Residents enjoy art at annual festival

YUNET JOMOLCA Amanda Russel, 8, and Chloe Chisholn, 8, watch glass artist Meredith Hartfield make glass beads during the Festival of the Arts. More photos are available online at: cu.cape-coral-daily-breeze.com.
The Jasinski brothers’ tent was lined with tropically themed photographs.
Several displayed surfboards and beautiful beach fronts. The two brothers,
Brian and Michael, were wallflowers in the back of their display tent at this year’s Cape Coral Festival of the Arts. Happy to help, but also happy just to
let 100,000 or so residents wander through and appreciate their craft.
“We grew up surfing, water skiing,” Brian Jasinski said. “We have the tropical spirit in our blood.”

YUNET JOMOLCA Kelly Sabourin and daughter killian, 6, pick out a mermaid fairy from The Enchanted Fairy stand at the Festival of the Arts. More photos are available online at: cu.cape-coral-daily-breeze.com.
The Gainesville natives’ theme seemed to fit in well in Southwest Florida.
“We do well at this show,” Jasinski said. “We have a lot of people who come every year to see what we’ve done new.”
The brothers have been at the Rotary Club’s Festival of the Arts event for the past 7 of the 23 years it has been held in Cape Coral.
Jasinski said the two brothers went to the University of Florida for unrelated degrees, criminal justice and accounting, but the things they love brought them to photography, which they’ve been pursuing professionally for the past 10 years.
They participate in about 30 to 40 art shows a year and use the summers to take new photographs.
“Were trying to think a little bit outside the norm…to capture what we enjoy and share it with people,” Jasinski said.
If the Jasinskis’ work made event-goers hungry for more art, they were in
luck, about 300 artists lined the east and westbound sides of Cape Coral Parkway in a stretch of blocked off roadway. It was enough to whet the palate of any man or woman who appreciates great art.
“I’m very impressed,” said Susan Findley, a seasonal Cape Coral resident who
visited the festival Saturday afternoon. This year was Findley’s first year coming to the event. “I’ve seen a lot of different things that I haven’t encountered in the past.”
Findley said she enjoys painting, and has worked at the craft for about three or four years.
“I’m just a beginner, though,” Findley admitted. “I came to get ideas.”
Findley especially enjoyed the various paintings at the event.
“I’ll be coming here every year,” she said. “I think this art fair has a more
varied mix of arts.”
Fans of the fantasy genre of art may have found themselves drawn to the tent of painter Delight Prescott, whose talent has been used to create paintings of fantasy’s wondrous worlds and creatures for 53 years.
“I’ve always loved fantasy since I was a child,” Prescott said of what drew her to the genre. “I can paint a world of my own.”
Prescott finds inspiration from novels, movies, and various other forms of
fantasy art. She first created a fantasy painting at age 15.
“It might’ve been a Pegasus,” Prescott said.
Of the many paintings she’s done, Prescott couldn’t point out a favorite over
all the others, or a creature or world she preferred to paint.
“I’m like a little kid,” she said. “My favorite is the one I’m doing right now.”
The South Carolina resident participates in about 50 shows a year, including
renaissance festivals, medieval fairs and various others. This was the first
year she was a part of Festival of the Arts.
“I like the show,” she said. “It’s a lovely area. Nice people.”
- YUNET JOMOLCA Kelly Sabourin and daughter killian, 6, pick out a mermaid fairy from The Enchanted Fairy stand at the Festival of the Arts. More photos are available online at: cu.cape-coral-daily-breeze.com.