STARs SHINE AT PUBLIC PROGRAM

The winners of the Hermitage Artist Retreat’s State Teachers’ Artist Residency (STAR) will present a free public program on Friday, August 10, at the Hermitage’s gulf front campus on Manasota Key, 6660 Manasota Key Road in Englewood. The evening’s activities include presentations by the five artists who are visual artists, writers and playwrights. The planned program begins at 6:30 pm with open studios and house tours. At 7:30 there will be a variety of beach readings, followed by mother nature’s dramatic sunset at 8:15. Visitors are reminded to bring their beach chairs, and refreshments to enjoy, as they listen to the artists read from their work. Questions for the artists will follow. The evening is free.

            “Our second group of STARs are here and enjoying a four-week journey back to their artistic roots,” remarked Hermitage Executive Director Bruce E. Rodgers. “The Hermitage is very pleased to be able to extend this gift of time and space to all Florida arts educators. Over the past couple of years we have come to appreciate how important it is for these teachers to reignite their creative spirits by spending time in our beautiful setting just being artists.”

            Hosting the open studios at 6:30 pm will be Visual Artists Donna Haynes, a high school teacher from J.P. Taravella High School in Coral Springs, Broward County and Freddie Rosa whose classroom in Miami-Dade’s Mandarin Lakes reaches students in grades K-8. Haynes’ AP studio program offers a varied curriculum, which includes drawing, painting, photography, ceramics and sculpture. Haynes received her MFA in sculpture from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. She maintains a studio in the F.A.T. Village art community in downtown Ft. Lauderdale and exhibits frequently in South Florida as well as nationally and internationally. At the Hermitage, Haynes is working on a series of drawings and paintings influenced by her experiences here. She is also working on some figurative paintings and drawings of an autobiographical nature involving growing up near the beach.  Freddie Rosa is a painter who has many images he’d like to pass on to the world. His focus while at the Hermitage will be sharing an intimate look into family life, the experiences of life that he feels have the greatest value. Coming from a complicated childhood, Rosa was able to reinvent his family as an adult. He begins a piece by capturing an intimate family moment and is anxious to manifest his own artistic voice this summer.

            At 7:30 attention will shift to the beach in front of the campus, where three resident artists will read from their work. Playwright Reid Conrad teaches theater at University High School in Orange City, Volusia County. His focus for his students has been one-act plays, and at the Hermitage, Reid hopes to explore writing beyond those confines. Writer/Poet Pamela Janecki teaches journalism and stagecraft at Orange Grove Middle School of the Arts in Tampa. Janecki had a plan for her residency but found herself pulled in another direction once she arrived. She will share this journey, along with a short story and some photographs that she has taken. Teryle Traver is the drama director at H.B. Plant High School in Tampa. With three plays in the works, Traver plans to use his time to expand these projects while at the Hermitage.

            “Once again, we have five very talented and motivated artists excited to use their talents to make art,” Rodgers continued. “We look forward to having the public meet them, see and hear their work and get a better understanding at what happens at an artist retreat when artists come together in an inspiring location with no demands or expectations but all the freedom to be who they are.”