St. Pete Mural Tour, Part 1

"In the Deep Space of the Sea
I Have Found My Moon" by BASK (2020)

St. Pete takes its murals seriously. Since 2015, the SHINE Mural Festival has been an annual event, with a bevy of international artists vying for a handful of walls on which to make their mark. Other artists take advantage of the event to create their own murals to draw attention to their work. Still, I was astonished to learn the city boasts 532 murals as of last count. 

Happily, Florida CraftArt sponsors both walking and biking mural tours. During Sarah's recent visit, I corralled Stephenie and Steve to join us on a bike tour during which we covered as much ground as we could in 2 1/2 hours. It was fabulous. 

The 2020 SHINE Festival was a bit scaled back given COVID. Still, 15 murals were painted by Florida artists around the theme of oceans.  The Festival was sponsored by PangeaSeed Foundation as part of its Sea Walls: Artists for Oceans program. The initiative has funded more than 400 murals across the globe in furtherance of its aspirational motto: "A Drop of Paint Can Create an Ocean of Change." But I digress.  

The artist Bask created this Jacques Cousteau-themed mural for the festival. Bask was a fan of the tv show "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau" as a youth. He realized there was a lot more information available about space compared to oceans. The discrepancy has continued to fascinate him. The anti-gravity feel of this work is intended to give the image a space-like feel that brings the two worlds together. And in case you're wondering, the drips and splatters in the work are intentionally created with a flick of his roller. 

Sarah with "Ctulhu Lulu" by Lauren YS (2017) 

While Lauren YS' "Ctulhu Lulu" wasn't done for the 2020 SHINE Festival, its watery woman fits right in. (Coincidentally, YS painted a mural in New Zealand for PangeaSeeds' Sea Walls program.) If you happen to be an A.J. Lovecraft fan, you'll recognize the title as a reference to his "fictional cosmic entity" of the same name. It's all new to me, but Ctulhu is apparently a part octopus, part dragon, part human entity that became a cult figure. Admittedly, it's a tiny bit creepy, but I like her determined look. This is a creature who can take on the world. 

"Gift" by Lili Huan (2020)

Lili Yuan's mural featuring a woman in an elegant dress floating in a pool of water is flat out beautiful. It probably won't surprise you to learn that Yuan is a hyper-realistic artist. But I bet it will surprise you to learn that she took her first art class only four years before she painted his mural. Talk about innate talent!

The image in this mural is similar to a painting from Yuan's "Flow Blue" series and was a response to her move to Florida from China. She has said of the series, "I can feel the freedom whenever I touch the water, something that has no shape, no color, no taste, but fluid. I'm trying to show freedom in my pieces also and remind people to enjoy every moment of their life." Our tour guide watched this mural come to life during the 2020 SHINE Festival. He learned from Yuan that the Chinese writing says, "Be like water - good, useful, pure, part of things." 

"The Voyage" by Matt Kress (2018)

I'll leave this part of my St. Pete mural post with Matt Kress' "The Voyage." While not one of my favorite murals -- even the description on the SHINE website calls it "gaudy" --  it has a great story. And it kinda-sorta fits the water theme of this post. 

Kress is a St. Pete-based artist who, before creating "The Voyage," was known exclusively for his work as a fine artist. In 2018, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers showed their confidence in Kress' ability to transfer his skills from a standard sized canvas to a 25' x 27' wall by commissioning this work for the SHINE Festival. The detail in the mural is pretty impressive, so I've sacrificed the entire image to allow you to focus in. The lower left hand side continues out to create a sense of buildings that mimic the Tampa skyline. I love the colorful circular shapes that populate his canvas and fill in the buildings and sails and clouds in the sky. But then we get to the tacky part -- the Buccaneers' logo that serves as the masthead for the pirate ship. What can I say -- I'm a Kansas City fan still suffering from the embarrassment of the last Super Bowl.  (As a total aside, to see the history of the Buccaneers' logo, which originally featured an Errol Flynn-style swashbuckler, click here.) Our tour guide watched this mural come into existence and shared that Kress worked night and day to create the image within the Festival timeframe. His hard work paid off, and he's now doing murals on a regular basis.  

To learn more about the SHINE Festival, click here. You can search artists by name to learn more about them and their work or search by Festival year to see the variety of the work done. To read about PangeaSeed's Sea Walls: Artists for Oceans program, click here. And to find out more about Florida CraftArt's mural tours, click here.

Stay tuned for more St. Pete murals -- and a fabulous sculpture installation.