Fifty artists, roughly 75 pieces of work, and a nonprofit trying to prove it can still throw a party after a brutal year. That is the setup for Amped: Turn Up for the Arts, a fundraiser and exhibition opening that Creative Pinellas is staging Saturday, September 5, from 6 to 10 p.m. at FloridaRAMA, 2606 Fairfield Ave. S in St. Petersburg's Warehouse Arts District.
The exhibition, curated by Maggie Duffy, spans film, painting, photography, glass, ceramics, mixed media sculpture and assemblage, according to Creative Loafing Tampa. Featured artists include Cecilia Lueza, Geoffrey Baris, Patricia Moses, Cory Robinson and Sarah Nakano, with Baris contributing a piece called Wired, a fine art photograph rear-printed to plexiglass. Live music will run throughout the night courtesy of DJ Austen Van Der Bleek, cellist Liz Glushko performing looped compositions, and soprano Jodi Karem. Tickets to the opening reception start at $25, and the show remains on display through November 1.
A Nonprofit Rebuilding After Losing Its Home
Creative Pinellas is an arts nonprofit that has spent the past year navigating what Creative Loafing Tampa describes as a quarrel with county commissioners over funding. That fight came to a head in September 2025, when the Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners voted 5-2 to defund the organization, stripping roughly $1.2 million in annual county support, including $860,000 drawn from local Tourist Development Tax revenue, according to FOX 13 Tampa Bay. The vote followed a motion led by Commission Chair Brian Scott to shift oversight of tourism arts funding to Visit St. Pete-Clearwater.
The fallout was immediate and physical. Creative Pinellas was forced to vacate its longtime gallery and headquarters in Largo in early 2026 after losing access to the county-owned facility, a transition that pushed the organization toward a mobile and remote operations model, per St. Pete Catalyst. CEO Margaret Murray confirmed that staff would work remotely while still trying to maintain programming across the county, which helps explain why Amped is unfolding inside FloridaRAMA rather than at Creative Pinellas' former gallery space.
A Restructured Deal, But Still A Subcontractor
Pinellas County Commissioners approved a restructured Creative Tourism Arts Program in March, worth $500,000, that designates Creative Pinellas as a subcontractor under Visit St. Pete-Clearwater. The arrangement sets aside $100,000 for administrative operations and $400,000 for competitive grants awarded to local artists and organizations, according to the WUSF report on the deal. The compromise was developed jointly by Visit St. Pete-Clearwater, Creative Pinellas, and regional arts alliances, though it leaves the nonprofit operating at a fraction of its former budget and without direct control over the funding it now helps distribute.
The county-level turbulence did not happen in isolation. Governor Ron DeSantis vetoed all $32 million in state arts and culture grants in June 2024, a move that eliminated state-level funding for hundreds of nonprofit cultural organizations across Florida for that fiscal year, as reported by WLRN. That veto marked the first time state grant allocations for arts and culture were cut to zero in Florida history, stripping away a funding layer that groups like Creative Pinellas might otherwise have leaned on when county support dried up.
Why Fundraisers Like Amped Now Carry More Weight
Against that backdrop, ticketed events like Amped have become less a nice-to-have and more a necessity for keeping programming alive. Nonprofit arts and culture organizations in St. Petersburg generated $132.5 million in total economic activity in 2022, supported 2,121 local jobs, and produced $17.6 million in government revenue, according to Americans for the Arts' AEP6 study, as previously reported by Hoodline's recent look at rising studio rents. Audience spending alone accounted for $70.9 million of that total impact.
Even as the sector generates that kind of regional revenue, individual working artists are being squeezed. St. Petersburg artists warned city leaders last month that commercial studio rents have climbed to two to three times their budgets, creating workspace shortages severe enough to threaten pricing creatives out of the city entirely. Rising rents paired with short lease terms have left many artists with little long-term security, according to that same reporting, which makes the $400,000 in competitive grants now flowing through Creative Pinellas' restructured county arrangement a closely watched detail for the local creative community.
Inside The Warehouse Arts District Venue
FloridaRAMA, the venue hosting Saturday's opening, sits inside The Factory complex in the Warehouse Arts District. It originally opened in 2021 as Fairgrounds St. Pete before rebranding to FloridaRAMA in 2024, per the Business Observer's coverage of the property. The venue features immersive installations built in collaboration with more than 80 local and regional artists, including permanent work from Amped-featured artist Cecilia Lueza inside FloridaRAMA's Mermaid Star Motel exhibit. Lueza's public art résumé in St. Petersburg includes a 120-foot painted pier mural at North Shore Park and a multi-story mural at ONE St. Petersburg created during the 2018 SHINE Mural Festival, according to the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance.
Curating Saturday's show is Maggie Duffy, who serves as managing editor of Creative Pinellas' digital magazine and spent five years as the full-time arts writer for the Tampa Bay Times before joining the organization. Duffy holds an art history degree from the University of South Florida and previously managed the Florida CraftArt gallery in St. Petersburg, according to Creative Pinellas. She now works under CEO Margaret Murray, who took over the organization in January 2024 after prior leadership roles at the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg, the Morean Arts Center, and the Tampa International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, per The Gabber Newspaper. Murray succeeded founding CEO Barbara St. Clair, who retired in late 2023.
Amped opens Saturday and runs through November 1, giving the roughly 50 participating artists more than two months of visibility at a moment when the organization backing them is still working out what its future funding will look like.
