Art lovers will visit the Fort Lauderdale studios of pioneering professional artists and attend curated shows and workshops at the Third Avenue Art District’s Annual ArtWalk early next year.

Venues for the February 27 evening event will also include the Girls’ Club Collection art gallery and exhibition space on Northeast Second Street for the curated shows and workshops and the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale.

The ArtWalk will celebrate the work of the eight artists who followed the lead of printmaker Rosanna Saccoccio who moved to the area in 1995. Saccoccio bought a two-story building in the area north of Broward Boulevard and on or around Third Avenue for her studio. The eight artists bought, built or rented studios in the area that soon was dubbed the Third Avenue Art District. It now includes Flagler Village, a popular art/technology, residential/business community.

The district’s roots are in the work of its artists: Francie Bishop Good (photography, painting, video), Tin Ly (sculpture, painting), Mary Lou Siefker (mixed media painting), Madeline Denaro (painting, sculpture), Wilma Bulkin Siegel (portrait, painting, water media), Margi Glavovic Nothard (drawings, models, photography), Michel Pellus (oil painting, macro realism) and Henning Haupt (oil painting, drawing).

In future blog posts about the ArtWalk readers will get to know several artists like Siegel, Nothard, Pellus and Haupt.

Siegel is a retired New York City oncologist whose lifelong passions for medicine and art are reflected in her portraits of survivors of AIDS and breast cancer, the homeless and the elderly.

Nothard is an artist and designer whose work includes public art, architectural projects and large urban sculpture that can be seen throughout Broward County.

Pellus is a Montreal native whose collection of work exclusively in oil—people, still life, graffiti–has a modern photographic appearance.

Haupt is a painter who teaches architectural design at the Florida Atlantic University School of Architecture in Fort Lauderdale.