Editorial
Allison Massari
On Exhibit at the Morean Arts Center
Allison Massari, “The Healer”, Collage, 2008, 30" x 40"
Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts,
St. Petersburg and the artist
St. Petersburg native Allison Massari still remembers the role the Arts Center (renamed the Morean Arts Center earlier this year) played in her journey to becoming an artist.
“My art teacher in the first grade came to my parents and said, ‘Your daughter has a gift for art,’ ” said Massari. “They took me down to the Arts Center, and I took classes there from then on.”
Now, as she prepares for a solo exhibition at the Morean that opens in October, the California resident waxes enthusiasticly about a homecoming that also marks a high point in her career as an adult artist. While she’s in town, visitors will have a chance to enjoy a series of her figurative collage works—the product of a labor-intensive process that results in ethereally beautiful depictions of the female form—and to hear Massari speak about a life’s journey that has made her a force of positive energy.
Given Massari’s successes as an artist (one of her collages was recently acquired for the permanent collection of St. Petersburg’s Museum of Fine Arts), it’s hard to believe that her career almost ended 11 years ago when she was nearly burned alive in a head-on car collision. She survived, thanks to the heroic efforts of a passer-by, and went on to create a camp for child burn victims while pursuing her art and occasional motivational speaking engagements.
Her art bears witness to the healing process, celebrating regenerative feminine power. Lately, her expression has found a new medium: the written word. When Massari holds a public talk on Oct. 10 in St. Petersburg (for location information, visit the Morean’s website, listed below), she’ll be drawing from her unpublished memoirs to offer advice about overcoming life’s obstacles—advice she hopes will be relevant for people struggling both with personal tragedy and the challenges of living and working in today's difficult economy.
An exhibition of Allison Massari’s work runs from Oct. 9 through Nov. 7 with an opening reception Fri., Oct. 9, at the Morean Arts Center, 719 Central Ave., St. Petersburg.
—Megan Voeller
For more exhibit information, visit
moreanartscenter.org. For more information
about the artist, go to allisonmassari.com.
Marin Independent Journal
BY LENNIE BENNETT
Times Art Critic
ST. PETERSBURG
October 22, 2009
“Massari is an immensely talented artist...(I’m) a longtime admirer of her prodigious gifts”
“Massari deserves to create in whatever manner brings her inspiration.”
• • •
Also at the Morean Arts Center is "Allison Massari: Pyrotechnic Luminescence." Massari is an immensely talented artist whose career — not to mention her life — was nearly destroyed in 1998 by a horrific car accident that left her with severe burns. Over a decade, she has recovered her health so that her talent, which never left her, has continued to blossom.
Eight of her collages are in the show, virtuoso turns in which she replaces paint with small pieces of paper arranged in elaborate mosaics. Massari has always favored a representational style, especially portraiture, and here she has created a gallery of beautiful, partly clothed women surrounded by aureoles in dense, bright patterns.
After what she has been through and continues to achieve, Massari deserves to create in whatever manner brings her inspiration. As a longtime admirer of her prodigious gifts, I wish for more emotional complexity.
Lennie Bennett can be reached at lenniesptimes.com or (727) 893-8293.
Allison Massari, MFA
The Inspirer • Keynote Speaker • Mentor • Artist
Allison Massari Ignites Rebirth, Vitality and Renewal.
Press & Media
Commentary by Michael Milkovich October, 2009
Director Emeritus, Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg
Allison Massari’s exhibition, Pyrotechnic Luminescence, is a segment of a group of collages which were created in the last two years. If observed in the context of her entire opus, which extends over the last twenty years or so, it is obvious that her continuing development, both technically and pictorially, characterize her own identifiable and distinctive artistic personality. While at the beginning of her artistic career Massari depicted a variety of subjects and techniques, the human figure became her main source of most varied possibilities.
The consequence of a tragic event in 1998 where Massari was trapped inside a burning car fundamentally redirected and transformed her outlook on life. This suffering turned into inspiration and elevated her individual tragedy to a most powerful force of humanism. “I love the idea of sharing myself and connecting to others through art” and “my hope is that my art will be a vehicle for others to feel inspired, comforted, seen and touched.”
The present exhibition is a “victorious song,” inspired by suffering and human drama. The direct experience of the suffering body so dramatically expressed in Massari’s sculptural group of 2004, Inspected by Curious Person #301, is held in stark contrast to her collages, which shine with optimism and love for life.
Massari selected the “female form to represent an intrinsic energy and intelligence that is present everywhere” to symbolize life, energy, delight, freedom and the heart’s desire. This idea is reinforced to the greatest extent in the purest poetry in using exuberant color.
As an artist of humanistic orientation, her work presents human hardship, suffering, hope and transformation as a dominant quality of her artistic expression.
This exhibition confirms that we are in the presence of an accomplished, self-confident and well-defined artist.
Clients Include
Office: 888.990.9907 Cell: 415.209.3616 Email: massari@mac.com
40 minute radio interview with
Camille and Rick Copeland.
Click below to listen to the full story
ABC News Story Captures Allison Massari in Her Essence
September 5, 2010 article
Seminar offers path to ‘Peace and Purpose’
Accident survivor Allison Massari shares her experiences
By Sharon Kant-Rauch
The flames licked Allison Massari’s shoulder, burning the flesh to the bone. Then the vinyl car seat ignited and she was on fire.
Was this it? Was she going to die in this car crash in Central Florida all alone?
Despite the pain, despite events unfolding in slow motion, a sudden feistiness shot through her. She pulled herself up to the hole in the ceiling and screamed. A passerby rushed over to the car, kicked the glass in and pulled her out.
But that rescue was only the beginning. She would endure months — years — of agony. She would sleep for only 10 minutes at a time. Twice a day she was scrubbed down with a wire brush. For weeks she didn’t even cry. No energy.
Three years later, she was in another car accident that injured her brain. She couldn’t read, drive or identify the color blue. An artist for decades, she’d sit in front of her paints and not know what to do.
Her anger was so intense, she felt it could “knock the planet out of orbit.”
On Saturday, 12 years after her first accident, Massari will be in Tallahassee to share how she made it through her ordeal — and to help others who have suffered trauma.
“Allison is pure love,” said Laura Reeves, who, along with her friend Judee Pouncey, is coordinating Massari’s visit to Tallahassee. “I know it sounds cheesy, but that really describes her. She exudes a wonderful, peaceful compassion.”
Pouncey said she connected with Massari on Facebook after listening to Massari’s CD set “Ignited.”
“Once I started, I couldn’t stop,” Pouncey said. “The things she went through, what she overcame — I think I have problems, but listening to someone like Allison puts problems in perspective.”
Massari, who exhibited her collage art at the Morean Arts Center in St. Petersburg last fall, said she didn’t reach that peaceful, positive place overnight. It took over a decade. “My message is to let people know that it’s real, healing can happen,” Massari said in a telephone interview from her home in California.
“It can be sloppy and messy, but you can move your life forward.”
Both accidents left Massari feeling abandoned by God and questioning all her beliefs about how the world worked.
“I was taken to ground zero,” she said. “Everything I had ever been told, I dropped. It was a terrifying and enormous gift.”
Two things helped her the most — dealing with her anger and the love of others.
Massari said she was raised to be gracious and a “good girl,” but the anger was so potent she felt she was going to explode. So she faced it head on.
“There’s nothing wrong with getting angry as long as you don’t hurt anybody or yourself,” she said. “But you can’t hold the emotions in the body.”
The kindness of others — the sweetness of the nurses who attended her, the family who stayed by her side, the strangers who sent her cards — all contributed to her recovery. But the silent, loving presence of another person was often the most healing balm.
“I remember once sitting with one of my mentors and I was in so much pain I sobbed for two hours, uncontrollably. She never took her gaze off of me. She’d lean in, hold my hand and be with me. It made me feel that I wasn’t alone, that it was OK to fall apart.”
On Saturday, Massari will share more of her story, but most of the seminar will be geared toward giving participants tools to use in their own lives. On Sunday, she’ll be available for one-on-one consultation.
“I love when people bring me something I can help them with,” she said. “I (welcome) the opportunity to do that.”
“My message is to let people know that it’s real, healing can happen. It can be sloppy and messy, but you can move your life forward.”
Allison Massari
MARK DEAN/ Special to the Democrat
Allison Massari will be in Tallahassee on Saturday to share how she survived after suffering severe injuries in two car accidents.