Morean to exhibit works by St. Pete news artist Joe Tonelli

One of St. Petersburg’s most prolific artists is finally getting a retrospective exhibit. Opening Saturday at the Morean Arts Center, Illustrating the News will showcase the work of Joe Tonelli, who directed the award-wining art department at the then-St. Petersburg Times from 1961 to 1991.

Times owner and publisher Nelson Poynter is credited with adding art – sketches, illustrations, even paintings and sculpture – to the paper’s storytelling visuals. Often, when available photography was insufficient, editors would turn to the art department for narrative aid. Tonelli’s work appeared with regularity in the features, sports and religion pages, as well as the news sections.

Joe Tonelli

In the ‘60s, the Times was one of the first newspapers in the country to add occasional color to its pages. This was an artistic challenge welcomed by Pittsburgh-raised Tonelli, and by Jack Barrett, who joined the staff in 1970 and quickly became just as in-demand as Tonelli for his interpretive skills (Barrett was also from Pittsburgh, and the two got on famously).

These artists were required to turn out quality work on a daily basis. Like everyone who toiled in a newsroom, the pressure on them was relentless. And they loved it.

Barrett retired from the Times in 1990, and went on to a second career as a respected gallery artist. He died in 2008, and that same year the Morean exhibited a retrospective of his paintings.

Tonelli retired in the early ’90s, too, and passed away in 2023, at age 96.

“We were cleaning out the garage and we realized that he had brought home all of the art,” said his daughter Maria Tonelli Smith, an artist who now lives and works in Georgia. “They just let him take it all home. Maybe all of the artists did at that time. So it wasn’t in a computer. There was just so much art.”

Earlier, she’d scanned a lot of it – created on paper, posterboard and as the four-color mylar separations used in offset printing –  and had a private edition book made for her father. “It was one of his most treasured items,” Smith recalled. “And when he went to the nursing home, he was so protective of it.”

She gave the book to writing coach Roy Peter Clark, an old family friend who’d spoken at Tonelli’s memorial service. Clark, in turn, suggested a Tonelli exhibition to Morean curator Amanda Cooper.

Smith’s first challenge? Sorting through 30 years of quality work. “We had to do it by themes,” she explained. “I started to do it chronologically, but about half of them are dateless. And he said it was quite common for people to come in and go ‘Oh, can I have that piece of art that you did?’ So it’s not a complete set of his stuff for over 30 years. It would be so much more if it was.”

She worked in tandem with her mother and sister. “We chose the very best pieces to frame and display. And we’re going to bring his old desk and chair that he brought home, and just kind of make it look like a working artist’s desk. He has a lot of really cool sketches in black and white, and then you can see them progress to the final newsprint.

“Then I have two “concept to reality” portfolio books. That’s fun to see. You don’t even have to know my dad to appreciate it, because they’re stories about St. Pete.”

Illustrating the News will be on display at the Morean Arts Center, 719 Central Ave., from Feb. 22 through March 27. There will be a public reception from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday, March 8 during the Second Saturday ArtWalk.

Morean Arts Center website