Cars and spectators turn out for the 2022 Mount Clemens Car Show and Cruise. At press time, the 2023 event was set to take place June 2-3.

OLEAN — The current Tri-County Arts Council exhibit, “Haudenosaunee, Art of the Now: Survive, Alive, Thrive,” features works from the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum’s artist in residency program funded by the Appalachian Regional Commission’s Area Development fund.

Artists in the residency program include Samantha Jacobs, Lorinda John, Penelope S. Minner, Alicia Sanford, Antoinette Scott, Bernadette Scott, Kristina Tome and Leeora White

In late summer of 2021, ARC’s Area Development with Southern Tier West grant funding came through for the Pathways to Success: Artist in Residency (AiR) Program at the Seneca-Iroquois museum. A call for indigenous artists to apply went out in October 2021. Eight artists from both the Cattaraugus and Allegany territories took part. Their talents ranged from making corn husk dolls and weaving to painting and sewing.

Each AiRs received a stipend to participate in a variety of activities that would inspire them to create a piece of art that they would donate to the museum. This show at Tri-County Arts is an acknowledgement of the challenges met during this time, but more importantly a celebration of the successes of overcoming obstacles and the creativity that arose as a result.

This show at TriCounty Arts is an acknowledgement of the challenges met during this time, but more importantly a celebration of the successes of overcoming obstacles and the creativity that arose as a result.

John Sheehan from the Seneca-Salamanca Chamber of Commerce presented the first workshop on how to be the best salesperson. He also gave the artists his equation for building successful sales relationships.

Fred Frigthner, director of marketing and communications at W.R. Case & Sons Cutlery, did two separate workshops on telling stories about products along with a writing workshop.

Tom Cullen led the AiRs in a discussion on “recognizing and identifying your audience in order to attract your dream customer.”

Tri-County Arts Council director emeritus Mikel Wintermantel and artist educator Allison Braun did a hands-on workshop focused on displaying and photographing art. Artists got to play with light boxes and learn all about the power of their cellphones to highlight their work.

Hayden Hanes brought the previous topics together and presented on photographing one’s work and how to tell your story, while Brian Kelly hosted a creating and editing websites workshop at The Hub in Olean.

Sharon Louden, the former director for Chautauqua Visual Arts presented a virtual talk on making a living as a working artist, which covered grants, fellowships, arts markets and commissions. The artists also participated in several arts markets arranged at the museum and they took a trip to K-Art in Buffalo and participated in discussion with gallery managers.

In addition to forming new relationships between the Seneca-Iroquois museum and organizations in Olean and Allegany and supporting creative economies, the final piece to the Pathways to Success program is the mini-gallery boxes. This was an idea inspired by the mini-libraries that have been popping up in communities and neighborhoods across the United States. The idea behind the mini-galleries was to place art and the institution within the communities to make the exhibits accessible and give people a taste of what they will find in the museum.

Seneca Nation Arts and Cultural Placed Based Tourism Initiative is an example of a cost-effective foundation for a continued partnership and project to create permanent resources that will benefit all partners.

An opening reception was catered by chef Lorinda John from LoMade Meals and beverages were provided by an anonymous donor.

For more information on this and any other exhibits at the Tri-County Arts Council, visit the website www.tricountyartscouncil.org or call (716) 372-7455.

Today, The Old Globe opens its 42nd season of outdoor Shakespeare productions on its festival stage in Balboa Park with a production of “Twelfth Night.”

Today also marks the 10th summer of Shakespeare in San Diego for Barry Edelstein, who is celebrating his 10th anniversary this year as artistic director of the Old Globe.

Edelstein came to the Globe on Jan. 1, 2013, from New York City, where he oversaw Shakespeare programming at the Public Theater, the huge nonprofit entity founded by Joseph Papp in 1954. His duties included running Shakespeare in the Park, the free summer festival that is one of New York’s signature cultural events, and the Public’s Mobile Unit, which took the Bard’s plays into prisons and homeless shelters.

A decade later under Edelstein’s leadership, the Old Globe’s Shakespeare programming has also expanded far beyond the stage of the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre into this region’s prisons, refugee centers, senior centers, schools, libraries and community centers.

Edelstein has also created Shakespeare educational “Thinking Shakespeare Live!” events onstage, lectures on YouTube during the pandemic, and a Shakespeare-themed podcast earlier this year — all designed to teach San Diegans how the Bard’s words are just as timely and meaningful today as they were 400 years ago.

Old Globe Artistic Director Barry Edelstein leads a “Thinking Shakespeare Live!” event in 2014.

(Doug Gates)

Edelstein has also transformed how the Globe presents Shakespeare’s works on its own stages.

First he oversaw the installation of a $250,000 sound system at the festival theater that made the actors’ words crystal-clear for audiences.

He replaced the repertory company approach of two plays alternating each night from June through September to presenting two independent productions in shorter, 10-week runs. This made it easier for him to attract big-name actors — like Blair Underwood to play Othello and Grantham Coleman to play Hamlet — who are too busy to commit to a five-month rep season.

“That has put major actors at the center of our work in a really important way,” Edelstein said. “That harkens back to the days of Ellis Rabb, Rosemary Harris and Richard Easton in the golden age of the Globe and Shakespeare.”

And, in contrast to the Globe’s previous Shakespeare fest director, former Royal Shakespeare Company leader Adrian Noble, Edelstein introduced an American style of Shakespeare, where American actors speak in their own voices, not faux English accents, as a way of communicating to the audience that Shakespeare is for everyone and for all times.

“I’ve devoted my entire professional life to the idea that there is such a thing as American Shakespeare,” Edelstein said. “That’s why it’s such an honor to be working at one of the great American Shakespeare companies.”

Another clear change has been the rise in diversity onstage in the Shakespeare and other productions, with many actors of color in lead roles, and in some cases male characters played by women actors and vice-versa.

Now, Edelstein is embarking on his next Shakespeare project, “Henry 6,” which will be presented on the Globe’s festival stage next summer. He has written a two-play adaptation of Shakespeare’s history plays “Henry VI, Parts I, II and III.” They’re the only plays in Shakespeare’s canon that the Globe has never produced in its 88-year history.

Among Shakespeare’s earliest works, the “Henry VI” history plays tell the story of the War of the Roses, a decades-long war between England’s York and Lancaster dynasties in the 1400s. Edelstein has condensed the three plays, which would normally run a total of nine hours, to two 2-1/2-hour plays that will focus on the characters’ quest to achieve power at any cost, and how that single-minded purpose can lead to chaos, violence and anarchy.

To prepare audiences for what Edelstein has nicknamed “H6,” the Globe is embarking on an extensive education blitz at the end of June to work with community members citywide for dialogues offstage and, possibly, onstage.

“I’m proud of putting Shakespeare in the middle of our community-based work. So many of our arts engagement programs have Shakespeare in them somewhere,” he said. “I imagine the idea that Shakespeare is a kind of glue that binds together so many different parts of American culture and speaks to so many different sectors of American society powerfully and eloquently. I think the Globe is doing that in a way that nobody else is doing.”

A scene from the Old Globe’s 2017 production of “Hamlet,” directed by artistic director Barry Edelstein and starring Grantham Coleman, center left in black doublet and hose, in the title role.

(Courtesy of Jim Cox)

But Shakespeare represents just a part of Edelstein’s job at the Old Globe.

Over the past decade he has overseen the production of 130 plays and musicals, and has directed 12 of those shows himself (his favorite self-directed Globe shows are “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank” (2022); “The Wanderers” (2018); “Hamlet” (2017); and the Michael John LaChiusa musical “Rain” (2016).

Eden Espinosa, pictured in The Old Globe’s “Rain” in 2016, will perform outdoor cabaret concerts at the Globe July 9-11.

(Jim Cox)

During the past 10 years, the Old Globe’s budget has doubled, from $19.1 million in 2013 to $40 million in 2022. Last year’s budget was enhanced by investments from the Broadway producers of “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’,” which debuted at the Globe last summer and went on to a two-month Broadway run this spring.

“The Globe has doubled in size over the past 10 years,” he said. “The thing that makes me happiest about that is last year the Globe issued nearly 1,200 W-2s and 1099s. In addition to this place being a real asset, we’re also a huge employer.”

Edelstein said his biggest challenge now is teaching San Diegans that the Globe is much more than just a producer of Shakespeare plays an the annual “Grinch” musical. A marketing campaign launching this fall aims to help San Diegans see the Globe’s impact beyond the stage.

“Ten years later, we still haven’t been able to penetrate the city’s imagination about all the stuff that we do beyond putting on plays,” he said. “It’s amazing how hard it has been to tell that story. There are maybe three other theaters in the country (the Public, The Goodman in Chicago and the Guthrie in Minneapolis) that do the work at the level we do.”

Edelstein recently sat down for a wide-ranging interview to talk about what brought him to the Globe, what he’s most proud of and his favorite productions of the past decade. The following comments have been edited for length.

Q: What attracted you to come work for the Old Globe?

A: I was working at the Public Theater which produced outdoor Shakespeare, indoor plays, new plays, classic revivals and community-based work. The Old Globe is all those things … but I wasn’t the boss there (at the Public). The Globe is this famous place with an amazing reputation, and San Diego is one of the country’s most beautiful cities and I’d get to raise my kids there. Absolutely nothing about it had a downside.

Q: Having spent the earlier part of your career on the East Coast, what did you know about the Old Globe’s history?

A: Even in the ‘80s when I graduated from Oxford, I knew what Jack (O’Brien) was doing with Shakespeare outdoors at the Globe. I thought then, and I think now, that the Public Theater on the East Coast and the Old Globe on the West Coast are the polar theaters of the United States. Certainly at this moment I think the numbers would bear out that we’re the largest nonprofit theater outside New York.

Q: Looking back on what you’ve built over the past decade, what are some of your proudest achievements?

A: I take pains to make this not a story about me. So many people have been part of what this is: the artists who come and work here, the huge effort of forging partnerships with community-based organizations; our arts engagement department; the board and philanthropists; the magnificent staff of the Old Globe. And I’m proud of Freedome (Bradley-Ballentine, the Globe’s former associate artistic director and director of arts engagement) who built the arts engagement work with help from the Irvine Foundation.

I’m happy to conceive of myself as a leader who articulated a point of view and who worked really hard to suggest a path. But what actually happened was done by hundreds and hundreds of people who did the heavy lifting over the years.

A scene from “Time and the Conways” which was produced at the Old Globe in 2014. It’s one of Globe artistic director Barry Edelstein’s favorite productions since he came to the San Diego theater in 2013.

(Jim Cox)

Q: What was your perception of San Diego’s theater community when you arrived in 2013, and how has it changed?

A: I got here and saw this amazing theater community. I saw the La Jolla Playhouse and San Diego Rep and a network of small theater companies. But what’s happened in the past 10 years is a huge explosion of energy.

The growth of the San Diego Symphony, the growth of the museums in Balboa Park and at the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla. It’s been a sea change in the arts and culture sector of the city. The city has adopted an arts and culture plan, energized its arts commission in a new way and the county has an arts commission. And the building of the Rady Shell was a game changer.

I would like to think that the Globe’s energy has been a real catalyst for that. I thinking of the Globe’s investment in our community-based work; the idea that we should take the insides of these nonprofits and turn them to face outside; and the idea that we should enfranchise our neighbors who are not participating to the extent that they would love to and invite them to become part of our work.

I don’t think in 2012 I would have believed it if someone would have said that a decade from now San Diego will be a city in the country that people are talking about as a real innovator in the arts.

Q: The pandemic was devastating for San Diego’s theater community, but the Globe was a rare bright spot, offering so many online community engagement, education, playwriting and other programs when everything else was shut down.

A: I had this idea to try to activate things here at the Globe and I’m just thrilled with what happened. Lots of theaters that tried to turn their lights back on in 2022 found they didn’t have any people anymore. They’d moved on, left the field. We kept everyone on health insurance, whether they were furloughed or not. We tried to keep a big chunk of our staff working and making content to keep our audience engaged. And I’m proud of the Old Globe’s Social Justice Roadmap that came out of that time.

Jōvan Dansberry with the cast of “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’”.

(Courtesy photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Q: What is another achievement you’re proud of from the past 10 years?

A: I think we and La Jolla Playhouse are doing incredible work contributing to the future of American musical theater.

“Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” was the sixth (Globe-born) Broadway show that happened during my time. So much of our new playwriting has gone on to productions all over the country, not just New York. “Dial M For Murder,” that we did last summer, is being produced all over the country now.

You can’t do that work unless you know there’s an audience that’s hungry for what’s going to be next in the American theater. Playwrights want to come and be produced here and that’s what makes directors want to come and work here. So I think that recommitting the Globe to its historic musical theater roots and really building the infrastructure for new playwriting has been a huge part of it.

I have to share this with (director of new plays and dramaturgy) Danielle Mages Amato and (philanthropists) Paula and Brian Powers, whose huge gift turbocharged that work.

Carmen Cusack in the musical “Bright Star,” which premiered at The Old Globe in 2014 and transferred to Broadway.

(Joan Marcus)

Q: One thing I really enjoyed this spring was your new eight-episode podcast series, “Where There’s a Will,” which was about how Shakespeare lives in our world today. Where did you get the idea?

A: A job like this is such an extraordinary platform. There’s such an opportunity to evangelize for the idea of Shakespeare. That’s the real gift this community has given me over the past 10 years. (The podcast) has allowed me to make a public case for this thing that I revere and value and I think is so important.

Q: How is the Shakespeare audience at the Old Globe different than it was at the Public?

A: The San Diego Shakespeare audience listens extremely carefully. The New York Shakespeare audience tells you how hard it’s listening. There’s a certain kind of laugh (there) that is telling the person next to you that you got the joke. Here it’s a real genuine connection to it. That intense listening, that intense sense of discovery, is really special and fresh about this audience.

Our Shakespeare audience is, by and large, younger than our indoor audience because a lot of people bring their kids or friends here to experience this thing they know they should have in their lives for the first time.

A scene from the Old Globe’s 2018 production of “Uncle Vanya,” which is one of Globe artistic director Barry Edelstein’s favorite Globe productions from the past 10 years.

(Courtesyof Jim Cox)

Barry Edelstein’s favorite Old Globe shows from the past 10 years:

“Time and the Conways” by J.B. Priestley (2014)

“Bright Star” by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell (2014)

“Camp David” by Lawrence Wright (2016)

“The Lion” by Benjamin Scheuer (2016)

“Uncle Vanya” by Anton Chekhov (2018)

“In-Zoom” by Bill Irwin (2020)

“Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” by Bob Fosse (2022)

“The Old Man and the Old Moon” by PigPen Theatre Co. (2022)

A scene from “The Wanderers,” directed by Barry Edelstein at The Old Globe in 2018, had a New York City run in early 2023.

(Courtesy of Jim Cox)

pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com

In the summer of 2021, a formerly little-known museum at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn presented a blockbuster exhibition of 25 paintings and drawings by famed Mexican painter Frida Kahlo from the Museo Dolores Omedo in Mexico City. It proved to be a huge hit, drawing 102,000 people from 43 countries and all 50 states.

The immediate question afterward was what to do as a comparable follow-up. And the answer is a multifaceted look at the life and work of Andy Warhol, one of the most famous and influential artists of the second half of the 20th century. Titled simply “WARHOL,” the exhibition opens June 3 and runs through Sept. 10.

“The idea is that every other year, the museum space works with the entire arts center to create not only a really unique experience for our visitors but also a key draw in DuPage County,” said Justin Witte, the show’s curator.

The centerpieces of this summer’s presentation in the college’s Cleve Carney Museum of Art are 94 works from the wide-ranging Bank of America Collection called “Andy Warhol Portfolios: A Life in Pop.”

The touring show features some of Warhol’s best-known original screenprints, including such portfolios as “Campbell’s Soup Cans II” (1969), “Flowers” (1970) and “Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century” (1979).

Bank of America began collecting art in the mid-20th century, and it acquired additional holdings as it merged with other banks in subsequent decades, developing strengths in photography, contemporary art, regional art and such styles as American Impressionism.

Since 2009, more than 170 exhibitions from the bank’s collection have been loaned to non-profit art spaces around the world at no cost. “Once we realized we had this extraordinary repository of works, we wanted to make the art more accessible,” said Kerry Miles, Bank of America’s senior vice president and art and heritage program manager.

“Andy Warhol Portfolios” is one of Bank of America’s longest-running shows, and it has been seen in American institutions including the Fresno (California) Art Museum and Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn Harbor, New York, as well as the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London.

Warhol had his first solo gallery show in 1952, but he did not achieve widespread success until the 1960s with the explosive rise of pop art. His now instantly identifiable imagery parodied and commented on mass media, mass marketing and celebrity culture.

The celebrated artist made sense as a subject of a major exhibition, according to Diana Martinez, director of the McAninch Arts Center, where the Cleve Carney Museum is located, because he has the name recognition to attract substantial crowds and a life story that holds considerable interest in itself.

“With Frida, we were able to tell her whole story, and the same with Andy,” Martinez said. “We love an artist with a good story as well as someone who has a broad range of appeal.”

To help recount that story and give visitors a broader look at Warhol’s impact, organizers have added a series of supplementary offerings beyond “Andy Warhol Portfolios.” They fill up the entirety of the college’s 11,000-square-foot McAninch Arts Center, turning it into what Martinez called an “interactive experience, in a way.”

In addition to an extensive timeline of Warhol’s life in the lobby, these extras include a Studio 54 experience, a printmaking workshop for children and an exhibition of 157 Warhol photographs from the 1970s and ‘80s from the College of DuPage collection.

The Cleve Carney Museum was one of 180 college and university art spaces around the country to receive an allotment of the more 28,500 photographs that the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts donated in 2007 as part of the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Project. 

“So, it’s a really thorough, fun experience,” Martinez said. “There is even a selfie station, where you can stand in a soup can and a Brillo box. I think Andy Warhol would love it, because you can take pictures and have fun in that area.”

If all that wasn’t enough, 20 communities across DuPage County are undertaking related Warhol and pop-art events during the run of the show, including Studio 54 parties, art classes and restaurant specials. In addition, the museum commissioned local artist Geoffrey Bevington to create Warhol-style outdoor portraits of four notable persons from each of the participating towns.

“It’s been fun to see everyone getting on the Warhol bus,” Martinez said, “and it’s super exciting to see the ideas and creativity that are coming out all over.”

The McAninich Arts Center is committed to presenting a high-profile, summer exhibition like those devoted to Kahlo and Warhol every two years. And planning is already under way for the 2025 offering.

College officials had a recent meeting with an Italian agent who represents a group of major art collections in Europe. She came to the college to see the facilities and how it was handling the Warhol show.

“So, we’re talking with them about what we can do in two years,” Martinez said. “By the end of the summer, we need to know.”

Oscar Murillo, 37, exploded on to the global art scene a decade ago, becoming known as “the 21st-century Basquiat”. Born in Colombia, he moved with his family to London when he was 10. He graduated from the Royal College of Art, and worked as a cleaner and a teacher until 2013 when one of his paintings, with an estimated value of $30,000, sold for $401,000 at auction in New York. In 2019, Murillo – whose work includes paintings, videos and room-sized installations – was one of four artiststo be jointly awarded the Turner prize. He has new work showing as part of To Bend the Ear of the Outer World, a show examining contemporary abstract painting at Gagosian, London.

Where are you living and working these days?
Well, I don’t really have a home. The work began, many years ago, to take me everywhere. And the pandemic really accelerated that, even though things collapsed in terms of movement. But I moved to my village [La Paila] where I grew up in Colombia and I lived there during the entire lockdown. And it was a beautiful experience to live in such a context as an adult for the first time – as opposed to being a tourist. You understand better the social complexities of Colombia and the politics. The crisis that the country has been living for decades.

Did your feelings towards the country change?
Prior to this trip, I’ve always idealised Colombia, and I still do. It’s a pretty magical place where I’m from, but it’s magical precisely because it has its own complexities. It’s not a dormant place: it’s complex and dark. But then nature injects a tremendous amount of beauty in parallel, too. Unmatched by any other place that I know. Also I had time to think about the decade that had just gone: 2020 really marked a decade of non-stop experimentation and travelling.

Also of great personal success. What impact did winning the Turner prize have?
I don’t think about it. It’s funny, because I obviously grew up watching the Turner prize. Like, I remember Martin Creed winning [in 2001]: the lights going on and off. And Jeremy Deller winning [in 2004]. It was just something that felt… so unreachable. But I’m really very grateful to the courage of my fellow nominees – Tai Shani, Helen Cammock and Lawrence [Abu Hamdan] – that we collectivised. Because the Turner prize didn’t want us to collectivise.

You wrote to the judges and asked to share the prize…
Yes, ironically it was the marketing agency that works with the Tate that said: “This will actually continue the legacy of the shock tactic.” Because, of course, it is something that had not been done before, and then everybody will write about it, and so on.

Did that feel empowering: an artist having power over this huge institution?
Of course. And it was a win-win for everybody at the end, because the Tate [which organises the prize] was seen as progressive, but I think they are not progressive at all! And we were able to intervene in the way we did and it was a good thing.

How did you find moving to London when you were 10?
It was a trauma. If you imagine a mango tree getting uprooted from the most beautiful tropical place, and this soil where anything grows… You spit a seed of mango or papaya – I’m serious – and it grows into a tree three weeks later. If you remove that tree and you bring it here to London, and you try and replant that tree – even though you have the most beautiful parks – it’s just not going to grow.

Were there positives?
In the 1990s, the floodgates opened and this country really opened itself up to the world in a way that I am tremendously grateful for. If I had travelled to the US, for example, I don’t think that I would even be an artist. The migrant experience in the US is brutal, it’s dehumanising. It removes the sense of self and worth and dignity from the individual, and everything becomes about money.

You have a new work, Manifestations 2020-2022, in the new exhibition at Gagosian, alongside work from Gerhard Richter and Frank Bowling. How would you describe it?
Well, when I was in Colombia, I wasn’t thinking about art. I wasn’t thinking: “Oh, shit I have to be in the studio.” I was really living. But I had canvas, I had paint, and then very slowly, I got into it. I work on canvases over years. It’s like making really good wine, it takes years.

And the painting gets better over time?
Exactly. Like a very good stew or ramen broth: the richer it is, the better the ramen will be. So I had some material, but in truth, I only had myself: I didn’t have all the baggage or structure that I usually rely on to produce. And I just dived in, in this way that was very unfiltered and this was really the birth of this work, Manifestations.

Outside the world of art, who inspires you?
The Colombian vice-president, Francia Márquez, I think she’s really a hero. She’s of Afro-Colombian descent and she’s not really a politician, she’s an activist. It’s not whether I agree or not with her politics – I mean, I do, because she’s someone who wants to protect nature – but it’s that kids can look at this black woman, who has a similar background to them, effectively running the country. And Colombia being this not just very racist, but also violent country, that takes a lot of bravery.

Does that give you hope for the country?
It gives you hope for humanity.

• To Bend the Ear of the Outer World: Conversations on Contemporary Abstract Painting runs at Gagosian’s two Mayfair sites until 25 August (gagosian.com)

On a hot summer day, what’s cooler than exploring local Tampa Bay museums? If you have a library card, you can take advantage of the Pinellas Public Library Cooperative’s Museum Pass Program.

Thanks to PPLC’s partnerships with area museums, you can get a free family admission to Dunedin History Museum, Florida CraftArt, The Florida Holocaust Museum, Great Explorations Children’s Museum, Imagine Museum, The James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art, Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts and in Tampa, the Henry B. Plant Museum and Tampa Bay History Center.

“PPLC’s Museum Pass Program began in 2015. Last year in 2022, we gave out 10,000 passes (and up to five people could use each pass) so it’s more than 10,000 people who are enjoying the program. Beginning on June 1, we’re adding more museums to the program, including The Glazer Children’s Museum of Tampa and The Collection on Palmetto (antique automobiles and engines in Clearwater),” says Cheryl Morales, PPLC executive director.

Library card holders can borrow a free family pass to these institutions for seven days. Each PPLC member library and its branches have two museum passes from each museum partner (except for the Henry B. Plant Museum which has a total of six passes countywide).

Passes are available for in-person check out on a first-come, first-served basis. Passes are not renewable or holdable. You can use the program as many times as you want, but you can only use one museum pass at a time. Passes can only be checked out by adult PPLC cardholders in good standing. Admission is valid for up to two adults and three children, under the age of 18, from the same household.

To see what passes are available and at what museum, go to https://pplc.us/museums/. When you check out a pass, the library will give you a check-out receipt to take to the museum. Present the library check-out receipt to the museum staff for entry; they will retain the receipt. Passes will automatically be removed from a borrower’s record after seven days.

The Pinellas Public Library Cooperative serves Pinellas County residents in member cities and unincorporated Pinellas County. The cooperative office provides coordination of programs, funding, and marketing for the 14 member libraries, offering classes, audio books, E-books, DVDs, events and more for children, teens, adults and seniors. You can even borrow a ukulele at some branches, take a crafts class, play games (mahjong, Dungeons & Dragons, Scrabble), join a book club, learn to research your genealogy or pursue a writing dream. To find out what’s happening at your library by month, visit https://pplc.us/program-guide/.

To obtain a card at the public libraries a patron must be a Pinellas County resident or property owner and provide a valid Florida driver’s license, Florida identification card, or picture ID with their name and current address. You can do it online at some libraries, but if you apply in person at one of our libraries, you will receive your card immediately. https://pplc.us/get-a-library-card/.

Dunedin History Museum — 349 Main St., Dunedin. Dunedin Museum contains approximately 2,000 artifacts, 2,500 photographs, and a library containing 200 volumes of local and Florida history. Included in the collection is an electronic archive of the Dunedin Times Newspaper, from 1924 through 1965. Visit www.dunedinmuseum.org.

Florida CraftArt — 501 Central Ave., St. Petersburg. FCA is a member-supported, nonprofit organization presenting fine craft art by more than 220 Florida artists in the 2,500-square-foot Florida Artists Gallery and in the adjacent exhibition gallery. Visit floridacraftart.org.

The Florida Holocaust Museum — 55 Fifth St. S., St. Petersburg. The Florida Holocaust Museum honors the memory of millions of innocent men, women and children who suffered or died in the Holocaust. Visit www.thefhm.org.

Great Explorations Children’s Museum — 1925 Fourth St. N., St. Petersburg. For over 35 years, Great Explorations has been Tampa Bay’s preeminent children’s museum supporting practical learning applications through a proven creative curriculum. Visit greatex.org.

Imagine Museum — 1901 Central Ave., St. Petersburg. Imagine Museum features a spectacular collection of contemporary glass art from around the world. Experience the evolution of the studio glass art movement of artists who have turned it into contemporary masterpieces of color, motion, and light. Visit www.imaginemuseum.com.

The James Museum of Western & Wildlife Art — 150 Central Ave., St. Petersburg. The James Museum’s art includes paintings, sculpture, jewelry, and artifacts by 20th and 21st century artists. The collection is robust in contemporary figurative Western paintings, created since 1980, that feature 19th century historical narratives. Visit thejamesmuseum.org.

Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art — 600 E Klosterman Road, Tarpon Springs. The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art is a modern and contemporary art museum featuring works from the 20th and 21st century masters as well as contemporary artists working in Florida and the Gulf Coast regions. Visit leeparattner.org.

Museum of Fine Arts — 255 Beach Drive NE, St. Petersburg. From a collection covering almost 5,000 years of civilization in thousands of objects extending from antiquity to present, to fascinating traveling exhibitions, to exciting events in the heart of downtown’s scenic waterfront, the MFA is here for your discovery. Visit mfastpete.org.

Safety Harbor Museum & Cultural Center — 329 Bayshore Blvd. S., Safety Harbor. The Safety Harbor Museum and Cultural Center is proud to offer a multitude of activities that celebrate the history of Safety Harbor while welcoming the growing arts community. Visit www.cityofsafetyharbor.com/573/Museum-Cultural-Center.

Husband-and-wife Jennifer Corio and Dave Frei worked in the high-tech world of Hewlett Packard. A simple smile brought the two together. But it was their love for complex design that drew them out of the office and into the world of public art. Corio and Frei, of Cobalt Designworks, took a trip down memory lane with “Oregon Art Beat.”

Jennifer Corio: Our mission with our artwork is to lift spirits and brighten the world.

Dave Frei: I’m Dave Frei.

Corio: And I’m Jennifer Corio and we make up the artists team for Cobalt Designworks.

The world right now is heavy. I feel the heaviness and I think that’s why I’m always striving to design with a lightness.

Frei: Creating a piece of public art, you’re putting out something that’s visual and creates a conversation. It becomes part of the community. And I think people tend to have pride in it, even if it’s a little controversial, it becomes something they can talk about and share with people visiting the community and it becomes important to them.

Corio: The piece in Ashland was all about a work of art that speaks to the transformation that the railroad made. They have a whole railroad district that was created in the late 1800s when the railroad came through. And Ashland was a very important part because it was a final connection between Portland and San Francisco when they finished the rail. It marked the complete circumference of the railroad around the nation. So it was a golden spike moment.

The golden spike became a canvas for some words. Then as I dived into the history, I saw just how pivotal the Chinese were in coming over and building the railroad. And it says in English, ‘In honor of the Chinese men who laid these tracks despite discrimination and without recognition, today we offer our belated gratitude in sadness’.

We met almost 24 years ago now. We were both working at Hewlett Packard at the time and Dave was doing R&D mechanical engineering work and I was in the marketing department. A friend of mine knew him and I thought he had smiling eyes. Um, I thought he was really handsome. He lived out in Battle Ground and he had a shop that he built, that was at least five times —

Frei: — three times.

Corio: Three times bigger than his house. We have all these different cars in there. I thought it was cool but I let him do his thing. I had been working in marketing for about five years. I was doing a lot of project management and more process-oriented stuff and taking these art classes at Clark College. I started exercising my creativity. And so these art classes, I was having a blast!

Frei: And she was coming home from her classes and sharing. I got to use a plasma cutter today. You know what those, yeah, I have one and he said we learned how to TIG [weld] and I go, oh, I have a couple of those. She started realizing she married into a dowry of a fabricator.

Corio: Dave and I started coming together, we would work in the garage and just do it as a hobby.

Frei: Jennifer had had some successes with the sculptures and all of a sudden HP had a downsizing and I qualified for early retirement. We took the leap and started Cobalt design works.

Corio: I work in my design studio. I’m the one who is looking for the art opportunities. Once we have secured a commission, the first part for me is the most exhilarating and the most daunting part. It’s playing detective on trying to talk to as many people as I can about what they want this art to represent. Then I’ll also start collecting images. I might take out some of my son’s books, books that I read to him as a kid, right? They’re just a source of so much fun inspiration like this one color. I mean, the stories are fun but just the pictures.

Frei: A lot of the work requires hand forming, hand shaping; a new area for me, but it’s been really enjoyable and learning how to shape metal and get the shapes we want to. A lot of people think of metal as quite rigid, but it really is very much like pizza dough. So when you press it out and stretching in certain areas, shrinking in other areas, you end up creating bowl shapes and waves and shapes like that. So the material will take a shape just like bread dough or something soft like that.

Because all our pieces are one-off, everything has to be assembled. The fabrication process takes hundreds of hours. So it’s a matter of breaking it down in different pieces and stepping through and trying to create one step at a time.

Corio: I will say we’ve worked with some delicious colors. We work with powder coat mostly. Sometimes we do automotive paint but mostly powder coat because it’s much more environmentally friendly. They electrically charge the sculpture and then they spray the powder and the electrical charge is what attracts the powder to the piece. And after it’s been coated, it will go into an oven and it gets baked on.

Frei: Anything over six feet has to go through an engineering process and has to have a structural engineer look at it.

Corio: Dave and the engineers are always bringing me back down to earth. They’re reminding me that gravity is a thing, you know, and uh and sometimes, you know, they’re like, you gotta thicken this up and I’m like, oh that takes away the sexy look. But we, there’s a back and forth and it ends up being both graceful and structurally sound.

Frei: We’re finishing up a collaborative project with the Vancouver School of the Arts. It’s their design, but we are doing the actual fabrication.

Corio: The visionaries behind this project really want the students to learn; how do you work with the client to get to come up with your concept?

Frei: How do you find funding, apply for grants?

Corio: And they’re just getting to see the whole process. And I think this will really help launch them if they do want to go into public art themselves.

Frei: We each have our role in this process and it’s the coming together that really builds both our business and our relationship. I’m convinced our relationship has gotten stronger and stronger because of what we’re doing here.

Corio: I love a sense of lightness and a sense of brightness. And if I can lift somebody’s mood through our art that brings me a lot of joy. And so it’s meaningful to know that these things will last for a long time, decades to come and they’ll be out there, hopefully making a lot of people smile.