Arts In

Arts In: Don Gialanella Don Gialanella can make a cow out of children’s toys, that’s the size of a cow. He made the giant twirly moustache in front of The Dalí Museum. Don creates huge and beautiful sculptures that have personality and humor. From a life-sized metal man tenderly opening his chest to reveal his glowing heart, to a diver arcing exuberantly into a dumpster full of plastic bottles, to remind us to recycle. In this conversation with Barbara St. Clair, Don Gialanella shares wild and wonderful stories of working with sculptor Louise Bourgeois, new projects involving sound and how he keeps up with more commissions than ever despite Parkinson’s disease. Don explains how he wound up on the cutting-edge of digital design for television and shares his enthusiastic passion for public art. Explore Don Gialanella’s work at donsculpture.com Arts In is produced by Sheila Cowley. Executive Producer, Barbara St. Clair.

Award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter Victoria Johnson creates both narrative and documentary films. In this conversation with Barbara St. Clair, she tells us surprising and humorous tales of learning the craft of analog filmmaking in the adventurous artistic atmosphere of the University of South Florida in the late 1970s. She explains how her skills evolved through video and digital, and her focus on creating films that change her audience’s views about a subject. Victoria shares the challenges of suddenly needing to run her family business, and how she brought video to her marketing firm - and surprisingly got hired by the 2012 Republican National Convention, something she still chuckles about. She won the Telly Award for Welcome to Tampa. Victoria shares her passion for screenwriting, an art she came to after establishing a career as a filmmaker. She reflects on the thriving world of streaming video, and how to find an audience in a world where everyone can make a film on their cell phone. Victoria’s currently exploring political performance art. You can read about her recent project here - https://www.cltampa.com/arts-entertainment/visual-art/article/21080912/tampa-bay-artist-puts-toy-babies-in-cages-to-protest-trumps-migrant-detention-centers. And here - https://www.wtsp.com/mobile/article/news/local/ice-ice-baby-local-artist-takes-aim-at-immigration-crisis/67-6bdae07b-a0e9-48dc-a4ed-e8220edaf090. You can find out more about Victoria Jorgenson’s work at http://amovieproductions.com/.

Bahia Ramos recently spoke at the Art of Marketing and Branding Summit hosted by Creative Pinellas. She serves as Director of Arts at New York City’s Wallace Foundation, and leads the team responsible for the foundation’s work funding research by arts organizations around the country, as they explore a larger question that affects the entire arts community. Bahia explains the five-year relationship she has with grantees, as they help create a body of knowledge that can be shared to help arts organizations nationwide. She shares her thoughts on the crucial business of philanthropy, on growing new audiences and how to change your art as the world around you changes. Find out more about the Wallace Foundation at https://www.wallacefoundation.org/pages/default.aspx. Explore their five-year project, Building Audiences for Sustainability - https://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/building-audiences-for-the-arts/pages/default.aspx Their research is available for anyone to read. Here’s a selection from many pages of documents you can download. Audience Building and Financial Health for Nonprofit Performing Arts https://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/pages/audience-building-and-financial-health-nonprofit-performing-arts.aspx Ballet Austin: Building Audiences for Unfamiliar Works https://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/pages/ballet-austin-building-audiences-for-unfamiliar-works--discussion-guide.aspx Change in Audiences in American Theaters https://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/pages/change-in-audiences-american-theaters.aspx Arts for All: Connecting New Audiences https://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/pages/arts-for-all-connecting-new-audiences.aspx Studies in Building Arts Audiences and Building Deeper Relationships https://www.wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/pages/wallace-studies-in-building-arts-audiences-building-deeper-relationships.aspx

Mark Feinman is the drummer for the eclectic jazz trio, La Lucha - and an inventive composer. Mark tells La Lucha’s origin story of how he and pianist John O’Leary and bassist Alejandro Arenas began their long-term collaboration. And he shares his own journey in jazz, with stops at St Pete’s Pinellas County Center for the Arts at Gibbs High School and the University of South Florida’s cutting-edge School of Music. He talks with Barbara St. Clair about constantly listening and creating music, and even shares a sneak peek at a future song, recorded on his phone during a dog walk. Find out more about La Lucha’s music and performance schedule at https://www.laluchamusic.com/. You can read about Mark Feinman’s work during his tenure as a Creative Pinellas Emerging Artist Fellow at https://creativepinellas.org/mark-feinman/.

Carrie Jadus made a name for herself as a professional artist, after giving up a career as a skilled radio frequency engineer. Her distinctive, soft and subtly subversive style is seen in paintings, on murals, posters and notecards around St. Petersburg. Working at Soft Water Studios, she’s a mainstay of the Warehouse Arts District and longtime illustrator for St. Pete Preservation. Carrie shares the turning point that made her decide to choose art over engineering - and how as a working mother, she carefully planned a sustainable artistic career, using the business plan of a Toymaker as a model. She explains how working in several different styles helped her earn a living and fulfill her urges for personal expression. She tells the story behind her well-known mural of pioneering electrical engineer, Nikola Tesla - and Little Miss Sisyphus, the mural people often miss just around the corner. Carrie shares her passion for ‘grand portraits,’ monumental paintings of figures from Einstein to Nina Simone, and explains in detail two recent, more surrealistic, paintings. You can explore Carrie Jadus’ work at http://www.carriejadus.com/bio.html. And follow her new work at https://www.facebook.com/cjadusfineartpage/ and https://www.instagram.com/jadusfineart/. Soft Water Studios is open during Second Saturday ArtWalk - https://stpeteartsalliance.org/artwalk/ - from 5-9 p.m. on the second Saturday of every month - http://www.softwaterstudios.com/. Her Tesla mural and Little Miss Sisyphus are featured in the St Pete Arts Alliance’s Virtual Mural Tour - https://stpeteartsalliance.org/carrie-jadus-tesla/ and https://stpeteartsalliance.org/carrie-jadus-little-miss-sisyphus/.

Jason Hackenwerth is an adventurous abstract sculptor who’s medium is thousands of latex balloons. His enormous sculptural inventions can fill a towering museum atrium, or mall. His sculptures are enormous, and the vivid pictures on his website are only an echo of the overwhelming power of experiencing them up close. Jason Hackenwerth teaches at St. Pete’s Eckerd College and works all over the world. To his knowledge, he’s the only artist right now doing serious, curated art with balloons. He talks about the challenges of validating a new kind of art when you don’t have a community of artists working in that style. In this conversation with Barbara St. Clair, Jason shares the moving and “terrifying” story of his early experiments, and how his first big installation went so badly wrong. And how he turned that failure into a new way of working that got him a year-long gig building a sculpture a day on a stage inside FAO Schwarz, and traveling the world creating giant balloon sculptures. Jason explains his passion for the ephemeral nature of his artistic practice - and his ongoing artistic quest to push this unique medium constantly further. And the challenges of creating artwork that curators expect to look like a birthday party. Find out more about Jason Hackenwerth’s work at http://www.jasonhackenwerth.com/. Time-lapse footage of the installation of Pisces at the National Museum of Scotland - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtqPxtSMK9E. An interview with Jason during the unveiling of Corona at the Abu Dhabi Science Festival - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHv9PMl-Ki8. The video he mentions of a year of impromptu sculptures created while people watched him at FAO Schwarz - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg3aE1zytnI

Erin Blankenship is the Curator of Exhibitions & Collections at the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg. The Museum is more special than most people realize - it’s a historical museum that maintains a vital collection of contemporary art. Erin’s seen first-hand how visual art offers another path to understanding the challenging reality of genocide. The Museum’s permanent collection includes work in a range of mediums, created by artists in concentration camps and Holocaust survivors - along with work by “empathizers,” artists who may or may not be Jewish, but are moved to respond to acts of genocide. She explains the powerful role artists shoulder, telling stories that need to be told. And she shares memories of beloved artist William Pachner, an internationally-known Abstract Expressionist and a longtime, vivid presence in Tampa Bay. In one of the highlights of her curatorial career to date, Erin organized an exhibition where collectors of Pachner’s beautiful and colorful abstractions discovered that his paintings were inspired by the loss of his entire family in the Holocaust - forcing people to rethink their perception of what ‘Holocaust art’ looks like. Find out more about the Florida Holocaust Museum’s exhibitions and programming at https://www.flholocaustmuseum.org/. Read a Tampa Bay Times review of the exhibit of William Pachner’s work that Erin talks about - https://www.tampabay.com/things-to-do/visualarts/art-review-william-pachners-powerful-response-to-holocaust-still-resonates/2230372. A detailed look at the life and work of William Pachner published in Tablet, with a quote from Erin - https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/250423/painter-william-pachner-obit. - Arts In is produced by Sheila Cowley. Executive Producer, Barbara St. Clair.

Katherine Pill is the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts in downtown St. Petersburg. In this conversation with Barbara St. Clair, Katherine shares her duties as curator of the growing collection of contemporary art at this classic museum - from exploring cutting-edge new digital works to collaborating with public artists Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse on community engagement with their work. Find out more about the Museum of Fine Arts at mfastpete.org. . . . Images 1-2 are from Mickett-Stackhouse’s Irma Reflections at the MFA. Find out more about this participatory installation at mfastpete.org/event/mickett-stackhouse-irma-reflections/all. Image 3 is by Christian Marclay, a still from Telephones, 1995, video, running time 7:30 minutes. © Christian Marclay. Courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York. Find out more about this pioneering artist at tate.org.uk/art/artists/christian-marclay.

Desiree Moore is a multidisciplinary artist working in video and film, art installations and a unique take on interactive public art. She shares her creative process, with plenty of action in the editing room, in this conversation with Barbara St. Clair. Along with her engaging collaborative effort, The Barter Boat, traveling the country to trade people’s special objects and stories. Find out more about Desiree Moore’s work at https://www.desireenicholemoore.com/. Explore the online journal she posted during her Creative Pinellas Emerging Artist Fellowship - https://creativepinellas.org/desiree-moore/. Find out more about the Barter Boat at https://www.facebook.com/BarterBoat/.

Saumitra Chandratreya is an adventurous visual artist whose work is political, but beautiful - and often created from unexpected materials. In this conversation with Barbara St. Clair, he talks about identity, immigration and the inspiration he takes from objects other people overlook or throw away. As he explains, “If I don’t make challenging work, then I’m letting down anyone who is of brown skin and queer, who might be interested in making their voice heard, but don’t have the tools - because I have the tools.” Saumitra Chandratreya’s work was chosen this month for the 2019 Visions of Health Equity project sponsored by the Foundation for a Healthy St. Petersburg. His work will be featured at the Chad Mize Gallery in November. Link to the Foundation For Healthy St. Pete announcement: https://myemail.constantcontact.com/News--Events-and-Resources.html?soid=1120560768999&aid=BfoxUOerk8I Link to Mize gallery website: http://chadmize.com/exhibits.html Find out more about Saumitra Chandratreya’s work at https://www.saumitrac.com Instagram: saumiisawyou Facebook: Saumitra Chandratreya