City Celebrates Murals at Palm Avenue Garage

With all the artwork and the wind sails at the Palm Avenue Parking Garage, officials are having a tough time calling it a garage.

Mary Anne Servian of Sarasota Ballet says the ballet’s director Iain Webb might have the best term — “car parks.”

Whatever the term, officials and the arts community came out on a blustery Wednesday afternoon atop the $12 million Palm Avenue mural wonder to celebrate the completion of the deck and the artists’ work, which was completed during the Chalk Festival.

"It's a true representation of what this community values so highly, which are art and culture," Mayor Suzanne Atwell said.

Atwell said it’s unusual to discuss art in a parking garage of all places.

“My husband and I were here last Saturday night and parked on the Ballet Dance Floor,” she said. “When was the last time I went to a parking garage—a structure — and we’re talking about the arts?”

Drivers parking at the garage could talk about the Sarasota Ballet on the first level, the downtown music scene on the third level, the Sarasota Film Festival on the fourth level, the Sarasota Opera House on the fifth level and the Players Theatre on the roof.

And that’s the goal, said the garage’s architect Jonathan Parks. Not only does it get you talking about the arts scene in Sarasota and how it relates, but also the art is actually quite useful.

His team thought people would remember what floor they are on in terms of themes—dance, movies, music, opera, theater—and placed those in alphabetical order according to floor.

The street level was intentionally left without murals because the structure itself is art, Parks said.

“Architecture is the mother of all arts, so we asked the artists to leave that floor alone,” Parks said.

Also, the risk is low that someone would graffiti tag over the murals because in graffiti culture, once someone sees a piece of work like that, they leave it alone, but just to be safe, there’s a special coating over the work that aides in the removal of vandalism.

Denise Kowal, founder of the Sarasota Chalk Festival was amazed at all the work put in by the artists. Brazilian artist Eduardo Kobra alone completed more than $100,000 worth of art all over the city, she said.

Between Kobra and French artist MTO and others, who would have figured, she said, spray paint can be expensive.

“I didn’t know you could accumulate tens of thousands of dollars worth of spray paint in one location,” she said.

The Public Art Fund paid for the project for $25,000, according to city figures.

And those artists are just cool, Parks said.

“You can’t spend too much time with them because you feel so uncool—so stuff,” he said.

The graffiti culture is typically a late-night one and Parks joked that some of the artists felt like they were getting away with something.

“You’re absolutely getting away with something and because of that, give us your best work,” Parks told them. “And I have to say, I think we got their best work.”

The only work left to do for the garage is to fill the empty storefronts on street level, and the city will consider a $1.6 million bid to purchase that space on Monday.