The Niceville artist creates vibrant miniature artwork suitable for framing, but that also has a face value of about $27 Euro or $34 US. She participates in the Bank of International Art Money (BIAM) program that invites artists from around the world to issue their own bank notes.

 

There are stipulations – certain structure requirements and denomination limits – minters must adhere to, but the notes can be used in any participating business to pay for up to 50 percent of a purchase. Most of the member shops, cafés, and hostels participating in the program are located in Denmark, but there are a few in Canada, France, India, Netherlands, Sweden, Pakistan, Britain and even a small handful in the United States.

 

Each bill is a unique, original piece of art rich in neon bright pinks, oranges, reds, yellows and blues. Each is signed by the artist and stamped with a signature logo.

 

ginnetti ponto, one of three sisters born to an Italian father, decided at a young age she would carry on the family name. When she later married another Italian who wanted her to take his name, she had to compromise and kept both.

 

Her love of art first began in high school where she took as many art classes that she could. Then reality set in as ginnetti ponto approached college. Through the help of a benefactor, she attended an all-girls College in Illinois, and majored in art, but also knew she had to be able to make a living.

 

Somewhere the decision to teach was made.

 

“I didn’t know beans about teaching,” she said. But, teach she did.

 

For 30 years ginnetti ponto taught junior highs school students about art. All the while, during summer breaks, she also continued to learn. Traveling back and forth from Illinois to California to attend art classes, she eventually met the man she would marry. After the third summer of commuting, ginnetti ponto stayed in California and started her own family.

 

Throughout those early years, art was a constant even if ginnetti ponto’s family continued to move from California to Illinois, and back several more times, finally settling in Chicago.

 

“Art kept me mentally stable,” ginnetti ponto said. “It was my therapy, my healing, my prayers.”

 

She would need that stabilizing place again when she and her husband moved to Niceville shortly after he had a heart attack. The cold of Chicago was too much for him and a trip south convinced him Florida was the place for him to retire. They made the move permanent in 2000.

 

Since then ginnetti ponto has embraced the artist community in and around Niceville. She joined the Arts and Design Society and began teaching again.

 

ginnetti ponto favors abstract designs, using color, three-dimensional pieces and text to create elaborate paintings and what she calls “constructs.”

 

“Friends give me stuff and I put it together,” she said. “There is no right or wrong. You have to do it for you.”

 

In her studio behind her home, ginnetti ponto has several projects going on at the same time.

 

“I work all over the studio,” she said pointing to each counter, table and easel. “A little here, a little here.”

 

She also enlists the help of friends and family on some of her projects – her art books.

 

Each book has a central theme. She has created pages for friends battling different ailments, and her husband’s heart attack. She has enlisted other friends and students to help create books chronicling their families and relationships with each other.

 

“I exchange them with my friends,” she said. “I do a few pages, they do a few.”

 

Each section or page includes elements that the artists feel expresses what it important to them, or what they feel is a challenge in their lives. ginnetti ponto said the books are also for “healing,” a way to release those things that are worrisome and destructive.

 

Some of the pages are filled with photos, ribbons, pressed flowers or other mementos from a life. Some pages are abstract ideas of what an illness conquered looks like, or a worry vanquished.

 

“They are very empowering,” she said.

 

To see ginnetti ponto’s artwork visit the Arts and Design Society Gallery in Fort Walton Beach or go online to http://artsdesignsociety.com/.

 

The Arts and Design Society Gallery is located at 17 First St. SE. Admission to the Gallery is FREE and open to the public on the following schedule:

 

 

If you would like your own ginnetti ponto money, you can visit the BIAM website at http://www.art-money.org/101 to learn more. There are hundreds of artist, representing nearly every country, nearly every continent, from which to choose. Just be warned, other than self-imposed puritan ideals of Americans, BIAM puts no strictures on what the artists can represent on their money.