Daily Loaf

Customers browse at the Tampa Artist Emporium in South Tampa. Pictured below: Boggs stands behind the Emporium’s front desk.

Two years ago, Tampa photographer Shelby Boggs took a gamble. Inspired by the Kress Emporium, an historic building in Asheville, NC, that serves as a marketplace for more than 80 regional artists and craftspeople, she set out to create something similar (if smaller) in Tampa. Using some money she’d pocketed after flipping a house in the once-hot real estate market, she snagged a favorable lease in Hyde Park Village.

Boggs dubbed the location, once occupied by retailer Ann Taylor, the Tampa Artist Emporium and soon began renting wall and shelf space to local artists, who displayed their work. Monthly mixers and an open-door policy during the shopping district’s popular outdoor art fair led to sales. In relatively short order, Boggs’ pie-in-the-sky idea didn’t look so crazy after all.

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Britney Spears w/The Pussycat Dolls Over the past few years, Britney Spears has been through the media gauntlet. But the superstar songstress picked up the pieces, clocked some hours in the dance studio and got in svelte shape, hit the studio with the right producers, and got her pop groove back.  Sun. Mar., 8, 8 p.m., St. Pete Times Forum, Tampa.

Jessica Simpson The Strawberry Fest’s concert closer features the country-music-friendly curves of Simpson, who makes up for her limited singing ability with  sun-kissed girl-next-door sexiness. Sun. Mar. 8, 7:30 p.m., Florida Strawberry Festival Grounds, Plant City.

Raymond James Gasparilla Festival of the Arts More than 300 artists and crafters take part in the 39th annual fest, displaying paintings, ceramics, fiber, jewelry and more along Franklin Street and throughout Lykes Gaslight Square Park. March 7-8, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Sat., 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun., Lykes Gaslight Square Park, downtown Tampa, free admission, gasparilla-arts.com.

GASP!Arilla. If you’re looking for the after-dark, floral-free alternative to the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts, Café Hey presents GASP!Arilla. The single-day art party features live music by Acho Brother, Bay Area Klezmer Konnection and DJ Fuego, and work by up-and-coming artists. Sat., March 7, 8 p.m., Cafe Hey, Tampa, free admission, myspace.com/cafehey. (Leilani Polk)

Verdi Requiem The Florida Orchestra and the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay present a Progress Energy Masterworks concert of Verdi’s powerful operatic work. More than 200 musicians and singers perform. Sat., March 7, 8 p.m., Progress Energy Center for the Arts – Mahaffey Theater, St. Petersburg, and Sun., March 8, 7:30 p.m., Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater, $19-$65.

After the jump: Whitest Kids, Pen Is Mightier, Abilities, Emerge, Urban Dare and more. Read the rest of this entry »

[Editor's Note: Ami Sallee Corley is an actor, a teacher and now a blogger for CL. (That's Ami in the photo with Drew DeCaro, Bechir Sylvain and Petrus
Antonius, fellow members of the cast of Gorilla Theatre's recent Six Degrees of Separation.) I'm pleased to have her join the conversation, which she begins with a particularly cogent question for area artists.]

In a city where an artist’s choice is to   survive on crumbs or leave, why would anyone want to stay and starve as an artist in Tampa?

I believe there are some pretty fantastic reasons out there.

If we are to build a thriving, sustainable arts and culture scene here in Tampa, we should at first focus on what makes it tempting to stay.  Here goes. Read the rest of this entry »

This post continues an ongoing conversation with local arts leaders about how the economy is impacting their business. (Read the first in this series of posts here or an even earlier post here.)

The national media are starting to pick up the broader story about the effects of the recession on arts organizations and the art market. This Boston Globe article opens with the bittersweet account of a patron requesting an extended donation payment plan; in the past week, more ominous stories about art museums and the Frieze Art Fair hit the New York Times. All three articles suggest that the worst may be yet to come.

On the other hand, this story about the $69 million economic impact of Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfalls hit NYC newspapers this afternoon—a glimmer of good news that emphasizes one of the many ways in which we value art (i.e., by its nifty tendency to attract tourists).

As of three weeks ago, representatives from both the Salvador Dali Museum and the Tampa Museum of Art told me their building projects are on track to meet previously set opening dates (fall 2010 and fall 2009, respectively). And Lights on Tampa 2009 remains set to take place during the Super Bowl. (I assume it will play a role in luring Super Bowl visitors to Tampa’s downtown—what those visitors will think of the city’s core when they get there is another question.)

Thoughts from other players in the Bay area arts community:

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