one that is held in soft focus. The texture, surface, and soft shapes of flower petals almost mimic the body. Perhaps paralleling a human’s physical changes over time, Ober states that she is interested in the life span of a flower—the transient states of beauty in all its stages.
read moreModern Hunter-Gatherer
Gabrielle Gould is a self-described “modern hunter-gatherer” who uses small wonders of the natural world to create jewelry art. Based in historic St. Augustine, Gould’s art form has caught the eye of the producer of PBS’s art and craft documentary series Craft in America. The show airs just once or twice a year, and typically features craft arts in conceptually themed episodes. The episode featuring Gould will be the first medium-specific one, shining the spotlight on jewelry. The episode will air on PBS stations on December 10. (For our area, check WJCT’s listings for airtime.)
read moreHonoring the Role of Art in Healing
Molly Cones and John Beard, “The Village” New book highlights artwork at Baptist MD Anderson Cancer Center, with proceeds benefiting the center. From its inception in 2015, art has been a critical component of the vision for Baptist MD Anderson Cancer Center, a vision centered around the belief that when curated with purpose and intention, works of art can have a profound effect on the health and well-being of patients, families, and staff alike. The link between art and medicine goes back centuries, but only over the past few decades...
read moreRebecca Louise Law: The Journey
British artist Rebecca Louise Law’s new site-specific installation was created for the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens. Using more than a million dried flowers collected throughout her career, as well as 10,000 fresh stems hand-wired by a team of local volunteers, “The Journey” forms an immersive visitor experience that explores the relationship between humanity and nature.
read moreBehind the Mask: Sept 11 – Jan 2, 2022
Nonprofit organization Art with a Heart in Healthcare (AWAHIH) provides personalized art experiences to enhance the healing process for patients and families at Wolfson Children’s Hospital, Nemours Children’s Clinic, St. Vincent’s, Mayo Clinic, and Baptist Medical Center. Each year, now for eleven years, patients collaborate with AWAHIH Artists-in-Residence (AIR) to create artwork on a unique theme, then exhibit the body of work in a cohesive exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Jacksonville. The theme is prompted by a question, and this year’s question is all too appropriate for these pandemic times: “What are you thinking or saying behind your mask?”
read moreEverything Speaks Design
The entryway to a building is often spoken of as a face—it holds the features that connect to what’s inside, both literally and figuratively, both making an impression and providing access. Baptist Health, Baptist Medical Center Jacksonville, and Wolfson Children’s Hospital have a new entryway that is the face of the flagship medical complex.
read moreLaFond’s Heart, Hands, and Soul
An internationally recognized sculptor whose works are in private collections around the globe, LaFond earned her undergraduate BFA degree in studio arts, with double minors in theology and philosophy from Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York (formerly Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart). She studied sculpture with Clara Fasano and Jean DeMarco and took postgraduate studies in painting and sculpture with Eric Isenberg and Adolph Block at the National Academy of Design School of Fine Arts, later studying marble carving in Pietrasanta, Italy, where Michelangelo saw “David” in the marble and carved until he “set him free.”
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