Create
St. Pete’s mural festival shines, despite hurricane interference
With the 2024 SHINE Mural Festival in her rearview mirror, director Jenee Priebe exhaled, put her feet up and reflected on the event that almost wasn’t. SHINE’s 10th anniversary got pushed back a month, from October to November, in the wake of Hurricane Milton.
Sunday was the final day of SHINE ‘24.
“I’m very happy with it,” Priebe said. “I really wanted to make Year 10 special, and I was worried that with all the rescheduling, that would be missed or wouldn’t happen.
Walker Whitney Plaza now features this 14-story mural by Canada’s Emmanuel Jarus. Photo by Bill DeYoung.
“But this year still feels different, and it feels bigger – we’ve done incredible, big walls in locations that we’ve never been able to do before.”
Biggest of all was the 14-story Walker Whitney Plaza, 226 5th Avenue N. Canadian muralist Emmanuel Jarus was assigned the west-facing wall.
Priebe was one of three guides Sunday on a sold-out afternoon trolley tour, taking in many of the new works (there are 15 in total) downtown and in nearby districts.
When the trolley paused at the Walker Whitney site, guide Dan Wood said the internationally-known Jarus worked on a particularly tight schedule. He’d allotted 20 days for the massive mural, but had to – absolutely had to – be in Hawaii by a certain date.
So he started on his depiction of an enigmatic, fair-skinned woman in black in early October. He was painting, Wood explained, the day before Milton blew ashore.
“No one knows who she is,” Wood continued. “We’ve been asked many times. I asked Jarus over lunch who the lady is, and I just got this blank look. That’s part of the mystery of it, right?”
Jarus, of course, came back and finished the job last week.
Tour guide Dan Wood – with microphone – talks about the mural-making process. Channeling John Cusak, fellow guide Laura Spencer is at right, holding up the sound system so everyone can hear. Photo by Bill DeYoung.
Wood, Priebe and artist Laura “Miss Crit” Spencer told the 30 rapt trolley riders about each mural as it came into view, and answered a volley of questions about technique, equipment and the method for selecting muralists.
“People ask how you select Jarus for a wall like this,” said Wood. “You’re really whittling it down to the capabilities of an artist – who can actually paint a 14-story wall in an allotted time, in a given time period? Maybe it wouldn’t be possible with spray paint, but Jarus used acrylic … not only a brush on a roller, bit also, at times, a broom dipped in paint.”
The next-largest mural, by Australian Fintan McGee, was not quite completed Sunday. It’s on the side of Reflection St. Pete, the new apartment complex by Mirror Lake. Reflection is SHINE’s corporate sponsor for this year and next, and kicked in $50,000 for the privilege (that’s approximately one-fifth of the event’s annual budget).
Tampa muralist Frankie G., an unannounced guest on the tour, took the microphone and discussed his ambitious mural on the backside of FloridaRAMA, part of The Factory St. Pete.
Frankie G.’s mural at FloridaRAMA. Photo by Bill DeYoung.
Priebe isn’t an artist herself, but considering all the hoops she has to juggle, she might be the most creative person on the entire team. “I feel a great sense of pride for the part that I did, which is making sure everyone could paint successfully,” she said.
“My job is to clear the way, set everything up so that when they show up, they can paint and get their job done within the time frame. And that’s happening. And the artwork is incredible.”
The curated Star Trolley SHINE tours began at the beginning of this year. They immediately sold out, and more were added. Although the tours were put on hold during the long, hot summer, they picked up again for the ’24 event and will continue (click here for tour scheduling and tickets). The trolley service donates five percent of sales to the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance, which produces SHINE.
Priebe believes the tours are introducing an entirely new audience to SHINE, and to public art in general.
“It’s really about being able to disseminate this information to the public, and give them this opportunity to learn more about it,” she said. “Which we’d been limited in our ability to do.
“And now we have a structure, a curated experience for them to really understand what we’re doing and why it matters.”
Here’s the SHINE map of all the new murals and their locations.
Work by Abys Osmoz at Moderna. Photo by Bill DeYoung.
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