2006 Wooden Boat Show Poster: Joseph Cave

Artist Joseph Cave's original oil painting, "Sailboat on the Sampit River", was photographed to create this year's Wooden Boat Show poster and T-shirt design.

The original oil on linen was auctioned at the Big Blow Auction to benefit Georgetown's Maritime Museum.

Born in Columbia, SC in 1936, Joseph Cave attended the University of Georgia (Athens, GA) where he studied painting from 1954-58. He went on to attend the San Francisco Art Institute (San Francisco, CA) and received a BFA in Fine Arts in painting in 1962, and a Master of Arts in 1964 from San Francisco State University.

Cave has taught at several institutions including the Memphis Academy of Art, Southwestern at Memphis, San Francisco Art Institute, and San Francisco State University.

Joseph Cave's landscapes and still life's have been in numerous one-man exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad. He is inspired by early landscape artists, American scene painters, and French Impressionists.

To view more paintings by Joseph Cave visit the Cheryl Newby Gallery in Pawleys Island, South Carolina or online at www.cherylnewbygallery.com.

2005 Wooden Boat Show Poster: Kaytee Esser

Artist Kaytee Esser was commissioned to create the art used for this year's Wooden Boat Show poster and t-shirt design. Esser's original watercolor captures the fun and excitement of the final segment of the Wooden Boat Challenge boatbuilding competition – the rowing relay. This race across the Sampit river determines the seaworthiness of the finished boats as well as the rowing ability of the boatbuilders.

Esser, a Hilton Head resident who lives and works on her boat, describes her style as "colorful and impressionistic with a splash of the erotic." Kaytee paints mainly boats, people and animals. She enjoys working in pastel, watercolor, gouache and acrylic, but has a preference for oil because she is able to paint in all weather," cold or hot, windy or not."

Esser is a member of the Portrait Society of America, American Society of Marine Artists and the Hilton Head Artist League.  Her paintings can be seen at shows throughout the southeast.

You can access Kaytee Esser's Online Gallery by clicking on the poster.

2004 Wooden Boat Show Poster: Pat Schirtzinger

By Jason Lesley
GEORGETOWN TIMES

When Litchfield Beach photographer Pat Shirtzinger saw the rowboats tied up along the Harborwalk in Georgetown, he knew he had the elements of a good photograph.

There was the art of the boats themselves and the sense of place provided by the town’s clock tower in the background.

He leaned as far back on the floating dock as he dared and clicked the shutter on his Olympus digital camera. He had a winner. Shirtzinger’s photo was selected for the 15th annual Georgetown Wooden Boat Show’s poster.

Pat and his wife Susie moved to the Litchfield Country Club area a little over five years ago after he retired from Lucent Technology in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. They had been vacationing in the Litchfield area for 35 years and bought a lot in 1987. “We fell in love with the place,” Pat says. He spent many vacation hours shooting Litchfield scenes that are long gone from view these days.

As his children began to excel in sports, Pat got more interested in photography. Today, each of his three children and their families have their own wall of photos in the Shirtzinger home. There’s daughter Stephanie and her husband, Duncan Puffer, with sons Luke and Lance of Duluth, Minn. And son Patrick and wife Susan with children Patrick, Ashley and Loren of Mansfield, Ohio. And daughter Natalie and husband, Steve Fox, with son Zachary in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. Pat even shot his daughters’ weddings.

The Shirtzingers have other hobbies. She paints and he does some woodworking. He just finished a rocking moose for one of his grandsons.

2003 Wooden Boat Show Poster: Bob Likes

By Jason Lesley
GEORGETOWN TIMES

When artist Bob Likes of Surfside Beach visited Georgetown about a year ago, he admired a model of the Brown's Ferry Vessel [a flatbottomed sailboat used on rivers during the 1700's] in the front window of the Rice Museum on Front Street. "That would make a great painting," he remarked to a friend. Likes, a retired technical illustrator and engineer, combined the old wooden boat and a live oak he had admired at Brookgreen Gardens into a river scene oil painting he called "Slower Times." That painting was selected for the Fourteenth Annual Wooden Boat Show poster.

Likes has been painting since his childhood, spent in the northern Kentucky town of Erlanger, just seven miles south of Cincinnati. He studied at the Central Academy of Commercial Art under artist Pop Storey in the days before photography was widely used in commercial art. He married childhood sweetheart Janet while he was in military service in Aiken, oddly enough, and they moved to southern California in 1961. For an artist, Likes says, "The West is a beautiful place to live. That's where I developed the techniques and the pallet of colors I prefer." The Sierra Mountains were particularly fascinating for Likes, and he wrote and illustrated a book on silver mining around Cerro Gordo, Calif., and the Owens Valley. In 1991, Bob and Janet decided to move east to be near their children and settled in the Myrtle Beach area.

2002 Wooden Boat Show Poster: Nancy Bracken

Nancy Bracken's painting titled "Rearview of the Underdog" was created with water based paints applied to a slick plastic surface called yupo- the result is a melange of color effected by the artist's limited control over the flow of paint on the shiny, textureless surface.

Nancy was born in Jamestown, N.Y. She attended Jamestown Community College, Fredonia State University, and earned a masters degree from New York State University. She and her husband, John, moved to North Litchfield six years ago. She is a member of Low Country Artists, the Georgetown County Watercolor Society, and the Waccamaw Arts and Crafts Guild. Her work ranges from painting and collage, to quilting and dollmaking. Nancy's creations can be found at the following area galleries: Art Works in the Litchfield Exchange, South Wind Gallery and the Gray Man Gallery in Pawleys Island, Burroughs and Chapin Gallery Gift Shop in Myrtle Beach, The Original Hammock Shop in Pawleys Island, and the Bath and Etc. Shop in Pawleys Island.


2001 Wooden Boat Show Poster: Kathy Amspacher

The 2001 Wooden Boat Show Poster is the work of artist Kathy Amspacher.

.Amspacher, a nurse and social worker by profession, has been painting since she was a child. She and her husband settled in Pawleys Island two years ago after having lived in a log cabin in the mountains, then on their 37' sailboat for 10 years while cruising the Intracoastal Waterway.

She has fond memories of anchoring in Georgetown's harbor.

Although she has a special affinity for boats and life on the water, she found it difficult to pursue her art while living aboard the boat. She says, "It was just time to become land- lubbers."

Kathy is now a full time artist. She has exhibited her paintings at the Georgetown Art Gallery and at Southwinds Gallery in Pawleys Island. She also paints commissioned works.

2000 Wooden Boat Show Poster: Charles Walker

Artist Charles Walker is originally from New York
and made the move to the South Carolina coast
eight years ago. He graduated Cum Laude from Syracuse University with a Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts. He worked for over 40 years as an illustrator and advertising artist before his retirement and subsequent move south. He is the father of five children and has been married for 55 years

Walker'sartwork was originally a sketch for a painting
he planned to do. After completing the preliminary drawing he started playing with color splashes creating the award-winning work of art.

Charles says that he has always had " a love of the sea. I think there must be saltwater in my veins."