The mural above, Kittys, by Florida artist Mr. Cory Robinson, is located outside the Oceanic Market building in Tampa.
You can also find his work on Instagram.
Mar 222025
Reading List- “The Work of Art” by Adam Moss
Architecture, Art, Artists, Books, Ceramic Art, Collage, Conceptual Art, Dance, Design, Digital Art, Drawing, Fashion, Fiber Arts, Films, Glasswork, Illustration, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Music, Musicians / Bands, Painting / Painters, Performance Art, Performances, Photographers / Photography, Printmaking, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture, Sound Art, Video and Film, Writers
Mar 172025
The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing by former New York magazine editor Adam Moss is a fascinating look at the creative processes of several famous artists. Each artist discusses specific works and gives the reader an inside look at how they came about.
The 43 artists included are visual artists, writers, musicians, editors, designers, and many other creative categories. Moss is also an artist and you can see that in his desire to both inform the reader, and to learn for himself, what makes these individuals tick.
Many of the names will be familiar, but these behind the scenes looks are incredibly enlightening. These discussions often also inspired, for me, a deeper dive. I found myself watching videos of Twyla Tharp‘s choreography, reading Guy Talese’s essay and Sheila Heti’s book, listening to Moses Sumney, watching Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, and so on, as I progressed through the book.
While some artists will appeal more than others depending on your interests, all of them had something interesting and valuable to say. This book was one of my favorites of 2024.
Mar 072025
This mural by Michael Fatutoa was created for the 2021 edition of SHINE Mural Festival in St. Pete, Florida.
From St.Petersburg Arts Alliance about the artist-
Originally from the island of Tutuila in eastern Samoa, Michael Fatutoa was raised in Hawaii and later relocated to Tampa Bay. His work consists of motifs from the ancient Art of the Samoan Tatau (tattooing) and other Polynesian crafts such as carvings and tapestries. Michael shares this integral part of Samoan culture through his full-time work as a tattoo artist at Sacred Tatau in Tampa.
Mar 062025
This mural by Portuguese artist António Correia (aka Pantónio) was created for the 2016 edition of SHINE Mural Festival in St. Pete, Florida. The mural wraps around two walls of the Imagine Museum building.
Feb 262025
This mural by Tracey Jones, aka Artist Jones, located on the PSTA ticket office building in St. Pete, was created for the 2023 edition of the SHINE Mural Festival.
The work includes an image of John Donaldson, a former slave from Alabama who became the first black man to settle on the lower Pinellas Peninsula. He purchased a forty acre farm there and was one of a small group of pioneers who, along with his family, created the foundation for the community that would later grow into today’s St. Petersburg.
Los Angeles Art Shows- “Sensing the Future: Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.)” at The Getty
Feb 212025
As part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, The Getty is highlighting the incredible work created by the engineers and artists that made up the group Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T). The exhibition focuses on the history of the group and two of its most ambitious projects- 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering (1966) and the Pepsi Pavilion from Expo ’70 in Japan.
From the museum-
In 1966, engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman founded Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting and supporting collaborations between artists, engineers, and scientists. These partnerships brought disparate fields together, bridging the gap between culture and emerging technology. E.A.T.’s debut event, 9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering (1966), integrated art, theatre, and engineering at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York City, resulting in a technology-aided performance experience that proved to be a launchpad for artistic exploration. Their second major project, the Pepsi-Cola Pavilion at Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan (1970), presented a multisensory environment featuring experiments with sound, light, lasers, a mirrored dome, and fog. Through their collaborations, E.A.T. artists and engineers came to believe that such team efforts could benefit society; subsequent multidisciplinary endeavors, such as Projects Outside Art (1970), addressed issues of housing, education, environmental sustainability, and communication.
About 9 Evenings–
In 1965, Swedish electrical engineer Billy Klüver and American artist Robert Rauschenberg gathered 10 avant-garde artists and 30 Bell Labs engineers to participate in a collaborative, multidisciplinary project combining new technologies with theatre, dance, and music. The event,9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering, took place at the 69th Regiment Armory in New York, from October 13-22, 1966. More than 10,000 people attended performances by John Cage, Lucinda Childs, Oyvind Fahlström, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Rauschenberg, David Tudor and Robert Whitman. These performances incorporated technological equipment such as photocells, doppler sonar, remote controls, infrared cameras, and transistors. In addition, 9 Evenings engineers created the Theatre Electronic Environmental Modular, a flexible, wireless, networked control system, and the Proportional Control System (PCS), which used photocells to adjust light and sound levels. The event led to the founding of Experiments in Art and Technology the following month.
Below are images and objects from two of the nine evenings, Open Score and Physical Things–
Performance description of “Open Score” by Robert Rauschenberg
About Open Score–
Open Score began with a tennis match between professional player Mimi Kanarek and painter Frank Stella. Engineer William Kaminski wired their rackets with transmitters that caused every strike of the ball to emit a loud sound and extinguish an overhead light. The game continued until the Armory was completely dark. At that point, a cast of 300 volunteers walked onto the court and performed a series of loosely choreographed movements while infrared cameras projected their images onto large screens. Rauschenberg described the action as “the conflict of not being able to see an event that is taking place right in front of one except through a reproduction,” an idea that resonates in today’s world of social media, streaming, and smartphones. For the second performance, Rauschenberg added a third section in which he carried dancer Simone Forti around the Armory in a burlap bag while she sang an Italian ballad.
About Steve Paxton and Dick Wolff’s Physical Things–
For 9 Evenings, Paxton created an enormous, inflated sculpture using Polyethylene and box fans and invited visitors to walk through the structure at their own pace, confronting different environments and performances along the way. After climbing through a 100-foot inflated tower, participants emerged into an enclosed area with wire loops suspended above their heads. Using modified transistor radios, they could listen to an array of sounds, including animal noises and sports commentary. One’s location underneath the sound loops determined which part of the score was audible, allowing people to choose where to linger and what to listen to.
One of the group’s most ambitious projects was for the Pepsi Pavilion (pictured above).
From the museum-
In 1970, the Pepsi-Cola Corporation commissioned E.A.T. to design a pavilion for Expo ’70 in Osaka, Japan. Artists Robert Whitman, Robert Breer, David Tudor, and Forrest Myers made early contributions to the design of the pavilion; eventually the design team included 20 artists and 50 engineers and scientists.
Outside the pavilion, a water-vapor cloud sculpture by the artist Fujiko Nakaya covered the white, faceted dome. On the plaza, seven of Breer’s Floats, six-foot-high dome-shaped sculptures, glided in slow motion while emitting sounds.
Visitors entered the pavilion through a tunnel and descended a staircase into a clamshell-shaped room lit by moving patterns of laser light. On the far end, another staircase led up into the Mirror Dome, a 90-foot diameter, 210-degree spherical mirror made of aluminized Mylar. Within the Mirror Dome, visitors’ reflected images appeared to float upside down above their heads.
You can find more images and further documentation here.
This exhibition closes 2/23/25.
Feb 072025
This mural, Southern Expansion, was created by Zulu Painter and is located in St. Pete, Florida.
Located in the old phone booth on the corner is a plaque that reads-
In the late 1800’s, Black Men were hired to continue the railroad in to the territory that is now known as St. Petersburg, FL. These men settled in this area and were largely responsible for building our city and streets and creating this Gulf Coast community.
This mural honors the history and legacy of the African American people at the foundation of our great city.
You also find Zulu Painter’s work on Instagram.
Feb 072025
The Triangle Park Mural, in downtown Asheville, North Carolina, pays tribute to Asheville’s historic African American business district and the surrounding Valley Street/ East End neighborhoods. Completed in 2013, the project was a collaboration between the Just Folks community club, the Asheville Design Center (ADC), and artist/community-arts organizer Molly Must.
From Molly Must’s website–
Triangle Park is in the heart of “The Block,” an historic area that was the cultural and economic center for all of Western North Carolina’s African-American citizens, from the time of Reconstruction until the years of integration and the East-Riverside Re-Development Project (funded under the federal Urban Renewal program), which severely altered the community’s physical, cultural, and economic topography. Although the community continues to experience displacement and transformation under heavy development, a generation of people who grew up on and around Valley Street (now Charlotte Street) still congregate in Triangle Park, as they have for many years. This dedicated group of community members — who organized under the name Just Folks — has been hosting regular block parties in the park for over a decade. The Triangle Park Mural was born of this vital commitment and a collective desire to mark the changing landscape with celebratory evidence of the area’s profoundly important past.
In an upwelling of community effort and care, nearly 100 volunteers helped paint the Triangle Park Mural between June of 2012 and May of 2013 (many of whom have their own stories about the heyday of the Block). The design is a product of community discussion that was aided by historical archives, interviews, family stories, and donated photographs (including the collection of photographer Andrea Clark). The mural honors both personal stories and memories of several historic institutions of the area, including the Stevens Lee High School, Catholic Hill School, and the Young Men’s Institute (YMI). Artist Molly Must composed the design, with contributions by artists Ernie Mapp, Twila Jefferson, Ian Wilkinson, Harper Leich, and Liana Murray.
Jan 312025
This mural in Akron by Axel Void was organized by Curated Storefront and is based on a photograph taken with a ring camera and posted on the Neighbors app.
From Curated Storefront about the work-
This piece is a note on human inter-relational experience. The work presents a highly specific, anonymous interaction between neighbors in the digital realm.
The image is sourced from a post on the Neighbors app, a location based message board designed to connect Ring doorbell cameras into a network of private surveillance, with the intention of “always knowing what is happening in your neighborhood with real time, hyper local safety.”
The posting was created on June 18th, 2022 by an anonymous neighbor 3.4 miles away from the site of the mural. The post is titled: “Unknown visitors, Strange kids at my door 10:30 pm do you recognize them?” The Ring doorbell footage shows a young man at the door for about one minute; the footage is grainy and black and white, he is hard to make out and shuffles from side to side; a friend waits in the background on a bicycle. Twelve commenters on the post argue on whether or not the boy appears suspicious, or if he is merely looking for his lost dog; casing the house or calling for help.
This piece proposes a discussion point on irrational fear, the changing nature of surveillance, and an overarching sense of paranoia in modern society.
Jan 312025
Pictured are selections from Gustavo Prado’s Tempo, located in the windows of the University of Akron’s Polsky Building. You can also see the pieces lit up at night which give it a very different look. It is one of several works that are part of Curated Storefront’s ongoing project to transform downtown Akron.
From their website about the work-
Employing sculpture, performance, photography, and video, Gustavo Prado examines shifts in perspective to produce works that investigate different conceptions of reality. He focuses on light, site, and context to create a body of work that dissects the need to constantly negotiate inhabited space as a means of deriving an understanding of personal identity.
Exploring the complexities inherent in the act of gazing, Prado makes inquiries into a series of notions that are both intrinsic and extraneous to the field of art, such as surveillance, appropriation, voyeurism, aggregates, artificial intelligence, narcissism, information overload, and the right to privacy. He uses off-the-shelf materials that he slightly alters, enabling viewers to recognize the source material while understanding potential deviations from the intended use. Through processes of combining seemingly disparate materials and subject matter, Prado tests cultural assumptions of what can or should belong together.