Arts In

Ya La’ford

Painter, muralist, installation artist, community activist and teacher, Ya La’ford, shares her passion for creating art, and for nurturing the next generation of artists.

Ya spoke with Barbara St. Clair after recent work in Thailand and China, and before a project where she’ll be working with children in Cuba. While her artwork is internationally known, Ya’s murals grace buildings throughout her chosen home town of St. Petersburg, including the Morean Arts Center, the James Weldon Johnson Public Library and a beautiful blue tunnel leading to the baseball stadium at Tropicana Field.

Ya reveals her intense creative fire, her profound connections to her family and the world around her, and how training in engineering and law have shaped her art practice.

Find out more about Ya’s work at http://yalaford.com

Arts In is produced by Matt and Sheila Cowley. Executive Producer, Barbara St. Clair for Creative Pinellas.

Rebecca Penneys

Internationally-acclaimed concert pianist Rebecca Penneys commutes between St. Pete and New York every other week, to teach at the Eastman School of Music.

Her infectious sense of humor and the joy she finds in sharing music run throughout this vibrant conversation. Penneys talks about how training as a dancer - and almost giving up piano to pursue a professional ballet career - now shapes the way she plays piano, and the way she teaches even students with carpal tunnel and stress-related injuries to play the piano so it feels like they are having a massage.

Rebecca shares her true love, the international piano festival she hosts each summer at USF Tampa. She hosts 40 students from around the world, for free, to learn in a non-competitive environment from a variety of world-class teachers, and to share their music in free performances all over Tampa Bay.

rebeccapenneyspianofestival.org

Music selections from:

Rebecca Penneys & Steinway, Fleur de Son Classics 2005

Recital Gems from Chatauqua, Fleur de Son Classics 2002

All Brahms, Fleur de Son Classics 2000

Arts In is produced by Matt and Sheila Cowley. Executive Producer, Barbara St. Clair for Creative Pinellas.

Internationally-known artists Robert Stackhouse and Carol Mickett share their method of collaboration and give listeners a look behind the scenes of large-scale public art commissions - wrangling contracts. sourcing materials, coordinating with engineers, and managing budgets and schedules on art installations where you have to wear a hard hat.

Robert and Carol explain their passion for both 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional art, how placement on a wall affects a work of art, and why St. Petersburg’s maturing arts community needs every kind of artist from students to professionals.

Find out more about their work at http://mickettstackhouse.com

Produced by Sheila Cowley.

Arts In is produced by Matt and Sheila Cowley. Executive Producer, Barbara St. Clair for Creative Pinellas.

Lynn Whitelaw looks at how much the world of visual art has changed in Tampa Bay in the last 40 years. We enjoy a wealth of museums, galleries and arts events now, and take for granted the many working artists and arts organizations in our area. It’s hard to believe how different the arts scene was when Whitelaw arrived in 1975.

Lynn Whitelaw recently retired as the founding Director and Curator of the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art at St. Petersburg College. He also served as Curator of Education at the Tampa Museum of Art and taught at Hillsborough Community College.

- Recorded and mixed by Matthew Cowley, edited by Sheila Cowley.

Arts resources Lynn mentions in his talk:

Chihuly Collection http://www.moreanartscenter.org/chihuly/

Salvador Dalí Museum http://thedali.org

Dunedin Fine Arts Center http://www.dfac.org

Florida Artists Hall of Fame http://dos.myflorida.com/cultural/programs/florida-artists-hall-of-fame/

Florida Association of Museums http://www.flamuseums.org

Gallery 221@HCC http://www.hccfl.edu/gallery221

Graphicstudio http://www.graphicstudio.usf.edu

Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art https://www.leeparattner.com

Morean Art Center http://www.moreanartscenter.org

Museum of Fine Arts http://mfastpete.org

Ringling Museum of Art https://www.ringling.org/museum-art

Ringling College of Art + Design http://www.ringling.edu

Shine Mural Festival http://shineonstpete.com

Studio F, University of Tampa http://www.ut.edu/studio-f/

Syd Entel Gallery http://www.sydentelgalleries.com

Tampa Bay Businesses for Culture and the Arts http://www.tbbca.org

Tampa Museum of Art http://tampamuseum.org

USF Contemporary Art Museum http://www.ira.usf.edu/CAM/cam_exhibitions.html

Warehouse Arts District http://www.warehouseartsdistrictstpete.com

Arts In is produced by Matt and Sheila Cowley. Executive Producer, Barbara St. Clair for Creative Pinellas.

Tom Sivak

Tom Sivak is an adventurous composer and lyricist who talks about turning Beatles songs into Bach fugues, a musical version of “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die - in 3D!!!” and an Andrews Sisters spoof on Shakespeare that featured Jose Ferrer at Lincoln Center. Tom spoke to us shortly after revealing his new comic opera, “Dr. Dilligaff’s Baboon,” at The Palladium.

You can find out more about Tom’s work at http://tomsivak.com and follow the development of “Dr. Dilligaff’s Baboon” at http://www.rapidreturns.org/artistslandingpage/.

Arts In is produced by Matt and Sheila Cowley. Executive Producer, Barbara St. Clair for Creative Pinellas.

Lisa Powers Tricomi

In a conversation rich with laughter and with her own probing questions, Lisa Powers Tricomi shares her thoughts on acting and directing.

Lisa talks about her work with veterans in The Telling Project, and the ideas behind drama therapy. She explains the different energies of acting and directing, the power of theater to transform audiences, and how she grapples with questions of how to be human through her work onstage and off.

Find out more about Lisa Powers Tricomi’s work at:

http://creativepinellas.org/artists/lisa-powers-tricomi/

https://thetellingproject.org

http://www.theactproject.com/home.html

Arts In is produced by Matt and Sheila Cowley. Executive Producer, Barbara St. Clair for Creative Pinellas.