Creatives Artist Collective celebrates its 10th anniversary this month in Ybor City, Florida. Credit: Photo by Jennifer Ring

In 2013, photographer Jenny Carey started a breakfast club to keep in touch with her female artist friends. The club includes several notable Tampa artists—lens-based artists Suzanne Williamson, Lori Ballard, and Jenny Carey; filmmaker Victoria Jorgensen; potter Kimberli Cummings; choreographer Cindy Hennessy; poet Gianna Russo; woodworker Kate Swann; and multidisciplinary artists Candace Knapp, Debra Radke, Brenda Gregory, Eileen Goldenberg, Paula Brett, Melissa Fair, and Kim Radatz.

Ten years later, the Creatives still meet for breakfast once a month. They also show their work together once a year in Tampa, with Creative Loafing Tampa Bay visiting the group in 2017 (“13 on the 13th”), 2018 (“Seeing Now”) and 2019 (“Fractured Spaces”).

Usually, they show at HCC Ybor, but now that three Creatives artists have studio space at the historic Ybor City Kress Building, there’s been a change of venue. Next weekend, the Creatives celebrate their 10th anniversary with a four-day-only art show at the Historic Ybor City Kress Building.

There’s no cover for “A Decade at the Table” art show, which opens at the Kress Collective in Ybor City on Wednesday, Nov. 8 and runs select hours through Saturday, Nov. 11.
The show features artwork by Creatives artists, past and present, on the themes of identity, memory, language, and relationships. But this isn’t a themed show. Carey gives her Creatives the freedom to present their latest artwork no matter the subject. And though the Creatives lost long-time member Suzanne Camp Crosby to cancer in 2020, she’ll be present through her photography at “A Decade at the Table.”

The four-day celebration begins with an opening reception on Thursday, Nov. 9, 2023, from 6 p.m.-9 p.m. and ends on Saturday, Nov. 11, with a grand finale of sorts. Saturday’s closing reception, held from 1 p.m.-3 p.m., features an artist talk and a performance featuring Gianna Russo’s poetry and Cindy Hennessy’s choreography.

This writer will moderate Saturday’s artist talk as though it were a live interview. So, if you ever wanted to go behind the scenes of arts journalism, this could be a fun opportunity for you to do so. I’ll ask the group important questions like “Who makes the best breakfast in Tampa?” and “Mimosa or Bloody Mary?” At some point, I’ll probably ask them about their art, how their personal art practices have changed over the past 10 years, and how they’ve inspired each other through the years.

Also, the world has changed significantly in the past 10 years; I’d love to know how these changes have affected their creative lives. With 10 years of art and life, there’s much to talk about.