Customers browse at the Tampa Artist Emporium in South Tampa. Pictured below: Boggs stands behind the Emporium’s front desk.
Two years ago, Tampa photographer Shelby Boggs took a gamble. Inspired by the Kress Emporium, an historic building in Asheville, NC, that serves as a marketplace for more than 80 regional artists and craftspeople, she set [...]

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Denis Gaston. Little Boxes. Mixed media on masonite, 20″ x 16”. Pictured below: Denis Gaston. Ground Control To Major Tom (Grab ‘n Go Art Collection). Ink on paper, 7″ x 5″. Images courtesy of the artist.
If it’s summer, it must be time for the Cool Art Show. Any other time of year, the region would [...]

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Wallpaper design (detail) by Anthony Zollo. Image courtesy of the artist.
For a couple of years now, Florida Craftsmen has been organizing a series of exhibitions that explore a single theme: living with art and fine craft. Despite their conceptual commonality, the exhibits couldn’t be more diverse. At Home With Crafts, the inaugural effort in 2007, [...]

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Artist Brandon Dunlap at REAX Space.
The historic district’s visual arts cred just went up a notch, thanks to the launch of two new art venues: REAX Space, a boutique for artists’ prints, t-shirts and other products that also houses offices for the popular music magazine, and Arts On Ninth, a nacent community arts center. [...]

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Thomas Allen. Fancy, 2006. 20 x 24 inches, chromogenic print. Courtesy Foley Gallery.
Who says pop-up books are for kids? Just check out artist Thomas Allen’s sly constructions, crafted from pulp fiction book covers and beautifully photographed to produce images that resonate with adult concerns: eroticism, repression and the enticements of nostalgia’s mirage.
Learn how to [...]

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This life-sized work by UF alum Matt Schaffer is featured in Florida Fire at Florida Craftsmen Gallery.
Dunedin collector Mindy Solomon, who curated Florida Fire: the UF Ceramic Faculty Experience, currently on view at Florida Crafstmen Gallery, will speak tonight on a panel about collecting contemporary ceramics with UF professor Anna Callouri-Holcombe, whose work is [...]

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Image courtesy TMA.
I wrote about Amy and Charles Haynie’s beautiful, sustianably-produced walnut bench– which appeared in the Tampa Museum of Art exhibit It’s Not Easy Being Green this summer– here in Creative Loafing. This weekend, the Haynies re-launch their retail effort, Tampa Street Market, in Seminole Heights. Yay!
Full press release after the jump.

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Jamey Grimes. Merge IV, 2007. Mylar, acetate, transparency film, thread. Courtesy DFAC.
This week in Creative Loafing:
These days, it’s hardly an exaggeration to call the evening news the stuff of nightmares. Between the implosion of Wall Street and the prospect of the other guy winning the election, the current state of national affairs might be enough [...]

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C. Wade Brickhouse, Paper Vessels, 2008. Courtesy Florida Craftsmen.
Most of you probably know the artists’ studios housed above Florida Craftsmen in downtown St. Petersburg as Artspace. I’m told by staff at FC, which owns the building, that a slight reorganization has taken place. The studios will be known as ArtLofts going forward, and the artists– [...]

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Uli Rapp, Chains, tricot textile, screen printing and rubber. Photo by Marina Williams.
When I first heard that Florida Craftsmen Gallery’s new exhibit would be all about necklaces, honestly, I was disappointed. I don’t know why—whatever the theme, FCG’s exhibits always manage to bridge definitions of art and craft, new and old materials and [...]

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Bi-polar bunnies by Coralette Damme, a.k.a. the Crafty Hag, at Saturday Morning Art Market.
In addition to the largely food-based Saturday Morning Market (where you can buy assorted herbs, plants, soap, batiked garments, etc., as well as fruits, veggies, prepared foods, baked goods, and so on), downtown St. Petersburg now hosts the Saturday Morning Art [...]

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A detail of the installation of Rediviva by Tampa artists’ collective Experimental Skeleton last year at Miami’s Locust Projects. On Friday, the same project opens at Flight 19. Sculptures, clockwise from bottom right, by: Bob Dorsey, April Childers, Gregory Greene, Jeremichael Bonds, Brian Taylor, Joe Griffith and Paul Pisoni. Image courtesy Experimental Skeleton. [...]

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