Newsroom

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If you are a mem­ber of the media seek­ing more infor­ma­tion or images to accom­pany press cov­er­age, please con­tact Deb­bie Koman­ski at 407.647.6294.

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March 2013 On View

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Museum Facts 2012

Albin Polasek’s Bio

Cur­rent Press Releases

  (WINTER PARK, FL:  Novem­ber 30, 2012)  The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­den is excited to share our newest acqui­si­tion with our guests, a bust of Woodrow Wil­son, cre­ated by Albin Polasek him­self that was tar­geted for destruc­tion by the Nazis. This extra­or­di­nary piece of Amer­i­can his­tory, thought to have been destroyed in World War II, is now on dis­play at the Win­ter Park museum. (WINTER PARK, FL:  Novem­ber 30, 2012)  The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­den is excited to share our newest acqui­si­tion with our guests, a bust of Woodrow Wil­son, cre­ated by Albin Polasek him­self that was tar­geted for destruc­tion by the Nazis. This extra­or­di­nary piece of Amer­i­can his­tory, thought to have been destroyed in World War II, is now on dis­play at the Win­ter Park museum. The orig­i­nal larger– than-life mon­u­ment to the 28th pres­i­dent of the United States was cre­ated by Polasek in 1928 and proudly ded­i­cated by Tomas Masaryk, the first pres­i­dent of Czecho­slo­va­kia, and Wilson’s widow, Edith. The bronze mon­u­ment  bore the Wil­son quote “The world must be made safe for democ­racy.”  After the US declared war on Nazi Ger­many, the orig­i­nal mon­u­ment was destroyed on the night of Decem­ber 10, 1941, by order of Rein­hard Hey­drich, the dia­bol­i­cal “Reich Pro­tec­tor” of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia. After the war ended, the Sovi­ets ordered all the molds and plas­ter mod­els of the Wil­son mon­u­ment destroyed. How­ever, one orig­i­nal plas­ter cast­ing of Wilson’s bust sur­vived and was secreted in a ware­house on the out­skirts of Prague, where it was dis­cov­ered in Jan­u­ary 2008.  The col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts of three artists and patrons of the arts, includ­ing The Amer­i­can Friends of the Czech Repub­lic, Czech offi­cials and the team at the Polasek Museum, worked together to bring the sculp­ture back to life using the mold. On dis­play now at the Polasek, guest will learn about the cast­ing process for this sculp­ture and the more about the intrigu­ing story sur­round­ing it. “Open­ing the crate from Europe was an elec­tric moment,” said museum cura­tor Rachel Frisby. “This sculp­ture is polit­i­cally charged and of such world sig­nif­i­cance that it was com­mis­sioned, sup­pos­edly destroyed, hid­den away for its pro­tec­tion, and recre­ated. It’s mon­u­men­tal that the bust cre­ated from Polasek’s orig­i­nal mold returns to Amer­ica, and Win­ter Park in par­tic­u­lar, where the largest col­lec­tion of Albin Polasek’s works reside.”  Vis­i­tors to the Museum will be able to view the Wil­son bust as part of the docent-led tour of the his­toric home; a do-not-miss oppor­tu­nity to be inspired and to be swept up in the col­lec­tive power of Democ­racy. Help us enthu­si­as­ti­cally wel­come this price­less addi­tion to our col­lec­tion – a com­pelling reminder of Albin Polasek’s com­mit­ment to free­dom.
The orig­i­nal larger– than-life mon­u­ment to the 28th pres­i­dent of the United States was cre­ated by Polasek in 1928 and proudly ded­i­cated by Tomas Masaryk, the first pres­i­dent of Czecho­slo­va­kia, and Wilson’s widow, Edith. The bronze mon­u­ment  bore the Wil­son quote “The world must be made safe for democ­racy.”  After the US declared war on Nazi Ger­many, the orig­i­nal mon­u­ment was destroyed on the night of Decem­ber 10, 1941, by order of Rein­hard Hey­drich, the dia­bol­i­cal “Reich Pro­tec­tor” of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia. After the war ended, the Sovi­ets ordered all the molds and plas­ter mod­els of the Wil­son mon­u­ment destroyed. How­ever, one orig­i­nal plas­ter cast­ing of Wilson’s bust sur­vived and was secreted in a ware­house on the out­skirts of Prague, where it was dis­cov­ered in Jan­u­ary 2008.  The col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts of three artists and patrons of the arts, includ­ing The Amer­i­can Friends of the Czech Repub­lic, Czech offi­cials and the team at the Polasek Museum, worked together to bring the sculp­ture back to life using the mold. On dis­play now at the Polasek, guest will learn about the cast­ing process for this sculp­ture and the more about the intrigu­ing story sur­round­ing it. “Open­ing the crate from Europe was an elec­tric moment,” said museum cura­tor Rachel Frisby. “This sculp­ture is polit­i­cally charged and of such world sig­nif­i­cance that it was com­mis­sioned, sup­pos­edly destroyed, hid­den away for its pro­tec­tion, and recre­ated. It’s mon­u­men­tal that the bust cre­ated from Polasek’s orig­i­nal mold returns to Amer­ica, and Win­ter Park in par­tic­u­lar, where the largest col­lec­tion of Albin Polasek’s works reside.”  Vis­i­tors to the Museum will be able to view the Wil­son bust as part of the docent-led tour of the his­toric home; a do-not-miss oppor­tu­nity to be inspired and to be swept up in the col­lec­tive power of Democ­racy. Help us enthu­si­as­ti­cally wel­come this price­less addi­tion to our col­lec­tion – a com­pelling reminder of Albin Polasek’s com­mit­ment to free­dom.
(WINTER PARK, FL Jan­u­ary 11, 2013) Have you ever won­dered how a sculp­ture replica is made? Do you want to learn more about the cast­ing process? Here’s your chance! From Jan­u­ary 17– 23, 2013, Sculp­ture House Cast­ing, Inc. of New York will be cast­ing one of Albin Polasek’s most pow­er­ful and iconic works of art, “Man Carv­ing His Own Des­tiny” right here in Win­ter Park! Cast­ing a larger-than-life-sized sculp­ture, such as this piece, is a com­plex and inten­sive under­tak­ing. Drop in to The Museum and see how the process unfolds. Cura­tor Rachel Frisby, along with skilled arti­sans from Sculp­ture House, will be on site to answer your ques­tions and to enlighten you on the “Man Carv­ing Project” as it devel­ops. Through­out the (roughly) week-long process, you will see the crew build a plat­form around the exist­ing sculp­ture, coat the sculp­ture with a thin a layer of wax, and make sil­i­cone rub­ber and plas­ter molds (the shell or plas­ter pos­i­tives of the orig­i­nal).  The mold will be made in sec­tions and when com­plete will be shipped to New York City, where the foundry will pour the sculp­ture. So, if you’re a stu­dent, a sculp­ture enthu­si­ast, buyer, or per­haps just curi­ous, visit the Polasek Museum &Sculp­ture Gar­dens and wit­ness the mold­ing of “Man Carv­ing His Own Des­tiny” for your­self!
 (WINTER PARK, FL, Jan­u­ary 25, 2013) The 2013
(WINTER PARK, FL, March 21, 2013) Join us in The Polasek Gar­dens for Med­i­ta­tion & Stretch­ing. Mon­days — May 6, 13, 20, 2013; 11:30 am to 12:30 pm. Expe­ri­ence the con­nec­tion between your body and your spirit in these 60-minute guided med­i­ta­tion & stretch­ing ses­sions led by men­tal health coun­selor and fit­ness instruc­tor, Teri Reuter. Cost: Museum Mem­bers: $8 per ses­sion; Non Mem­bers: $10 per ses­sion. Reg­is­ter online www.polasek.org or call 407 – 647-6294. For more about Teri visit www.terireuter.com. 

(WINTER PARK, FL, Jan­u­ary 25, 2013) The 2013 Win­ter Park Paint Out kicks off with a splash of Florida His­tory in this spe­cial demon­stra­tion and lec­ture by awarded Florida High­way­men, Kelvin Hair.  Before this year’s 25 plein air artists fill up the Polasek’s Muse­ums wet-room gallery with their lively art­work (April 22 – 27), we hope to intro­duce vis­i­tors to the roots of Plein Air paint­ing in Florida. Admit­tance to the museum, gar­dens, and demon­stra­tion will be FREE!  We encour­age guests to bring their own lawn chairs or blan­kets, sit back and relax with a glass of sweet tea while you learn, and watch the magic unfold on Kelvin Hair’s can­vas. Lim­ited out­door seat­ing is avail­able, so get your seat early for the best view! Refresh­ments will be avail­able for sale on site-please no out­side food or bev­er­age on grounds. The demon­stra­tion and lec­ture begins at 1:00 pm and the museum will be open until 4:00 pm. Mr. Hair’s art­work will be avail­able for pur­chase the day of.  Here’s your chance to speak to and learn from the artist selected by Gov­er­nor Rick Scott as the 2012 Black His­tory Month artist! 
The Albin Polasek Museum acknowl­edges and cel­e­brates not only the Euro­pean begin­nings of “plein air” paint­ing, a French term mean­ing “in open air” or sim­ply out­door paint­ing, but also of the con­tem­po­rary legacy of the High­way­men and artists such as Kelvin Hair.  It is dou­bly fit­ting that the High­way­men were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2004, the very same year Albin Polasek was also inducted.
The Florida High­way­men were a group of 26 African-Americans; Kelvin Hair’s father, Alfred Hair, among the orig­i­nal founders and orga­niz­ers group broke racial and artis­tic con­ven­tions of the 1950’s to paint Florida’s land­scapes. Their deter­mi­na­tion and cre­ativ­ity out­shone an era marked by racism and poverty. The name “high­way­men” stuck because their work was orig­i­nally shunned by local gal­leries, forc­ing these entre­pre­neurs to sell their art from car trunks along the East­ern coastal roads and door-to-door.  Much like Albin Polasek, whose sig­na­ture piece of sculp­ture is enti­tled “Man Carv­ing His Own Des­tiny,” the Highwaymen’s art­work has also become a sym­bol of over­com­ing insur­mount­able bar­ri­ers and the belief in power of inspi­ra­tional and beau­ti­ful art. Today the Highwaymen’s art­work is highly prized, and the artists are con­sid­ered a cor­ner­stone in both Florida’s his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary cul­tural scene.
The Polasek Museum is delighted to host Kelvin Hair as our spe­cial guest artist for the 2013 Win­ter Park Paint Out.  Kelvin Hair was born in Vero Beach, Florida, and is the son of Mat­tie Thorn­ton and Alfred Hair. Kelvin’s father first intro­duced him to art when he was a tod­dler. Very much in keep­ing with the tra­di­tions of the orig­i­nal High­way­men, who were self-taught and shared their craft among one another, Kelvin Hair was men­tored by the leg­endary A.E. Backus, who is widely known to be the art teacher of the High­way­men founder, Alfred Hair.  To learn more about the artist Kelvin Hair, please visit his offi­cial web­site: http://khairart.com/.  Do not miss this oppor­tu­nity to watch plein air his­tory cre­ated live!!
This project is funded in part by Orange County Gov­ern­ment through the Arts & Cul­tural Affairs
Program.

WINTER PARK, FL Jan­u­ary 11, 2013) Have you ever won­dered how a sculp­ture replica is made? Do you want to learn more about the cast­ing process? Here’s your chance! From Jan­u­ary 17– 23, 2013, Sculp­ture House Cast­ing, Inc. of New York will be cast­ing one of Albin Polasek’s most pow­er­ful and iconic works of art, “Man Carv­ing His Own Des­tiny” right here in Win­ter Park! Cast­ing a larger-than-life-sized sculp­ture, such as this piece, is a com­plex and inten­sive under­tak­ing. Drop in to The Museum and see how the process unfolds. Cura­tor Rachel Frisby, along with skilled arti­sans from Sculp­ture House, will be on site to answer your ques­tions and to enlighten you on the “Man Carv­ing Project” as it devel­ops. Through­out the (roughly) week-long process, you will see the crew build a plat­form around the exist­ing sculp­ture, coat the sculp­ture with a thin a layer of wax, and make sil­i­cone rub­ber and plas­ter molds (the shell or plas­ter pos­i­tives of the orig­i­nal).  The mold will be made in sec­tions and when com­plete will be shipped to New York City, where the foundry will pour the sculp­ture. So, if you’re a stu­dent, a sculp­ture enthu­si­ast, buyer, or per­haps just curi­ous, visit the Polasek Museum &Sculp­ture Gar­dens and wit­ness the mold­ing of “Man Carv­ing His Own Des­tiny” for yourself!

(WINTER PARK, FL:  Novem­ber 30, 2012)  The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­den is excited to share our newest acqui­si­tion with our guests, a bust of Woodrow Wil­son, cre­ated by Albin Polasek him­self that was tar­geted for destruc­tion by the Nazis. This extra­or­di­nary piece of Amer­i­can his­tory, thought to have been destroyed in World War II, is now on dis­play at the Win­ter Park museum.
The orig­i­nal larger– than-life mon­u­ment to the 28th pres­i­dent of the United States was cre­ated by Polasek in 1928 and proudly ded­i­cated by Tomas Masaryk, the first pres­i­dent of Czecho­slo­va­kia, and Wilson’s widow, Edith. The bronze mon­u­ment  bore the Wil­son quote “The world must be made safe for democ­racy.”  After the US declared war on Nazi Ger­many, the orig­i­nal mon­u­ment was destroyed on the night of Decem­ber 10, 1941, by order of Rein­hard Hey­drich, the dia­bol­i­cal “Reich Pro­tec­tor” of Nazi-occupied Bohemia and Moravia. After the war ended, the Sovi­ets ordered all the molds and plas­ter mod­els of the Wil­son mon­u­ment destroyed. How­ever, one orig­i­nal plas­ter cast­ing of Wilson’s bust sur­vived and was secreted in a ware­house on the out­skirts of Prague, where it was dis­cov­ered in Jan­u­ary 2008.  The col­lab­o­ra­tive efforts of three artists and patrons of the arts, includ­ing The Amer­i­can Friends of the Czech Repub­lic, Czech offi­cials and the team at the Polasek Museum, worked together to bring the sculp­ture back to life using the mold. On dis­play now at the Polasek, guest will learn about the cast­ing process for this sculp­ture and the more about the intrigu­ing story sur­round­ing it.
“Open­ing the crate from Europe was an elec­tric moment,” said museum cura­tor Rachel Frisby. “This sculp­ture is polit­i­cally charged and of such world sig­nif­i­cance that it was com­mis­sioned, sup­pos­edly destroyed, hid­den away for its pro­tec­tion, and recre­ated. It’s mon­u­men­tal that the bust cre­ated from Polasek’s orig­i­nal mold returns to Amer­ica, and Win­ter Park in par­tic­u­lar, where the largest col­lec­tion of Albin Polasek’s works reside.” 
Vis­i­tors to the Museum will be able to view the Wil­son bust as part of the docent-led tour of the his­toric home; a do-not-miss oppor­tu­nity to be inspired and to be swept up in the col­lec­tive power of Democ­racy. Help us enthu­si­as­ti­cally wel­come this price­less addi­tion to our col­lec­tion – a com­pelling reminder of Albin Polasek’s com­mit­ment to freedom.

(WINTER PARK, FL Octo­ber 8, 2012) Start your New Year off with a pledge to do some­thing that will ben­e­fit your entire well-being! Local Busi­ness Owner, Engi­neer, Meta­physi­cian, Spir­i­tual Coun­selor and Author of the Global Heal­ing Tril­ogy Vipin Mehta, chal­lenges us to “Change the Mind­set, Change Heal­ing.” Learn about these prin­ci­ples directly from the inter­na­tion­ally rec­og­nized author him­self in this infor­ma­tive sem­i­nar series to be held at the beau­ti­ful Polasek Museum. This is a sin­gu­lar expe­ri­ence that will allow for greater under­stand­ing of com­plex and per­haps new con­cepts of heal­ing. Par­tic­i­pants should bring an “open mind” for the shar­ing of ideas, cul­ture and per­sonal growth. The under­ly­ing prin­ci­ples are Per­sonal Heal­ing, Think­ing Out­side the Box and Empow­er­ing Your­self. Each three-hour dis­course will focus on a par­tic­u­lar theme and will include a pre­sen­ta­tion, Q & A peri­ods, breaks, refresh­ments and med­i­ta­tion. Be inspired by beau­ti­ful art­work as you con­tem­plate your own life’s jour­ney. Lim­ited seat­ing is avail­able, Must pre-register for classes online at www.polasek.org/events or call: 407.647.6294. Indi­vid­ual ses­sions are $30.00 for non-museum mem­bers and $25.00 for mem­bers. Reserve the entire series for the dis­counted price of $110.00 for non-members and $90.00 for mem­bers. All pro­ceeds will go to fur­ther sup­port the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens.
Dis­course 1: Sun­day Jan­u­ary 6th 2013 (9:30a-12:30p)”Conscious Heal­ing Mantra & Life is a Pil­grim­age”
Join us as we explore Life Energy & Forces, Com­pelling Forces of Needs, Pro­pelling Forces of Desire, Dri­ving Forces of Know­ing and be opened up to the New Dimen­sion of Life.
Dis­course 2: Sun­day Jan­u­ary 13th 2013 (9:30a-12:30p) “Nature of Health Body, Mind, Soul & Spirit Inte­gra­tive Rela­tion­ship” & Part I – “Types of Ill­nesses”
Good Health is the entirety of Body, Mind, Soul, Spirit rela­tion­ship; this dis­course will show you how to inte­grate those com­po­nents through­out your life and help you to begin the heal­ing process by rec­og­niz­ing, iden­ti­fy­ing and cat­e­go­riz­ing ill­nesses.
Dis­course 3:  Sun­day Jan­u­ary 27th 3013 (9:30a-12:30p) Part I –“Explor­ing & Dis­cov­er­ing the Power of Heal­ing & Spir­i­tual Anatomy of the Human Being”
This dis­course is of explo­ration and dis­cov­ery of the Power of Heal­ing and Empow­er­ing Your­self. We will dis­cuss the Spir­i­tual Anatomy of the human being, the con­nec­tion and inte­gra­tion of the five lay­ers of the human being, and how to dis­cover where the Power of your Per­sonal Heal­ing lies.
Dis­course 4: Sun­day Feb­ru­ary 3rd 2013 (9:30a-12:30p)”Modalities of Heal­ing” & “Intro­duc­tion to Meta­physics”
Open your­self up to the var­i­ous Modal­i­ties of Heal­ing and decide which is appro­pri­ate for your dis-ease. Dis­cover Meta­phys­i­cal Heal­ing and the Power that lies within you. Dis­cus­sion top­ics will include “The Artistry of Love, Faces of Love, Pro­gres­sion of Love” and “Cre­at­ing the Magic of Love in Life.” This sem­i­nar is highly rec­om­mended for couples.

  
(WINTER PARK, Sep­tem­ber 14, 2012) The Rotary Club of Win­ter Park presents the 9th annual Win­ter Park Boat Parade and Ski Show which will take place Decem­ber 8th on Lakes Vir­ginia and Osce­ola.  The Win­ter Park Boat Parade and Fes­ti­val of Lights is a fun, community-wide water parade with holiday-themed and lighted boats along the lakes’ shore­lines.
Event Sched­ule:
3:30 pm:  Water ski show will be on Lake Vir­ginia with view­ing on the Rollins Col­lege cam­pus by the Jump Ramp in front of the Cam­pus Stu­dent Center/Swimming Pool. The area’s lead­ing water skiers will be per­form­ing a one-hour ski show to music.  Over two dozen pro­fes­sional skiers will be pulled by South­east Mas­ter­Craft boats per­form­ing rou­tines fea­tur­ing jumps, mul­ti­ple skiers’ acts, bare­foot, wake boards, and high-performance equip­ment.
5:00 pm: The Polasek Museum hosts the offi­cial view­ing sta­tion and judg­ing stand for the Win­ter Park Hol­i­day Boat Parade, where the fes­tiv­i­ties kick off with live music and Santa, bring­ing the hol­i­day spirit of the sea­son to life.  The Rotary Club of Win­ter Park will host a fundraiser to ben­e­fit local non-profits, with food, wine and beer avail­able for pur­chase.  Admis­sion to the Polasek Gar­dens for the Parade is FREE.  Lim­ited onsite park­ing will begin at 4:30 p.m. in the Polasek Gar­dens for a $5 dona­tion.  Bring your lawn chairs, blan­kets, friends and fam­ily to The Polasek to enjoy a Win­ter Park hol­i­day tra­di­tion.
Addi­tional pub­lic view­ing of the boat parade at Dinky Dock (off Fair­banks Avenue) begin­ning at sun­down.  Bring lawn chairs or blan­kets.
Sun­down: The parade will begin on the east shore of Lake Vir­ginia (near Dinky Dock) in front of Wind­song and pro­ceed clock­wise around the shores of Lake Vir­ginia, then pro­ceed through the Palm Canal to Lake Osce­ola.
About 6:30 pm: Boat parade passes in front of judges at The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens and tours around Lake Osce­ola.
CALL FOR BOATS:  Orga­niz­ers of the event are seek­ing res­i­dent and busi­ness boat entries.  For res­i­dent boats, there is no entry fee, and all local licensed area boat own­ers are invited to par­tic­i­pate.  Boat reg­is­tra­tion is required with appli­ca­tions avail­able by con­tact­ing wpboatparade.com or call 407 – 647-6492.
Key Spon­sors:  South­east Mas­ter­Craft, The Mayflower, Pan­era Bread,  Scenic Boat Tours of Win­ter Park, Win­ter Park Memo­r­ial Hos­pi­tal, Fan­nie Hill­man & Asso­ciates, The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens, City of Win­ter Park Lakes and Water­ways Depart­ment, and the Rotary Club of Win­ter Park.
Note to Media:
Images are avail­able to media.
Please con­tact Deb­bie Koman­ski, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, 407 – 647-6294, DKomanski@polasek.org.

(WINTER PARK, FL August 30, 2012) The Albin Polasek Museum and Sculp­ture Gar­dens in Win­ter Park, Florida is look­ing for vol­un­teers and is begin­ning a new vol­un­teer and docent train­ing pro­gram.
Polasek vol­un­teers and docents pro­vide an invalu­able ser­vice by help­ing vis­i­tors of all ages; engage with works of art through the museum’s guided tour pro­gram, assist with keep­ing the gar­dens look­ing beau­ti­ful and aid guests with ques­tions and gift shop pur­chases. While no expe­ri­ence is required, vol­un­teers must be com­fort­able talk­ing to the pub­lic. An appli­ca­tion is required.
“Being a museum docent is unlike other vol­un­teer expe­ri­ence,” says Trudy Furno, docent trainer and research spe­cial­ist at the museum.” Docents become well acquainted with Polasek’s life story and art and have many oppor­tu­ni­ties to inter­act with Museum visitors.It can truly be a reward­ing expe­ri­ence to make a con­nec­tion with a group of guests and get them excited about what we have to offer here.“  The museum has needs in all areas includ­ing Docents, Museum Gallery and Gift Shop Atten­dants and Gar­den­ing enthu­si­ast.
About the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculp­ture Gar­dens: Founded in 1961, the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens holds an art col­lec­tion focus­ing pri­mar­ily on Amer­i­can rep­re­sen­ta­tional sculp­ture, with over 200 works by Czech-born Amer­i­can sculp­tor Albin Polasek. The museum offers guided tours of the his­toric Polasek res­i­dence and chapel, an out­door sculp­ture gar­den and a gift shop. The museum is the retire­ment home of 2004 Florida Artists Hall of Fame inductee Albin Polasek, is listed on the National Reg­is­ter of His­toric Places and is one of only 30 mem­bers of the National Trust’s His­toric Artists’ Homes and Stu­dios.
Mis­sion: To pro­mote the legacy of inter­na­tion­ally known sculp­tor, Albin Polasek N.A., and to encour­age study, appre­ci­a­tion and the fur­ther­ance of rep­re­sen­ta­tional art.
His­tory: Born in the province of Moravia (now Czech Repub­lic), Albin Polasek immi­grated to this coun­try as a young wood­carver in 1901. He later attended the Penn­syl­va­nia Acad­emy of the Fine Arts in Philadel­phia and the Amer­i­can Acad­emy of Art in Rome. Dur­ing his influ­en­tial artis­tic and edu­ca­tional career, Polasek won many awards for his works and was com­mis­sioned to cre­ate numer­ous pub­lic sculp­tures now found through­out Europe and Amer­ica. Polasek ded­i­cated his life to encour­ag­ing the study, appre­ci­a­tion and fur­ther­ance of rep­re­sen­ta­tional art.
Col­lec­tions: The Polasek is a liv­ing museum, with out­door gar­dens dat­ing to 1949. The three-acre gar­den is a pas­toral oasis within the City of Win­ter Park. It is also a his­toric land­scape on Lake Osce­ola with many of the plant­i­ngs orig­i­nally placed by Mr. Polasek and his fam­ily. It pro­vides a col­or­ful back­drop for fifty out­door sculp­tures includ­ing free­stand­ing and archi­tec­tural sculp­tures by Albin Polasek, as well as works by other 20th cen­tury sculp­tors.
Hours:  Gal­leries, His­toric Res­i­dence & Chapel: Tuesday-Saturday 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, Sun­day 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Con­tact Infor­ma­tion: 633 Osce­ola Avenue Win­ter Park, Fl 32789
Phone:  407 – 647-6294  Web­site:  www.polasek.org  Email: volunteer@polasek.org

(WINTER PARK, FL August 27, 2012) On Sat­ur­day Sep­tem­ber 29, 2012, the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens will open its doors free of charge along with over 1,400 other par­tic­i­pat­ing venues for the eighth annual Museum Day Live! This immensely suc­cess­ful pro­gram, in which the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens will emu­late the free admis­sion pol­icy of the Smith­son­ian Institution’s Wash­ing­ton, D.C. based facil­i­ties, encour­ages learn­ing and the spread of knowl­edge nation­wide. We will be open 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Enjoy com­pli­men­tary art activ­i­ties in the Museum’s Gal­ley. Cre­ate gar­den inspired art­work out of recy­cled mate­ri­als in a hands-on, eco-friendly project the entire fam­ily will love.  Amy Wieck, the Pres­i­dent of The Florida Sculp­tors Guild, will also be demon­strat­ing the process of “Life cast­ing” and mould mak­ing.  Vis­i­tors will learn about this ancient tech­nique and be encour­aged to participate. Inclusive by design, Museum Day Live! ful­fills Smith­son­ian Media’s mis­sion to make cul­tural edu­ca­tion acces­si­ble to every­one. For one day only, the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens will grant free access to vis­i­tors who down­load a Museum Day Live! ticket at Smithsonian.com.  Last year’s event drew over 350,000 museum-goers, and this year’s Museum Day Live! is expected to attract close to 400,000 par­tic­i­pants. The Museum Day Live! Ticket will be avail­able to down­load at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/museumday/ 

(WINTER PARK, FL August 22, 2012)  The Polasek Museum’s 8th annual 3-concert music series fea­tures the world-renowned vio­lin­ist Ayako Yone­tani with com­puter accom­pa­ni­ment by Dr. Kimi­nobu Sug­aya and a vari­ety of guest instru­men­tal­ists per­form­ing works by Mendelssohn, Vivaldi, Mozart, and Bach among other com­posers. Held in the ele­gant salon of the Polasek res­i­dence, concert-goers expe­ri­ence acoustic per­fec­tion in an inti­mate set­ting. Lim­ited to 50 seats, the per­for­mance is fol­lowed by a pri­vate recep­tion. Cost: $80 for three con­cert series or $30 per con­cert. Tick­ets avail­able at www.polasek.org or 407 – 647-6294. 
Dr. Ayako Yone­tani, an inter­na­tion­ally acclaimed violin/viola player won First Prize in the Japan­ese National Com­pe­ti­tion at age nine and made her United States debut as a con­cert­mas­ter with the New York String Orches­tra at Carnegie Hall.  Dr. Yone­tani received her bach­e­lor, mas­ters, and doc­toral degrees from the Jul­liard School of Music. Cur­rently, she is a Pro­fes­sor of Violin/Viola at the Uni­ver­sity of Cen­tral Florida and trav­els the world as a guest soloist.  She is a mem­ber of Japan’s pre­mier cham­ber ensem­ble in Tokyo.
Dr. Kimi­nobu Sug­aya is Chair of the Neu­ro­science Con­sor­tium and also with the Uni­ver­sity of Cen­tral Florida Col­lege of Med­i­cine.  Dr. Sug­aya is an inter­na­tion­ally award-winning adult stem cell sci­en­tist. Along­side Dr. Yone­tani, he has been con­duct­ing research on the impact of music on the brain.  Using the lat­est in tech­nol­ogy Dr. Sug­uya pro­vides inno­v­a­tive musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment for every con­cert.
Sun­day, Novem­ber 11, 2012, 2:00 p.m.
Mozart Vio­lin Sonata, Bach Con­certo for Oboe and Vio­lin
Guest:  Jamie Stre­feler, oboe, OPO prin­ci­pal oboist, UCF oboe pro­fes­sor, and Dr. Kimi­nobu Sug­aya accom­pa­ni­ment
Jamie Stre­feler received her master’s degree in oboe per­for­mance from the Uni­ver­sity of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and is cur­rently prin­ci­pal oboe of the Orlando Phil­har­monic Orches­tra. She has held prin­ci­pal oboe posi­tions with the Amer­i­can Youth Orches­tra, the Debut Orches­tra and the Helena Sym­phony as well as a sec­ond oboe and Eng­lish horn posi­tion with the Tri-Cities Opera Com­pany. Jamie has been a fea­tured soloist with the Great Falls Sym­phony and the Amer­i­can Youth Orches­tra.
Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 20, 2013, 2:00 p.m.
Corelli Sonata Op. 5 #1, Lennox Berleley: Trio for horn, vio­lin and piano
Guests: Mark Fis­cher, French horn, and Dr. Kimi­nobu Sug­aya accom­pa­ni­ment
Mark Fis­cher has per­formed as Prin­ci­pal and Solo Horn for the Orlando Phil­har­monic Orches­tra since 1996 and can be found on more than two dozen CDs pro­duced by Madacy Records. He has also per­formed with var­i­ous other pro­fes­sional orches­tras, includ­ing the Florida Sym­phony Orches­tra, the Min­nesota Orches­tra, Grand Teton Fes­ti­val Orches­tra, St. Paul Cham­ber Orches­tra, Jack­sonville Sym­phony, and Naples Phil­har­monic. Mr. Fis­cher is a found­ing mem­ber of the Board of Direc­tors of the Orlando Phil­har­monic and cur­rently serves as its Gen­eral Man­ager.
Sun­day, March 24, 2013, 2:00 p.m.
Mendelssohn Vio­lin Sonata, Vivaldi Con­certo for four Vio­lins, fea­tur­ing  “Prodigy and Young Peo­ple”
Guests: Tris­tan Rhode­side, Vic­to­ria Senko, and Julia Hos­sain, vio­lins, and Dr. Kimi­nobu Sug­aya accom­pa­ni­ment

(WINTER PARK, FL June 21, 2012) The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens offers three unique year-round expe­ri­ences for vis­i­tors with its out­door sculp­ture gar­dens, chang­ing exhi­bi­tion gallery and tour of the his­toric Polasek home and chapel.
Gar­dens and Out­door Sculp­ture: Three acres of gar­dens on the shore of Lake Osce­ola pro­vide a col­or­ful back­drop for numer­ous out­door sculp­tures includ­ing free­stand­ing and archi­tec­tural sculp­tures by Albin Polasek, as well as works by other 20th cen­tury sculp­tors.
Chang­ing Exhi­bi­tion Gallery: Works in a vari­ety of media by local, national and inter­na­tional artists are fea­tured in exhi­bi­tions in our museum gallery that change through­out the year.
His­toric Polasek House and Chapel. Vis­i­tors can step back in time and into the life of an artist by tak­ing a docent-led tour through the his­toric Albin Polasek home fea­tur­ing his own sculp­tures, paint­ings and sculpt­ing tools, as well as his fas­ci­nat­ing per­sonal col­lec­tion of works by other artists, fur­ni­ture and antiq­ui­ties. Polasek’s per­sonal chapel is an inti­mate, sacred space and a high­light of the tour.

Museum Day Sep­tem­ber 29, 2012; 10 a.m. — 4 p.m. A cel­e­bra­tion of cul­ture, learn­ing, and the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge, Smith­son­ian Magazine’s “Museum Day” reflects the spirit of the mag­a­zine with free admis­sion to par­tic­i­pat­ing insti­tu­tions. Last year over 100,000 peo­ple vis­ited muse­ums on this day in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. Visit www.smithsonianmag.com for more infor­ma­tion. There will be a hands-on art activ­ity in which to par­tic­i­pate and sculpture-related art demonstrations.

Czech Inde­pen­dence Day Octo­ber 28, 2012; 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. In recog­ni­tion of the cre­ation of a free and inde­pen­dent Czecho­slo­va­kia in 1918, all vis­i­tors to the Museum will be admit­ted free of charge. Reg­u­larly sched­uled docent tours will focus on Albin Polasek’s Czech-influenced works.

Life in the Fast Lane: The Art of David Delong Octo­ber 2, 2012 – April 14, 2013 Over the course of five decades Amer­i­can Real­ist David Delong (1930 – 2001) pro­duced a body of work remark­able for its breadth, vari­ety and dex­ter­ity. An avid motor­cy­cle racer, Delong con­sid­ered these machines to be the per­fect metaphor for life and art, explain­ing that each requires a high level of con­trol and dis­ci­pline. The orig­i­nal works on dis­play will focus on the cul­ture of motor­cy­cle rac­ing and include oil paint­ings, pen and ink draw­ings, and etch­ings from the late 1950s to 2001. The col­lec­tion will be on loan from David Delong’s widow Har­ri­ett Delong.

Ayako Yone­tani at the Polasek: Exclu­sive Cham­ber Con­cert Series Dr. Ayako Yone­tani, a world renowned vio­lin­ist, began play­ing at the age of five and made her solo debut at the age of ten.  Later, she made her United States debut as a con­cert­mas­ter with the New York String Orches­tra at Carnegie Hall.  Dr. Yone­tani received her Bach­e­lor, Mas­ters, and Doc­toral degrees from the Juil­liard School.  Cur­rently, she is a Pro­fes­sor of Violin/Viola at the Uni­ver­sity of Cen­tral Florida and trav­els the world as a guest soloist.  She is a mem­ber of Japan’s pre­mier cham­ber ensem­ble in Tokyo. The Museum’s 7th annual three-concert music series fea­tures inter­na­tion­ally acclaimed violin/viola player Ayako Yone­tani and a vari­ety of guest instru­men­tal­ists. Held in the ele­gant salon of the Polasek res­i­dence, concert-goers expe­ri­ence acoustic per­fec­tion in an inti­mate set­ting. Lim­ited to 50 seats, the per­for­mance is fol­lowed by a pri­vate recep­tion. Cost: $80 for three con­cert series or $30 per con­cert.
Sun­day, Novem­ber 11, 2012, 2:00 p.m. Mozart Vio­lin Sonata, Bach Con­certo for Oboe and Vio­lin. Guest performer: Jamie Stre­feler, oboe, OPO prin­ci­pal oboist, UCF oboe pro­fes­sor.
Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 20, 2013, 2:00 p.m. Corelli Sonata Op. 5 #1, Lennox Berleley: Trio for horn, vio­lin and piano.  Guest per­former: Mark Fis­cher, French horn.
Sun­day, March 24, 2013, 2:00 p.m. Mendelssohn Vio­lin Sonata, Vivaldi Con­certo for four Violins. “Prodigy and Young Peo­ple” Guests:  Tris­tan Rhode­side, Vic­to­ria Senko, and Julia Hos­sain, violins

Good Fri­day March 29, 2013; 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. In obser­vance of Good Fri­day the Polasek Museum will be open free to the pub­lic.  Vis­i­tors are encour­aged to come and view the many litur­gi­cal works cre­ated by Albin Polasek includ­ing “The Vic­to­ri­ous Christ” and “The Sta­tions of the Cross.” Vis­i­tors will also have the oppor­tu­nity to find 20 hid­den tra­di­tional Ukrain­ian Easter eggs, or pysanky, in the his­toric home.

2013 Win­ter Park Paint Out Mon­day, April 22 – Sun­day, 28, 2013 For this spe­cial local event, a selected group of the finest plein air artists will cap­ture the land­scapes and land­marks of Win­ter Park with oils, water­col­ors and pas­tels painted out­doors with the sub­ject directly in view, rather than in a stu­dio. A por­tion of the pro­ceeds from the sale of the works gen­er­ated dur­ing this week ben­e­fit the Albin Polasek Museum.  The Polasek gallery and gar­dens will be open free for vis­i­tors Mon­day through Fri­day, and Sun­day dur­ing the week of the Paint Out. The Gar­den Party will be held on Sat­ur­day and is a spe­cial tick­eted event. Please visit www.winterparkpaintout.org for more information.

From Start to Fin­ish: The Florida Sculp­tors Guild Annual Exhi­bi­tion May 7 — July 21, 2013 Build­ing upon the legacy of Florid­ian sculp­tor, Albin Polasek, the Museum presents From Start to Fin­ish: Florida Sculp­tors Guild Annual Exhi­bi­tion. Pro­vid­ing an insight­ful behind-the-scene glimpse, the exhi­bi­tion will high­light the processes used to cre­ate each sculp­ture. Through pho­tographs, sketches, and mod­els, vis­i­tors will see how the art devel­oped from the orig­i­nal con­cept, the meth­ods and mate­ri­als used, the stages and mod­i­fi­ca­tions involved, and the ful­filled vision— from start to fin­ish. Each piece of con­tem­po­rary sculp­ture will be as unique as the Guild’s diverse mem­ber­ship, rang­ing from tal­ented emerg­ing artists to estab­lished pro­fes­sional sculp­tors. The exhi­bi­tion is a tes­ta­ment to the high cal­iber of art com­ing from Cen­tral Florida and a tes­ta­ment to the beauty in process.  

Awak­en­ing: The Art of Ursula Schwartz July 30 — Octo­ber 27, 2013 This intro­spec­tive exhibit fea­tures a sam­pling of large-scale oil paint­ings cre­ated by con­tem­po­rary artist Ursula Schwartz. Born in Nel­spruit, South Africa, she expresses her unique South African per­spec­tive through bold col­ors, enteric brush strokes, and inti­mate por­traits and fig­u­ra­tive work. Poetry writ­ten by the artist and her young son will accom­pany each paint­ing. Schwartz’s paint­ings reflect the com­plex nature of mod­ern fem­i­nin­ity, and por­tray an ele­gant jux­ta­po­si­tion of power and vul­ner­a­bil­ity. Her work has been exhib­ited, sold, and col­lected in South Africa, Europe, and the USA.

The Holy Art of Impe­r­ial Rus­sia: Icons from the 17th C. –Early 20th C. Novem­ber 5, 2013– April 13, 2014 The sacred images on view in this exhi­bi­tion are of a kind once read­ily found in even the hum­blest homes of Rus­sia, as well as its churches and pub­lic shrines. Centuries-old artis­tic con­ven­tions are jux­ta­posed with new, West­ern­ized for­mal ele­ments and ver­nac­u­lar inter­pre­ta­tions of these new forms. For Ortho­dox Rus­sians, icons served as more than just reli­gious paint­ings; they were relic-like objects directly linked to the holy fig­ures they depicted.  They were seen as com­forters and pow­er­ful guardians. Icons were the direct line from the real world to the spir­i­tual and appeared every­where in pre-Soviet Rus­sia.  The exhi­bi­tion will be on loan from Hollingsworth Fine Art.

WINTER PARK, FL March 9, 2012 Sun­day, April 29th Free Open House  The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens hosts the Fourth Annual Win­ter Park Paint Out dur­ing the last week of April 2012.  Twenty-six of the finest “plein air” artists will be paint­ing through­out Win­ter Park cap­tur­ing local land­scapes and land­marks with oils, water­col­ors and pas­tels. The pub­lic is invited to stop by the museum and gar­dens all week long to see recently com­pleted works, watch artists paint­ing in the gar­dens, and to attend free paint­ing demon­stra­tions.  Art­work pro­duced dur­ing the Paint Out will be for sale with a por­tion of the pro­ceeds going to sup­port the preser­va­tion, main­te­nance and oper­a­tion of the museum and gar­dens. Plein air, a French term mean­ing “in the open air,” describes art­works painted out­doors with the sub­ject directly in view, rather than being cre­ated in a stu­dio. Plein air artists cap­ture the spirit and essence of a land­scape or sub­ject by incor­po­rat­ing nat­ural light, color and move­ment into their works.The 2012 Win­ter Park Paint Out con­cludes on Sun­day, April 29th with an Open House of the art­work cre­ated through­out the week-long event. The “Florida Plein Air Mas­ters” exhibit fea­tures paint­ings by over two dozen, selected juried plein air painters. This is your LAST CHANCE to view the orig­i­nal art­work in the museum gallery and or to make a pur­chase.  The Polasek Museum, gallery, and gar­dens will be open to the pub­lic free of charge.  Visit www.WinterParkPaintOut.org

WINTER PARK, FL Feb­ru­ary 1, 2012 Fourth Annual Win­ter Park Paint Out This Spring
The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens hosts the Fourth Annual Win­ter Park Paint Out dur­ing the last week of April 2012.  Twenty-six of the finest “plein air” artists will be paint­ing through­out Win­ter Park cap­tur­ing local land­scapes and land­marks with oils, water­col­ors and pas­tels. The pub­lic is invited to stop by the museum and gar­dens all week long to see recently com­pleted works, watch artists paint­ing in the gar­dens, and to attend free paint­ing demon­stra­tions.  Art­work pro­duced dur­ing the Paint Out will be for sale with a por­tion of the pro­ceeds going to sup­port the preser­va­tion, main­te­nance and oper­a­tion of the museum and gar­dens. Plein air, a French term mean­ing “in the open air,” describes art­works painted out­doors with the sub­ject directly in view, rather than being cre­ated in a stu­dio. Plein air artists cap­ture the spirit and essence of a land­scape or sub­ject by incor­po­rat­ing nat­ural light, color and move­ment into their works. The Paint Out con­cludes with a spe­cial tick­eted evening event — The Paint Out Gar­den Party, which takes place Sat­ur­day April 28, from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM. All artists will be present and patrons are able to dis­cuss and pur­chase their works. Tick­ets for The Paint Out Gar­den Party are avail­able through the Polasek Museum. They are priced $45 in advance, $60 at the door. Be sure to pur­chase your tick­ets soon. Space is lim­ited and the event has reached capac­ity each year. Call the museum at (407) 647‑6294 for addi­tional infor­ma­tion or visit the paint out web site at www.winterparkpaintout.org for a com­plete sched­ule of events. The event has a reward­ing pro­gram for patrons and spon­sors. Please visit the web­site for more infor­ma­tion on how to par­tic­i­pate as well as for details on how to fol­low the event on Face­book and Twitter.

2012 Sched­ule of Events
Gallery and Gar­dens Open Daily
Open House — Free to the Pub­lic All Week
Sun­day April 22 through Sun­day April 29
Sun­day April 22 — 1:00 PM until 4:00 PM
Mon­day April 23 to Fri­day April 27 — 10:00 AM until 6:00 PM
Sat­ur­day April 28 — 10:00 AM until 12:00 noon
Sun­day April 29 — 1:00 PM until 4:00 PM
Artists paint in the Polasek’s sculp­ture gar­dens and at other loca­tions through­out Win­ter Park. Works will be on dis­play and for sale as soon as they are com­pleted and dropped off at the museum’s wet room. Stop by to see and pur­chase works pro­duced dur­ing this year’s Win­ter Park Paint Out!
Free Paint­ing Demon­stra­tions
Mon­day, April 23
10:00 to 12:00 Noon 
Mor­gan Samuel Price, Oil Paint­ing Demon­stra­tion
Nat­ural Light in Plein Air Paint­ing – Mor­gan dis­cusses the impor­tance of light in plein air paint­ing and demon­strates tech­niques for cap­tur­ing var­i­ous light­ing effects on can­vas.
Tues­day, April 24
10:00 to 12:00 Noon 
Tim Malles, Oil Paint­ing Demon­stra­tion
Paint­ing the Noc­turne — Tim shares his meth­ods for paint­ing a night scene in the broad day­light. Learn how to con­vert day­light to moon­light and cre­ate a suc­cess­ful noc­turne. You will also learn insights into astron­omy and observ­ing and work­ing on a land­scape under a dark sky.
Wednes­day, April 25
10:00 to 12:00 Noon 
Stew­art Jones, Water­color Demon­stra­tion
Water­color En Plein Air — Stew­art shows how to cap­ture nature in all of its three-dimensional glory in water­col­ors. He will show you how to see nature and focus on the essen­tial ele­ments and elim­i­nate the unnec­es­sary obstruc­tions. This will be a direct approach paint­ing en plein air with water­col­ors.
Thurs­day, April 26
10:00 to 12:00 Noon 
Bill Farnsworth, Oil Paint­ing Demon­stra­tion
Inte­grat­ing Fig­ures into the Land­scape — Bill shares his knowl­edge about fig­u­ra­tive paint­ing using a model in a nat­ural set­ting.
Fri­day, April 27
10:00 to 12:00 Noon 
Harold Frontz, Oil Paint­ing Demon­stra­tion
Paint­ing En Plein Air Overview — Harold shares tips with the audi­ence on how to ana­lyze and resolve the chal­lenges encoun­tered when paint­ing out­doors. Ques­tions are encour­aged.
 Other Spe­cial Events:
Wednes­day April 25 — 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Sun­set Paint­ing
The pub­lic is invited to come by as Paint Out Artists gather on the shore of Lake Kil­lar­ney at Hill­stone Restau­rant (for­merly Houston’s).  There we’ll cap­ture a beau­ti­ful Florida sun­set, then take a break from the week’s activ­i­ties. Come share the vista with us and watch as these out­stand­ing artists cre­ate a sun­set mem­ory on can­vas.  Hill­stone is located at 215 S. Orlando Avenue in Win­ter Park.  Call (407) 740 4005 to reserve a table for this spe­cial night.

Sat­ur­day April 28 — 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Paint Out Gar­den Party:  A Plein Air Cel­e­bra­tion!
Join us for a spe­cial night “en plein air” at the Polasek Museum. We’ll be cel­e­brat­ing the mas­ter­ful works of Florida’s finest artists as we bring the 2012 Win­ter Park Paint Out to a close. Meet the artists from this year’s event and see the entire exhi­bi­tion. Tick­ets are $45.00 in advance, and $60.00 at the door. Park­ing is lim­ited. This event has SOLD OUT the last three years, do not miss! For ticket infor­ma­tion, please con­tact the Polasek Museum at (407) 647 6294.

Sun­day, April 29 — 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM
Open House: The Sun­day after­noon Open House marks the final day of the 2012 Win­ter Park Paint Out. This is your LAST CHANCE to view the paint­ings on dis­play and to make a pur­chase.  The Polasek Museum will be open to the pub­lic free of charge. Hurry in and pick out your favorite!  

2012 Win­ter Park Paint Out Par­tic­i­pat­ing Artists
Please visit our online artist direc­tory at www.winterparkpaintout.org. for more infor­ma­tion about artists, includ­ing pho­tographs and sam­ples of work.
Stephen Bach– Orlando, FL; Jane Chapin– St. Peters­burg, FL; Kathy Chenet– Long­wood, FL; Hiu Lai Chong– Mary­land; Jessie Cook– Palm Coast, FL; Priscilla Coote– Naples, FL; Matthew Cor­nell– Orlando, FL; Katie Dob­son Cun­diff– Braden­ton, FL ; Charles Dick­in­son– St. Augus­tine, FL ; Bill Farnsworth– Venice, FL; Elis­a­beth Fer­ber– Orlando, FL; Harold Fronz– Lex­ing­ton, NC; Elaine Hahn– Hol­i­day, FL; Brenda Hofre­iter– Win­ter Park, FL; Stew­art Jones– Orlando, FL; Tim Malles– Gainesville, FL; Niko­lay Mikushkin– Syra­cuse, NY; Larry Moore– Win­ter Park, FL; Bar­bara Per­rotti– Ormond Beach, FL; Robert Ross– Alta­monte Springs, FL; Gary Rupp– Orlando, FL; Tom Sadler– Win­ter Park, FL; Mor­gan Samuel Price– Orlando, FL; Don Sondag– Mait­land, FL; Mary Jane Volk­mann– Gainesville, FL ; Lynn Whip­ple– Win­ter Park, FL. 

WINTER PARK, FL Octo­ber 26, 2011 — The 8th annual Win­ter Park Hol­i­day Boat Parade — Rain or shine, the 2011 parade will take place Decem­ber 10th on Lakes Vir­ginia and Osce­ola. The Win­ter Park Boat Parade and Fes­ti­val of Lights is a fun, community-wide water parade with holiday-themed and lighted boats along the lakes’ shore­lines. The Rotary Club of Win­ter Park will host this fundraiser to ben­e­fit local non-profits, with food, wine and beer avail­able for pur­chase.  Admis­sion to The Polasek Gar­dens for the Parade is FREE. Lim­ited onsite park­ing will begin at 4:30 p.m. in The Polasek Gar­dens for a $5 dona­tion. 
Event Sched­ule Decem­ber 10th:
3:30 – 4:30 pm: Water ski show will be on Lake Vir­ginia with view­ing on the Rollins Col­lege cam­pus by the Jump Ramp in front of the Cam­pus Stu­dent Center/Swimming Pool. The area’s lead­ing water skiers will be per­form­ing a one-hour ski show to music. Over two dozen pro­fes­sional skiers will be pulled by South­east Mas­ter­Craft boats per­form­ing rou­tines fea­tur­ing jumps, mul­ti­ple skiers’ acts, bare­foot, wake boards, and high-performance equip­ment.
5 pm: Fes­tiv­i­ties will kick off at the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens. Food, wine and beer, hol­i­day music and a visit from Santa will bring the hol­i­day spirit of the sea­son to life. Bring your lawn chairs, blan­kets, friends and fam­ily to the Polasek to enjoy a Win­ter Park hol­i­day tra­di­tion.  Dinky Dock (off Fair­banks Avenue) is another pub­lic view­ing area for the parade begin­ning at sun­down.
Sun­down 5:45 pm: The parade will begin on east shore of Lake Vir­ginia in front of Wind­song and pro­ceed clock­wise around the shores of Lake Vir­ginia, then pro­ceed through the Palm Canal to Lake Osce­ola. Boat parade passes in front of judges at Albin Polasek Museum & Gar­dens and tours around Lake Osce­ola.
Orga­niz­ers of the event are seek­ing res­i­dent and busi­ness boat entries.  For res­i­dent boats, there is no entry fee, and all local licensed area boat own­ers are invited to par­tic­i­pate. Boat reg­is­tra­tion is required with appli­ca­tions avail­able at www.wpboatparade.com or call 407 – 647-6492.
Key Spon­sors: South­east Mas­ter­Craft, Fan­nie Hill­man & Asso­ciates, The Rotary Club of Win­ter Park, Scenic Boat Tours of Win­ter Park, The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens, Win­ter Park Memo­r­ial Hos­pi­tal, City of Win­ter Park Lakes and Water­ways Depart­ment.
Note To Media:
Images are avail­able to media.
Please con­tact Bena Greene winterparkboatparade@polasek.org or call 407 – 647-6294.

WINTER PARK, FL Sep­tem­ber 16, 2011 — The tra­di­tional day of Czech Inde­pen­dence will be cel­e­brated with free admis­sion to the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens on Fri­day, Octo­ber 28 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Museum founder Albin Polasek was born and raised in the province of Moravia, in what is now the Czech Repub­lic.
The his­toric Polasek res­i­dence and chapel will be open as well as the gallery cur­rently exhibit­ing Darker Shades of Red: Soviet Pro­pa­ganda from the Cold War. This spe­cial exhibit runs through Jan­u­ary 8, 2012. Darker Shades of Red pro­vides a rare oppor­tu­nity to revisit the Cold War period through the explo­ration of the Soviet Union’s offi­cial imagery. The col­lec­tion reveals the eco­nomic, social and polit­i­cal ide­ol­ogy of the Soviet Union from the mid 1940s to 1990 through strik­ing poster graph­ics and Soviet ephemera.
Hand-crafted jew­elry made in the Czech Repub­lic by “Zivot” and fine Czech gifts by “Heart of Europe” will be avail­able in the museum gift shop.
The Repub­lic of Czecho­slo­va­kia was formed in 1918 after cen­turies of rule under the Haps­burg dynasty. Czech pro­fes­sor Thomas Masaryk, Slo­vak sci­en­tist Milan Ste­fanik and Czech soci­ol­o­gist Edward Benes pro­claimed inde­pen­dence for Czecho­slo­va­kia on Octo­ber 18, 1918 while in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Ten days later, Octo­ber 28, 1918, the Sov­er­eign Repub­lic of Czecho­slo­va­kia was founded in Prague and Masaryk was elected pres­i­dent.
In July 1992, Slo­va­kia declared its sov­er­eignty and on Jan­u­ary 1, 1993 Czecho­slo­va­kia offi­cially split into the Czech Repub­lic and Slo­va­kia. The tra­di­tional date of Czecho­slo­va­kian inde­pen­dence, Octo­ber 28, is still acknowl­edged in both coun­tries.
Note To Media: Images are avail­able to media. Please con­tact Deb­bie Koman­ski, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, 407 – 647-6294, DKomanski@polasek.org.

WINTER PARK, Sep­tem­ber 14, 2011 –The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens is pleased to announce that David McLeod has accepted the posi­tion of Co-Chair for the Fourth Annual Win­ter Park Paint Out event that will be held the last week of April 2012.  Mr. McLeod will share the chair posi­tion with Mr. Hal Stringer, found­ing Co-Chair of the Win­ter Park Paint Out Event.  

Mr. McLeod, a Win­ter Park res­i­dent, has exten­sive expe­ri­ence in the Cen­tral Florida Art Com­mu­nity. Mr. McLeod served as the Trea­surer and Board Chair for Cre­alde School of Art over a con­sec­u­tive 8 year period. He also sat on the gallery com­mit­tee for Cre­alde School of Art for 7 years.

The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens is also pleased to announce the Artist Selec­tion Panel Mem­bers for the Fourth Annual Win­ter Park Paint Out event which will be held April 22 – 28, 2012. The Artist Selec­tion Panel Mem­bers are:
Terry Olson, Chair, Arts & Cul­tural Direc­tor for Orange County for the past 10 years and founder of many area arts groups and events.
Arthur Blu­men­thal, Inter­na­tional museum con­sul­tant, Renais­sance scholar and direc­tor emer­i­tus of the Cor­nell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins Col­lege in Win­ter Park.
Clau­dio Men­z­er­tolo, Owner of Nitesol, a stu­dio– based com­pany that spe­cial­izes in the design, fab­ri­ca­tion, and instal­la­tion of large-format prints and sig­nage.
Dou­glas Nes­bitt, Inter­na­tion­ally acclaimed com­mer­cial and fine art pho­tog­ra­pher who serves on the Board of Trustees, and Chairs the Exhi­bi­tion Com­mit­tee, for the Albin Polasek Museum.
Francine New­berg, Art col­lec­tor, Co-Chair of the Win­ter Park Pub­lic Art Advi­sory Board and Project Devel­op­ment for Albert­son Art Con­sul­tants.
Carla Poindex­ter, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Art (Paint­ing, Draw­ing and Design) at the Uni­ver­sity of Cen­tral Florida and an active fine artist work­ing in mul­ti­ple disciplines.

Note to Media: Images are avail­able to media. Please con­tact Deb­bie Koman­ski
Con­tacts: Deb­bie Koman­ski, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, 407 – 647-6294, DKomanski@polasek.org.
 
The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens receives $90,000 grant from The Edyth Bush Char­i­ta­ble Foun­da­tion to develop the organization’s fundrais­ing capac­ity
WINTER PARK, FL Sep­tem­ber 9, 2011 – The board of direc­tors of the Edyth Bush Char­i­ta­ble Foun­da­tion awarded a grant of up to $90,000 to the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens so the museum can hire its first full-time direc­tor of devel­op­ment. The two-year grant cov­ers 100% of a devel­op­ment director’s salary for the first year and 50 per­cent for the sec­ond. As part of the grant award the museum’s board of trustees was issued a chal­lenge. In order to receive the sec­ond year’s award, the trustees must raise the equiv­a­lent of $30,000. “A grant of this size is a tremen­dous honor,” said Jere Daniels, Jr., Chair­man of the museum’s board of trustees. “It also comes with tremen­dous respon­si­bil­ity and I’m con­fi­dent our trustees are pre­pared to meet that chal­lenge.” Both the grant award and the chal­lenge to raise match­ing funds are con­sis­tent with the Edyth Bush Char­i­ta­ble Foundation’s mis­sion to “cre­ate inno­v­a­tive civic solu­tions help­ing peo­ple help them­selves.” Rather than sim­ply mak­ing an award and wait­ing for a progress report, the Edyth Bush Char­i­ta­ble Foun­da­tion prefers to take a more inno­v­a­tive approach. Grants rou­tinely include chal­lenges to stim­u­late board mem­bers into improv­ing their fundrais­ing skill. The Foun­da­tion under­stands that when board mem­bers become bet­ter at acquir­ing and cul­ti­vat­ing donors, it gen­er­ates the finan­cial resources nec­es­sary to accom­plish strate­gic goals. When an orga­ni­za­tion rou­tinely accom­plishes its goals, it becomes sus­tain­able. For the Polasek Museum, sus­tain­abil­ity means being around another 100 years to inspire an entirely new gen­er­a­tion through Polasek’s mas­ter­pieces.
“The Polasek Museum rep­re­sents a great sculp­tor who hon­ored his Czech her­itage while embrac­ing the Amer­i­can dream and becom­ing a US cit­i­zen,” said David Oda­howski, pres­i­dent and chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of the Edyth Bush Char­i­ta­ble Foun­da­tion. “His pur­suit of beauty can be seen in his work and in the loca­tion he chose to build his retire­ment home. The res­i­dents of Win­ter Park and Cen­tral Florida are for­tu­nate to have such a valu­able cul­tural insti­tu­tion in their midst and the foun­da­tion is pleased to be con­tribut­ing to its long-term sus­tain­abil­ity.”
Deb­bie Koman­ski, the Polasek’s exec­u­tive direc­tor said hir­ing the first pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment direc­tor is a vital step in the growth of the museum. A full-time employee work­ing tire­lessly to cul­ti­vate indi­vid­u­als, cor­po­ra­tions and foun­da­tions increases dra­mat­i­cally the like­li­hood the museum will achieve its vision for the future. With the Polasek board hav­ing launched its match­ing grant cam­paign to raise $30,000 and the exec­u­tive direc­tor actively accept­ing resumes to locate the right per­son to become the first devel­op­ment direc­tor, it is fair to say that the grant is already hav­ing the desired out­come by help­ing the Polasek to help itself.

About the Edyth Bush Char­i­ta­ble Foun­da­tion www.edythbush.org 
The Edyth Bush Char­i­ta­ble Foun­da­tion was cre­ated in 1973. Since then, it has been enriched by the Richard J. Con­lee Fund and the H. Clif­ford Lee Fund. To date, the Foun­da­tion has issued nearly 3,000 grants to more than 400 orga­ni­za­tions through­out the state, but pri­mar­ily in Cen­tral Florida, total­ing more than $95 mil­lion. Though it does not actively solicit out­side dona­tions, the Foun­da­tion will work with phil­an­thropists to achieve their char­i­ta­ble goals. Board mem­bers are Ger­ald F. Hilbrich, Chair­man; Her­bert W. Holm, Vice Chair­man; Matthew W. Certo; Deb­o­rah C. Ger­man, M.D.; David A. Oda­howski and Richard J. Walsh.

Hal Stringer Receives “The Sower Award”
WINTER PARK, FL July 29, 2011 – On July 21, 2011 Hal Stringer received the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens’ first “The Sower Award.” The Board of Trustees has pre­sented Hal Stringer, found­ing chair­man of the Win­ter Park Paint Out, with The Sower Award for his excep­tional ser­vice to The Polasek.  The Sower Award, based upon Albin Polasek’s 1911 sculp­ture of the same name, is a prime exam­ple of Polasek’s mas­tery of the human form. The dra­mat­i­cally mod­eled fig­ure of the Sower has a clas­si­cally inspired face and a strong, mus­cu­lar body. Using as his inspi­ra­tion the para­ble of Jesus about the sower  –  “a sower went forth to sow”  –  Polasek’s inter­pre­ta­tion shows a man scat­ter­ing the seed of good through­out the world. The Sower won an Hon­or­able Men­tion in the spring 1913 Paris Salon. Hal Stringer estab­lished the Island Fine Art Cres­cent Beach Paint Out and has orga­nized and man­aged it since 2005. In 2008 Stringer was named the found­ing co-chair of the Win­ter Park Paint Out by The Polasek.  The annual event fea­tures over two dozen of Florida’s finest plein air artists, who roam across our fair city cap­tur­ing many of your favorite land­scapes and land¬marks with oils, water­col­ors and pas­tels. Plein Air  —  a French term mean­ing “in the open air”  —  describes art works painted out­doors with the sub­ject directly in view rather than in a stu­dio. Plein air artists cap­ture the spirit and essence of a land­scape or sub­ject by incor­po­rat­ing nat­ural light, color and move­ment into their works. Mr. Stringer is a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­sity of Florida with a degree in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion and earned his Master’s in Com­puter Sci­ence from the Uni­ver­sity of Cen­tral Florida in 2007. Stringer cur­rently works as the IT Direc­tor for Tech­nolo­gies Man­age­ment, Inc., a telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions reg­u­la­tory con­sult­ing firm in Mait­land, FL.

Soviet Pro­pa­ganda will invade The Polasek Museum
Sep­tem­ber 27, 2011– Jan­u­ary 8, 2012
WINTER PARK, FL July 20, 2011 – Darker Shades of Red pro­vides a rare oppor­tu­nity to revisit the Cold War era through the explo­ration of the Soviet Union’s offi­cial imagery. Strik­ingly graphic in its social­ist imagery, the col­lec­tion of posters and assorted ephemera reveals the eco­nomic, social and polit­i­cal ide­ol­ogy of the Soviet Union from the 1940s to 1991. Darker Shades of Red: Soviet Pro­pa­ganda from the Cold War will open on Sep­tem­ber 27th at the Albin Polasek Museum. When the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion first began to take shape at the end of the 19th cen­tury, reli­gious icons were already a well-established part of daily life. Since Russia’s con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­ity in 988 AD, icons were believed by both the rich and poor alike to pro­vide access to God, like “win­dows into heaven.” The com­mu­nist lead­ers rec­og­nized these images as a pow­er­ful tool; so, they adapted them to cre­ate “gods” and heroes for the new world they envi­sioned them­selves build­ing. After World War I, the Rev­o­lu­tion and the fol­low­ing civil war had crip­pled Rus­sia, lead­ers real­ized that it would be nec­es­sary to enlist the strong sup­port of the peo­ple to achieve rebuild­ing efforts and the restruc­tur­ing of soci­ety. How­ever, since reli­gion and reli­gious images were deemed incom­pat­i­ble with rev­o­lu­tion­ary think­ing they were quickly elim­i­nated and replaced with the new iconog­ra­phy– that of the Com­mu­nist Party. From the time of the Bol­she­vik Rev­o­lu­tion and after, the poster was used a per­sua­sive source of Soviet ide­ol­ogy. Lead­ers placed a high pri­or­ity on com­mu­ni­cat­ing the ideas of rev­o­lu­tion, social­ism and social respon­si­bil­ity to its cit­i­zenry. Posters were used to shape and direct mass con­scious­ness in accor­dance with Com­mu­nist Party objec­tives. Sym­bolic images of Soviet lead­ers, sol­diers, work­ers, and peas­ants were com­mon heroic motifs. Images of machin­ery sym­bol­ized pro­duc­tiv­ity in indus­try and farm­ing while loco­mo­tives, sput­niks and rock­ets sug­gested progress and achieve­ment. This patri­otic infor­ma­tion was com­mu­ni­cated to the pub­lic through dynamic com­po­si­tions that com­bined fig­ures with text (often poetry) and geo­met­ric blocks of color. Post World War II ten­sions between the Soviet Union and the West led to the begin­ning of the Cold War era. Fear of nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion and anti-west sen­ti­ments were often reflected in Soviet posters dur­ing the decades that fol­lowed. Civil defense posters illus­trated how to pre­pare for a nuclear attack. Car­i­ca­tures of Amer­i­can and British lead­ers depicted the West and its polit­i­cal struc­ture as the enemy of the Soviet peo­ple.
Pro­pa­ganda images also fil­tered down into the homes and daily lives of peo­ple. All schools, shops, fac­to­ries, apart­ment build­ings and pub­lic spaces were splashed with Soviet images. In this closed soci­ety, there were no com­pet­ing images; peo­ple were exposed only to what was seen as ful­fill­ing the goals of the Party. Com­mon objects such as post­cards and even children’s books had to rein­force Com­mu­nist objec­tives. By look­ing at these offi­cial images, we are given an insider’s per­spec­tive into life in a total­i­tar­ian soci­ety.
The pieces on exhibit are drawn from the pri­vate col­lec­tion of Gary Hollingsworth, an Orlando-based art restorer who trav­eled exten­sively in the for­mer Soviet Union. 

Cel­e­brat­ing Sculp­ture dur­ing the 50th Anniver­sary Year of the Albin Polasek Museum
WINTER PARK, FL May 18, 2011- The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens is cel­e­brat­ing sculp­ture dur­ing its 50th anniver­sary year. To bet­ter serve the com­mu­nity, the Museum will now be open dur­ing the sum­mer to pro­vide year-round enjoy­ment for the first time in the Museum’s fifty year his­tory. In honor of Albin Polasek, two sculp­ture exhi­bi­tions by con­tem­po­rary artists will be held to high­light Florida sculp­tors and their cre­ative tal­ents in this medium. “Two Gen­er­a­tions: Two Visions” and “Fig­ure and Form: A Show­case of Florida Sculp­tors” (con­cur­rently with “The Red Chair Vis­its Orange County Pub­lic Art”) will run back to back begin­ning in May through September.

First Juried Sculp­ture Exhi­bi­tion at the Polasek Museum
Exhibit to take place in sum­mer of 2011
WINTER PARK, FL May 4, 2011 – The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens will hold its much antic­i­pated sculp­ture exhi­bi­tion, Fig­ure and Form: A Show­case of Florida Sculp­tors from July 19, 2011 through Sep­tem­ber 18, 2011. This exhi­bi­tion is also being held to com­mem­o­rate the Museum’s 50th anniver­sary year and in honor of the legacy of the inter­na­tion­ally renowned sculp­tor Albin Polasek. This is the first juried sculp­ture exhi­bi­tion show­cas­ing high-quality works by Florida sculp­tors to be shown at the Polasek Museum in sup­port of its mis­sion to pro­mote rep­re­sen­ta­tional art. A juried selec­tion com­mit­tee chose twenty works by the fol­low­ing sev­en­teen artists to be fea­tured in Fig­ure and Form: Cheryl Bog­danow­itsch, Shawn McCurdy, Doug Bringle, Vic­to­ria Nanos, Louise Buhrmann, Nan Reink­ing, Mindy Colton, Kirk Vaughn-Robinson, David Cumbie, Henry Sinn, Mar­sha DeBroske, Katty Smith, Peter Forster, Dean Stu­art War­ren, Daryl Golden, Amy Wieck, Patri­cia Lancaster.

“Two Gen­er­a­tions: Two Visions,” a father and son exhi­bi­tion
WINTER PARK,FL March 28, 2011- Artists Arthur and Samuel Jones (a father and son respec­tively) share the same blood­line, the same his­tory and the same artis­tic spirit. Their approaches to art, which are dis­tinctly dif­fer­ent, are high­lighted in their first-ever dual exhibit fea­tur­ing Arthur Jones’ wood sculp­tures and Samuel Jones’ paint­ings and mixed media works.  In addi­tion to their respec­tive approaches to art, a few of the works by each artist will echo in some impor­tant way its coun­ter­part in the other’s work. The exhi­bi­tion will be on dis­play at the Albin Polasek Museum from May 17 through July 10, 2011. It is the museum’s first sum­mer exhi­bi­tion since open­ing year-round to vis­i­tors begin­ning this year, the 50th anniver­sary of the museum. Arthur has been exhibit­ing his works in muse­ums and gal­leries through­out the United States includ­ing the cities of Chicago, Los Ange­les, Wash­ing­ton D.C. and New York since 1997. Jones’ sculp­tures are in the per­ma­nent col­lec­tions of The Detroit Insti­tute of Art, Mobile Museum of Art, Mait­land Art Cen­ter, and the City of Orlando. His sculp­tures have been fea­tured in wood­work­ing mag­a­zines such as Amer­i­can Wood­turner, Turn­ing Points, Craft Arts Inter­na­tional and Wood­work. Images and com­men­tary on his work appear in sev­eral books that exam­ine the emerg­ing sig­nif­i­cance of wood as a medium for artis­tic expres­sion. When describ­ing his art, Arthur reflects, “Much of my sculp­tural wood­work is an expres­sion of per­sonal inter­ests, espe­cially in sea life, cos­mol­ogy, and fos­sil mate­r­ial; a spe­cific design strat­egy; and sto­ries that emerge early in the cre­ation of a piece which tell me what I need to do. The body of work that emerges from this process reflects an aes­thetic that val­ues light­ness and fragility; the appear­ance of move­ment in a sta­tic object; a lyri­cal and sen­su­ous tone; and an expressed energy in the sculp­ture.” Samuel Jones, Arthur’s son, is a mixed media artist cur­rently liv­ing in Hous­ton, Texas. Accord­ing to Samuel, “My work reflects a life­long pas­sion for explo­ration and dis­cov­ery.  From a very early age I enjoyed the excite­ment of the search, and was the eter­nal opti­mist, always sure the next hand­ful of dirt would have inside an arrow­head or a gold nugget.” “Now I am drawn towards tak­ing a more cathar­tic approach in my explo­rations.  Using a vari­ety of media, my art­work still reflects that same love of search­ing. How­ever, it also explores the arti­facts of the human con­di­tion, and rec­og­nizes that there can be magic in the mun­dane and excite­ment in an oth­er­wise ordi­nary and rou­tine life … in addi­tion to the magic in the next hand­ful of dirt.” 

“The Red Chair Vis­its Orange County Pub­lic Art” Exhi­bi­tion at the Polasek Museum
WINTER PARK,FL Feb­ru­ary 7, 2011- Pho­tographs by twenty-eight local artists are fea­tured in “The Red Chair Vis­its Orange County Pub­lic Art” on dis­play from July 19 to Sep­tem­ber 18, 2011. In June 2010, Orange County Arts & Cul­tural Affairs Direc­tor, Terry Olson issued an invi­ta­tion to area pho­tog­ra­phers to choose a piece of Orange County pub­lic art to incor­po­rate into a pho­to­graph of their own artis­tic inter­pre­ta­tion. The pho­to­graph also had to include a small red chair within the com­po­si­tion.  The chair is not only sym­bolic of arts audi­ences but is also rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Red Chair Project, the area’s cul­tural infor­ma­tion por­tal (www.redchairproject.com).
The Red Chair Project is a pub­lic ser­vice designed to increase par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Orlando/Central Florida arts and cul­tural com­mu­nity by build­ing aware­ness. It is a non­profit orga­ni­za­tion that pro­vides meth­ods to increase ticket sales, increase arts edu­ca­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties and pro­mote arts and cul­tural phil­an­thropy in Cen­tral Florida. This exhi­bi­tion was made pos­si­ble through the Orange County Pub­lic Art Review Board, whose mem­bers per­son­ally donated the nec­es­sary funds to pur­chase the entire col­lec­tion of pho­tographs for Orange County. The col­lec­tion is avail­able on loan to local venues and has been exhib­ited at the Orange County Admin­is­tra­tion Cen­ter and Orlando City Hall. With mul­ti­ple local exhi­bi­tions, it is the hope of Orange County Arts & Cul­tural Affairs to bring aware­ness to as many Orange County res­i­dents as pos­si­ble of the artis­tic trea­sures in our area. The fol­low­ing pho­tog­ra­phers are fea­tured: Doug Blood­worth, Cherie Boyce, Nancy Jo Brown, Andrea Canny, Chris Casler, Pam Daum, Mark Englert, Car­olyn Hutchins, Gil Ihrig, Meg King, Tammy Kriv­inek, Shelly Lake, Rick Lang, Joanelle Mul­rain, Dou­glas Nes­bitt, Terry Olson, Rob Phillips, Carla Poindex­ter, Todd Ruopp, Deb San­didge, Peter Schreyer, Ran­dall Smith, Bon­nie Sprung, Ash­land Thomas, Gus­tavo Var­gas, Steve Vaughn, David Weg­man, Chip Weston. The pho­tographs are view­able at www.ocfl.net/redchairpublicart

WINTER PARK, FL Jan­u­ary 17, 2011 — The Albin Polasek Foun­da­tion, Inc. announces the appoint­ment of three trustees. Paula Zahn, Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent, First National Bank of Cen­tral Florida Paula Zahn is a vet­eran banker of Cen­tral Florida and a ded­i­cated com­mu­nity leader. Ms. Zahn’s com­mu­nity lead­er­ship posi­tions include past Pres­i­dent of the Cler­mont Kiwa­nis and past Pres­i­dent of the South Lake Hos­pi­tal Dis­trict Board of Trustees.  She is cur­rently a mem­ber of the Win­der­mere Rotary Club and the Lead­er­ship Win­ter Park Alumni Coun­cil. Ms. Zahn was rec­og­nized as the 1999 Vol­un­teer of the Year by the Metro Orlando Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment Coun­cil. 
Regis A. Simasek, Pres­i­dent, Prin­ci­pal, Owner of R. A. Simasek, P.A. Mr. Simasek, a licensed CPA, served in the U.S. Air Force from 1963 – 1967 where he reached the rank of Cap­tain.  In 1967 he joined the national account­ing firm of Ernst & Ernst (now Ernst & Young) where for eight years he served as Super­vi­sor. In 1975, Mr. Simasek formed Amort & Simasek, P.A. and in 2002 he formed R.A. Simasek, P.A. Over the years he has vol­un­teered with var­i­ous not-for-profit orga­ni­za­tions and he is cur­rently serv­ing as Trea­surer of the Cen­tral Florida Kid­ney Cen­ters.
Dou­glas Nes­bitt, Pro­fes­sional Pho­tog­ra­pher Cross­ing all pho­to­graphic bound­aries, Mr. Nesbitt’s images are found in adver­tis­ing, archi­tec­ture, por­trai­ture, fine art and photo jour­nal­ism. A photography/journalism major at Los Ange­les City Col­lege, he began his pro­fes­sional career as a pro­duc­tion still pho­tog­ra­pher for Nor­man Lear Pro­duc­tions and Trump Films. In 1982 Nes­bitt was com­mis­sioned by Warner Broth­ers to doc­u­ment the orig­i­nal set-designs for Rid­ley Scott’s sci-fi epic “Blade Run­ner.” Over his 30– year career, Nes­bitt has pho­tographed such nota­bles as George Car­lin, Joan Rivers, Helen Hays, Evan­der Holy­field, Henry Miller, Kim Alexis, Bev­erly John­son and music leg­end Bo Did­dley. Nes­bitt was also the cam­paign pho­tog­ra­pher for Jesse Jackson’s pres­i­den­tial campaign.

(Win­ter Park, FL) Novem­ber 8, 2010-  “Turn on the Light: Plein Air Paint­ings by Mor­gan Samuel Price” will open on Novem­ber 23rd at the Albin Polasek Museum with much antic­i­pa­tion from Win­ter Park Paint Out fans in the Cen­tral Florida area. Price has par­tic­i­pated in the past two Paint Out events held at the Polasek Museum and her work will now be fea­tured in an exhi­bi­tion high­light­ing her works held in pri­vate col­lec­tions and muse­ums.  Over 30 works in oil dat­ing from the 1980s to the present are being loaned from col­lec­tors through­out Florida and the United States and depict scenes inspired by Price’s trav­els. Accord­ing to the artist, “Paint­ing is a mis­sion dri­ven by fas­ci­na­tion. As the dis­cov­er­ies reveal them­selves, I con­tinue to explore other paths of adven­ture. It is true that the artist needs two excep­tional fea­tures: one is def­i­nitely tenac­ity and the other is audac­ity.”
Plein Air- a French term mean­ing “in the open air”- describes art­work painted out­doors with the sub­ject directly in view rather than being painted in a stu­dio or from a pho­to­graph. Plein air artists such as Price depict the spirit of a land­scape or sub­ject by incor­po­rat­ing nat­ural light, color and move­ment into their works. Price’s mas­ter­ful tech­nique and love of paint allow her to cap­ture the fleet­ing moments of light and shadow cast by the mov­ing sun. Whether it is depict­ing friends strolling down a shady avenue or the sparkle of light from a river’s edge, there is a simul­ta­ne­ous sub­tlety and bold­ness in her work. Accord­ing to Price, “The most inter­est­ing dis­cov­ery to any artist is the real­iza­tion that what is sim­ple is not obvi­ous; find­ing the sim­plest state­ment to con­vey a mes­sage requires hours of obser­va­tion in nature and thought.” Since the 1970s Price has con­sis­tently been an award-winning artist and has par­tic­i­pated in numer­ous national exhi­bi­tions through­out her artis­tic career includ­ing the Salma­gundi Club, Allied Artists, Pas­tel Soci­ety, Amer­i­can Artist Pro­fes­sional League in New York City, Knicker­bocker Artists New York and the Cop­ley Soci­ety in Boston. An artist as well as an edu­ca­tor, Price has cre­ated edu­ca­tional DVDs and writ­ten books to instruct stu­dents in under­stand­ing color, value, light and design. Fol­low­ing the suc­cess of her first book Oil Paint­ing with a Basic Palette (North­light Books, 1999) Price pub­lished a sec­ond book in 2008 about her tech­nique titled Turn on the Light: A Touch­stone to Plein Air Paint­ing. Price is rep­re­sented by gal­leries through­out the United States and trav­els exten­sively through­out the year to pro­vide art work­shops to stu­dents of plein air paint­ing. “Turn on the Light” will run through Jan­u­ary 23, 2011. For more infor­ma­tion about Price please visit her web­site at www.MorganSamuelPrice.com.

WINTER PARK, Octo­ber 13, 2010 — The tra­di­tional day of Czech Inde­pen­dence will be cel­e­brated with free admis­sion to the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens on Thurs­day, Octo­ber 28 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Museum founder Albin Polasek was born and raised in the province of Moravia, in what is now the Czech Repub­lic.
The his­toric Polasek res­i­dence and chapel will be open as well as the gallery cur­rently exhibit­ing “A Mas­ter of Mod­ernism: Wood­cuts and Prints by Charles Turzak.” Turzak was the son of Czech immi­grants and the exhi­bi­tion fea­tures scenes of Czecho­slo­va­kia from 1929.
Hand-crafted jew­elry made in the Czech Repub­lic by “Zivot” and fine Czech crys­tal and glass­ware by “Heart of Europe” will be avail­able in the museum gift shop.
The Repub­lic of Czecho­slo­va­kia was formed in 1918 after cen­turies of rule under the Haps­burg dynasty. Czech pro­fes­sor Thomas Masaryk, Slo­vak sci­en­tist Milan Ste­fanik and Czech soci­ol­o­gist Edward Benes pro­claimed inde­pen­dence for Czecho­slo­va­kia on Octo­ber 18, 1918 while in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Ten days later, Octo­ber 28, 1918, the Sov­er­eign Repub­lic of Czecho­slo­va­kia was founded in Prague and Masaryk was elected pres­i­dent.
In July 1992, Slo­va­kia declared its sov­er­eignty and on Jan­u­ary 1, 1993 Czecho­slo­va­kia offi­cially split into the Czech Repub­lic and Slo­va­kia. The tra­di­tional date of Czecho­slo­va­kian inde­pen­dence, Octo­ber 28, is still acknowl­edged in both countries.

WINTER PARK, August 11, 2010 – Yone­tani at the Polasek: Cham­ber Con­cert Series 2010 – 2011 Sea­son
The Polasek Museum’s 6th annual three-concert music series fea­tures inter­na­tion­ally acclaimed violin/viola vir­tu­oso Ayako Yone­tani accom­pa­nied by Dr. Kimi­nobu Sug­aya and guest instru­men­tal­ists.  Inti­mate per­for­mances are held in the ele­gant salon of the Polasek res­i­dence on Sun­day after­noons from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm.  Seat­ing is lim­ited, and tick­ets are $30 per per­son con­cert or $80 per per­son for the sea­son. 
Decem­ber 5, 2010 – Guest per­for­mance by Scott Kluks­dahl
Jan­u­ary 16, 2011 – Guest per­for­mance by Dr. Johnny Pherigo
March 20, 2011 – Guest per­for­mance by Niko­lay Blagov
Dr. Ayako Yone­tani, a world renowned vio­lin­ist, began play­ing at the age of five, and made her solo debut at the age of ten.  Later, she made her United States debut as a con­cert­mas­ter with the New York String Orches­tra at Carnegie Hall.  Dr. Yone­tani received her bach­e­lor, mas­ters, and doc­toral degrees from the Jul­liard School.  She has pre­vi­ously assisted the great Dorothy DeLay and held the posi­tion of Jul­liard Isaac Stern con­cert­mas­ter chair of the Acad­emy Orches­tra at the Aspen Music Fes­ti­val & School.  Cur­rently, Dr. Yone­tani is a Pro­fes­sor of Violin/Viola at the Uni­ver­sity of Cen­tral Florida and trav­els the world as a guest soloist.  She is a mem­ber of Japan’s pre­mier cham­ber ensem­ble in Tokyo.  Recently, she was selected as an offi­cial artist of the Florida Arts & Cul­ture State Tour­ing Pro­gram.
Dr. Kimi­nobu Sug­aya is Chair of the Neu­ro­science Con­sor­tium and also with the Uni­ver­sity of Cen­tral Florida Col­lege of Med­i­cine.  Along­side Dr. Yone­tani, he has been con­duct­ing research on the impact of music on the brain.
Scott Kluks­dahl is a Pro­fes­sor of Vio­lin­cello at the Uni­ver­sity of South Florida School of Music and has per­formed inter­na­tion­ally as an orches­tral soloist, recital­ist and cham­ber musi­cian.  He holds a Bach­e­lor of Arts in Eng­lish and Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture from Har­vard Uni­ver­sity and a Mas­ters in Music from the Jul­liard School.
Dr. Johnny Pherigo is a Pro­fes­sor of Music at the Uni­ver­sity of Cen­tral Florida, where he teaches horn, a musician’s health and well­ness class, and online music appre­ci­a­tion and coaches brass cham­ber music.  He received a Bach­e­lor of Music degree from Texas Tech Uni­ver­sity, a Mas­ter of Music degree from Catholic Uni­ver­sity, and a Doc­tor of Musi­cal Arts degree from the Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois.
Niko­lay Blagov is the prin­ci­pal clar­inet in the Orlando Phil­har­monic.  He stud­ied the clar­inet first with Ron Samuels at the Duquesne Uni­ver­sity School of Music, and later with Michael Rusinek at Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­sity School of Music.

WINTER PARK, August 11, 2010 – The Albin Polasek Museum presents A Mas­ter of Mod­ernism, a ret­ro­spec­tive exhibit of wood­cuts and paint­ings by the Amer­i­can Mod­ernist Charles Turzak (1899 – 1986). Turzak enjoyed a long and pro­lific career as a mas­ter wood­block print­maker, painter, WPA mural­ist, com­mer­cial illus­tra­tor and a beloved art teacher. His crit­i­cally acclaimed graph­ics of the expand­ing urban sky­line in his home­town of Chicago and work­ing class heroes epit­o­mized the Mod­ern Art move­ment in Amer­ica in the 1930s. Dynamic lines and pul­sat­ing move­ment are the trade­marks of his style.
The works on dis­play, dat­ing from the 1930s to 1960s, reflect Turzak’s artis­tic devel­op­ment from Mod­ernism to Abstrac­tion and include views of Chicago, his­tor­i­cal Amer­i­can fig­ures, Czecho­slo­va­kian land­scapes and impres­sions of Orlando, Florida– the home of his retire­ment. Exam­ples of his orig­i­nal carved maple and bass wood­blocks, linoleum blocks and print­mak­ing tools are also on dis­play.
Turzak began show­ing a tal­ent for art and wood carv­ing at a young age. He honed his self-taught artis­tic skill by carv­ing mon­keys out of peach seeds to sell for pen­nies and cre­at­ing draw­ings for his school’s year­book.  While in ele­men­tary school he had an appren­tice­ship mak­ing vio­lins and by the time he grad­u­ated high school, he had won a national car­toon con­test spon­sored by The Purina Com­pany. Tak­ing the advice of one of the con­test judges, Turzak used the prize money to fund his entrance into the Art Insti­tute of Chicago.
In 1929, Turzak trav­eled to Europe in search of artis­tic inspi­ra­tion and to visit his family’s home­land of Czecho­slo­va­kia (present day Czech Repub­lic). Vibrant color prints and del­i­cate water­color paint­ings of the charm­ing Bohemian coun­try­side and Euro­pean life show the breadth of Turzak’s artis­tic abil­ity and are fea­tured in this exhi­bi­tion.
As a long-time admirer of Amer­i­can his­tor­i­cal fig­ures, Turzak began a pic­to­r­ial biog­ra­phy of Abra­ham Lin­coln after his return from Europe. He carved the thirty-six wood­block illus­tra­tions for the book while in pub­lic view at the Cen­tury of Progress at the World’s Fair held in Chicago in 1933. A sec­ond biog­ra­phy fol­lowed with eighty wood­cuts of the life of Ben­jamin Franklin.
Turzak’s mas­ter­ful Mod­ernist style dur­ing the 1930s can be seen in his views of Chicago land­marks and his socially con­scious depic­tions of the masses, includ­ing fac­tory work­ers, the home­less, immi­grants and orga­nized crim­i­nals. Turzak, an artist of the peo­ple, often sketched on Chicago street cor­ners, in Grant Park and along the lake­front to cap­ture the essence of the city and its peo­ple dur­ing the Depres­sion Era.
As the aes­thet­ics of art evolved from Mod­ernism to Abstrac­tion by the 1950s, so did Turzak’s style. In 1958 he and his fam­ily moved to Orlando, Florida, an area that promised a milder cli­mate and the com­pany of fel­low artists and friends includ­ing renowned sculp­tor Albin Polasek. Polasek and Turzak had been friends since their days at the Art Insti­tute of Chicago in the early 1920s, where Polasek was the head of the AIC sculp­ture depart­ment. For Turzak, liv­ing in Orlando was “like a taste of eter­nity, with­out sea­sonal changes, time seemed non-existent” and it pro­vided much artis­tic inspi­ra­tion. Works from Turzak’s years in Florida are on dis­play includ­ing prints of Lake Eola and blos­som­ing hibis­cus flow­ers. This exhi­bi­tion has been gen­er­ously loaned to the Albin Polasek Museum by Joan Turzak Van Hees, Charles Turzak’s daugh­ter.

WINTER PARK, April 15, 2010 – The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens will end its 2009 – 2010 sea­son with con­cur­rent exhibits in the museum’s gal­leries, both run­ning
May 25 through June 30, 2010.
An Attrac­tion to Abstrac­tion: The Fluid Life of Bruce Gre­gory focuses on works painted pri­mar­ily in 1950s New York and Paris by Amer­i­can artist Bruce Gre­gory. Gregory’s goal in pro­duc­ing art­work was to lib­er­ate col­ors into broad areas, achiev­ing a dimen­sional con­trast of shape, color and form. An artist of national renown, Gre­gory (1917 – 2002) is best known as the artist who painted Fer­nand Léger’s two abstract murals in the Gen­eral Assem­bly Hall of the United Nations.
The Hip­pie House Revis­ited takes a look at the final years of 667 Osce­ola Avenue, the tract of land adja­cent to the museum’s orig­i­nal east prop­erty line. Dat­ing back to 1873, the site has been owned by some of the city’s best known his­tor­i­cal res­i­dents; later the site was pop­u­larly known as the hip­pie house.  This exhibit shows paint­ings and pho­tographs from the final years of the hip­pie house, prior to the lot being pur­chased by the museum in 2000.
 
WINTER PARK, March 16, 2010 – The scenic back­drop of Win­ter Park will host the sec­ond Win­ter Park Paint Out, an event where the pub­lic can watch 26 pro­fes­sional artists paint­ing out­doors (en plein air) at var­i­ous Win­ter Park loca­tions and then pur­chase these unique land­scapes through­out the week and at a tick­eted recep­tion at the Polasek Museum.
The Paint Out will take place April 24 — May 1 and will be fol­lowed by a tick­eted evening recep­tion, Paint Out Gar­den Party, from 6 to 9 p.m. on May 1, where all of the artists will be present, and patrons will be able to pur­chase their works. Call 407 – 647-6294 for addi­tional infor­ma­tion; advance pur­chase tick­ets are $25. www.WinterParkPaintOut.org 
All par­tic­i­pat­ing artists were invited to sub­mit a paint­ing to be cho­sen as the Paint Out’s poster image, which is the defin­ing image for this year’s Paint Out. On Feb. 1, 2010 Kath­leen Chenet’s paint­ing titled For­est Idyl won the poster con­test. Chenet received $1000 and her orig­i­nal paint­ing is now part of the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion of the Polasek Museum.
The Paint Out begins on April 24 when artists arrive at the museum with blank can­vases. The can­vases will be date stamped and the artists will then fan out through pub­lic loca­tions in Win­ter Park, paint­ing and bring­ing their com­pleted, stamped can­vases back to the museum at the end of each day. It is antic­i­pated that most artists will pro­duce five to seven new works dur­ing the Paint Out.
The museum’s gallery, which has part­nered with the artists for this event, will be open for free between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. each day dur­ing the Paint Out to allow the pub­lic to view and to pur­chase paint­ings. Entrance fees will apply for guided tours of the his­toric Polasek res­i­dence and chapel dur­ing the Paint Out.
Free artist lec­tures and demon­stra­tions will take place from April 25 through April 30, 2010. These lec­tures and demon­stra­tions will be pro­vided by five emi­nent Florida painters: Linda Blondheim, Cyn­thia Edmonds, Sally Evans, Stew­art Jones and Mitch Kolbe. No reser­va­tions are required.
Stew­art Jones, “Water­color Demon­stra­tion,” Sun­day, April 25, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.
Water­color can be a dif­fi­cult medium when paint­ing en plein air.  Stew­art Jones shows how to work from light to dark in order to cap­ture a scene.  His tech­nique uses abstract lay­ers of light val­ues and darker pat­terns to pro­duce a unique water­color paint­ing.
Cyn­thia Edmonds, “Oil Paint­ing Demon­stra­tion,” Tues­day, April 27, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon
This ses­sion cov­ers many of the basics of plein air oil paint­ing includ­ing mate­ri­als, medi­ums and com­po­si­tion.  Cyn­thia Edmonds demon­strates the direct paint­ing tech­nique — paint is applied opaquely to the can­vas, with each brush stroke cap­tur­ing a spe­cific ele­ment in the scene.
Sally Evans, “Pas­tel Demon­stra­tion,” Wednes­day, April 28, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon
Pas­tels are an unusual paint­ing medium requir­ing the artist to mix and blend col­ors on the paper, rather than on a palette.  Sally Evans shows how to com­bine both draw­ing skill and color aware­ness to cre­ate a unique pas­tel paint­ing.  Included is infor­ma­tion about the mate­ri­als and types of pas­tels avail­able to pas­tel artists.
Linda Blondheim, “Acrylic Demon­stra­tion,” Thurs­day, April 29, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon
Com­pared to oils, acrylic paints are a rel­a­tively new medium.  In this ses­sion, Linda Blondheim shows how acrylics can be used effec­tively in plein air paint­ing.  Sev­eral tech­niques are taught which allow the artist to achieve oil-like results using this quick dry­ing paint.
Mitch Kolbe, “Oil Demon­stra­tion,” Fri­day, April 30, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon
Mitch Kolbe gives a talk on color har­mony and its use in plein air paint­ing.  Start­ing with the basics, Mitch pro­gresses from “Color 101″ to more advanced tech­niques and appli­ca­tions for the work­ing pro­fes­sional.  Color con­cepts are the focus of this oil paint­ing demon­stra­tion.

Jan Clan­ton, “Chang­ing Land­scapes, Chang­ing Visions Lec­ture,” April 30, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
This lec­ture focuses on how the tra­di­tion of the land­scape in Amer­i­can art has been promi­nent for over 200 years.  Ini­tially, the land­scape was a sym­bol of unlim­ited poten­tial and spir­i­tu­al­ity.  Over the years, this national sym­bol has evolved to depict indus­tri­al­iza­tion, derange­ment in soci­ety and even envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns.  Join us to exam­ine this uniquely Amer­i­can tra­di­tion in all its per­mu­ta­tions.
The Paint Out con­cludes with a free Open House on May 2 from 1 to 4 p.m. fea­tur­ing the spe­cial exhibit Florida Plein Air Mas­ters. This exhibit will high­light works from the Paint Out and will run until May 16.
Addi­tional infor­ma­tion about the Paint Out, includ­ing artist and instruc­tor bios and ticket info, can be found at WinterParkPaintOut.org
All pro­ceeds from the Win­ter Park Paint Out’s paint­ing sales and ticket sales for Paint Out Gar­den Party will directly ben­e­fit the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens and artists.
 

WINTER PARK, March 13, 2010 — The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens is pleased to announce that renowned illus­tra­tor Michael Whe­lan will be speak­ing at the Win­ter Park Pub­lic Library on Sat­ur­day, April 17 at 11:00 a.m., offer­ing a visual pre­sen­ta­tion fol­lowed by a ques­tion and answer ses­sion. Whelan’s illus­tra­tions, “Where the Evil Dwells”, 1982, acrylic on illus­tra­tion board and “The Mas­ter Mind of Mars“, 1979, acrylic on illus­tra­tion board are cur­rently on dis­play at the museum, part of the spe­cial exhi­bi­tion “Maid­ens and Mon­sters: the Art of Sci­ence Fic­tion, Adven­ture and Fan­tasy.”
Whe­lan will also be the hon­ored guest at the Polasek Museum on Sun­day, April 18 from 1:00 – 4:00 p.m. dur­ing the clos­ing recep­tion for “Maid­ens and Mon­sters: The Art of Sci­ence Fic­tion, Adven­ture and Fan­tasy.” Whe­lan will not offer a for­mal pro­gram at the museum; he will be avail­able for infor­mal dis­cus­sions and to sign books.
Since 1980, Michael Whe­lan has been one of the world’s pre­mier fan­tasy and sci­ence fic­tion artists. He is cur­rently work­ing full time on his fine art paint­ings, but in the past three decades he has cre­ated more than 350 book and album cov­ers for authors and artists like Isaac Asi­mov, Anne McCaf­frey, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen King, the Jack­sons, Sepul­tura, and Meat­Loaf. His clients have included every major U.S. book pub­lisher in addi­tion to such diverse com­pa­nies as National Geo­graphic, Road­run­ner Records and The Franklin Mint.
A grad­u­ate of San Jose State Uni­ver­sity with a BA in Paint­ing and a President’s Scholar, Michael Whe­lan went on to attend the pres­ti­gious Art Cen­ter Col­lege of Design also in Cal­i­for­nia, but he dropped out to accept his first book cover assign­ment. The most hon­ored artist in his field, Whe­lan has won an unprece­dented 15 Hugo Awards (Sci­ence Fiction’s Oscar), 3 World Fan­tasy Awards, and the Super­Hugo as the Best Artist of the last 50 years. He is a mem­ber of the Sci­ence Fic­tion Hall of Fame which includes such lumi­nar­ies as H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Ray Brad­bury, Steven Spiel­berg, Rod Ser­ling, and Ursula K. Le Guin. The read­ers of LOCUS mag­a­zine (for SF insid­ers) have named him Best Pro­fes­sional Artist 27 times in their annual poll, includ­ing 2009. In addi­tion to count­less Best of Show and Best Artist Awards from SF and Fan­tasy con­ven­tions and regional art shows, Michael was named a Grand Mas­ter by the Spec­trum Annual of the Best in Con­tem­po­rary Fan­tas­tic Art. His other awards include a Gold Medal from the Soci­ety of Illus­tra­tors, a Var­gas Award, and a Grum­bacher Gold Medal.

WINTER PARK, March 13, 2010 — The Albin Polasek Museum and Sculp­ture Gar­dens con­tin­ues its annual tra­di­tion of offer­ing free admis­sion on Good Fri­day, April 2, 2010 from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.  Reg­u­larly sched­uled tours of the his­toric Polasek res­i­dence and chapel will take place at 11:00 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 2:00 p.m. and 3:20 p.m.
Among his vast port­fo­lio, Albin Polasek sculpted hun­dreds of litur­gi­cal works for churches, cathe­drals and pri­vate col­lec­tions. Lenten/Easter works on dis­play in the gar­dens include Sta­tions of the Cross, Vic­to­ri­ous Christ and Risen Christ.
The four­teen Sta­tions of the Cross, sketches in the chapel and bronze medal­lions in the gar­dens depict Jesus Christ’s Good Fri­day walk through Jerusalem — from his trial to his entomb­ment. Two Vic­to­ri­ous Christ sculp­tures, one in the Polasek res­i­dence and one in the gar­dens, show Christ on the cross; Risen Christ in the gar­dens is an Easter image of the res­ur­rected Christ.

WINTER PARK, Feb­ru­ary 24, 2010 – In con­junc­tion with the sec­ond Win­ter Park Paint Out, the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculp­ture Gar­dens will present five days of free artist lec­tures and demon­stra­tions from April 25 through April 30, 2010. These lec­tures and demon­stra­tions will be pro­vided by five emi­nent Florida painters: Linda Blondheim, Cyn­thia Edmonds, Sally Evans, Stew­art Jones and Mitch Kolbe. No reser­va­tions are required.
Stew­art Jones, “Water­color Demon­stra­tion,” Sun­day, April 25, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m.
Water­color can be a dif­fi­cult medium when paint­ing en plein air.  Stew­art Jones shows how to work from light to dark in order to cap­ture a scene.  His tech­nique uses abstract lay­ers of light val­ues and darker pat­terns to pro­duce a unique water­color paint­ing.
Cyn­thia Edmonds, “Oil Paint­ing Demon­stra­tion,” Tues­day, April 27, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon.
This ses­sion cov­ers many of the basics of plein air oil paint­ing includ­ing mate­ri­als, medi­ums and com­po­si­tion.  Cyn­thia Edmonds demon­strates the direct paint­ing tech­nique — paint is applied opaquely to the can­vas, with each brush stroke cap­tur­ing a spe­cific ele­ment in the scene.
Sally Evans, “Pas­tel Demon­stra­tion,” Wednes­day, April 28, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon.
Pas­tels are an unusual paint­ing medium requir­ing the artist to mixed and blend col­ors on the paper rather than on a palette.  Sally Evans shows how to com­bine both draw­ing skill and color aware­ness to cre­ate a unique pas­tel paint­ing.  Included is infor­ma­tion about the mate­ri­als and types of pas­tels avail­able to pas­tel artists.  
Linda Blondheim, “Acrylic Demon­stra­tion,” Thurs­day, April 29, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon.
Com­pared to oils, acrylic paints are a rel­a­tively new medium.  In this ses­sion, Linda Blondheim shows how acrylics can be used effec­tively in plein air paint­ing.  Sev­eral tech­niques are taught which allow the artist to achieve oil-like results using this quick dry­ing paint.
Mitch Kolbe, “Oil Demon­stra­tion,” Fri­day, April 30, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon.
Mitch Kolbe gives a talk on color har­mony and its use in plein air paint­ing.  Start­ing with the basics, Mitch pro­gresses from “Color 101″ to more advanced tech­niques and appli­ca­tions for the work­ing pro­fes­sional.  Color con­cepts are the focus of this oil paint­ing demon­stra­tion.
Jan Clan­ton, “Chang­ing Land­scapes, Chang­ing Visions Lec­ture,” April 30, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
This lec­ture focuses on how the tra­di­tion of the land­scape in Amer­i­can art has been promi­nent for over 200 years.  Ini­tially, the land­scape was a sym­bol of unlim­ited poten­tial and spir­i­tu­al­ity.  Over the years, this national sym­bol has evolved to depict indus­tri­al­iza­tion, derange­ment in soci­ety and even envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns.  Join us to exam­ine this uniquely Amer­i­can tra­di­tion in all its per­mu­ta­tions.
 
WINTER PARK, Feb­ru­ary 1, 2010 – The scenic back­drop of Win­ter Park will host the sec­ond Win­ter Park Paint Out, an event where the pub­lic can watch 26 pro­fes­sional artists paint­ing out­doors (en plein air) at var­i­ous Win­ter Park loca­tions and then pur­chase these unique land­scapes through­out the week and at a tick­eted recep­tion at the Polasek Museum.
The Paint Out will take place April 24 — May 1 and will be fol­lowed by a tick­eted evening recep­tion, Plein Air Cel­e­bra­tion, from 6 to 9 p.m. on May 1, where all of the artists will be present, and patrons will be able to pur­chase their works. Call 407 – 647-6294 for addi­tional infor­ma­tion.
All par­tic­i­pat­ing artists were invited to sub­mit a paint­ing to be cho­sen for the Paint Out’s poster con­test. On Feb. 1, 2010 Kath­leen Chenet’s paint­ing titled For­est Idyl won the poster con­test to deter­mine the defin­ing image for the exhibit. Chenet received $1000 and her orig­i­nal paint­ing is now part of the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion of the Polasek Museum.
The Paint Out begins on April 24 when artists arrive at the museum with blank can­vases. The can­vases will be date stamped and the artists will then fan out through pub­lic loca­tions in Win­ter Park, paint­ing and bring­ing their com­pleted, stamped can­vases back to the museum at the end of each day. It is antic­i­pated that most artists will pro­duce six to 10 new works dur­ing the Paint Out.
The museum’s gallery, which has part­nered with the artists for this event, will be open for free between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. each day dur­ing the Paint Out to allow the pub­lic to view and to pur­chase paint­ings. Entrance fees will apply for guided tours of the his­toric Polasek res­i­dence and chapel dur­ing the Paint Out.
The Paint Out con­cludes with a free Open House fea­tur­ing the spe­cial exhibit Florida Plein Air Mas­ters on May 2 from 1 to 4 p.m. This exhibit will high­light works from the Paint Out and will run until May 16.
Addi­tional infor­ma­tion about the Paint Out, includ­ing artist bios and ticket info, can be found at http://polasek.org/?page_id=31
All pro­ceeds from the Win­ter Park Paint Out’s paint­ing sales and ticket sales for Plein Air Cel­e­bra­tion will directly ben­e­fit the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens.
Note To Media: Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Deb­bie Koman­ski, Paint Out Co-chair Hal Stringer, as well as Paint Out artists will be avail­able for inter­views the open­ing day of the Paint Out at 10 a.m on April 24 at the Polasek Museum.

WINTER PARK, Jan­u­ary 21, 2010 –In con­junc­tion with United Arts of Cen­tral Florida’s Arts­Fest, the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculp­ture Gar­dens will be offer­ing free admis­sion on Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 13 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and Sun­day, Feb­ru­ary 14 from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Three art gal­leries, the his­toric Polasek res­i­dence, a chapel and pic­turesque sculp­ture gar­dens on Lake Osce­ola offer vis­i­tors mul­ti­ple oppor­tu­ni­ties to view Albin Polasek’s sculp­tures and pieces from his per­sonal art col­lec­tion, along with the museum’s spe­cial exhi­bi­tion “Maid­ens and Mon­sters – The Art of Sci­ence Fic­tion, Adven­ture and Fan­tasy.” This exhi­bi­tion presents a fresh and sur­pris­ing view of Amer­i­can illus­tra­tion, high­light­ing some of the exotic adven­tures, fan­tas­tic fables and roman­tic encoun­ters told in mag­a­zines and books pub­lished between 1914 and 1995.
Sat­ur­day Events:
Docent-led tours of the his­toric Polasek res­i­dence will take place at 10:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 1:30 p.m., 2:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m.
Free children’s art activ­i­ties will be on-going in the museum’s out­door breeze­way class­room.
There will be a 12:00 p.m. collector’s tour in the museum gal­leries show­cas­ing “Maid­ens and Mon­sters – The Art of Sci­ence Fic­tion, Adven­ture and Fan­tasy,” led by the co-owner of the col­lec­tion, Stephen D. Kor­shak. The exhi­bi­tion includes 50 orig­i­nal works by 22 pio­neer­ing illus­tra­tors. The collector’s tour will be fol­lowed by a book sign­ing, fea­tur­ing Korshak’s books “Grand Mas­ter of Fan­tasy: The Paint­ings of J. Allen St. John” (Van­guard, 2008) and “From the Pen of Paul: The Fan­tas­tic Images of Frank R. Paul” (Shasta-Phoenix, 2009). Stephen D. Kor­shak is a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago and a prac­tic­ing attor­ney for the past 30 years. He resides in Orlando with his wife and four chil­dren.
Fol­low­ing the book sign­ing there will be a 2:00 pm panel dis­cus­sion: “The Rel­e­vance Today of Clas­sic Sci­ence Fic­tion Illus­tra­tion” with pan­elists includ­ing area illus­tra­tors, writ­ers and sci-fi fans. The focus of the dis­cus­sion will touch on whether younger fans still are influ­enced by older sci­ence fic­tion images and their accom­pa­ny­ing sto­ries. Is there such a thing as “time­less” sci­ence fic­tion?
Sun­day Events:
Docent-led tours of the his­toric Polasek res­i­dence will take place at 1:30 p.m., 2:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m.
Free children’s art activ­i­ties will be on-going in the museum’s out­door breeze­way class­room.
Tra­di­tional Czech kolache (fruit-filled bread rolls), apple strudel and Vien­nese cof­fee will be served free to vis­i­tors through­out the day in honor of the birth of the museum’s founder Albin Polasek. Polasek was born in 1879 in Moravia (now the Czech Repub­lic).
 

WINTER PARK, Octo­ber 30, 2009 — Orange TV cov­ers the Nes­bitt exhibit open­ing at The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gardens

WINTER PARK, Sep­tem­ber 18, 2009 — The tra­di­tional day of Czech Inde­pen­dence will be cel­e­brated with free admis­sion to the Albin Polasek Museum and Sculp­ture Gar­dens on Wednes­day, Octo­ber 28 from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Museum founder Albin Polasek was born and raised in the province of Moravia, in what is now the Czech Repub­lic. Tours of the his­toric Polasek res­i­dence and chapel will be offered by museum docents hourly, from 10:30 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. Tra­di­tional Czech kolache (fruit-filled bread rolls), apple strudel and Vien­nese cof­fee will be served free to vis­i­tors while sup­plies last, begin­ning at 11:00 a.m.
The Repub­lic of Czecho­slo­va­kia was formed in 1918 after cen­turies of rule under the Haps­burg dynasty. Czech pro­fes­sor Thomas Masaryk, Slo­vak sci­en­tist Milan Ste­fanik and Czech soci­ol­o­gist Edward Benes pro­claimed inde­pen­dence for Czecho­slo­va­kia on Octo­ber 18, 1918 while in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Ten days later, Octo­ber 28, 1918, the Sov­er­eign Repub­lic of Czecho­slo­va­kia was founded in Prague and Masaryk was elected pres­i­dent. In July 1992, Slo­va­kia declared its sov­er­eignty and on Jan­u­ary 1, 1993 Czecho­slo­va­kia offi­cially split into the Czech Repub­lic and Slo­va­kia. The tra­di­tional date of Czecho­slo­va­kian inde­pen­dence, Octo­ber 28, is still acknowl­edged in both countries.

WINTER PARK, Sep­tem­ber 4, 2009–The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens presents presents the spe­cial exhi­bi­tion “My Cam­era Speaks for Me” run­ning from Oct 13 — Nov 15, 2009. This ret­ro­spec­tive exhi­bi­tion of 30 pho­tographs rep­re­sents the most potent images of pho­tog­ra­pher Dou­glas Nes­bitt. He cap­tures the human con­di­tion and the world around us in this thought-provoking one-man-show fea­tur­ing works cho­sen by the artist. A pho­tog­ra­pher with­out a spe­cialty, Nes­bitt con­sid­ers him­self to be a “jour­ney­man with a cam­era.” Cross­ing all pho­to­graphic bound­aries, his images are found in adver­tis­ing, archi­tec­ture, por­trai­ture, fine art and photo jour­nal­ism. Dou­glas Nesbitt’s pho­tographs are pow­er­ful com­po­si­tions that speak to the viewer because every ele­ment – pat­terns in the back­ground, signs in the cor­ner, the angle of a face – add some­thing to the nar­ra­tive of the photograph.

WINTER PARK, Sep­tem­ber 4, 2009 – The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens will open its fifth sea­son of cham­ber music con­certs with “Yone­tani at the Polasek,” on Sun­day, Novem­ber 22, 2009 at 2:00 p.m. The extra­or­di­nary atmos­phere of the Polasek salon pro­vides an incred­i­bly warm and inti­mate acoustic expe­ri­ence. Fea­tured will be inter­na­tion­ally acclaimed violin/viola soloist Ayako Yone­tani. Works by GF Han­del, Georges Bizet, Franz Schu­bert, Fritz Kreisler and Beethoven will be per­formed.  Bari­tone Thomas Pot­ter will join Yone­tani dur­ing the concert.

WINTER PARK, Sep­tem­ber 2, 2009 – “The Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens,” writ­ten by Deb­bie Koman­ski and Karen Louden, a pho­to­graphic cof­fee table book, was hon­ored on August 8, 2009 at the 22nd Annual Florida Print Awards (Print­ing Asso­ci­a­tion of Florida) as the Best of Cat­e­gory in the Book divi­sion. The eye-catching design was cre­ated by Terry/Kane Orlando, Inc. (TKO) and printed by Sun Dance Graph­ics.
The book con­tains pho­tographs and nar­ra­tive recount­ing the engag­ing life and works of Czech-born Amer­i­can sculp­tor Albin Polasek. Dur­ing his life­time, Polasek (1879 – 1965) cre­ated over 400 works of art. The book fea­tures a strik­ing com­bi­na­tion of archival pho­tographs and con­tem­po­rary shots along with com­pelling text. The book is high­lighted by its attrac­tive and var­ied lay­out and a visu­ally strong impact is made by the har­mo­nious col­ors cho­sen by the design team. Fund­ing for the project was pro­vided by the Com­mu­nity Foun­da­tion of Cen­tral Florida, Terry/Kane Orlando (TKO) donated all of their design time and Sun Dance Graph­ics donated fifty per­cent of the cost of print­ing and bindery and pro­duced addi­tional copies of the book for the museum. The book is avail­able for pur­chase at the museum store.

WINTER PARK, August 14, 2009 – On Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 26, 2009, the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens will par­tic­i­pate in the fifth annual Museum Day, pre­sented by Smith­son­ian mag­a­zine.  A cel­e­bra­tion of cul­ture, learn­ing and the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge, Smithsonian’s Museum Day reflects the spirit of the mag­a­zine and emu­lates the free-admission pol­icy of the Smith­son­ian Institution’s Wash­ing­ton, DC-based prop­er­ties.  Doors will be open free of charge to Smith­son­ian mag­a­zine read­ers and Smithsonian.com vis­i­tors at muse­ums and cul­tural insti­tu­tions nationwide.

WINTER PARK, July 29, 2009 – You don’t have to be an expert on art, his­tory or gar­den­ing to become a val­ued vol­un­teer at the Albin Polasek Museum & Sculp­ture Gar­dens. The Polasek relies on the ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment of over 100 vol­un­teers to help sus­tain the museum in a mul­ti­tude of ways. If you want to con­tribute your time, energy and skills, the Polasek offers a range of vol­un­teer oppor­tu­ni­ties for which we will train you.

 WINTER PARK, July 21, 2009 - Mixed media artist Don Howard’s bold, col­or­ful, cre­ative and extremely three dimen­sional hand-crafted sun gods and ances­tral art is fea­tured in the museum’s first exhibit of the 2009 – 2010 sea­son, “Mod­ern Prim­i­tives: Sculp­tural Images of Don Howard” run­ning from Sept. 1 through Octo­ber 11, 2009. Howard’s wall-mounted relief sculp­tures evoke the look of Aztec and Incan deities, while other pieces draw upon African imagery, with angu­lar mask-like faces and tribal coloring.