Michael Moore Jr. | The Crow’s Nest
By Michael Moore Jr.
When students amassed in The Edge during Thursday’s reading day, it was for more than just another art show: It was a culmination of student artwork on campus.
One of those students was the one who put it all together.
Antonio Permuy, a 22-year-old political science major with minors in art history and entrepreneurship, is president and founder of The Collection USFSP, an art appreciation club that has been largely responsible for facilitating the increasing presence of art around campus.
He is also the president of Big Talk, a positive psychology club on campus which co-sponsored Thursday’s event, along with the poetry club and the aforementioned art club.
The student exhibition, which saw a steady turnout from 5 to 8 p.m. as scheduled, served as a showcase for artists to display work they have been creating all semester.
According to Permuy, it also served as his grand finale at USF St. Petersburg and what he hopes will be the crowning touch of his legacy on campus.
“It’s fun for me to be able to see the talent we have hiding beneath the surface, just sitting there in plain sight the whole time and bringing that to the surface of this campus,” Permuy said before Thursday’s event. “Personally, I just enjoy seeing that talent and knowing that I had some role in making that happen.
“One of the big legacies of this club are the people who just doodled for fun and would have never considered publicly displaying their art until we came around and pushed them to do so – seeing their paintings being shown alongside professional artists and seeing art as a community is just so rewarding,” Permuy said.
Permuy’s legacy on campus was instilled by the legacy of his family – his journey through USF St. Petersburg has, at times, been as much about building on what they did before him as it has been about furthering his education.
This is especially true when it comes to art.
He didn’t just choose to enter the art scene: He was born into it.
His father, Ignacio, is the founder and president of Permuy Architecture. Antonio works at the architecture firm in his spare time by running their communications department when he isn’t busy with schoolwork or setting up art shows.
It was his grandparents who started it all, though.
His grandfather, Jesus A. Permuy, studied architecture and worked extensively as an urban planner after coming to Miami from Havana, Cuba. His grandmother, Marta, ran Permuy Gallery in the ‘70s and continued to collect and deal art up until her death in 2017.
Upon her passing, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida, tweeted the following: “Sorry to hear of Marta Permuy’s passing; she bravely fought Castro and was a key figure in Miami Cuban art. My condolences to the Permuy family.”
“When my grandfather was in college back in Cuba he was involved with a periodical on campus that focused on arts, so when he came over to the states he wanted to get involved,” Antonio Permuy said. “But a lot of artists who didn’t have huge resources and big followings didn’t even have a place to show their work, and so they provided that by opening one of the first Cuban art exhibits in Permuy Gallery.”
For his grandparents, it was never about making money, Permuy said. “It was about supporting artists. They rarely collected commissions on the work they sold, they literally made just enough to keep the gallery running.
“They could have been millionaires after just a few years if they did it the way most people did it – but my grandmother continued dealing art until her death with that philosophy of art being a truly socially beneficial thing, both for the artists and the communities.”
In a way, closing his final chapter at USF St. Petersburg with an art show has brought things full circle.
“This makes her memory alive because this is what she did for all those artists during her life – I’m continuing to try to do that for people who didn’t even know she existed,” he said. “That’s what I think will have the longest impact during my time here.”
Alan Mathon, a 24-year-old senior biology major, is one of those people. A videographer for USFSP Connect and a budding photographer, Mathon’s photography was on full display during Thursday’s event.
Mathon, whose table at the exhibition featured images of dragonflies, butterflies and flowers, said he’s been focused on macro photography recently – and Permuy’s event was the perfect showcase for these extreme close-ups.
“It’s all about telling stories about the world that goes unseen,” Mathon said.
He got interested in photography as recently as a year-and-a-half ago and has been “grinding ever since” by taking as many photographs as possible and constantly working on his craft. While photographing a subject as unpredictable as a dragonfly, he sometimes has to take hundreds of images just to find one or two that are perfectly in focus, he said.
But finding that perfect one and displaying it at Permuy’s show is worth it, according to Mathon.
“I love it because there’s both a science and an art to it. It’s the story of movement,” he said.
Brandon Santiago is another one of those people unknowingly touched by the legacy of Permuy’s grandmother. A 19-year-old graphic design major who plans on transferring to USF Tampa next semester in order to study studio art, Santiago was a prolific contributor to Thursday’s exhibition with multiple paintings on display.
It all started when he took an art class during his junior year in high school and his teacher “hated” all of his work. It was at that moment that he decided he was going to get good at creating art, fueled by his teacher’s criticism.
But since then, his relationship with art has evolved. “I’m not sure what happened or how it happened, but I just fell in love with it,” he said.
“I’m not doing this for the fame or the money, even though I’m sure that will come eventually, I’m just in love with using art to express myself. My art is limitless,” Santiago said.
Maybe Marta Permuy’s impact on a new generation of artists is also limitless, then.
Antonio Permuy is trying his best to make that so.
While Thursday’s event served as a “bookend” to his time spent on campus, he says it’s just the beginning. This isn’t the end of his ventures into the art world, according to him. If anything, it will serve as a bridge to more events he intends on holding in the near future. Events that are not limited to the confines of The Edge, or the school, or even St. Petersburg.
Who knows?
He already convinced his father to recently convert the office Christmas parties at Permuy architecture to end-of-the-year art shows. Eventually, he wants to hold exhibitions that don’t have the backing of his father’s company too.
He wants to do it all. For the artists, he says. It’s all about them. And it always will be.
“Art is special and there’s nothing quite like it. The average person off the street can go into a gallery and have an experience that literally elevates you. That’s something,” Permuy said.
