SHINING ON

SHINE MURAL FESTIVAL, ST. PETE’S ANNUAL ART BASH THAT TRANSFORMS THE CITY INTO A LIVING OUTDOOR MUSEUM, IS SET TO RETURN WITH A FOCUS ON LOCAL ARTISTS.

By Marcia Biggs

Last October, uninvited guests Milton and Helene crashed the 10-year anniversary celebration for SHINE. The back-to-back hurricanes resulted in widespread destruction across Tampa Bay and fizzled big plans for the festival, which was rescheduled to November.

With eyes to the skies, the organizers of this year’s festival announced the event would take place November 7th through the 16th, making it unlikely that a hurricane will cause havoc again.

“I think we learned from last year this is a safe, wise move as we enter our second decade,” offers Helen French, the recently appointed new executive director of the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance (SPAA), a nonprofit 501(c)(3) dedicated to advocating for the arts and driving arts-related economic impact, which spearheads the event.

The SPAA has stated that the annual festival “illuminates the power of art in public spaces by revitalizing areas, inspiring dialogue and uniting our community—while cultivating new standards of artistic excellence reflecting St. Petersburg's creative and vibrant spirit by using the walls and streets as canvas.”

Each year, SHINE invites 10 to 20 muralists to participate, which typically includes local, national and international artists, as well as four community-based “bright spots” projects to allow local residents to assist in painting a mural. SHINE provides compensation for the artists and funding for room, board, food and airfare. In an effort to honor the individual visions and voices of the artists, the muralists have full creative expression outside of some basic community standards. Most mural artists earn their living through commissioned projects for private businesses, so the exposure that SHINE provides is very valuable.

With this year’s SHINE Origins theme, the SPAA made the decision to focus exclusively on local artists, as a way of devoting its resources to support, promote and celebrate the incredible talent present within the St. Pete area at a time when many of those artists are still recovering from hurricane damage and returning to their creative spaces. Organizers are keeping a tight lid on the participating artists until they are ready to announce the full lineup in September.

“The theme honors the origins of the festival and looks at how we are growing into the second decade,” French shares. “We’ll be looking back at some of the founding mural artists to see where we started and how far we’ve come.”

Nicknamed the "Art City" because of its thriving arts scene, St. Pete has somewhere between 500 to 600 murals in total, some dating back to the early 2000s; many of the earliest can be found around the historic 600 block of Central Avenue—and of those, over 180 are SHINE murals which have been commissioned since the festival began in 2015.

In recent years, nationally and internationally known artists have been keen to take part in this highly anticipated event, raising St. Pete’s reputation globally.

“The SHINE Mural Festival began as an opportunity to showcase the depth of talent in our community through art for the public to enjoy for years to come,” SPAA Board Chair Ryan Griffin shared in April when the format for this year’s festival was announced. “I’m thrilled to see the festival continue to grow all these years later and the commitment to our local artists for SHINE #11.”

“There is so much incredible talent here, this year our goal is to keep the momentum going and help our local artists build an international reputation,” adds French.

Over the last 10 years, the SPAA has expanded its focus from primarily downtown to include other area arts districts. This year’s festival will continue this expansion throughout the city. The festival was the first in the world to offer a free and accessible audio tour through the PixelStix app to allow anyone with an Apple or Android phone to find and interact with the murals. There are also regularly scheduled “vintage style” open-air Star Trolley mural tours. Florida CraftArt also offers both walking tours of the Central Arts District in downtown and bike tours that cover downtown, the Edge District and the Warehouse Arts District.

Visit stpeteartsalliance.org for more information.