SPL SPOTLIGHT
Where the Arts are in Bloom Year-Round Gulfport
12 StPeteLifeMag.com March/April 2020
PHOTOS/LARRY BUSBY
It’s a warm Saturday evening in Gulfport and the town’s cultural
and business center, Beach Boulevard, is alive with a creative
energy usually reserved for towns much larger than this artists’
enclave of 12,000 or so on the shores of Boca Ciega Bay.
Locals and visitors make their way along the many new shops,
restaurants and storefronts that have introduced themselves
as part of the town’s unique charm in the past year and vendors
and artists have taken their places for the town’s monthly third
Saturday arts event.
of portraiture that has landed her on the cover of national arts
publications.
echoing the title of her subject, Neil Young’s, seminal 1972
recording, and in some ways the arts community is experiencing
its own harvest from the seeds planted by the creative hands of
the artists who came before like Owen Patch, Frank Strunk, Tom
Pitzen and August Vernon, to name just a few who have long
BY JAMES BRIGGS
/StPeteLifeMag.com