ST. AUGUSTINE'S ART SCENE
THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 2010 - ST. AUGUSTINE, FLORIDA
St. Augustine, Florida is the oldest city in America, so it could beg the question; is the art scene similarly ancient. . . or is it state of the art? Pictured above is the interior of the Absolute Americana Art Gallery, which was my favorite stop in our one day art crawl around St. Augustine Florida's Historic District. Albeit it was founded by the owner of Absolut Vodka, I'll get more into the details of that gallery later on but first I would like to start with some of the other galleries we had the fortune - and in some cases misfortune to visit earlier on.
Molly and I weren't in town to catch one of their First Friday Art Walks so we had a few spiked frozen drinks then started our own random art crawl based on the list of First Friday galleries I had picked up at a tourist information counter. We started out at Butterfield Garage Art Gallery and Butterfield Too Art Gallery, as they are by the same owner, and separated by a wall. Butterfield Too is cool because they have a studio in the back where they teach classes and have live drawing from model etc.
You better not lay a field on my Butterfield. Above is some landscape work by realistic artist Sam Kates. Boats, water, lighthouses, and such. St. Augustine is on the ocean so people like this sort of thing when they are on vacation. It's the beach town equivalent of Zatarains.
Here are some interesting charcoal nudes by artist Jay Antablian.
Pictured above are some neat pop-ish illustrative paintings by artist Kevin Dunn.
"Lady Ga Ga" mixed media assemblage by sculptor Barbara J. Cornett.
The next stop I was excited to visit was Rembrandtz Art Gallery as it had top billing in the brochure, and I had read online that it had won dozens of Best Art Gallery in St. Augustine Awards. This excitement was short lived however as I entered and quickly exited the "gallery" with the realization that the so called awards couldn't be worth the paper they were printed on.
Bullshit awards plastered on Rembrandtz door.
In my opinion Rembrandtz, the store, isn't even an art gallery. By definition, you would actually have to have art on display I'd assume, to be called an art gallery. Yet somehow Rembrandtz has fantastically managed to score dozens of best art gallery in St. Augustine door sticker awards- without any semblance of a gallery on the premises.
It's baffling really. It's a shitty craft hawking gift shop you would find in any summer resort town. It has as much right to call itself an award winning art gallery as a 7-11 has to call itself an award winning restaurant.
Rembrandt, the old dutch master and the shop's namesake, would probably have slit his wrists with a rusty palate knife before showing a piece of work in this tchotchke shilling converted beach house.
A big FAIL, and a big FUCK YOU to Rembrandtz for wasting our time. If you see in the picture, we are drinking pïna coladas in styrofoam cups as we go, so that made the disappointment a little more bearable.
We saw a glass & fine art place across the street. We crossed the street but it was closed. We put our faces up against the window and saw that there were paintings in there among the glass art.
A few blocks later we ran into The St. Augustine Gallery, which wasn't even on the art crawl brochure. And I'm glad we found it because it had a lot of really cool pop art.
A classic Ronnie Cutrone Felix The Cat piece circa 1989.
We passed by the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum. It was closed because it is associated with Flagler College and classes weren't in session for Summer I suspect. Why the hell we were in Florida in the middle of Summer is beyond my comprehension by the way.
We then took a turn off the main road because the map told us to, and we saw this pink and red building. Unlike the storefront galleries on the main strip, this gallery was self contained, and well air conditioned. The Absolute Americana Gallery. Inside we found works by Romero Britto, Ron English, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, LeRoy Neiman, Edward Ruscha. Really some great stuff, and the place was totally empty except for the curator who let us in and then went back to her office and let us browse and take photos. Such a chill vibe. I hope to have a piece or two in here sometime in the next few years.
The place was founded by the Absolut Vodka guy, so a lot of the art is liquor themed. While we were there they were showing a great exhibit of Absinthe posters and the original paintings the posters were made from.
The next stop was the St. Augustine Art Association.
It was a big space with a grand piano, but there was nobody in it. We walked around, looked at the art, used the bathroom. Then searched for the offices. There was a lot of interesting and diverse art in here btw, probably worth checking out if you are visiting. We thought it humorous that there were some paintings of Times Square and based on the musicals depicted on the theatres Molly could tell what year the reference photo was taken.
Artist Nadine Meyers mixed media on canvas piece titled "Mind Landscape".
When we finally found them we said hi to the people and signed the guest book. Side note, when you are looking at art in St. Augustine and someone working at the gallery finds out you are from New York they instantly are interested in you. That is unless they didn't give a shit about art and were just working there because it was a better gig than being a gift shop clerk.
P.A.S.T.A Art Gallery was on a cobblestone side street. The air conditioning wasn't working in there so we couldn't stay in too long, but there was some line art to be had.
After a few more twists and turns we ended up stumbling on some more galleries that weren't in the gallery guide. The Aviles Street Gallery which is an artist collective. 
That's where I met plein air painter Pamela Geiger (seen above painting a birds eye view of Aviles Street). Did you know Aviles street is the oldest street in the country? Weird.
Above are a few more of Pamela's oil paintings which were on display in the gallery and were all of landmarks around St. Augustine.
We stopped in Worley Faver Pottery and gallery where there was some painting but the focus was on the pottery, obviously, which, if I were running an art blog that focused on earthenware that would be awesome.
The woman working the desk was actually a painter named Claire Jane Kendrick. She had a landscape triptych on display, which she happily posed with. She seemed to like us and after we talked with her for a few minutes it almost seemed like she wished she could close up shop and roll out with us for a night of partying.
This building housed three floors of paintings by Tripp Harrison. I guess it's his studio and gallery, but the place is pimped out. His art is very um, like realistic paintings of ocean scenes, beachy island scenes. He must have a big following in St. Augustine to have a three floor gallery in a prime location. His prints sell for more than 90 percent of the original paintings I saw over the course of the day. He's gotta be doing pretty good for himself.
Metalartz gallery isn't an art gallery, it's a crafty gift store.
Every time a Thomas Kinkade gallery is constructed in a tourist town an angel takes a shit on Jesus' sandles (if you believe in such things). 
This place, Mullet Beach Gallery claims to foster local art, yet when I took a few photos of one of the local artist's work they actually asked me to delete the photos from my camera before leaving the gallery. FUCK YOU! Good way to promote local art, don't let anybody on the web see that your art exists so they might want to visit and BUY IT!. Good job getting the word out.
I said something like that to them as I lifted up my camera and deleted the photos. Then they said something about protecting the artist's copyright. Like I want to take a picture of a local artist's crummy line art drawing of a fish and um, do what with it? Make the art into refrigerator magnets and sell them around the globe?
Say I didn't have an art blog and was just a tourist taking photos. What would I do with the photo? Take it home, put it in a photo album, show my friends, family, and neighbors? Maybe recommend the gallery to them? How is any of this hurting the artist again?
I can't stand when places act like that. MoMA lets you take photos. So you are better than MoMA now? I was just really taken aback by the wanting to make sure I deleted the photos from my camera. First time ever. Go fuck yourself lady.
This is a little alley on St. George Street, which is the main tourist street.
There are a few small galleries in this alley, but they are of seascapes, and cartoonish manatees (as seen in this picture). Nuff said. Molly did enjoy the pearl shop.
The next three galleries are all owned by the same company.
They feature very similar if not the same artists in each. Mostly all realistic artists, some masters, snobby salespeople, no photos allowed, etc... Bigger budget commercial galleries really don't have a place in this town and stick out in a bad way.
So my advice when you are spending a few hours looking at art in St. Augustine. Take it as a given: you are going to see a lot more bad than good, but there are a few diamonds in the rough. There are also some really nice artists and curators you can stumble upon along the way. The art crawl gallery guide is good, but you really need to explore outside of it's narrow perimeters. Some of the cooler galleries, as well as artist-run galleries weren't on the list.
We asked someone why their gallery wasn't listed in the First Friday art crawl guide and they said that the guide charged galleries two hundy to be included in the crawl so if they couldn't afford they were omitted.
