Dawn Price Rhonda Kuntz grew up in Kentucky, moved to Texas where she raised her children, and retired to Florida. As life changed, she found her way to SaddleBrooke where her good friend helped her find her forever home. Rhonda welcomed me into her home, which houses her art studio and showcases her own work,…
Dawn Price If you are a member of the SaddleBrooke Fine Arts Guild (SBFAG) and attend any meetings, you are fortunate to be greeted at the door by Vincent Biase and his lovely wife Dona. They are newlyweds who moved to SaddleBrooke in 2019 from Hudson Valley. Although married just a few years, they have…
Dawn Price Meeting up with new SaddleBrooke resident Daphne Cates from Idaho Falls, I asked what drew her here. Newly married, she had been living up North with her husband of three years and her horse. They recently did a road trip to visit family in Tucson, and Daphne was not enamored with the heat…
LaVerne Kyriss Love of art leads to satisfying career. Jean Matheson has always loved art. While there weren’t a lot of classes available to her when she was growing up, she was frequently chosen to create artwork for various school activities. She also got interested in art history and was able to take part in…
LaVerne Kyriss Debby Sullivan recently told a group of elementary school children she’d never picked up a pencil or brush until she was 59. She said that she wanted the children to know that it’s never too late to try out a dream. While her mother and brother were experienced painters and Debby had always loved…
LaVerne Kyriss Mary Baum always liked art. Like many other women of her generation, she saw this as a pleasant pastime. As a young woman, she expected to work for a while, get married, and have a family. When that track wasn’t moving as fast as she wanted, she decided college would be a good next…
LaVerne Kyriss For Gretchen Bierbaum, discovering collage was the perfect blending of her education in both art and test measurements and statistics. “When I was studying art in college, classes in collage and watercolor weren’t even offered. Exploring collage was an aha experience,” she explained. “Collage is more visually exciting than flat painting. It involves…
LaVerne Kyriss Janet and Tom Frost moved to SaddleBrooke in early 2019, excited to begin exploring all the community and surrounding areas had to offer. Janet, a former operating room nurse and hospital manager and travel blogger, was excited to begin exploring other activities and pastimes. She had always worked with fabric and yarn, quilting…
LaVerne Kyriss Connie Kotke first learned about rosemaling when she was a teen attending Norwegian camp. This summer experience immersed her in all things Norwegian, from language and crafts to food and culture. She explained that rosemaling is a decorative folk art that originated in Norway in the late 1600s and reached its height in…
LaVerne Kyriss When Deb Kress decided she was going to enter the SaddleBrooke Fine Arts Guild’s 2021 One Image, No Limits contest, she first decided that collage was going to be her medium. While skilled in watercolor and acrylics, collage has been her medium of choice for 25 or 30 years. Her entry, Buckie, won an…