The new Waters Edge Gallery features the works of local artists including Kevin Boldenow.

Kevin Boldenow

Kevin Boldenow’s message:

“Over six billion people walk this Earth. By the time you have read this passage, another thousand will be born. There are 300 million Americans alone working, clamoring and striving to get ahead. Day in and day out, millions of them grab a cup of coffee in the morning, run out to the car with cell phone in one hand and kids in the other, and find themselves on the road fighting swarms of people doing the exact same thing.

“In this frenzied race from one place to the next, few stop to notice the world around us — not the world of coffee shops, parking lots, and fast food joints, but the natural world, the world of shrubs, flowers, trees and animals. In their haste, few see the old oak tree or Florida pine standing beside the road, see the majestic Washingtonian Palm and the Bougainvillea in full bloom. They pass by these gifts from God and ignore them in the never-ending rush we call life.”

"Fanning" $800

Leslie D. Grossman’s stone sculptures will be exhibited at The Neighborhood Gallery in Boynton Beach  October 5 through November 5.

Leslie Grossman

Grossman began sculpting seven years ago, followng a natural progression, he explained. His mother was a  photo colorist and he started drawing at age 5. After graduating art school, he  created ads for motion-picture-production companies. “The stones guide me and because I follow their flow, each piece I finish  becomes a living, breathing entity,” he said.

“Somehow, each piece knows the person it’s intended for, and when people get that specific piece it gives them just what they need….hope, joy, love, peace, etc.

“My pieces speak for me, expressing my deepest inner thoughts and feelings. They tell my life story of where I was, who I am, and who I hope to be. They reveal the real me.”

The “Womb,” above, symbolizes the artist giving birth to new ideas. “The round white ball represents potential birth inside the womb,” he said.

Grossman let the stone’s flow guide him when he sculpted “Fleur Africaine.” Notice the placement of the knee, for example, he points out. Although not anatomically precise, he considers the lines of this piece representing the female form to be beautiful.

Grossman calls the sculpture above the  “Watchman,” because the posture describes someone who is watchfully waiting for something and is impatient for it to happen. “His hair has gotten gray from waiting, and his crossed arms show his frustration,” he said.

The Neighborhood Gallery is located at 422 West Industrial Avenue, Boynton Beach. Gallery hours are  11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For information, call  Rick Beau-Lieu  at  (561) 736-8181.

Her colorful intuitive drawings and paintings, influenced by her Caribbean heritage, exude energy, movement and sensuality.

“In the past, people have called my work bold and free, because I draw the female form,” she said. “I describe my work, which celebrates the beauty of life, as  playful.”

Tohar was born in Cuba in 1964. Her family fled the Castro regime when she was 7 years old and resettled in Hollywood, CA, where she was raised.

Following a career in fashion retail, her art changed focus after traveling in Europe where her interest in fine art emerged. Inspired by her travels and following her return to the United States, Tohar embarked on her studies in Illustration at Otis Parsons in LA, and later Parsons Art Institute, in New York.

“Art is magic energy that jumps into the canvas, creating stories that come together with lines, textures and forms. It is a fantasy feast for the soul.

“Last October, I was faced with a major health crisis, which I view as another reason to believe in the miracles in life. It’s important to go for our dreams. If you can dream it, I believe that you are halfway there.”

The gallery, Studio 101, is at 12 S.E. 1st Avenue, in Delray Beach. On opening night, there will be entertainment with live music, wine and hors d’ oeuvres. For information or to make an appointment to visit the gallery, call Tohar at (561) 330-9540.

Steve Konopacki

The exhibit, Inner Space – large scale paintings by Steve Konopacki, runs through October 7 at the  Jan and Gary Dario Gallery, HU Bldg., Palm Beach State College, Lake Worth campus.

Steve Konopacki teaches college composition at Palm Beach State College, where his classes integrate the techniques of the formal writer with those of the word-painter.

His abstracts are hard to categorize, since he aims for his viewers to go  beyond their rational search for meaning and explore the place within themselves that is without language,  where color and relationships work together.

"The River:Images of Florida impinge while contemplating Manhattan from Edgewater, New Jersey.” 2004 Giclee print, 8 by 9 ft. (original piece, oil on canvas).

“I  invite the viewer into the world where thought has passed from thinking, by capturing the latent silence found in the space between hard edged shapes, size provides various access points,” he said. “The interpreting mind passes from language-based semantic identification (what does it mean?) towards a stillness…towards still ‘life.’

"Onward Christian Soldiers on Jupiter: Opposing ideas meet where worlds collide.” 2009 giclee print, 8' x 9' (original piece, oil on canvas).

“In the movement from recognizable shapes into the surrounding silence, the constantly churning mind —the mind that demands meaning from all things — calms down and accepts the shape as a shape, not what it should become.”

Palm Beach State College is at 4200 S. Congress Avenue, Lake Worth. Gallery Hours are 9 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. For information, contact Kristin Miller Hopkins at (561) 868-3909.

Opening night

The Artists of Palm Beach County are sponsoring a juried exhibit at the Crest Theater, Old School Square, August 25 through October 30, with an opening reception on Thursday, August 26, from 5:30-7 p.m.

Boca Raton Museum of Art School artist and teacher Miles Leventhall accepted 26 artists into the show, whose works cover a wide variety of media.

As an example of what you’ll find at this exhibit, take a look at the work of Jean Hutchison of Delray Beach.

Jean Hutchison

Hutchison started drawing as soon as she could hold a crayon, she explains, and although she studied art as a child at the Art Institute of Chicago, she went to pharmaceutical school at the University of Wisconsin, managing to take art classes as electives.

Later, she re-enrolled in school finishing as an English major, an art minor and a science minor along with obtaining  her teacher’s certificate.

“From this diverse background, I developed my passion for art as well as science,” she said. “I go to the zoos and animal rescue facilities to draw and since I have had the opportunity for extensive travel, I’ve photographed and drawn the more unusual animals, too. I also study the human body.”

” The Beak Can Hold More Than the Belly Can,” refers to a popular children’s poem and has a whimsical quality. “I found that pelican skull just like that on a sidewalk on Federal Highway in Delray Beach,” she said. “My friend said, ‘You’re not going to take that home,” and I said, ‘Yes I am.’

“Then I had the box built and I went to Busch Wildlife Sanctuary in Jupiter and got some wonderful photos of pelicans.

“’…A wonderful bird is the pelican,’” she adds.

Her other piece, “Bernadette in Blue,” is a portrait of a model who is also a friend. As such, the piece conveys the sense of a friendly, comfortable social interaction, which was exactly the situation in which the painting was executed, Hutchison explains.

The Crest Theatre, in Old School Square Cultural Art Center and National Historic Site, is located at 51 N. Swinton Avenue in Delray Beach.

Crest Theatre Galleries’ exhibit hours are 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, Admission is free.

Julia Whatley

Artspace 408, an exhibit sponsored by the Center for Creative Education, is currently featuring  the works of local artists Steve Brouse, Nelson Corchado, Sonya Gaskell, Veronica Volani-Inza, Frances Linn, Robert Murphy, Kevin Murray and Juia Whatley for the month of August.

For a quick taste, here are works by artists Whatley and Gaskell.

Julia Whatley of Lake Worth considers herself an action painter interested in the application of paint. “I employ vigorous mark-making to build form and to create energy and movement,” she said.

Color is integral and helps to express her subjects. She develops designs on her computer and paints them directly from the display screen. She also works from life — painting industrial scenes, for example.
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Viewpoint 2009, a multimedia exhibit presented by National Association of Women Artists Florida Chapter, will be at the Northwood University Jeannette Hare Gallery from November 2 through December 3. The opening reception is at 2 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 3.

"The Perils of Charlie," oil and collage, 50 by 38 inches, $10,000.

Elaine Geisinger

With her series of iconic portraits, “Not Just Portraits,” Boca Raton artist Elaine Geisinger aims to portray the individual in what she believes to be his or her most publicly representative and identifiable form. “I have to qualify what is the unique essence of the individual that I can capture. I ask myself, what makes him/her most recognizable to the public?”
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Palm Beach Community College is exhibiting “And Four Decades Later…” at the Art Gallery at Eissey Campus, October 20 through November 25, with an opening reception on Tuesday, October 20.

“And four decades later…” takes a look back at 1969 and then jumps to the present, featuring the work of artists Wayne and Sherry Stephens as they celebrate four decades of art-making and marriage. The retrospective contrasts then and now, with samplings of their early work, which facilitates that trip back in time. Current photographs by Sherry and paintings by Wayne bring the show up to date.
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The Armory Art Center is featuring the work of the Photo Salon, a group of local professional and emerging photographers, who have been meeting at the Armory Art Center for the past two years. In the exhibit, “Vanishing Florida,” which runs from October 9 through 28, the photographers explore the textures, colors, humor and symbols from the Vanishing Florida that they know and love.

Shown here is the work of Greg Allikas, of West Palm Beach, a professional photographer who also considers his life’s work his hobby. He studies the arrangement of shapes and tones within the four sides of a photograph, regardless of subject, and restricts his use of Photoshop, using it only to “clean up” his photographs.

“I like to force a composition and work the edges,” he said. “Sometimes I use cropped heads and limbs, or petals and sepals…I like that tension.” Read the full story