Don’t tell Chris Kelly that bigger means better. Last year, Kelly took a 300-square-foot storefront in Seminole Heights — the size of your average kitchen — and made it into Workspace, a clear frontrunner for the most popular new gallery on either side of Tampa Bay. (With no air conditioning, the space also doubles as a free sauna for people with clothes on between June and September.) Not only do people show up at Workspace when there’s an exhibition — they routinely buy the art. Much of it takes the form of affordable design and illustration by local artists as well as artists from outside of Tampa Bay. 4501 N. Florida Ave., Tampa, 813-453-0492, tampaworkspace.com
This article appears in Sep 18-24, 2014.