Eighth Annual Muse Awards

St. Petersburg Arts Alliance Eighth Annual MUSE Awards Recognizes Six Local “Muses”

MUSE is back honoring local artists and celebrating our City of the Arts at the fabulous Morean Center for Clay in the Warehouse Arts District on Friday, March 4, 2022.  

MUSE celebrates the diversity of all the arts and culture in St. Petersburg and pays tribute to the remarkable talent and variety that can be discovered around every corner of our amazing city.  Celebrate with all of us, as you will experience an evening of visual and performing art that will lighten your heart and lift your spirits! Our goal is to share all that art can do – communicate, inspire, connect, and deliver limitless possibilities.

Gourmet delicacies and cool libations will awaken your taste buds. Music will make you tap your toes and want to dance (and so we shall!). SPAA promises some of St. Pete's finest entertainers -- present and future.  We will showcase arts in forms that will delight you with engaging displays and outstanding performers. Paul Wilborn and Eugenie Bondurant again host the event!  

MUSE Visual Arts Award Honoree, ZuluPainter (Carlos Culbertson). Zulu is a local multi-media artist who works in traditional mediums as well as body paint, special effects and scenic art. An aerosol-based mural artist, Zulu Painter’s work can be seen across Florida and whose murals in Historic Midtown have lent to the art revitalization in this bustling area.

MUSE Performance Arts Award Honoree, Matthew McGee. Matthew has been performing for over 20 years as an actor and drag artist. His irreverent drag style is a mix of high camp and 1960's Hollywood cocktail party glamour. As an actor, Matthew has appeared in musicals and plays in and out of drag. He has received numerous awards and accolades including BroadwayWorld.com's Favorite Leading Actor in a Musical, Theatre Tampa Bay Award winner for both Leading and Featured Actor in a Musical and has been voted Best Local Drag Performer in Creative Loafing's Best of The Bay issue. In drag, Matthew has hosted numerous charity events and is a on air guest-host on Daytime NBC, Suncoast View and Tampa Bay’s Morning Blend . Matthew's drag work has been so popular in the Bay area that he is affectionately known as "Tampa Bay's favorite Clown in a Gown"

MUSE Literary Arts Award Honoree, Gloria Muñoz. Gloria is a Colombian American author who writes across genres for children and adults. Her poetry book Danzirly won the Academy of American Poets Ambroggio Prize. A literary translator and advocate for multilingual writing, Muñoz was awarded Lumina’s Multilingual Nonfiction Prize. She was also recently part of Tin House’s inaugural Young Adult Fiction

Workshop. Other honors include a Las Musas Mentorship for Latinx picture book authors, a New York Summer Writers Institute Residency, and a Creative Pinellas Artist Grant. Muñoz also writes for film and TV, and she co-founded Pitch Her Productions. Her writing is widely published and anthologized, appearing in VIDA Review, Entropy, the Rumpus, Best New Poets, Burrow Press, Cagibi, and elsewhere. A proponent of cross-disciplinary collaboration, Muñoz has worked alongside filmmakers, animators, visual artists, actors, dancers, conservationists, and neuroscientists. Muñoz is part of the songwriting duo Moonlit Música that writes lyrics and music for a range of projects, including animated children’s series. She teaches creative writing at Eckerd College.

MUSE Patron of the Arts Award Honorees, David and Becky Ramsey. David and Becky have been avid art collectors for the past 40 years in St. Petersburg.  They first began collecting from Florida Craft Art and have supported the organization the entire time.  Their collection includes primarily craft arts (glass, clay, textile, and sculptural work). Both have been supportive of local art organizations as well.  David worked as a Financial Advisor for 40 years and has been on several Art Boards and volunteered at local museums.  The last 18 years were at Raymond James as Managing Dir. Sr. VP.  Becky worked in the Pinellas County School system for 30 years.  Becky has volunteered at Florida CraftArt gallery for 11 years.  In addition, she has been a member of the Stewart Society at the Museum of Fine Arts for 8 years.

MUSE Arts Ambassador Award Honoree, Chad Mize. Chad Mize is a multimedia artist, designer and muralist residing in St. Petersburg, Florida. He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1974, and then moved to Tampa Bay Florida, where he spent most of his childhood. An early interest in art resulted in his earning a BFA in Visual Communications at the University of Mississippi. With a love for past and contemporary culture, he takes a humorous, tongue-in-cheek approach to his designs, which include playful free flow artworks, colorful patterns, political art and graphics with text. In 2010, Mize opened BLUELUCY, a gallery in St. Petersburg, where he represented over 450 local and national artists. When the gallery closed in 2015, Mize founded his own lifestyle and design brand, CHIZZY. His contributions to the thriving St. Petersburg art scene also include working on the SHINE Mural Festival, which brings artists from around the world to paint murals in St. Petersburg. In 2018, Mize opened the gallery MIZE in the Historic Uptown neighborhood of St Petersburg.

AND NEW THIS YEAR our MUSE ART AND TECHNOLOGY AWARD Honoree, Matthew Walker, PixelStix -Matthew Walker has been a solutions architect for over 25 years with significant contributions in Telcom and Healthcare as well as playing a leadership role in a variety of startups. His latest work has been creating solutions to the human experience in an online world using the same tools used.  Matthew has been instrumental in collaborating and elevating our public art through his work with SHINE. He is an avid proponent of mural art across the country. In addition, as founder of PixelStix, Matthew played a significant role in our PRIDE collaboration, bringing more attendance to our murals through a scavenger hunt, than ever before. 

For more information go to www.stpeteartsalliance.org