09/04/2024
🐝🎻UNVEILING the 6th Annual Painted Violin — “Flight of the Bumblebees” by Jo Sinclair & Bo Sterk
See this masterpiece in person at all EMMA concerts in Lewis Auditorium at Flagler College. The first concert in the 46th season will feature the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet on Sunday, September 15 at 2 p.m. 🎟️TICKETS: emmaconcerts.com
Get tickets in the lobby for a chance to win The Painted Violin. Suggested ticket donation:
$10 for 1 ticket
$40 for 5 tickets
The winner will be announced on April 26, 2025 at the Ocala Symphony Orchestra concert.
🐝EMMA is honored that Jo Sinclair and her husband, beekeeper Bo Sterk, collaborated for The Painted Violin, benefitting the Jack Page Project, which supports music education in our community’s schools!
FROM THE ARTISTS
What’s the buzz behind “Flight of the Bumblebees”, mixed media collage/assemblage of a violin? It is a sweet collaboration between husband and wife team Bo Sterk and Jo Sinclair. Inspired by the famous orchestral interlude of his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Bo and Jo saw the opportunity to combine their talents in this bee-utifully decorated violin. As the sheet music flys around the sky of the image, the violin is enveloped in a garden setting of collaged photographs of flowers by Jo, and buzzing pen and ink drawings of bumblebees. (Clarification: A bumblebee is not the same as a honeybee. One difference? It’s larger and fuzzier.)
Long time residents of St. Augustine, Florida, Sterk and Sinclair moved to this once sleepy town as professional artists from Cleveland, Ohio. In the beginning, they traveled the country successfully participating in nationally recognized art festivals, exhibiting in galleries and museum shows. Bo’s mediums included graphics and printmaking, Jo created mixed media drawings, paintings, and sculptures.
After their daughter Zoë was born, Bo, who still draws in his sketchbook almost every day, found the path into his second love of botany and entomology. Smitten by the art and science of the social organism we call honey bees, and the need for bee education in undeveloped countries, he volunteered for FAVACA, Florida Association for Volunteer Action in the Caribbean and the Americas.
This experience evolved into forming his own non-profit Bees Beyond Borders, BBB, to continue the bee education work in underdeveloped countries throughout the Caribbean and beyond. Bo is one of three Florida Masters Craftsman Beekeepers in the state. He is President of Bees Beyond Borders, BBB and lecturer/educator of beekeeping, development and sustainability. He is also former president of St. John’s County Beekeeping Association, Florida State and American Bee Federation Beekeeping Representative. He has his own apiary, and with the help of his bees, harvests and sells Beeboy Honey.
Jo decided at the time to add teaching to her practice, running small local children’s art camps and classes, and joined the roster of Butterfield Garage Gallery, BGG for several years. She taught at Flagler College, former Art Institute of Jacksonville, and Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. And was an arts integration specialist. She is in the boards of BBB, Atlantic Center for the Arts and Art With a Heart in Healthcare. Jo is a professional studio artist/photographer, art educator and lecturer, design and creative consultant.
Bo Sterk and Jo Sinclair “bee”-lieve in giving back and are “buzzed” about being able to contribute to raising funds for the arts, on this chord the music education programs in St. Augustine.
