Among the hundreds of exhibitors at the 40th annual ArtiGras Fine Arts Festival this weekend in Palm Beach Gardens, is Paul Herber, aircraft designer by day, day-glo artist by night.
Herber, wearing fashionably torn pants that looked like they had been decorated by Jackson Pollock, is one of four local ArtiGras exhibitors who met last month with the public at a reception at the Palm Beach Gardens Tennis Center.
The four are among 250 artists selected from 600 applicants for the festival, presented by the Palm Beach North Chamber of Commerce and Tampa General Hospital.
The festival is open 10 am to 5 pm Saturday and Sunday at the Gardens North County District Park. Tickets at the gate are $20. Nearby parking costs $15 but free offsite parking, with a shuttle, can be found here.
The festival could draw 40,000 snowbirds, tourists and full-time residents.
“If you get accepted to ArtiGras,” Herber said, “it means you’re an accomplished artist.”
Here’s an introduction to the four local artists at the Jan. 23 event:
Paul Herber
Herber’s paintings appear to glow. The acrylic paint mirrors the colors as he sees them, capturing the wild, natural world of Florida.
Flamingos float above a sunset-pink ocean, sailfish rise against the waves and dolphins dance with an orange horizon.
Herber, born in Texas and a Palm Beach County resident for 14 years, has a day job designing parts at Chromalloy in Palm Beach Gardens for some of the most complex machines in the world.
“I design aircraft engines by day and then I do artwork at night,” he said.
Among his many jobs over the years: Designing parts for the B2 stealth bomber in Southern California.
In the early 1990s, he and a University of Texas-Austin fraternity brother created Hollusions while trying to depict the stealth bomber in 3-D. It led to a worldwide fad of random-dot stereogram posters, he says on his LinkedIn page.
He’s an avid diver and relies on his underwater insights to inspire his work with fluorescent, black-light artwork.
Find his work in booth 458 at ArtiGras.
Gretchen Cocuzza
Gretchen Cocuzza took up painting just nine years ago.
And she’s been showing at ArtiGras ever since. She credits her longevity to the help she got in her first year, as part of ArtiGras’ Emerging Artist Program.
The program did more than help her as an artist. It provided practical advice on how to set up a booth and which work to show. “It teaches you what to expect,” she said.
Cocuzza, a Jupiter native who has lived for 25 years in Palm Beach Gardens, practices plein air painting, meaning outdoor painting. She paints from photographs she takes herself, capturing her experiences with Florida wildlife.
Spoonbills march along native plants amid beaming sun rays, painted in a rococo-like style. A painting depicting Juno Beach captures the full-spectrum colors often seen at each end of the day.
Find her work in booth 358.
David Hawks
David Hawks, a Palm Beach Gardens High School graduate who lives in North Palm Beach, turned to the art world six years ago after a fiberglass fish he painted caught the eye of a customer at a boatyard, where he had found jobs since age 17. He sold his first painted fiberglass fish and found a calling.
He calls his work “faux teak,” as he is able to create on fiberglass a likeness to the unique grains of teakwood he sees every day in the boatyard.
Each fiberglass piece, from custom molds, is coated with up to seven layers of polyurethane.
A faux teak blue marlin is priced on his website at $2,000. He also shows hogfish, snook, sailfish, dolphin and manta rays.
Find his work in booth 413.
Carol-Ann Salley
Carol-Ann Salley didn’t make it the first time she sought to show her work at ArtiGras. She persevered, though, got into the Emerging Artist Program and is preparing to show for her fourth time.
Salley, a native of Philadelphia, studied commercial art in college and began painting ceilings, murals and blinds for interior designers in New Jersey. She moved to Palm Beach Gardens about 10 years ago and began devoting herself to painting on canvas in 2017.
She recalled a day when you could be too smart to be an artist, when teachers would steer smarter students to more business-like professions.
Now, she takes acrylic paint to canvas to depict scenes in and around the ocean, constantly snapping photos of nature — even underwater — to use in her art.
“My early summer vacations included time at the Jersey shore where I discovered a deep love for the ocean,” she wrote on her website. “I would often be found sitting on a boardwalk bench admiring the ever changing seascape.”
Find her work in booth 246.
This story was originally published by Stet News Palm Beach, a WLRN News partner.
