Brush to canvas: News from the art community

There’s a mini mural festival this month, at the St. Pete Pier. Former SHINE Mural Festival director Jenee Priebe was tapped by the City to curate five 20×10 foot temporary murals in and around the main lawn – home to Janet Echelman’s currently-out-for-repairs floating net sculpture – as part of the Pier’s five year anniversary observance.

Local artists Jabari “iBOMS” Reed-Diop, Chad Mize, Alyssa Marie, Michael Vasquez and Cristi López were asked to create murals that represent the St. Pete sun-n-sand ethos. The artists are schedule to paint – and you’re welcome to watch – Tuesdays through Fridays each week in July. If the weather allows.

López completed her work last week. This week, it’s Mize and iBOMS.

For Priebe, who served as a consultant on the hugely popular Outside In mural exhibit at the Dali Museum, the Pier project was perfectly in line with the sort of work she’s pursuing with her newly-minted consulting company, No Good Deeds Art.

“I’m hoping to do more projects like this with the City,” she said. “We’ll see! But just to be able to curate, and help run logistics and get these murals built, it’s great. I was really happy they reached out.”

The five murals will remain at the Pier through the end of the month.

Works by Orlando artist Mindy Z. Colton are included in the FLAG exhibit at Eckerd College.

FLAG waving

The Florida Artists Group (FLAG) is holding a reception Friday (5:30-8 p.m.) at the Helmar and Enole Nielsen Center for Visual Arts, Eckerd College, as part of its Artbeat St. Pete exhibition, marking the organization’s 75th anniversary.

Featuring 2D and 3D work from more than 65 artist members of FLAG, the juried exhibition will run through Aug. 8.

Free symposium presentations begin at 10 a.m. Saturday, and continue through lunchtime. Find a schedule, and additional information, at this link.

Sound and vision

The “new renaissance artist” known as The Honourable Elizabeth A. Baker will perform Thursday in the Marly Music Room of the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg. It’s experimental, electronic music inspired by the paintings and other works of New York artist Nina Yankowitz (the retrospective In the Out/Out the In is currently on view at the MFA). Thursday’s performance, titled “Sound In Your Eyes – Listening Session,” begins at 7 p.m. Find tickets at this link.

ArtWalk openings

Saturday brings the July edition of the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance’s monthly Second Saturday ArtWalk, during which several dozen galleries and studios welcome visitors with open arms (5-9 p.m.), and many galleries use the occasion to debut new works.

Here are a few:

Quiet at Heart: A New Multisensory Projection-Based Installation opens Saturday at the FloridaRAMA Gallery. A work by Florida video artist Keaton Fox, it’s an immersive dive into natural Florida, via three-wall video projection, a custom soundscape and a textured “environment” of sand and turf underfoot.

Quiet at Heart – on view through Aug. 30 – is the culminating exhibition of a Creative Pinellas artist grant program.

Fox will attend Saturday’s reception (6-8 p.m.), and will be our guest on Friday’s Arts Alive! podcast, to discuss the piece, and her work in general. Find more information here.

Silent Conversations in the Street, an exhibit by Ybor City photographer Dave Decker, opens Saturday at the Tully-Levine Gallery, on the campus of the Warehouse Arts District Association.

Next door at Soft Water Gallery, there are new paintings by Candace Knapp, as well as an ongoing exhibition featuring Casey Haugh.

At Wild Space Gallery (inside The Factory St. Pete), Blazing the Trail: From Strand to Slough opens with a reception during ArtWalk hours. It’s an art and photo exhibit, with a documentary, chronicling the Florida Wildlife Corridor. At 6 p.m., there will be a live, in-house recording of the podcast Wild Takes: Florida Uncut Live, with host, producer and creator Mason Gravley.

Holly Rose Moore: Diaries of Convergence opens Saturday at the Morean Center for Clay. The artist says the exhibit “consists of three distinct sculpture series arranged in the spirit of a scaled down museum exhibit.” Follow that thread where it goes, at this link.

“Beyond Van Gogh and Beyond Monet: The Immersive Experience” will debut Aug. 1 at the Straz Center. Photo provided.

Still to come

Mark those calendars: The 36th annual PAVA Cool Art Show will take over the St. Petersburg Coliseum July 19 and 20.

Starting Aug. 1 at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts: Beyond Van Gogh and Beyond Monet: The Immersive Experience, a walk-through combination of moving, wall-sized projections and symphonic music. Presented on the Morsani Hall stage, at 45 minute intervals each day (through Sept. 14), it appears to be similar to the Dali Museum’s geodesic dome experience, or more precisely to the immersive Van Gogh Alive that thrilled Dali visitors in 2021. This one is produced by a different company, and you can find out more at this link.

If you have a mailing list, please add us! Send press releases and exhibit information to bill@stpetecatalyst.com. Thanks!