From the streets of Fort Myers to the markets of India, a certain 11th-floor condo at Pointe Royale was designed around the artwork that its residents have been collecting for decades.
It’s fitting that Sharon McAllister and John Stefani have an art-filled nest perched above the Caloosahatchee. She founded ArtFest Fort Myers as we know it today 20 years ago and has spearheaded the three-day event ever since.
She and her husband didn’t know too much about art festivals when they moved from Chicago to Fort Myers in 1990, but they were already nascent art collectors. They brought with them a half-dozen works acquired from auctions and galleries in the Windy City, and she had become a fan of the long-established Coconut Grove Arts Festival on Florida’s east coast.
Brian Tietz
Sharon stands by a teak elephant statue covered with hand-painted, camel-bone veneer that John admired during a trip to India but did not purchase. Sharon secretly bought it and had it shipped home to surprise her husband.
“I loved the work and artists there and started attending others,” she says. “I liked the fact I could talk to the artists, not like a gallery, where you rarely get to meet the artist.”
When they moved from a gated golf community in 2001 to what she calls “the original condo high-rises” on the Caloosahatchee in downtown Fort Myers, the couple stripped their 2,200-square-foot unit down to the studs and wires to create their space exactly as they envisioned.
“We designed it around artwork we owned at the time knowing we would add more,” Sharon says.
A stylized, somewhat Cubist portrait of a woman by Cantonese-Jamaican artist Adrian Wong Shue sets the palette and modern approach to the living room.
Today, more than two dozen works, many purchased at ArtFest Fort Myers or during trips abroad, punctuate their west-facing condo with each day’s sunset glimmering from their waterfront vista.
Art of place
Living in an architecturally rich city that Chicago is “makes a subconscious impression on you,” Sharon reflects. Innovative, time-tested designs “live in you. They make an impression in your life that you continue to have.”
John and Sharon’s love of exquisiteness in all forms — buildings, art, culture, food and landscape — is consistently rediscovered on their travels across the globe: Italy, Spain, France, Cambodia, China and Africa. She estimates they’ve been on a half-dozen African safaris, during which she settled on the elephant as her favorite creature.
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An artistic grouping of nine ceramic squares created by students of FGCU Professor of Art Patricia Fay and purchased at an art show at the Berne Davis Art Center.
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From the kitchen to the balcony patio overlooking the Caloosahatchee, splashes of whimsy, beauty and otherworldliness can be found throughout the 11th-floor condo facing west toward sunsets. A photographic still life of a culinary tableau from the Sausalito Art Festival in California hangs above a desk in the kitchen.
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Left: A sculpture made of fused glass slumped over metal pipes created by Michael Thompson graces the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Right: A “woven” basket, actually made of clay by a California artist, was a Sausalito Art Festival find.
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A playful sculpture by Sanibel mixed-media sculptor Lawrence Voytek on a pedestal (left corner) greets visitors to the great room.
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On the dining table is an assemblage of surreal vegetables and fruits, a hallmark of Miami ceramicist William Kidd.
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Objects d’art from world travels, by local artists and discovered at festivals fill Sharon and John’s condo at Pointe Royale.
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Objects d’art from world travels, by local artists and discovered at festivals fill Sharon and John’s condo at Pointe Royale.
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Brian Tietz
Objects d’art from world travels, by local artists and discovered at festivals fill Sharon and John’s condo at Pointe Royale.
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Brian Tietz
Objects d’art from world travels, by local artists and discovered at festivals fill Sharon and John’s condo at Pointe Royale.
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Brian Tietz
Objects d’art from world travels, by local artists and discovered at festivals fill Sharon and John’s condo at Pointe Royale.
“I’ve seen elephants on all of the safaris. I like them because they live in families like we do and care for their children like we do. They are extremely intelligent, and I love to watch them travel together and defend each other,” she says.
While she wouldn’t have called herself a collector of elephant-themed objects in the past, it’s safe to do so now. This fall, the couple explored India on a three-week tour where a highlight was attending the annual Hindu Diwali “festival of lights” on the Ganges River. They also browsed and bought, among other objects d’art, a passel of special elephants: one made of camel bone, a vignette of elephants crossing a bridge and a statue of the half-elephant Hindu deity, Ganesha, which has taken a prominent location in her office. Ganesha is embraced as a good-luck omen, as “the remover of obstacles,” but Sharon was also told that Ganesha symbolizes one who “listens well and talks less, with a big belly that digests what she learns.”
“Listen more and talk less? Well a good place for that would be my desk to remind me of that,” Sharon decided.
But her prized treasure from this trip is the solid marble elephant she purchased at an artist’s co-op in Kalakriti in Agra, where the Taj Mahal is located. Her marble elephant was created by local artists with the same marble, semi-precious stones (including lapis and mother-of-pearl), inlay designs and techniques used in the Taj Mahal.
“I watched them work. The elephant was made by one artist who took about three months — and he only gets paid when it sells, like all artists,” she says of the weighty foot-high, foot-long statue. “Now I own too many elephants,” she confides.
The meaning behind an elephant’s trunk position in art has been a matter of debate among collectors who say “up” symbolizes good luck and “down” foretells of bad luck. But Sharon came to this conclusion: Up is a defensive, guarded position, while down is a relaxed, foraging mode. Therefore, both are perfectly acceptable, depending on one’s mood.
But none of these are the reasons she is completely smitten with her marble elephant.
“It’s made there by the people whose ancestors had done this earlier. It’s of the place as well as being beautiful. When I saw it, I said, ‘I have no option but to buy this. I love it, and it’s of this place.’”
Best of show
Entering John and Sharon’s condo, visitors are greeted by a funky sculpture on a pedestal by Sanibel artist Lawrence Voytek. They obtained it during one of the first major fundraising auctions for the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center in 2007, when local philanthropist Berne Davis pledged $1 million toward the 1933 landmark’s restoration. The theme was hardhats, and Voytek went beyond simply decorating one to creating a half-scale female figure adorned by various objects, featuring eggbeater hands and wearing a hard hat.
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The Pointe Royale building
Deciding on a piece of artwork to buy is based on a gut reaction, one that is difficult to put into words, Sharon says. Generally, she and John both agree on a piece when they both experience a positive reaction, though sometimes “there is compromise.” They typically buy large-scale works rather than smaller, “knick-knacky” pieces.
Twice she purchased pieces before they earned “Best of Show” at ArtFest — bringing murmurs that she knew beforehand. “I didn’t know. It was just a coincidence,” she says. She happened to base her decision to buy the otherworldly sculpture by ceramicist William Kidd, who has won Best of Show here twice, and a bronze cast of a juggler by James LaCasse on that same gut reaction. “I buy it when I see it,” she says.
She is drawn to work that makes her happy or recalls a memory.
“I have to love it when I see it. If I have to talk myself into buying it, I don’t buy it,” she says. “It’s an emotional reaction. It’s not a thinking process.”
Sharon and John don’t buy something every single year at ArtFest, which is a good thing: “We’re getting full. We need to stop traveling, need to do some editing or go to a bigger condo.”