From the very beginning, it has always been a school within a school serving the entire state from the First Coast out to the Panhandle and down to the Keys. Everyone loves a good story.
Florida School of the Arts was created by the Florida School Board of Education in 1974 as the first state-supported professional arts school for high school and college students in Florida. It was conceived as a school dedicated to helping develop young minds through immersion, discipline and the art of beginning to see the world through a creative lens, no matter the area of study. For visual artists, we were taught to no longer see our surroundings as simply trees, clouds, roads, buildings and figures, but as compositions made up of light, shadow, pattern, rhythm and texture.
This is foundation studio arts 101, “Draw what you see.” For many, this was the beginning of a lifelong journey of understanding what it truly meant to put pencil to paper. “It’s not ‘what’ we draw but ‘how’ we draw that matters.” We were taught decorum in assembling our compositions, and as a result, our “works of art” required discipline.
FloArts began full operation with a charter class of 51 students in August 1976 on the Palatka campus of what was then St. Johns River Junior College. Administratively, the school was organized as part of SJRJC and governed by the college’s board of trustees. The school still sits on the Palatka campus with its own dedicated facilities, dean, faculty, mission and statewide scope of practice.
The goal in 1976 was simple: put a small, audition-only program on a campus that had land and could add a dedicated Fine Arts complex and combine it with an inaugural faculty committed to developing sustainable arts curriculum and programming. The late Gene Roberds was one of these founding faculty members, and the visual arts foundation he built at FloArts continues today as the “new school” turns 50.
Gene’s career was dedicated to supporting studio arts through continuity versus rupture. Gene was a well-regarded narrative-based painter and printmaker living in St. Augustine and was an active member of the Florida Artists Group. His credentials carried weight, and his stature commanded attention. He would drive to and from Palatka daily for his students while maintaining his house and private studio on Anastasia Island, a block from Matanzas River, across from Castillo de San Marcos.
Florida School of the Arts is completing a yearlong renovation, and the Jacksonville firm kasper architects + associates are wrapping up their project details for the school, having come a long way as an architecture firm since their first project designing a 144-square-foot concrete block pump enclosure at Sawgrass. Regardless of complexity, “good design equals good business,” and it’s truer now than ever that Florida architects design Florida buildings. “Successful projects nearly always exceed client expectations.”
It only seems fitting that the inaugural exhibition in the New Gallery at Florida School of the Arts, running through Oct. 27, is a tribute to excellence: “Wilderness: Landscape Paintings of the Late FloArts Professor Gene Roberds.”
When I arrived as a student at FloArts in the early ’80s, it was Gene Roberds’ attention to detail in the drawing studio and printmaking lab that captured my attention. There’s an old saying, “It’s not what we learn but who we learn it from that stays with us the longest.” Gene had an ability to develop students’ line quality first and foremost. It was rare in the age of experimentation that was blurring the boundaries between what was and was not considered “art.” Foundation drawing was an uncompromising principle for Gene. Mastering lines meant carrying a composition to completion. “Slow down,” he would say to his classes regularly. “Let the line travel over the form."
The first week of his drawing classes always started with the same assignment: Draw 250 “left hands” in a sketchbook. Halfway through the semester he would ask us to pivot and now draw 250 “right hands” in our sketchbooks. A good portion of the final evaluations and grades would be based on these drawings. The final exam would be an in-class drawing of a pair of hands in various positions as described by Gene. Each student was given a different scenario, and mine was this: “Draw the hands of someone who is sliding down the pitch of a roof away from you.” Wait? What? What does that mean?
Gene knew exactly what it meant. It meant I would need to visualize someone sliding away from me while they’re trying to stop their slide before they dropped over the edge. I had to ask myself, “What would their sliding hands look like?” There was no right or wrong, only my interpretation of the scenario, based on proficiency, and doing my best to illustrate the action in a fine art manner. This was the nature of urgency in the arts in the early ’80s. Things were changing. Students were all given 20 minutes to complete their drawings.
Printmaking folded the line lessons into traditional intaglio printing. We would cut small copper plates that we would then buff and polished to a mirror surface. An asphaltum tar-like material would be spread on the plate and heated to even-out the surface. Once cooled, an image could be drawn through the asphaltum using an etching tool. We’d then place the copper plate in an acid bath to etch grooves that would later hold the ink for hand and press printing. A method dating back to the Renaissance.
The asphaltum recipe was brought to FloArts by Gene. He had learned it from a printmaker at the Minnesota School of Art and Design, who learned it from a printmaker at the Nova Scotia School of Art and Design. The printmaker there had learned it from a printmaker who taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, Germany. The same recipe was used at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. But where the recipe came from before Weimar was lost to history. Or, at least, that’s what we were told.
Gene’s personal work reinforced his teaching and underscored his reasons for dedicating a career and a lifetime to the arts. After his retirement, he painted Ol’ Florida from his home studio near Palatka; Murphy’s Creek, Dunn’s Creek and Silver River, among others were chronicled by his hand. This dedication to place can be seen in the FloArts exhibition, part of “50 Years of FloArts.” In his own words, Gene leaves us with this: “My paintings begin as a series of small watercolors executed on location. Since I usually work in a boat, I am able to reach remote wilderness areas away from civilization and bothersome onlookers. I feel strongly about the documentary aspect of painting these areas, for they may not exist much longer. My larger works, both oil and acrylic, are fabricated from many of the small watercolors, plus some photographs and drawings. They are a bit impressionistic, a little expressionistic, but are mostly compositions of abstract brush stroke patterning, calligraphy and color.”
His artist’s statement continues, “It is an ordered arrangement of abstract parts that result in a composition that is conceived abstractly, and should, I believe, be perceived in that realm. Subject matter is only an excuse or reason to begin painting. The result is a painting that satisfies my involvement in the abstract structure of composition but reads representationally as well.”
His statement is a master class by a man of achievement, a Who’s Who in American Art inductee and an artist who championed many of his students and their careers that sprung from his 19 years at Florida School of the Arts.
Palatka is just over an hour’s drive from Ponte Vedra Beach, either through Palm Valley and over to Green Cove Springs via the Shands Bridge and down that way, or from St. Augustine over through Hastings and across the St. Johns on the Memorial Bridge at East Palatka. The exhibition is an experience and is on display through Oct. 27. FloArts gallery hours are 9 to 5 Monday through Friday. Groups and carpools are welcome. Don’t miss the opportunity to see “Wilderness” at its best. For more information, call 386-312-4300.
Gallery openings and receptions are always in need of quick recipes for successful nibbles.
Carol Pitman’s famous “Cheese Breeze” checks all the boxes:
Blend well the following:
Spread on Melba Toast. Toast under broiler until golden brown.
Serve hot as canapés.
This is another quick and successful recipe for moments that matter in this smartly casual place of all places, Ponte Vedra Beach.
