HOT STUFF
Jaden Hair does Asian for Americans in classes and in her Steamy Kitchen blog.

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Nebraska, Jaden Hair, 35, learned to cook Asian cuisine using ingredients readily available in America. After moving to Lakewood Ranch in 2002 and overhearing a restaurant diner refer to sushi as “Chinese,” she decided to share her knowledge. Now, Hair brings her fun, sassy style to cooking classes, television appearances and her year-old blog, Steamy Kitchen, which draws 200,000 visitors a month. (Hair credits the blog’s “drool-worthy” photos, which she takes herself.) She’s even developing her own TV show, but she’s kept her intuitive, homemade cooking style. “Everything on my Web site is what I make for dinner,” she says. “I have a couple of minutes to snap a picture while my kids and husband are at the table waiting to be served.”—Hannah Wallace

Artist and arts advocate Elizabeth Van Riper’s Tuesday program on WSLR 96.5 FM Sarasota Community Radio, The Creative Life, invites guests from across the spectrum in the performing and visual arts. She also posts news of what is happening and upcoming in a weekly e-mail. Van Riper does all this while running Van Riper Communications, a marketing and public relations firm. Her enthusiasm for Sarasota is infectious; rarely does one end a conversation with her and not take a step back in amazement for her “can-do approach.” She says she hosts the radio program “to enhance our community's awareness and appreciation for those who dare to share their creative inspiration and to encourage all to tap into their own intrinsic creativity.”

Eleanor Merritt is showing her work in three locations this month. At the Fine Art Gallery at Manatee Community College, her show Color Matters opens Jan. 25. The Black Muse 2008 (with other Master Artists of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History) begins Jan. 15 at the Sarasota Visual Art Center, and her work can also be seen at Art Uptown on Main Street. Merritt acknowledges the importance of her training and studies with her instructors at Brooklyn College in New York, including Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko and Jimmy Ernst, and she says her style continues to emerge, with continual experimentation in mixed media techniques.

Ringling College graduate in painting David Piurek is moving to Williamsburg, Va., this month to become head of exhibitions and operations at the Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William & Mary. He was recruited by Aaron De Groft, an alumnus of William & Mary, who was also hired away from the Ringling to become the director in Williamsburg a few years ago. David worked for 10 years at Ringling as a conservation technician and preparator, spending two years on the restoration, re-gilding and installation of the Historic Asolo Theater. He says he’s looking forward to the challenge of the new job.

In addition to being a writer and an artist, Kim Northrop is an avid gardener. She and her husband, Stephen, have transformed their property on Wood Street into an oasis of tranquility and peace, creating meandering paths and visual exclamation points using flowering trees and plants. Her butterfly garden also attracts an unusual array of species. Kim approaches her garden as an artwork in progress; she is also busy making revisions to the text of her book, My First Success as an Artist.

Bonnie Dennis was more than a little disappointed when her proposal for a George W. Bush clown was accepted and then rejected this past year by TideWell Hospice. So she was thrilled to have her work accepted by The Players Theatre for its lobby. Players artistic director Jeffery Kin has decided that every show at the Players will have an original art show to go with it; this one, tied to the production of Jekyll & Hyde, had a “good vs. evil” theme and included a piece depicting Bush, Condoleeza Rice, and other administration members with the alternate titles Magnificent Seven (Neo-Conservative Title) $25,000 and Axis of Evil (Liberal Title) $2,500.

Newtown native and Sarasota NAACP president Trevor D. Harvey is often at odds with the groups he represents. He’s one of only a few Republicans in the NAACP leadership, but when the District 13 Congressional race showed an unusual 13 percent undervote in favor of Republican Vern Buchanan, Harvey protested, unlike fellow Sarasota Republican Executive Committee members. Harvey’s one unwavering passion is for kids and his job as parent-community liaison at the Phoenix Academy.