Earlier this year, Shelby Boggs learned firsthand the power of viral marketing. After flipping a house (before the real-estate market tanked), the 35-year-old fine-art photographer and former property manager finally had the nest egg she needed to start a business of her own. At first, Boggs dreamed of a photography studio in downtown Tampa; then she remembered something else.
On a visit to downtown Asheville, N.C., she had discovered the Kress Emporium, a 1928 historic building transformed into a showcase for more than 80 regional artists and craftspeople. Inside the Kress, each artist gets a booth to fill from floor to ceiling with his or her own work, while customers can peruse an eclectic mix of paintings, sculptures, quilts, jewelry, stained glass — even soap. Tampa needs something like this, Boggs thought.
Almost overnight, her dream of a photography studio was replaced by the more ambitious goal of opening a showcase for Bay area artists similar to the Kress. Then an offer she couldn't refuse fell into her lap. On Snow Avenue in Hyde Park Village, a space formerly occupied by an Ann Taylor store (now located on Swann) was available, and its owner was eager for a tenant who could stomach a single-year commitment. (Current plans call for condominiums to be built on the site in the near future.) Soon — much sooner than Boggs anticipated — the Tampa Artist Emporium was born.
That's when she learned about the power of e-mail in the hands of Tampa's tightly knit community of artists and art lovers.
"We weren't sure how it was going to take off," she says. "We'd heard some mixed reviews [of the idea]."
But instead of a mixed reception, after sending out "an e-mail through two very well connected people," Boggs received dozens of requests from artists who wanted to take part. In short order, she "sold out" the areas throughout the space — walls, nooks, columns and shelves — that individual artists could rent to display their work, and the Hyde Park store was fully stocked with art by opening day.
"We were shocked," Boggs says, surveying the space.
About two months after a July 14 opening gala, the Tampa Artist Emporium now boasts 42 local artist "residents" and a waiting list of 20 more. A diverse array of artsy endeavors, from photographs of Tampa's downtown skyline and beach scenes rendered in watercolors to fused glass jewelry and pottery wine racks, cover the surfaces that artists can rent at rates from $80 (for the side of a column) to $325 (for a sizeable chunk of wall) a month for three months at a time. (After three months, artists are free to leave if, for instance, they're not selling anything.) In the center of the store, three Y-shaped partitions, built by Boggs' fiancé Bob Parsons, effectively double the store's wall space. Take a peek into former dressing rooms, and you'll find some pottery stashed there, too.
Boggs instituted monthly art mixers on the second Saturday of each month, and ample crowds have come out to join the artists. Many of the artists have already recouped their three months' rent through sales, Boggs says. The venture is doing well enough that its founder can even contemplate paying herself a minimal wage to run the space, which she does six days a week with the help of Parsons and a student from the University of Tampa. In addition, several artists barter work for space, helping Boggs out with graphic design and printing.
This month, the Emporium's mixer will move to a date to coincide with Hyde Park Village's biannual Arts Festival. On Friday, Sept. 28, the Emporium will host an evening mixer, some proceeds from which will benefit the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Then on Saturday the 29th and Sunday the 30th, the Emporium will keep regular hours as the popular and eclectic festival takes place along the street outside.
Much like the festival, the Emporium prides itself on having something for everyone. It's not meant to be a high-concept gallery or a stuffy museum environment, Boggs says — and a placard explaining the Emporium's art-for-the-masses philosophy on the cash register backs her up. The point is to offer fun, friendly, accessible work and, well, to sell it (and put that money right back in the artist's pocket).
While not all of the offerings will appeal to everyone — Robert Stagemyer's life-sized 3-D bust of a "Biker Dude" complete with tribal tattoos and chest hair had me dying to meet the artist but not whip out my checkbook — there are more than a few diamonds in the rough, to be sure. My must-haves were Tampa photographer Mitzi Gordon's eerie narrative works featuring dolls.
With saturated colors and snatches of vintage fabrics, Gordon sets the stage — her own childhood dollhouse, in fact — for a send-up of idyllic suburbia. In settings decorated meticulously with tiny props, vacant-eyed dolls act out scenes of emotional estrangement: A toddler boy grasps his oblivious mother's feet; a father's expression hints that something is terribly wrong (yet you can't help but laugh at his constipated grimace).
I even liked that Gordon's images reminded me of other "doll art" — like some works by photographer Laurie Simmons — but still seemed to have something original to call their own. (And at $125, the price was right. Another theme throughout the store: affordability.) Elsewhere, a red-painted wall showcases Gordon's business, Pyramid Photography, a collaborative endeavor with fellow artist Bradley Paul Valentine.
"It's a terrific space and a really great opportunity for exposure," Gordon says. Meet her — and the other artists of the Tampa Artist Emporium — at the mixer later this month.
This article appears in Sep 5-11, 2007.