DUNEDIN — City commissioners recognized the artists behind the newest panels at the Leland Chase Outdoor Gallery, an open-air display that has turned the screening wall of the city’s wastewater treatment plant into an exhibition space.
The gallery, at 1140 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave., is a project of a subcommittee of the city’s Arts and Culture Advisory Committee. Nicole Delfino, the city’s strategy and sustainability manager, said the recognition marks the third phase of work that has been underway for several years.
The panels are not traditional murals painted onto brick or stucco, said Elizabeth Brincklow, the city’s art consultant. They are original two-dimensional works — photography, digital art, paintings and drawings — that have been fabricated, weatherproofed and mounted to the wall as individual panels measuring 4 feet tall by 6 feet wide. The city licensed the images from the artists.
The works reflect the gallery’s inaugural theme, “Celebrating Diversity.”
The gallery takes its name from local educators Lorraine Leland and Almira Chase, who worked together to create educational opportunities for students moving from Chase Memorial School to Dunedin schools beginning in 1963.
Chase founded the Washington School and Social Center in 1915 and served as its first principal. The school, established for Black students under Florida’s segregation laws, was later renamed Chase Memorial Elementary School and closed in 1963 after desegregation. Leland then coordinated the Dunedin Educational and Enrichment Program to fill the gap in support for those students.
The site itself carries that history. The plant sits along Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in a neighborhood settled in the 1880s by Black workers who came for jobs on the Orange Belt Railway.
“Almira Chase and Lorraine Leland exemplified the strength of community collaboration,” Brincklow said.
After commissioners approved the selections, city staff and Brincklow worked with SpeedPro Imaging on printing and installation. The material is lightweight and flexible, Brincklow said, and can be applied or removed without damaging the wall — which means the displays can be rotated and new work selected periodically.
Artists in the second and third rounds are Addie Rodriguez, “Melody of Unexpected Bonds”; Sheree Woulfe, “Raising the World of Tomorrow”; Erica Eve Salaman, “Qween” and “SmartOwl”; Finn Rodriguez, “All Hearts Around the World”; Patricia Kluwe Derderian, “United Colors — Feet” and “RESPECT”; Frances Snihur, “Breakfast Vibes”; and Meps Schulte and Stig Fonslet, “Collaboration.” Schulte and Fonslet no longer live in Pinellas County.
Addie Rodriguez is a mixed media artist who works in 2D collage and 3D assemblage, drawing on a background in fashion illustration and design. She works deliberately with materials she can touch, cut and arrange by hand rather than on a computer, and the tactile quality of the finished piece is central to it.
Jurors have selected Rodriguez’s work for group exhibitions at the Arts4All Florida Community Outreach Village at the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts, Florida CraftArt, Studios@5663 and the Brick City Center for the Arts.
Woulfe is a Tampa Bay-based multimedia artist whose work spans pixel pop art, abstract expressionism, graphic design and mixed media, using bold color, layered textures and materials such as gold and silver leaf. Inspired by Florida’s landscapes, music and the human spirit, her subjects range from citrus imagery and colorful abstract faces to portraiture. She exhibits regularly in the Tampa Bay area, including at The Market Marie and the annual Game of Shrooms.
Derderian is an architect turned artist. She studied architecture because art was not an option in the small Brazilian city where she grew up, and she used drawing to work out her projects and ideas until it became her way of thinking. She draws loosely to establish a subject, then fills in color without much commitment to reality, letting the painting reveal what it wants to be.
Salaman’s “SmartOwl” drew praise from Mayor Maureen Freaney, who asked whether a copy could be displayed at City Hall.
A poet, mixed media artist and behavioral therapist, Salaman grew up in New York in the early 1990s, drawing on her Puerto Rican heritage and on what it took to blossom amid poverty and violence. She worked in the nonprofit sector in her community before finding a passion for painting. Women are a central theme in her work, which she has described as abstract painterly expression with a touch of surrealism, and which she calls a way to heal and connect with herself. She has held a solo gallery show, sold work at Artwalk and Artscape in Miami and is moving into murals.