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- AboutJenny Floravita was born to be an artist. She began her studies in painting, drawing, music and dance as a small child, excelling in all. Her life in the San Francisco Bay Area afforded her great exposure to the arts. Jenny won numerous awards as a young artist including four California Governor’s Medallions and four California State Seals, two each for art and dance. After receiving several scholarships, Jenny went on to study and receive her formal art degree through University of California, Santa Cruz. She lived and worked in Santa Cruz as a graphic designer and fine art painter for several years before re-locating to her family’s home town in the Delta. Since 2000, Jenny Floravita’s fine art career has blossomed. She has exhibited in numerous galleries and high-end art festivals. She paints island scenes and tropical flowers in both oil and watercolor. Jenny’s journey in reverse glass painting began in the early summer of 2007 and since then she has added her beautiful custom glass painted chandeliers to her line of oil and watercolor paintings.
- ExhibitionsMarch 10-13, 2011 La Quinta Arts Festival for info and to purchase tickets: 706-564-1244 www.lqaf.com Please check back in the spring of 2011 for additional events.
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Morning Glory House, waimea plantation cottage painting
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Late last month I was blessed to visit Hawaii proper also known as Big Island. Hawaii is a very dynamic, living island. Though our entry and exit to and from the island happened late at night, if you fly in to land during the day you will be able to see how the lava effects the landscape.
This island is still producing shoreline. The lava has a beauty in itself that is hard to describe if you have never experienced standing on and in an immense dried lava bed in person as we did on the grounds of the great 1990 eruption. I’ll have to create a few paintings this year that incorporate the beauty of lava rock.
My husband and I also realized that we really love the East side of the island. It’s the wet side of the island. As an artist who is inspired by the islands, it was great to finally be back on Big Island—it really helped me to reconnect with my chosen subject.
Though the painting featured here does not have lava it does have one of my other favorite elements to paint—the Hawaiian sugar plantation cottage. This piece titled, Morning Glory House is a small canvas, 6″x12″. There is a lot of fun texture on this painting. You can see a couple more details of this fine vignette oil painting under my Mini Paintings category: http://floravitalights.com/portfolio/blue-waimea-plantation-cottage-with-purple-morning-glory-and-pink-flowers/
Red & Orange Tropical Flower Glow, watercolor
8″ x 8.5″ watercolor on rough 300lb Arches paper, 50 plus 6 packing/ship—I’ve shipped my paintings and chandeliers all over the country
Red & Orange Tropical Flower Glow is a watercolor study for possibly a larger watercolor painting. It is on a thick, 300lb rough watercolor paper. Normally I don’t paint on ‘rough’ surface paper so that said, this is a very true contemporary watercolor—though it’s highly realistic, it’s painted very freely, with a lot of layers and vibrant tropical colors.
The torn edges add a lovely element to this painting. Watercolor has always been my first love. I’ve been painting in watercolor for much of my professional career. Though galleries have largely preferred oils I’ve stuck with this exquisite medium through the years, showing them alongside my oil paintings and sometimes exclusively.
My first watercolors were painted at age 11 and I painted exclusively in watercolor for the first 20 years of my painting life. My floral paintings are inspired by tropical flowers. I travel to the Hawaiian Islands most every year and we also grow tropical flowers in my California home garden.
IFDA’s Dining by Design Table Taste & Hop
These images below are of the evening of Dining By Design’s Table Taste & Hop, 2012 at the San Francisco Design Center Galleria. Everything came together beautifully! The IFDA team worked very hard and included team members:
Lauren Shelby— www.spaceswithin.com
Athena Charis—www.athenacharis.com
Diane Nicolson—www.pbd.org
Tim Manning—web.me.com/timothydmanning
Davis Dalbok—Living Green
Jenny Floravita (me)—floravitalights.com
Susan Crane—Bloom Artistry (floral arrangements)
The following evening was the actual dinner for those who purchased seats at 500 and tables at 5,000 and up. Click on the images to view larger and scroll through the entire portfolio.
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- Detail of our troical flower theme
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- Detail of our troical flower theme
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- Our table in it’s prime
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- Detail of tropical flower mural
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- Check out the lovely table setting!
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- Our floral designer tied in flowers on the table with the flowers in the mural
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- Our floral designer tied in flowers on the table with the flowers in the mural
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- Bravo to the entire IFDA team!
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- Bravo to the entire IFDA team!
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- This was a multiple-designer effort!
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- SFDC rocks the Table Taste & Hop!
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- The crystal chandelier costs 20K
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- More shots of our table!
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- More shots of our table!
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- Tim Manning too this shot, and it’s lovely!
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- The evening of the event!
IFDA Dining By Design set-up day, 2012
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- Piece by piece, the table comes together
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- Members of the IFDA team install the mural and prep the table
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- The mural, ready to roll out
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- Tim Manning’s shot of two of our lovely IFDA designers, Athena Charis and Lauren Shelby
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- The San Francisco Design Center Galleria on set-up day
Finally I’ve had a chance to “process” all of my photos from the 2012 Dining By Design event. Our (IFDA) table scape was one of the best! We definitely had a lot of energy in this space and a lot of time and thought went into our Pirates-of-the-Caribbean-meets-Lost theme.
Dining by Design is a national AIDs fundraiser. The event was held at the San Francisco Design Center Galleria.
Click on the photos above to view larger versions.
Floravita’s Reverse Painted Lamps
As corny as it may sound, my rooms no longer feel “complete” without my reverse painted lamps turned on. My first lamps were created for a gallery—Sorrel Sky Gallery in Durango, Colorado—and I felt guilty for not shipping them immediately after completion. Instead, I grew accustomed to them in my living rooms. I was really enjoying the new ambiance that these reverse painted lamps provided.
The photos that I’ve provided here on my website don’t do these lamps justice. I hope, in time, to learn to photograph the true illuminated beauty of these special lamps.
I hand-craft my glass shades here in my studio. A lot goes into each of these reverse painted lamp shades before I begin painting. Even hardware components at the top need to be specially machined here in my studio for these lamps.
The beauty is that these hand painted lamp shades can fit over other bases—for example, an antique base that’s been in the family—as I can provide the hardware that holds the glass.
This particular Tiffany style lamp stands 27″ tall. When they are illuminated, a special glow fills the surrounding area. My rooms feel empty without these lights turned on! I love the splashes of vibrant color and the warmth of the light…so much nicer than I can show here in a photograph. I’m now working to have a few extra reverse painted lamp shades on hand so that I don’t have to ever let go of my only lamps again.
Tropical Flower Mural in Floravita’s Main Gallery Room
I’m going to miss this tropical flower mural in my main gallery room…but alas, all good things must come to an end.
One week from tomorrow this tropical flower mural will be installed at the San Francisco Design Center for the 2011 Dining By Design charity fundraiser.
I think this wall will feel empty after this painting’s release…and I think it’s time to complete a few more tropical flower paintings to show in it’s place…
Floravita Painted Night Lights, grab ‘em while you can!
My hand-crafted, hand painted glass night lights have been a work in progress for over two years. Like anything good, it took me a good solid year to figure out how I would mount the fixtures, what fixtures I would use and how I would approach the painting of my subjects. It then too me another year to paint and create my glass night lights on a regular basis let alone offer them on my website.
My reverse painted chandeliers offer me a large glass canvas to freely paint flowers and mix colors. On the other hand, the night lights only gave a limited amount of space in which to capture my ideas. At first I tried to capture big sections of my chandeliers and compress them into my small glass shapes and that did produce some interesting and original painted night lights that took too long to paint (for what I was charging—keep in mind I cut, slump and cold work each glass shape and in those days I was also creating the backing that attaches to the fixture).
Certain subjects were a hit right away and I continue to offer those in my collection. Others were truly one-of-a-kind and the collectors who purchased those particular pieces got a great deal!
Because each hand painted night light is truly original and unique in it’s own way—no two could possibly be alike—and I allow myself a certain freedom in how I paint them, I don’t post each and every “new” night light that is created on my website. It would simply take too long to do so. A good friend who designs unique jewelery pieces said this, “it’s a grab ‘em while you can get ‘em situation” and that is so true because I’m inspired to create and paint my night lights in batches. When I’m focusing on my chandelier commissions I’m usually not creating night lights.
I am not a production artist so I will continue to paint unique night lights and I’ll continue to allow myself to veer off from my designs and color schemes and yes, some night lights that were “hits” will eventually no longer be offered. After all, I’m an innovative artist and I have to be interested and inspired to create truly unique works! It’s just how it is and I’m true to my work.
Beautiful New, Floravita Reverse Painted Chandelier in Rose Colors
It’s been a very busy month in my studio and I’ve juggled commissioned reverse painted chandeliers, painted lamps and even a mural sized oil painting for a national fundraiser.
In fact, most of the summer season was spent working on commissions. Don’t get me wrong—I love commissions but it’s also very gratifying as an artist to create original works that are ‘new’.
This reverse painted chandelier is inspired by the large 36″ original, Romantic Summer Garden, only it has rose colors throughout and no sky blues. It features roses and peonies flowers. This is a very, very lovely piece in person and I look forward to photographing this work and adding it to my collection on my website.
Tropical Flower Mural for 2011 Dining by Design Finished!
Finally, my tropical flower mural is finished! This is really a very lovely oil painting in person. It has very ‘designer’ colors in the background and will look lovely in our table-scape for the upcoming 2011 Dining by Design, which will be hosted at the San Francisco Design Center Galleria in two weeks.
There will be a preview and taste party. Patrons will bid on the ‘tables’ and then winners will come back on the following night with their dinner party guests to feast. This is a wonderful event and proceeds go to help the AIDS community.
The Preview Party: Table Hop & Taste is Wednesday, November 16, 6—11pm and tickets are 100. Cuisine will be provided by: 25 Lusk, Bar Bambino, Barbara Llewellyn Catering, Bisou, Chef Tyler Stone, Limon and Mission Minis. To order tickets, click here. Stay tuned for event photos!
The art of living life in the ‘now’
It’s so easy to get caught-up in waiting for the future. Every now and then I have to remind myself to live more for “now” and I suspect that many people are the same in this respect. We set goals, reach for them, work hard. As a working artist and a business person I must constantly look into the future and work towards deadlines. A huge part of my business operation revolves around planning for the future and I think that if I didn’t embrace this characteristic as naturally as I do that I wouldn’t be as successful as I am today.
On the other hand my husband is good at living in the “now”. In fact, he excels at it. He’s always working in our lush tropical yard or working on some section of the house or garage improving this or building that… He has a better natural balance in the art of living life in the now. People who are naturally good at this probably have to be born with this trait while others need to concentrate more on the ‘now’ to bring it into their lives.
In the last home that I owned in Santa Cruz I had make a couple improvements that were easy and yet they added a certain quality of life that was, well, nice. The problem was that I didn’t do this until I had decided to sell my home and move back to the Bay Area outskirts. It definitely occurred to me that I could have been living with these improvements all along and I would have really enjoyed them. This was one of those lessons that stays with you——not that I learn these lessons well enough as I promptly went back to focusing my business on the future…so it’s good that I have my husband to help keep us current.
That reminds me, I should go out to my yard and enjoy the scent of the last plumeria and ginger blossoms while they last…
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