STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

Tell us about it

• What would you add to this story? Tell us what we missed.
• Do you have photos from this event? Documents we need to see? Share with us.
• Upload photos & videos
• More ways to get your stuff online and in the paper.

More Latest Stories

• A la Carte: A French Twist at the Old Marco Inn
• Chef's Q & A: Tony Flores
• La Casita and Pub

Share and Enjoy [?]

The Art League of Marco Island’s first exhibit of the season — Dimensions, which runs through Nov. 7 — presents a group of four artists’ whose work is distinguishably three-dimensional.

“This is first time we’ve had a contemporary art exhibit in about two, two and a half years,” said Diane Peck, Art League member and a director of its annual pARTy fundraiser (March 28).

“This is one of the most fun shows. I love it,” said Carole Roberts, one of the league’s newly inducted boardmembers. “You walk in and it just hits you — right away.”

Mark Chew

Mark Chew began to cultivate his tactile senses and ability to visualize concepts in three Dimensions, when he was a welder in high schooler.

Later he studied and worked as a mechanical engineer within the automotive industries.

After having crafted bicycles for six years during the day, and giving away one of his first pieces as a gift, he and his wife, Lonna, realized he might just be on to something.

“I don’t know, either I lost my mind or I grew enough courage,” he said of his change of careers.

His evolution into the world of sculpture have brought him to create pieces that could be considered a confound of contradictions — industrial art made of hot and cold medals, polished and textured finishes, winding and circular pieces are piled atop jagged triangular edges.

“Often several extremes are reflected within the individual piece,” writes the Art League.

Inspired by such sculptors as James T. Russell, he is working on a series of outdoor pieces titled Tango, inspired by breaching dolphins in the gulf and the intertwining dance of the Tango. It’s cornerstone piece, Diablo Tango, is dark, futuristic and best viewed at night on the beach in a lightning storm, Chew says.

For more about the artist, visit imagejava.com and markchew.com on the Web.

Veli Lapinoja

For Veli Lapinoja, the many Dimensions of wood and the life of trees and their many species are what stirs his passion for sculpting.

“The wood whispers to me — it tells you what to take and what not to take,” Lapinoja said Sunday during a presentation about his wood works, which focused on his technique and the science behind trees — down to its chemical and molecular components. “None of us would be around if it weren’t for trees producing the pollutant known as oxygen.

Wood is made of 99.6 percent greenhouse gases, about 71 percent is carbon dioxide and 29 percent is water, and with the help of solar energy, trees create glucose and oxygen, Lapinoja said.

“The heat given out by burning wood is equal to the amount of sunlight it took to grow the tree,” Lapinoja said.

“It was wonderful,” Brenda Autrey, a fan and owner of his works, said about Lapinoja’s presentation made prior to the exhibit’s opening reception. “His passion just exudes. He just loves the wood.”

Lapinoja said he likes to use handheld tools for control. His pieces are made of all different kinds of wood, and his artistic process depends upon the kind of wood he is working with.

“I love wood, and I hate to say that anything having to do with wood is boring, but ash is boring,” Lapinoja said. (Ash is commonly used for food containers, because it has no taste.)

A favorite of the audience’s when he held it up was a semi-polished sculpture made of black walnut. He also works with Brazilian pepper, red mangrove and anything else he can find.

“As a matter of fact, I left a dinner party once because I heard a chainsaw,” Lapinoja said. “But my wife was not so happy about that.”

But in all his life, he said, he might have only cut down one live tree.

“I always use salvaged wood,” Lapinoja said.

“No man, no scientist, could reproduce what leaves and trees create in nature all over the world,” Lapinoja said. “Wood is amazing. The cells in the cambium layer have the capacity to build the organic molecules of life from solar energy ... .

“Each species has its own beautiful structure. I mean true artistry — if you look at a thin slice of wood under a microscope it’s better than all the paintings you’ll ever see — it’s beautiful ... .”

Kim Radochia

For the sculptor and fine artist Kim Radochia, who has formerly worked as an architect and designer, the many Dimensions of nature create her passion to find an ever-evolving approach to creating art — commonly tailored to her client’s desires.

Her current collection at the Art League was inspired from her work with piles of scrap pieces of paper and her client, a biomedical company which issued her an indoor space.

Radochia more often creates outdoor sculptures for clients. She presented a sculpture as part of the Marco Island Foundation for the Art’s ArtQuest 2006.

Her experience in outdoor sculptures and studio art helped her to create this unique combination of contemporary art made of loosely folded papers, which were given wax treatments for sturdiness, paints and wooden bases for hanging.

Originally, she began with layers of separated paper, without folding them over. The look was reminiscent of her A Clean Slate sculpture created for an exhibition in Great Barrington, Mass.

A Clean Slate’s layering of large sheets of metal in a row with varying rectangular shapes might look like a book from afar but viewed from another angle looks much like mountain ranges, watery waves or bark from a tree, which directly relates to the local topography of the Berkshires’ rolling hills and rivers, according to the International Sculpture Center and publisher of Sculpture magazine.

Lynn Russell

Primarily a papermaker, Lynn Russell’s collection for Dimensions features sculptures made of paper and woven copper to make sturdy bowl-like structures and mixed media collages on canvas.