Ybor City – Bay Art Files

PARADISE | PARADISE – Layered

Thomas Sayers Ellis, Blackfish, Fisheye, Blackened, 2024.

PARADISE | PARADISE – Layered

St. Petersburg Month of Photography and the inaugural Photo Laureate Thomas Sayers Ellis

By Clara ten Berge

Thinking about living in Florida, the lyrics “this could be heaven or this could be hell” comes to mind. The white sandy beaches, the refreshing springs with their captivating flora and fauna, and the rich cultural landscape (as evidenced by this very website), along with the agreeably mild winters, make it a paradise you wouldn’t want to leave.

Yet, when mid-May arrives, the heat slaps you in the face and hurricane season begins, a layer is peeled back to reveal one of Florida’s many other sides. Peel back another layer, and you uncover complicated politics, homelessness, a terrible housing market, raging late-stage capitalism, and more. Florida is a many-headed beast; while it can be paradise for some, it could be hell for others.

Thomas Sayers Ellis, the inaugural Photo Laureate of the Saint Petersburg Month of Photography (SPMOP), has spent a year walking the streets and unveiling the many stories of Tampa Bay, capturing everything from the blissful and joyful to the mundane, the painful, and the terrible.

Thomas Sayers Ellis, *The Critical And Response of Woke Maintenance*, 2024

Thomas Sayers Ellis, *The Coke Bomber*, 2024.

With his images, he creates narratives that go beyond street photography. They are seductive, they will lure you into paradise. They are confrontational, they will show you the fringes that make up your paradise. His images are layered, both in the literal as in figurative sense. They show a different dimension in paradise, a dimension that is made up of advertising, marketing and image building of what paradise should be. But at the same time, this paradise is a construct that is only available for the happy few.
— Marieke van der Krabben, Executive Director, SPMOP
(excerpt from “‘In the Hall of Mirrors, Nothing Is as It Seems,”
foreword to Paradise ǀ Paradise -Layered)

Saint Petersburg Month of Photography

SPMOP, a non-profit founded by photography historian and curator Marieke van der Krabben and photographer Águeda Sanfiz, celebrates local Tampa Bay photography in every way possible. During the month of May, SPMOP organizes exhibitions and events, collaborating with local artists and venues such as the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts in Tampa, and the Morean Arts Center, Five Deuces Galleria, and the Museum of Motherhood in St. Petersburg.

Every year the organization will choose a Photo Laureate, who will have the honor of documenting life in Tampa Bay for a year. In May of 2023, SPMOP announced its first Photo Laureate: Thomas Sayers Ellis. From over 35 artists, SPMOP selected five nominees whose work was exhibited at the Morean Arts Center in Saint Petersburg in May of that year. The jury was captivated by Thomas’s poignant photos that immediately grabbed the viewer’s attention. Each photograph told a unique story and invited dialogue. The panel was convinced Thomas would be able to highlight the many stories of Tampa Bay in new and exciting ways.

It is inspiring to see an artist like Thomas in action. His dedication and enthusiasm are infectious. He is open, polite and friendly when photographing people on the streets. Since he moved to Saint Petersburg in 2016, he is not yet used to the Florida heat, but his urge to document the streets and the people overcomes this obstacle.

Now, at the end of his tenure, Thomas Sayers Ellis receives a solo exhibition at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts (FMoPA). Opening on June 18th, the exhibition will showcase this year-long project. Using a mixture of black-and-white and color photography, digital as well as film, and accidental double exposures, Thomas has assembled an eclectic collection of images that constructs a multi-layered account of his year as SPMOP’s first Photo Laureate. An accompanying photo book with an extended collection of Thomas’s photographs and poems is currently in the making by SPMOP Executive Director Marieke van der Krabben.

Florida Museum of Photographic Arts

FMoPA’s move to Ybor City has been a game changer. The beloved Photography Museum struggled at its previous downtown Tampa location, surrounded by corporate offices and at an inconveniently high level to attract foot traffic. Since relocating to 7th Avenue, the museum enjoys the warm embrace of the vibrant arts community around it. Residing on the first floor of the historic 1928 Kress Building, the museum is part of Kress Contemporary. Kress Contemporary is the home of many art galleries, art studios and visual and performing arts organizations such as GRATUS, Tempus Projects, Screen Door Microcinema and the Tampa City Ballet. Often on Thursdays, the museum hosts events coinciding with the art initiatives above it, feasting art lovers with double the celebrations.

What sets FMoPA apart is its combination of internationally and nationally renowned artist exhibitions, its celebration of emerging local artists, and its many community programs. This Spring they organized the phenomenal exhibition Joel Meyerowitz: Confluence, 1964-1984 and in July they will open Photo Ybor, about the history of Ybor City. Programs such as Prodigy: Storytelling through Photography and the annual Member’s Show, demonstrate FMoPA’s commitment to their community. Not all museums offer their members and community a venue to exhibit their art, which makes stepping into a place like a gallery or museum more accessible. This layered approach in exhibitions and offerings is evidently working well; they have seen an influx of visitors since they officially reopened at the new location in September 2023. All in all, FMoPA is a worthy exhibition venue for SPMOP’s Photo Laureate.

Thomas Sayers Ellis, *Our Lady of Lines and Lanes*, 2023

Poetry and Photography

Ellis is not only a photographer but also a published poet and a bandleader. Since the beginning of his Photo Laureate journey, he has treated the community to bi-weekly photographic updates accompanied by his free-flowing poetry. Even more powerful when spoken out loud, they highlight Thomas´ creativity and provide a glimpse into his intriguing musings.

Combining two art forms can make it greater than the sum of its parts. For this reason, poetry and photography are a match made in heaven! This past May, Keep St. Pete Lit! held a Poetry Open Mic at St. Petersburg’s Studio@620, featuring a special photography edition of their poetry open mic to celebrate the month of photography. Local talent from all stages of life brought photographs that are dear to them and shared their poems, prose and spoken word. It was beautiful to see and experience people at their most vulnerable, sharing their most inner thoughts, all cheered on by a very respectful and supportive audience. Keep St. Pete Lit! plans to invite Thomas Sayers Ellis as a featured speaker in the near future.

Thomas Sayers Ellis, *The All-Star Cage Jump Wrestler*, 2023

Also this past May, SPMOP presented an exhibition titled Photo Laureate 2024: the Nominees at the Morean Arts center which featured the work of the following five local artists: Christa Joyner Moody, David Moreno, Jose Ramirez, Marian Tagliarino and Ric Savid. From this impressive grouping, the torch of Photo Laureate was passed on to Ric Savid, an amazingly skilled artist who shoots mostly in film and specializes in portrait photography.

We can all look forward to next year’s St. Petersburg Month of Photography celebration and a future public exhibition of Photo Laureate Ric Savid’s unique and exciting exploration.

About the author

Originally from the Netherlands, author Clara ten Berge has been living in Tampa for 2.5 years with her husband. In the Netherlands (Amsterdam), she worked at several museums. She has volunteered at FMoPA for a year, and is currently volunteering for SPMOP as Creative Director.

A special thank you goes out to the Gobioff Foundation for sponsoring the exhibition and to St. Petersburg Month of Photography’s entire team.

Let’s all go to the movies

Tampa Bay’s microcinema scene

By Keven Renken

For many of us, going to the movies has become an inherent part of our DNA.

Mason City’s 500-seat Art Deco-era theater, The Arlee, opened on S. Main Street in 1936.

I know for me personally, my experiences with attending motion pictures has pretty much gone hand in hand with the evolution of how, and where, we watch them. I may have been four when I first experienced going to a movie theater to see a film. At least this was the first one I could remember. It was the Arlee Theater in my tiny little town of Mason City, Illinois (current population: 2,343), and on its single screen it showed movies on Friday and Saturday nights and Saturday and Sunday afternoons. The run would be extended a second week and sometimes also play on Thursdays if they were showing something more popular. My young self was there with my brother and sisters and mother to see “Babes in Toyland” with Annette Funicello and Tommy Sands, and as I remember it, I screamed like a banshee when the trees surrounded the children in the cast (and no, I’m not getting it mixed up with similar talking trees in “The Wizard of Oz”).

And yet I went back. There was magic and mystery to be had in a space like this – this was decades before Nicole Kidman talked about similar feelings in her ad for AMC – and each iteration of the movie-going experience was more thrilling than the next. Going to a space where there were THREE movie theaters was to experience something beyond bliss – imagine, if you will, waiting in the hallway and hearing the ending of “Close Encounters” and knowing you’re about to see it yourself – so that when something akin to a multiplex opened up, it was well worth the half-hour (or more) drive for the seemingly endless choices of entertainment viewing. And the food! Soon you could get an entire meal, to be consumed at the same time as the viewing!

And assigned seats.

That reclined.

And Dolby.

And IMAX.

And many other viewing choices that made the whole encounter something that audiences actively sought out for amusement as humanity moseyed their way through the 21st century.

Of course, the double whammy of streaming content and the pandemic changed that forever.

At first, people started staying home because they had so much choice there. And then they stayed home because they had no choice. And multiplexes became vast ghost towns, a slightly sad extension of the malls where they were often located.

It took a hot second, but cinemas are in the process of bouncing back (not all, though – the movie theaters at Citrus Park Town Center, for instance, recently closed). The options for the average moviegoer, in the midst of said bounceback, are varied. You still have your more traditional choices, like AMC, that nonetheless give you seat selection, reclining comfort and a range of snack foods (and even alcohol) that will make your head spin. They also have a membership program that promises a number of amenities, including discounted movie tickets. Then there are your meal-and-a-movie places, such as Cinebistro in Hyde Park. For a slightly higher price, you can buy a (mostly) adults-only experience that involves having an entire meal (and alcohol) delivered to your seat.

And then there is the microcinema experience.

Over the past three years, a couple of scrappy little additions to the movie-going experience have started making their presence felt in the Tampa/St. Pete landscape of movie-going. And whether their bill of fare is either current indie/foreign films (currently the sole domain of the Tampa Theater) or older cult classics, the microcinema as an alternative to mainstream multiplexes has developed a certain appeal to local moviegoers.

Green Light Cinema, on Second Ave. N. in downtown St. Petersburg, opened in October of 2020. Photo credit: Zachery Howard

Green Light Cinema in St. Petersburg has led the way in this mini-movement. Michael Hazlett, the owner and general manager, started the space at the height of the pandemic (October 2020) because he had recently moved to the area and was somewhat surprised that there was no local alternative to the mainstream movie experience (besides the Tampa Theater, in Tampa, there was nothing on the Pinellas side since the Beach Theater closed years before). Opening in the midst of a world crisis may not have been ideal, but as we have come out the other side of COVID, this intimate space on 2nd Avenue (in St. Petersburg’s bustling downtown) has apparently developed a loyal following. On the night we attended to see the film “Passages” it certainly seemed to have a decent amount of traffic, especially since Hurricane Idalia had just threatened the coast the day before.

As a matter of fact, almost everything about going to Green Light felt a little bit like going to other cinemas – except that there was both a charming intimacy and an agreeably nostalgic quality about the encounter that almost guaranteed a return visit. It was almost as if I was returning to the Arlee Theater of my youth. One person (Zachery Howard, in charge of operations and marketing for Green Light) sold us both the tickets and concessions before you traversed the visually interesting lobby to sit in the comfy chairs of the 80-seat theater. The space seemed to be populated with folks who understood the “voluntary surrender” (Zachery Howard’s words) involved in going to the theater and all seemed to be there to actually watch the film. The film itself, the latest by the acclaimed independent filmmaker Ira Sachs has been adored by critics (94% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes) and received a certain degree of notoriety online for having some of the most explicit sex scenes in any film in recent years. There is some issue with a protagonist that is so deeply flawed that one can neither sympathize or empathize with him. However, the focus on queer romance is certainly one that is rarely the subject matter of many films, even in the third decade of the 21st century, and Green Light is to certainly be applauded for giving screening time to one of the few that do.

Screen Door: an Ybor City microcinema, located on the second floor of the historic Kress building on Seventh Avenue, can seat up to 38 film enthusiasts. Interior photo credit: Sean O’Brien/Screen Door

Meanwhile, on the Tampa side of the bay, the microcinema experience has begun to be a thing with the opening last Fall of Screen Door Cinema in Ybor City. Like Green Light, Screen Door has a pretty high-profile location that can certainly promise them a potential built-in audience. Everything else about Screen Door, however, has the feel of a guerilla movie-going adventure. First, unlike Green Light, which curates mostly current films that mostly fall under the category of independent or foreign, Screen Door’s film selection is mostly older films, with a heavy emphasis on what could be considered cult films (though they also showed “Passages” in October and scheduled a screening of the re-release of the Talking Heads documentary “Stop Making Sense”). There is enough similarity in programming, however, that Green Light and Screen Door participate in a joint program called Second Screen Cult Cinema, where the two micro-cinemas take turns screening a film (once a month) followed by a discussion of said film.

And then there is the actual experience of going to Screen Door, which adds to the slightly covert quality of the whole thing. Even though the physical address is on much-traversed Seventh Avenue, there is no actual signage telling you where the cinema is. And you have to be buzzed in. Then you go up a flight of stairs, in a building that is apparently closed for the day. You enter the second floor in a wide open space – and you follow the voices before you actually arrive at where the tickets (and concessions) are sold, and the screening takes place. Once you finally sit down (there is a move afoot to get something with a little more cushion installed), your sense of adventure is already so heightened that you are more than prepared for what the evening has to offer. The space was about two-thirds full (this cinema seats 38) the night I attended, and the film was “How to Blow Up a Pipeline.” Another film that was adored by the critics upon its release earlier this year (also, interestingly, 94% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes), the film has a cast of rather softly-written and fairly unlikeable characters, though it also manages to deftly ask about the role of anarchy in today’s society.

Ann-Eliza Taylor, who along with Warren Cockerham and Sean O’Brien curates the film program for Screen Door (and keeps it running with an army of volunteers), references that there is “almost something religious about being in a space with strangers” when referencing going to the movies. She also saw both Screen Door and Green Light as filling a niche, especially if/when the Tampa Theatre (the granddaddy of film screenings and especially of alternate cinematic choices) leans more towards more live events at their gorgeous historic space. Jill Witecki, Vice President and Director of Marketing at Tampa Theatre, acknowledges that “Over the past few years, touring musicians, comedians, and the number of live shows we present is growing every year.”

And the theater has a plan for that.

Coming late next spring. . .

A smaller, more intimate movie theater, affectionately known to the Tampa Theatre staff as T2 (science fiction fans everywhere, rejoice)!

Tampa Theatre, on Franklin Street in downtown Tampa, expects to open their long-anticipated
43-seat second screen theatre sometime in 2024. Photo credit: Jeff Fay / Tampa Theatre

Situated right next to the original historic space, T2, which will seat 43, will serve as an even more “warm and inviting” (Jill again) alternative to the regal grandeur of the 1926 location we have all come to know and love, but with enough of the same DNA that it will still feel like attending the Tampa Theatre to see a film. At a recent member event, President and CEO John Bell introduced the new space and described how both the Tampa Theatre and T2 will give audience members “a sense of occasion and a unique experience.” Jill also explained to me later that having the smaller space will often allow them to book a film for the uninterrupted run that many distributors require by moving the screenings into the smaller space while playing live events in the larger space. While standing in the midst of T2, even as it was being transformed, one already felt, from the brick walls and high ceiling, the thrill that so appealed to the young self all those years ago.

It was thrilling.

And it was exciting.

This going-to-the-movies thing. I can’t get enough of it. How amazing it is that we have these new options for viewing films in front of us.

Let the magic and mystery continue.

Keven Renken is an American author of literary, queer, and genre fiction. His debut novel, “Welcome to the Day,” was published in 2019 and was a finalist for five independent book awards. His sophomore novel, “Graphic: The Novel,” was published by St. Petersburg Press in 2022. His film and theatrical criticism have appeared in Creative Loafing and Creative Pinellas, among other publications. He was the chairman of the theatre department at the Pinellas County Center for the Arts at Gibbs High School and taught there for 30 years. Keven is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Tampa. A native of Illinois, he now lives in Tampa with his husband Bill.

For additional information about each theater and upcoming film features and events, go to their websites. Several offer membership and opportunities, which is a terrific way to support their efforts in keeping the screens bright for years to come.

Green Light Cinema

Tampa Theatre

Screen Door: an ybor city microcinema

For enthusiastic readers of Bay Art File’s previous posts about the Georgia-based self-taught artist Nellie Mae Rowe (1900-1982), please note that ArtHouse3 and Bay Art Files are pleased to be bringing the award-winning dramatized documentary This World is not My Own about her life and work to Green Light Cinema in St. Petersburg, FL, on Thursday, January 18, 2024. There will be a 4 pm and 7 pm screening. Booklyn-based Co-director Petter Ringbom will be available after each screening for an audience Q&A. Advanced tickets may be purchased online. Please join us!

Themes for the American Kestrel

An exhibition of works by Ry McCullough

by Tony Wong Palms

Pausing at the entrance, taking in what is in front of me, many things come to mind when walking into Gallery114@HCC at the School of Visual and Performing Arts on the Ybor City campus and encountering the works of Ry McCullough.

Ry McCullough, Themes for the American Kestrel, installation view.
Image courtesy of Gallery114@HCC Ybor City Campus.

There are three pedestals composed in the middle of the floor, each covered with little objects, some with oddly familiar shapes, like Claes Oldenburg’s monumental sculptures that more or less resemble everyday things, except these are in sizes that can easily fit inside a coat pocket; there’s a video showing the same stuff in a smaller, but ever-changing grouping, the setting like a photographer’s studio; there are framed mixed media works hung on the wall, each depicting a landscape with a scattering of these objects; and finally there’re two small shelves, each with a rectangular box made delicately from Japanese paper, sitting on a greenish felt, like architectural models of some basic structural forms.

The pedestals could be an archipelago, a small group of islands with colored and differently shaped things that washed in from the sea, and the wind blew them around and around to end up where they are now, curios.

And taking a walk on these island shores, kicking around at your feet, these shaped and color things, maybe they are sea shells, or sand smoothed pebbles, perhaps pieces of coral, but most definitely flotsam and jetsam telling tales of their long transformative voyage through the ocean waves, when a glint of something catches your eye and you pick it up, examine it, drop it in your pocket, take it home, place it on a shelf, or window sill, or the end table, alongside all the other odds and ends that have been collected from here and there over the years, and now together they all are, in the same time and space, more or less coexisting, little islands in of themselves.

A friend comes and visits and they might admire your collection, picks one up, studies it, puts it back, but not quite the same spot or orientation; or maybe it’s cleaning day, and the objects are lifted one by one, dusted and put back, and again, not all returned to the exact same position. The arrangement thus shifts slightly, hardly noticeable, and continues shifting one cleaning day after another, one friend’s exploratory hands after another.

This constant picking up and putting back is essentially the 20 minutes long video piece. With the magic of video editing, pieces suddenly pop in and out of existence, creating a slightly different composition with each editing cut. One piece may go poof and reappear in a little while next to something else, or maybe never appear again. The viewer’s brow tense with concentrated anticipation. Did someone just get kidnapped, or is this an example of what physicists call entanglement? Who knew such unassuming objects appearing and disappearing could create such a drama. A suspenseful video performance where the artist is unseen.

The framed works on the wall is non-action action in a flat space. There’s a line, could be a table’s edge or the horizon, plane of the sky meets plane of the earth, but unlike the objects on the pedestals or in the video where they’re visibly grounded, the objects in these mixed media pieces feel suspended, while not as high as the floating bowler hat men in a René Magritte painting, they are not as affected by the gravity that anchors their pedestal counterparts.

Within each frame is a vignette of possibilities. They are very precise and elegant, exuding a calm to the videos’ caprice. Its stillness belies conscious intentions and subtleties of movement, like a person in meditation, where meditation is a deliberate act, as in the long wave of the tsunami, its motion unseen, or unrecognized until it momentously meets the shore.

The exhibition is titled Themes for the American Kestrel. There’s a curious group of objects way up on one of the gallery’s architectural ledges, next to the title wall, with one of the objects resembling a bird, watching all that’s below. This little vignette does not have a title or exhibition label, nor is it acknowledged anywhere else, and being high above eye level, could be easily missed.

Perhaps the zen like statement from the artist in the exhibition brochure may explain this apparition high on the ledge: “I sit and the bird arrives or the bird sits and I arrive, or not.”, or maybe it’s the meaning of the exhibition title, or both, or neither.

The exhibition brochure, designed like one of the framed wall works, is very handsome, includes a meaningful quote from Virginia Woolf, with the opening phrases: “How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake….”

Following this is a brief artist statement outlining his ideas and intentions. Towards the end of the statement, McCullough references the artist Giorgio Morandi and his still-life paintings as a counterpoint to the evolving compositions in his video piece.

Morandi (1890-1964) lived his whole life in Bologna, Italy, where for the last 40 or so years of his artistic practice he maintained a singular focus on regimented compositions of bottles, vases, and similarly shaped and size objects, painted with subtle hues and tone gradations. It is an ascetic discipline, like a monk repeating a mantra, like Sol LeWitt’s endless iterations of the skeletal cube. The subtlest of details and changes are noticed with potential significance, like when physicists discovering an elemental particle, or that tiny chili pepper altering the flavor makeup of an entire dish.

If Morandi’s 40 years could be compressed into a 20 minutes time-lapse video, the result might be something like McCullough’s own video performance. Of course, a time-lapse video skips over many moments and details. But what is 40 years or 20 minutes, barely a nanosecond within a razor-thin sliver of a rock layer tucked in a stratum of the earth’s crust in the expanse of geologic time.

The exhibition is open to the public by appointment through June 24, 2021. For additional information about the gallery visit the Galleries at HCC website.

Ry McCullough received his MFA in Printmaking and Book Arts from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia. He is an Associate Professor of Art and Design at the University of Tampa in Tampa, FL.

Tony Wong Palms is the Exhibitions Coordinator/Designer at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa, FL.

Setting the Table with Separate Checks

by James Cartwright

“The main appeal of the name is that it speaks to how an artist collective functions on exhibition night: one shared space with many distinct voices.” – Katelyn Montagna and Adam Mathieu

Separate Checks is an artist collective founded in the summer of 2018 by Katelyn Montagna and Adam Mathieu, who created the group to reconnect with friends and encourage each other to produce new work. Additional members include McKinna Anderson, Aaron Castillo, Krista Darling, Jonathon Dorofy, Anna Dunwody, Nabil Harb, Andres Ramirez, Erika Schnur, Kristy Summerson, and Jessica Thornton. Many members are University of South Florida alumni who came through the School of Art and Art History’s photography program or the School of Advertising and Mass Communications. It is easy to imagine that assembling the group’s roster had a definite “getting the band back together” feeling.

While the USF connection forms the backbone of Separate Checks, other artists have joined by contacting Adam and Katelyn on social media. Adam amusingly recalls how member Aaron Castillo slid into his DMs on Instagram before meeting with him and Katelyn in person. They describe the encounter as feeling like they were on a blind date with a photographer, but thankfully everyone clicked and the date did not end in awkwardness and disappointment.

Installation view of Narrative Nowhere exhibition at Gallery221.
Photography credit: Emiliano Settecasi.

The many distinct voices of Separate Checks will be in conversation with each other in Narrative Nowhere, showing at Hillsborough Community College’s Gallery221@HCC Dale Mabry from November 2 – December 10. Visitors are encouraged to view the show in person, by making an appointment on the Gallery221 website and following guidelines on social distancing. Originally slated to debut this spring, it is yet another exhibition that was postponed because of the coronavirus. The show’s change in schedule also led to a change in content, as the extended timing allowed artists to respond to their experiences over the past eight months of this turbulent year.

The initial concept of Narrative Nowhere was to invite other artists to collaborate and reflect on personal histories and the geographic spread of the group, but some members have refocused on addressing Covid-19, racial tension in the United States, and the U.S. Presidential Election. The collective has worked in concert with Gallery221 director Amanda Poss to adjust to these atypical conditions and deliver a show well-suited for this cultural moment.

Andres Ramirez, *Muro Falso 1*, 2020, panoramic decal.
Photography credit: Emiliano Settecasi.

Andres Ramirez is one member whose work confronts the political, with the artist reacting to the Trump administration’s brutal border policies. His images in Narrative Nowhere are “about facades and what hides behind them; whether they’re digitally invented or not, these images are constructions much like the norms of our society.” This year he has been grappling with the concept of borders and their violently divisive nature, as he questions whether they should even exist.

Anna Dunwody, *Sempiternity I* and *Dioscorea bulbifera 1-5*, 2020, cyanotypes.
Photography credit: Emiliano Settecasi.

Anna Dunwody’s recent works tangle with themes of loss, discovery, and regrowth. Here she displays a series of cyanotypes that she created while in quarantine. She draws connections between the unpredictability of this year and her chosen media, musing that with cyanotypes “you can do everything with such care and intention and each one always comes out a little different and maybe not how you wanted or expected, much like life.” She says that in her work she seeks to find the constantly surprising and occasionally beautiful.

The current exhibition at HCC represents a major sign of growth for the young collective, who previously held one-night-only showings in venues like the Creative Loafing Space and Dojo Sounds recording studio in Ybor. Those events emitted a special “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” energy, where it was exciting to see a show in an unfamiliar space and not already know everyone there. However, Adam is thankful for the opportunity to display work in a fixed space like Gallery221, where the group can reach a wider audience and their works are given ample time and room to breathe.

The Main Course one-night-only show held at the Creative Loafing Space in 2018. Image taken by Anna Dunwody.

Why join an artist collective in the first place? For McKinna Anderson, the group offers her friendship and a sense of accountability, without being restrictive or stifling her voice. Living in Nashville in 2018, she knew Adam and Katelyn from her time as an undergrad at USF and she found herself wandering through a similar post-graduate fog until she joined Separate Checks. She explains that the group has a tethering effect, acting as a lighthouse that always leads her back to the art community.

Separate Checks logo designed by Jonathon Dorofy

The group’s identity is still in flux, but it adopts several traits from its founders. Adam’s Fine Art background blends with Katelyn’s graphic and advertising skillset to produce something with an art school sensibility and savvy self-promotion. The mixing of elements is persistent among the membership, with both Aaron Castillo and Kristy Summerson moving between the Fine Art and advertising worlds. Member Jonathon Dorofy is also heavily involved with the group’s branding, where he imbues quintessential Florida motifs with a sleek veneer and graceful simplicity.

In a subtle way, the collective also has a quiet confidence that reflects Adam’s and Katelyn’s personalities, wherein his calm demeanor and her animated enthusiasm form a perfect partnership.

Separate Checks is currently finding its place in the Tampa Bay art community alongside established collectives like QUAID and the photography-centered Fountain of Pythons. USF photography professor Wendy Babcox is a member of FOP, and Katelyn remembers being intrigued by the group when Babcox mentioned it in class. Babcox’s guidance has had a lasting impact on Adam and Katelyn, and they single her out as an important mentor from their undergraduate days. Additionally, FOP member Selina Roman also serves as a member of Gallery221’s Advisory Council, and she proposed the Narrative Nowhere show to HCC. She was one of the earliest and most ardent supporters of Separate Checks, and she continues to offer her encouragement on its ventures.

What is next on the menu for the young collective? The group plans to eventually host a juried show, and they have kicked around the idea of having their own permanent exhibition space. They are becoming friendly with other artists collectives such as Portland’s Small Talk Collective and are discussing a show exchange and curating each other’s work. For now, they seem content with taking things as they come and not looking too far ahead.

When it comes to Separate Checks, part of the excitement is in not knowing what comes next. For many viewers, the Narrative Nowhere exhibition is likely their first exposure to the group. This show provides a rare chance to see numerous artists creating work together in the early stages of their careers. These separate voices are coalescing into something new right before our eyes. Don’t blink and miss the moment.

Narrative Nowhere runs from November 2 to December 10 at Gallery221@HCC Dale Mabry campus. To learn more about the gallery and make an appointment to view the exhibition, follow these links:

https://www.hccfl.edu/campus-life/arts/galleries-hcc/gallery221

https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/Gallery221HCC@hccfl.onmicrosoft.com/bookings/

To learn more about Separate Checks, visit their official website:

https://www.sepchecks.com/

James Cartwright earned his M.A. in Art History from USF in 2017. He focuses on cross-cultural exchanges in art production, while occasionally wandering into the realm of contemporary art criticism. He is an adjunct Art History instructor at USF and the University of Tampa, where he uses his liberal arts background to joyfully corrupt the impressionable youth of America.

We Must Go…

By Sabrina Hughes

The Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg’s newest exhibition is Theo Wujcik: Cantos, a series of works based on Dante’s Inferno. The exhibition is in turns lyrical, poetic, and dark in keeping with Wujcik’s literary inspiration for the paintings.

If, like me, it’s been decades since thinking about Dante in any way, substantial or otherwise, a refresher on the basics of the Inferno will help add layers of interpretive flesh to the works in the exhibition. The Inferno is the first part of Florentine poet Dante Alighieri’s three-part epic poem The Divine Comedy. In this part of his journey, Dante travels through the nine circles of hell guided by ancient Roman poet Virgil at the behest of his love Beatrice who is in heaven and notices that Dante has wandered off his proper path. Dante trades the offer of fame in the living world for the tortured souls’ stories. Each canto in the poem is analogous to a chapter in the story.

*C-2-C Invocation of the Muses*, 1998. Acrylic on canvas. Collection of Alan J. and Sue Kaufman.

Like any proper epic poem, Theo Wujcik: Cantos begins with an invocation of the muses. In Dante’s second canto, he calls upon the muses to ask for creative aid in recounting his story faithfully. Wujcik’s paintings in the introductory gallery C-2-A and C-2-C, both subtitled Invocation of the Muses (1998), are not only an introduction to the themes of Cantos but also to the visual fragmentation and recombination that has come to be Wujcik’s stylistic hallmark. These first two paintings in the exhibition had at one time been part of the same canvas, but Wujcik excised these sections from the whole creating two distinct works. C-2-C, with its simple and recognizable votive holder motif paired with the title sets the mood for ritual experience.

Wujcik moved to Tampa in 1970 to join the staff at Graphicstudio as a master printer at the University of South Florida. He lived and worked in Ybor City until his death in 2014. Wujcik found inspiration in comic strips and other found imagery of the mass media. Several collages are included in the exhibition, revealing the way he combined and composed drawings, photos, and comics. The personalized symbolism that manifests in his work is pop filtered through the visual language of Florida. Ever present in his work since the mid-1980s is the diamond chain link fence motif. This visual device further heightens the fragmentation and visual confusion that begins in collage and ends on the canvas.

*Men Were We Once (Canto XIII)*, 1997. Acrylic on canvas. Collection of The Terrier Foundation, Tampa, FL.

Wujcik’s personal symbolic structures are reworked in Cantos to metaphorically reference Dante. In Men Were We Once (Canto XIII) (1997), red drapery and a white button-down shirt represent Virgil and Dante. In this canto, the travelers enter the seventh circle of hell and meet those who have committed violence against themselves–suicides. These souls have been transmuted into tree stumps that speak and bleed. The empty wooden hangers directly reference both the wooden form of the souls as well as part of the punishment—that the flesh they used to “wear” now hangs like clothing among the trees. The comic strip imagery below the hangers hint at conflict and violence that they may have experienced in life, as well as the forest Dante describes in the story.

Theo Wujcik: Cantos is anchored by two large-scale paintings in the MFA’s collection: Canto II (1997) and Gates of Hell (1987).

*Canto II*, 1997. Polymer emulsion and charcoal on canvas. Gift of Bonita L. Cobb in memory of Nikki C. Cobb.

In Inferno, it is in Canto II that Dante learns how and why Virgil was sent to him—directed by three women in heaven looking out for his well being: Beatrice, St. Lucia, and Mary. Virgil has told Dante that they must travel through hell to get back on the proper path, and while Dante is at first brave, he quickly loses his resolve. He wavers not out of fear but from self-sabotage, uncertainty, and feelings of unworthiness.

In Wujcik’s Canto II, the viewer is confronted with an overwhelming fragmentation of images—one’s eyes slide over the monochrome surface looking for purchase, something solid to focus on. The element that resolves first and most prominently, that gives the eye a place to rest, is a large bolt in the upper right quadrant. The winding threads of the bolt may reference the concentric circles of hell that Dante is about to spiral into. Three butter knives are situated in the center of the canvas, large yet somehow almost invisible among the cacophony; below them appear three chain links all rendered naturalistically while surrounding and overlaid are cartoons and the ubiquitous diamond fence. Perhaps this jumble of overwhelming image fragment foreshadow the chaos and distress that Dante will experience in hell. Or perhaps it is all of the memories that Dante is attempting to make sense of to create a coherent narrative.

The Gates of Hell references Canto III when Dante and Virgil set out into the underworld. The gates are inscribed with verse ending “Abandon hope, who enter here.” This canto describes an area called the vestibule of hell where souls reside who took no sides in life. They are not in hell but neither are they out of it—eternally trapped in the liminal doorway due to their relentless self-interest in life. The sage figure on the left, presumably Virgil, encounters one such soul who, as described by Dante, is sentenced to eternally chase a banner while themselves being chased by bees (!). Further into the pictorial space is Charon, the ferryman for the souls who are driven by celestial balance to enter hell proper.

*Gates of Hell*, 1987. Acrylic and collage on canvas. Gift of Susan Johnson in honor of Katherine Pill.

In contrast to the thick chain link device that fragments the surface of Canto II, in Gates of Hell, the familiar device serves a different visual purpose. The figures and planes appear to be shaped from a diamond-wire armature. All are made of, behind and in front of the ubiquitous chain link motif. In this painting, the chain armatures are tantalizing. They create figures that are paradoxically solid and hollow. Like shades encountered in the underworld, they are simultaneously there and not. Rather than creating lines that obstruct and confuse the viewer’s progress through the pictorial space, here it creates and shapes the space.

The only solid elements in the painting are the pink door frame mouldings defining the edges of the space. Even these solid surfaces, however, when examined closely, reveal the chain links texturally embedded and painted over. Wujcik used paper towels, polymers, and other inclusions on the canvas surface to produce dimensionality on his otherwise relentlessly flat painting surfaces.

*PSST!*, 1997. Acrylic on canvas. Collection of Beth Daniels, Largo, FL.

Cantos provides viewers a way out of Wujcik’s Inferno with the paired paintings We Must Go (Canto XXXIV) (1997) and PSST! (1997) where the exit from hell is fittingly made of cantilever patio umbrellas. In We Must Go, the horizontally-mirrored umbrella canopies float on a white ground. It is a simple yet elegant composition that so subtly references the Inferno that were it not for the title, I think a viewer would not make the connection. PSST! is a painting after a preparatory collage included in the first gallery. Here, one umbrella canopy shape is filled in with a domestic scene from what looks like an interior design publication decades old even at the time of the painting’s creation. The mirrored canopy contains fragmented comic strip imagery, juxtaposing two different rendering styles, one an idealized interior space, the other a cartoon. In Dante’s Inferno, Canto XXXIV is the final one, where Dante and Virgil have come to the center of hell where Lucifer resides in stasis. In order to leave hell, they must climb down Lucifer’s torso to a point, only visible to those who know to look for it, where a threshold is crossed, gravity is inverted, the world is topsy turvy, and they are no longer in hell. In PSST!, especially as it is in conversation with the preparatory collage where the composition is inverted, the question is which is the ninth circle of hell and which is the way out? Is the ideal home scene hell or the way out?

Wujcik’s Cantos represent a theme that he returned to over the span of more than a decade. In other words, it wasn’t a thought that was completed easily. As Dante experienced, hell is not traversed easily, and the only way out is through.

Bay Art Files contributor Sabrina Hughes holds an M.A. in Art History from the University of South Florida, with a focus on the History of Photography. Hughes has worked at the National Gallery of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg and is an adjunct instructor at USF and is the founder and principal of photoxo, a personal archiving service specializing in helping people preserve their family photos. She also has an ongoing curatorial project, Picurious, which invests abandoned slides with new life. Follow her on Instagram @sabrinahughes for selfies, hiking, and dogs, and @thepicurious for vintage photos.

Theo Wujcik: Cantos is on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg through June 2, 2019. In tribute of the artist’s love of the Ybor City night club scene, the MFA’s support group The Contemporaries is hosting a dance party fundraiser “Theo’s Inferno” on Friday, May 17th at the Museum. 1980s punk and new wave tunes spun by Tampa-based DJ Gabe Echazabal, Ybor City-themed food offerings, and an open beer bar will set the retro tone for the evening. General admission is from 7 – 10 pm with an extra special VIP offering starting at 6:30 pm featuring a private tour by Susan Johnson of the Theo Wujcik Estate and MFA Curator of Contemporary Art Katherine Pill. Advance tickets available for purchase online at the Museum’s website.

The Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg received generous support for this exhibition from Ann and Bill Edwards and The Gobioff Foundation.