Did you know Seminole Heights had art galleries? Have you heard of Seminole Heights? This is my neighborhood and we’re pretty centrally located; north of Tampa Heights and Downtown Tampa. There’s six art galleries in and around the Seminole Heights area: Epoxy, The Hatchway Gallery at Florida Avenue Ales, Kirk Ke Wang Art Space, QUAID, Tempus Projects and the one I’m featuring today is called Workspace.

If you’ve heard of Seminole Heights, the food and craft beer scene is probably the first you hear. A little gem in this charming rough is the art scene that’s been blossoming. Workspace is one in particular that holds shows on a monthly basis and seems to have brought the community out and about a little more. The opening night of these shows are held weekend evenings and it’s an outing we look forward to attending because it’s a great relaxing event to see different art and meet the local artists. Plus it’s kid friendly and easy to grab dinner before or after the show at one of the local restaurants in the neighborhood. Workspace is located off Florida Avenue in walking distance of a fellow art gallery, Tempus Projects and a popular, classic diner in Seminole Heights, Nickos. All events are FREE and a light selection of snacks, beer and wine are available. The best part, most shows are reasonably priced so don’t have to worry about rubbing two pennies together to incorporate local art in your home, office or even a gift!

Workspace’s building houses two other artistic businesses, Built and Back 40.

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tumblr_mqf6iuzRJ61szdewjo1_500 — The Workspace art gallery and wood sliding door made by Built.

Built uses the majority of the space as this is a hand-crafted furniture and fixtures shop. Have you heard of the new restaurant Ulele opening soon on the Riverwalk, just north of Downtown? Well, Built has been busy building the interiors! Here’s the latest article on the progress.

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Back 40 is in the back of the building that sells repurposed mid-century furniture by Workspace’s curator and also local artist, Chris Kelly, and hand-crafted furniture by Andrew Watson from Built. The only part left of this crafty building is the front, where the gallery of Workspace is housed.

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One of my favorite shows that kids really loved was by Cory Robinson called ‘Best Friends’. His work has fun, quirky animal and people drawings I think are adorable and perfect for not only your home but children’s rooms. Cory incorporated ‘kid approved’ snacks and colorful ‘best friend’ bracelets that the kids and adults happily wore throughout the night as well as photo-ops with life size animals in the front yard. At this show, I personally picked up two water color prints that are in my newly designed nursery. I picked out one of a little girl since we’re expecting one and a lamb because that’s been our chosen ‘baby’ animal that we’ve incorporated into her room. We chose a lamb because we have a herding dog, a Mini Australian Shepherd and he’s always reminded us of a fluffy lamb since he has no tail, thus our favoritism towards lambs

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There’s been so many good shows at Workspace and we’ve managed to purchase pieces we still aren’t sure where to hang in our house. If you follow Workspace on Facebook and their blog you’ll be able to see previous shows and previews for the next upcoming show. They’ve also started showcasing the artists and making promo videos so you can get a feel for the artist and their work before attending the show. You can find these on their social media sites as well. On Saturday, April 5th, Workspace did a fun show featuring the painting and photography from the 6th, 7th and 8th graders of Corbett Preparatory School of IDS. The next show at Workspace is this Saturday, April 19th from 6pm – 10pm called ‘Slow your Roll’ by local artist, Angus Shafer.

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Angus Shafer – “Slow Your Roll” at Workspace from Harbr Co. on Vimeo.

Now that there’s revolving events happening in the area, First Fridays Seminole Heights has recently emerged! On the First Friday of every month ALL of the art galleries in and around Seminole Heights have their doors open from 6pm-10pm and this month three local businesses joined the list; Seminole Heights Antiques, A Modern Line and Still in the Heights. This is a great way to bop around the neighborhood and take a peek at what your local galleries have in store. May 2nd is the next First Friday, mark it in your calendar and don’t forget to ‘Like’ their Facebook page for the map of participating shops.

April’s stops included: