Living Color
Creativity leads the way of life for Towles Court resident artists
Photo:Dave Czarnecki
In Towles Court, time does not rush by with the harried agenda so familiar to most Florida communities.
Rather, the two-block haven in downtown Sarasota is a place where butterflies flit serenely along a well-used cobblestone path through a garden lush with vegetation and eclectic sculpture. The path ends at a short set of creaky stairs leading up to a quaint, wood-frame house.
An easel lies propped against a green, wooden railing on the porch of the bungalow.
As a petite, auburn-haired woman in an oversized shirt decorated with a beach scene prepares to paint, birds are heard chirping in the background. “The atmosphere here is so conducive to creativity,” she says lightheartedly, preoccupied with her work.
Nearby, water trickles and splashes in a fountain, and the wind flows gently through the stately oaks, rustling leaves and causing wind chimes hanging from the porch to clash harmoniously as they twist and sway.
“There’s no other place like this,” she adds, smiling whimsically.
In the distance, a car horn sounds, disrupting the illusion of timelessness; then another adds to the discordance. A semi-truck rumbles as it pulls a tractor-trailer over an uneven intersection. Cars screech to a halt as preoccupied drivers misjudge a yellow traffic light.
Despite its setting in the middle of the hustle and bustle of one of the octogenarian and tourism capitals of Florida, the Towles Court Artist Colony provides a colorful sanctuary for artists looking to escape the ordinary in Sarasota. The community sits in the shadow of drab high-rise condos and office buildings, down an easily missed side street off the busy highway 301.
“When you’re here, you almost forget how busy the world is. There’s just a calming atmosphere in Towles Court,” says Rosalie Silver, the auburn-haired woman preparing to paint on the porch of her bungalow.
By that atmosphere, Silver means the more than 40 artist galleries and studios, all clustered together in the lush two-block stretch between the narrow roads of Adams Lane and Morrill Street, and housed in restored, multi-colored bungalows and cottages where some of the artists both live and work.
“For anyone who is an artist, it is their dream to own their own gallery,” says Silver, who has owned and operated her own gallery, The Rosalie> Silver Gallery, in Towles Court since 1998. “It’s such a bonus to have this support system for each other here in Towles Court. We share with each other and have become close like an extended family.”
Although the Towles Court artists practice a serene culture set apart from the hurried, hectic lifestyle of the city that engulfs it, Silver says the artists contribute to Sarasota’s flourishing artistic side.
“If you walk down a couple of blocks that way,” she says gesturing north, “you’ll see a large mural painted on one of the high-rises. One of our artists did that.”
In addition to painting murals, Silver says some of the artists teach classes at Sarasota’s renowned Ringling School of Art and Design.
Although the moss-draped oaks have shaded the neighborhood for nearly a century, it is only recently that the enclave of bungalows and cottages has housed artists and their galleries.
Through a history of prosperous and perilous times, the fortunes of the neighborhood have ebbed and flowed. The community finds its origins in a golf course that was built in 1905 by Sarasota’s first mayor, John Gillespie, who also built a home on the land that is now Towles Court. The golf course survived until the 1920s, when William B. Towles transformed the area into a small residential neighborhood for professional people and seasonal residents.
The neighborhood fell into decline after nearly three decades when new shopping malls and gated communities drained the prosperity from downtown Sarasota. The historic cottages of Towles Court were then carved into cramped apartments for migrant workers.
“During that time, the area succumbed to the other vices of low-income housing, such as drugs and prostitution,” says Silver, who has served as tour guide and historian for Towles Court. “It got so run-down that the city was planning to demolish it.”
The blighted area avoided the wrecking ball when it was rescued by Sarasota businessman and real estate mogul, N. J. Olivieri, in 1983.
“Olivieri bought up the houses, and planned to transform the community into something to resemble Colonial Williamsburg, [Virginia],” Silver says, while walking through the doorway to the front porch of her restored house. “He wanted the community to be very picturesque.”
In the early 1990s, Olivieri’s friends approached him with the unconventional idea of developing the area as an artists’ colony and, in less than two months, over 200 artists nationwide had written letters endorsing Olivieri’s new plan. The first artist signed a lease and moved into Towles Court in 1995, starting a trend that has attracted more than 40 other artists since.
Special zoning provisions have been secured so that artists can both live and work in the community; it is the only such place in Florida.
Following a cobblestone and wood planked walkway from The Rosalie Silver Gallery across the sculpture garden, where the hodge-podged sculptures and statues adorn the grass like multi-colored sprinkles on lime-colored ice cream, a visitor passes bungalows of lavender, canary yellow, red and lime.
On the corner of Adams Lane and Links Avenue, so named when the quaint neighborhood was a golf course for John Gillespie, is the tidy Beverly Fleming Gallery.
“I grew up in Boca Grande in a family of artists,” says the pleasant, grandmotherly Beverly Fleming, who recently moved out of her Towles Court bungalow so she could have more gallery space. “I found out about Towles Court from my cousin, who is also an artist, who knew another artist who was working and living here.”
Fleming’s gallery has a small, homey environment, with paintings of egrets and Floridian scenes hanging on the walls. A faint, sweet scent of potpourri wafts through the air, as browsers drift in and out of the rooms, making the aged wooden floor boards creak. Soft, mellow music flows gently through the rooms.
“I lived here for about four years, and I loved it,” Fleming says. “Being surrounded by other artists gives you such a unique environment in which to live and work. It’s a great, wonderful community to live here with so many others who have the same interests, and that gives a lot of energy to your work.”
Fleming, a self-taught artist, has daughters who also paint and display their artwork in Towles Court.
“Coming from an artistic family, it’s meaningful to come to a community where you’re surrounded by people who remind you of that,” she says. “We love to help one another out, and give advice on our work, like a family would do.”
Although many of the artists at Towles Court paint, other art forms are also explored and practiced.
A scripted sign on a teal bungalow with goldenrod trim and icicle lights announces yoga classes and other lessons and practices in the healing arts.
Glossy pottery shines on display in the windows of a white bungalow with ivy climbing delicately up its garnet trim to a second-story veranda. This is the Katherine Butler Gallery, and it displays artwork from a number of Sarasota-based artists.
Inside this spacious, modern-looking gallery, art by Larry Forgard hangs on one wall. A sign above his collages of paintings and photography reads:
“In my paintings, time and motion are woven together. To convey this concept, I create figures that move and interact with their environment, co-mingling day and night on canvas. My figures move and twist while leaving imprints of past actions.”
Another type of art practiced in Towles Court is expressive art therapy. The Inner Visions Community Art Studio and Gallery, run by Kathleen Horne and Victoria Domenichello-Anderson, an expressive arts therapist and practitioner, respectively.
This tiny gallery and studio, located in the corner of a bungalow that houses another gallery and a residence, displays artwork that is different from any other works in Towles Court. Many of the pieces are mixed media to include 3-dimensional abstract designs, and do not stray far from the primary colors of reds, yellows and blues. The energy at Inner Visions makes it unique from the other galleries, as well.
Horne is the coordinator for Inner Visions, and has been in Towles Court since 1997.
“When I came here, only a few of the houses had been remodeled, and many were still in their semi-fallen down state,” Horne says. “The courtyard was dirt, and very little of the landscaping had been completed. I have seen this place flourish since I’ve been here. It’s been great to see this vision come alive.”
It was by chance that Horne stumbled upon Towles Court.
“One morning, I was driving to my old studio in another part of Sarasota several years ago, and I accidentally turned down a wrong street,” Horne says in her native British Columbian accent. “I saw the Towles Court houses being restored, and all the other work being done here. I thought the idea of being a part of community devoted to the arts was unique, and I thought an opportunity to be a part of a quaint area was something I should do.”
Horne says she was also drawn to the outdoor atmosphere available in Towles Court’s park-like setting, adding that Towles Court is a safe place for people to feel at ease. The community itself has soothing qualities for those who visit, and for those who have chosen to stay, like Horne.
“Our gallery is devoted to the healing arts, and I thought that would be something unique to bring to this community,” Horne says.
Some of the artwork in Inner Visions is completed by abused children as therapy, and a portion of all the sales goes to the Visions of Hope project to help abused children.
“What we’ve done here in Towles Court is creating a community where people with different creative ideas live and work communally,” says Horne, who also mentioned that on the third Friday of each month Towles Court has an “Art Walk,” where all the shops are open at night. “We are starting traditions here, with our Art Walks, and our vibrancy and excitement.”
Towles Court is easy to miss when visiting Sarasota. It remains purposely quaint and evasive. The artists are friendly, both to visitors and to each other. They pleasantly call out to one another as they step out onto their porches, or walk across the sculpture garden to visit a neighbor during the day, but they don’t want their community to become another tourist attraction in the busy atmosphere of the tourist-laden city.
They are content to keep their quiet, oak canopied lanes and unhurried lifestyles, where a visitor can sit for a moment on a tiled bench in the sculpture garden and watch a chameleon scurry through the leaves of a lush shrub, or listen to the tinkling of a wind chime.
Towles Court is Sarasota’s Oz, and the artists who discovered it plan to keep the community vibrant and unique.
“Living and working with these artists gives you a challenge and a change to the everyday life we were each leading before we came to Towles Court,” Horne says. “That is what keeps me here.”