Once Miami’s bohemian heart, Coconut Grove’s art scene has fallen victim to high rents and regional competition but a new low-key event has local artists dreaming of better days ahead.
The air is heavy and the temperature approaching 90 degrees on a recent Sunday morning as longtime Grove artist Theresa Marie Calluori — better known as “the pear butt lady” – sets up her stall on the sidewalk outside a noisy and crowded restaurant on Commodore Plaza in Center Grove.
Despite the usual weekend bustle, foot traffic is slow. As she waits patiently for her first customer she explains to a visitor the origin of her distinctive creations. “I started painting pears in thongs back in college,” she says matter-of-factly. “Now I’ve got pears in diapers. I do fishscapes too.”
Calluori is here, hawking her wares, at the second Coconut Grove Art Walk, a two-block stretch of about 20 artist stalls that organizers describe as a nascent effort to reinvigorate a local art scene that has long underpinned much of the Grove’s cultural identity.
The event, a collaboration of the Coconut Grove Business Improvement District and a group of veteran local artists, kicked off in March. Although the event will be paused during the hot and rainy summer months, organizers hope interest from visitors – and surrounding retailers – will lead to a monthly “third Sundays” schedule.
“The neighborhood had a history of being an art hub, with people making art, music, and doing funky things,” says Trina Collins, a longtime Grovite and founder of the Gifford Lane Art Stroll, an annual, one-day grassroots arts festival now in its 27th year. “But it started to look like, now, people only come to the Grove to have dinner.”
Collins says the idea for the Art Walk evolved from conversations over the past couple of years with neighbors such as artist Barbara Tejada and gallerist Peter Studl, who owns and operates a gallery space on Commodore Plaza.
The Art Walk, they envisioned, would conjure the spirit of the “Old Grove”: organic, multifaceted, an intersection of the arts and community. Admission, for both artist and visitor, would be free.
“This isn’t just about the visual arts,” Collins tells the Spotlight. “My dream would be to have musicians, performance art, actors, and installations popping up around the neighborhood.”
Collins’ vision echoes a common refrain from many local artists and residents alike who complain of the high cost and commercial feel of the Coconut Grove Arts Festival.
What began in 1963 as a homegrown street fair has grown into a corporate behemoth with few Grove-based artists able or willing to pay stall fees that range from $850 to $1,500. Visitor tickets at this year’s festival were $35, or $30 for Grove residents.
For artist Patrick Volum, a 27-year Grove resident, the low-cost, low-key Art Walk is its appeal. At the event’s March inaugural, he sold over $600 of his wooden sculptures and bowls. Today, within minutes of setting up, he received a commission for a custom piece.
Studl, an attorney-turned-artist who operates a gallery on Commodore Plaza which he’s dubbed “Art Installation Space,” says the Art Walk and hopefully similar events can help Coconut Grove reestablish the vibrant arts scene that defined Coconut Grove in its heyday as a community of artists and other creative types.
“Way back, the Grove was the arts center of Miami. There were a dozen galleries here, and the art scene was here,” says Studl of the era from roughly the early 1960s through the late 1980s when real estate prices began favoring the upscale boutiques and high-end restaurants. Gone are the nonprofit art spaces like GroveHouse. Only a handful of commercial galleries remain.
Regional competition is another factor for the Grove art scene’s decline, veteran artists say. In its heyday the Grove enjoyed something of a monopoly on galleries – and the artists who supplied them – but now must compete with South Beach, Wynwood, the Design District and other upstarts.
But for artist Tod Friedman, who has set up at the Art Walk to sell his new pen-and-ink series called “Water Nymphs,” the Grove’s artist community still occupies a distinctive corner of the South Florida art world.
“The bohemian, easy lifestyle of the Grove is unique to Miami, and we want to keep that,” he says. “I think what made the Grove the Grove from the beginning is the artists.”
Reviving that past, Friedman adds, can serve as a kind of counter balance to the upscale transformation that is reshaping both cultural life and the commercial makeup of the village.
And painter Eileen Seitz, who has lived in the Grove for 45 years, sees a loftier, more collective imperative: “We need more art and artists in the Grove. Art relaxes people, and people need to be more relaxed.”
To be sure, not everyone is relaxed at the second Coconut Grove Art Walk.
“They were blocking my display!” the irate owner of a clothing boutique tells the Spotlight, after complaining to officials from the Business Improvement District about a stall on the adjacent sidewalk.
The stall’s artists, Deon Mandelstam and Rob Dworkin, who make contemporary blown glass pieces, are moved to Fuller Street where they say the vibe is decidedly more chill.
“I felt a little awkward anyway, being in front of these high-end places,” Mandelstam says.
Other artists complain of steep parking fees – for those on an artist’s income at least — that organizers should find a way to mitigate. “We cannot spend $50 on parking!” says Calluori.
And a general consensus emerges that event promoters – whomever they are – dropped the ball on this one.
“As an artist, I would have liked to have seen the promotion come out earlier so that people could have found out about it sooner and filled gaps in the earlier part of the day,” says Cynthia Shelley, an artist and 43-year Grove resident. “But everyone was still excited to attend the event.”
Coconut Grove Business Improvement District Executive Director Mark Burns is quick to point out that the Art Walk is “still in pilot mode.” Feedback from artists, business owners, and the public will help shape future events.
“Ultimately, we want people coming to the Grove for the art and artists,” he says. “We are making tweaks, and the idea is to spread the word over the summer and into the fall that we want to do this.”
Adds Shelley: “Places evolve, and I think the Grove will always stay a bit funky. We have some great Grove artists,” she adds.
