Auspicious artists

From amateur to professional, from oil paintings to sculpture, the Pasco Art Center's Promising Picassos show is for any artist and any medium.

By BARBARA L. FREDRICKSEN

© St. Petersburg Times, published July 7, 2000

On Saturday, the Pasco Art Center will open what is, arguably, its most popular and anticipated art show of the year, Promising Picassos 2000. The show continues through Aug. 21.

This is the seventh year the center has invited budding and seasoned artists and sculptors to enter their creations in the show and vie for prizes and ribbons.

"I wouldn't be surprised if we got in 150 pieces," Trish Demasky, program coordinator for the center, said last Saturday as entrants streamed through the door. At last count, there were nearly 100 entries, with three hours left until the entry deadline. Past shows have had between 120 and 140 pieces.

"We're seeing remarkable talent by people we've never seen here before," Ms. Demasky said.

Technically, Promising Picassos is a juried show, in which entries are screened by a panel of judges before they can be entered. For this show, however, almost any Pasco County resident who walks through the door with a properly mounted painting or sculpture and the entry fee will be put on exhibit and made eligible for the cash awards and ribbons during judging.

" You would have to be pretty profane in order to not be accepted," Ms. Demasky said.

Unlike previous Promising Picassos shows, which divided entries based upon the medium (oil, watercolor, etc.), Promising Picassos 2000 has only three categories: student, amateur and professional. "That way, people are competing in their ability level, not a student against a professional," Ms. Demasky said.

The winners will be announced during a reception from 4 to 7 p.m. July 14. Judges for the show are Susan Duda-Schultz, an artist who owns a gallery in Tarpon Springs, and Doug Butler, head of libraries at Pasco-Hernando Community College. The Community Choice Award of $100, chosen by those who attend the show, will be announced after the exhibit ends.

"This show is a nice venue for amateurs to find out what it's like to be in an exhibition," Ms. Demasky said.

Ms. Demasky, a well-known artist who has painted murals of Florida scenes in several public buildings in the area, was impressed with many of the entries. She pointed out works by first-time entrant Juan Arroyo of New Port Richey, including a large oil painting of brightly colored tropical birds in a lush setting.

"He has nice texture, good brushwork, nice perspective," she said. "He is really good."

A luminous painting of an egret flying across a marshland as clouds gather in the distance is by another first-timer, Gerald Foster.

Several entries in the professional category are by previous winners, including bright red flamingos, Baker's Paradise, by Jo Schmidt, who won a first place in 1997 and third in 1995, and a watercolor collage, Reef Life, by 1999 winner Fern Ursa..

Retired art teacher B.J. White-Myers' collage of cut-up credit cards, clothing price tags, brand tags and labels is used as a backdrop for a painting of three well-dressed women, Three Bobos in Paradise. Her quirky blue and silver collage of buttons, beads, perfume bottle lids, medicine bottle tops, sponges, paper plates, plastic champagne glasses, doorknobs and compact discs is called The Garden of Eternal Effervescence.

George Renniger's large acrylic, Before the Dance, shows three girls in ethnic costumes of white with bright red scarves. Renniger also entered a ceramic sculpture wrapped in knit.

Entries include pottery, macrame, watercolors, pen and ink, poster pencil, photography, sculpture, acrylic and oil paintings and stained-glass objects.

"This exhibit is difficult to hang because of the diversity of styles and subjects," Ms. Demasky said.

Most of the works are for sale, though buyers will have to agree to let them remain on display for the duration of the show.

The Upstairs Gallery is featuring oil landscapes and watercolor wild flowers from around the world by Hazel Hanning through the end of August. The exhibit includes several albums of wild flowers painted between 1948 and 1998 during Ms. Hanning's travels.

If you go

• Pasco Art Center

• 5744 Moog Road in Holiday

• Hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

• (727) 845-7322

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