Naples Art

During the month of November, four exhibitions open, two close and 23 others continue their runs.

Each year, the Naples Art Institute holds three outdoor art fairs, the Naples New Year’s Art Fair in January, Naples National in mid-February and the Naples Downtown Art Fair in mid-March. The Naples Art Institute Director, Frank Verpoorten, says that art fairs are the best way for people to see a lot of art in a short amount of time.

October is National Arts & Culture Month. This year’s theme is “Stories Unite Us.” Every artwork in this year’s Naples Invitational tells a story.

Southwest Florida’s museums regularly curate traveling art exhibitions as well as artworks from their permanent collections. During the month of October, seven new exhibitions open, six close and 15 others continue their runs.

Still reeling from cuts to grant funding, Collier arts organizations are now weathering a 10 percent drop in international visitors. That amounts to about 100,000 fewer international visitors this year. Canadians and British tourists comprise the largest percentage of this decline. That impacts arts organizations since as much as 40 percent of patrons come from out of town.

Naples artist Lynda Fay Braun has made a career imposing spiritual order on nature’s chaos. Her paintings in this year’s Naples Invitational reflect her signature meditative depth.

Mary LeGarde is a shapeshifter. Depending on the motif and emotion, she may work in Figurative Realism, Impressionism, Surrealism or Narrative Art. For her painting in this year’s Naples Invitational, she combined Figurative Realism with Cubism. It was a necessity. Her muse was Pablo Picasso. The man pioneered the notion of artistic shapeshifting.

Artists Tammra Sigler and Carolyn Reed are tethered by loss. For Sigler, it’s the loss of her husband of 62 years. He’s in her painting “Blocks and Clouds.” Carolyn Reed’s mother died when Reed was 20 years old. She's embedded a recently discovered photograph of her mom in the trunk of one of the trees in her mixed media work, "A Sense of Place."

Naples Invitational is a biennial exhibition that showcases the work of contemporary artists with strong ties to the Naples community. A number of those artists got their start at Naples Art in classes and workshops.

It promises to be the hottest ticket in town. One of art’s greatest storytellers, Rembrandt van Rijn, is coming to the Naples Art Institute next year. Executive Director Frank Verpoorten makes the announcement.