RhondaK


Merry-time Native Folk Artist

Let me tell you this, if you're ever in a rough situation with bullies, bad neighbors, failed love, death of loved ones so dear you don't know how your heart can beat without them or the world's shifting under your feet....seriously...laugh. Start laughing. Start painting. Start creating. Start working harder than you've ever worked. When your heart hurts so bad its like glass shards coming through your very soul, that's when you take your dreams even your childhood dreams and put them into your each and every day. Chip away at it like ice on a New York Strip you left in the freezer too long. Pack those dreams around you like life boats and paddle - hard. Grow your hair out. Throw on some flip flops. Watch sunsets. Make a list of what your HAPPY IS. Daily, minute by minute do something that gets you there or you become the person who doesn't need dreams because the NOW is so precious. Dig down. Make something of your heart.

That's where I'm working from...every day. You believe that.

WHO IS RHONDAK? You can always check my resume. That's the dry facts of educational attainment and some instances of stark, mad, naked ambition. I am still a librarian, but now practicing that peculiar faith in an academic setting in Venice, Florida. I left a good paying, though soul crushing job in 2005. That's when life got really interesting. But that isn't really where it all began.

In 2006 I made $6000, had three boats, two pugs, one man and a pretty fascinating life living on board a brightly colored 1950s motorsailor. These things disappeared in pieces, beginning with the one man so that I lived on board for 5 months solo with a mad man trying to do me in with things like cutting my anchor line, stealing my steering wheel and otherwise launching a sort of sea-billy campaign of terror against me. It may be said, all this Folk Artist Bar Sign Painting stuff began there because in order to eat or put gas in my Jeep....I had to do something. And the yacht detailing really failed in a major way.

But that's not where it all began either. But it might be where it looked like it began. But you don't just pick up a brush one day and start painting sign after sign of things about Florida, drinking, living, loving, pugs and all that without having been soaked something serious in all those things.

My life began in Plant City, Florida where I grew up in an agricultural community. My Grandpa was a water witch, strawberry farmer, grape grower, tractor man, bluegrass playing man of all trades. My Great Grandpa was called the "mullet man" as he caught mullet in Tampa Bay and drove them around selling them. He also smoked them. My Uncles made money in their early years selling gator eggs, squirrel meat and all sorts of things that would upset PETA. It's rumored my Florida ancestors up in North Florida were whiskey runners back in the day. My mom and dad stayed married through the years of his fishing, road paving and all of our collective wildness. We were all born with a love for the water, fishing and Florida's natural landscape.

When my beloved father died, my mom began painting and selling with me and my sister, who is actually a fine artist, welder and wild biker woman also joined up for many of my shows.That's where we all wanted to die, but instead found another meaning for "began."

I love painting tiki bar signs. I've hung out at quite a few and I want my work to share the laid low, feeling fine experience that is real Florida no matter what the city or the road. I call the places I can write REmusing zones. I don't just paint, I write a lot of my own work. I spent many years in Tampa Bay running an poetry open mic called "Poetry in the Dark." That daily committment to writing continues and I tell you what, I'll not in my life time ever paint all my bar doodles or words.

I live now on one of Florida's most beautiful Keys between an amazing array of beaches, fish camps, keys and the swamps of Old Florida... I travel Anna Maria and the West Coast, as well as, Flagler Beach and St. Augustine.

This used to be what I woke up to daily back in Cortez.

If you ever need your version of "began"--I'd suggest a serious day on the back dock of the Star Fish Company Restaurant in Cortez, Florida. If you see a dreadheaded girl there--say hello.