Pieces of colorful, different and amusing art hang sporadically along the walls inside the St. Cloud Arts Studio on Pennsylvania Avenue.

It’s a budding playroom for equally budding local artists some eight years after it was conceptualized and injected with $20,000 in seed funding through a Community Betterment Grant from the county. Its doors have been open for less than a year.

Line Cindie Amaral up next to all of her artwork — the stained-glass paintings, the mosaic paintings, the remade vintage jewelry — and you would swear she’s poured a good 30 years of her life into it.

Fact is, the St. Cloud mother of three has really been creating all of these extremely professional art pieces for only the past few years.

And she is quickly getting recognized for it, as the artist has sold practically all of her 160 paintings. She lights up when she talks about where all those works are now.

Two shootings were reported from separate parts of Osceola County over the weekend, leaving one person dead and sending two others to the hospital.

Peeples

Quiñones

By Marvin G. Cortner

To avoid showing favoritism to one property owner over another, Osceola County Commissioner John Quiñones cut short a presentation Monday on a 217-acre site being offered for sale to the county by Osceola Development Trust for a proposed tourist-tax funded sports complex.

The proposal involves 17 ball fields and a 50,000-square foot multi-use indoor facility to be used for expanded athletic events sponsored by the United States Specialty Sports Association, which has its national headquarters at Osceola Heritage Park in Kissimmee.

Kissimmee commissioners Tuesday reconsidered a proposed 150-acre baseball complex that would be built in a residential neighborhood on the north side of Carroll Street and approved the first step in its development.

News-Gazette Photos/Andrew Sullivan

Construction officially commenced Thursday evening on the renovation of Hickory Tree Community Park.

Osceola County Commission Chairman Fred Hawkins Jr., center, as well as representatives of the design and construction firms working on the project and members of the St. Cloud Youth Football program, who will ultimately benefit from the improvements, paricipated in the ceremonial breaking of ground.

Turner Construction Company officials were unhappy with the Osceola County School Board’s 3-2 decision Tuesday to rebid the Highlands Elementary School replacement project because of confusion over the local vendor policy.