A smiling woman with long dark hair stands next to a hanging art installation composed of vertical strands of white and red circular discs. She is wearing a sleeveless, floor-length dress with a blue, green, and yellow citrus fruit print and holding a colorful embroidered clutch.
Ceramicist Karina Yanes at her Morean Center for Clay exhibit, “Between Two Groves.” Credit: Courtesy of Morean Center for Clay

This weekend is your last chance to check out “Between Two Groves,” Karian Yanes’s solo exhibition at the Morean Center for Clay.

Through ceramics, Yanes shares her experience at the intersection of Puerto Rican, Palestinian and Midwestern culture, exploring how stories and traditions transform across time, memory, and diaspora.

A display of small, colorful ceramic bowls mounted on a black wall, arranged in a diagonal, wave-like formation from the top left to the bottom right. Each bowl features unique hand-painted designs, including floral patterns, geometric shapes, and fruit motifs.
From Karian Yanes’ “Between Two Groves” exhibit at the Morean Center for Clay in St. Petersburg, Florida. Credit: Courtesy of Morean Center for Clay

The show’s largest work, “All We Ate Was Watermelon,” is a 12-foot-tall mixed-media sculpture with 3,480 ceramic pieces protecting an orange branch modeled after a traditional Palestinian cross-stitch pattern.

It’s surrounded by a series of ceramic wall hangings that show fragments of Yanes’ family history using scenes from her family’s orange grove in Palestine and imagery from Puerto Rico, where her grandfather worked in a juice factory, along with references to her ‘90s Ohio childhood and elements of her current life in Florida.

There is no cover for “Between Two Groves,” running through Saturday, Dec. 27 in St. Petersburg.

Karina Yanes: Between Two Groves Ceramic Exhibition

Time Wednesdays-Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Continues through Dec. 27 2025

Location Morean Center for Clay, 420 22nd Street South, St.Petersburg

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This article appears in Dec. 18 – 24, 2025.

Selene San Felice is managing editor of Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. Prior to joining CL in 2025, she started the Axios Tampa Bay newsletter and worked for her hometown paper, The Capital in Annapolis,...