By Andrrea Martone
St. Petersburg: One City, Many Mediums
St. Petersburg’s creative scene is booming, and two local artists – sculptor Cecilia Lueza and famous rapper Rod Wave shaped by the city’s vibrant venues – show how one Gulf Coast city can contain entire worlds of imagination.
From South St. Pete Pain to Platinum Fame
Rod Wave is a nationally known rapper and singer from St. Petersburg, whose real name is Rodarius Marcell Green. He was born and raised in St. Petersburg and first gained major attention with his emotionally raw, melodic rap single “Heart on Ice,” which went viral on YouTube and TikTok and later charted on the Billboard Hot 100. His early albums, including “Ghetto Gospel” and “Pray 4 Love,” reached the top 10 on the Billboard 200 and helped establish him as one of the leading voices in so‑called “trap-soul” or melodic hip‑hop.
Rod Wave’s early life in St. Petersburg was marked by close family ties, sudden instability, and a lot of time spent between school, church‑type arts programs, and the streets. Rodarius Marcell Green wa born on August 27, 1998 (often reported as 1998 or 1999) in St. Petersburg.
He grew up around 13th Street S in the Cromwell Heights area, one of the poorest and most violent parts of St. Petersburg, in modest bungalows where extended family lived close by. His grandmothers and aunts were key figures, and his “Nana” ran Starlights Performing Arts, a local troupe for girls, reflecting how community arts and family overlapped in his upbringing. He attended Lakewood Elementary and Lakewood High School in St. Petersburg, where teachers noticed his strong voice early; he made a rap about bones in fourth grade and was selected for Florida All‑State Elementary Chorus in 2009 and 2010.
As money got tighter, he started hustling and committing burglaries as a teenager, saying he was trying to help relieve the financial pressure on his mom.
He was arrested around age 15 for a break‑in and had multiple run‑ins with the juvenile system, which he later framed in his music as part of the “hard times” he was trying to rise above. He lost a close childhood friend, Daijha (the daughter of a family friend), to cancer when she was 17 and he was about 14, and he has said she was “the only one who understood my pain,” a theme that appears in his lyrics. The combination of his father’s incarceration, poverty, grief, and neighborhood violence gave him the raw emotional material he later poured into songs about heartbreak, trauma, and trying to escape street life.
His older half‑brother first encouraged him to write songs after school, and in high school a classmate/producer helped him start recording in makeshift setups, including in a Lakewood High classroom. A friend gave him the name “Rod Wave,” and by 17 he was performing in local strip clubs and dropping early mixtapes like “Hunger Games Vol. 1,” while still living in or just outside the same south St. Pete neighborhoods he raps about.
Many songs revolve around leaving his hometown to chase success while feeling pulled back by memories, guilt, and responsibility to people still in St. Petersburg. That tension produces recurring themes of loneliness on the road, survivor’s remorse, and a desire to show his city that escape is possible without glorifying the streets he came from.
Cecilia Lueza: Sculpting the Movement of Water
Walk into downtown and you might meet St. Pete’s story in steel and color before you ever talk to a single person – that story often belongs to sculptor Cecilia Lueza. Known for large‑scale public works inspired by nature, light, and motion, Lueza’s newest commission is a waterfront‑inspired sculpture greeting residents and guests at the 42‑story Art House condominium tower on First Avenue S. Rising like a spiral of blue, the work captures the rolling energy of the Gulf, translating waves into a sweeping vertical form that seems to move even when the air is still. Lueza, who came to Florida from Argentina more than two decades ago, has quietly become one of the visual anchors of the city’s streetscape. Her mural “The Blue Hour,” created during the SHINE St. Petersburg Mural Festival, turns an ordinary surface into a meditation on the moment when day gives way to night, mirroring the transitions and tensions she explores in three dimensions. In both sculpture and mural, she leans into saturated color and fluid geometry, inviting passersby to think about space, movement, and the thin line where land meets sea.
Her work suits a city that has built a reputation as an open‑air gallery. St. Petersburg’s embrace of public art means Lueza’s pieces are not tucked away in quiet corners but placed directly in the paths of commuters, dog‑walkers, and evening strollers. The result is that her sculptures are less like monuments and more like neighbors – part of the daily rhythm, part of the way locals navigate their own stories against a coastline in constant, shimmering motion. www.lueza.com