Brush of Excellence Artist Reception & Talk

This evening reception and talk on Tuesday, March 11, will feature artists and 2024 Brush of Excellence Environmental Art Award recipients Cecilia Montalvo & Charlie McCullers, and their series of photographs, "Where the Light Enters." Montalvo and McCullers will discuss not only their intent behind the series but also the artistic process.

This event is in collaboration with the ongoing "Water" exhibit by the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation (SCCF) and Sanibel-Captiva Art League (SCAL). The exhibit will be on display during the event, and many of the artists will be present.

Art by Cecilia Montalvo and Charlie McCullers

The reception will begin at 6:30 p.m., and the artist talk will begin at 7:30 p.m. This event is generously supported by SCCF's Flourish Fund. 

The artists are also holding a lumen printing workshop the following day, March 12. Click here to register.

About "Where the Light Enters"

Characterized by the dynamic nature of the land-sea interaction, barrier islands are places with many shape narratives, and inversions. A barrier island is ephemeral, an instance of simultaneity, above and below what we call the surface. Mangroves straddle these mirror worlds, walking on water, making something out of nothing. Light rushes through every keyhole and seam in palm forest canopies, which is another sort of inundation. The islands are always being eroded and redeposited, their permanence rooted in impermanence, existing where many forces converge.

Everything residual from the land and the sea is ultimately represented there. And in that history, that recording, that perpetual washing over of it all, beautiful things and ugly things, there is a prelapsarian magic, which is always starting over, clean. This work is metaphorical. It's about demarcation and intermediation. It's about origins, and going back. It's about paradoxes of individual experience within the enormous, scary, and magical system.