Emerging Artists

2023 Emerging Artists Applications Open

The application is now available for the 2023 Great Gulfcoast Arts Festival Emerging Artists program. This program seeks artists who have limited experience participating in arts festivals to give them guidance on what is involved in being in an arts festival. An artist will be chosen to participate in this year’s festival. Details »


 

The Great Gulfcoast Arts Festival, in partnership with Artel Gallery, offers a grant opportunity for emerging artists. The purpose is to provide support and exposure for one new artist each year.

Jeffery Tremmel and Joe Vinson were selected as the 2022 Great Gulfcoast Arts Festival Emerging Artists.

 

 

Jeffery Tremmel

 Jeffery Tremmel is an artist living in Pensacola, Florida. He was born in the state of Washington in February of 1979 and moved to Pensacola with his mother and younger sister in 1985.

 Jeffery attended school in Escambia County, where he first took photography classes that provided him the opportunity to master the use of an SLR camera and experience working with black and white film in a darkroom setting. Tapping into his creative mind, he found he enjoyed - and was inherently talented in - capturing photographic images. He attended college to pursue a graphic design degree and learned to use graphic arts software, once again accessing a darkroom for hands-on photo development. Jeffery bought his first digital camera during this time.

As an imaginative boy, Jeffery escaped into the fantastic worlds presented in action-adventure movies, comic books, as well as fantasy and science fiction stories. That and his love of travel, especially to New Orleans and similar places, have helped him develop a unique style and interpretation in his photographs.

 

Joe Vinson

Joe Vinson is a Pensacola native who works as a digital media specialist in the University of West Florida’s Office of Institutional Communications. After graduating from Florida State University in 2003, he began his career as a graphic designer at the Appleyard Agency, where he also caught founder John Appleyard’s infectious love of local history. Joe’s passion is to make history accessible to the public through design and technology. To that end he has created the wiki website Pensapedia, historical murals at the Bayview Community Center, and the 1821 Sampler Project. He and wife Bradley, an elementary school media specialist, live in East Hill with their three children and two dogs.

Joe is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Public History, and his capstone project is a poster series entitled “Lost Pensacola.” Each poster depicts a beloved Pensacola landmark lost to time in a style that would have been appropriate during the building’s heyday. Inspired by vintage travel posters and advertisements, the project is simultaneously a celebration of Pensacola’s rich past and a memorial of the historical structures we failed to preserve, spanning more than two centuries of design trends and printmaking techniques.

Joe’s process begins by researching each subject and connecting it to representative artwork of its time. He uses architectural software and reference photos to make a 3D model of the structure, so that each poster has a unique perspective. Depending on the intended style, he uses a combination of digital illustration tools, linoleum block carving, or photography to create the design, with particular attention to period-appropriate typography.