A haunting ghostly St. Petersburg art exhibit just in time for Halloween
ST. PETERSBURG — She must have been fabulous in her day, but now she’s giving “Psycho” vibes: a skeleton dressed in Victorian garb, perched in an antique wheelchair at Florida CraftArt.
Janna Kennedy’s memento mori assemblage titled “Ghostly Memories” is the ghoulish introduction to the “Ghost Stories” exhibition at the downtown St. Petersburg gallery. The wheelchair is decked out with vintage photographs, candles and a book literally titled “Ghost.”
Catherine Bergmann, who is the curatorial director at the Dunedin Fine Art Center, guest-curated the show that features 38 artists’ riffs on the spirit world. As she said in a news release: “Who doesn’t love a ghost, and who better to invite to the seance than a group of artists?”
With so much creativity in the room, it’s hard not to imagine the stories behind them. In fact, an ekphrastic exercise in which people made up stories inspired by the pieces (led by Keep St. Pete Lit) was part of the programming for the exhibition.
Kennedy’s “Souls and Pharmaseuticals” is an antique cabinet filled with cabinet cards from the 1800s, 19th-century medicine bottles and an early 20th-century pharmacy ledger and medical ads. At the center is a human skull. Could her pieces be related? Did the woman in the wheelchair visit the pharmacy? Did she ingest some concoction that led to her demise?
Similarly mysterious is Mark Georgiades’ metal sculpture, “Ghost of the Abandoned Bride.” The artist’s use of negative space creates a supernatural aura, and the title makes you wonder what happened to her. Could she have died from a broken heart?
Maybe her tombstone was like the one Eric Folsom created, granite with a verse from Walt Whitman written in bronze and titled “Herein Dear Reader Lies a Benevolent Spirit.”
Other pieces have narratives that are slightly easier to imagine, like Trent Manning’s mixed-media sculpture “Moth, Man or Myth.” The winged figure brings to mind the legend of the Mothman — a humanoid creature spotted by residents of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, for more than a year from 1966-1967.
But Manning’s figure lacks the glowing red eyes that were characteristic to Mothman, so it’s fun to imagine what otherworldly realm he emerged from, with his wooden hands wrapped in thread and bits of metal hardware at his joints. He might look a bit scary, but it’s nice to imagine that he is a good force.
The most haunting piece of all is Nick Reale’s “Out of Wood,” because we know the narrative. It depicts two marionettes in a tug of war and is about Reale’s attempt to save his brother from the throes of addiction. The piece includes a wooden book engraved with a poem he wrote to memorialize his brother, who died in 2003.
The last verse reads, “Brother Two, Brother One. Two will lose the fight. Unless one makes the choice to live in the light.”
What to know before you go to “Ghost Stories”
It remains on view through Oct. 21. Free. At 6 p.m. Oct. 12, Manny Leto and Emily Elwin of Preserve the ‘Burg will present “Ghost Buildings: Places that Haunt our History.” $10 suggested donation. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Monday-Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday. 501 Central Ave., St. Petersburg. 727-821-7391. floridacraftart.org.
