Students surround teacher Richard Kirk on the first day of his painting fundamentals class at the Arts Bonita Visual Arts Center. MARY WOZNIAK / FLORIDA WEEKLY
Arts Bonita is thriving as it celebrates the 25th anniversary of its visual arts center and is determined to take its rightful place in the Southwest Florida arts firmament.
The 25-year-old visual arts center is on a 10-acre campus on Old 41 Road. Arts Bonita also added a performing arts venue on Bonita Beach Road 11 years ago.
Besides scores of diverse classes for children and adults in visual arts, performing arts, dance and other offerings, it holds art exhibits, live concerts, lectures, film showings, theater performances and other events.
Yet Arts Bonita officials believe that the arts venue is not given the recognition that should come with a stellar record in providing cultural landscape of visual and performing arts and opportunities for the community to partake in and enjoy them.
In fact, they believe they are still somewhat of a well-kept secret, swallowed up in the middle while the emphasis and public spotlight are on Naples arts venues at one end and Fort Myers arts venues at the other.
USHE
“I think we have by far the best facilities, equipment, best instructors. And yet we still remain a secret,” said Alyona Ushe, the Arts Bonita executive director.
“We’re definitely not just another arts center,” said Jon Artigo, Arts Bonita’s education director. “It’s hard to think of something area people want to do that we don’t have.”
“We are actually working with the village of Estero to try to articulate our identity,” Ushe said. “And I think for us, one of the main ways to do so is by making Bonita the place for artists to come and create.”
They are putting a lot of initiatives in place “to attract artists, to give the artists a stage, a voice, a wall, you know, spotlight, whatever it takes to really highlight how much immense talent we have right here in our own backyard,” she said. “We don’t always have to import people and artists here to make a statement, right?”
ARTIGO
Arts Bonita was founded over 60 years ago, starting in 1959. It didn’t incorporate as a nonprofit until 1991 and, in the mid-90s, still operated as the Art League of Bonita Springs out of a tiny storefront on Old U.S. 41. Then, the Bonita Springs Center for the Arts opened 25 years ago as a visual arts center. The Performing Arts Center was added in 2014, home to the 400-seat Hinman Auditorium and the 200-seat Moe Auditorium & Film Center.
The new Halsell Family Dance Studio recently opened at the performing arts center. The venues are all part of what makes up Arts Bonita.
The growth was nurtured and overseen by long-time executive director and CEO Susan Bridges, who retired on Jan. 1, 2023. Bridges and her husband, Barry Witt, also launched the Bonita Springs National Art Festivals, which are now celebrating their 25th year.
The festivals are held three times a year in January, February and March in downtown Bonita Springs, featuring artists from around the country. The first two festivals this year have already been held and the third festival is March 1-2.
Jon Artigo, Arts Bonita education director and Alyona Ushe, Arts Bonita executive director, stand outside the entrance of the Arts Bonita Visual Arts Center, celebrating its 25th anniversary. COURTESY PHOTO
Ushe took over after a long search in May 2023. She pays tribute to Bridges’ contributions and says she has big shoes to fill, but the forward trajectory continues under her leadership. The nonprofit has a $4 million budget.
They continue to grow but are trying to do “smart growth,” Ushe said. Their educational programs and classes have been the bones of the organization since they started as an art league.
“The education program at the visual arts campus is doing fantastically well,” Ushe continued. “There are still some disciplines that we’re going to add that we don’t have right now. We’re going more into curriculum-based teaching for more professional artists while still creating events and classes for hobbyists. So we want to make sure that we capture both groups.”
“The performing arts campus, I think, is the one that has the most potential for growth, and that goes to youth education,” Ushe said. Historically, visual arts have been offered, but “performing arts, dance, theater, film, digital art, all of those things.”
Marissa Jankowski, faculty chair of the dance program, strikes a pose in the new, state-of-the-art Halsell Family Dance Studio. MARY WOZNIAK / FLORIDA WEEKLY
Ushe said Artigo is overseeing their development. In addition, this year, they are doing at least a third more performances, including concerts and theater. “Theater is growing exponentially,” she said.
Joseph Brauer is the theater’s artistic director.
Besides expanding the curriculum even further, taking Arts Bonita to the next level will include creating a full-fledged school of the arts, Ushe said.
That means exploring accreditation to offer AP classes and certificates in a specific discipline, Artigo said.
They want to build a youth base in the area, he said.
Artigo has implemented youth classes like video game design, digital filmmaking, acting for the camera and improv comedy performance. They’re starting improv comedy arts student showcases where beginners and more experienced students show off their skills. For adults, offerings include “acting for the camera: dramatic and comedic monologue,” “storytelling and podcast production” and improv comedy to sharpen the mind.”
MERTENS
“If you want to perform, we are going to give you the opportunity,” Artigo said.
Ushe said the future also includes growth, not just in expanding programs but also in expanding facilities. “We are outgrowing our space.”
Ushe said area demographics are changing, with more younger families moving in. Their facilities committee is assessing their needs. They have an additional four acres at their visual arts campus and some space on the four-acre performing arts center.
“We are a community-based organization, so we will get community input. Do we need to build out?” Ushe asked. “These are exciting questions to answer. We are in a data-gathering stage right now.”
“So that’s kind of our overall direction in terms of growth and identity and just screaming at the top of our lungs, we are not a little red-headed stepchild who is hiding in the shadows of Naples and Fort Myers,” Ushe said. “We have our own identity, our own equipment, our own facilities, our own artists and our own vision. And we are done fighting.”
Marcie Karavakis shows off the piece of Red Utah alabaster she is working with in the stone sculpting studio that shines translucent in the light. MARY WOZNIAK / FLORIDA WEEKLY
Arts Bonita’s dynamic classes
Artists were generating small clouds of dust one recent morning at an open-air workshop at the Arts Bonita visual arts center.
The clouds were indicative of an ongoing creative process — these were students in a stone carving class using power tools to shape their artistic vision out of lumps of stone, usually alabaster marble. Many weren’t sure what they were creating when they started, but it was clear they loved what they were doing, and the results, in many cases, were stunning.
All across classrooms and studios at the visual arts center, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, students were working on clay with paints, fusing glass and engaging in other artistic activities. Florida Weekly recently visited to see for itself.
KIRK
In the stone carving workshop, Terri Mertens, director and faculty chair of the stone program, said the class included beginners as well as those experienced in working with hand and power tools on stone.
“We make dust and then we make beautiful sculpture,” she said.
Ken Harris, of Estero, was working outside on a piece of Italian translucent alabaster. He’s been carving on and off for about 20 years, he said. “The first piece I made turned out so nicely, I said, this is better than playing golf.”
Inside the studio, Vivian Greenberg was polishing a beautiful carving of calla lilies.
“I didn’t know what it was going to be when I started,” she said. “I love it. It releases a lot of stress and tension. Bottom line, it makes me feel good about myself. I accomplish something I never thought I could do.”
KERKER
Alice Fjelstul was washing the dust off a piece she had been working on. “I’m 83,” she said. “Hanging around here keeps you young.”
In another classroom, a painting fundamentals class was taking place. Students gathered around teacher Richard Kirk for some tips. These students were starting on page one, learning how to look at a combination of items arranged in a still life and enlarge it on canvas, using oils or acrylics, he said. They were learning artistic form and value as they did it.
Over at the Performing Arts Center on Bonita Beach Road, other classes were going on in the building housing the 400-seat Hinman Auditorium.
Danielle Kerker was preparing to teach her first class in video game development.
“The whole idea is introducing them to 3-D game engines,” she said. She said that her students were going to learn how to create a platform game from start to finish and publish it so anybody can play it.
JANKOWSKI
In another office, Marissa Jankowski, faculty chair of the dance program, said an adult tap class was taking place that evening in the new, state-of-the-art Halsell Family Dance Studio. The next week, she was starting a 16-week youth dance academy program.
Jankowski said she was born into the love of dance because her family ran a dance studio for years in California. She teaches youth ages 2.5 years and up, including jazz, ballet, tap, lyrical, hip-hop, acrobatics and more. It will all culminate with a dance recital on May 3.
On the other end of the building, Lisa Kennedy was in an art studio teaching an intensive master class called “Embrace the practice,” where students were learning painting techniques to create habits that could speed up their artistic process.
One of her students was Heather Meehan from Campbellville, Ontario.
“I came down here for the weather and for the art,” she said. Meehan has been painting for four and a half years. She was a potter before that.
KENNEDY
“Painting is my love right now,” she said. “You just kind of get lost in your work. I just love interpreting what I’m looking at, making it my own on canvas.” ¦
In the KNOW
Arts Bonita
· Visual Arts Center, 26100 Old 41 Road
· Performing Arts Center, 10150 Bonita Beach Road
· For information on classes and events, call 239-495-8989 or visit artsbonita.org.
MEEHAN
Jon Artigo, Arts Bonita education director, stands next to an array of sculptures created by Arts Bonita faculty.