The Raymond James Gasparilla Festival of the Arts is pleased to introduce our esteemed group of Selection Jurors and our Emerging Artist Juror for the 55th annual Festival.
Main Show Selection Jurors
Curator of Education, USF Contemporary Art Museum and
USF Educator
Leslie Elsasser serves as Curator of Education at the USF Contemporary Art Museum where she develops and facilitates educational programs and events, and cultivates collaborations, and community partnerships. Leveraging the museum’s collection, she also teaches courses in the USF Honors College centered on the Warhol Foundation Photographic Legacy Project as well as other art and artists related to the museum’s permanent collection. Leslie’s personal mission is to foster contemporary artmaking and bring awareness to the essential role of the arts across cultures and through history. She has taught studio arts, design and non-western art history courses at the Ringling College of Art and Design, the University of Tampa and the University of South Florida. Her scholarly work concentrates on Indian Mughal Miniature painting, and she was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to India 2003, artist in residence at Sanskriti 2003 and 2005, and at U Cross in 2012. She holds an MA in Fine Art from the University of South Florida, and an undergraduate degree in Art and Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. Leslie has the privilege of having been the recipient of the Gasparilla Emerging Artist Award in 2002 and has continued to work with the Emerging Artists program.
Artist and Educator
Ya La’Ford is a versatile artist, educator, and muralist, working across a wide range of media including paint, sculpture, installation, video, and sound weaving layered meanings to engage with the universal language of art and creating transformative experiences that inspire communal growth. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts from The Art Institute of Boston, and a Juris Doctor from the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law. As a first-generation American of Jamaican heritage, she gracefully navigates between her cultural roots and marginalized communities utilizing the power of art as a medium of connection. Her artwork is held in the esteemed permanent collections of institutions such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Vinik Family Foundation, Nike, Indy500, Grand Prix, the Rays, and the Rowdies, and she was selected to create art for Super Bowl 55 held in Tampa. Her work has also been featured in notable exhibitions at the Tampa Museum of Art, Orlando Museum of Fine Art, and the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, among many others.
Assistant Professor of Art and Design, University of Tampa
Samantha teaches courses in the History of Graphic Design, Graphic Design I, and Typography. A Nigerian-Sri Lankan artist who works figuratively in pen, collage and digital media to portray Black and female characters, she positions her work within the speculative practice of Black imaginary—a centering of Black dreams and fantasies to create alternate spaces of both comfort and confrontation. She has worked as a graphic designer at a global health nonprofit in Massachusetts and did freelance commissions for (RED), Dartmouth College and other nonprofit and for-profit organizations based in the U.S. and abroad. Modder has been an artist-in-residence at Chautauqua Visual Arts, NY, and the Good Hart Artist Residency, MI. In St Louis, she was a community member of "Murals on Olive Street," a volunteer at a local art studio and a member of the Fairness and Diversity Committee at the Sam Fox School. She presented on panels and held workshops on art and activism as an alumnus at Dartmouth's Center for Social Impact and other online programming. Modder's art has been shown in group shows in Boston, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Albuquerque and other cities. Modder has had three solo exhibitions, most recently in Granite City, IL.
Samantha holds a BA from Dartmouth College (2017), a BE from Dartmouth College (2018), and an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis (2022).
Curator and Senior Interpreter, The Dalí Museum
Tush earned his undergraduate degree in Art History from New College, Sarasota, and his master’s degree in art history from the University of South Florida. Working at The Dalí Museum for over two decades, Tush is a key interpreter of the Dalí collection and special exhibitions. He develops exhibitions, trains the docents, scripts the audio guides and gallery labels, and works with the education team to develop the student exhibitions. Recently he curated the exhibition, Reimagining Nature: Dalí’s Floral Fantasies. Over the years, Tush has taught classes on Dalí, Surrealism and film, and has presented on a wide range of topics including Dalí and Hollywood, Surrealism and Women, and Dalí’s Ghosts.
Emerging Artist Juror
Photographer, Art Director and Editor
Lissa Hatcher's award-winning photographs are highly conceptualized and choreographed productions full of fantastic characters in imaginary places. As a photographer, art director, and editor, it is often whispered that her shoots look like tiny movie sets where characters play out scenes like actors. Specializing in surrealistic fairytales, she has received awards from Kodak, Fuji and other industry leaders, with features on Amalie Arena’s Jumbotron, Tampa Theater’s Marquee, American Photo Magazine, Kodak.com, and a variety of other publications and prominent spaces. Primarily self-taught, she became skilled enough at Photoshop to become a sought-after teacher and speaker, eventually circling back to earn her Masters of Photography from the Professional Photographers of America.
Lissa continues pushing boundaries by combining photography, costume design and paint to create mixed media pieces and writing short stories about her characters which will ultimately be published as a children’s book, also serving on tea covers for her trademarked company Morbid Curiosities. After traveling the globe with her military husband, Lissa, a true Florida native returned home can currently be found making thoughts into things, showing, teaching and mentoring in Tampa and beyond. Lissa is also a previous winner of the GFA Emerging Artist Award.
