I’m Maggie Duffy, the new Managing Editor of Creative Pinellas’ digital magazine—created to share the vibrant arts of Pinellas County with locals and travelers alike. I’m so excited to be working on relaunching the magazine with a new look and fresh content. Big things are to come, so stay tuned.
In my first weeks on the job, I explored The Shape of Us, a moving exhibition where six artists reveal deeply personal stories through bold, expressive work.
It was curated and installed by Freddie Hughes, the Gallery and Facilities Engagement Manager. He did an outstanding job on the exhibition, which has been very well-received.
The Shape of Us is installed so that each of the six Pinellas County artists have their own room, giving the feeling of a series of solo exhibitions. It’s important when an artist’s work has its own space to be viewed as a body of work.
The artists in The Shape of Us come from a variety of backgrounds, are in different places in their careers and have different perspectives. But as Hughes explains, “The Shape of Us is a gathering of people, of stories of what we carry and what we let go.”
I caught up with all the artists to discuss their work.
Kirk Palmer
Whether riffing on quotes from poets and philosophers, being inspired by ancient archaeological sites to consider the transcendental impact of human mark making, or responding to the devastation the recent hurricanes left in their wake, at the core of Palmer’s work is humanity’s interconnection.
Or conversely, the disconnection between people and communities when they disagree with each other. Despite this, Palmer encourages people to reject fatalism and indifference.
“My perspective is really more of a global one,” he said. “People are people. In the big scheme of things, (if) people would just take a step back and understand how interconnected we are, we might care about each other a little bit more.”
Many of Palmer’s works are inspired by his travels across the world, which explains his global perspective. The former Marine spent part of his career as a Middle East Foreign Area Officer and Arabic linguist. His time spent in Syria inspired the piece “Voyeur,” which includes ceramic tiles and shrapnel from a historic church.
A signature recurring grid motif that permeates much of his work. He likes to leave the meaning open to the viewer’s interpretation. Palmer also hand grinds his own pigments derived from natural materials from around the world to create textured surfaces.
Palmer’s most recent series of small abstract paintings was made in response to the piles of detritus composed of people’s personal belongings after Hurricanes Helene and Milton that he saw near his home in St. Petersburg. (His home wasn’t affected.)
“I could feel people’s exposure,vulnerability, I could feel anxiety and it bothered me,” he said. “As artists, you don’t have any alternative but to feel that sense of loss…and exposure to what people had to put out in their front yards.”
Alice Pickett Lewis
Through her mixed media textile work, Lewis also responded to the sense of loss the hurricanes created when it felled thousands of trees. That’s including two majestic live oaks that made her Gulfport yard a shady oasis, where owls would nest and woodpeckers would visit.
“I got seriously depressed, and then I got depressed because I felt like I was being self indulgent, because people here lost everything,” she said. Luckily, her house, which is home to her sewing studio, wasn’t severely damaged.
But it’s through her layered technique that she can repopulate the lost trees in her work. It starts with photographs she takes of nature, then catalogs them into a library of images. By using Photoshop, she’s able to plant the tree into any background she wants, including ones that she has painted. She said some of her pieces have 30-40 layers.
Using a process called free motion embroidery (or stitching), thread and other fiber embellishments make the pieces sing.
Her technique allows her to create “imaginary landscapes,” like the one titled “Blue Spring,” which she said people always ask about the “real” locale. Annual visits to California yield landscapes with wildflowers, with varieties not found in Florida.
Lewis’ piece, “Country Road” uses the path from Boyd Hill Nature Preserve in St. Petersburg, where there had been a tree tunnel, but is no longer there. Lewis added in oak trees to evoke the tree tunnel again, with the actual shadows from the photograph.
Karel Garcia
The Cuban artist and architect emigrated to the U.S. three years ago. That experience is one of the main inspirations for a recurring motif in Garcia’s work: human hands.
He came to this country looking for freedom, he said, and his hands were the tool for buying that freedom, by using them to make his art. He sees them as one of the most important parts of the body, because they connect to the environment and relay information.
Hands are the main focus of “Between Two Worlds,” but they also swirl through the other pieces, many of which celebrate the feminine form.
“It’s one of the elements (that) have potential for…people to connect with emotions or feelings or desires,” he said.
And that emotional connection is at the core of his intention for his art, particularly his most recent series, Deep Feeling. He says in his artist statement, his work is a “constant search to capture the most intimate human feelings through a visual language that moves between figuration and surrealism.”
Garcia, who is based in St. Petersburg, uses a mix of materials to create his work. Unprimed canvases create texture, watercolor makes transparent background layers, to which oil and charcoal make heavier marks.
As an artist in Cuba, Garcia primarily made drawings with pencil and charcoal on paper, because of the limited art materials available there. When he came to the U.S., there was a learning curve as he adjusted to new materials and techniques, he said.
“With Birds on the Head” was the first work he made with paint and canvas. He said it took him three months to complete.
“It was an interesting journey,” he said. “Now, I feel really comfortable using all these materials… You can see how I am more free right now to express myself.”
Tavia Reyes
The St. Petersburg-based artist’s work is defined by a bright color palette and abstract shapes based on cellular structures and components.
Reyes’ study of neurodivergence opened the door to her return to her art practice. Despite having been in the academic world her entire life, she struggled with symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder, a label she grappled with from a young age.
She found that high-achieving women struggled the older they got, due to a chronic nervous system dysregulation.
Through her research of women with ADD/ADHD and autism, she discovered the feelings women had of “being behind” or otherness that often contribute to guilt and/or shame.
“I was trying to understand how to show up in the world without being ashamed of that otherness,” she said. “And so for me, art was able to express that.”
Reyes has a series of works inspired by other neurodivergent people she knows, who provided insight and color selection.
As a chiropractor, being certified in acupuncture and a yoga teacher, healing is part of her daily practice. In her piece, “Seven Generations,” Reyes explores healing generational trauma with the images of people with eyes made of flowers with seven petals each.
They’re centered around a mitochondrion, which is where special DNA that only gets passed down from the mother is stored. The number seven is significant because, based on epigenetic research, it can take four to seven generations to heal on a cellular level, Reyes said.
That notion is backed up in the painting “Ke Akua,” which features seven dancers around a fire and a prominent female figure in the foreground. This figure represents the collective of ancestors, the giants whose shoulders she stands on, she said.
“She’s kind of like that embodiment of the energy that flows between you and the people that you are related to, or the people that you love,” she said. “That feeling of timelessness and that grounded feeling when you’re comforted by the people that you love.”
Zulu Painter
Through a variety of media, St. Petersburg-based artist Zulu Painter, seeks to uplift people with his artwork.
Known for his vibrant “Mindful Murals” that adorn walls around the world — many of which are found in Pinellas County, the paintings on display in The Shape of Us embody the same celebration of not only color and pattern, but connection to humanity.
One example is “Pearls of Wisdom from Mother Universe.”
“We as human beings have a tendency to try to go off of the path,” he explained. “That can hurt us, and that can help us. But we need to pay attention to those pearls of wisdom, like people that come to us with knowledge, information that we don’t have, take it in and consider it and don’t try to like, don’t try to reconstruct it all the time.”
Pop culture plays a significant role in establishing connection with the viewer. A series of works in cardboard depict recognizable motifs such as Nike sneakers.
It’s a bonus that cardboard art is also an opportunity to upcycle and do a little something for the environment,” he said. With the “Reduce, Recycle, Reboot Mask” (it’s actually not a Transformer, but a robot he imagined), Zulu Painter re-used a bunch of boxes from Walmart.
Environmental benefits are also part of his newest series, which is made from preserved moss. It was given to him by a neighbor, but it’s taken some time for him to find a use for it. After researching moss, he found that this moss, which is in stasis, filters air the way plants do, creating oxygen and repelling dust.
Zulu Painter stays artistically true to himself with the moss series, which includes pieces depicting Homer Simpson, his signature geometric patterns and a peace sign.
Luke Vest
Life experiences ranging from learning to fly airplanes, working on an organic vegetable farm in Montana, living alone in an adobe in a New Mexico desert and being a wildland firefighter have made Vest the artist he is today.
And the St. Petersburg-based artist is still collecting life experience as he strives to push his artwork to create something new. While he didn’t set out to create a series and the figures each evolved differently, they naturally came together.
Vest uses oil paint, spray paint, pastel and metal leaf —which creates luminous backgrounds, giving figures ethereal auras. The addition of symbols gives them a mythological quality.
Upon first glance, they have a cubist quality, but Vest said he consciously tried to evolve from the sharp angles and lines that define that genre by rounding the figures and making them more fluid. He’s blending a lot of different styles, he said.
“I really want to create something new,” he said. “I want to try to push a visual idea. I guess it’s hard to conceptualize, but in some way contribute back to the visual language of art and maybe reign in a new era.”
His idea of art relates to alchemy, or the idea of the slipperiness of mercury, always just out of reach, he said.
“As you chase that thread, it winds you through this natural evolution of your own work” he said. “It’s a fine balance between surrender and planning… but as long as I just keep actively pursuing that, or chasing that thread, kind of a mercurial line, it will naturally evolve itself, kind of like mirrors of a reflection of my own personal soul.”
Go see The Shape of Us
To learn more about the artists or explore available works for sale, visit creativepinellas.org/event/the-shape-of-us. The Shape of Us is on view at the Gallery at Creative Pinellas in Largo, with free admission through August 10. Come experience the exhibition in person and take it all in.
