OCALA - Only perfect sunny weather at the Ocala Art Show and lots to see. We found this show the best of any we had seen here so far. We never got around to all the booths, but we did what we could. Jack Hill's statuary was absolutely amazing. Each piece not only demonstrated his artistic skills but were thought provoking, humorous, or both. Three-dimensional qualities were also evident in Dora Martini's stained glass, a medium not known for 3D effects. Dora does it with metal leaves and vines interwoven with the glass. Many photographers were represented. Bill Sargent (Photosarge.com) uses a coolpix 5000 for his superwide panoramas by stitching images together. On display were panoramas of the morning after New Year's Eve celebrations in Ybor City, a barber shop, Florida scenes, inside an abanadoned car, and more, all fascinating, all unique.	Weber takes simple still lifes and makes them into amazing water colors by meticulous attention to detail. He has been doing this trick full time for thirty years.
Bill Sargent and his Coolpix 5000 produce panoramas. We liked his Ybor City photo of the streets as New Year's day dawns. We also like his truck overgrown and abandoned.	Miki and I were especially impressed with Michael J. Weber's water colors, mostly still lifes. People often think of water colors as something done in a hurry with a free mix of luck and skill, a painting done in an hour. But Weber's plain subjects (glass vases on a shelf) take him a week or two of fulltime effort. For me, this kind of painting is like a virtuoso performance. The Florida wildlife and nature photographers (Ernest Simmons, Terry Smith, William Underwood, and Ben Essenburg among others) were well represented. One of my favorite Florida birds, the black skimmer, stood out in several shows. I visited the websites of many of these artists and found more work on display.
Marcia Haley, of Homosassa, represented Florida Landmarks, Creative Electrographic Recordings (waynetimm.com). Florida Landmarks has photographed many of the most famous sites in Florida with their digital cameras and converted them into interesting artistic effects in the computer. Bob Senesac (bobsenesac.com) is another digital artist, but he specializes in smaller subjects than Florida landmarks. He takes small objects (flowers, leaves, etc.) and (apparently) places them on a scanner. The result are of delicate, almost transparent beauty. Many of the artists concentrated on Florida scenery, plants, and animals. Some use cameras to record their scenes and then paint from them -- many paintings (oil, acrylic, water color) look photo realistic. Such artists included Ernest Simmons, Terry Smith, William Underwood, Charles Rowe, and Ben Essenburg. More photos of artists in the gallery sections. See link on our home page.	Ernest Simmons, as many of the other nature photographers do, works from photographs that he has taken himself. The photographers spend as much time in the forests and fields as they do in their studios.