The St. Petersburg Arts Alliance is partnering with the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs and the Arts Advisory Committee to establish an Individual Artist Grant Program. Individual Artist Grants provide up to $5,000 for artist-driven projects that benefit the public and enrich the community of St. Petersburg by advancing artistic excellence and increasing access to innovative and diverse arts experiences. These awards support the public engagement of individual artists, work or projects that further artists' careers with professional practice, helping them grow and thrive.
This opportunity is intended to provide financial assistance to artists who live or work in the City of St. Petersburg for specific projects. The program is designed to support public engagement of individual artists’ work/projects in genres such as Visual/Craft Arts, Dance, Music, Theater, Literature, and more.
2023 Individual Artist Grant Recipients
Tricia Lynn Bush - Multimedia Arts
Tricia created works of art featuring endangered, threatened, or vulnerable species and their habitats in several representational larger-scale paintings. Using technology, viewers were immersed in a narrative about the painting experience, and a video journal was captured and looped at the exhibitions to highlight the process of artistic development for this body of work.
Secondary works were created by others through community engagement, specifically youth, elderly, and/or veterans who traditionally had limited exposure to the arts. The goal was to help humans connect with conservation and learn about Florida’s endangered or threatened wildlife.
Tricia is a Florida resident and practiced as a Registered Nurse in healthcare administration and adult education while pursuing and advancing her skills and competence in painting.
Sheila Cowley - Literary & Performing Arts
Professional visual and performing artists from Sheila Cowley’s Sparks Collaborative Ensemble created collaborative, multi-arts performances for children based on her plays and produced long-lasting online stories, including five videos in Spanish and new stories illustrated by young artists.
Sheila Cowley is a playwright and audio producer based in St. Petersburg, Florida. She collaborates with actors, dancers, scientists, musicians and visual artists on performance works aimed at inspiring audiences to look up and look sideways, to reach out and embrace this complicated world. She leads the Sparks Collaborative Ensemble, a working group diverse in age, gender identity, ethnicity, ability and art forms that create joyous performances both for and with kids, elders, neuro-diverse artists, creative adventurers, and you.
Tiffany Elliot - Visual Arts
Tiffany produced a collaborative gallery show through the Justice Studio art program presented by NOMADstudio, using jewelry as a medium to create personal adornments with students inside Pinellas Juvenile Detention Center (JDC). This project provided detained youth with meaningful opportunities for creative freedom, expression, learning, and growth. Throughout December, Tiffany displayed the polymer and metal jewelry pieces inside Justice Studio, where students resonated with the work they helped create. The display showed how their creations, along with those of their peers, could transform into sellable items.
Tiffany Elliott, GIA Diamonds Graduate and jeweler, is best known for incorporating baroque minimalism into her collections inspired by history, culture, and places across the globe. Her recent work of custom grillz showcased her commitment to push the boundaries and refine her skills, by creating intricate designs that cover the smalls of the teeth.
Polita Glynn - Multimedia Arts
Polita created “Underground History,” a documentary film project designed to explore connections between St. Petersburg’s diverse cultural history and emerging community efforts to acknowledge that past in charting the future. The project considered the links between the history and remaining archaeological sites of the region’s Indigenous ancestors, the displaced contemporary African American communities, and erased black cemeteries and historic waterways that once created connectivity for these places and people.
There were two film screenings and community discussions that presented a work-in-progress documentary and gathered feedback from the audience about the film.
Polita Cohen Glynn is a filmmaker and director of Merfolk Media Alliance. As a writer/producer, she creates films and stories which explore ideas about social justice and equity with a focus on history, cultural diversity and nature. She has received art awards from the State of Florida, Sundance Institute, St. Pete Arts Alliance, Creative Pinellas and Florida Humanities.
