Every year, the Zodiac Membership Committee invites 12 local emerging artists to exhibit at the Museum during one special evening. The Zodiacs are an all-volunteer group that supports the mission of The Dalí Museum by building meaningful relationships with members and helping to strengthen the ties between the Museum and the arts community. For more information about the Zodiacs, please contact membership@thedali.org. This year, The Dalí Dozen are:
Paul Bararra
Sponsored by Dalí Museum Zodiac Member Janna Kennedy-Hyten
Paul is an abstract artist, musician and painter. Originally from Bogota, Colombia, he moved to Louisiana at the age of four and became a resident of Saint Petersburg in 1978. His love of music and art has fueled his desire to learn and experiment with various techniques and styles. In painting, his abstract expressions strive to be fun, colorful and intriguing. He loves the freedom and spontaneity of abstract painting, use of bright colors, shapes of every variety and has a fun and playful approach to his art.
Peter & Chris Chomick
Sponsored by Dalí Museum Zodiac Member Pamela Joy Trow
Peter Meder and Chris Chomick have worked together for over forty years. Both have a commercial background, described as a combination of artistic and technical, unorthodox, and analytical. In 1978 they met while employed as clerks in an art supply store in the Chicago Loop, discovering their mutual fascination with puppets, stop-motion films, and mechanical toys. Inspired by similar interests, they began collaborating on various projects. They have defined roles based on their skills: Peter builds the armatures, designs the automata mechanisms and electronics. Chris sculpts, paints and costumes the figures. Their works reside in private collections throughout the United States, Canada, Asia, and Europe.
Nancy Cohen
Sponsored by Dalí Museum Zodiac Member Pamela Joy Trow
Nancy Cohen is an artist determinedly out of sync with the times. While the rest of the world is plastered to their screens, her oil paintings of landscapes and still-lifes evoke the quiet richness of past centuries. Whether it’s simple objects on a shelf or a collection of luscious pastries, Nancy’s paintings are about serenity, abundance, fragility, and the pure beauty of light. Nancy was born in New York City and now lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. She studied at the Art Students League of New York with Gregg Kreutz and has taken workshops with many of the masters of modern realism – C.W. Mundy, Duane Keiser, Christopher Gallego, John Morra, David Leffel, and Dennis Perrin. Nancy is currently represented by Woodfield Fine Art in St. Petersburg.
Nick Davis
Sponsored by Dalí Museum Zodiac Member Jeremiah Tipton
With the evolution of technology and the rise of self-sufficient creators, Nick Davis is taking the world of multimedia art by storm. Inspired by the greats who came before him such as Brooklyn graffiti pioneer Jean-Michel Basquiat, the St. Petersburg, FL native began sketching and painting at a young age. In 2019, Davis took on digital artistry after epilepsy left him unable to work. Using an iPad gifted to him by his wife, he began to experiment with computer-generated artwork. Before long, Davis constructed an entire collection of digital art that portrayed his love for his culture, appropriately titled, Black Is Beautiful. In November 2019, he was recognized by BET as their Artist of the Week. He has since been featured by WhatsOn, PBS, The Weekly Challenger, Creative Pinellas and CBS Channel 10.
Julian Desta
Sponsored by Dalí Museum Zodiac Member Laura Bethea
Julian J. Desta is a Abstract Artist/Expressionist currently living in Richmond, VA. Self taught, Julian has been exploring the world of art since a child. His earliest impressions to start creating came from comics and cartoons. Now 45, Julian continues to explore art from various modalities and perspectives, which tend to overlap. Whether it is visual art, movement, or music, Julian continues to explore these realms as a way of creating a new reality within what has already been given. The purpose of his art is to continually create something that has yet to be seen or felt. Julian often terms his art as Energy Art. The concept of Energy Art is using the contemporary abstract model, to create that which cannot be seen as much as felt. A release of spontaneous burst of creativity within the very moment it is created.
Alyssa Dunlap
Sponsored by Dalí Museum Zodiac Member Brett Holden
Alyssa is owner and founder of Alyssa Marie Gallery alongside her husband, Braden Everly. She is originally from Littleton, Colorado and moved to St. Petersburg, Florida in Feb 2017. Alyssa has been a lover of art from the get-go, covering her parents’ kitchen table with reflections of her childhood art projects. She gained her BFA in Communication Design at Metropolitan University of Denver, Colorado and moved to St. Petersburg shortly after with her husband, two dogs, parrot and chameleon. Her passion and energy is evident in her each work, from sunflower crowns on great white sharks to sunnies on blue herons.
Ashley Finegan
Sponsored by Dalí Museum Zodiac Member Huong Tran
Ashley is a 23-year old artist living in St. Petersburg, FL. She is currently studying Graphic Design at USF St. Petersburg. Her artwork focuses on abstraction that connects with the full range of human emotion. The pieces she will displaying in the Museum’s annual Dalí Dozen event are meant to embody the female experience and address the idea that women are constantly judged for taking up space, socially, romantically and in the workplace. These pieces offer the idea that adhering to the appropriate space forces us to contort our natural way of being.
Juan Santos Garanton
Sponsored by Dalí Museum Zodiac Member Harvey Drouillard
Juan Santos Garanton was born in Caracas, Venezuela. He began his formal Education at “Escuela de Artes Plasticas Cristobal Rojas.” He moved to States and studied at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale where he earned an Associate of Science Degree in Advertising Design in 1982. His experience includes more than 25 years working as a Graphic Designer until becoming a Production Director for local Advertising Agencies in the Tampa Bay area. His work captures the beauty of Saint Petersburg and Tampa Bay area, primarily in watercolor, and has been showcased in many galleries and collections all over the world. His paintings of landmarks, sea and landscapes depict a colorful lifestyle for the community and visitors.
Erika Leigh
Sponsored by Dalí Museum Zodiac Member Kisha Linebaugh
With 12 million tons of textiles going to landfill every year, bowtie maker, fashion enthusiast, and sustainability advocate, Ericka Leigh uses fabric as her medium to reflect her hopes for a future without waste. Her creative process begins with the story I want to tell about different fabrics and the journeys of their life, which is synonymous with the tattered and woven roads we’ve all found ourselves on at one point or another. With each stitch, she strives to connect the dots and transform that anger, heartbreak, glee, or fear into an actionable takeaway. With textiles as her medium, she hopes to enlighten the viewer to the way fabric and clothing affects the aforementioned states.
Savannah Magnolia
Sponsored by Dalí Museum Zodiac Member Frances Recheungel
Savannah Magnolia was born in Fort Myers, Florida in 1996. Her art merges science and art through hyper-saturated, stylized paintings influenced by anatomical cross-sections and medical imaging scans. These larger-than-life paintings subvert traditional expectations of anatomical diagrams and confront viewers with what it means to be a living body within the context of our current healthcare system. Savannah maintains a laboratory-like precision in her paintings through a graphic, hard-edge style. Guided by her personal experiences with deteriorating health and healing, Savannah continues to explore the role that medicine can play in art, and vice versa. Savannah has exhibited in numerous galleries and museums nationally. Recently, Savannah’s work was included in the immersive exhibition, Fairgrounds St. Pete.
David Skoczen
Sponsored by Dalí Museum Zodiac Member Jenny Grinder
David Skoczen is a transplant from the Midwest. When he went to college for photography 17 years ago, film techniques and procedures were still being taught. Though digital technology began to eradicate the darkrooms of the college campuses during that time, he was lucky enough to attend a small community college that couldn’t yet afford new digital cameras and the computers to “develop” the “film”. Now, after adapting to the digital age and having almost 20 years of photography experience, he still prefers the ancient art of shooting film and developing the photographs in his darkroom.
Peter White
Sponsored by Dalí Museum Zodiac Member Harvey Drouillard
Peter White has been making violins, violas, violoncellos and mandolins for fifty years. Inspired by his Belarusian grandfather, Peter studied violin making at an early age in America and later in Kraków, Poland under master luthier Jan Pawlikowski. To date he has made 262 instruments which are owned by musicians from Hawaii to St. Petersburg, Russia. His violins and violas have won multiple gold medals for workmanship and tone in American contests, and he has won a gold medal for his antiqued copies of Andrea Amati’s Il Portuguese violin of 1560 and a viola from the same period. Peter started the New Mexico Musical Heritage program at the University of New Mexico and was formerly the owner of Old World Violins which hosted the 1990 Violin Society Of America Convention and Competition.