Your weekend arts forecast: Fine art, fine Americana

While the 2021 Gasparilla Festival of the Arts is all virtual this weekend, Gulfport’s got a real, live outdoor art show. Twenty area artists show and sell at the First Friday Art Walk, which takes place 5-9 p.m. Friday along Beach Boulevard. There’ll be live entertainment at the juried event, put on by the Gulfport Merchants Chamber. Masks are required.

Darrell Scott

Multi-instrumentalist Darrell Scott, who performs Saturday at the Safety Harbor Art and Music Center, is one of those “secret weapon” guys who’s worked with an almost incalculable number of jaw-dropping names – as singer, songwriter, sideman and/or producer – and in every case made them better. Here’s a quick laundry list: Guy Clark, Buddy Miller, Emmylou Harris, Sam Bush, Tim O’Brien, Steve Earle, Dan Tyminski, Brad Paisley and the Dixie Chicks. Then there was the tour as part of Robert Plant’s Band of Joy. Not merely a utility man, Scott makes his own fine Americana records (his 2011 release A Crooked Road won the Country Album award at the  Independent Music Awards). The pick of the weekend! (details here).

“Bath Time” by Rebekah Lazaridis, part of the new show at Mize Gallery.

Mize Gallery’s March show, Afterlife, opens Friday with Chad Mize’s virtual tours on Facebook (at 6 p.m.) and Instagram (7 p.m.). Artists whose works explore the notion of life after death include Frank Strunk III, Rebekah Lazaridis, Johanna O’Donnell, Alle Wilkie, Acute Perception, Andrea Pawlisz and others. Gallery hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday, and by appointment.

The streaming concert series Palladium Live! Officially begins Friday with the availability of a pre-taped Palladium Theater performance by the classical Mile-End Trio (aka the Palladium Chamber Players). Details here.

Country singer Aaron Lewis plays Ruth Eckerd Hall Friday, while the Capitol Theatre, Ruth’s sister venue, has two performances of the musical play Sister’s Easter Catechism: Will My Bunny Go to Heaven? Sunday. Details here.

Eugenie Bondurant (left) and Madison Iseman in “Fear of Rain”

Fear of Rain, the thriller made in St. Petersburg in Tampa, returns to Green Light Cinema in downtown St. Pete for another week. The film stars Harry Connick Jr., Madison Iseman, Katherine Heigl – and Eugenie Bondurant, longtime St. Pete resident, who’s scary good in it. Details here.

There are two virtual theater offerings this weekend, both one-person shows – American Stage’s magnificent production of Satchmo at the Waldorf, with L. Peter Callender as Louis Armstrong, and across the bay, Andresia Moseley in the riveting Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, from Jobsite Theater.

Jobsite is also live onstage at the Straz Center’s Jaeb Theatre this weekend with the comedy Hand to God; watch the Catalyst Friday for something special on this outstanding production.