It's 8 p.m. and members of Gala Corina's board of directors are ready to get down to business.
There's just one problem: no electricity.
It's the cleaning lady's fault. She has arrived to vacuum out the law offices that are next door to the unfinished 30,000-square-foot warehouse space the group is using this year. Gala Corina organizers are borrowing electricity (with the law firm's permission), but they can only run so many electrical things at once or all the power will go out.
So the dozen board members sit in the dark on carpet remnants arranged in a circle. A wall of filing cabinets stands between them and a pile of debris they've cleaned out of the space: lumber, bricks, stuff they found sitting in a coat of sawdust and concrete dust in the former mill. A pair of flashlights and the occasional cell phone project giant shadows onto the wall — a fitting background to a planning meeting one night before Halloween.
Watching the group in its humble surroundings, it's hard to imagine that one of Tampa's most anticipated art and cultural events will emerge as the product of their labor. For less money than the cost of a typical artwork at the Tampa Museum of Art, they'll stage a combination underground art fair and fringe festival likely to draw several thousand visitors. Opening and closing night parties will bookend a weeklong exhibit of over 100 artists with performances by artists, poets, drag queens and rock bands. The free food and alcohol (donations appreciated) probably won't hurt attendance either.
The event takes its name from the Corina cigar factory just south of Ybor, where the first Gala took place. Ever since 2003, when a last-minute crisis led to nicknaming the event Milagro, or miracle, each Gala has also revolved around a Spanish word chosen for its symbolic relevance. The theme of this year's event is Esperanza, or hope.
Seven years after its debut, Gala Corina still cruises bravely toward opening night on a wing and a prayer … and a couple of amps, a keg and some donated plywood. But as organizers look for ways to make sure Gala Corina has a future — a future inextricably linked with the still-nascent state of downtown Tampa and the regional arts scene — "hope" is indeed the operative word.
Gala Corina is the product of a passionate group of volunteers — so passionate that it can feel, as it does the night of the board meeting, like too many cooks in the kitchen. As Gala president Amy Kroslak goes down the list of crisis situations, she's answered by a chorus of voices, each suggesting a creative, but not always practical, solution.
News that plans for a donated sound system have fallen through is greeted by a couple of offers of two-channel amps and some mic stands instead. In response to a request for a keg, one board member says he's got a cold plate if they can buy a couple of $150 CO2 tanks and find someone who knows how to rig them up. Perhaps MacGyver could swing by and take a look at it, another board member suggests to general laughter.
"Let's work on free first. If we don't have something by the end of the week, then we look at payment options," Kroslak says.
She looks nervous. These jury-rigged solutions are threatening to send the group over its $12,000 budget, nearly half of which has been spent on liability insurance. She doesn't have the few hundred bucks it might take to solve any one of these problems. When the meeting dissolves into a half-dozen conversations and people start answering their cell phones, she snaps, pleading with the group to be quiet.
The lights come back on. The cleaning lady is done.
Kroslak's mission as president is to bring a little left-brain organization to Gala, which has been staged yearly since 1999 by an ever-changing group of artists and architects.
Two years ago, Gala Corina faced a decisive moment when founder John Langley stepped down as president, explains Steve Kroslak, Amy's husband and a longtime Gala artist and volunteer. After spearheading six Galas, Langley decided it was time to decrease his time commitment to the event. Kroslak and his wife stepped in, agreeing to take on the responsibilities for the show: He would manage the construction aspects of getting the space ready, and Amy, who manages the cruise department for a Tampa-based travel agency, would take care of the money, paperwork and administration by becoming president.
They've tried to take steps that will make Gala more stable and less dependent on a single leader. Amy Kroslak, took on the task of turning Gala, which was already a corporation, into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to obtain tax exemption and make the group more attractive to foundations and corporate donors. They've also brought new members to the board of directors as old ones have fallen away, creating a mix of artists and nonartists with skills in PR, graphics, event planning and sound production. Each board member has a pet project.
Musician Bryan Leighty, iPod earbuds in place as he nail-guns boards to the stage, says it became his mission to join the board after the sound system failed at last year's Gala. After a two-hour delay in the middle of the fashion show, people began leaving before the second fashion designer's models could walk the catwalk, he recalls. Leighty says he doesn't want to see that happen again this year to any artist — much less to his band, Hey There, Battleship, which will play on closing night.
Fashion designer Ivanka Ska was lured in by the opportunity to co-direct Gala's entertainment and fashion component. Now she and another designer, Bonny Lau, are working with Leighty to figure out how to make sure the catwalk — built by artists from donated plywood — will bear the weight of models and drag queens on opening night. She's had to take on some decidedly less glamorous responsibilities as well, her nose wrinkling as she recalls cleaning the warehouse's toilets.
As part of Gala's new modus operandi, the group began requiring all exhibiting artists to do 10 hours of service, though they are enforcing this rule on the honor system, assuming that artists will make their best effort to show up and do something. Kroslak says she had to read people the riot act, but the response has been tremendous. At least 20 artists have shown up to volunteer each night, she says.
Langley, who continues to be involved on a reduced scale as a board member, seems pleased with Gala's evolution. "It's in very capable hands," he says. "The new leadership has taken it to the next level."
This year, for the first time, the event will incorporate a charity benefit to raise funds for Gala and for the Children's House, a local shelter for abused and abandoned children and teens. Sixty of the exhibiting artists will decorate plywood silhouettes of children to be sold by silent auction on opening night. The portion of the proceeds left after Gala has paid its bills will be donated to the Children's House, Kroslak says.
Over the years, Gala has not only proven to be a nexus for artists; it's also become, almost inadvertently, a kind of development tool. This year, groups from three of Tampa's resurgent neighborhoods tried to persuade the festival to come to their neck of the woods.
"Gala Corina brings the crowd that everybody wants," explains Paul Wilborn, the city's creative industries manager. "It's an arts crowd, a young professional crowd, and it's a big crowd." In particular, a healthy presence of 25-40 year olds — the core of Gala's following — is a harbinger for an area's economic success, he says.
The city has co-sponsored the event for the past two years. Rather than giving money, it facilitates police presence, road closure or electricity if needed, or provides anything else that will be helpful, Wilborn says. This year, he volunteered to send out an e-mail asking for Gala site suggestions. Within 24 hours, there were three offers of buildings in West Tampa, Tampa Heights and Ybor City.
"[Gala has] been around for so long and it's got enough oomph … that we actually had three different locations compete for it," he says.
Kroslak and her board eventually selected the Ybor warehouse because it balanced the right factors: It was structurally sound, already had some access to electricity and came with the added perk of parking and advertising assistance from the Ybor City Chamber of Commerce, she says.
Chamber president Tom Keating says he was determined to bring the event to Ybor this year, after being turned down last year when he suggested the Cuban Club. This year he proposed a warehouse space in the former Gulf Millwork & Fixture building owned by two partners of Sponsler, Bennett, Jacob & Cristal, P.A. The law firm has renovated about a third of the building to contain its offices; the other two-thirds — the space that Gala Corina will take over — may eventually become condominiums.
Keating hopes the event will highlight an evolution he feels is underway in Ybor, from nightlife district to a live-work community with bustling activity all day long. He hopes to shift more emphasis to Ybor's historic culture and its growing cachet as a hub for creative businesses like engineering and architectural firms. Because Gala Corina combines the two, it was a perfect symbolic event and public relations opportunity, he says.
Warren Sponsler, one of the partners who co-owns the building, says he's most surprised by how many people have stopped him to say how cool it is that he's letting Gala Corina use his building. That, and he got a hundred artists to clean out his warehouse for free. "They're out there at 5 p.m. every day, and they sometimes they stay until 1 a.m. … it's better than the way they found it," he says appreciatively.
Developer Russell Versaggi has lent buildings to Gala twice, in 2002 and 2004. In the first instance, he and architects Vivian Solaga and John Tennison of Atelier Studio turned over the keys to the building they own that now contains the Sanctuary Lofts. They couldn't have bought better advertising to create a buzz about the space, Solaga says.
When asked if he would do it again, Versaggi's response is immediate. "Oh, heck yeah, man — I'd do it in a second," he exclaims. "We're looking at something now — I don't think it's going to happen — but it's a real neat old building that would be a fabulous building for Gala Corina," he laughs.
Architects and designers have been an integral part of Gala from the beginning. At the past two Galas, the Tampa Bay chapter of the American Institute of Architects has sponsored competitions on specific design themes: In 2004, architects were challenged to envision a democratic space in response to the then-current political climate; in 2005, they were asked to transform Tampa into a city of the arts. This year, instead of competing, AIA members are working together — and with the public — to brainstorm ideas for the redevelopment of West Tampa. Architects, planners and members of the community put their heads together at an intense collaborative design session — called a charette — last Friday at the Berriman-Morgan cigar factory on N. Howard Avenue. Following the charette, they planned to translate into visual form those ideas for the future of West Tampa's street fronts, waterfront, gateways, transportation and development along the Howard-Armenia corridor. The results will be displayed at Gala Corina and during an AIA luncheon on the Nov. 17.
Architect Gus Paras says bringing more arts-related activity into the area — by creating artists' studios in restored cigar factories, for example — is a component of West Tampa's economic redevelopment plan. "The arts play a role in all areas of urban design," he says.
For artists, Gala is the underground equivalent of the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts, a chance to sell and exhibit work open to just about everyone.
Kim Radatz, who won the $15,000 Best in Show prize at Gasparilla this year, remains loyal to Gala. "Gala is the best," she says simply. It's the best place to see edgy, experimental work — and it's $50 rather than $350 to exhibit, which opens the door to a lot more artists, she says.
Gala's selection process is also a lot more democratic. The committee that sifts through entries, like the board of directors, is made up of the event's most committed volunteers, a combination of artists and art lovers. They don't say no very often; this year, of 165 entries, 140 were accepted. Some artists were kept out because they required more space, electricity or other resources than Gala could furnish, says Kroslak, the board president.
The resulting mix of artwork includes work by artists who don't always fit into the white-box gallery paradigm, like Maria Saraceno, who has crafted a sculpture suggestive of a life-sized gown from clear plastic drinking straws, or graffiti artist Center One, who will create a site-specific installation on a billboard-sized panel at the warehouse. That diversity isn't reflected anywhere else in the area, Kroslak says.
"Local galleries are either very elite or they do a lot out-of-state. It's almost like no one really pays attention to the talent that's in Tampa Bay," she says. "There's so much focus on becoming a city of the arts, but it's not really focusing on local artists."
Wilborn, the city's creative industries manager, points out that local museums have followed Gala's lead in appealing to a younger crowd, forming young professional membership groups like St. Pete Museum of Fine Art's Contemporaries and Gulf Coast Museum's Les Fauves, and staging events that combine work by local visual artists with performance, fashion, food and drink, like Tampa Museum of Art's Art After Dark. Lakeland has spawned its own mini-Gala in the form of a twice-yearly event called Platform.
Hope — or esperanza — may not spring eternal, but where Gala's future is concerned, it looks like it may stay alive for a good long time.
This article appears in Nov 8-14, 2006.