The buzz around Vero Beach right now is all about Ballet Vero Beach Artistic Director Adam Schnell, who has crafted a lineup so raw and kinetic for the Riverside Dance Festival, its like an athletic masterclass disguised as high art. You will see dancers push the absolute boundaries of physics, testing their limits right in front of your eyes. As Schnell so aptly put it recently while talking to Willi Miller: "One of the things I love about dance, and one of the things I alwa

VBMA pours three themed cocktails this Friday, August 7 at 6:30 p.m. for Flight Pattern, the latest installment of Art of the Cocktail, the museum's recurring series pairing whatever's on view with a drink menu. This round celebrates James Prosek: At Work, drawing inspiration from birds and the natural rhythms of flight. The exhibit itself is a 70-piece survey of an artist who's spent three decades painting trout, ocean fish, birds and prairie grasses, and who has been referr

If you've been meaning to get more literary in Vero, start marking your calendar now. The Laura Riding Jackson Foundation just released a sneak peek at its coming season, one of its most exciting ones yet, complete with a downtown poetry cookout, a full-day publishing bootcamp, and a book festival unveiling a brand new local anthology, plus a growing lineup of programming for kids and teens all year. Nov. 7: Local Author Book Festival at Vero Beach Book Center. Food trucks, a

It's that time of year again. Every summer, Riverside Theatre and Ballet Vero Beach bring a world-class dance company to Vero Beach, move a group of serious young dancers into rehearsal alongside them, and put all of it on the Riverside Stage together. Year after year, they deliver. This year is something else entirely. Jennifer Kronenberg Meet Jennifer Kronenberg. She trained on scholarship at the School of American Ballet, joined Miami City Ballet as an apprentice at 17, an

Jill Nathanson paints without figures or scenery. There's no subject to speak of, just color, carrying the entire picture on its own. Starting this Saturday, July 25, 20 of her paintings fill VBMA's Schumann and Titelman galleries in a show entirely the museum's own, built in-house, every piece on loan from the artist and her gallery, Berry Campbell. Nathanson works in the Color Field tradition, a school of painting built on the idea that color alone, without shape or subject

James Prosek was ten when he hit a wall that would go on to define his life. He wanted to paint every trout in North America, went to the library for a field guide, and found nothing. So he wrote letters to biologists. He got warm replies, but zero consensus, because new discoveries about trout change too quickly to fit rigid classifications. That's been the central theme of his entire career: the human urge to draw neat, straight lines on a messy natural world that refuses t

1st: Leslie Greenwood, "Summer Breeze" 1st: Tim Hinkle Jr., "Old Garden Delight" 1st: Tim Hinkle Jr., "Swirl of Wonder" While we (and all of Vero) were caught up in Princess Pungent frenzy, McKee Botanical Garden announced the winners of its 21st Annual Waterlily Celebration photography contest. More than 40 entries came in this year, judged across Color, Black & White, and Manipulated categories, with a Youth division and a crowd-voted People's Choice thrown in for good meas

You wont want to miss this one. Next Wednesday, July 8 at 7:30 PM, Grammy-winning cellist Mike Block and a world-class faculty ensemble take the stage at First Presbyterian Church for the first of two mainstage concerts presented by the Vero Beach International Music Festival. Here's what makes Block unusual: he plays cello standing up. He invented a patented strap that lets him walk, move, and dance while performing, and was the first standing cellist ever to perform at Carn

The New York Times calls him "the Audubon of the fishing world." James Prosek published his first book at age 19, featuring 70 watercolor paintings of trout species in North America, produced while an English major at Yale. Three decades later, he's shown at the Smithsonian, the Royal Academy in London, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. On July 11, Prosek will be at VBMA leading a community mural inspired by the flora and fauna of the Indian River Lagoon, a fitting debut fo

A snowman who has spent a decade pining for summer is about to get his wish, in Florida. In June. At Riverside Theatre. What most people don't know about Olaf is how close he came to being something else entirely -- a penguin. Instead, he became a snowman who wants nothing more than to revel in the one season built to destroy him. He'll be holding court at The Loop Kitchen & Bar three Wednesdays this summer: June 24, July 15, and July 22 5:30 to 7:30. The event is completely

Noriko Murai Andreas Marks Pico Iyer Fresh off a landmark season headlined by American Made: Paintings and Sculpture from the DeMell Jacobsen Collection, one of the most celebrated exhibitions in recent VBMA memory, and the museum isn't wasting any time. The 45th International Lecture Series lineup has been announced, and member tickets are already on sale. This season travels east, in conjunction with Hokusai, Hiroshige, Hasui: Japanese Landscapes in Print. Here's the lineup

She will likely do her thing before the next Vero Minute goes out, so watch the livestream here. Last we checked, they were installing yellow caution tape. Make of that what you will! Was this forwarded to you by a friend? Scroll to the bottom of the page and sign up to never miss a Vero minute! Visit the Home page to explore all stories. Visit The Week Ahead to see a curated list of upcoming events.

There is an entire philosophy built around the idea that what breaks you can also make you more beautiful. In Japan, they made it into an art form. When pottery shatters, some artists repair it with gold. The cracks become the most luminous part of the object. The break is the story. That's kintsugi. And this Wednesday, June 17 at 6:30 PM, the Vero Beach Art Club is hosting a kintsugi workshop benefitting The Sheepdog Program, which lives that philosophy every single day. Adr

McKee Botanical Garden has a signature mood. Cultivated calm. Pebble paths. Serene ponds. Last weekend, crowds materialized for the annual Waterlily Celebration, blossoms floating in glassy perfection, everyone behaving themselves. That era is over...at least for the next few days. Meet Princess Pungent. She arrived at McKee just last month, in May, as an unremarkable two-inch spike. She has since been growing nine inches in a single day. She is currently an imposing alien gr

The youngest and oldest in the room: Caliyah Windham, Age 5 1/2, and Ms. Leonora Williams, 106, whose grandmother walked 26 miles to Tallahassee when Union troops announced the Emancipation Proclamation in Florida The story of emancipation in Florida runs straight through Gifford. This past weekend's Journey to Juneteenth celebration at the Gifford Community Center honored that lineage with everything it had. The afternoon was organized by Jonnie Mae Perry, who also serves as

Why does Florida consistently attract the best landscape painters? Audubon arrived chasing native flora and fauna. Harriet Beecher Stowe came for the light. Winslow Homer kept coming back. Something about this place has been pulling painters south for three centuries. VBMA answers that question this Saturday at 1 p.m., kicking off its summer Florida Humanities lecture series with Picturing Paradise. UCF art historian Keri Watson analyzes this history, the undeniable allure of

Florida's history has never had its Yellowstone moment. The crackers, the cattle drives, the scrub, the lagoon and the slow gorgeous ruin of it all. This might be it! A Land Remembered has been Florida's cult novel for forty years. Published in 1984, Patrick D. Smith's book follows three generations of the MacIveys, Georgia migrants who arrive in the Florida scrub in 1858 with nothing and, by 1968, have helped pave over the wild place they once loved. It was nominated for the

Original concept art of Elsa for Disney's Frozen (2013) | Source Calling all families: Riverside Theatre for Kids is bringing Disney's Frozen for an immersive theatrical journey into Arendelle beginning Thursday, June 18 Unlike most Riverside productions which bring professional actors directly from Broadway, Frozen stars our talented local youth from the Riverside Theatre for Kids program -- costumes and props all designed in-house. Audiences will be seated family-style at l

Gallery 14's summer show is here! Titled Coastal Currents, the show begins this Thursday, with the opening First Friday Gallery Stroll reception this Friday, June 5, 5 to 8 p.m. Sarah Eden Houglum's paintings carry the imprint of everywhere she's lived: Hawaii, California, and now Vero Beach, each place absorbed and translated into imagery. Sandy Bachmann arrives with a different background: 23 years in graphic design, then a degree in art education, and a sculpting and ceram

Edward Moran (1829-1901), Summer Morning, New York Bay, 1873. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of the Thomas H. and Diane DeMell Jacobsen PhD Foundation. If you've been meaning to get to VBMA to see American Made, this weekend is your final window, and with America's 250th just weeks away, the timing couldn't be better. The exhibition, closing Sunday June 7, features more than 80 works spanning 250 years, from Hudson River landscapes to Sargent portraits to early modernist abstraction