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Homes

Front Porch: Gallery frames his life

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published June 10, 2005

Robert Whisnant lives in a three-bedroom Key West-style apartment over his frame gallery along Bay to Bay Boulevard in South Tampa.

The bougainvillea, carried back from a trip to Key West more than two decades ago, grows so thick that it has taken over.

Every morning, he walks past it and admires its mammoth shape.

Every morning, he thinks how lucky he is not to have to commute to work.

"The arrangement definitely cuts down on overhead," he quips.

Whisnant is the owner of Robert's Custom Framing, housed for nearly 30 years in what was once a garage for his friend's Corvette.

He frames enough history to make him a great storyteller. He has framed Joe Montana's helmet, Secretariat's bridle, a picture of Amelia Earhart that hangs in the Smithsonian and artwork by the venerable Florida pop artist Robert Rauschenberg.

He's even framed a child support check signed by the legendary Babe Ruth.

Whisnant, who grew up in Dade City, learned to frame pictures in the late 1950s in a high school vocational program from a teacher he still remembers with fondness. He began a framing apprenticeship in 1961 at Wolfe's Artist Supplies on Kennedy Boulevard.

The art store owner's son, John Wolfe, now works as a consultant and framer in Whisnant's shop, where one day last week the two were framing architectural renditions of Tampa's new Trump high-rise.

Whisnant held a chunky ornate gold wooden frame up to the picture.

"I'm not sure this is what I would have chosen - I might have gone with something more contemporary," he mused. "But this is what the customer (a local Realtor) wanted."

The framing workshop itself is as much an institution as Whisnant, with its long stacks of molding and rows of old Christmas cards strung on cords across the ceiling.

Some date to the opening of the store 28 years ago.

"One day I came to work and something seemed wrong - I felt really nervous," he recalls, "and I realized that someone had taken down my Christmas cards."

Whisnant, who also specializes in archival framing, is a favorite among local artists. He's also cherished by locals who simply want a good frame job at a reasonable price.

It's his unusually large supply of framing materials that allows for fast turnover and lower prices.

In the back workroom, John Wolfe proudly showed off framed work: a shadow box of porcelain masks; a large butterfly image for a local doctor; a Chinese landscape painted by a local interior designer - a lifelong client - as a young man.

Whisnant greets clients and takes orders in an adjoining gallery with hardwood floors, track lighting and an original photo by noted Florida landscape photographer Clyde Butcher. Whisnant has been known to frame pictures inside large wall clocks or bracketed by complex jigsaw-style frames.

Customers keep coming back, often eschewing the pristine gallery for the "messy" work studio.

Whisnant, who is 64, says he doesn't know how much longer he will keep the shop open. He's tired, he says, his wife is sick, and he'd love to sell the business.

Maybe in a year.

Then again, maybe not.

Whisnant, who enjoys dabbling in real estate (he owns prime acreage out on Bull Frog Creek) says the housing boom of late has only helped his business.

"People have got to have pictures to hang on all those walls," he says with a smile.

[Last modified June 9, 2005, 10:29:11]