St. Pete Life March/April 2020

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SPL SPOTLIGHT

Gulfport

Where the Arts are in Bloom Year-Round PHOTOS/LARRY BUSBY

BY JAMES BRIGGS It’s a warm Saturday evening in Gulfport and the town’s cultural and business center, Beach Boulevard, is alive with a creative energy usually reserved for towns much larger than this artists’ enclave of 12,000 or so on the shores of Boca Ciega Bay. Locals and visitors make their way along the many new shops, restaurants and storefronts that have introduced themselves as part of the town’s unique charm in the past year and vendors and artists have taken their places for the town’s monthly third Saturday arts event. Outside of Brenda McMahon Gallery, Gulfport’s first curated fine

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StPeteLifeMag.com

March/April 2020

art gallery in years, fiber artist Dawn Waters is creating the kind of portraiture that has landed her on the cover of national arts publications. “Harvest was the first album I owned,” says Waters. She’s echoing the title of her subject, Neil Young’s, seminal 1972 recording, and in some ways the arts community is experiencing its own harvest from the seeds planted by the creative hands of the artists who came before like Owen Patch, Frank Strunk, Tom Pitzen and August Vernon, to name just a few who have long created magnificent works of public art in Gulfport.


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