What do you get when you pull together the eclectic works of 20 Florida artists who have little in common other than the moxie to keep creating even though they may lack formal education or training and get little public acclaim?
"Leave A Message: Urban Art in Florida.''
That's the name of
an exhibit on display at the
Morean Arts Center in downtown St. Petersburg through August 24.
A new video put together by
83 Degrees contributors Megan Voeller, the art critic for Creative Loafing of Tampa, and Frank Rodriguez, the entrepreneur behind
Mighty Fine Production in downtown Tampa, captures the essence of the show in interviews with four of the artists and curator Amanda Cooper.
"My view of urban art is art you find on the city streets by artists who don't necessarily ask permission to create it,'' Cooper says. "It crosses boundaries of what people would define as fine art, illustration, graphic design and advertising. There's a little bit of all of that, I would argue, in every piece in this show.''
Here is a link to Voeller's
critique of the show. The video can be viewed above and or by
clicking here.
Diane Egner is publisher and managing editor of 83 Degrees Media. Comments? Contact 83 Degrees.
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Read more articles by Diane Egner.
Diane Egner is a community leader and award-winning journalist with more than four decades of experience reporting and writing about the Tampa Bay Area of Florida. She serves on the boards of the University of South Florida Zimmerman School of Advertising & Mass Communications Advisory Council, The Institute for Research in Art (Graphicstudio, the Contemporary Art Museum, and USF’s Public Art Program) Community Advisory Council, Sing Out and Read, and StageWorks Theatre Advisory Council. She also is a member of Leadership Florida and the Athena Society. A graduate of the University of Minnesota with a BA in journalism, she won the top statewide award for editorial writing from the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors while at The Tampa Tribune and received special recognition by the Tampa Bay Association of Black Journalists for creative work as Content Director at WUSF Public Media. Past accomplishments and community service include leadership positions with Tampa Tiger Bay Club, USF Women in Leadership & Philanthropy (WLP), Alpha House of Tampa Bay, Awesome Tampa Bay, Florida Kinship Center, AIA Tampa Bay, Powerstories, Arts Council of Hillsborough County, and the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce. Diane and her husband, Sandy Rief, live in Tampa.