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Front Porch: Gallery a refuge for shoppers, art lovers

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published December 16, 2005

The new gallery along Waters Avenue could well be in the hippest of art districts: Bright folk art paintings and papier-mache masks pop with eye-catching reds, blues, yellows and greens.

A tiny sculpture, as childlike and exuberant as a miniature railroad village, depicts the buildings of Tampa, including the landmark Sulphur Springs water tower, through the eyes of an untrained artist.

Paintings of churches, jazz singers and brightly festooned ladies climb the walls and crowd large display bins. Magnets and homemade Christmas ornaments and fashion T-shirts offer browsers enough treasures to stuff a stocking.

And the prices?

A holiday shopper's dream: original art from $2 to $200 with a lot in the $20 to $50 range.

Humbly named the Lobby Gallery, it offers an offbeat refuge for both holiday shopping and soul searching. The light-filled space is nestled in the front lobby of Project Return, a social service organization dedicated to improving the lives of people with mental illness.

The gallery, which opened in May and held a holiday sale Saturday and Sunday, stands as a labor of love for Angela Dickerson, a 34-year-old art teacher with a life's passion.

Dickerson, the center's art program coordinator, opened the gallery as a way to help her students sell their original artwork. For many, having a gallery display their work gives them "a title in life," other than that of a person experiencing mental illness, she says. Students work from an adjoining studio and workroom, a busy place full of big art tables, cubby holes and jars of paint brushes.

"My goal is to give them an outlet for expression, but my long-term dream is to get them into books about folk art," she says.

Most Project Return students have no formal art training, other than what Dickerson offers.

"I try not to change their style, especially if they're self-taught," she explains, adding that many of her students are deeply intuitive, talented and haven't been influenced by the elitism that sometimes taints the art world.

"It's as if they're untouched by the outside world," she says. "Their work is very raw and comes from within. It's all about emotion and imagination."

Dickerson, who holds a bachelor's degree in art from the University of South Florida, worked at Project Return as a volunteer before being hired full time. When she came to the job, she was already familiar with the work of at least one of her students, Tommy D., who is deeply influenced by the illustrated Bible books he reads. A few years ago, she made a film of the artist and his work called Spirits of Color.

"Many of these artists are very interested in the concepts of heaven and hell, God and the devil," she says. "Religion is a common fixture in their paintings."

Tampa art consultant and folk art collector Katherine Gibson, who has purchased art from the Project Return gallery, explains that the works might be called "folk, visionary or naive" because they are created by people who are untrained, but often driven by an intuitive calling.

"What I liked was that the art was very prolific, very bright, and very expressive," she says of the gallery. "It's a very active place full of people who are very sincere, proud, and excited about their work."

The Lobby Gallery at Project Return, 304 W Waters Ave., is open from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and from noon to 4 p.m. Sundays. It's also open by appointment. For information, call (813) 933-9020.

[Last modified December 15, 2005, 10:05:12]