Josh Sullivan and Stu Andrews collaborated on their first work of art in first grade in Michigan. Twenty-three years later and in St. Petersburg, they're still friends and artists, exhibiting together, currently at the Globe Coffee Lounge.
The Globe, owned and operated by JoEllen Schilke, AKA 'Queen of Cakes' and her merry band of staffers, is not just a gallery, but a happening haven for poets, musicians, artists, and anyone looking for a laid-back welcoming environment, great coffee, music, food and most of all, people.
Stu used to do comics, and is now a portraitist. His work is portraiture of friends and commissions "being human". It's a graphic, yet realistic, Post-Pop style with a touch of American Regionalism. Casual, intimate and immediate, with slightly amplified/stylized gestures and large blocks of color.
Josh Sullivan is a jovial, upbeat character, with a smile like a young Teddy Roosevelt. An incredibly prolific artist, who churns out many zines, drawings, and endless characters in angst-inducing, humorous and familiar absurd situations, projections of our real lives. The characters that populate his comics are frustrated, but their spirits are indomitable, no matter what the Dystopia deals out to them, or they are dystopiary. Josh's paintings are more graphic, influenced by movies and his comics. Some, like his road map, are nearly abstract. His painting of the Blob, a largely silhouetted dark figure towering over homes in the evening, under a starry sky and the whims of the crescent moon, evokes more nostalgia and empathy for the monster, who in spite of his size and XXL carnivore teeth, looks as confused and powerless as the rest of us.
Many thanks to both you and Lydia from Stu and I! We really appreciate coming to the show and for the wonderful write-up.
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