Artist: Lori Smith

On display at the Hudson Library

Lori Smith is a native Floridian and has been an artist most of her life. She has expressed her creativity through a variety of activities and mediums. She enjoyed drawing but didn’t discover how much she liked painting until the COVID-19 pandemic. She then taught herself how to paint from YouTube and has been creating all kinds of different pieces that she hopes you will enjoy.

What is your favorite piece in the show and why?

• My favorite pieces are the lighter of the flowers because my hand is very soft there and it's very whimsical I like things to kind of look a little fairy like magical and light-hearted.

Artist: Joyce Owens

On display at the New River Library

Before becoming an artist, Joyce Owens served proudly in the U.S. Army, both active and reserve for a total of 26 years. Joyce earned many awards during this time and retired as a Master Sergeant.

Art has been a long-time love for Joyce. As a child, she began drawing the characters from the newspaper and magazines. Joyce adventured into doing paint by number kits, but she wanted to create her own art. This journey of painting for Joyce started in her adulthood. Owens earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Individual Studies late in life at age 46. Since then, Owens completed two art courses at the University of Alabama and a non-credit course with the University of South Florida. Most of Owens’s art education has been from reading art literature, attending workshops and her most rememberable event was attending a week’s seminar with other artists under the instruction of Charles Sovek, a New England artist. Owens’s favorite mediums are acrylic and oil paints.

Owens has won several awards from different art venues, such as fairs, the Strawberry Festival and art shows with different organizations. She enjoys creating common sense paintings of everyday subjects. She would like viewers to feel they have seen it or have been there. Owens is a member of the Zephyrhills Art Club and the East Hillsborough Art Guild.

Artist: Nereida Roman

On display at the South Holiday Library

The complex patterns and shapes inspire my art in the natural world. It examines the link between nature and humans. I utilize a variety of media to produce layered compositions that inspire a sense of harmony and connectivity.

My latest series, "Into the wild," combines acrylics and watercolors with natural elements, including leaves, twigs and fibers. By combining natural ingredients with conventional art supplies, I can depict the fleeting beauty of nature and its constantly shifting cycles.

I have an experimental and intuitive creative process. I embrace spontaneity and chance, starting with an idea or emotion and letting the materials lead. The final pieces express my continuous converse with the environment while honoring its fragility and resilience. By inspiring awe and reflection in the audience, I hope to get them to stop and re-establish a connection with nature. I want to encourage a more profound respect for our world and a dedication to its preservation by drawing attention to the precarious equilibrium between nature and human existence.

Artist: Rhonda Donovan

On display at the Starkey Ranch TLC • Energy Art

Rhonda Massel Donovan is an artist, designer and art instructor. She resides and works in the Tampa Bay area and has been recognized through exhibitions, curation and awards in U.S. and European cities, including the Venice Biennale of Architecture and several exhibitions in Manhattan, NY. Donovan has been published in Studio Visit Magazine, Artist Closeup Contemporary Art Magazine, Friend of the Artist’s Studio Image Project and Manifest Gallery’s International Painting Annual. She has presented artworks and papers during multiple SECAC conferences, has been a juror and visiting lecturer for events and competitions, and has attended residencies in Europe and the U.S. Her work has been on music albums, publication covers and in non-traditional art spaces as a way of bringing her conversation to people who might never consider walking into a gallery. As an art professor in higher education and art teacher in public schools, Donovan shows students how to tap into their creativity to best expand their problem-solving skills, wherever their interests lie.