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Work by Carlos Pons inside Kress Contemporary in Ybor City, Florida on Sept. 17, 2026. Credit: Dave Decker \/ Creative Loafing Tampa Bay<\/p>\nWork by Carlos Pons inside Kress Contemporary in Ybor City, Florida on Sept. 17, 2026. Credit: Dave Decker \/ Creative Loafing Tampa Bay<\/p>\n
Fall and spring arts previews, like the seasonal changes they accompany, arrive like clockwork. As the Bay area trades weeks of oppressive heat and humidity for 13 days of Uggs-worthy weather, natives and newbs alike look for ways to get out and experience their neighborhoods.<\/p>\n
For the most part, there are clear cut ways to support the venues, events and individuals in arts previews. Theatergoers, live music fans, and movie buffs buy tickets. Bookworms aren\u2019t going to ask an author to sign a Kindle.<\/p>\n
Ironically, the picture\u2019s not as clear when it comes to the visual arts. Yes, there are gallery openings, but for longer than there\u2019ve been seasonal arts previews, visual artists have always needed people to, well, buy their art.<\/p>\n
Luckily, most supporters agree: someone doesn\u2019t have to be wealthy to collect art.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t always afford the art you want,\u201d Tracy Midulla told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, \u201cBut you can purchase the art you can afford.\u201d<\/p>\n
Midulla, a fourth-generation Tampe\u00f1a who is founder and director of Tempus Projects<\/a>, reiterated that some people tailor their collections around their budgets while others shape their collections by what they have to spend.<\/p>\n \u201cI know a lot of people that buy really small works of art from really big artists, and it\u2019s expensive, but it\u2019s not as expensive as buying a large painting,\u201d she added. \u201cThen there are people that buy work from emerging artists, which is usually more affordable because they\u2019re earlier in their career.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJust imagine if you had bought a Basquiat when he was just drawing postcards on the street,\u201d Effren Denson told CL.\u00a0<\/p>\n No stranger to purchasing prints, Denson, who runs Honey Gallery<\/a> inside the same Kress Contemporary space where Tempus lives, didn\u2019t buy his first piece of art until just before the pandemic.<\/p>\n Denson, a second-generation Tampe\u00f1o, grew interested in Ryan Lagasse\u2019s work after seeing a jack-in-the-box style clown during a Pabst Blue Ribbon show at The Bricks. He reached out, wondering if she still had it.<\/p>\n \u201cShe said, \u2018No, I don\u2019t have that, but I have other things,\u2019\u201d he explained. \u201cI remember I walked down to The Hub and met her. She showed me some things, and that was probably about five years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n Lagasse ended up showcasing her poppy, almost surrealist acrylic paintings on canvas and paper at Honey Gallery last spring<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last month, during another Third Thursday at Kress, Carlos Pons<\/a>, a self-taught artist from Guatemala, opened his studio to visitors. One of his paintings is on the cover of CL\u2019s fall arts issue.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s actually still a work in progress,\u201d he told CL. \u201cI think all my art is a work in progress.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite doing art full-time, Pons said his career is also still developing, with much of his time being spent on commercial and commission work.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not always relying on the sales of original artwork for sustaining myself financially,\u201d he added. \u201cDoing my art sometimes\u2014most times\u2014falls on the back burner. So when I\u2019ve sold original artwork, I find myself incredibly fortunate and lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n Midulla has theories on why Bay area artists might have a hard time moving work. For one, the collector scene here is thinner than it should be. There are people in Tampa who buy art, she said, but there\u2019s a caveat.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the majority of the people that are spending a large amount of money on art, people that are investing or collecting in a serious manner, don\u2019t buy art in Tampa,\u201d Midulla said. \u201cI think they buy it when they travel, or they buy it from art fairs like Miami Art Week, or they have galleries that they work closely with.\u201d<\/p>\n Tampa is still developing culturally, she added. Yes, there are certainly people out there doing good work, but for a long time, Tampa has been a city obsessed with sports, tourism and beaches. People love their paintings of football players and celebrities, or boring beach photos and sunsets.<\/p>\n The fact that small theater companies, galleries and music venues struggle is a reflection of that reality.<\/p>\n \u201cWe still suffer from that type of Florida cliche as far as where we put our value in culture,\u201d Midulla said. \u201cI don\u2019t think that the visual arts are the only thing suffering from that.\u201d<\/p>\n Denson says that while many of the people who buy art at his gallery aren\u2019t buying $1,500 paintings, there are folks nearby who might.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to bring in other people,\u201d he said, noting how it\u2019s rare to see people from Westchase, Brandon or Riverview at art shows. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to figure out a way. How do we incorporate more people into the Tampa Bay art scene, because it\u2019s much needed.\u201d<\/p>\n Midulla is doing her part, preaching about the value of local galleries and nonprofits to anyone who\u2019ll listen. In her role as an art consultant, she leans into people looking for art, to help them find pieces\u2014local work that they wouldn\u2019t otherwise buy\u2014that fits their collection.<\/p>\n Hell, over the last six months, she and Tempus Exhibitions and Programs Manager Mitzi Jo Gordon, have held \u201cGo Ahead, Buy Some Art\u201d lectures where they invite local collectors and curators to talk about affordable art. \u201cThere are plenty of venues and artists that understand a spectrum in budget and sales and price point,\u201d Midulla added.<\/p>\n This month, another installment of \u201cGo Ahead, Buy Some Art\u201d will happen inside Kress Contemporary in Ybor City on Thursday, Sept. 17<\/a>, with a panel that includes FloridaRama founder Liz Dimmitt, Noelle Mason. Associate Professor, Sculpture & Extended Media at University of South Florida, USF Graphicstudio Marketing Director Kristin Soderquist, Dunedin Fine Arts Center Curatorial Director Danny Olda, and multimedia artist William Downs.<\/p>\n At the end of the day, Denson explained, buying art is about being surrounded by the shit you love. In your 20s, that might be posters from Ikea or Walmart, but at some point, people want to fine tune their lived environment.<\/p>\n \u201cIt just feels good to be surrounded by your own cool, curated stuff that you went out in the world and kind of picked up for yourself over the years,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd by the time you get in your 50s, 60s, and 70s, you have this beautiful collection of things that you just kind of collected through life\u2014and art\u2019s one of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n Pitch in to help make the Tampa Bay Journalism Project a success.<\/a><\/p>\n Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.<\/a><\/p>\n Follow us:\u00a0Google News<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0NewsBreak<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Reddit<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Instagram<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Facebook\u00a0<\/a>|\u00a0BlueSky<\/a><\/p>\n \n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n \t![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/carlos_pons_dave_decker_kress-31.webp\")
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