Annual Report of the South Lake Art League, Inc.

April 2010 - April 2011

Kathie Camara, President

Here is a review of some of the highlights of this past year.

In April we participated in Earth Day Celebrations at both our Cagan Crossings and our Montrose Street locations.  Artists participated in the Arts and Crafts areas and there were demos at the galleries.

We had 2 successful member art shows, a very successful photography show, and a Student/Teacher art exhibit.

SLAL continues to offer weekly classes and monthly seminars and has even hosted some 3 - 5 day ‘big brush' workshops, which bring in studio rental donations to cover the cost of running the gallery.   We have a number of new classes, including kids classes and photography.   We now have instructors contacting us to see if they can teach a class or a workshop.

The Treasure Box program has donated more than 500 treasure boxes to the Shriner's Hospital since its inception.  SLAL hosts a Painting Party where a person (painter or non-painter) can come in to the gallery and for a small donation receive a free art lesson, with all supplies included.  They paint a Treasure Box and donate it back to the SLAL to be sealed and delivered to the Shriner's Hospital for their chronically ill children.

We continue to offer our Montrose gallery wall space for solo artist's exhibits during the times when the Art League does not have a show of it's own.  

SLAL is a member of the Chamber of Commerce and the Clermont Downtown Partnership and participates in events sponsored by both groups for the community.  We participated in the Sidewalk Chalk Art Festival and a couple of Arts & Craft Fairs and Light up Clermont.   We will be participating in the Wine Walk, which will hopefully be every other month.  We are usually open during the Farmer's Market on Sunday, and it is our busiest day, with lots of people stopping in to see what's on exhibit or inquire about classes.

Our Cagan site teamed up with the Cagan Library and Simka's Sweets to host a field trip for almost 60 kids, grades K - 5, in August.  Publix donated grocery bags and the kids painted them for their moms.  We had an art exhibit and a small reception to show the kids art.

We opened a very successful Holiday Fine Art Boutique at Cagan from Thanksgiving to Christmas.  We had 18 artists/artisans who used the Boutique to sell their hand-crafted art and/or crafts.  A spinoff of this Holiday Boutique is our new Artist's Boutique at Cagan.  We are operating as an Artisan's Coop, with the Artisans volunteering to run the boutique.    We are still teaching classes in the back room, encouraging our artisans to teach classes in their crafts.

We continue to team up with Cagan Management for the Farmer's Market and other events at Cagan.  

Our Website is up and running and the minutes and newsletters are posted there for members to read and/or download.  Our classes, seminars, and special events are listed on the site.  

We lost some members, but gained some new members, so our membership is still around 84 members.

The newspapers & local magazines are now carrying more of our press releases and class offerings.