Ghosting St. Pete: Reflections from artist Frank Strunk

Although the views of the Allegheny Mountains are breathtaking, particularly as the leaves take on their fall colors, the northwestern Maryland city of Cumberland has seen better days. Once a major manufacturing hub, after World War II the factories, and the jobs, went east. Today, there are barely 20,000 residents in Cumberland, many of them living below the poverty line, and a whole lot of empty buildings downtown alongside the flowing Potomac River.

Frank Strunk III fell in love with the place, on first sight.

Eighteen months ago, the St. Petersburg artist – he’d been here, swimming happily in the artistic bloodstream, for 30 years – and his longtime partner Bethany Peabody relocated to Cumberland.

It was a quick shift. One day they were here, the next they were gone.

“The architecture is amazing – a lot of historic buildings that are really cool,” enthuses the 61-year-old Strunk, who’s known for his industrially-inspired sculptures of metal (he’s an accomplished welder), concrete and other found materials.

“And they’re old, like skeletons from the past. It’s nicknamed the Steeple City, because of all the church steeples – although most of the churches are not operating any more. There are a lot of big brick buildings that aren’t abandoned, they’re just not being used for anything.”

The couple will be in St. Pete next week for the opening of Unpolished Intent, an exhibition of new Strunk works, opening with a reception Nov. 7 at ARTicles Gallery, 1234 Dr. Martin Luther King Street N.

“It’s a study in the texture and the architecture, and the building aesthetic, of the old brick homes, built in the 1900s, in Cumberland,” the artist explains.

“I have a long history of working in construction, although I never laid a single brick anywhere. I’ve always loved the aesthetic of concrete and rebar, certainly in my flatwork and my sculptural work, and I’ve loved finding and salvaging these old bricks and cutting them with my brick saw or my tile saw, into smaller bricks. And then using mortar to mortar the bases together.”

There’s a careful symmetry in Strunk’s art, despite its sometimes rough and rugged appearance. “The geometry and the handwork that goes into it is f—ing enormous,” he says. “But it’s really meditative as well.

“And the way it looks when I put ‘em together? Some of those bricks are one inch long. They’re little bricks made from bigger bricks! I look at that and my mind just ignites with inspiration.”

FROM THE ARCHIVE: The Catalyst Sessions: Frank Strunk III

Change of seasons

“I’d been wanting to leave St. Petersburg for a while,” Strunk relates. “The list is not long, but there were some definite bullet points.” His aggro laundry list included a growing frustration with the commercialization of downtown and its original, funky art studios and galleries. He was there in the earliest of days, started the band Fingerpuppet here, and to this day has a “boatload” of local friends who are also boiling with outrage over the city’s transformation.

“And they’re building straight up,” he says, with amazement. “Watching sky-space disappear gives the illusion, the sensation, of being buried. You’re laying in your grave and they’re throwing dirt on top of you. You’re watching these buildings go and you’re thinking ‘Who the f–k’s gonna live in here?’ And the answer is, there’s waiting lists to get in there.”

The “bitch slap,” Strunk says, was the construction of a 40-plus story hotel called Art House. That, he insists, was an audacious name, all things considered – he felt like it was like putting a corporate tattoo on the backside of every artist in town.

“So when I got the opportunity to go, I was off like a rocket.”

In 2023, he and Bethany were driving to an art festival at Frostburg State University in northwest Maryland. Strunk’s hometown was Rockville, 126 miles to the east (and several lifetimes away).  At dusk, what photographers call the golden hour because the light is particularly warm and direct, they passed through Cumberland. To them, it looked like a postcard.

Cumberland, Maryland (Wiki Commons)

The next morning, they drove back. “And we’re there for two and a half hours, walking,” Strunk recalls. “Because I just couldn’t unglue my eyes from everything. I took maybe 400 pictures. I don’t want to say I was hooked, but I was really interested in what was going on.

“Inside a week, I was like ‘Man, this place is really speaking to me.’ One thing that struck me was how quiet it is – I’m talking quiet quiet, at night, when we sleep with the windows open, it’s so soothing to not hear anything. The peacefulness of it really made an impression on me. That, and the architecture.”

Bethany didn’t need a lot of convincing to trade booming, morphing St. Petersburg for a tiny – and quiet – Appalachian mountain town. “I left the bright lights and bright colors, and sometimes chaotic energy, of St. Petersburg’s art scene … if you will,” Strunk says.

He made a deal to lease out the second floor of what had been a concrete factory – there was something serendipitous in that – and after he cleaned out the cobwebs, and chased out the pigeons, he ran electricity, built a bathroom and settled in. There’s a landscape business down below, on the ground floor.

Strunk sounds like a booster from the Cumberland Chamber of Commerce, he’s so enthused. “It’s a gritty little railroad town – there’s CSX, Amtrak and a dedicated coal train,” he points out. “There’s still mining going on up here. And some of them run right behind my studio, all day.”

Their vintage 1907, brick home is less than a mile from the studio. Strunk walks to work every day, grabbing a coffee on the way, in a little place where they know his name and they greet him at the door.

“I try to walk everywhere. I love to walk. But in St. Pete, you’re just flat. Florida is just the flattest flat. You can get four or five miles in – that’s a good clip, but it’s not hard.

“You’re not pulling four or five miles in Cumberland. There are hills here, dude, and the difference in elevation, just to walk downtown, is tremendous.”

Find information on the Nov. 7 reception (5-7 p.m.), the exhibit and the gallery on the ARTicles website.

Frank Strunk III website.