Anja Palombo creates life each and every day. The artist, who specializes in ceramics and painting, recently opened her latest exhibition, Composed at Art Center Sarasota. Palombo hails from Hamburg, Germany, and owns a studio in Sarasota, teaching ceramics to adults. Composed marks Palombo’s first time showing her pottery and painting at the same time. “When I worked full time, I tried to have a show every year and it would alternate between painting or sculpture,” says Palombo. “Before they felt like two separate things but now they are ideas bounding back and forth.”

Palombo’s sculpture and painting are both defined by shapes, a warping of patterns often seen in nature. When visiting her parents in Germany, Palombo says, she does not have access to a ceramics studio—without the pottery wheel, Palombo turns her focus to painting. In Composed, paintings made from dye, acrylic and colored pencil, mirror the structure of her ceramic sculpture. “When you work on the wheel, there’s symmetry because the wheel is round and then you disrupt that symmetry and start bending and warping it which makes things more interesting. Then you cut the piece of clay and have one left over that makes you think, ‘hmm, what I can do with this piece?’” says Palombo. “With painting, I started doing the same thing that I did with ceramics with pieces of paper, cutting shapes and negative spaces from those shapes and juxtaposing them with each other. Then I began to paint the shapes themselves.”

Palombo frequently takes inspiration from mundane objects—the curve of a lampshade, the angle of a table edge—and incorporates them into her sculpture and painting. These universal shapes, Palombo attests, are often those that are most overlooked, yet possess innate beauty. “We live our lives with our heads in computers all day and we fail to see shapes everywhere that are so simple and so outrageous,” says Palombo. “Look at the shadows or the clouds—I even took a tea tray at one point and started to trace it because it looked so cosmic to me.”

Anja Palombo: Composed, May 21-July 31, Artist Talk June 26, Art Center Sarasota, 707 N Tamiami Trail, Sarasota.

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The Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall is thrilled to welcome Vince Gill, one of the most celebrated artists in modern country music, with his 50 Years From Home tour playing Friday, June 26, 2026 at 7:30pm. Tickets start at $85and can be purchased at VanWezel.org, by calling 941-263-6799 or by visiting the Veteran Air Box Office at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall Monday through Friday between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. and Saturday from 10am to 4pm. 

Join us for Botanical Briefings with Bruce Holst, Vice President for Botany at Selby Gardens, as he describes the research and conservation efforts of the institution over its 5+ decades at our Downtown Sarasota campus. Selby Gardens has been a leader in the discovery and description of previously unknown species of plants for science in the tropical Americas, particularly epiphytes, or “air plants.” In addition, he will discuss its important role in documenting plant diversity and distribution to promote conservation, and how Phase II of Selby Gardens’ Master Site Plan will enhance its work.

Plant Diversity, Conservation and the Future of Selby Gardens, Wednesday, June 10, 11am - 12pm. 

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Sol LeWitt (1928–2007), a leader of the American Minimalism and Conceptual Art movements, famously declared that “the idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” This concept is front and center in a new solo exhibition dedicated to LeWitt’s extensive printmaking practice, “Beautiful Ideas: The Prints of Sol LeWitt,” on view now through October 25, 2026, at Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design.  More at SarasotaArtMuseum.org.  

Selby Gardens is honored to partner with the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation to announce the continuation of the Virginia B. Toulmin Leadership Scholarship, available for the 2026-2027 academic year.  

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The Ringling relies on donors such as you to help support our operations and programs that inspire, educate, and entertain.Thanks to the generosity of The Bolger Foundation, you have the opportunity to help us raise funds through a Challenge Grant to facilitate the restoration of Ca'd'Zan from the hurricane damage sustained in the fall of 2024. Every dollar contributed through this fund gets us one step closer to receiving a $222,000 grant from The Bolger Foundation for Hurricane Helene Damage Repair and Restoration of Ca'd'Zan. 

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