2024 Halifax Art Festival Judges

Jack Hill

Jack Hill is a master of fine art in bronze sculpture. His imagination and old world wax technique show his skill as a sculptor. Jack lives in DeLand, FL. Jack Hill Sculpture specializes in bronze statues and bronze sculptures from desktop sculptures to life-size statues. Custom sculptures are a specialty. Bronze Sculpture, DeLand, art for sale, fine artist, contemporary art, garden statues for sale.

Jack Hill draws on his background as a magician and mime to create classical and comical works of art.  He had the good fortune to work with renowned mime Marcel Marceau in France and it taught him how to tell a story in a series of motions.

As a sculptor, he must select just one moment to convey his message.  Jack delights in the fact that his pieces rarely finish exactly as he first envisions them, they evolve as he is sculpting and when something wonderful happens that he hadn’t anticipated, he is thrilled with the result.

Hill likes to demonstrate how he works from clay to wax to the final bronze piece, and what inspires his sculptures.

Karlene McConnell

Karlene McConnell is an artist born in Pittsfield, MA and currently living in Ormond Beach, Florida. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art Education from the University of Central Florida. She is a former special education art teacher and museum curator. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows from New England to the Miami art fairs and is found in several corporate and private collections including Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, NY and the permanent Lemerand Collection at Daytona State College, FL. 

Karlene’s perceptions of nature are explored through gestural paintings. It has been said that this work serves as a bridge between the expectations of realism and the freedom of abstract expressionism.  Nontraditional palettes are chosen to create conversations between cool and warm tones and to energize the compositions.

“McConnell uses her experiences of the real world to recreate the joy, excitement and even the magic of a walk in the woods. When she is “in the zone” she is exploring the interaction of vibrant colors or making simple marks that mimic nature and are pleasing to look at. Harking back to Matisse, we hear a similar theme: Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the diverse elements at the painter’s command to express his feelings. This is about as close to a manifesto that we can imagine for the wild beasts (Les Fauves never wrote one) and it applies to McConnell as well. This kind of painter makes no effort to desaturate or blend but allows pure color, even discordant ones, to ring out at a maximum intensity.” – Dr. James Murphy -original Director of the Atlantic Center for the Arts & former Art Professor Florida State University