Hundreds of artists gather in New York City tonight, as the 16th International ARC Salon begins its 10-day celebration of the realist tradition with a combined exhibition and auction. Paintings will be sold, awards will be given, and Sarasota-trained artist Li Jian Volk will be attending for the first time, accompanying three of her works that have been selected for inclusion from the more than 5,400 entries the competition saw this year. (Little more than 1,000 were ultimately selected.) One of them, a charcoal drawing of a scene from the Cortez fishing village, even won an award. And though the award will say “Honorable Mention,” it will mean much more to Volk.

A former student and now regular at the Miano Academy of Art, formerly The Southern Atelier, Volk paints in the old ways, emphasizing anatomic exactitude and studying the realist techniques of the Renaissance Masters. And when visiting artist Huihan Liu took Volk and other students to the Cortez fishing village, they spent a whole week conducting research, making sketches, interviewing fishermen and even jumping aboard to see the whole messy process from catch to crate. “We try to find real life,” says Volk, noting that the same thing can be seen in China, where artists still look for the old fishing villages not yet consumed by the tides of industry. “All cultures have that kind of thing,” she says. Her resulting drawing, a charcoal rendering of a lonely fish gasping in a slab of sunlight carved from the darkened interior of a Cortez fishing house, she named “The Big Catch.” She submitted it for competition in early 2022.

Before the year was over, she had sworn off art.

“I stopped doing art for 10 months,” Volk says. “I was quitting.” A personal tragedy had rocked the foundations of her world and cracked its firmament. Art made no sense. She stopped drawing. She stopped seeing her artist friends. She went to a Buddhist monastery in Tibet and stayed for a month, learning again how to meditate and how to be present. She learned the power of compassion and the beauty of impermanence. And when she came home, she found a letter waiting for her: “The Big Catch” had won an international award. Volk took it as a sign. “That my artist’s road isn’t over yet,” she says. “And that I’d be able to carry on.” She started drawing again immediately.

Now reinvigorated and refocused, Volk returns to the canvas with a calling, wanting to share the lessons she’s learned in the last year, to become the artist she was meant to be. “I’m not young,” she says, “but I’m a young artist. And I’ve figured out my purpose.” 

Pictured: Pictured: The Big Catch, charcoal on paper, by Li Volk.

For many artists, moving to the Gulf Coast means painting beach scenes and palm trees, seascapes and sunny days. But for Jeff Riggan, who arrived in Manatee County in early 2020, paradise had an obvious problem. And with his latest sculptural series, Off The Grid, the artist hopes to shine an unconventional spotlight on an oft-recognized but all-too-ignored social ill.

“I know people who are homeless,” Riggan says, “who are living right off 64 under the overpass.” And the artist himself is no stranger to homelessness, having lost his home in the 2008 financial collapse and experienced it firsthand. Now on surer footing but still dismayed by what he sees around him, including a neighbor moving into their car because they couldn’t afford the ballooning rent, Riggan feels compelled to say something. Anything. “This could be anybody,” he says. “This could be you, me, your neighbors, your parents—anybody.” And one day, stopped at an intersection and watching the panhandlers move from car to car, it struck him: these scenes are as iconic of everyday Florida as any of its beaches. But only the latter ever show up in galleries.

Working with found objects and recycled materials, epoxy and clay, Riggan recreates these scenes in his signature “rusted and busted” style, all grime and grit and exposed baling wire, calling upon his experience both as a sculptor and as a guy who used to build theme park attractions for Universal Studios. Shaping scrap wood with a jigsaw and angle grinder, he blot-coats it with a homemade mixture of tile mastic, glue, handfuls of beach sand and black paint until it looks like sunbaked asphalt. Painted popsicle sticks become an upturned fruit crate and rectangles of waxed cardboard from a frozen pizza box become street signs. Most of the figure’s body is cobbled together from wooden pegs, discarded jewelry, bent wire and colored clay, but Riggan uses a two-part epoxy to sculpt the head, carefully hand-carving every line of its careworn face. “I put character into every last detail,” he says. “And I want you to see that these are handmade.”

Three of these Off The Grid dioramas have been completed already—the panhandler in the median, a tented homeless encampment and a beach scene complete with a movable swing—each inspired by something that Riggan has seen right here in Bradenton and Sarasota. “I don’t know the solution,” he says, “but I really hope that this can turn some heads.”

Currently working on expanding the project, Riggan is hoping to partner Off The Grid with one or some of the many nonprofits and agencies already trying to raise awareness and lend what effort he can. “Homelessness is an issue that people should be confronted with,” he says. “What are we going to do about this problem that’s growing and growing and growing?” 

Pictured: Sculptor Jeff Riggan's Off The Grid series recreates scenes of homelessness in Sarasota/Bradenton. Photo by Jeff Riggan.

To view more from the artist, visit the website here:

“One of the things I’ve emphasized to the kids is that you never know who’s watching you from the audience,” says Jim Weaver, the Education Director/Artistic Associate at Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe. “If in some moment you decide that you’re going to separate from what’s happening on the stage and not pay attention to the scene, you’re going to take that audience member out of the story.”

Weaver is speaking on one of the lessons that he and fellow staff members at WBTT have been working to instill on the participants of this summer’s “Stage of Discovery” camp, an intensive, five-week summer musical program offered by WBTT to students ages 13-18. “Stage of Discovery”, now in its eighth year, is an audition-only program that provides five weeks of lessons in acting, dance, singing and improvisation free of charge to its participants. This summer, the program will culminate in two public performances of FAME The Musical in WBTT’s The Donnelly Theatre on July 15 and 16. The show is based on the 1980 musical film FAME, which chronicles the life and challenges of students at New York's High School for the Performing Arts.

“In terms of picking FAME, I couldn’t think of anything more apropos to what the program is about,” says Weaver, who is also set to direct the show. “Everything that they’re studying in the show is exactly what we’re doing at this camp. For me, it’s very important that everyone feels that they are contributing to the show as well – this is our first time doing a “book” show, or something that has been published and produced before as opposed to the musical revue shows that we’ve done in the past. Part of the program is realizing that everybody is essential to telling the story, no matter how big or small a role they may have.”

In keeping with the sentiment of the camp, Weaver didn’t cast FAME through a traditional audition process. “Because we have participants from ages 13-18, we have a wide range of experience and skill levels. So what I’ll do, since I don’t want them feeling as if they’re competing with one another, is I’ll go and just observe the classes as they’re happening for the first few weeks and cast the show that way,” says Weaver. “It’s kind of like my own secret audition process where I can figure out which character suits each camper without having them feel that pressure to perform on the spot.”

Saturday, July 15 at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, July 16 at 2 p.m., The Donelly Theatre at WBTT, 1012 N. Orange Ave., Sarasota. 

Pictured: Stage of Discovery student Hadara Porter learns a dance number. Photo by Sorcha Augustine.

Running July 21 through 23, The Players Centre is happy to produce the 2022 winner of The Players New Play Festival, Lateral Moves by Cece Dwyer. Directed by Candace Artim, this production will take place in The Players’ new black box theatre in the Rosemary District, Space is limited, and there will be a talkback after each performance led by Artistic Director Steven Butler. Synopsis: Family affairs come into play during a weekend at Martha’s Vineyard as an engaged millennial couple find their respective unattached boomer parents have the upper hand.

July 21-22 at 7:30pm, July 23 at 2pm, 1400 Blvd. of the Arts, Suite 200 (Second Floor) Sarasota. 

For ticket information click here.

The Sarasota Ballet announces that Principal Dancer Danielle Brown, having enjoyed a dance career spanning more than a decade and a half with the Company, has retired after the end of the 2022 – 2023 Season. The impact her presence brought to The Sarasota Ballet is indelible and her beauty and elegance gracing the stage will be truly missed. Brown began her career with The Sarasota Ballet at the opening of the 2007 – 2008 Season, hired as a corps de ballet dancer. In 2010 she was promoted to the rank of Principal. Throughout her career, she would continue to flourish and dance roles spanning the Company’s vast repertoire, including ballets by Ashton, Balanchine, de Valois, MacMillan, Tharp, Wheeldon, and Wright, as well as roles created on her by Sir David Bintley, Will Tuckett and Resident Choreographer Ricardo Graziano. Executive Director Joseph Volpe speaks of Danielle’s impact on The Sarasota Ballet, “While her beauty on stage has been an inspiration, it is also a true gift to have a dancer who can be appreciated as an artist and as someone who can connect with our patrons both on the stage and off. Danielle is a unique breed of dancer that we could always count on to be a part of a dinner with patrons, stay late for an event to greet donors, or be interviewed and share more of herself with our enthusiastic audiences. Iain, Margaret, and I all feel blessed to have supported her during her career and look forward to seeing where her next chapter will take her.” 

Wellen Park invites the community to come out and enjoy music from local bands and artists during the Summer Music Series every Wednesday through Sunday in Downtown Wellen. Now through September, Wellen Park is hosting different musicians throughout the week. Wind Down Wednesdays, Thursday Tunes and Saturday Sounds (every week) will feature music under the Heritage Tree from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday Night Live (first Friday of the month) will feature a band on the Solis Hall stage overlooking the Great Lawn from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday Groove (second, third and fourth Friday of the month) will feature music under the Heritage Tree from 5 to 9 p.m. Unplugged Sunday (every Sunday), there will be music under the Heritage Tree from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 to 6 p.m. The event is open to the public. Guests are encouraged to bring lawn chairs for seating on the Great Lawn and around the Heritage Tree. For more information, visit wellenpark.com/events/summer-music-series. 

On Saturday, August 19, from 12 to 2 pm, bring the whole family to a free “Family Day” event and come see what Sarasota Youth Opera is all about! The Sarasota Opera House will be abuzz with activities – you can hear the Youth Opera sing, attend a “Find Your Own Opera Voice” singing session, join in fun acting games, and stand on the opera stage when you take a tour of the opera house. You can even get creative and make some props, have fun at the wig and makeup demonstration, explore the beautiful costumes, and more! This fall Sarasota Youth Opera will present Benjamin Britten’s The Little Sweep on the Sarasota Opera House stage, complete with professional sets, costumes, and orchestra. The opera tells the charming story about a group of children who join together to free a young chimney sweep apprentice from his cruel master and send him back to his family. The fall program starts up on August 15th, and auditions for the lead roles will be held on August 22 and 24. No prior experience is necessary, all skill levels are welcome! To learn more about Youth Opera visit https://www.sarasotaopera.org/youth-opera-program.

Sarasota Youth Opera Family Day, Saturday, August 19, 2022, from 12 to 2 pm, Sarasota Opera House: 61 N. Pineapple Avenue, Sarasota. Tickets: This is a FREE event and no tickets are necessary. 

To learn more, visit

It was a night inspired by a Pinterest board at Motel Therapy’s first ever after-hours event. The event was a candle painting workshop hosted at the boutique in collaboration with multiple women-owned, local businesses. Candle painting is a popular trend at the moment; if you search candle painting on Pinterest you’ll find tall tapered candles painted with colorful designs like flowers, hearts and polka dots. The activity is simple and fun, and you’ll be left with unique candles to display in your home or use as a sentimental gift.

The intimate event hosted 20 women on a Saturday evening and offered light bites and beverages curated by Plait, a local tablescaping and food styling company specializing in special gatherings and dinner parties. Plait transformed the boutique into a beautiful and cozy space with two large banquet style tables set with large floral bouquets, personal place settings with design inspiration and all of the necessary supplies to paint.

As the guests arrived, they enjoyed appetizers and conversation. Once seated, everyone began painting and enjoying good company. Throughout the night, Motel Therapy offered permanent jewelry and exclusive discounts on clothing. The store buzzed with good conversation, creativity and positive energy.

Although the event focused on painting candles, Motel Therapy’s overall goal was to create community and build relationships. The evening offered a unique and new experience for the locals of Sarasota and offered an opportunity for four local businesses to network and collaborate. Motel Therapy will continue to host events and pop-ups throughout the year. The events are advertised on Instagram and their email list.

Florals provided by: Blossm Cart, 4023 Sawyer Rd Sarasota, FL 34233, Sarasota Florist Local Flower Delivery | Venice Florist | Blossmcart @blossmcart; Glassware provided by: DOT, Dot (shopdotshop.shop) @shopdot; Permanent Jewelry by: Link x Luxe, 532 S. Pineapple Ave Sarasota, (inside Motel Therapy), LINK x LUXE | Permanent Jewelry Sarasota @linkxluxe; Tablescaping by Plait@byplait.

Motel Therapy,532 S. Pineapple Ave Sarasota. 

Pictured: A look inside the candle painting workshop at Motel Therapy. Photo By: Kelsey Fuse.

Do you know a board member, volunteer, philanthropist, staff member, or a corporate organization with a giving heart that has meaningfully impacted our community in the past year? Nominate them today! Nominations close Friday, October 6th, 2023 at midnight. 

Nominate Here!

SUMMER READS | Recommended by Roxanne Baker of Bookstore1Sarasota, July/August 2023. 

Read Here!