Respite: Still Full of Life, Just Out of Bloom

Saturday, September 28, 2019  –  7pm

Kurtos Chimney Cakes will be offering food to purchase.

Artist and curator Pamela Callender opens Fogartyville Art Center 2019/2020 visual art season with her solo show Respite: Still Full of Life, Just Out of Bloom, a retrospective collection of artwork accomplished while caring for her parents over the past twelve years.

After her father died in 2009, Pamela left a successful dance-teaching career to care for her disabled mother. While tightly tethered to the home for what turned out to last ten years, she completed her Master of Fine Art degree in Interdisciplinary Art and focused on an Environmental Art practice. Respite is presented with a mix of a little bit of Callender’s sense of humor while offering insight to the resolution that caregivers face.

The term Environmental Art in the 1930’s has been described as conceptual art in three-dimensional atmospheres. This application unites reality with art by providing the audience with a sense of inclusion while displaying metaphors of everyday life and far-reaching societal issues. A more contemporary characterization of Environmental Art is artwork made from nature, in nature. Callender’s Respite collection offers examples of both definitions as well as a series of work she has developed and calls, Patina Prints.

On opening night of Respite, the Fogartyville beer & wine bar will be open for business, and live music playing on stage with James Varnardo on drums. Callender’s wide range of style will be demonstrated and on display in the patio gardens and main gallery space. A champagne toast will be given in thanks to all the people who visited and became part of Pamela’s respite during this caregiving period.

Callender is the recipient of the 2018 John Ringling Tower Fund grant that helped support the development of her website, www.ecoartnews.com that will be launched at the Respite opening reception. Pamela is also an Adjunct Professor of Environmental Art at Eckerd College, Art Curator for Friends of Sarasota County Parks and Fogartyville Art Center.