Art Uptown Gallery closing in downtown Sarasota after 43 years

SARASOTA — One of Sarasota's best-known artists' studios, Art Uptown Gallery, will permanently close on Aug. 26 displacing almost 30 local artists whose work is currently on view at the historic 2,000-square-foot gallery on upper Main Street.

For 43 years, Art Uptown served as a gathering place for working artists in the city. The membership model allowed artists to use the two-story, historic space to connect with other local artists, create new projects in the studios and showcase their work to locals and visitors.

Now, many of the 27 artists who currently use Art Uptown Gallery are unsure of their next steps after the gallery closes later this month due to rising costs of tenant rent.

Evelyn McCorristin Peters, Art Uptown Gallery's long-time treasurer, has been an artist in the gallery for eight years. The gallery's membership-based co-op model allowed artists' dues to be used to cover the cost of the gallery's bills since its inception. Unlike typical galleries, Uptown retained around 3% of artists' total sales, allowing the artists to retain a large portion of all of their art sales. The co-op model was unique to Art Uptown but with the rising costs of tenant leases locally the cost to stay in the space couldn't be sustained long-term by the gallery artists.

"I wasn't surprised at all. It was just a matter of time. We were really lucky here. In the past eight years we've had the best group of artists, not just in their quality of art but their spirit and who they are," Peters said.

Peters' oil paintings and abstracts have taken over her time over the past few months she said, but her favorite art depictions are of four-legged canines she's been painting for the past 15 years. She is one of the few artists at Uptown who have plans for their work following the gallery's closing.

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"I think a lot of people will likely just stop showing... Some people have other outlets where they sell, but not everyone. As an artist, it's really important to get the eyes on the work and to get that validation, otherwise, it just gets lonely and you feel alone."

New Sarasota building owners

Marlane Wurzbach, 73, has been a member of the Art Uptown Gallery for the last five years. She’s watched galleries in Sarasota close over the past year and said she had a feeling that her gallery’s expiration date was also drawing near.

“I knew it was inevitable when the benevolent landlady passed away,” she said. “I was very happy there... I had never thought about going to another gallery.”

Art Uptown was notified around Aug. 1 by a letter from the new building owners and was asked then to decide whether the organization wanted to stay in its long-time space and begin to pay the market rate for leasing a prominent and historic downtown Sarasota building space.

“When we heard the proposal from the new owner it was hard,” she said. “Yes, it is the going rate, but there's no way we could afford it.”

After the purchase of the building by new owners in July, Wurzbach and the gallery's board of directors were disheartened to see the new rental rate of $7,000 a month for gallery use.

A committee was formed in early August to search for a new space closer to the group's previous 'generous' monthly rent of $1,000 Wurzbach said, but the group hasn't had much luck finding a comparable space.

"The foot traffic, the windows, and being right there on Main Street, we haven’t found anything like it,” Wurzbach said. “Because of its cement block, it stopped a raging fire from proceeding up Main Street and destroying more of the street."

The building itself is a historic part of Sarasota’s architectural footprint according to local history archives and was one of only a few buildings that survived the Main Sreet fire in the winter of 1910.

The Art Uptown website will remain up for the foreseeable future, Peters said, and customers and art enthusiasts will be able to connect with current gallery artists via their personal websites on the gallery's page.

"I know people are staying here in the community and we will keep working. We are going out with our heads held high, we plan to keep getting together to support each other. We are very grateful for all the support over the years," she said.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota Art Uptown closure to leave 27 artists without a home gallery