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Art
The last picture show?
A St. Petersburg gallery whose sophisticated presence is threatened by tough economic times features an exhibit in which simple lives and everyday actions are the focus.
By LENNIE BENNETT, Times art critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 24, 2003
Herbert Davis, Raynetta at Maggori, 2003, pastel.
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ST. PETERSBURG -- In a recent column, St. Petersburg Times restaurant critic Chris Sherman mourned the demise of Grand Finale, one of the finest restaurants in the Tampa Bay area, which closed because it didn't get enough business. Now it's my turn to lament a probable closing due to hard times: Gallery Enormous, one of the area's fine art galleries.
"This will probably be our last show," gallery owner Lisa Lippincott says. "I can't continue to lose money here."
There are parallels in the failures of both enterprises.
Like Grand Finale, Gallery Enormous started with grand aspirations. The art exhibited often hasn't been "easy," and certainly it hasn't been inexpensive. But it usually has been very good. Lippincott has exhibited local stars along with promising newcomers and introduced us to artists not commonly seen in this area.
On Central Avenue, in what has become known as the Arts District in downtown St. Petersburg, it's close to a number of other galleries offering different genres and levels of quality. Theoretically, there is something for everyone in the district, from affordable crafts to serious art. Such a concentration creates synergy, and Lippincott says that she gets a lot of walk-in traffic. But, she says, it's mostly people curious about the sophisticated art she exhibits; she rarely gets serious buyers.
Like dining out, collecting art is a function of disposable income, something you do after you pay the bills and feed your 401K. And, like most other Arts District galleries, Gallery Enormous is a for-profit business, relying completely on sales. The nearby Arts Center and Florida Craftsmen Gallery are not-for-profit facilities whose primary sources of income are individual donations, corporate contributions and government grants. Gallery Enormous is not the only one struggling; I wouldn't be surprised to hear of more closings in the coming months.
A lot of people, especially local politicians and developers, tout St. Petersburg as a culturally enlightened community, a magnet for the arts. It is in many ways, and it is certainly superior in the diversity and excellence of its arts institutions and organizations to any other local municipality.
But arts are a business, and like most small businesses, they are fragile, more so because they provide products and services that are not necessary to basic survival. Government and taxpayers certainly have no obligation to shore up private businesses, though we do so if the business is deemed important enough, such as the airline industry. And people should not feel guilty because a particular business doesn't make it. We buy what we want. Maybe we're just not a big enough community to support the proliferation of galleries in our area, especially those few, like Gallery Enormous, that offer something beyond the decorative, something that challenges us.
Herbert Davis’ The Light (2003, pastel) and other works will be on display at Gallery Enormous.
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But I sure hope that creative optimists keep trying.
That said, the current, and possibly last, exhibition at Gallery Enormous is more conventional than past shows.
"Herbert Davis: South of Central" is a collection of representational pastel drawings Davis created with a grant from the city of St. Petersburg Arts Advisory Council. It's an annual collaboration with the Gulf Coast Museum of Art, which selects and works with the artist on the concept of the show and finds space in a local gallery for it.
Davis' subject is St. Petersburg's African-American community, and the documentary feel of the show is interesting, rendered in chalk rather than more typical photography.
Because of segregation, black neighborhoods were historically concentrated in southern parts of the city. The majority of the city's African-Americans continue to live in neighborhoods "south of Central" (Avenue), and now some of them -- Lakewood Estates, for example -- are among the most racially diverse, though this show, in its selectivity, does not reflect that diversity.
The artist focuses on what he calls "the positive images" of the African-American community. I'm not sure I embrace its underlying assumption that there is a monolithic "community" to document. And if there is, he, for the most part, turns his eye away from the grittier realities. But taken on their own terms, his portraits of men and women and scenes of everyday life are imbued with dignity and create their own community, lined up on the gallery walls.
Some of the portraits have a monumental and timeless quality to them, such as Raynetta at Maggori, its foreground dominated by a smiling woman whose red-clothed figure takes up half the drawing. Her crossed arms run parallel to the shoreline behind her, and clouds billow as if radiating from her full hair. Her ease and confidence suggest some sort of ideological ownership of the land and lake around her, as if she could almost part them, just as she bisects the drawing. The Stand, in its obviousness and hint of sentimentality, is less successful in its subject matter, though it has the same adept composition of most of the drawings.
The Light is another example of Davis' fine sense of line. A church facade is broken into a series of geometric planes and angles that are interrupted by a circular stained glass window and the organic twists of a tree casting lacy, flickering shadows on the austere walls. It's a visual study of permanence and mutability.
Davis chose black paper for these drawings, so even the most joyous images are underlaid with a brooding sense of memento mori. His dense crosshatches, rarely softened by blending, are at times almost frenzied and give even the calmest scenes a sense of movement. The technique is especially effective in the evocations of nature, in which you can almost feel the wind churning gently over the water and rustling the lake rushes.
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REVIEW: "Herbert Davis: South of Central" is at Gallery Enormous, 540 Central Ave., St. Petersburg, through May 8. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and by appointment. (727) 551-9865.
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