Henry "Pete"
Petersen moved to Jacksonville in 1976, just out of graduate school
and hoping to make a living as an artist.
He found it tough going. There were a handful of successful
artists working here at the time, notably Joseph Jeffers "Jerry"
Dodge.
But the city had no venues for unknown, avant garde artists.
Neither of the city's major museums showed much interest in emerging
local artists and there was only one major commercial gallery, the
Contemporanea, with a clientele that favored safe, commercial art
over the shock of the new.
That's changed. Jacksonville isn't a paradise for the young
artist yet. But increasingly, it's a place where young artists see
an opportunity to live and work.
That's the underlying theme of Street Scene: A Decade of New
Painting in Jacksonville, a show, curated by Petersen, whichd
last night at the University of North Florida's University Gallery.
The show consists of the work of 11 artists who established their
careers "in and around" Jacksonville's Riverside neighborhood and
the Five Points district in the 1990s.
The geographic link was an accident, Petersen said. "It wasn't my
intention," he said. "It just seemed to be where the art world was
happening in those years."
More significant to him was that his chosen artists were deeply
committed to their work. "For these people, paint is nearly as
essential as air," he said.
Artists of his generation, Petersen said, tended to live middle
class lives, with jobs and obligations that prevented them from
focusing on their art. But then, artists of his generation didn't
have the opportunities today's artists have.
"They are certainly getting more exposure," said George Kinghorn,
chief curator of the Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art. "There are
just more venues now and more opportunities to exhibit your work
than there were when I was growing up here."
Tom McCleery, who owns the Five Points boutique Edge City, began
buying the work of Jacksonville artists back in the 1970s. But he
was unusual at the time. The prevailing attitude was an odd sort of
provincialism, a belief that the work couldn't be good if it was
local.
McCleery traces the change in that attitude to the arrival of the
Jacksonville Jaguars. "The most important thing that happened to the
city was that the Jaguars came and people began to think it was OK
to live here, that it was cool."
During the 1990s, McCleery's shop was in the middle of the
burgeoning art scene. In fact, in 1999, an organization called Art
Stop was formed to discuss designating an official Jacksonville arts
district. The group quickly focused on Park Street, which runs from
Brooklyn neighborhood, through Five Points, into Riverside. At the
time, a group of entrepreneurs were rehabbing an old drug rehab
center into the Brooklyn Contemporary Art Center, which was going to
be the largest art center south of Atlanta.
But the Florida Department of Transportation intervened,
demolishing the bridge that linked Five Points with Brooklyn, then
demolishing the Brooklyn center. Artists scattered. Meanwhile, rents
were rising as gentrification began reclaiming much of Riverside.
Five Points' loss became Springfield's gain. Now most of the 11
artists in the Street Scene show are working in Springfield. As Lee
Harvey, a Street Scene artist who once ran a gallery in Five Points,
later had studio space in Brooklyn, and is nowng a gallery in
Springfield, said: "Artists go where the cheap space is."
And where opportunity exists. As it now does in Jacksonville.
Charlie Patton's column appears on Wednesday, Friday and
Sunday. Contact him at cpatton
jacksonville.com or .
