 (photo David Shankweiler) The Dunedin History Museum held an early October Ribbon Cutting to celebrate their ten-month expansion and renovation project of the museum. Rod Collman of sdg Architecture, Dunedin, was the Architect who created a very challenging design to give the museum the best possible function and preservation. He chose two highly regarded Dunedin professionals to help oversee the project. Museum Executive Director Vinnie Luisi was very happy with the team and the result. “When we applied for the grant from the State of Florida, Division of Cultural Affairs, the panel’s greatest concern was historic preservation,” said Luisi. “The train station that is now our museum was built in 1924 by the Atlantic Coast Railroad. I shared my concerns and vision for the expansion with Rod Collman, President of sdg Architecture, and he understood. He set about designing a gift shop and new entryway that added only three walls with no noticeable difference in the design of the building. The fourth wall inside the gift shop is the exterior east wall of the station with the original windows, roof and Dunedin railroad sign under the new roof structure.”
above left: new walls and floor going up to create the entry, reception and gift shop area above right: interior under construction with east wall of the original building (photos courtesy sdg Architecture)
above left: Northeast corner of train depot before addition construction. Bronze sculptures by Randolph Rose. (photo courtesy City of Dunedin) above right: Completed entrance, reception area and gift shop (photo: David Shankweiler)
above left: Completed addition and entrance to museum above right: Remodeled exhibit spaces and exhibit displays  above: Detailed look at the new roof section blending in and embracing the original historic train depot (photo: David Shankweiler) Collman said that this was one of the most difficult expansions of his career, despite the small size of the project. “The challenge was truly saving the existing building - the need for detail was extreme,” said Collman. “When we first met to talk about ideas for the expansion, what we ended up doing wasn’t my first idea. It was well known Dunedin architect Dan Massaro who said, “we want to leave this overlay inside the building”. I did a drawing of what we proposed, and Vinnie and the Board of Directors of the museum said “Yes, that is what we are looking for!” Designing in such a manner to wrap around and enclose the old structure was complicated, but necessary to preserve the original building and make it look original on the outside. That exterior wall built in 1924 is the first artifact you see when you come in.” Team members included Dan Massaro, Project Manager, and Terry Hodge, President of Terbo Group contractors. “Dan played the role of Owner’s Representative to oversee the project,” said Collman. “He came to Dunedin from Chicago in 1973 and in 1985 he started his own business, Massaro and Associates, Inc. He was my partner for five years. Terry Hodge is the President of Terbo Group contractors. As General Manager of construction, Terry made sure everything was completed on time and within budget.” “The result was these three guys working together,” said Luisi. “It was a dream team. The City Commissioners and staff were so confident in the project’s planning and management, they rarely needed to check or supervise our progress. They had it covered.”  above: Bas relief sculpture honoring the role of the railroad in the history of Florida and Dunedin, Sculpture by artist Jerry Karlik, St. Petersburg (photo: David Shankweiler) Luisi is proud of the new level of presentation in the museum’s exhibits. Because of the funding that became available for showcasing the museum’s collection and the objects borrowed for temporary exhibits, the design, fixtures and layout of the galleries, the museum is more visually and physically sophisticated than ever before. The City of Dunedin allocated $400,000 with half of that earmarked for the extension of the project for exhibits and completion and outfitting of gallery space. The State of Florida, Division of Cultural Affairs allocated $400,000 and the museum raised $60,000 in private funding to supplement exhibits. “We are showcasing 150 years of Dunedin History, and the ancient history of the native people who lived in the area. Our exhibits now include videos and interactive monitors as well as traditional artifacts to better bring history alive. This gives us the opportunity to attract more school groups for more programs suited to them,” said Luisi.  above: East facing side of the Dunedin History Museum and the Pinellas Trail, once the rail bed of the Atlantic Coast Railroad (photo: David Shankweiler) Collman calls this a ‘Legacy Project’. “I’ve had the pleasure of working on other such projects like the Dunedin Fine Art Center, the Dunedin Community Center and the Largo Public Library,” he said. “The Dunedin History Museum is carefully planned to honor and celebrate the history and public of the past, present and future. I’m very happy with what we were able to do to provide future generations of visitors and school children with such a wonderful resource and tribute to our city.
The non-profit 501(c)(3) Dunedin History Museum was established in 1970 in the town’s train station, built in 1924. The museum contains approximately 2,000 artifacts, 2,500 photographs, and a library containing 200 volumes of local and Florida history. Architect Rod Collman sold his share of Collman and Karsky Architecture, the firm he worked for over 50-years, four years ago. In 2014, he and Gary Badders of Shorelines Design Group established sdg Architecture in Dunedin, FL. He specializes in municipal, public, museum, sports complexes and a variety of types of commercial buildings.
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Whether a work of art or music, a sporting event or a stunning landscape, all good things are best experienced in person, engaging the senses. But we can’t always be in the presence of the rarest automobiles. This 1935 Bugatti 57S Competition Coupe Aerolithe pictured here was at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art’s Dream Cars exhibition several years ago.  There was only one Aerolithe ever built – aside from this meticulous re-creation (as opposed to a replica). The original prototype was created by Ettore Bugatti for the London and Paris Automobile Shows of 1935. Bugatti was an engineer who was one of a family of artists from the Alsace-Lorraine area of eastern France. His father created highly regarded Art Nouveau furniture, his brother was a renowned sculptor of animals and his son, Jean became an accomplished automobile designer. Bugatti manufactured his expensive, highly technical (mechanically and aerodynamically) and visually magnificent machines for the road and the racetrack from 1911 to 1939. The one of-a-kind Aerolithe was perhaps the most daring and beautiful automobiles of the era. Based on one of the company’s 57S chassis, it featured a 3.3 liter double overhead cam, straight-8 non-supercharged engine, and a body created from a magnesium and aluminum alloy called Electron. Long used in the aircraft industry, magnesium is extremely strong and lightweight but does not bend like aluminum or steel. It can be carefully formed at around 800 degrees Fahrenheit and explodes into flame at 1400 degrees. (The term “mag wheel” originally referred to racing wheels made of magnesium). Unfortunately, the car disappeared sometime before the outset of World War II and was never seen again. It was highly experimental for Bugatti in the mid-thirties to attempt the forms of such a sculptural shape as the 1935 car in magnesium, and equally so for David Grainger and the Guild of Automotive Restorers in Bradford, Ontario, who built the car you see here.  Although it is a complete re-creation of the 1935 car, it qualifies as “original” because its’ chassis is an exact duplicate or the original 57S used to build the show car. It is the earliest of these chassis/frame assemblies to be built and it carries the manufacturer’s matching numbers for four out of five components – the frame, engine, transmission and rear end. The “Electron” magnesium bodywork had to be built from scratch, based on the few usable photographs in existence of the 1935 car. According to Grainger in a U-Tube video from Jay Leno’s Garage, he stopped keeping a count on time spent for the body after about 7000 man-hours. Rediscovering shaping and welding techniques used for the body pieces on the original car, Grainger’s crew riveted the roof and fenders together through the “spines” running over the tops of them, rather than opting for an all-aluminum body that could have been completely welded. The visual oddity of the riveted spines of the original Aerolithe took hold as a styling detail and reappeared in the Bugatti Atlantic models of the late ‘30’s based on the same chassis, despite the Atlantics being bodied with aluminum, making the spines unnecessary. The tires were even unique to the original Aerolithe, requiring the creation of tooling to make them for the modern re-creation. All these factors led the vehicle to be accepted by official Bugatti groups worldwide as the only existing 1935 Competition Coupe Aerolithe.
How fortunate that the public could enjoy this automobile and its story, and other history-changing automobiles from the past, in galleries normally reserved for the exploration of more traditional art. This is why I love museums. I was drawn to a talk at the Dunedin Fine Art Center, maybe because it involved ceramics and a book signing, and a chance to see an old friend or colleague – and I wasn’t somewhere else as I often am on a Friday. I didn’t know Jennifer McCurdy, although I am aware of her work, but we both seemed familiar to each other when we met. As it turned out, it was an evening well spent as I came away from it with a refreshing reminder of what the arts are truly about – and a book!
Jennifer McCurdy has been selling her porcelain in art shows and galleries for the last thirty-five years, and her work is included in the collections of several institutions, including the Smithsonian Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY, and the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, CA. She maintains a studio in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts.  above: porcelain sculpture, Jennifer McCurdy Jennifer was in town to conduct a ceramics workshop at the art center, “Testing the Limits of Porcelain in Thrown, Altered, and Carved Sculptures”, teaching some of her techniques for creating the beautiful works for which she is known. Rather than attempting to describe her work, I will let the images speak for themselves. But the work was only part of the talk, as she was promoting a book that is the collaboration of two sisters working in two very different art forms, porcelain pottery and poetry. Her sister, Wendy Mulhern is a poet. The introduction of Vessels – A Conversation In Porcelain and Poetry addresses “the indescribable bond in being sisters – commonalities sometimes obvious to everyone else that sisters barely notice, shared experiences and perspectives no one else knows about”. It eloquently expresses how their two divergent expressions of art, pottery and poetry, both symbolize vessels, or “containers to hold and display what is most precious about life”.
above left: an appreciative gathering of advanced potters hear Jennifer McCurdy read her sister's poetry. above right: Jennifer McCurdy demonstrating her techniques for cutting and carving 'leather hard' clay - photo courtesy of Bailey Gallery  above: porcelain pottery sculpture with gold leaf, Jennifer McCurdy
Well known potter Glenn Woods (Pottery Boys, San Antonio, FL) introduced Jennifer McCurdy and spoke eloquently of his impressions of the book. He suggested that one should select a poem by Wendy to read each day, to discuss, and to find personal meaning in the words while absorbing the imagery of the clay works. The first 150 pages, titled Part One: The Collaboration, alternate with a poem and a porcelain work, each drawing on the energy of the other. Jennifer selected several of her sister’s poems for a reading, talking between poems about their relationship. A latter part of the book, Part Two: Evolution and Process, offers Intimate thoughts from Jennifer and Wendy about their art. I use the word intimate because the insight is as much about creativity and association as technical process, defining their relationship and similarities as artists and further clarifying their respective mediums, pottery and poetry, as the building of vessels. The book is beautifully photographed and produced. Wendy Mulhern designed it for print herself. You can find it on Amazon, at the Dunedin Fine Art Center and elsewhere. I shouldn’t paraphrase a poet, but here is the first stanza of Wendy Mulhern’s poem If It Is Art. Just a few words in four lines that leave so much to think about. If it is art it will build on everything that came before it, and it will add something-  Religious Community Services (RCS) staged their annual fundraising event Empty Bowls 2017 at the Clearwater Campus of St. Petersburg College on Saturday, October 8th. According to Melissa Reddington, Campaign Development Director for RCS, proceeds generated go to the RCS Food Bank in Clearwater. The event featured soups and bread donated by several area restaurants served in donated, hand-made bowls. Tickets for Empty Bowls 2017 were $25 per person and each attendee was given a free bowl of their choosing. They could then purchase additional bowls for $10, offering a creative and unique holiday shopping experience.
 Happy volunteers serving the soups Empty Bowls 2017 was sponsored by the St. Petersburg College Humanities Department. The Olive Garden, Panera Bread, Nature’s Food Patch of Clearwater, The Whistle Stop Café in Safety Harbor and Restaurant Associates at Raymond James donated soup and bread. The hundreds of hand-made ceramic soup bowls were donated by area artists, and pottery students from St. Petersburg College, St. Petersburg Parks and Recreation, USF Lil’ Muddys, the National Art Honor Society chapters of Clearwater Central Catholic High School and Largo High School, and Highwater Clays of Florida. Award winning professional potters Charlie Parker; Ira Burhans; Jack Boyle; Glenn Woods/Keith Herband; and Wellman and Welsch donated selected works for a raffle drawing.  Empty Bowls 2017 Committee: Left to Right, Emily Schrider, Assistant Curator of Art, Raymond James and Associates; Scott Taylor, V.P. Advancement and Communication, RCS; Barbara Ott, Manager Highwater Clays Florida; Melissa Redington, Campaign Development Director, RCS; Jonathan Barnes, Chair of the Humanities Department, St. Petersburg College
“What can you do with twenty gallons of soup and enough bread for 400 people?”, asked Reddington. “At Empty Bowls 2017 we turned it into over $5,000 to benefit the RCS Food Bank. This is the 50th Anniversary of providing Help and Hope for People in Need in Pinellas County. We are Pinellas County grown and proud of it.”
The Empty Bowls 2017 Committee included Jonathan Barnes, Chairman of the Humanities Department at St. Petersburg College; Emily Schrider, Assistant Curator of Art, Raymond James and Associates; and Barbara Ott, Manager, Highwater Clays, Florida.. About RCS… Seeing the need to help people in need in Pinellas County in 1967, fifteen local congregations of varying faiths and ethnicities came together to provide "Help & Hope". As the needs grew, these community leaders founded RCS to pool resources, today serving people facing hunger, homelessness, domestic violence and basic needs. RCS is a non-profit, charitable organization requesting tax-deductible donations in a variety of forms.  Creative Pinellas Impact Returns Emerging Artist Grantees for 2017 Creative Pinellas celebrated the 2017 Emerging Artist New Work Exhibition On October 26, at the recently revitalized Gulf Coast Museum of Art facility in Largo. I was highly impressed with the quality of the work of these ten young artists and saw several old friends, some of whom I haven’t seen in many years. More than anything else, I was thrilled to see the direction Creative Pinellas is taking in nurturing creative talent in Pinellas County.  Mark Feinman performs his jazz composition  Shannon Leah Halvorsen with her scratchboard work "Dachau". Creative Pinellas Executive Director Barbara St. Clair explained that the Emerging Artist New Work grants program exhibits the work of selected Pinellas County artists, providing them with opportunities to exhibit their works, engage the public, and to receive financial assistance and recognition as they begin their professional careers. Elizabeth Brincklow, Engagement Director/Exhibition Coordinator for Creative Pinellas, stated “Shown together, these works offer a peek into the present mindset and expression of our emerging artists and future of the Tampa Bay area arts scene and beyond.”  Creative Pinellas Marketing Director Mason Gehring, Dunedin Fine Art Center Curator Catherine Bergmann and Bryan Voliton, Business Development Consultant with Beach and Main enjoying the Emerging Artist event. 2017 Emerging Artist Award grantees include Gloria Munoz (Poetry), Kellie Harmon (Choreography), Mark Feinman (Jazz Composition), Desiree Moore (Digital Video), Nathan Beard (Painting), Jake Troyli (Painting), Shannon Leah Halvorsen (Scratchboard), Kenny Jensen (Sculpture), Elizabeth Barenis (Painting), and Jeff George (Screenwriting). As a part of the grant program, each artist worked with a mentor from the community, all of whom were also honored at the event.  Sculpture by Kenny Jensen  Mary Childs, Artistic Director at Duncan McClellan Gallery talks with painter Nathan Beard about his hanging 'scrolls' - photo courtesy of Catherine Bergmann  Jake Troyli talks with attendees about his art  Reading of screenwriting by Jeff George  Choreography by Kellie Harmon Congratulations to Creative Pinellas, these dynamic artists and their mentors, and the Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners. A great showcase, a great night out and a pleasure to see the Gulf Coast Museum of Art facilities brought back to life.
“Who says print is dead? Ashleigh received her copy of the 125th anniversary issue of Vogue today. It's 774 pages, about an inch thick and weighs close to five pounds...”  These words came from my friend Jim Swope, Owner and President of Swope Public Relations, in a Facebook post a few nights back. It helped me put a smile on a little article I had been drafting about the importance of print in your content management strategy. Don’t be too quick to abandon print collateral, a mistake I have seen many small businesses make (especially non-profits) in trying to save precious dollars. When you include content marketing as a critical part of an overall marketing plan, you should consider that your constituency might be of mixed ages. What are their generational communication preferences? That is certainly part of the equation. Joe Pulizzi, author and founder of the Content Marketing Institute, thinks print should be a part of your plan no matter who you are talking to. In Pulizzi’s article “7 Reasons to Consider Print for Your ‘Non-Traditional’ Content Strategy”, he makes the point that print never died, but “flattened” along with TV and radio as digital media gained popularity. He notes that while some publications are still phasing out their print versions, many are going stronger than ever. Why? “Just think about that for a second… print is non-traditional marketing,” said Pulizzi. “That’s where we are today. Blogging, social media, web articles… that’s all very traditional. Now, am I saying that brands should be looking at print as an opportunity right now to get and keep attention?” “Even our own Chief Content Officer magazine has a clear competitive advantage in the marketplace because it’s in print. At a recent event (not ours), three marketing executives came up to me and told me how much they enjoy the magazine and can’t wait until the next one arrives (they didn’t mention our daily digital content… they just mentioned print).”  This is a revealing statement coming from the Content Marketing Institute. Pulizzi goes on to state that print maintains an excitement factor as the printed word is still perceived as more credible than web content. Additionally, print magazines and newsletters were developed for customer retention, a way to nurture customers after the sale. That still works.
‘We’ve seen this firsthand with Chief Content Officer magazine,” said Pulizzi. “Contributors love being featured on the CMI website, but they crave having their article in the printed magazine. It’s amazing how different the perception is of the print versus online channel when it comes to editorial contribution.” You may not be able to produce a 700-page magazine, but no matter how big or small, something tangible can help give your business a point of difference. And when imagery is important, a computer monitor is absolutely no match for ink on paper. Even the smell and feel add to the appeal of something that will be around far longer than that last Tweet. Creative and relevant content in well-designed newsletters, flyers, catalogs, postcards (postcards can be very effective at a low price) - pieces that can’t go unnoticed in the mail room or when they land on the kitchen counter, still catch the eye. The thought to take away from all of this is that print has become new again. It has become ‘non-traditional’. But it still does everything it ever has. If used selectively and creatively as a part of your content marketing, it may be more effective than ever… and far from dead.  The Dunedin Fine Art Center (Dunedin, FL) was proud to host a painting demonstration by California artist Elio Camacho on March 8. A sell-out crowd of 60 people came for the three-hour painting demo (a primer for his March painting workshop at DFAC), enjoying Elio’s depth of knowledge on the subject as well as his humor. The images show the actual still life, the demonstration painting at the break, and the painting near its completion.
 I brought Elio to the Beach Art Center in Indian Rocks Beach for a consecutive four years while I was the Executive Director of that organization because of his advanced skills as a painter and his concern for each of his students. The artist’s goal is to offer insight on how to improve an individual’s own work by elevating their ability to see and mix color, to build energetic compositions, and to enhance their brush skills. I’ve since had the pleasure of introducing Elio to the Dunedin Fine Art Center (Dunedin, FL), and to the Lee County Arts Alliance (Ft. Myers, FL) where he just completed his first demonstration and workshop. He also completed at least six other workshops around the state in the last few weeks in his annual spring visit to the Sunshine State.  The painting midway through the painting process.  The painting nearing completion.  Study of the brushwork and color mixing. His three-day workshop in Dunedin takes place March 15, 16, 17, 2017. There is still room for a few more in the workshop so if you are serious about discovering new possibilities to improve your paintings, reserve your place!
Member Tuition: $345.00, Non-Member: $375.00. Call DFAC at 727-298-3322 or visit www.dfac.org for details and to register. All skill levels are welcome.  Recent demonstratino painting by Elio Camacho, done in Jupiter, FL I have known Elio Camacho, a San Francisco painter about seven years, meeting him when I started as the Director of the Beach Art Center in Indian Rocks Beach. He made the trip to the Beach Art Center to conduct a still life painting workshop each year for four years. Well known as an artist and instructor in the western United States, Elio continues to establish himself in Florida as a painting instructor, conducting annual workshops in Tequesta (Lighthouse Art Center School of Art) and Amelia Island (Island Art Association), and new workshops in Key West (Ocean Reef Art League), Ft. Myers (Lee County Alliance for the Arts), and Dunedin (Dunedin Fine Art Center).
I have great regard for his “color intensive” painting technique for which he uses an Alla Prima method to capture light and color, and to mix color on the canvas and the palette. He demonstrates how color, value and transparency control composition, depth and focal points in a painting. An amiable and sharing artist with a very positive attitude toward his students, Elio gives them each personal attention to help them raise the bar on their own work. Elio is offering a painting demonstration of his color mixing technique on February 15, 2017 at the Dunedin Fine Art Center from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The demo is free for DFAC members and $5 for non-members, and precedes his March 15 – 17 Color Intensive Workshop at the Center. Whether your skill level is beginner or professional, you will find something to learn from his demo, and much more from his workshop. Please make a reservation by calling DFAC at 727-298-3322. I was enthralled by the retelling of a recent trip to Cuba taken by Dunedin architect Rod Collman of SDG Architecture, and his wife Cindy with a Dunedin Fine Art Center tour. Collman, a well-established commercial architect in the southeast United States and beyond, has gained recognition and won awards for the functionality, affordability and beauty of his designs. It comes as no surprise that the architecture of Cuba would be a highlight of his trip, but a surprise did appear in the form of an art school that has remained largely unknown in North America since its creation in 1960.  Visual Arts School Complex on the campus of the Cuban National Art Schools. “To experience the Cuban people and their culture is to discover their art and architecture,” said Collman. “Because of my background as an architect, I looked forward to seeing the wealth of history in Havana’s buildings and streets. Havana, a city of two million people, was founded only a few decades after the first Columbus voyage. The colonial phase was well represented with a wealth of beautiful buildings in varying states of preservation. There were signs of active renovation of many structures, including old hotels and apartment buildings. A mix of post-revolution 1960’s concrete and glass, brought about by the Soviet Union’s partnership with Cuba, as well as European built buildings, jars the senses.” Collman described the most unique architecture as that of Havana’s Cuban National Art Schools, featuring extraordinary revolution-era architectural design that was once widely criticized as being… non-Cuban. At the time of the inception of the school, however, the vision of Cuba’s future looked different than what it would become. Castro’s Cuba was to be a socialist Utopian society with free elections for its leaders and high standards of government-based education and healthcare for its citizens. Fellow revolutionary Che Guevara was a staunch communist and would continue to influence Castro’s views and in part, lead to the eventual system of government that Cuba has endured for over five decades. The ideals set forth in a post-revolutionary, pre-communist Cuba embraced the arts, and the Cuban National Art Schools (las Escuelas Nacionales de Arte, or ENA) was a result of this Utopian vision. According to the story, following his victory in the Bay of Pigs Invasion of 1961, a triumphant Fidel Castro went to the exclusive Havana Country Club with Guevara and other officials to enjoy a drink at the bar and play a round of golf in a political mockery of the class system so derided by the revolutionaries. As they talked on a balcony of the club, taking in the manicured beauty of the golf course, they envisioned the site as an art school like no other. This was a logical progression to an educational campaign already under way that had generated a huge increase in literacy across the country. According to John Loomis, in his landmark 2011 book Revolution of Forms: Cuba’s Forgotten Art Schools, “… the schools would have the political objective to educate those artists who would give socialism in both Cuba and the Third World its aesthetic representation.”  Sign at the Cuban National Art School showing layout of the campus on the property once occupied as the Havana Country Club and golf course, photo: Rod Collman
A young Cuban architect named Ricardo Porro, who had disagreements with the ousted Batista government, returned to Cuba from exile as the chief ENA architect. He chose Vittorio Garatti and Roberto Gottardi, Italian architects he had met in Caracas, to complete the design team. They went to work on five separate faculty structures located on the huge property for visual arts, ballet, modern dance, drama and music, plus a conservation facility. The project would have three guiding principles:
The origin of the design is not completely known, but was used extensively in ancient Mediterranean countries from Italy to Spain to North Africa. After being revived in the late 1860’s in Spain by Rafael Guastavino y Moreno, he brought the design and technique of building Catalan vault structures to the United States and patented it. The work of the father and son team of Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company can be seen in the Boston Public Library, Grand Central Station and Penn Station. Their greatest accomplishment was the 1909 construction of the central dome of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, with a diameter of 120 feet.
The use of brick, mortar and terra cotta tiles were the perfect media for the ENA Catalan vault structures. Also known as “cohesive timbrel arch construction”, the Catalan vault provides a very thin mass with great strength as a result of its form. The Catalan vault is known to be nearly indestructible. The vaulted roof structures of the ENA were built of rows of bricks, meticulously mortared into place, defying gravity as the mortar held the bricks to the row before it. Like a simple arch, when a curved row of bricks was complete, gravity locked them into place. According to a recent article in LaHabana.com, Cuba’s Digital Destination, the brick roofs were covered by at least two layers of tile held together by an additional mortar layer, making up approximately half the mass. The resulting designs allowed by such flexible construction media blended ancient shapes and methods with organic, modernist forms – bold, artful architecture for any era. As a result of the financial stranglehold of the American embargo, the industrialized design and standardization of Soviet-era Cuba, and criticism of the individualistic nature of the architecture of the ENA, work on the school was halted in 1965. The Cuban National Art Schools was never completed, and eventually fell into disrepair and abandonment, but the buildings have been in use to some degree by faculty and students from that time to the present day.  Painting student working under a Catalan Vault dome. “During our visit of the visual art complex, we saw many artists and craftsmen at work in the school, and signs of current renovation to complete the buildings,” said Collman. “We learned that artists are revered in Cuba, held in higher esteem than doctors. They can sell their work as long as it is handmade and unique and not commercially reproduced (this includes artist-made printmaking techniques). It was clear how a level of government criticism is tolerated, a freedom we saw demonstrated in the political and social statements of the work of some of the artists we met.” Rod Collman stated that “To experience the people and their culture is to discover their art and architecture”. The stunning architecture of the ENA, once criticized as non-Cuban and inappropriately individualistic, tell us much about the freedom of expression granted to the architects of the school so many years ago. Today, this freedom is shared by the artists of a country known for its oppression, yet embraces the arts and, once again, envisions a new future.  DFAC building west end, elevator shaft. DFAC building west end, elevator shaft. Photo courtesy of myself. A long series of meetings culminated in 1991 in which I was privileged to be a participant, a part of a core group looking ahead to the future of the Dunedin Fine Art Center. The meetings were hosted by Architect Rod Collman and always included my late wife and DFAC Director, Nancy McIntyre, Susan and Richard Gehring, Dr. Irwin Entel, and myself. Others would include staff members and a variety of community stakeholders. A Master Plan was proposed by Collman and became DFAC’s road map for the next 25 years. When Nancy began working at DFAC in 1986, she could see the promise of a bright future for this art center if she could muster others to commit to her vision. It had already grown in its early years from 2,500 square feet to 4,000. I started working with her eight months after she started. The Gehrings were major proponents. So was Collman. His career in architecture spans the entire history of DFAC and every phase of its growth and success.  Epic, Youth Education Director Todd Still's collection of original art and collected artifact. Photo courtesy DFAC. “I started working for Fasnacht and Schultz Architects as a draftsman in 1968,” said Collman. “We started designing the first building for DFAC in 1969. There have been five expansions since then and I have been proud to be at the heart of every one of them, this time with SDG Architecture. In 1991, we developed the Master Plan for the five acres allotted to DFAC by the City of Dunedin. That is when we had the vision for the two-story building and set up the grid leading to the 2016 expansion completion happening today. That’s pretty significant long-term visioning on the part of some very dedicated people.” Current Executive Director GeorgeAnn Bissett was hired in 2005, following the departure of McIntyre. “The phased capital campaign, called Creative Visions, was created in the 1990’s”, said Bissett. “It was part of the planning for the expansion and renovation completed in 1998 that took the facilities from 8.000 square feet to 18,000. A major part of this and the following campaigns was a grant program from the State of Florida Division of Cultural Affairs for organizations with a master plan that included building in phases over a period of years,” said Bissett.  Youth art being installed by preparator Anne Byal Feldshue in the Gamble Family Gallery. Photo courtesy DFAC. I oversaw two major expansions in my 19-year tenure at DFAC and wrote grant applications around 1988 that began a long term relationship with the State of Florida, Division of Cultural Affairs, that opened the door to larger scale funding. Also supporting DFAC from that time and earlier was the City of Dunedin. Gladys Douglas became a major contributor beginning with the campaign of 1996-98 and continued through the current project. The David L. Mason Foundation gave a large gift at the same time. Large gifts from the Estate of Valerie and Louis Flack and the Estate of Oskar Elbert, planned in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, came to fruition in recent years. The Creative Visions campaign of 2010, Bissett’s first capital campaign for DFAC, totaled $2.8 million. The Creative Visions campaign of 2014 was a $5 million-plus project. The State of Florida gave $1 million in a phased grant and the City of Dunedin gave $500,000. According to Bissett, the remaining $3.7 million came from private donations. By the time the State of Florida sent the final grant payment, the project was paid off, a tribute to Bissett’s capability as a fundraiser and community leader.  Second story reception area from the elevator. Photo courtesy DFAC.  The new fiber studio in action. Photo courtesy DFAC. “We are Florida’s premier art center,” said Bissett. “When I was hired here, I could see how well it was kept after, how excellent the exhibits were in support of the teaching program. There was a very competent staff in place to do those things. My job has been to carry on the legacy of the founders and of the former Executive Director, Nancy McIntyre. Nancy never veered off of the mission,” she said. “I have been able to bring my background in fundraising to the Center at a very important moment in the Center’s history.”
That is how you build a great art center. Quality, tenacity, planning, grass roots in the community. Today, DFAC has grown to 44,000 square feet of purpose-built space and the programming to fill it. As Rod Collman said, that’s pretty significant long-term visioning on the part of some very dedicated people. I am proud to have played a role. Kudos to the visionaries from the 1960’s to the present.. |
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