Get Your Tickets to Highball - A Craft Cocktail Competition

Do It Today: Native Music Rocks! Tour, Chromatophore, Film Florida launch

By Franki Weddington on Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 1:00 am

If the typical trappings of visual art — white-box exhibitions, snooty gallery assistants and mind-boggling [image-1]price tags — strike you as absurdly pretentious, take heart in mail art. The fiercely anti-commercial genre most often takes the form of postcards, illustrated envelopes and custom paper creations (though the odd three-dimensional object makes for a welcome surprise), traded among practitioners for the modest cost of a postage stamp. The Studio@620 presents Chromatophore, the multidisciplinary space’s second annual mail art exhibition, curated by St. Petersburg artist Jennifer Zoellner. Many of the more than 300 mail art works on display engage the concept of the chromatophore (a pigment-bearing cell that enables creatures to change color in response to their surroundings) as a theme. (Pictured: "Chromatophore Love" by Allison Honeycutt) Chromatophore: a Mail Art Exhibit, Aug. 27-Sept. 5, Studio@620, 620 First Ave. S., St. Petersburg, 727-895-6620, studio620.org. – Megan Voeller

Want to bring a little Hollywood glamor to Tampa Bay? Put in your two cents at the Film Florida launch, where a panel of industry professionals and economic experts dialogue on Florida film, TV and the digital media tax incentive program. The moderated discussion is open to public comments and questions. The St. Petersburg/Clearwater Film Commission, the Tampa Bay Film Commission and Film Florida host a post-panel reception. Go to visittampabay.com/meetings to register. Tue., Sept. 1, 4-7:30 p.m., Renaissance Vinoy Resort and Golf Club, 501 Fifth Ave. NE, St. Petersburg, free.

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The Native Music Rocks! Tour — starring Micki Free and American Horse, Crystal Shawanda, Casper, Martha Redbone and more — is a national Florida-born initiative to promote all varieties of Native American music as performed by modern Native American musicians. Highlights include the blues-infused rock of American Horse, which features tattooed Cherokee-Comanche Micki Free on electric guitar and lead vocals, afro fantastic drummer Cindy Blackman (Pictured: remember her from her days pounding skins for Lenny Kravitz?), and bassist David Santos (Joe Cocker, CSNY); the sweet-soulful country music of full-blooded Ojibway Indian and Canada native singer Crystal Shawanda; the hope-filled Native-roots-meets-dub reggae of Hopi / Dine singer Casper Lomayesva; and a fusion of soul, R&B, and funky bump by Native and African-American singer-soulwriter Martha Redbone. Tues., Sept. 1, 7 p.m., Floyd's at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, 5224 N. Orient Dr., Tampa, free, seminolehardrocktampa.com.