Women of Influence

by Jill Duff-Hoppes

“A Snapshot in Time”

When Eliza Pineau Casler paints or draws someone’s portrait, her objective is to not only capture their likeness but to also tell their unique story.

“A portrait evokes that person’s background and experiences, through their clothing and their expression,” says the 64-year-old Eliza, a traditional realist artist. “Portraits are just a snapshot in time, but they can capture so much.”

Born in France, Eliza has also lived in Belgium, Egypt, India, and several cities in the United States. Fluent in French and English, she studied fine art at George Mason University in Virginia but set aside her coursework to marry and raise a family.

After moving to Central Florida in 1990, Eliza earned dual degrees in studio/fine art and graphic design at Valencia College. She worked in the offset-printing field and as a freelance designer and now has a job in the travel industry.

Eliza has been interested in portraiture since visiting the Louvre and Grand Palais museums in France as a child. She also remembers being fascinated by the gold-framed family portraits on display in her grandmother’s apartment in Paris. Little did Eliza know that one day she’d be an artist painting faces for others to study and admire.

“Portraits were moving to me, and so I was inspired to learn the art of portraiture,” says Eliza, who lives in Orlando with her husband, photographer Chris Casler.

The award-winning Eliza paints and draws primarily in oils, charcoals, and pastels and sometimes works in acrylics, too. She frequently exhibits her artwork throughout Central Florida in group and solo shows. Because Eliza thinks it’s important for portrait artists to capture more than faces, she also paints and draws still-life arrangements, images of nature, and pet portraits.

It’s not surprising that Eliza is artistically inclined because her family tree has many creative branches. Her mother dabbled in acting, and other relatives were artists, authors, movie directors, and screenwriters. A great uncle, who perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp, was a portrait artist in France.

Always striving to improve her skills, Eliza has taken in-person and online workshops with master artists she admires. She is also a member of several art groups: the Portrait Society of America, the Florida Women’s Arts Association, the Art League of Daytona Beach, and the Women Artists Group.

In September, Eliza will exhibit a solo show of her work, appropriately titled Face to Face. The showcase of portraits and other artwork will be on display at the Fifth Avenue Art Gallery    in Melbourne.

For her portraits, Eliza prefers to paint or draw from life but also works from sketches and photos to capture her subject’s features and personality. At one point during the pandemic, she even drew a model who posed for artists on Skype.

“Live is better because you get so much more data,” Eliza says. “It breathes life into a drawing. And the more you look, the more you see. Museum-quality portraiture is my highest goal.”

Threads in a Tapestry

Barbara Grodin is giving herself permission to simply play and have fun these days, starting with the textile art creations she loves to make.

The 75-year-old has enjoyed fiber arts as a favorite hobby since childhood. As an adult, she has crafted beautiful contemporary quilts, tallits (prayer shawls) for Jewish clergy and her grandkids, and chuppahs (wedding canopies) for her three children.

For several years, though, Barbara set aside most of her artistic pursuits to be the caregiver for her husband, Jim, who had Alzheimer’s disease. Jim passed away in 2019, and now Barbara is exploring her creative side once again – by making designer pillows for the home décor market.

“I’m just finding a purpose again,” says Barbara, who lives in downtown Winter Park. “I’m sort of rediscovering and reinventing myself.”

Late last year, Barbara began making the pillows, which her friend Gary Lambert sells in a boutique and tea shop right next to his hair salon on Park Avenue in Winter Park. For the meticulously crafted pillows, Barbara uses a different print on each side to add to their versatility. And instead of buying material to make the covers, Barbara uses fabric samples from local interior designers – a clever example of repurposing.

Born and raised in Wisconsin, Barbara learned to sew, knit, and crochet thanks to her mother, grandmother, and home economics classes in school.

“Everybody else hated home ec. I loved home ec and couldn’t wait to get there,” she recalls with a smile.

Although Barbara has always gravitated toward art, she pursued a different path in college. She received a bachelor’s degree in elementary education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and taught elementary school for a few years. Later, she earned a master’s degree in clinical psychology at Marquette University in Milwaukee.

In 1988, Barbara, Jim, and their children relocated to Florida. At around age 50, Barbara became interested in improvisational quilting and then in making tallits. She also experimented extensively, and quite successfully, with hand-dying fabrics using natural dyes.

“When you’re an artist, one thing leads to another, and you can’t wait to try something new and incorporate it into the old,” she says. “My quest has always been to be very minimal and to be very genuine with my art.”

Barbara has studied at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Tennessee and has taken classes with several master artists. She has exhibited her work at venues across the country, and one of her quilts is part of the permanent collection of the Florida CraftArt organization in St. Petersburg. A fun fact about Barbara: in the late 1990s, she was invited to make a Florida-themed ornament that hung on the White House Christmas tree during the Clinton administration.

One of Barbara’s creative inspirations is her mother, who took up oil painting in her 60s and became an accomplished artist.

“She was a role model for me, that you can do this later in life,” Barbara says. “The pillows I’m making now are just right for my state of mind and at this stage of my life. It’s pure enjoyment.”