Longboat Key arts center hosts Hermitage Artist Fellows

Longboat Key Center for the Arts will host a special evening on Jan. 6 of music and art performed by Hermitage Artist Retreat Fellows .

The center, a division of Ringling College of Art and Design, will host composer Laura Kaminsky, visual artist Rebecca Allan and New York's musical trio Oxygen 3 and visual artists Ken Cro-Ken. 

It all happens at 7:30 p.m., Friday, Jan. 6 at 6860 Longboat Drive South. Admission is free but due to limited space, reservations are requested. To RSVP simply call 941-383-2345 or email lbkca@ringling.edu.

The evening begins in the Durante Gallery with a very special two-part new music concert.

HORIZON LINES, composed by Kaminsky during her residency at the Hermitage Artist Retreat in 2010-2011, was inspired in part by the coastal marine landscape of Manasota Key.

It is a multidisciplinary work for oboe, bassoon, and piano, performed with a digital film. HORIZON LINES will be performed by Oxygen 3 and is accompanied by a film by John Feldman, which incorporates Allan's paintings also created at the Hermitage Artist Retreat. HORIZON LINES was commissioned by the Seattle Chamber Music Society.

MULTIPLE ONENESS will be an improvisation between oboist/composer Matt Sullivan with live painting by Ken Cro-Ken. Performed in New York City in February 2011, The New York Times called this experience “an intriguing performance-art piece…. where the projected poured liquids…flowed through the painting’s raised surfaces like yellow lava, swirling in strange tandem with the oboe’s melancholy tunes.”  

A reception follows the concert, with a chance to meet the artists. Another exhibition, AFFINITIES, by visual artists Allan and Cro-Ken will be open in the Cultural Media Room. AFFINITIES underscores the LBKCA season theme of “Illuminated Light” as it relates to our natural environment.

Allan and Cro-Ken both work in the dense urban environment of New York City and share a deep and longstanding interest in the natural world as a source of inspiration and investigation.

Known for their individual yet related approaches to painting, both artists attempt to describe the underlying forces and dynamic variations that are manifested in the natural environment, whether in its pristine state, or in a condition that is altered by human presence.

Allan and Cro-Ken both have deep connections not only to the natural world but also to music as a significant mode of expression.