Tampa artist Mitzi Jo Gordon still remembers meeting her late friend, Vince Kral, in 2012, when Tracy Midulla invited them to co-curate Box on 5th in Ybor City.
“You know when you meet somebody and you immediately speak the same language?” Gordon told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “That’s what we had, and it was amazing.”
Together, they organized three shows at Box on 5th, including Kral’s first solo show, “FanAddict.”
“That was when I really started to understand who he was as an artist,” Gordon told CL. Kral sectioned the space into different fandom themes.
“One area was everything Van Halenized,” Gordon recounts. “There was a refrigerator and a couch and a lawnmower, and he just kept bringing stuff.”
The two of them worked into the night, bringing box after box of stuff from Kral’s vehicle into the gallery. He wanted to display a whole wall of VHS tapes, but the tapes were too heavy for the shelves they’d installed. As one side of the shelf started to collapse, Gordon briefly stepped out, frustrated.
“Then I came back in and he had it fixed,” Gordon recounts. “And I totally got it. It was perfect and fun and weird. And the fact that it was too much made it exactly the right amount.
When Gordon learned of Kral’s passing in November 2024, she assumed there would be boxes and boxes of stuff. She spent 10 days sorting it into categories—family keepsakes, VHS/DVDs, original vintage toys, costumes, artwork Kral made and artwork Kral collected.
As she went through his artwork, Gordon set aside works for a memorial art show.
“I knew I wasn’t going to get it perfect, but I went to that house every day and tried to think about what he would want or what he was trying to express through my hands,” Gordon told CL.
The collection first went to a gallery in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where Kral grew up. After that show closed, Gordon asked to show Kral’s work in Tampa. Kral’s parents drove his artwork down from Iowa in boxes so that Vincent’s Tampa friends and acquaintances could celebrate his life at the Disco Dolls Studio in Seminole Heights this weekend.
The artwork temporarily resides in Gordon’s home as she organizes Vincentfest, a celebration of life for Vince Kral. A trio of small amplifiers built into old cigar boxes sit beside a collaged vintage turntable on a tabletop. Next to them—a “Van Halen rock amplifier,” literally. Kral covered the amplifier in rocks painted with the same colors and patterns on Van Halen’s guitar. That striped, red, black and white pattern covers a motorcycle helmet, a dinner plate, and a fake plastic gun. A Ghostbusters jumpsuit hangs next to a makeshift ghost trap.
The Peter Pan vibes are real. Gordon points to a line in Kral’s master’s thesis tying youth to art. It’s a Picasso quote mixed with pop culture references.
“The Jedi come from the future through Nirvana’s In Utero, and are born to grow up to be artists. Well, actually, they are born artists, and grow up and remain artists until they die. Jedi Pablo Picasso spoke of this phenomenon. ‘Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.’”
On Gordon’s bed, a series of self-portraits surrounds Kral’s guitar. He’s a different character in each one—Princess Leia from Star Wars, a beer-drinking country boy, a Jedi knight, a nerd like Urkel, a deranged nurse. He stands in the same place in the same room in each photo. “Vince didn’t care much about backgrounds,” said Gordon, laughing.
Next to these are a series of digital artworks Kral made on a Commodore 64 Koala Paint Pad—a graphics tablet made in 1983. But Kral made these artworks in 2023. They are colorful sketches of his friend, her cat, and a couple of landscapes—from Earth and outer space. They show everything that 1980s and 1990s graphics programs lacked in the most hilarious and nostalgic way.
In another corner, a stack of DVDs rests on top of a tall cabinet—the physical stamp of Kral’s Vincentflix project. At the request of friends, Kral combined a person’s favorite movie with their favorite band, giving it a new soundtrack.
So much of Vince’s work was about giving joy, art and humor to the people around him. It was a large part of what drew Gordon to him as a collaborator and a friend.
“We had a mutual appreciation for art and humor and using those things to build community,” Gordon told CL.
“I never stopped smiling or giggling when I was with Vince,” says Vincentfest co-organizer Leigh Anne Balzekas. “Even with the heavy stuff—when we were having intense conversations—he made fun of everything in such a good way.”
“Vince was a genius for fun,” Gordon echoes.
“Vince was a genius for fun.”
That’s what Gordon and Balzekas hope to bring with Vincentfest—fun in the form of everything Kral loved. As Gordon’s selections show, Kral had many different inspirations and creative outlets, from music to movies to performance, costumes, photography, painting, prints, vintage toys and technology.
Vincentfest won’t be the first time Kral’s work has been at Disco Dolls. Balzekas collaborated with Kral on a show called “Fashion Victim” in 2016 where she turned Kral’s old skateboarding gear into new t-shirts.
In conjunction with this, Kral created an installation exploring sentimental attachment to physical objects like outdated clothing, toys, and antiquated technologies—things that recur throughout Vincent’s body of work.
“It’s been really great to work with the Disco Dolls,” says Gordon. “Leigh Anne and her husband Jon knew and collaborated with Vince. So, coming into that space, I automatically felt that these people have a clear sense of his personality and how we can honor that in their space.”
Gordon and Balzekas are consolidating most of Kral’s paintings, prints and photos on one large display wall. They’ll screen his videos in separate, more private spaces. Vincentfest honors Kral’s love of performance with a storytelling open mic and an invitation to come in costume.
“I hope people come out and dress up,” Balzekas told CL. She’s contemplating something Strange Brew-inspired, but anything Vince-inspired is fair game, from Star Wars to Superman, Inspector Clouseau or Van Halen colors. And it doesn’t need to be perfect, either.
“That’s the thing with Vince,” says Balzekas. “If you put something together with duct tape and things you have at home and are just trying to create the vibe, that would resonate with him too. That’s how he was. He wasn’t waiting for something to be precious or perfect. It was like, let’s make art, get out there, connect with people and bring world peace.”
There’s no cover for Vincentfest happening Sunday, May 4 at Tampa’s Disco Dolls Studio.
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This article appears in Apr 24-30, 2025.
