Credit: Andres Ramirez

Credit: Andres Ramirez

Adam Mathieu stopped making art.

Mathieu earned his art degree, started a full-time job, and, in his own words, shortly thereafter “felt I had lost my art community.”

That’s how Separate Checks, a Tampa-based art collective, started. Well, it also started on Instagram, where the group still curates the collective’s work on the reg. So, technically, you could see a lot of this online, but not all of it, and you’d miss the food and drinks, meeting the artists and the live screen printing. Or, more to the point, you’d miss that art community — the one Mathieu craved enough to create the collective in the first place. 

On Thursday, October 11, Separate Checks will have its first show, The Main Course. That was, Mathieu says, the goal of the collective: To have one show by the end of 2018.

Done, with more than two months to spare.

The group show, with work from the collective’s 15 artists, will showcase written works, performance and photography. Artists include Mathieu, Kristy Summerson, Krista Darling, Erika Schnur, Andres Ramirez and 10 others. Separate Checks will provide food and drink, and Swamp Willow Co. will live screen print the collective’s logo on tote bags. Prints of the work on display — and other work by the artists — will be available for a nominal price, and, of course, if you see art you must simply own, those are for sale, too.


Separate Checks presents The Main Course | CL Space, 1911 N. 13th St., Ste. W200, Tampa | Oct. 11, 7 p.m.

Cathy's portfolio includes pieces for Visit Florida, USA Today and regional and local press. In 2016, UPF published Backroads of Paradise, her travel narrative about retracing the WPA-era Florida driving...