St. Petersburg resident Chad Mize has not had a good year. It's been a slog of injuries, personal loss and political disappointment. But Chad Mize the artist, alias Chizzy, has had a blockbuster. His Sesame Street-swiping "Bernie" image caught on nationally, and his Paris-London-Tokyo-St. Pete "World Tour" shirt continues to sell big. The paint is still wet on several of his local murals. Some artists would sell their soul for that kind of 2016.
And yet he says, "I'm ready for it to be over." There was a rough car accident and the death of a beloved dog. Plus, "the Bernie thing this summer was a bummer for me." The year has turned him into a bit of a recluse, he says as we sip midday beers on a crowded Central Avenue sidewalk.
If this is Chad Mize in a blue period, I'd love to see him when things are hunky dory. The man is unfailingly pleasant and positive. This comes out clearly in his art, daily blasts of pattern and color delivered via Instagram. It's this warmth and cheerfulness that have made him a popular choice to wallpaper his hometown and architect its outreach. It's a perfect match.
Mize, 42, grew up in Bradenton and returned to the area in 2003 after a stint in Boston. The move back was fortuitous for both him and the city. He was part of the renaissance on St. Petersburg's central artery, one of the first wave of artists who were encouraged to move in and do artist-y things in the formerly slumberous area. Mize pulled his weight in the renewal campaign, opening his gallery Bluelucy in 2009 and fostering hundreds of artists. Looking around from where we sit quaffing $6.50 Blonde Ales, it's clear that their efforts worked. Hopefully not too well.
"St. Pete has allowed me to afford to be an artist," he says. "The reason I moved here is so that I could open a gallery and do all of those things that I always dreamed about. When I came here in 2003 we were able to kind of create our own reality… I'm hoping that St. Pete remains true to that, and doesn't become something that we don't want it to be."
The town's current incarnation is just about perfect for Mize; St Petersburg circa 2016 is a sweet spot. He had a commission to make 600 giftable artworks for the city's mayor. He was on the committee for the SHINE Mural Festival, and has started getting paid for his own murals. A recent wall piece in Historic Uptown was a tribute to the city's hex blocks — the concrete sidewalk pavers which you may not have known are quintessentially St. Pete. Some would call this boosterism; Mize would call it "a sense of pride in your community." He is unabashed in his desire to give back to the town which has fed his visual palette to overflowing.
I ask Mize what that visual palette will be giving us in 2017. He chuckles. The dawning of the Trump Era will be rich terrain. "I just feel like it's fed to you," he says. "It's so easy. It just seems like a MAD magazine cover every day." The cheerful demeanor clouds over a little bit. "I feel like you have to go through the darkness to get to the light." We'll be in the shadows for the foreseeable future, he implies: but how dark can it really get for the Sunshine City's favorite iconographer?
This article appears in Dec 15-22, 2016.