Arts In

Kathy White is the Deputy Director of The Salvador Dalí Museum. Peter Tush is the Curator of Education. They met and married at the Dalí and have seen the museum from its early days to its glorious signature home on downtown St. Pete’s waterfront. You might think that a museum focused on a single artist would only be worth one visit. But the Dalí’s ever-changing offerings range from paintings to s...

Pat Blocher is an adventurous artist who uses photography as a jumping-off point for experiments and explorations in the digital and physical worlds. An MFA candidate at the University of South Florida, Pat was one of the youngest artists featured in last summer’s Skyway exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. Pat talks with Barbara St. Clair about building thoughtful portraits of a...

Bob Barancik is an adventurous abstract artist who roams through a range of mediums, from painting and collage to printmaking, digital images, video, and three-dimensional boxes and books full of art. Bob talks with Barbara St. Clair about working on art inspired by current events, that viewers often aren’t ready for until years later. He’s created gorgeous artwork sparked by climate change, 9/11...

Renee Piechocki Longtime leader of the Pittsburgh Office of Public Art, Renee Piechocki helped create a city full of vibrant and imaginative, exciting and interactive public art. Renee talks about the need for temporary public art installations, where artists can make bold and more experimental work that serves a range of changing audiences. She details projects that break new ground - and ways th...

Marlene Rose is a glass artist who doesn’t make vases. Instead, she creates large sculptural works using the technique of sand casting. Developed in the 1980s, the process involves hours spent carefully carving a mold in sand, then pouring in molten glass heated to 2000 degrees. It takes a week in an oven to cool the finished piece down to room temperature. Sand casting is a physical and dangerous...

Fanni Green is an actor, director, playwright, poet and theatre professor. Gary Lemons is a writer, painter, musician and professor of African American literature and womanist studies. In this lively conversation, Fanni and Gary delve into the passion and activism at the heart of all their work and the joys of a marrying a fellow artist. They share stories of growing up with parents who weren’t ab...

Jim Rolston Jim Rolston’s abstract paintings are ferociously gorgeous explorations of color and form, while his deceptively simple statues are gentle and profound. Jim was a passionate artist and an energetic leader in St. Petersburg’s arts community. He created art throughout his life, while working a demanding job and raising a family. When Jim approached retirement, he went back to school and e...

Fight director Dan Granke is a master of physical storytelling and a professional expert on violence. Dan teaches at the University of South Florida and choreographs stage combat for a range of Bay area and Sarasota theatres, and even the St Pete Opera. He’s also a Shakespeare expert who helped to found the Tampa Shakespeare Festival’s free outdoor performances. In a conversation full of laughter...

While in St. Petersburg to direct the acclaimed production of A Raisin in The Sun at American Stage, the Artistic Director of the African-American Shakespeare Company talks with Barbara St. Clair about the teachers who guided him to a career in the arts and the relevance of Raisin right now. He shares an insightful analysis of the play, and of last year’s production of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s...

“I’m a nice guy, really!” laughs Gregory Green. The artist and pacifist teaches at The University of South Florida and is internationally known for his 3D installations of realistic bomb-making workshops and nuclear missiles. It’s art with a political edge and educational aim, seeking to spur conversations about violence - and alternatives to violence - and exploring how information and technology...

Steven Kenny’s paintings are startling and beautiful, and utterly unique. He’s an internationally-known Surrealist, and an anchor of the St. Pete arts community. His exquisite skill with oil paints may remind you of Old Masters, or Salvador Dalí. But the characters who look directly at you from his works are wholly original, set in worlds and costumes that blend the natural world with the very per...

Bob Devin Jones is the heart of St. Petersburg. The St Pete arts community revolves around The Studio@620, an imaginative arts space that is home to a wide range of visual arts, dance, jazz, kites, gospel, quilts, opera, boating, theatre, film, photography, workshops and lectures, poetry, puppetry and pretty much anything established and emerging artists can come up with. Bob’s a gifted director,...

Zev Buffman runs Clearwater’s Ruth Eckerd Hall. With hundreds of major concerts in multiple venues each year, and an education arm that works with public schools and trains teenagers that Zev books to open for bands like Chicago. Zev spent his own teen years carrying a machine gun in the Israeli army. He invented dinner theatre in L.A. when he was in his 20s, owned a network of theatres in Florida...

The detailed and imaginative paintings of Carol Dameron focus on allegories, unspoken stories and turning points. Her visual style echoes European masters, seen through American eyes. In this conversation, Carol talks about her European training, new techniques she’s using to re-energize old canvases and the discipline of working as a full-time artist. She details the visceral pleasure of painting...

Allen Loyd spends more than a year every year, putting together St. Petersburg’s biggest New Year’s Eve celebration. First Night is a family-friendly celebration of the arts, a way to roll out the old year and swing in the new with music, dance, visual art, theatre, fireworks and even fire sculptures, now on its 25th year. It’s aimed at letting people of all ages play, and create art themselves. A...

Akiko Kotani’s art embodies the surprising power and attraction of simplicity. Imagination and a sense of play infuse her work, ranging from miniatures to the striking “Soft Walls” many viewers remember from the recent Skyway Exhibit at the Museum of Fine Art in St. Petersburg. Her work contains a depth of feeling within an economy of means. Kotani’s work is in private, corporate and museum collec...

Mark Aeling is a master sculptor, a lifelong craftsman and, as he calls himself, a maker. His artistic practice is translating ideas into tangible, physical - and often very large - objects. Mark’s MGA Sculpture Studio is a mainstay of St. Petersburg’s Warehouse Arts District. Through his work with the Warehouse Arts Association, Mark’s helping to create the new ArtsXchange, with affordable studio...

Master artisan and printmaker Holly Bird is working in the Arts & Crafts Revival, creating art through hands-on methods that haven’t changed for hundreds of years. She worked on the cutting-edge of digital design as those techniques were developing. And storyboarded the classic movie “Caddyshack.” Holly’s lifelong love of sailing and Florida’s waterways give her work a unique look in the Arts & Cr...

Carla Bristol runs the Gallerie 909 in St. Petersburg. It’s the only African American art gallery south of Atlanta. Carla doesn’t just display original works of art and sell them, she opens the doors of the gallery to her community, and invites young people who’ve never explored an art gallery or museum into a welcoming place of creativity and conversation. Gallerie 909 is in the historically Afri...

Peter Meinke is what he didn’t think was a real job when he started writing - a professional poet. The first Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg is now the Poet Laureate of Florida. He’s friendly and funny, sharp and engaging. And he’s passionate about the sound of words. You’ll enjoy Peter’s conversation with Barbara St. Clair, as he explains the special nature and appeal of poems, the hard work behi...

Dora Arreola and Andrea Assaf are longtime collaborators and award-winning theatremakers who create adventurous works that focuses on women, immigration, war and military veterans. Their projects blend music, dance and text to create theatre that is beautiful and powerful. It’s theatre as activism, and as healing. Dora teaches in the University of South Florida School of Theatre and Dance, where A...

Babs Reingold is a nationally-known mixed-media artist whose works and large-scale installations are displayed around the country more often than they’re seen near her home in St. Petersburg. Her work asks questions about poverty and climate change. She explores aging and animal rights through her creations. Human hair is a material she often uses in her work. And Babs Reingold’s work is beautiful...

Paula Kramer is a dancer and choreographer whose graceful, powerful and adventurously creative. Tom Kramer is a dance photographer known for strikingly beautiful images of dance. The Kramers’ lifelong collaboration has made their life together a vibrant work of art. Now both in their 80s, Paula is still performing and choreographing and Tom is still creating vivid photographs of dancers and musici...

Catherine Woods has a visceral passion for color. She shares the possibilities of ever-changing light through large-scale glass sculptures that change from every angle, and shift their appearance by day and by night. In a conversation rich with laughter, Catherine details the work involved in public art commissions that combine art with engineering and construction crews. She explains the practica...

If you’re near downtown St Pete, you’ve seen the cheerfully iconic Mr. Sun mural and Twiggy’s dreamy, gazing eyes. The striking Paris-London-Tokyo-St Pete graphic is now a proud city emblem. Many of the city’s signature images spring from the quick-witted mind of Chad Mize. Chad talks with Barbara St. Clair about the allure of mural work, and the draining physical labor of mural creation. He share...