Experience visual interpretations of natural Florida in the new Wild Florida exhibit at Gallery MCO through March 14, featuring photographs, paintings, etchings and mixed media by Florida artists from the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority’s permanent collection of art.
On display in the select exhibition are photographs by Clyde Butcher and Steve Vaughn, paintings by Carol Elder Napoli, Jeannie Schubert and Sherry Lynn Lee Diaz, etchings by John Costin, and mixed media by Karin Bastidas and Beth Appleton.
The treasures in this small but powerful exhibition include a signature black-and-white photograph titled “Thompson Pine Island Road” by the legendary Clyde Butcher, whose studio is in Venice, Fla. Butcher is known worldwide for his majestic photographs of the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp taken with a large-format camera. The photographer, often compared to Ansel Adams, has only photographed in black and white since the tragic death of his son by a drunken driver in 1986.
In contrast to Butcher’s work is a colorful watercolor and cut-paper assemblage by self-taught artist Beth Appleton, who has been working from her home studio in Franklin County in North Florida for several decades. Her art-meets-science imaginative construction finds playful green frogs encircling a spring-like center informed by her fascination with viewing the patterns of diatoms – a type of algae — under a microscope.
The exhibit will be on display through March 14, 2024.
