Art for All. Play for All. Joy for All. How could I resist visiting a venue with this tagline? So I grabbed some friends and headed to St. Pete to experience The Fairgrounds. It was a blast.
The Fairgrounds' website explains what to expect as follows: "Our 15,000 foot artist-made environment is a choose-your-own-adventure art and technology experience with multiple ways for you to participate in the narrative celebrating weird, wacky, wonderful Florida." Not wholly enlightening, I know, but it's pretty accurate. From the moment you step into the front door, a wildly creative world opens up, with each room offering a different art experience.
All of the rooms are immersive, and many have an interactive element. In one room, a spotlight highlighted different areas of the scene as I waved my hand around. In another -- located in the Mermaid Motel -- you can lounge on the bed and watch a cartoon on a 1960s style TV. And in order to see this skyline, you lean into a rectangular hole in a wall. (I'm counting that as interactive!) Once you've inserted yourself into the environment, you feel as if you're actually standing under this bridge taking in the view. The lights shimmer across the water, which gently laps at the shore. It was magical.
Then we came upon a room with only static art. How old fashioned! But there was plenty going on, with 20 incredibly creative dioramas awaiting viewers. The artists must have had so much fun making them.
I was drawn to the sunniness of the diorama shown here, which reminded me of David Hockney's work. The floor and walls of another box were covered with seashells, bringing to mind the painful shell "art" found in tourist shops at Panama City Beach. Once I got past that, I realized there are framed miniatures of famous paintings on the walls, from the Obama portraits to the Mona Lisa to Warhol's Marilyn. Botticelli's Birth of Venus was, of course, perched on a clamshell. Perhaps the creator is asking us to consider what constitutes art and beauty. And then there was the scene in which two dolls were enjoying some time at the beach, complete with the obligatory pink flamingos and a gator. While it sounds like pretty standard stuff, it was actually somewhat unsettling. The bodies of our beachgoers looked like those of Ken and Barbie. The heads, though, were taken from standard size baby dolls. They left with me with a kind of Chucky feeling. Creepy.
The Fairgrounds is the brainchild of Liz Dimmitt, who calls herself a "cultural strategist." After living in New York for many years, she came home to St. Pete to work in the family business. But she wanted to do something creative as well -- and she went big. Dimmitt found a partner, purchased a warehouse and started looking for artists to make her vision reality. At the end of the day, 64 artists -- most Florida residents -- put on their creative thinking caps to make The Fairgrounds happen. Interestingly, while the artists were compensated for their contributions to the project, they also share in the proceeds from ticket sales so long as their work is on view. It's a truly collaborative project.
Perhaps the most exciting thing about The Fairgrounds is that it's a permanent arts venue. It's intended to be an anchor in the ever-growing St. Pete art scene. The current iteration will be in place for several months, allowing plenty of time for people to find their way there -- probably more than once. (I'm already planning my next visit.) I suspect a whole new set of artists are already hard at work on creating the next version of The Fairgrounds. By then, the entire complex should be complete, with a coffee shop and a record store and more to entertain visitors.
For information on The Fairgrounds, click
here. This is one art experience you won't want to miss.
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