National artists, special events to make SHINE even brighter
That honey-hive buzz you’re hearing is the anticipation for the 2019 SHINE Mural Festival – which will introduce more than 30 humongous works, painted in en plein air, to our already- colorful cityscape.
Day One is this Friday, Oct. 18. We talked about the five internationally-renowned mural artists who’ll be working on St. Pete walls in Monday’s story.
St. Pete Mural by Morning Breath, 2015.
Of the five national SHINE invitees, just Morning Breath (Doug Cunningham and Jason Noto, from Brooklyn) is making a return visit. At the inaugural SHINE, in 2015, Morning Breath created a bright yellow mural at 2026 Central, a humorous distillation of the creative and commercial mix for which the duo had become known.
Last year, a new building went up in the lot in front of the mural, and it all but disappeared (a fraction remains visible). So much for that.
As St. Pete grows, murals are bound to disappear for one reason or another. It’s part of the inevitable march of progress.
“Their mural got covered up, so it felt like a natural choice to have them come back,” says the Arts Alliance of St. Petersburg’s Jeanne Priebe, the director and all-things overseer of SHINE. “They’re friends with some of the original organizers of SHINE, and so it worked out to give them a new wall.”
Artist: Taylor White
From Raleigh, North Carolina comes Taylor White, who graduated (as an illustrator) from the Savannah College of Arts & Design, lived in Norway after graduation and subsequently spent several years in Melbourne, Australia, which is where she developed her love of, and talent for, street art and urban murals. “My work is as much a celebration of you as it is of me,” she said in a 2017 interview. “It’s a celebration of the spirit. I speak to an experience which is universal; we all occupy this coalescence of matter, roughly the same shape and configuration, and move through space by the same physical laws. That’s what fascinates me so much about dancing, which is the physical experience that provides me the most inspiration. It provides a universally recognizable visual language for that which cannot be articulated, only felt.” Location: Benson Worley Architecture, 276 Dr. MLK Street N.
Artist: Drew Merritt
Los Angeles muralist Drew Merritt takes the art of portraiture to new levels. The men and women in his large-scale work are shown at odd angles, in non-linear motion, reaching, watching or just … existing. Sometimes it’s just a face; sometimes it’s not even human. Defying categorization, his work is both realistic and unsettling. “I like my murals to be hopefully something positive,” Merritt told the Dallas Observer earlier this week (he was just finishing a new mural there). “I hope somebody will take away something that gives them a little bit of happiness, seeing just a little bit of color going to work or having a rough day.” Location: Barkett Realty, 551 Dr. MLK Street N.
O’er the waves
SHINE has partnered with the PangeaSeed Foundation to create an environmental mural, funded – for the very first time – by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A nonprofit entity dedicated to raising awareness about the proper stewardship of the world’s oceans, Hawaii-based PanageaSeed has under its many-tiered umbrella a public art program called Sea Walls: Artists For Oceans.
The organization has been responsible for the creation of more than 350 murals, in 15 countries, with the idea that future generations, growing up in the midst of these beautiful marine images on their city streets, will be the ones to demand the necessary protection. “A drop of paint can effect an ocean of change” is their motto, and who can argue with that?
Artist: Blane Fontana
Portland mural artists Blane Fontana and Plastic Birdie (aka Jeremy Nichols) will combine efforts on a massive side wall at BAMA Sea Products, 756 28th St. South, right there along the Pinellas Trail, on a mural that the Arts Alliance says will “creatively highlight St. Petersburg’s successful fisheries management system.”
Our city’s Vitale Bros. will also create an NOAA-funded mural stressing the importance of preserving a diverse marine ecosystem; the brothers will represent at First United Methodist Church, 300 1st Ave. North.
“Some of the artists we’ve worked with in the past through SHINE have participated in PangeaSeed festivals around the world,” Priebe explains. “And every time I’ve ever heard it spoken about, it’s ‘Top-notch.’ Or ‘That’s the festival you want to do.’ It has a great reputation.
“And I felt like, because of where we live, and what we do here, that it would just be a natural fit for usto bring PangeaSeed Sea Walls here to St. Pete.”
At the same time, NOAA was looking to acknowledge – through public art – the anniversary of the Magnuson–Stevens Act, an important conservation law (established in 1976) governing marine fisheries management in U.S. federal waters. “It all just kind of naturally came together in that way,” says Priebe. “They wanted to celebrate the fishing communities here, and then they wanted to highlight the ecosystems management.”
Looking down the road
For SHINE’s big finale event, Oct. 26 at The Factory, the Arts Alliance of St. Petersburg will debut a massive work called Inside Out, made up of hundreds of oversized black and white portraits of St. Petersburg residents, wheat-pasted onto an outer wall of the new multi-purpose business and art facility in the Warehouse Arts District. The idea is “transforming messages of personal identity into works of art,” according to the Inside Out project creator, French photographer and street artist JR.
“I’m really, really excited about the finale,” Priebe explains. “I think the Inside Out project is going to be amazing, visually really stunning. Just an amazing celebration of St. Pete. There’s also going to be a live mermaid there! So with those two things combined, I feel like you have a good thing going.
“There’s a lot of other things going on with the finale too, but I think those’ll be highlights.”
