Garwood Neighbors Win Top Watercolor Awards

In an unusual twist, the top watercolor awards in the 2011 Union County Senior Art Show went to painters who live within 100 feet of one another in a small condominium in Garwood.

The first prize for watercolor in the professional category was given to Dante Bonardi for “Shadows Reflected.” The top watercolor award in the non-professional category went to Bill Connolly for “Shades of Millbrook.” Both artists live at The Pointe, a small townhouse development in Garwood.

Dante Bonardi, 77, worked for RJR Nabisco for 27 years, most recently as director of TV commercial production. He later was a partner in the ad agency WLD Communications before retiring in 1996. After retirement he began painting again after a 50 year hiatus, concentrating on watercolor. He has studied with Robert Heyer, Robert Saxson, Tony Van Hasselt and Christine Calandra, among others.

His work has been purchased by private collectors and has appeared in exhibits at the New Jersey Watercolor Society, the Somerset Art Association, Ocean County College and other venues. He is an associate member of the New Jersey Watercolor Society.

Bill Connolly, 73, spent almost 40 years as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Minneapolis, Houston, Detroit, Norfolk and New York. He retired in 2001 as a senior editor of The New York Times.

Since his retirement, he has studied drawing with Rhoda Yanow, Frank Falotico, Christine Myshka and Alex Piccirillo and watercolor with Sandra Frank. His work is in a dozen private collections around the country. He is a trustee of the Millburn-Short Hills Arts Center and a member of the Livingston, Scotch Plains-Fanwood and Westfield art associations.

The 2011 Union County Senior Art Show attracted 129 entries in nine categories. Its initial exhibition, at the headquarters of the Elizabethtown Gas Company, closed on July 16, but paintings and drawings that won first-place awards will be on view until Aug. 24 in the Freeholders’ Gallery on the sixth floor of the Union County Administration Building in Elizabeth. In September, the first-place winners will join a statewide exhibition at Meadow Lakes in East Windsor, with the winners of that competition to be announced at a reception on Oct. 28.