I participated in the “Off The Grid” program run by Downtown Vision. It filled unused office and retail spaces downtown with artist to enhance and revitalize the area. It worked. I partnered with two other female artist to open up Bee Gallery in the Jacksonville Landing, a mall on the waterfront. We wanted to use the space for a studio but the Landing management asked us to look like a retail space and keep daily open hours instead of our by appointment only setup. We complied by dividing the space in half with the studio in back. I brought in another lady who had an online relaxation products business. Think hippy bath and body works. She was thrilled to have a storefront and had retail experience and she made the gallery look and smell great.
We participated in the First Wednesday Art Walk each month. We tried many things in order to get Art Walk visitors to come down Laura Street away from the main area to the Landing. One of the things we did was allow tarot card readers to set up tables during art walk and in the gallery a few times a week. This was successful until a new business moved next to us.
The new business sold spices, dips, olives, oils and jams. The owners of the store did not like tarot card reading because their religion thinks it is satanic. They started forming prayer circles outside the gallery, interrupting the readings and complaining about the gallery to the Landing management. They were religious nuts trying to bully us. Turns out the real reason to harass us was that the store owners wanted their friends to locate their business in our space. Unfortunately, the Landing management did not support us and told us to start paying rent or leave.
After two years and a first had view of all the ways that the Landing management was paid to discourage economic success of the mall I had had enough. To say the environment had become toxic was an understatement. But I am not one to be bullied. I told my story to the Folio and this is the article that was written about it. The story also got picked up by a national magazine. I will post it when I find it.
Overall the two years of shared studio and gallery space was fun, we had many awesome local and international artist show their work. Tourist were always happy to find the place and often purchased art. They tourist never understood why the mall was so vacant. I learned that it was by design and remain grossed out about how corrupt the collusion was between the property management company and the city government was and still is. the property management did get the buyout and payoff that they wanted from the city and the city destroyed the mall. There is nothing left now and they are not sharing their plans yet. My guess is that if they share the plans then reporters will be able to follow the money and connect the dots.
