A New Curator at The Werk Gallery, and a St. Pete Icon to Open the Season
by Avery Anderson
The Werk Gallery has built a reputation in just two years as a space that doesn’t mind being messy—in the best sense of the word. It’s part gallery, part object lab, part neighborhood hangout. Now the South St. Pete venue is entering a new phase: artist and curator Nathan Beard has been tapped to take over its programming.
Beard is no stranger to the region’s art circuit. Since arriving from Denver in 2010, he’s exhibited widely, handled installation work for private and public clients, and logged curatorial stints at ARTicles Art Gallery and the Dunedin Fine Art Center. His résumé reads like a cross-section of Tampa Bay’s arts infrastructure. The question is: what does that mean for a gallery like The Werk, which has staked its identity on being less traditional and more experimental?
Beard says he plans to double down on connection.
“As a curator, my focus has always been on connectivity and elegance,” he said. “This new appointment with The Werk Gallery will allow me to continue exploring those passions while also pushing me to evolve my curatorial practice to be ever more inclusive and to rise to meet the quality of exhibitions offered by so many other art spaces in St. Petersburg.”
First up under his watch: a survey of Carol Dameron, one of St. Pete’s most recognizable names. Dameron’s allegorical oil paintings—dreamscapes populated with animals, mythic figures, and family alike—have been part of the city’s visual vocabulary for three decades. But Beard isn’t just presenting finished works. The Secret Lives of Paintings (opening September 6) brings out the sketches, cut-outs, and iterative drafts that typically stay hidden in a studio. Visitors can even arrange their own paper figures into makeshift landscapes.
It’s a curatorial choice that gestures toward The Werk’s ethos: pull back the curtain, let audiences see the process, and invite them into it. Whether that approach will resonate across future programming is an open question—but Dameron, who has openly shared her techniques as a painting instructor over the years, is a fitting case
St. Petersburg’s gallery scene is growing fast. With Beard at the helm, The Werk now has a curator used to navigating institutions. What remains to be seen is whether he can translate that experience into the looser, more participatory vision the gallery has promised.
If You Go Carol Dameron: The Secret Lives of Paintings
🗓 September 6 – October 5, 2025
🎉 Opening Reception: September 6, 5–9 p.m.
🎤 Artist Talk: September 27, 4 p.m.
📍 The Werk Gallery, 2210 1st Ave S, St. Petersburg More info: thewerk.gallery