Winter Park festival draws thousands

Sometimes even bugs and butterflies think Ronnie Hughes’ glass-sculpted flowers are real.

“We get a lot of confused insects at my booth,” said Hughes, of North Carolina. “They’ll camp out on some of my pieces, and I know I’m frustrating them because there’s no scent to my flowers.”

Amid about 200 artists at Winter Park’s annual Sidewalk Art Festival, Hughes’ hand-torched collection of wildflowers drew the eyes of many of the thousands of festivalgoers.

The festival is known as one of the largest and highest quality in the state.

For Hughes, who crafts vibrant wildflowers with a torch that melts glass at a scorching 3,000 degrees, the Winter Park show is among the most competitive he attends.

When he was a child, Hughes, 62, said his mother would drag him to her flowerbed to help her work. But it wasn’t until he went for a hike years later as an adult that he appreciated the flowers’ beauty. He stumbled across a patch of about 200 rare lady slippers in full bloom and knew he had to try to make his own.

“I really didn’t like digging holes or weeding or anything like that, so when I started doing wildflowers, it was like the spirit of my mother coming through,” Hughes said.

The showhands awards, worth $72,500, to artists.

Judges selected a piece by Richard Currier called “Best Horizon 2018” as its Best of Show winner.

Currier said his style is hard to explain but has led to him winning the distinction in about a dozen other shows.

“I focus primarily on the space between the trees, the water and the sky,” Currier said. “So it’s not so much the subject itself, but painting the atmosphere.”

Heidi Thampert, a photographer from Titusville, out 63 about won the Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation Award. Jim Parmentier, from North Carolina, won the Morse Museum Award for Distinguished Work of Art for a clay piece dubbed “Bulbous Vessel.”

Ocoee-based sculptor Katherine Mathisen was one of 10 artists to receive the $2,000 prize for an Award of Excellence.

Judges lauded her piece “Companions,” which is a rust-colored depiction of more than a dozen people looking in various directions.

“It’s about how we’re all here together in this time and space, and we’re all companions whether we like it or not,” she said.

For Hughes, a trip to Florida means a chance to see orchids and other flowers he doesn’t often see in his home in the mountains of North Carolina.

“I just have a wealth of inspiration,” Hughes said, “All I have to do is go for a walk or go to a botanical garden. I get all sorts of ideas for new flowers to do.”