Gina Martinelli may be pushing 80, but she says her creativity has yet to peak.
“I’m exploding with creative energy – exploding! I’m glad I’m still here, but it also puts me in a slight state of panic because there’s so much more I want to do,” said Martinelli.
It’s difficult to find an art form Martinelli doesn’t dabble in: She paints, sculpts, sketches, plays more than a dozen instruments, and even has an at-home pottery studio complete with two kilns.
She remembers art first taking hold of her as a small girl growing up in New York City, where her father worked on Madison Avenue, and she took dance lessons at Carnegie Hall. When her dance teacher began giving her piano lessons at age four, the fifth song in her practice book moved her profoundly. It was John Thompson’s “Swans on the Lake,” and she’s never forgotten the effect it had on her.
“All of a sudden, I wasn’t in Queens anymore – I went someplace. I was the swan, I was the breeze. I saw the livery gentlemen playing the French horns, and I felt the total escape that music gives you,” recalled Martinelli, who says the piano is still the art form she cherishes most.
It’s been decades since she left the Big Apple, but her immense pride and love for her hometown remain evident when she speaks about it.
“The best theater in the world, the best museums, the only international city in this whole country. I was in the middle of the most fantastic city in the world,” said Martinelli.
In college, Martinelli studied drama and obtained degrees in music and fine arts. She moved to Jacksonville in 1973 with her husband on the day her second child was born.
“I imagined [my husband] would take care of the real world, and I would take care of the magical world. I would be a mom, and I would have cooking, gardening, my music, and I would never have to face real life,” said Martinelli. “[I thought] trying to make any kind of a career out of living in Jacksonville with three children is impossible.”
Contrary to her expectations, however, Martinelli did not stay confined to a life at home. She quickly began performing and singing in hotels, restaurants and clubs across Northeast Florida. Many of those venues are no longer around, and few of those that remain still feature live performances.
Martinelli laments that so few restaurants still have tablecloths, carpeted floors and acoustic ceilings, and wishes hotels had never put televisions in their lobbies. Martinelli fondly remembers a more elegant era of live musical entertainment that she says has been largely abandoned to cut costs.
“Entertainment is not in their business plan. It’s football, karaoke, earsplitting music, or nothing – and nobody notices,” said Martinelli.
These days, she makes the 30-minute drive to Fleming Island four nights a week, where she has played piano at Santioni’s Italian Ristorante for the past seven years. The atmosphere reminds Martinelli of the long-gone venues where she used to perform, and the Mastrocinque family has become like family to her.
“I am providing the soundtrack to the movie that you and your loved one are starring in. I’m not the star; they are the stars. I’m just helping to enhance their experience,” said Martinelli.
Patrons can count on her to appear with her signature blue hair, liberally applied makeup, and a vibrant outfit thoughtfully selected from hundreds of similar ones in her closet.
Over the years, Martinelli has also sought to share her talents with others by offering lessons from her home and even teaching in the public school system, where she sketched thousands of her students. All these years later, she has kept a collection of 10 sketchbooks, each containing about 200 sketches of her former pupils. It’s a reminder of her belief that we are all “at least 50% creative,” but are just afraid to use it.
“If you talk to any child that’s five years old or younger, and say, ‘Can you dance? Can you sing? Can you draw?’ They all say yes. By the time they’re seven, they don’t think they can do anything, because we teach it out of them,” said Martinelli.
Since 1999, Martinelli has lived in a home near Boone Park, the interior of which is filled wall-to-wall with her artwork. Twice a year, it’s the site of an epic party she throws for all her neighbors, with live music, belly dancers and more than 100 people in attendance.
Her garden, which will be on RAP’s Garden Tour this year, is similarly full of sculptures, pottery and other art pieces she has made over the years, including a four-foot-tall lion statue made of mosses and other living greenery.
For all her countless works of art, Martinelli is most proud of the three children she raised, who have blessed her with six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. She is currently enjoying reading a book over the phone to two of her grandchildren in California.
Martinelli isn’t sure if there’s a heaven waiting for her, but she says she’s not going to count on it. She lives every day trying to make the most of the life she has been given.
“Anything that is alive, that has been born, reaches a certain point when it dies. I do believe that our life is our one gift. It’s very precious. We all have the power to spread our light, to make the world a better place,” said Martinelli.
