Join Anne Hunter Galleries on Wednesday, May 28, 2025, from 4–8 pm at 25 Central Square as we celebrate the creative expression of local artists Bradley Copeland, Christon Anderson, Mary Ellen DeMauro, Patricia Anderson, Jamie Zimchek, Tim Harbeson and the Seaside Neighborhood School Sixth Grade Art Class. The exhibition is a cooperative effort with Amavida and the SEASIDE® Art Walk, a vibrant celebration of creativity in partnership with the Cultural Arts Alliance (CAA) for Art Month Walton.
“When it comes to the arts, Seaside isn’t just a stop on the map. It’s where the story began,” says Margaret Abrams, managing editor for The Seaside Times, clarifying Seaside’s important role in incubating creative talent. “Long before the 30A art scene became a movement, it was taking shape right here, in Ruskin Place, on the sidewalks of Central Square, and in the hearts of a few passionate pioneers who believed that Seaside could be a place that fostered the creative human spirit.”
Liza Snyder, an art teacher at the Seaside Neighborhood School, is doing just that with the students in her classes. As a practicing artist, this is her first year joining the Seaside School as an instructor. Art classes offer middle schoolers the opportunity to both learn and create, and Liza considers it an honor to be a part of the kids’ creative journeys. Art history and fundamentals are taught, and her students are given many invitations to express personal creativity and experiment with new art mediums. “The town of Seaside provides more than ample inspiration for so much creativity!” Snyder says. “From sitting at Ruskin Place creating thumbnail sketches of botanicals to a walk through town to admire and discuss Seaside architecture, our students are influenced by the beauty surrounding us each day at school.” The Seaside Neighborhood School’s sixth grade students’ paintings, a series entitled “Seaside Stylized Symbols,” will be shown at this year’s Art Walk.
Seaside’s first Art Walk began in 2006, when Eileen West, Wendy Mignot, and Tracy Lewis met with a shared vision: to bring art into the open and create something that felt like home for locals and visitors. What started as a simple idea–hosting monthly gallery shows, music in the park, and a glass of wine among friends–quickly became a cornerstone of the Seaside community.
From Via Colori, the colorful chalk art festival led by Billie Gaffrey, to the resurgence of the Seaside Art Walk along the 30A corridor in 2017 by Wendy Mignot, continuing on to 2020 when Tim Harbeson became the first conceptual artist to exhibit a sculpture in Seaside, it was the Davis family that shaped the artistic spirit of the coast by creating the first spaces for artists.
The arts gained momentum when Seaside co-founder Robert Davis designated a parking space at 25 Central Square for the art gallery exhibit installations. Soon after that, Harbeson appeared on the scene, seeking a venue to exhibit his unique wooden sculptures created in a studio at Elmore’s Landing near Choctawhatchee Bay. “Tim was an iconoclast,” his surviving spouse, Buffy Miller, shares. “One of our points of connection, part of our shared, unspoken language, concerned classical training applied to personal, idiosyncratic experiments. The way classical training only ends when the student’s life ends. It was a way of life for him. It was his way.”
Harbeson comes from a long line of prominent architects. The Harbeson prize at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts honors his paternal grandfather, John F. Harbeson. “Tim became interested in New Urbanism years before we met,” Miller explains. “Seaside is one of the factors that convinced him to move here. He was seeking to find his place in the culture here and was naturally drawn to the conceptual rigor of ideas that created Seaside.”
Harbeson’s legacy lives on, having paved the way for artists like Jamie Zimchek, who will reveal her most recent work, Carry On, at the 2025 Seaside Art Walk. “I’m particularly fascinated by personal narratives,” the artist says of her installation. “Our figurative baggage is shaped by literal memory, yet memory, in turn, is mercurial, fleeting and unreliable, tangible only in the form of token ephemera that helps forge a footpath to past history and present identity.”
As the second conceptual artist to show her work in Seaside, in Zimchek’s opinion, there is room to push the “art scene envelope” on the Florida Panhandle. “But that demonstrates that we are capable of it, of doing more, of stretching beyond commercial art to include conceptual and experimental work that can attract a cultured, diversified audience teeming with savvy collectors in search of fresh voices and new ideas.”
Take, for instance, Art Basel, the leading contemporary art fair, which originated in Switzerland and has become increasingly well-known for showcasing large-scale installations and exceptional works of art from both established and emerging artists who shape the art market, influence trends, and raise the profile of the fair’s host cities of Switzerland, Miami Beach, Paris, and Hong Kong. Drawing from an international audience, it is a sophisticated gathering place for the global art world, attracting influential private collectors, museum directors, and art professionals.
Santa Fe, New Mexico, a cultural hotspot and art mecca, is internationally recognized as a top international art city. Alongside New York City, London, and Paris, these cities are most consistently cited for their vibrant art scenes. Each boasts a rich history of artistic innovation, a thriving art market, and a significant number of museums, galleries, and cultural institutions.
By contrast, Scenic Highway 30A boasts a thriving commercial art scene still in the making, one in which art buyers are seeking decorative art to fill their beach homes or to own as keepsakes, not to challenge thought or donate to museums. Our patrons are typically not collectors, but they are buyers–and the local artists have responded by catering to their tastes. There is, however, room for both conceptual and commercial art in Walton County. As la città ideale, Seaside started a movement in town planning that has paved the way for the next global art movement–and it’s ours for the making.
The kind of conceptual and experimental work that makes a movement is not about low-hanging fruit; rather, it’s the risk-taking. “The work at Art Basel and other art fairs with an international pull can be challenging for some viewers,” states Zimchek, who also teaches in the art department at Gulf Coast State College. “But for those up to the challenge, the reward is work that ranges from the anecdotal humor of Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian, a banana with duct tape that sold for $6.2 million at an art auction last year, to Doh Ho Suh’s ethereal, gallery-sized home-scapes, to the exquisite line work of Christina Quarles.”
The interest in ideas over aesthetics is visible in Zimchek’s work, where quotidian elements such as notebook paper and wood in her Seaside installation rub shoulders with traditional bronze, but also less traditional materials such as diamonds, hair, allergy meds, and a red carpet. Zimchek explains that, though this work might at first appear minimalist, the discerning viewer will find there’s far more to it than meets the eye.
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SEASIDE NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOL art teacher Liza Snyder will showcase 40 works of art created by her sixth-grade students. Students studied artist Paul Klee to learn about stylized artworks, then walked Seaside for reference photos to create symbols that represent the town. Paul Klee’s work is known for simple shapes, suspended fish, moon faces, eyes, arrows, and quilts of color, which he orchestrates into fantastic and childlike yet deeply meditative works. https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/paul-klee-1879-1940
BRADLEY COPELAND received the South Walton Artist of the Year Award 2023-2024 and was the featured artist of ArtsQuest 2024. Since her debut in 2019, Copeland’s participation in countless exhibitions and events has made her a familiar and respected name throughout the community. Celebrated for her evocative work and creativity in self-expression, Copeland’s art has attracted devoted collectors from all over the world, including notable clientele like country music star Lauren Alaina. Her work has also attracted collaborations with prestigious brands, such as customizing shoes for Golden Goose and artist pop-ups at Anthropologie. She supports the Prison Art Program, a key initiative of the CAA’s Healing Arts initiative.https://bradleycopelandstudio.com/
CHRISTON ANDERSON is well known along the Gulf Coast for his distinctive paintings, which mix abstract and realistic images with collage and found objects. His art blends technical precision with creative freedom, producing intuitive works that evoke faded memories and vibrant social commentary. Anderson employs a variety of traditional mediums to craft pieces that invite interpretation, describing his work as “a conversation with the viewer” complete only when the audience engages with it. https://christonanderson.com/
PATRICIA ANDERSON is the 2025 Seaside Prize featured artist. An interior designer from the Midwest, her firm, Design Decisions Studio, was founded in South Bend, Indiana, where the artist has strong ties to the University of Notre Dame. She studied art history and drafting at Indiana University, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. A burgeoning artist who liberated her creative side after attending a watercolor workshop in Provence, France, in 2024, Anderson moved to Walton County in 2022. Enamored by the emerald water and crystal sand of the Forgotten Coast, she paints a variety of life and landscapes that summon the beautiful abstractions of coastal beach living. https://www.designdecisionsstudio.com/
MATTHEW ROGERS is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is deeply rooted in personal expression and the pursuit of beauty in everyday life. Growing up on a farm in rural southern Alabama, he developed a keen eye for detail and an appreciation for craftsmanship, inspired by the intricate quilting creations of his mother and grandmother. Their dedication to artistry and precision sparked his lifelong passion for creative exploration. Matthew’s artistic journey spans various mediums, including photography, embroidery, and woodworking. His work serves as both a reflection of his experiences and a means of healing, with creativity becoming a therapeutic outlet. In 2021, seeking solace and renewal, he moved to Walton County, embracing teh serene coastal landscapes as a source of inspiration.
JAMIE ZIMCHEK is an international artist based locally on Lake Powell, with a multi-disciplinary practice heavily influenced by her fundamentalist childhood and years spent internationally as a freelance writer, photographer, and educator. Much of her work revolves around an exploration of the popular narratives, promulgated by dominant systems in private and public domains. She is particularly interested in the ways these systems use calculated storylines to protect their authority, often falling back on absurd social constructs to protect deeply entrenched self-interests. Zimchek has an MA in Mediterranean Studies from King’s College London and an MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts. https://www.jamiezimchek.com/
Presenting: Carry On, 2025. Notebook paper, wood, bronze, teeth, diamonds, hair, metal, textiles, plastic, Allegra, red carpet. 6’x15’x3′
In Carry On, Zimchek obliquely references both the baggage we carry while simultaneously offering a comparatively upbeat admonition to continue, to carry on. This work considers the way life’s milestones–and the things we hold close–subtly steer our personal narrative. Conceptually, this connects closely to Zimchek’s interest in the ways in which subjective storylines structure everyday reality. Material choices, such as the inclusion of bronze and diamonds in a piece composed primarily from notebook paper, create a physical tension linking something tangible yet disposable, with the more elusive but enduring impact of memory, represented here by sentimental tokens symbolizing larger, defining life scenarios and their behind-the-scenes power to shape identity.
MARY ELLEN DiMAURO is a seamstress by trade whose artistic medium is antique remnants of tattered, worn textiles ingrained with stories of hand woven fibers. Her unique craft allows the artist to peer into the ritual of family heritage by way of stories relayed from the past and translated through decades or centuries in textiles. The goal of Dimauro’s art is to recontextualize stories into clothing and to allow long lost memories to live on. https://maryellendimauro.com
Creating Live: Bucket Hats. In Various Sizes. Sewn on site from recycled paint-splattered drop cloths from local artists
TIM HARBESON (1964-2022) exhibited his sculpture called Seaside Al Fresco at Seaside’s first conceptual art installation in the Town Square in 2020. Harbeson graduated with honors from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he received a classical education in painting, drawing, and sculpture. His vocation as an artist was unwavering and pure. In addition to the visual arts, he was an accomplished composer and musician, which garnered him a Maine Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship for Music Composition, as well as a devoted following of ardent admirers of his live performances. https://timharbeson.wixsite.com/timharbeson
Presenting: Artificiam, 2018. Wood sculpture. 19”x9”x26”
Gallery proceeds to benefit Emerald Coast Food Rescue (ECFR), formerly known as Destin Harvest, which has bridged the gap between food surplus and local hunger since 2008, delivering large volumes of food donations at no cost to food programs daily within Okaloosa and Walton County. ECFR distributes approximately 200k pounds of food each month for free to 44 recipient soup kitchens, food pantries, foster homes, emergency shelters, low-income after-school youth centers, and Meals on Wheels, as well as to Fort Walton Beach High School and many other amazing efforts. For more information visit: www.destinharvest.org
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