By Kurt Loft. “If I’m authentic on the stage, with the music I do, the way I sing, how I present myself – the audience, no matter their background, will connect with what I’m giving them,” says Ona Kirei. “I try to focus on that everywhere I go and I always feel the warmth of the audience, and it’s the best feeling ever.” Kirei believes people need that “best feeling” in large doses today because of the anxiety from COVID, mass shootings and so much political division. “Art always plays one of the biggest roles in difficult times… Read More
By Deborah Rodriguez. I am a storyteller. The ultimate story is the acknowledgement that we are one human race. It is my goal to express my membership in this human race through the lens of my African American soul. My art is how I share my membership…. Read More
By M. Thandabantu Iverson. here’s a word of thanks
lettin’ you know I heard
testifyin’ that I ain’t scared no longer
to say out loud that listenin’ at the table and hearin’ all those prayers
mixed in with all the truthtellin’ makes sense to me now… Read More
By Tony Wong Palms. It is all an adventurous, a celebratory, and a life preserving act when seeking out art – whether going couple of miles to galleries or museums in town, or a few thousand miles cross country, or over the ocean blue. A recent road trip had me driving from Tampa to Death Valley, where huge land art sites are dwarfed in an even more enormously vast untamed western landscape…. Read More
By Kendra N. Bryant. Creating a work on Zora Neale Hurston might seem trite for a Florida literary journal. However, years ago, while I was a student of Deborah G. Plant, Hurston scholar who edited Hurston’s Barracoon, I asked her, “How much more can we write about Zora?” Just as much as we can write about love, she said. & so it is…. Read More
By Margo Hammond. In 2012, after reading Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent, Barbara Rhode was inspired to launch a unique program of healing at the Pinellas County Jail for women prisoners. The Red Tent Women’s Initiative, a program that combines group therapy with classes on arts and crafts, has helped over 1,000 incarcerated women work through the trauma that landed them behind bars in the first place… Read More
By Bernice Willis. Let’s talk, not text, your voice is what I want to hear
It closes in the distance, as if you-are-near.
Call Me
Your voice is pleasing, gives me the same joy as to when
I heard it the first time. A text can’t recapture that moment, now or then…. Read More
By Robyn Crosa and Christina Marko. An NEA/Pinellas Recovers grant update. Visual artist Robyn Crosa has a solo exhibition, Gourdgeous Goddess Gals, on display at the Largo Public Library. Robyn first became enchanted by gourds when she was in a small town country store in Georgia. “When I looked at the basket of gourds, it looked like my mother and my sisters and I sitting together… Read More
By Fanni Green. University of South Florida Theatre professor, actor, director and writer Fanni Green talks with USF English professor, author, spoken word and visual artist Dr. Gary Lemons about his focus this month as our guest editor – Community Healing through Artistic Transformation. As Gary explains, “We must change people’s lives to believe we all have the right to be creative.” Listen here… Read More
By Dwaine Watts. An art community is a place where people of all ethnicity, gender, ideology can express their artistic talents freely without repercussions. It is a place that provides a platform for freedom of expression in any art form. It inspires and nurtures the growth of one’s talents. I began drawing in my early years growing up because I wanted to. I never thought of it as my true calling in life. … Read More
