Crab Devil ‘Bait Ball’ finds permanent home at Fairgrounds St. Pete art attraction

While Ybor Heights art compound Crab Devil won’t ever open, parts of it have found a home elsewhere in Tampa Bay.

“The Bait Ball,” a kinetic sculpture by Tampa artist and Crab Devil founder Devon Brady, is swimming across the Bay and will be unveiled to the public this week at the immersive art installation Fairgrounds St. Pete.

Devoted art lovers might remember the eight-foot “zoetrope” from the 2022 Gasparilla Festival of the Arts where lucky festivalgoers got to experience the way 3D printing, light, motion, and sound create a hypnotizing display that looked like fish swimming in a ball.

Brady told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that four 3D printers worked 24/7 for 10 weeks to create the approximately 254 fish (13 different designs), which work in conjunction with the sphere to create a trippy illusion

The “Bait Ball” debut happens Thursday, Jan. 25 at Fairgrounds St. Pete, where admission starts at $19.

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UPDATED 01/25/24  9:25 a.m. Updated with a picture of the work at Fairgrounds.

This article appears in Jan 18-24, 2024.