Ummarid “Tony” Eitharong was there, back in the early days of the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts, when artists’ booths filled a few streets in downtown Tampa.
“I remember it vividly,” Eitharong said. “It was 1976, and we were set up on Whiting Street in downtown. Even then, the Gasparilla Festival was big deal.”
Since then, he has participated in 50 of the GFA’s 55 Festivals, and earned several awards at many of them, including Best of Show in 1993, 1998 and 2019. This year, his longstanding commitment to his work, to this Festival, and to the profession of art led the GFA organization to create an award in his name: the Tony Eitharong 50th Anniversary Award, which includes a $2,000 prize awarded to a festival artist.
“Of the many art festivals out there, the Gasparilla Festival is closer to my heart,” he said, crediting not only the caliber of jurors who judge the show (representing top museums and art programs from across the country), but also the awards available.
“The GFA is #1, as far as award money is concerned and that makes the Festival really stand out; it’s a huge attractor for artists,” he said.
Like many artists, Eitharong’s career has moved across art mediums and morphed as inspiration came about. He began with photo-realistic pencil drawings, then expanded to mixed media and multi-media assemblages using found objects before spending the past couple of decades in acrylic abstract art, which are colorful and can be quite large in format. He was recently commissioned by the University of Tampa for a large format abstract – an impressive 18 feet by 30 feet – installed near the lobby of one of their newest buildings.
And he’s not done exploring; he is currently finding he’s more and more interested in the strong geometrics and symmetry found in the Bauhaus movement.
“When I started with abstracts, I absolutely fell in love with it, found it so intuitive,” he said. “But I’m always learning. I work every day, seven days a week, but I’m always asking ‘now what’ so that I don’t get bored, that I stay engaged and inspired.”
Eitharong, whose studio is in Deland, Fla, travels to many festivals, in Florida and around the country. And he says he’ll definitely submit for next year’s Gasparilla Festival of the Arts.
“Gasparilla is always a good show,” he said. “I do well pretty much every year.”
To learn more about Eitharong and his work, please visit: https://ummarideitharong.com/
Story by Sarah Worth. Photos by Will Staples and Marc Dahl.
