I’ve been writing about art in the Tampa Bay area for about three years now. It’s not a long time in the grand scheme of things, but it’s long enough for people to send me Facebook invites and email press releases when they have an art show coming up. I get about one to two a week during normal times.
Things were quiet for a while due to COVID-19, but once June arrived, my inbox was brimming with new happenings. After three months, it seems we’re ready to get back to our normal lives, but with masks and social distancing (I hope).
The vast majority of invites I receive are from galleries and artists I already know. When someone or someplace new sends me an invite, I notice. So when I received a Facebook invite from John Gascot to a Pride art show at Ekeko gallery, I assumed I’d never heard of Ekeko before because it was brand spanking new. And it is.
LGBT artist and gallery-owner Wilmer E. Vergara Homez opened Ekeko the week before Mother’s Day. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because Homez owns Graphi-ko Gallery on Central Avenue’s 600 Block.
"We're one of the oldest businesses on that block," he told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.
But the space on Central was too small for the type of events Homez wanted to do, so he found a new 3,200 square-foot space at 290 Martin Luther King Jr. St. N. in downtown St. Pete—just a five-minute walk away.
“St. Pete has Pride”
Fri. June 26, 6 p.m.-8 p.m.
Ekeko Gallery
290 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. N., St. Petersburg
(727) 685-5577
Ekeko Gallery on Facebook
"Most of the walls are dedicated to art," said Homez, but Ekeko also carries home décor, jewelry, gemstones and minerals. And it’s considering hosting some classes in the new space, like yoga and wire-wrapping stones (for jewelry).
When I asked Homez what it’s like opening a new gallery space during a pandemic, he said, “It is challenging, but we make it work.”
"We were planning to do a grand opening and different stuff, but that didn't happen,” Homez told CL. “When Pride got canceled, we thought, 'Let's jump and do something for Pride.'"
Ekeko’s upcoming “St. Pete has Pride” show, set for June 26, will be the first event in the new space.
Like many recent events, “St. Pete has Pride” straddles the digital and the real world. If you’re not ready to go out, you can see the art virtually via Facebook Live. If you can’t sit home a moment longer, you can shop the collection and meet the artists in person, but only if you behave yourself—that means wearing a mask and social distancing.
At the time of writing, co-curators Homez, Joe Zawaski, and John Gascot had already recruited about 10-12 artists; Homez expects more to join as the show approaches.
“I’ve been running shows for the past 10 years, different kinds of art shows,” Homez said. “I know the artists always jump in the last minute."
The artists who’ve already signed on are some of the most active LGBT artists in the Tampa Bay area, including John Gascot, Cam Parker and Saumitra Chandratreya.
John Gascot left the Washington D.C. metro area for St. Petersburg about six years ago. Coming to Tampa Bay from D.C. was like doing a 180, Gascot told CL.
"Most of my clients were online when I lived in [the D.C.] area, because it's a pretty conservative art market. They like a lot of rolling hills and muted abstracts and things like that,” says Gascot. “The whole humor and color and whimsy is much more welcomed here by locals. People here like color.”
But between D.C. and Tampa Bay, Gascot's work hasn't changed much. Whether the market was good for it or bad for it, John’s always incorporated his Hispanic heritage, bright colors and LGBTQ+ themes into his art. Many of his paintings possess a satirical and snarky quality to them as well, addressing taboo subjects like religion and politics with tongue-in-cheek humor; it’s a quality we love here at CL.
Gascot curated his first LGBTQ+ themed art show in the D.C. area about eight years ago because, at the time, he felt there was a lack of LGBTQ+ representation.
"The art center where I had my studio was very Caucasian and heterosexual. I think the only other gay guy I knew there was in theater. There were also a lot of older artists,” Gasct said. Thankfully, when Gascot approached his studio mates about hosting an LGBTQ+ themed art show in their shared space, they were up for it.
By contrast, LGBTQ+ artists and LGBTQ+ art is never in short supply in the Tampa Bay area. We’re like the Skittles of art communities—come taste the rainbow. I’ve missed seeing us all gathered in gallery spaces, sharing our work and our ideas. I’m grateful for any and every locally-initiated virtual art event that brings us together safely. So is Gascot, who told us he’s very excited about the virtual aspect of the Ekeko show, especially with so many other St. Pete Pride events being canceled due to COVID-19.
“So much has been canceled,” he told CL, “I'm just excited to find different ways to keep us together and connected…We're such an art community. We're used to going out several times a month to art events. Anything that I can do to keep that going in some way is exciting to me.”
In addition to co-curating the “St. Pete has Pride” art show at Ekeko, Gascot is submitting a portrait he’s painting of local drag queens Daphne Ferraro and Jada Fuentes.
Cam Parker started working in Tampa Bay about 11 years ago. Before that, the Tampa artist was living in Illinois and then Nashville.
"I knew that I wanted to be in Florida,” Parker told CL, “and no joke, I literally dropped my finger on a map and it landed on Clearwater."
Parker’s already made a tangible mark on our community. There’s a good chance you’ve either walked or driven past one his Tampa murals and didn’t even know it. Parker’s larger-than-life portraits of Lady Gaga, Lizzo, Elton John, George Michael and Britney Spears bring music to Tampa’s Franklin Street, 17th Avenue, and Ybor City gay bar Southern Nights. Another hallmark of Parker’s work is the bright colors.
"The color palette, typically, that I work with is very spectral, very chromatic, very bright,” Parker told CL. “As of late, I've been working on pieces that are speaking specifically to Black Lives Matter, police brutality, those kinds of things. And I'm still intentionally working in the color palette that I choose… that always visually harkens back to the rainbow with Pride… even when the topic is heavy or uncomfortable. My goal is to always bring a person back to a place of joy or a place of 'OK, things are crap now, but we can do this.’”
Parker's work is designed to be empowering, and he often uses color to accomplish this. One of the things he likes best about the Tampa Bay area is the sense of fellowship that exists within our art community.
"I feel like there's a really cool, built-in sense of camaraderie," Parker told CL. When artists meet each other here, they share info about shows they know are calling for artists. "My artist friends and fellow creators [in Tampa Bay] are really stoked about what we're all doing—everybody kind of wants everybody to join in and be included and do things in a way that is best for them.”
Parker especially loves being a part of Tampa Bay’s LGBTQ+ community.
“It's a part of my jargon; it's a part of my aesthetic; it's a part of my soul every day,” Parker told CL. “I'm always trying to have some sort of commentary on it in my work, even if it's a slight undertone, or if it's in your face, like boom-rainbow-bam."
Saumitra Chandratreya moved to the Tampa Bay area in 2017.
"It was never a plan to move here,” he told CL, “but I found myself here and actually really enjoying making art here."
I saw Chandratreya’s work for the first time while covering the 2018 Pride art shows in St. Petersburg for CL. When you entered MIZE Gallery that June, a vibrant rainbow-colored banner greeted you at the door and asked, “What the hell do you have to lose?”
Donald Trump famously asked black voters this question during the 2016 election. It was part of Trump’s argument for why African-Americans should vote for him—in his opinion, they had nothing to lose. But that’s not a very good reason to vote for someone, is it? This is especially true if your rights or your equality are in jeopardy, as is the case for people of color and LGBTQ individuals in America. The banner was woven by Chandratreya. He titled the piece, “Gays for Trump are Stupid.”
At the same time, Chandratreya made another powerful statement on Central Avenue for the Morean’s inaugural Pride show. This time it came in the form of a white flag with “Still Fierce” printed in hot pink and yellow. “’Post 45 but Still Fierce” is essentially a banner that says, “You might try to erase us, but we are still here."
Originally a textiles artist, Chandratreya isn’t afraid to use any available materials to make a point.
"I really like using objects that already have a meaning,” he told CL. In his 2019 ArtsXchange show, Chandratreya incorporated pieces of a crib into his artwork to reflect on Trump’s Family Separation/Zero Tolerance policy at the border.
For “Don’t Ask. Do Tell,” at MIZE Gallery through July 5, Chandratreya made a dollar sign out of gold-leafed pill bottles.
“I used about 58 bottles for a dollar sign that's about 2-by-3 feet. When I counted how much each of those medicine bottles cost without insurance, it came out to almost $200,000," said Chandratreya. He named the piece “Vital Greed.”
For “St. Pete has Pride,” Chandratreya told CL he plans to do a few canvases with rainbow stripes and geometric shapes. “I'm doing these pieces as an ode to the diversity of the community,” says Chandratreya. “We come in all shapes and sizes and political affiliations, but we have to work together to make sure that none of our rights are taken away."
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This article appears in Jun 25 – Jul 1, 2020.