Transcript beginning at 0:13 : I just want to welcome all of you here. Thank you so much for coming out to the Art Center. We are so excited tonight! Hot off the press is our 2017-2018 Season of Events. So I just wanted to let everyone know that. We are celebrating our 10 year anniversary this season. So make sure you grab a copy of our season brochure so you can come out and enjoy some of our wonderful events that we have tonight. And tonight is no exception. One of our favorite evenings of the month is Art Walk where we have a new exhibition every month and tonight we have the city art grant recipient group exhibition that’s featuring the 2017 recipients as well as past recipients. and tonight we also have some special performances for you. I’d like to introduce to you public art consultant and here on behalf of the public art committee,Tom Hall. Thank you Melissa. And welcome everyone. As Melissa said, my name is Tom Hall and I am here representing the public art committee. And its the committee that administers the individual arts grant program. Before I make just a few comments about what that program is all about. first I’d like to extend our deep appreciation to the Sidney & Berne Davis Arts Center and Jim Griffith. Thank you for hosting this wonderful event and let’s have a round of applause for Jim Griffith. Now the works that you see before you tonight took a lot of thought and a lot of effort and a lot of creativity on the part of the artists. But it’s almost an art form in itself to be able to put together such a diverse and eclectic show as this in a way that makes sense and that takes a very talented and gifted curator and we’re very lucky that the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center has Shawn Ayotte who hung this show. So Shawn certainly deserves a round of applause for doing that. And then last but not least the public art committee would like to thank the Southwest Community Foundation, southwest Florida Community Foundation that is our partner in receiving grant applications and reviewing those grant applications and then dispersing grants to qualified artists. so to Sara Owen and her staff: Thank you very much for your input and your help. We appreciate it. So you may be wondering, why does the city of Fort Myers actually dole out money to individual artist to help them with their work. And there’s a couple of different reasons why we do that. One of the most obvious is that we’re trying to establish a standard of living that everyone can enjoy, that is created that is uplifting and that is inspiring …but But quite frankly there’s also economic reason why the city of Fort Myers supports individual artists. Thanks to a report that we’ve just issued by the Americans for the Arts in cooperation with the Alliance for the Arts we now know that in the Year 2015 alone the not-for-profit arts and culture segment of our local economy was responsible for generating nearly 50 million dollars of revenues for the city of Fort Myers. From that amount 32.2 million dollars went into the income of local residents. We generated 6.7 million dollars in local and state tax revenues and we supported almost 1,400 full-time equivalent jobs. So as Lydia Black with the Alliance for the Arts is fond of say the arts really do mean business here in Lee County. All right, so I’m going to get out of your way now. You’ve probably heard enough of me. We have to have some exciting performances for you tonight and we’re going to begin with an art performance piece by Lily Hatchet and David Hatchet and with accompaniment by the renowned Kat Epple.
