GOOD NEIGHBORS: CLAUDIA O’BRIEN
Inside The Artist’s Mind Claudia O’Brien’s beautifully fantastic art allows her to “disconnect from the real world” into a space where the tiniest detail can reveal amazing depths and layers. BY RICHARD ANGUIANO • PHOTOS BY STEVE FLOETHE
C
laudia O’Brien’s name should be familiar to Ocala’s Good Life readers through her years of work as a contributing writer. Last year, Claudia retired from freelance writing but still pursues creative outlets: photography and digital art. “I’m kind of glad I don’t have deadlines anymore,” says Claudia, 78. “I wanted to be able to spend more time with my grandchildren and my art.” Claudia’s career in media dates to the early 1960s in her native Miami. She met her husband of 55 years,
20
Steve Floethe, also an Ocala’s Good Life photographer, in the newsroom of WCKT TV (now WSVN 7) in Miami. She was a newsroom assistant, and he was a fledgling reporter and the host of weekend interview programs. Steve’s career as an anchorman and TV reporter took the couple to Sarasota, Panama City; Albany, GA; and Fort Myers. Along the way, Claudia worked as a newspaper reporter covering hospitals and writing feature stories and later founded a public relations firm. The couple’s busy schedule also included bringing up a
OCALA’S GOOD LIFE retirement redefined
daughter, Joanie, and a son, Brian. Claudia’s foray into photography and digital art has its roots in the couple’s travels in the U.S. and Europe. “We always had cameras in the house,” she says. “In Sarasota in the 1970s, I took a photography course at a vo-tech school. I had written for papers for many years and now I could take pictures.” CLAUDIA BEGAN PURSUING photography in a more artistic vein around the time she and Steve moved to Ocala
