Galas: Artful efforts at Bonita home benefit Habitat for Humanity

You know you’re going to have an amazing evening when you see a mountain view in front of a Bonita Bay home.

Make that “Mountain View,” an acrylic-on-masonite painting by Jim Plesh. The color-splashed abstract welcomed visitors to a Habitat for Humanity fund-raiser Wednesday — part party, part art sale.

Guests wandered an improvised art gallery around the home and lanai of Frank and Sandi Paniccia, munching on bruschetta, Swedish meatballs and miniature crab cakes created by Blue Moon Cafe owner Sammy Bajrak and sous chef Eric Salmons. Nearby, a team piled crusts with pizza fixings, offering outdoor oven-fired squares to the guests. Later in the evening, the Paniccia’s son, Nick, was scheduled to provide entertainment as a “Fiddler on the Roof,” performing above the crowd.

But the main attraction was the eclectic art: Plesh’s large-scale works with an undercurrent of earth tone; Ruth Dwyer’s colorful, music-inspired abstracts, detailed pastels from Ruth Ann McLaughlin and Sandi Paniccia’s own varied-medium works.

Sheet-covered screens snaked around the lanai covered with works from abstract reactions to Hurricane Katrina to soft Lake Michigan shores and dreamlike digital photographs.

“We don’t paint together,” said Dwyer, whose background inspirations tend to be classical themes, “but we decided to show together. And we’ve become really good friends from this.”

Paniccia, who had held a similar exhibit and fundraiser several years ago, came up with the proposal when the others invited her into the show. Her last exhibition had made $15,000 for Hospice, and Paniccia was optimistic about equally good chances for this show.

“All the people working in the kitchen are just friends who have volunteered,” she said. “Blue Moon donated all the food.”

Paniccia said her art isn’t her livelihood: “I paint for the Lord. I donate what I make to charity,” she said. Plesh, on the other hand, is a professional who owns a gallery in Boston. He said he had shipped down 25 paintings for the show.

Habitat was a favorite cause among the quartet, all of whom live in Bonita Bay.

To donate the money to it “was a very quick, collective thing,” recalled Plesh. “Once it was mentioned, we didn’t even discuss it.”

At least some of them donate time as well as money; Dwyer said she’s scheduled to do some carpentry work at a Habitat home next week. The bonus of this show, she said, was getting to know three other neighbor artists.

“We’re all creative people,” she said, handing out red stickers to people marking her paintings for purchase. “We had a lot of fun and made four friendships that are going to last a long time.”