ArtLofts Studios & Gallery - Working Artists
One Floor Up: The Working World of ArtLofts
Above one of Central Avenue's busiest galleries sits a quieter institution — twenty studios where St. Petersburg's art is not displayed but made.
Most visitors to 501 Central Avenue never learn there's a second act upstairs. They wander the Florida CraftArt galleries at street level, admire the ceramics and blown glass, and leave without noticing the elevator — or the staircase that leads, one floor up, to a hallway lined with open doors, paint-spattered tables, jeweler's benches, easels, and the low hum of work in progress. This is ArtLofts: roughly twenty working artists' studios occupying the second story of a 1916 building that has been, in previous lives, Rutland's Department Store and the Golden Dragon Dance Hall.
If the galleries of the Central Arts District are the district's public face, ArtLofts is its engine room. It is one of the oldest continuously operating studio communities in downtown St. Petersburg — resident artists date it back more than two decades — and it offers something increasingly rare on this stretch of Central Avenue: a place where art gets made, in public view, at rents a working artist can survive.
Born of a Bold Purchase
ArtLofts owes its existence to a real estate decision. When the nonprofit then known as Florida Craftsmen (today Florida CraftArt) bought its building outright in 2002, the acquisition came with an entire second floor — and rather than lease it to offices, the organization turned it over to artists. The floor was carved into studios, initially numbering around 19 or 20 depending on the configuration, along with a shared meeting space called the Creative Loft, where Florida CraftArt now hosts workshops, lectures, and classes.
That decision quietly rewired the building's purpose. Downstairs, Florida CraftArt sells finished fine craft by juried artists from across the state; upstairs, ArtLofts houses the unfinished version — the sketches, the failed experiments, the works in progress. A visitor can watch a piece travel, over months, from a second-floor workbench to a first-floor pedestal. Few buildings anywhere in Florida contain the entire life cycle of an artwork under one roof.
It's worth noting the arrangement's structure, because it's frequently misunderstood: ArtLofts is not simply a wing of Florida CraftArt. The studio artists are independent — they rent their spaces, maintain their own collective identity (complete with their own gallery, website, and programming), and operate under their own name, The ArtLofts of St. Petersburg. The relationship is symbiotic rather than corporate: the nonprofit downstairs gains a resident creative community; the artists upstairs gain a Central Avenue address in the heart of the arts district, an elevator-accessible space, and 56,000 pairs of feet passing through the building every year.
Who Works Upstairs
The roster rotates as artists arrive, outgrow their spaces, or move on, but the mix has stayed consistent for years: painters, photographers, sculptors, jewelers, fiber artists, and workers in copper and mixed media, around twenty at any given time. The hallway functions as a permanent group show, and a shared ArtLofts Gallery near the entrance mounts rotating exhibitions of members' and guest artists' work.
Some names give a sense of the range. Photographer Joe Walles, a former St. Petersburg Times photographer and picture editor whose black-and-white documentary prints are made in his own darkroom, has shown gelatin silver work in the ArtLofts Gallery. Painter John Gascot, one of the city's most visible LGBTQ+ artists, debuted his pop-inflected "Sweet Boys" series in the second-floor gallery. Fiber artist Jeanine Hascall and acrylic painter Mavis Gibson have exhibited side by side, draped textile against canvas. B. Stark Art holds down Studio 208. And the floor has history as an incubator: metal and enamel artist Mary Klein — a Florida CraftArt member since 1981 whose work appeared in the organization's 75th-anniversary exhibition this spring — once kept her studio upstairs, a reminder that ArtLofts has been feeding the galleries below for a generation.
The Second Saturday Ritual
For most of the month, ArtLofts runs on the rhythm of private work — studios are open "by appointment or by chance," in the community's standing phrase, meaning a visitor who wanders up on a weekday might find three doors open or none. The exception is the second Saturday of every month, when the entire floor throws itself open from 5 to 9 p.m. for the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance's citywide ArtWalk.
On those nights, ArtLofts becomes one of the signature stops on the Central Arts District route — a listed venue on the ArtWalk's Central Avenue trolley line alongside the Morean, Studio@620, and Florida CraftArt itself. Visitors climb the stairs to find every studio lit, artists at their benches, works in progress on the walls, and often a bar, a DJ, or an opening reception in the gallery. It is the one night a month when the district's engine room runs with the hood open, and for many of the resident artists it is also the month's best sales night — collectors who discover a painter mid-canvas in March come back to buy the finished work in May.
Why It Matters
Every arts district eventually faces the same math: the galleries that make a neighborhood desirable drive up the rents that push out the artists who supply them. Downtown St. Petersburg has not been immune — studio space in the core has grown scarce as Central Avenue's storefronts have filled with restaurants and boutiques, and much of the city's working-artist population has migrated to the Warehouse Arts District and points south and west.
ArtLofts is one of the few counterexamples: affordable working studios surviving at the district's dead center, protected by the fact that their landlord is a nonprofit whose mission is helping artists make a living rather than maximizing a rent roll. When a studio opens up, Florida CraftArt and the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance circulate the vacancy through calls to artists — and the spaces do not stay empty long. As long as the arrangement holds, the Central Arts District retains something most gentrified arts corridors have lost: actual artists, actually working, one floor above the point of sale.
The best way to understand it is simply to go. Take the stairs at 10 5th Street North on a second Saturday, or ride the elevator on a quiet Tuesday and knock on an open door. Somebody upstairs is making something.
Visit: The ArtLofts of St. Petersburg, 10 5th St. N. (second floor, above Florida CraftArt, 501 Central Ave.). Open to the public every second Saturday, 5–9 p.m., during ArtWalk; otherwise by appointment or by chance. Elevator accessible. Information: TheArtLofts.com or theartlofts@gmail.com; studio rental inquiries through Florida CraftArt, (727) 821-7391.
Sources: Florida CraftArt organizational history; The ArtLofts of St. Petersburg; St. Petersburg Arts Alliance ArtWalk listings; Visit St. Pete-Clearwater; FOX 13 Tampa Bay.
