Ybor exhibit focuses on famous suicides

The Silver Meteor Gallery in Ybor City does not have exhibits regularly, but when it does, you can count on something special — and something you won't see anywhere else.

This time around, the gallery is hosting an exhibit of 13 photographic portraits of well-known people who died too soon, gone from the world by suicide.

Called "Lost Moments: The Art That Never Was," this one-of-a-kind show is the brainchild of Tampa actress and artist April Bender.

"The images are stylized portraits, modeled by artists and actors I know in the community, of celebrities who have committed suicide," Bender said in a telephone interview. "The moment is one that you might imagine could have been captured if there had been a photographer present before the suicide."

The actors brought a wide range of emotions to the various studies, she said, so that all 13 photographs are different in the feelings they depict.

"It's a showcase that reveals many different colors and pain," Bender said. "Some were frightened and out of their mind; some were very calm."

Some are in color; others in black and white.

"We based it on when it occurred in history," Bender said. "Like Virginia Woolf; we don't have a portrait of her in color, so her portrait is in black and white."

All the actors resemble to some extent the person they are portraying. Their interpretation of that pre-suicidal moment was gleaned through study of the character's death and "reading between the lines," Bender said.

Although Bender was responsible for all the art direction, she gives credit to her two photographers, Joshua Hamel and Melissa Wilson, as well as to the artists who portrayed the images.

"We want to make people realize that this is not a disease of one group. This is a disease that reaches out and touches everybody," Bender said.

Meet Bender, Hamel, Wilson and many of the actors at an opening reception for the exhibit, from 4 to 8 p.m. Sunday at the gallery, 2213 E. Sixth Ave., between 22nd and 23rd streets in Ybor City.

Admission is free; donations will benefit the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance.

The exhibit runs through Feb. 4. For information, call Michael Murphy at (813) 300-1722.

Called "Selected Work: Images Created between 1960 and 1970," the exhibit's oils, pastels and drawings present a selection of recurring themes found in Pachner's work. They include variations on landscape motifs, as well as memories derived from Pachner's childhood in Czechoslovakia and his later experiences in America.

Born in 1914 in Czechoslovakia, Pachner has been embraced as a "Floridian" since 1951, when he began to work and live in Florida for part of the year.

A dedicated teacher, he established the William Pachner School of Art in Clearwater in 1957.

The Clayton exhibit is up through March 17 and runs concurrently with the exhibition of Pachner's work from the 1960s at the Tampa Museum of Art, which ends March 18.

The public is invited to a free opening reception of Pachner's work at Brad Cooper Gallery from 2 to 7 p.m. Friday. Brad Cooper Gallery is at 1714 E. 7th Ave. in Ybor City.

For information, call the gallery at (813) 248-6098 or visit www.bradcoopergallery.com

A landscape painter with a master's degree in architecture, the Sarasota-based Wright recently has focused her attention and passion on the national parks of the United States.

"They are a memory of the country's vastness, a record of its history and the closest we have left to unspoiled wilderness," she wrote in a news release.

Many of the works in the Clayton show come from Wright's current project, "Mammoth — an exploration of Mammoth Cave National Park."

Meet the artist and see some of her latest work at an opening reception from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday at the gallery, 4105 S. MacDill Ave. For information call the gallery at (813) 831-3753 or visit www.clatongalleries.net.