THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 28, 1994 TAG: 9409270177
SECTION: ISLE OF WIGHT CITIZEN PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA McNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SMITHFIELD LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
The River Boardwalk Art Show, featuring more than 20 locally and regionally known artists, is sponsored by the Isle of Wight Arts League.
The show starts at 10 a.m. on Saturday and continues through 6 p.m. On Sunday, it runs from noon until 5 p.m.
The show will be held at Smithfield Station on the restaurant and marina's new, 180-foot-long boardwalk over the Pagan River. It's the first art show for the restaurant's boardwalk.
Smithfield Station Restaurant and Marina is located on South Church Street in Smithfield, just beyond the Cypress Creek Bridge.
Station owner Ron Pack invited the league to hold a fall art show to enhance the ambiance of his establishment for boaters as well as motorists enjoying the countryside on an autumn weekend, said Ann Hubbard, artistic director of the local arts league.
Hubbard said she hopes the show will become an annual tradition. It may never have the space to grow as large as the Seawall Art Show held in Portsmouth each year or the annual Boardwalk Art Show in Virginia Beach, but from the very beginning stages of planning, she said, the league has been dedicated to making it a quality show with some of the very best artistic talent around.
``We hope it will become an annual event,'' she said. ``We hope people will come this year and put it on their calendars to come back next year. We'll have a variety of fine arts - paintings, sculpture, pottery, jewelry. And there will be music and entertainment as well. We want it to be a very classy show to fit in with such a wonderful setting.''
Pack's boardwalk has every ingredient necessary for a two-day show and sale to make the artists as well as the visitors comfortable, Hubbard said. The boardwalk, alongside floating docks where a variety of pleasure boats are moored, has two gazebos, a rawbar and grill, restrooms, and, at the end, a reproduction of a river lighthouse that soon will open with a conference center and suites.
Bob Holland is just one of several fine artists in the show, Hubbard said.
Also involved is watercolorist Gloria Coker of Newport News, Ricardo Alma, of Williamsburg, with his colorful abstractions, area artists Paul Fisher and Ben Liverman, both of Suffolk.
John Head, a Smithfield artist with a national reputation, will have his works on display. Jeanine Dionne will have her decorator art at the show. And David Narvaez, one of the resident artists at the art league's headquarters, The Collage, will display his work, including several examples of paintings he did while artistically associated with the Williamsburg Ballet.
Two unique sculptors are in the show: David Allen, of Chesapeake, who does forms cast in brass, and Jennifer Canton, of Smithfield, who sculpts dolls and fantasy figures in clay.
Melanie Healey is another unique young artist who will be in the River Boardwalk show, Hubbard said. Healey, who lives at a historic plantation just outside of Smithfield, does New Age beadwork jewelry that is totally different from anything one can find in local shops.
Add to that two stained glass artists - Beth Netts and Charlotte Mitchell - of M&M Glassworks in Chesapeake. MEMO: For more information, call the Isle of Wight Arts League at 357-7707 or
Smithfield Station at 357-7700. by CNB