Art & Culture
Where the Heart Leads: Art With A Heart In Healthcare’s Origin Story
By Sheri Leonard Webber Equal parts compassion and creativity, Art with a Heart in Healthcare (AWAHIH) has served more than 100,000 patients at hospitals and clinics across Jacksonville. Founded in 2001, its origin story is as heart-driven as the art experiences it provides. “Well, it started with my cousin,” says Lisa Landwirth Ullmann. Lisa and her coursin Lori Guadagno, inseparable throughout childhood, found themselves living 1,200 miles apart as adults. “At the time, she lived in Vermont, and I visited in July of 2001. We were...
read moreDay Dreamers
Exhibiting at MOCA Jacksonville thru January 14th, 2024 Where does your mind wander when you daydream? Everybody enjoys envisioning who they hope to become, activities they aspire to do, and places they wish to explore. In fact, daydreaming can be a useful tool for relieving stress and a welcome respite for children and teenagers confined to the hospital. This collection of artwork offers insight into the imaginations of 20 pediatric patients receiving medical care from Wolfson Children’s Hospital. Whether they picture themselves as a...
read moreDragons & Pagodas
By Janet Reagor Sixteenth century Europeans envisioned the Far East as mysterious—even mythological—a fascinating and wonderous place inhabited by strange creatures, marvelous flora, exotic people, and incredible architecture. With travel nearly nonexistent, the few who visited offered sparse bits about culture, art, and lifestyle, leaving Westerners to let their imaginations soar. As Chinese marvels trickled into Europe in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a stir began. Then around 1603 the Dutch East India Company captured a...
read more30th Anniversary Pearl issue Timeline
The ABC’s of 30 Years ofthe Arts, Business, and Culture Introduction by Wayne W. Wood Design by Natalie McCray Since its auspicious beginning three decades ago, Arbus has been acclaimed for its striking covers and creative content. The nearly 300 covers of Arbus have consistently been works of art unto themselves—resplendent graphic compositions by mostly local artists that not only show off the depth of our homegrown talent but also serve as eye-catching invitations to explore the stellar content inside the magazine. No other local...
read moreNatalie McCray-Krauz on Creating the Arbus 30th Anniversary Cover
By Madeleine Peck Wagner a whisper gathers more attention than a shout Sometimes, and always when least expected, my phone buzzes and in comes an image of wit and inventiveness that makes my day. That this image will often inflame my own imagination is, I think a testament to artist, art director, and designer Natalie McCray-Krauz’s extraordinary ability to transform the most mundane of objects into objects of desire and veneration. The whole she creates is always more than the sum of its parts. Recent...
read moreA New Public Art Installation
Honoring the Arlington Community By Melanie Young Just as the eyes are the window to the soul, the entrance to a college campus is a window into the community that lives, works, learns, and plays there. For Jacksonville University (JU), that window recently became even more emblematic of the university’s relationship with the Arlington community. At the site of the turbo traffic roundabout welcoming drivers and pedestrians to campus—the nation’s first such traffic configuration which improves traffic flow, access and, most importantly,...
read moreMarsh & Saxelbye A beautiful Legacy
By Wayne W. Wood Jacksonville’s extraordinary natural landscape is complimented by its (often overlooked) manmade beauty. It is a surprise to many that Jacksonville has a greater number of outstanding architectural gems than any other city in Florida. Jacksonville has the most sites listed in the National Register of Historic Places and a quarter of those were designed by a single architectural firm—Marsh & Saxelbye. Made up of partners of Mulford Marsh and Harold Saxelbye, the firm dominated Jacksonville’s architecture from 1920 to 1930....
read moreJacksonville Children’s Chorus
Filling the Heart of Our City with Song By Susan D. Brandenburg Just as he passionately directs each member of the Jacksonville Children’s Chorus (JCC) with care and concern, President and Artistic Director Darren Dailey has been intimately instrumental in helping to design the chorus’s spectacular new downtown headquarters. “This wonderful space would not have been possible without the support of VyStar Credit Union and our generous donors,” says Dailey, as he conducts a tour of the new headquarters, designed by Dasher Hurst...
read moreLightner Museum
An Iconic St. Augustine Museum Celebrates Its 75th Anniversary By David Bagnall, Executive Director of The Lightner Museum This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Lightner Museum and the 135th anniversary of the museum’s historic St. Augustine building. Located in the heart of downtown St. Augustine, the Lightner has been an important part of the community since it was first built as the Hotel Alcazar in 1888. Founded by Chicago publisher Otto C. Lightner (1886-1950), the Lightner Museum offers an immersive...
read moreTransitory Permanence:
What does it mean to belong to the land? And what happens when your notion of home is a perpetual journey to the new unknown? There are exoduses of displaced people happening all around the world today. Millions are leaving their home countries, some looking to escape and some simply yearning for a dream. The purpose of this exhibition is to show the human behind the statistics and to acknowledge the path of the displaced toward a new culture as a surreal and uncanny permanence. I explore the journey of the displaced from...
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