Bradenton's pocket of art sets example for Tampa
By MARY JO MELONE, Times Staff Writer
Published April 23, 2004
The welded aluminum sculptures in Victor Garcia's living room are light, airy. They reach to the ceiling. They take your breath away.
"I do them for fun," he said with an easy shrug.
There's no clue in the work that this is the artistry of a 32-year-old school air conditioning maintenance man. That is his bread. This is his soul.
Garcia displays his sculptures in an apricot-colored house in what used to be a nameless neighborhood south of downtown Bradenton. Now it's called the Village of the Arts, and when I say the place is hot, I'm not talking about the weather.
I visited the village earlier this week to learn more about a project that Tampa officials want to emulate. Wouldn't it be grand, after all these years of falling down for professional baseball, football and ice hockey? I also asked a question, though: Why should all the benefits of an arts district go only to artists?
Well, they have to take some risks, and artists tend to be more willing than the rest of us. Tampa officials want to encourage them to buy homes in a dilapidated, even dangerous east Tampa neighborhood north of Interstate 4, restore the houses, live in them, show their art in them - and in the process revive the area. Some work is already under way.
The Tampa neighborhood has much to recommend it. It's a pocket of architectural finds, those classic cigar worker houses from 80 years ago. The 220 houses in the Bradenton art village are ramshackle by comparison.
But what's happening in Bradenton is exciting. If they can pull it off in a city with a population of 52,000, surely it can't be too hard in Tampa, more than six times as big.
Plans for the village took shape in 1999. The idea came from a savvy Bradenton official desperate for a way to clean up streets riddled with drugs and prostitution.
The city promised new streetlights, sidewalks, better intersections. There would be some small matching grants for artists to fix up lawns and facades.
So the word went out. Quilter Linda Bronkema joined last year. Her store, Bits & Pieces, sits on a corner with a colorful sign out front that identifies her shop as one among 33 galleries within the 18 blocks of the village.
As stark and modern as Garcia's sculpture gallery is, Bronkema's shop is sweet and homey. She displays only her own work, or that of relatives and close friends.
She has those familiar double wedding ring quilts. She showed me another she's making, in which cats appear to be crafting a quilt dotted by fish. She handles the fabric so lovingly she makes visitors wear gloves. Fingers can leave oily stains behind.
Bronkema took me from room to room, from the front porch to the living room, the dining room, what must have once been a bedroom. Small antiques were everywhere, even in the bathroom.
"My criteria for the shop is, if I like it, I have it," she said.
Later we were joined by Annie Russini, who owns a nearby gallery, The Village Veranda. Russini is president of the Arts Guild of Manatee, which oversees village activities.
She was quick to say the drug dealing is slowly leaving the neighborhood, that the police put more officers out during regular art walks. And housing prices are doing what the city wanted them to do: Houses that once sold for $35,000 are now going for as much as $110,000.
"To me, the sky's the limit as far as value," Russini said.
But she worries that the village will become a victim of its success, what she called the "SoHo phenomenon" - a reference to the New York City neighborhood that artists revived but the rich took over.
How ironic it would be. We hear so much in Florida about the economic impact of tourism, the dollars that pro sports bring in. Art is foreign territory, like a land many of us can't even imagine. It can be hard to grasp that creativity has significant cash value.
You remember that movie about the glories of baseball, Field of Dreams, and its most famous line. Linda Bronkema borrowed it to talk about the rising success of Bradenton's Village of the Arts.
"Build it," she said, "and they will come."
- You can reach Mary Jo Melone at mjmelone@sptimes.com or 813 226-3402.
[Last modified April 23, 2004, 01:20:38]
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