I've lived my entire life in a state of suspended belief, Barbara Nicolazzo said while explaining her art (painting with Afro-centric designs on things like cars). Wait. That doesn't make sense.
Sure it did, or at least it sounded good, which was enough for me. WMNF's Holiday Bazaar packed all four floors of the Cuban Club and the jumbo courtyard with craftsmen peddling everything from shell-encrusted birdhouses and bejeweled Madonnas to organic hemp diaper-bags.
As had happened with the woman pushing homemade lotions and another selling secret-recipe hot sauce that made my lips numb, Nicolazzo didn't know how to react when I asked if she'd ever consider using me as a canvas, saturating me in her art. To be honest, I didn't really know what I meant, but it sounded like a good thing to be saturated in art. Niccolazzo declined my offer, but a team of masseuses was willing to work with me for a dollar a minute. I only had a buck, but to be honest, a minute of oiled-up rubbing was about all I could handle.
Sunday, Bluelucy's founding fathers, Chad Mize and Phillip Clark, hosted the Spacewalk art show at their house, where every wall was covered in vibrant, clever and often comic pieces. St. Pete poster-boy DJ Mega was in attendance ogling over the art and lamenting his recent decision to purchase a series of fruit paintings to give his apartment a Pac-Man-esque feel. Bluelucy also had a series of graphic T's selling for $10. For those too cheap to swing 10 bucks, or people like me in search of clever Christmas gifts, the host even set out three boxes full of free shirts.
The art show also included the unveiling of four Creative Loafing distribution boxes, which were recently turned over to St. Pete artists to re:cover. The artists collectively picked a unifying elemental theme (air, earth, fire and water).
Josh Sullivan's box featured a robot flying a kite. He chose the kite because he wasn't sure how to graphically portray wind (as it has the uncooperative quality of being invisible), but he chose the robot, well, because he friggin' likes robots. To prove his commitment to the mechanical race, he lifted his sleeve, revealing a tattoo of a boxy android that looked strikingly similar to the Creative Loafing box. Taking some ideas from Sullivan, Maria Licodo depicted her earth theme by turning her box into what looked like a battle-bot, complete with a protective grill and a handle resembling the blade of a circular saw. Mize and Clark, the party's hosts, collaborated on the fire element, covering their box in images of forest fires and atomic bombs. Chris Parks and Scott Lukacs, who paired up for the water theme, created a tattoo-art-style octopus wrapping its tentacles around the newsstand. When asked what type of person got a tattoo of an octopus, Scott rolled up his sleeve. Suddenly I felt like an imposter. Not only did I lack sleeves to roll, but I wasn't passionate enough about anything to have it inked on me. That's not true. I'm passionate, but only about things I can wipe off, like hot sauce or massage oil.
This article appears in Dec 5-11, 2007.
