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The Marco Town Centre Mall celebrated two unveilings Thursday in the Marco Island Foundation for the Arts’ ArtQuest 2008. The Town Centre Mall also held a Customer Appreciation Day on Thursday in concert with this season’s inauguration of ArtQuest and Blue Mangrove Gallery held an unveiling of its own with local artist Tara O’Neill.

“Blue Mangrove Gallery is a very interesting gallery,” MIFA board member Claudi Klug-Kowel said Thursday at O’Neill’s unveilings. “They have things that you won’t see anywhere else.”

“We were approached by Marco Island Foundation for the Arts to sponsor a sculpture for ArtQuest — the Island-wide event,” President of the Marco Town Centre Mall Merchants Association Christie Marcoplos, owner of Blue Mangrove Gallery, said Thursday. “And we chose to sponsor two sculptures. All of the merchants chose to participate in the sponsorships. And we are all very excited to have community involvement and bring the Marco Town Centre Mall back into the public eye to offer community-sponsored events, as well as to continue other events.”

“The Town Centre is actively planning different events for 2008,” Marcoplos said. “And we’re going to have a great bunch of varied musicians on Wednesday nights.”

ArtQuest 2008 Chairperson JoAnn Sanborn thanked Marcoplos, Georgie’s and the Marco Town Centre Mall Merchants for their support of ArtQuest 2008 at the mall’s first unveiling.

“As the community grows there is more need for something beyond the beach, and this is one of those things,” Sanborn said before helping to unveil the two sculptures that will stand through April at the Marco Town Centre Mall.

After Marcoplos accepted a plaque on behalf of the Mall merchants from Klug-Kowel in gratitude of their sponsorships, the unveilings of “Renewal” by Mindy Colton and “Exhaling” by Lisa Ruttan Wolff were presented to applause from the crowd that gathered Thursday for each unveiling at the mall.

Colton, of Orlando, originally of New York City, won Best of Show and the People’s Choice with “Renewal” in the 2006 Kissimmee Outdoor Sculpture Experience. “This is the largest sculpture I’ve ever made. And it’s been a very successful piece for me,” she said. “I uninstalled it in Kissimmee on Oct. 31. And the next day drove it down here. And I’m very excited that Marco Island Foundation for the Arts is doing this exhibit. I think it’s absolutely wonderful to support the arts and bring arts into the community.”

On the other hand, Ruttan Wolff of Norris, Tennessee, is originally from St. Petersburg, Fl. She said the exhibition of “Exhaling” was a homecoming for both her and her art.

“What’s fun is that I was raised in Florida and this is the first time that my work has been shown in Florida, and its just amazing for me,” she said. “Quite often you can see the ocean and influence of being raised in Florida in my sculptures. And quite often ocean life will surface in my work and that’s the case with this piece.”

She continued, “I was imagining looking up from the bottom of the ocean and seeing the water playing and as you exhale the bubbles floating to the surface of the water. And I hope she encourages people to sit still for a moment and take a deep breath and the most important thing is to float to the top and that’s what I’d like for her to be able to do for the people who view her.”