Two fresh outlooks

Naples-based photographer Wayne Wilmoth says his unique 3-D images are so laborious and painstaking to produce that most photographers are reluctant to copy his style. Sarasota sculptor Dana Clark says he has recently started exploring the erotic potential of furniture design.

In an exhibit starting Saturday, Sarasota's oldest art gallery will spotlight the quirky pair: Clark for one week, Wilmoth for one month. And while the two artists may seem to have little in common on paper -- aside from a shared taste for subverting traditional media -- they at least share loyalties: both are regular contributors to Art Uptown on Main Street; neither has displayed work anywhere else in town.

"What's kept me from showing elsewhere is that I'm shy," admits the sculptor. Clark, a New Jersey native who once worked alongside his father in condominium management before making art a profession, has served as treasurer for the 26-year-old artists' cooperative for the last two decades. He has been sculpting for more than four.

These days, when he is not helping the makers of Disney on Ice and Ringling's Barnum & Bailey Circus with set construction, Clark can usually be found in his garage studio in Southgate.

"I really enjoy turning a curve," he says. "I just like sculpting things and carving things. I find it sensuous."

Sensuous enough, he says, that he recently started adding erotic flourishes to his usual abstract clay, wood and steel pieces. In the upcoming show, he will present three fairly new creations: a wooden end table sporting "some feminine legs," and two 8-inch ceramic figurines of women striking, well, "figurative" poses.

"They're not obscene or overtly sexual," assures the man who made them.

Still, Clark is grateful for the chance to put his artistic risks on display. The first time he dared trot an erotic sculpture out of the closet and into Art Uptown was two years ago, he says. The debut ultimately got him a call from a prospective patron in Las Vegas and commissions for more erotica.

Clark is not the only one hoping to introduce new styles to the downtown market. Since he relocated to Naples from the San Jose, Calif., area five years ago, Wayne Wilmoth has been trying to get the word out about his unique photo displays.

"What I do really nobody else does," he says. "I do three-dimensional landscapes."

Each tableau is a composite of about eight separate photographs, all cropped and mounted individually on a quarter-inch of sheet plastic and arranged, collage-style, with perspective in mind. In a typical composite, the farthest point on the horizon will be situated farthest away from the viewer.

Wilmoth, a former manager for various Silicon Valley tech firms, has been shooting professionally for more than 25 years now. He says he came up with his new style three years ago, and has already found acceptance at galleries in Sacramento, Denver and Newport Beach.

For the Sarasota market, Wilmoth will debut four pictures of birds -- pelicans and sea gulls -- that he captured on a pier in Naples, and a shot of waves he took in the Caribbean.