On the first Friday of every month, St. Augustine’s art galleries welcome visitors to browse the latest art exhibits and enjoy refreshments and live entertainment at more than 25 participating galleries. For lovers of local art and culture, the First Friday Artwalk is a great way to celebrate both the start of a new month and the end of a long week. Spend your time hopping from gallery to gallery in the downtown area or jump on a complimentary shuttle and check out the galleries on the beach. But wherever you decide to spend your time, here’s what’s new at the March 2, 2018 First Friday Artwalk.
Henle Sisters at the Sea Spirits Gallery
Tina Henle is an award-winning freelance photographer with over 35 years of experience in fine art, portrait, wedding and commercial photography. She grew up on the island of St. Croix and acquired her first camera from her father, Fritz Henle, at age 18. Thus began her love for photography and travel. Tina has a bachelor’s degree in Art and Anthropology from the University of New Mexico. She worked and mentored with her father throughout the 1980s. She has exhibited in numerous group and solo shows and owns the Henle Gallery in St. Croix. Tina resides and freelances in St. Augustine. She continues to travel worldwide, always adding to her portfolio of creative fine art photography.
Maria Henle was the daughter of photographer Fritz Henle. She was a painter, printmaker, and environmentalist with a passion for creating large landscape paintings and color etchings. Her inspiration came from the Caribbean, Europe, U.S., Mexico, Nepal, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Iceland. She is known for her trademark layered multiple images. Maria studied printmaking in Florence, Italy and in New York City in the 1980s. In 1993, she opened the Maria Henle Studio and Gallery on St. Croix. Maria exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout her career and we can find her work in Metropolitan Life, Delta Airlines, Time Inc., Bank of America, the University of Texas, and in private and corporate collections worldwide. She received grants and awards for her work in printmaking, including a 1986 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. In 1998 her work was featured in New American Paintings. Maria Henle passed away in 2007.
www.seaspiritsgallery.com
Fritz Henle at the Lost Art Gallery
Fritz Henle is the father of Maria and Tina. He started his career in Germany in 1928. He traveled through the Mediterranean, India, China, and Japan in pre-war 1930s and immigrated to the US in 1936. Henle was a freelance photojournalist and worked for Life Magazine and was a fashion and portrait photographer throughout the 40s and 50s in New York. As a documentarist, he traveled to Asia, Mexico, Paris, the USA, the Caribbean, and finally settled on St. Croix in 1958. Henle published nineteen books of his work. His photographs were published in Life Magazine, Harpers Bazaar, Mademoiselle, Town & Country, and the Sunday New York Times. He held one person exhibitions of his accumulated work which established him as a creative visionary with an exceptional technique, a keen sense of composition, and a determination to capture the beauty of life. As one of the best-known photographers of his time in America, Fritz Henle has been described by the late photo historian Helmut Gernsheim as the last of the great classical photographers. Fritz Henle passed away in 1993.
www.lostartgallery.com
Secret Garden of Shisha Opens Behind The Golden Gypsy
Long-time restaurateur, business hospitality entrepreneur, and artistic visionary Wendy Relph has announced a new international and eclectic food and beverage and hookah lounge venture with Secret Garden of Shisha, located behind Relph’s retail store The Golden Gypsy at 23 Cuna Street in historic, downtown St. Augustine. The establishment will formally open during First Friday Art Walk in historic St. Augustine on March 2 beginning at 6 pm.
According to Relph, her lifelong treks into exotic regions including Asia, Africa, Europe, South America and the U.S., have yielded a treasure trove of one of a kind, limited edition teak seating and lounge art pieces and artifacts among fire pits and sculptures to highlight an upscale hookah lounge specializing in craft beers, family-owned vineyard wines, Shisha (hookah), and mezze style food. Adjacent to The Golden Gypsy, the new space will feature performance fire dancers and music along with fun and funky artwork, merchandise, plus fine interior design pieces that are unique to northeast Florida. With Relph’s tagline ‘life as art,’ the premises features her artistic and culinary talents with a creative and unique environment in an open space. Relph hand sourced and imported custom teak furnishings, table, benches, and chairs from Thailand along with lush landscape and artwork, plus sculptures to create an intimate and dramatic outdoor environment. Secret Garden of Shisha is open Monday through Thursday and Sunday from 5 pm until 12 am, Friday and Saturday from 5 pm to 1am.
“Secret Garden of Shisha is a new concept for St. Augustine and the region, and we’re proud to be the forerunners in this genre. Our team continues to be thought leaders here and we’ll continue to alert and enlighten the community with our unique style,” Relph said. According to Relph, she focuses on sustainable, repurposed and recycled materials when seeking the unique pieces for the Secret Garden and retail store.
www.facebook.com/23hookah/
All-County High School Art Show at St. Augustine Art Association
The 13th Annual All-County High School Art Show opens at St. Augustine Art Association on March 2nd. A community outreach partnership with the St. Johns County Schools, this exhibition features over 100 pieces of 2D and 3D art by local students in grades nine through twelve.
www.staaa.org
Olivia Block at The Crisp-Ellert Art Museum
Artist and musician Olivia Block’s forthcoming exhibition, “Four Channels” is a collaboration between the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum at Flagler College, and the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve (GTM Research Reserve). The exhibition will include two site-specific sound installations. The first will open at the GTM Research Reserve on Friday, February 23, in conjunction with their State of the Reserve Symposium, and will continue through March 2. CEAM’s presentation will kick off with a walkthrough of the exhibition on March 2 at 4 p.m., followed by an opening reception from 5 to 8 p.m. The exhibition will continue through April 14.
Four Channels was originally inspired by Block’s participation in the CEAM Artist Residency in October 2016. The artist’s interest in acoustic ecology, the relationship of human beings to their environment as mediated through sound, coupled with her extensive research into Northeast Florida’s coastal environment, led her to propose a site-specific sound installation at CEAM, and an exciting partnership with the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve (GTMNERR). The sound installation will present raw materials, field recordings, scientific data, and photographs from on-site within two different contexts, the museum space, and science pedagogy space. The development of Four Channels stems from Block’s engagement with the conservation research work done at the GTMNERR, as well as her interest in the presentation of “science education to the public — dioramas, interactive features, living specimen presentation, narrative, and artistic design.”
www.flagler.edu/news-events/crisp-ellert-art-museum
For more information about First Friday Artwalks in St. Augustine, visit www.artgalleriesofstaugustine.com/first-friday-artwalk.
To find more events in St. Augustine, visit our online calendar of events!