For one day each year, residents of a one-block stretch in Center Grove have turned Gifford Lane into a deliberately low-key art show and street party rooted in neighborhood culture, local artists and charitable giving.
“Do more than belong,” the writer William Arthur Ward once wrote. “Participate. Do more than care: help. Do more than believe: practice.”
For nearly three decades, residents along a one-block stretch of Gifford Lane in Center Grove have put those words into practice through the Gifford Lane Art Stroll, a one-day arts show and street party rooted in participation, mutual aid and neighborhood-scale culture.
Each year, the street closes to traffic and opens to the public for a community-run event that brings together dozens of local artists of all stripes, along with live music, food vendors and charitable fundraising — a deliberately small, accessible alternative to larger, more commercial art festivals.
This year’s free Gifford Lane Art Stroll will be held Sunday, March 1, from noon to 5 p.m. on Gifford Lane between Oak Avenue and Day Avenue.
At the center of the Art Stroll is Trina Collins, a longtime Grove artist whose own creative journey is inseparable from the event’s history. Her story helps explain how a modest neighborhood gathering grew into a lasting community institution — and why the Stroll has remained intentionally small, local and rooted in place.
Bloom Where You’re Planted: The Founder
Trina Collins has lived her life like a work of art — one that has changed settings and mediums over time, but the fundamental intention and essence endure.
In the late 1990s, Collins, then in her 50s, was the proprietor of a Philadelphia modern dance company, Danceteller, where she served as both dancer and choreographer.
The company performed throughout the Northeast and across the United States, as well as internationally, with stops in Scotland, Russia and Argentina. Dance had long been central to her life; she had been in the dance program at the University of Arkansas in 1970, where she met her husband, David, then earning a master’s degree in English.
But to everything there is a season. Feeling her balance was no longer what it once had been and searching for a second act, the couple moved south in 1997.
Inspired by art classes she had taken in Philadelphia, Collins turned to painting. As she did, she realized that the artistic life was not only prevalent in the famously bohemian Grove, but especially on her new block, Gifford Lane.
“There was a photographer and a sculptor and another painter and a little jazz group across the street,” Collins recalled. Surrounded by so much creative energy, she and David began asking a simple question: Why don’t we have an art show?
In 1998, they did just that. There were no permits at first — just art inside homes and out on the street. The event raised about $50 each for the St. Stephen’s AIDS Ministry and St. Alban’s Child Enrichment Center, and the response was enthusiastic enough to try again.
Twenty-eight years later, the Gifford Lane Art Stroll is fully permitted and more established, showcasing around 60 artists alongside food, music and dancing in the closed street. Charitable donations now approach $10,000 annually, but Collins says the core remains unchanged.
“We’re proud of it,” she said. “At its heart, the Stroll is still about neighbors coming together.”
Collins is realistic about the passage of time, but undeterred by it. “Do I wish I had the same energy I did in my seventies or sixties or fifties or forties or thirties? Of course,” she said. “But every year the Stroll comes around I think, ‘Oh, what fun!’ To me it’s a party, and it brings out the best of us.”
And here, on Gifford Lane, that spirit has found a purpose.
Hooked on Quilting (And Nature): The Featured Artist
Margie Bauer, the artist featured on this year’s Gifford Lane Art Stroll poster, did not arrive at the event by the most direct route. Though her fabric work now anchors the Stroll’s visual identity, it took years — and some hesitation — before she applied to show her art on Gifford Lane.
Bauer grew up in Cincinnati, drawn early to both nature and art.
She spent time camping and hiking, and gravitated toward drawing and painting in school. But she also showed a talent for science and math, and those strengths ultimately shaped her professional life.
Bauer went on to a nearly 30-year career with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the diplomatic corps, work that took her around the world.
“It was a good fit for me,” Bauer said. “I really liked the people I worked with, and I had the opportunity to travel and work in embassies all over the world.” As retirement approached, she began asking herself what might come next.
Miami had already become home. During her career, Bauer had traveled extensively throughout the Caribbean, with Miami as a frequent hub, and eventually settled here. She began volunteering at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden and enrolled in a drawing class there — an experience that initially tested her resolve.
“I couldn’t even draw masking tape,” she recalled. “I thought, maybe this isn’t for me.”
She stuck with it, turning first to detailed botanical illustration that bridged her scientific background and artistic interests. Over time, her work evolved through pattern-based drawing and watercolor before she discovered fabric art at a quilting retreat in Alabama.
“I spent five days surrounded by professional quilters,” Bauer said. “I got hooked.”
Today, quilting and fabric art form the core of her practice, alongside botanical themes rooted in the natural world she has long admired. Her work has appeared at the Gifford Lane Art Stroll for the past five years.
For Bauer, the appeal of the Stroll goes beyond visibility. She describes it as unusually welcoming — a place where artists and visitors talk easily, ask questions and form connections that extend beyond the day itself. Some visitors, she said, have gone on to visit her home studio.
That openness, she believes, is not incidental, but central to what makes the Gifford Lane Art Stroll distinct: a neighborhood event where art, conversation and community are treated as inseparable.
Artistry of Mutual Aid: The Humanitarian
Before settling in Coconut Grove, Deb Dolson spent much of her career teaching overseas, most recently in Moscow. When political conditions there forced an early retirement, she and her husband returned to the United States and eventually made their way to South Florida.
While her husband moved into consulting work, Dolson found herself searching for a new sense of direction.
That direction emerged through the Coconut Grove Crisis Food Pantry, which has operated out of Christ Episcopal Church — known locally as the Pink Church — since 1984. Dolson began volunteering tentatively, unsure what to expect. She quickly found herself drawn not only to the mission, but to the people.
“I went from wondering if I was going to like it to being there all the time,” Dolson said. “I’m proud to be associated with the pantry and the people who make its work possible.”
The pantry’s role grew significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand surged and operations expanded. Today, it provides groceries and essential items to roughly 230 households each week, supported by donations from local grocers and community members.
One of those households was on Gifford Lane. During the pandemic, Trina Collins’ husband, David, lost his job, and pantry deliveries became part of the family’s routine. Dolson was already familiar with the street through the Gifford Lane Art Stroll, but that connection deepened through the shared experience of need and support.
“It doesn’t take long to understand that Trina is the heart of that block,” Dolson said. “There’s a generosity there that goes both ways.”
The Art Stroll has become an important source of support for the pantry and other local nonprofits, including St. Alban’s Child Enrichment Center. Donations raised through artist fees, food sales and informal contributions routinely flow back into community services. Visitors who learn about the pantry one year often return the next with canned goods or cash donations.
“It’s a place where people don’t just hear about the need — they respond to it,” Dolson said.
For Collins, that reciprocity was always central to the Stroll’s purpose. Art was never meant to stand apart from service.
“We always wanted there to be giving back,” Collins said.
The result is an event where art and mutual aid coexist naturally — a neighborhood gathering that treats creativity not as a luxury, but as another way of showing up for one another.
Event Details: The Gifford Lane Art Stroll takes place on Gifford Lane between Oak and Day Avenues on Sunday, March 1, from noon to 5 p.m. Admission is free. Bike Coconut Grove will offer free bike valet parking at the Oak Avenue entrance.
