After a lifetime spent playing the blues, Delbert McClinton is finally beating the Cost of Living, the title of his latest album (available at his Web site, www.delbert.com). He’ll be wailing at the Sarasota Blues Fest at the Sarasota County Fairgrounds on Oct. 29 (for ticket info go to www.sarasotabluesfest.com); we spoke to him recently [...]

Ann and John Ross’s 1970s-era waterfront home got a jolt of color and breezy island attitude when designer Lee Younger took "the elephant in the room"-an assertive green vintage chinoiserie curio cabinet the homeowners never really liked but couldn’t jettison because it’s an heirloom-and made it the focal point of the new living/dining room. Younger [...]

Not to be outdone by the other notables in the much-lauded Sarasota arts group of the 1950s (which included writers, painters and the ground-breaking proponents of the Sarasota School of Architecture), Victor Lundy arrived here in 1951, soon to become world-famous in architecture. Born in Manhattan, Lundy traveled through Europe and back to the United [...]

New owners have often ruined Sarasota School houses by expansion. An exception: the Rudolph-designed Burkhardt/Cohen House on Casey Key, renovated by Toshiko Mori. The new guest house, raised 17 feet above sea level, connects to the original 1957 Rudolph house via an exterior stainless steel staircase, which becomes the new center of the house, connecting [...]

In Louis De Marco’s lush, peaceful Siesta Key garden stands a magnificent grove of Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis) full of filtered light and contemplative beauty. Like a cathedral’s majestic organ, the imposing canes reach 70 feet high, wind eliciting melodic clatter from the swaying stalks. "It began with a small clump, about two feet tall, [...]

When ill-starred adventurer Ponce de Leon trudged ashore in 1513 to claim a tropical paradise for God and Spain, he christened the land that lay before him "Pascua Florida"-feast of flowers. Landfall was on the east coast, just above the Indian River. We can only guess which flowers he found there. But whatever they were, [...]

Some of the most coveted properties in Sarasota aren’t showy, sprawling or rising 10 stories into the sky. Instead, they’re a scattered collection of tiny beach cabanas, as simple and unassuming as can be. But you’ll probably never see any of these hot properties advertised. Their value and their cachet just keep escalating, and the [...]

As grand palaces rise all around us in Sarasota (like the 20,000-square-foot edifice that a retired couple will soon move into on Longboat Key), it’s worth escaping every now and then to the pleasures of rustic simplicity. That’s just what I was lucky enough to do this summer, when I-and three other editors at the [...]