Sarasota is a place where connections are made. Karl C. Bernhard, a partner at local architecture firm Sweet Sparkman Architects, is a board member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Gulf Coast Chapter. At the previous firm Bernhard worked for in New Orleans, he would often organize “art walks,” turning the firm’s studio into an art gallery where pieces could be auctioned off for a local charity. In Sarasota, Bernhard was looking to do the same thing—it just so happened that SARTQ Artist Collective wanted to do an event with Architecture Sarasota. The team at Architecture Sarasota connected Bernhard with SARTQ and the Reflections silent art auction was born. Held at Architecture Sarasota this past April, Reflections featured the work of SARTQ artists and local artists alike, with the proceeds benefitting the Boys and Girls Clubs of Sarasota and Desoto Counties. The theme of Reflections centers around the use of mirrors to create distinct sculptures—what does self-reflection look like and how can art meld that perception?  “It’s an interesting merging of creativity between artists and architects,” says Bernhard. “Mirrors are a multi-dimensional material—it can purely reflect what’s in front of it or it can make space. As architects, we are space makers. There are different ways of looking at mirrors, either from the beauty of the material itself or from the more ethereal aspects of mirrors themselves.” A submission from a group of Sweet Sparkman architects—Rob Harrison, Mary Alvarez, Mahdi Amhed, Laura Lozano and Bernhard—titled Reflexion is a 22"x12" sculpture of mirror, 3D-printed film and wood, that depicts how self-perception becomes easily fragmented, dismantling the traditional notion of a single-image mirror.  SARTQ artist Ellen Kantro, who works in paintings and dimensional work such as totems and sculptures, used painted cardboard and pieces of a shattered mirror to create her mixed-media abstract piece. “I never plan my work, which is why they are abstract, I never know where they are going. Having something as finite as the requirement to use a certain size mirror in the piece was a challenge for me,” says Kantro. “I had these shards of a mirror I’d broken a couple of weeks prior, and the idea came to me instantly.”Another SARTQ artist, sculptor Ro Daar, took inspiration from Paul Rudolph’s iconic Umbrella House and other visual cues from the mid-century modern style of design. Daar works in contemporary wood sculpture, creating abstractions with large, geometric shapes and patterns. “I began to study mid-century modernism and the work of Paul Rudolph, and realized that a lot of this is very similar to my artwork,” says Daar. “I’m a builder who works with shapes and plays around with a lot of negative and positive space.”   SRQ