Sarasota Orchestra Announces 2024-2025 Harmony Gallery Artists

October 4, 2024 | Sarasota

Today Sarasota Orchestra announced six exhibitions at the Orchestra’s Harmony Gallery to take place during the 2024-2025 season, including a collaboration with Booker High School featuring works by students from the school’s venerated Visual and Performing Arts program. The exhibit will also feature a special spotlight on Sarasota African American Cultural coalition artists.

The Harmony Gallery features local artists showcasing their work in solo exhibitions throughout the Orchestra’s season. These juried exhibitions feature artists with mediums ranging from painting to pastels to mixed media. Twenty-five percent of all proceeds from the sale of the artwork benefit Sarasota Orchestra. The exhibits invite patrons to explore the collaboration between the visual and performing arts.

2024 – 2025 Harmony Gallery Schedule
Jim Stewart
Exhibition Titled: Celebrations
Medium: Ink Art

Jim Stewart’s drawings and paintings are influenced by his career as a graphic designer. Fine arts and photographic experiences also inspire him to look for a balance of impact and legibility with these abstractions: possibilities for describing our relationship with nature. Stewart’s drawings are created using waterproof, lightfast India Inks. They offer intense color, dilute and glaze well to make new colors. These Celebrations are drawn using bamboo pens, “brushes” of cut heavy paper and archival fine line pens. Stewart’s work was previously chosen for Sarasota Music Festival posters from 2007 thru 2011.

Exhibit Dates: September 24– October 29
Public Reception: Thursday, October 3, 2024, 5:00 pm-6:30 pm

Adrienne Watts
Exhibition Titled: Weaving Connection
Medium: Acrylic Mixed Media

About: Adrienne Watts embarked on her artistic journey in Wilmington, NC in 2018. Since moving to Sarasota in 2022, she’s continued her journey, expanding her artistic skills by exploring and mastering the discipline of Woven Art. She is an active member of Women Contemporary Artists and served as Exhibition Co-Chair in 2024. In addition, she organized and curated a December 2023 group exhibition at Fogartyville. Most recently, she’s been admitted for membership in SARTQ, a Sarasota Artist Collective. Prior to her artistic pursuits, Watts had a successful career in finance and real estate. Throughout her professional endeavors, she maintained her dedication to art, composing pet portraits and still life paintings in watercolor and watercolor pencil for friends and acquaintances.

Exhibit Dates: November 1 – December 16
Public Reception: Wednesday, November 6, 2024 from 5:00 – 6:30 pm

Booker High School Student Exhibition
Medium: Various

About: Booker High School, a comprehensive learning facility, is home to the Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) program, which offers rigorous, pre-professional training in the arts in five disciplines: Dance, Digital Film & Motion Design, Music, Theatre, and Visual Art. In collaboration with Sarasota Orchestra, Booker VPA visual art students will present a collection of two-dimensional artwork from various genres.

Exhibit Dates: December 19 – January 30
Public Reception: Thursday, January 9, 2025 from 5:00 – 6:30 pm

Karina Herrera
Exhibition Titled: Good Things Take Time
Medium: Acrylic and Oil Pastel

About: Karina Herrera is an abstract artist based in Sarasota, FL. Her practice is deeply rooted in search of self expression and to connect deeper with herself, life, and nature. Karina works with large scale canvases that are self-built and hand-stretched that allow the space to use the span of her body to direct her flow on the canvas. Her work translates emotions into compositions of color complimented by intentional mark-making. She finds whatever feelings she experiences internally at the time heavily influence her work, each piece marking a different sentence, page, or chapter of her life.

Exhibit Dates: February 4 – March 5
Public Reception: Wednesday, February 19, 2025 from 5:00 – 6:30 pm

Sarasota African American Cultural Coalition Artist Spotlight
Medium: Various

The Sarasota African American Cultural Coalition (SAACC) mission is to preserve, celebrate, and share the cultural, artistic, and historical heritage of African Americans in Sarasota and beyond. SAACC’s goal is to share the rich history and culture of African Americans in Sarasota and create opportunities for enlightenment, learning, and entrepreneurship. To that end, SAACC in collaboration with the Sarasota Orchestra showcases the work of three young Tampa Bay artists whose colorful palettes and brushstrokes convey positivity, resilience, and tenacity.

Exhibit Dates: March 10 – April 9
Public Reception:  Thursday, March 27, 2025 from 5:00 pm-6:30 pm

Robert Rashkow
Exhibition Titled: Groovy People
Medium: Mixed Media

Chicago-born artist Robert Scott Rashkow often escaped as a child into his own private magical world by making art. Later that world was broadened by exposure to time tested masters at The Art Institute of Chicago, as well as avant-garde “Hairy Who” Imagists like Ed Paschke. An opportunity to work at LANDFALL PRESS (Publisher of original fine art lithographs) as an apprentice was an eye-opening experience. Assisting in producing limited edition prints for world renowned POP artists like Alan Jones and Claes Oldenburg. As a fine artist, Rashkow developed his unique style that blends realism with ambiguity and a touch of fancy. Roberts works have earned a place in juried exhibitions, private collections and galleries.

Exhibit Dates: April 15 – May 20
Public Reception: Thursday, April 24, 2025 from 5:00 pm-6:30 pm

About Sarasota Orchestra:

Since 1949, Sarasota Orchestra has inspired and entertained music-lovers across the region and visitors from around the world. As the oldest continuing orchestra in the state of Florida, each year the 76-member Orchestra performs more than 100 classical, pops, chamber music, and community outreach concerts. Sarasota Orchestra’s acclaimed music education program includes the Sarasota Youth Orchestras, established in 1959. Sarasota Orchestra is also the parent program of the world-renowned Sarasota Music Festival, founded in 1965. For further information, please visit www.SarasotaOrchestra.org.