Meet Creative Pinellas' 2023 10 Emerging Artists Grant Winners

LARGO, FL — Creative Pinellas will present a diverse exhibition of work by the 10 artists chosen for this year’s Emerging Artist Grant.

This seventh annual exhibition features original work by artists awarded grants from Creative Pinellas: Troy Bernardo, Jenipher Chandley, Marie Cummings, Kathryn Cummins, Dennis DeBon, Kimberly Engel, Patrick Arthur Jackson, Aimee Jones, Amy Wolf and Agueda Zabisky.

The free exhibit runs through July 16 at the Gallery at Creative Pinellas, 12211 Walsingham Road, Largo.

Troy Bernardo

Troy Bernardo loves spending time reading, writing, camping and drinking local craft beer. He is an English department head at an alternative online school, and lives with his wife Laura, his newborn baby Alice, and their four cats, Jax, Maya, Cali and Fuzz Lightyear, in St. Petersburg.

Bernardo has spent the last decade and a half moving and traveling around the world. His journeys have brought him from teaching English in South Korea to living in a tent in the Alaskan wilderness for five months to swimming and living on sunny San Diego beaches. These diverse experiences greatly influence his writing and make him even more appreciative of the family around him now. Bernardo's book, Hardly Harding, is available on Amazon, and his published short stories can be found at troybernardo.com.

Jenipher Chandley

Jenipher Chandley is a representational artist working in her hometown of St. Petersburg where she has raised her four children and is a proud new grandmother. She has earned degrees in interior and graphic design, from the International Academy of Design and Technology in Tampa.

Chandley is currently lead curator for Bar@548. She also has co-curated and exhibited in hundreds of shows throughout the Tampa Bay area.

Her artwork is real, sometimes raw, and emotionally charged, expressed through symbolism and poetic gestures. Chandley returns often to the divine feminine, to rediscover the beauty of inner power and resilience that conquers all.

Marie Cummings

Marie Cummings was born in Detroit, Michigan. There she studied psychology and business at Wayne State University. She moved to Clearwater with her three daughters, where she embarked on a career as a Realtor.

When her last daughter entered college, Cummings decided to seek a new direction in her life: exploring the world of visual art. While studying experimental watermedia at the Dunedin Fine Arts Center, she also ventured into creative writing at St. Petersburg College. This dual experience served as a launching pad for a serious embrace of fine art from an outside-the-box viewpoint.

Since that time, Cummings has focused on the creative potential of watermedia. She thinks of her palette, brushes and paper as tools for play. Water and paint dance together in her studio, making forms that spark the imagination and speak to the heart.

Cummings recently taught experimental watermedia at the Dunedin Fine Arts Center, the same course that first inspired her to take the leap into the world of art. She also enjoys teaching beginning watercolor classes for adults who are beginning to dip their toes in the wellspring of their own creative resources.

Cummings is a signature member of the Florida Watercolor Society, the National Association of Women Artists, (New York City) the Society of Layerists in Multimedia, International Society of Experimental Artists, Tallahassee Watercolor Society and Watercolor USA Honor Society.

Kate Cummins

“I cant remember a time when I wasn’t drawing, painting or fabricating something out of something else” said artist Kate Cummins of her work. “I come from a creative household where the arts had a natural hierarchy."

After completing an honors bachelor’s of fine art degree from the University of Western Ontario, Cummins travelled extensively and now lives with her family in St. Petersburg.

Cummins works in the film industry and has a busy studio practice where her focus has been creating work that responds to social issues.

“I am grateful to have a creative and challenging work life and look forward to concentrating exclusively on my artwork," she said. "The need to connect with others is the purpose and motivation for my art making. In my large-scale abstract paintings, I call attention to recurrent symbols: icons, motifs and totems. This personal iconography has become my language. Through it, I am able to process and communicate perspectives regarding the effects of important societal influences, primarily climate crisis, social conflict and women’s rights."

Dennis DeBon

Dennis DeBon is the creator of EnergyWebs, one-of-a-kind works of modern glass art.

He has often been compared to artist Jackson Pollock. Like Pollack, DeBon uses simple artistic techniques and has combined reverse painting on glass with spin art and taken both to a whole new level.

Each EnergyWeb is cut from a large sheet of plate glass, then free-style hand-cut into shape, scalloped, polished then spun. DeBon uses a multitude of application techniques and color combinations when creating each piece before firing and hand-signing them.

Every EnergyWeb is a one-of-a-kind work of modern glass art and he is the only artist in the world creating them.

In addition to selling his artwork at fine art festivals across the country, DeBon was commissioned to create the Richard Dawkins Awards. Past creations have been presented to James “The Amazing” Randi, Carl Sagan’s widow, Ann Druyan, and the Zora Neale Hurston and the Koi Society of America award winners.

DeBon was born and raised in Buffalo, New York, and attended the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, where he studied photography and graphic design.

He now lives in St. Petersburg. When he isn’t creating art, he can be found writing screenplays or in the boxing ring working as a professional boxing referee.

Patrick Arthur Jackson

Patrick Arthur Jackson is a creative multi-hyphenate with a passion for community connection through storytelling.

He is the associate artistic producer at American Stage, where he oversees new play development and casting. Jackson most recently served as the assistant director/choreographer for the production of "The Colored Museum" at American Stage.

He holds a bachelor of arts in drama from Morehouse College, has studied with the British American Drama Academy and is an alumnus of the Florida Studio Theatre Acting Apprentice Program.

Regional performance credits include "Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol" (American Stage), "It’s A Wonderful Life: (American Stage), "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" (Jobsite Theatre), "Gloria" (Mad Cow Theatre), "A Raisin In The Sun" (American Stage), "White Rabbit/Red Rabbit" (Urbanite Theatre) and "Alice With A Twist: (Florida Studio Theatre).

Off-stage, Jackson is the host of The Black Hand Side Podcast, minister of multimedia for Today’s Church Tampa Bay and is a 2022 Advancing Racial Equity on Nonprofit Boards Fellow with the Nonprofit Leadership Center.

He's a member of the Actor’s Equity, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia and Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc. and is the son of renowned storyteller, Cynthia Jackson.

Kimberly Engel

Kimberly Engel is a contemporary abstract painter who lives and works in Clearwater, but lived on the shore of Lake Erie in Euclid, Ohio, prior to moving to the Gulf Coast.

Her distinct gestural style combines a love for color interaction with spontaneous mark making. Engel’s paintings explore levels of transparency, evoking depth and light. She is inspired by the constant presence and changing states of large bodies of water.

In 2002, Engel received a bachelor of fine arts from the Cleveland Institute of Art. She has exhibited in Cleveland, Chicago, Raleigh, Camarillo and several galleries throughout Florida. Her work is in Capright Corp.’s permanent collection in Chicago.

Aimee Jones

Aimee Jones is a visual artist and educator currently working in St. Petersburg. She earned her master's of fine arts and graduate certification in women and gender studies in 2022 at the University of South Florida. She was a finalist for the Carlos Malamud Prize in 2022, has exhibited in Spain and throughout the U.S., and was a participant in the HANNAC Can Borni Residency in Barcelona.

She specializes in painting the human figure transformed in both domestic and botanical landscapes while researching feminist theory and invasive plant species.

After studying advertising in Texas, she moved to Italy to study under a ceramic artist specializing in Italian tile painting. From there, she moved to Madrid for three years to be an educator and has been creating work as a response to her life experiences and research since.

Amy Wolf

Amy Wolf is a ceramics and mixed media artist based in St. Petersburg. Originally hailing from equal parts northern California and western Pennsylvania, she spent her adult life between New York City, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Lima, Peru, before permanently relocating to St. Pete in early 2020 for an artist residency.

She received her bachelor's of fine arts from The New York State College of Ceramics School of Art & Design at Alfred University and her master's in Sociology from Arizona State University.

Wolf has shown her work both locally and nationally since 2018 and was a 2021 emerging Florida CraftArt artist. She is a 2022 recipient of an individual artist grant from The St. Petersburg Arts Alliance and a 2022 Gobioff Foundation microgrant recipient. She lives in Kenwood with her adult son and is a member of the Artist Enclave of Historic Kenwood.

Agueda Zabisky

Agueda Zabisky has been working with ceramics since 2005.

"It all starts with a block of clay that transforms until it takes shape. Understanding that each phase has its right time made me learn not only to model clay but also model my anxiety and opened new paths for me," she said.

Her project, "Journey to Equilibrium," is based on her view that people are made up of pieces symbolized by geometric blocks that they collect along the way.

"We are born with nothing and are given love, knowledge, intelligence, strength and courage. At the same time, we also acquire selfishness, fear, anger and much more," she said. "Sometimes, we manage to make connections and a few pieces find their way to complete themselves, generating states of euphoria and happiness. Other times, our blocks move away, we make mistakes, we feel lost, full of doubts and we think that nothing fits, and this causes us anguish, anxiety and sadness. Surprisingly, even confused, we may have fun but not joy."