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“Experience the fusion of fine art and luxury living,” read the invitation. It was sent to me by Leslie Curran, owner of St Pete’s ARTicles Gallery. Her gallery was teaming up with realtor Rachel Sartain Tenpenny to offer a unique evening called Art + Home Exhibition.
They were offering a look at one of The TenPenny Collection’s listings, a 4,000 square-foot waterfront home on Snell Isle, up for sale at $7.3 million, featuring a curated collection of art from Curran’s gallery showcased throughout the home.
This obviously was not your parents’ real estate open house. But do real estate and art really have anything in common?
“Was this the first time you’ve shown your gallery’s artwork at a real estate opening?” I asked Curran.
Leslie Curran, a former City Council member and longtime cheerleader for St. Pete’s EDGE Business District, began working as a custom frame designer 30 years ago and upscale framing is still a mainstay at her gallery, which recently moved to the Uptown Arts District at 1234 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. St. N.
“No, we’ve done this a few times before,” she said, adding, however, that this house was particularly enjoyable to work in.
Enjoyable, I imagine, because the house itself is a work of art. A mid-century built in 1964 and designed by Sanford M. Goldman, who studied under Frank Lloyd Wright at the Taliesin Fellowship – the modern structure is flooded with light, with floor to ceiling windows that offer spectacular water views.
The house also boasts walls of stacked rough-cut stone and original longleaf yellow pine paneling, so there are plenty of places to hang art. Curran found some unique spots to do just that.
A painting by Herbert Davis called Koi Pond sits above a sunken tub in one of the home’s four+ bathrooms. BC Woo’s Clown Fish is cleverly tucked behind the owner’s collection of fishing rods.
On the kitchen wall four small oil paintings by Lance Rodgers of a tomato, two pears, an apple and cherries create a collage of shapes with a sleek, boxy black telephone and a modern gear-inspired clock.
Three small pink paintings look down onto a baby crib, including, appropriately, a cubist-inspired oil by John Taormina entitled Family.
Another oil painting by Taormina, the head of a girl looking like it was chiseled from wood, was offered in a raffle at the Art + Home event as an enticement to drop in.
Those who did were treated at the door by a jazz saxophonist and invited in, to wander through the house at our own pace. Drinks were available at a bar overlooking the Bay and a fruit and vegetable spread was offered in the kitchen.
When I admired a snake-like sculpture on the bar, the friend I came with pointed out that it was made of movie film. She had seen a similar one at a museum in her hometown of Rochester, N.Y., the longtime home of Kodak.
Sure enough, when I checked my program it was a piece by Nancy Cervenka, made of movie film and resin.
Throughout the evening, I watched Richard Seidel sitting at an easel in a corner under a floating staircase, painting the crowd swirling around him.
I returned from time to time to check on his progress. A Florida artist, he is one of the few Florida artists whose work hangs in the Florida State Capitol building. By the evening’s end, he had finished the work.
In another part of the house I talked with illustrator Alli Arnold about her whimsical drawings on a mobile display set in the center of the room.
A graduate of Parsons School of Design, Arnold created illustrations for the New York Times, Tiffany & Co., Travel + Leisure and Penguin Publishing before moving to St. Petersburg. She now offers to draw people’s houses on commission, she told me, as she penned a hand-drawn calling card for me on the spot.
Behind her were six recesses set in the wall, displaying pieces by ceramists Dan Meisner, Rob Giardano and Robert Hodgell.
My favorite artwork on view? The haunting mixed media piece by Ezra Siegel entitled 16, referring perhaps to the 16 repeated images of a profile, a figure with an enormous eye, drawn seemingly without lifting the pen. According to the blurb on him on the ARTicles website, the artist was born in Chicago to artistic parents and has exhibited around the globe, winning several Best in Show awards.
I couldn’t afford Siegel’s painting anymore than I could afford the multimillion dollar house where it was being shown, but that is the one thing, I discovered at Art + Home, that real estate and art do have in common.
They both are the stuff dreams are made of.
