Linwood and Saskia Fuller are an energetic local couple who aim to offer their Off Island Studio space to artists whose work excites them.
Located in a light industrial complex at 3435 Aviation Boulevard, Off Island Studio is a place where artists – or creative people in general – can come to the studio’s Saturday morning open house with their ideas for projects, events or exhibitions. If the Fullers are receptive to the idea, there is a chance that Off Island Studio will supply the space, tools and know-how to bring the project to light.
The Saturday open houses start at 9 a.m., “surf permitting,” says Linwood.
Fuller, a painter and digital artist, designs boats by day for Pursuit in Fort Pierce – one design he worked on was named Boat of the Year by Boating magazine in 2011.
He is also the technical brains behind Off Island Studio. Saskia Fuller, a metalsmith who creates her own jewelry designs, acts as the studio’s manager and publicist. Together they dream of bringing a diverse mix of creative people and ideas to the Vero art scene.
“We have a friend who’s writing a rock opera,” says Linwood, who explains that when the project is finished, it will debut at Off Island Studio.
Another friend is a fashion designer. “He goes up to New York to do a show, and goes out to L.A. to do shows. We said to him, “Why don’t we do a local show? Wouldn’t that be fun?’”
Those events are yet to be announced on the gallery’s calendar, but according to Saskia, the schedule is “already pretty full” for art exhibitions in the 2015-16 season.
Since opening in January with an inaugural exhibition of Linwood Fuller’s paintings (which combine a flair for cartooning, humor and tropical subject matter), the space has hosted art shows in February (surrealist painter Charles Blake) and March (photographer Rochelle Haisley). The upcoming “Banyan Tree Park Benefit,” an art exhibition held in cooperation with the newly-formed Florida Conservancy, Inc., will be held on Friday, April 17 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
The show will feature artworks in turned wood, sculpture, mosaic, block printing, painting and jewelry by Jack Shelton, Ginny Piech Street, Anita Prentice, Brooke Malone, as well as works by both Linwood and Saskia Fuller. A percentage of sales will help fund the purchase of a tree-filled lot on State Road 60 for a public park. The lot is the site of the house – now razed – of noted Vero Beach resident Dr. W. H. Humiston.
Exhibitions at Off Island Studio are presented for one night only. Looking for all the world like an opening night reception for a month-long art exhibition, the shows open and close within the span of four hours.
The Fullers have their reasons for keeping the shows brief.
“It’s not an art gallery like that,” say Saskia. “It’s a space for one night where we show pieces, but then it becomes work space again.”
Linwood adds, “We don’t have a prime location. We’re not on the main drag. The thought is, if we make it a special, one-night thing, it tends to work out. Gets people excited. If they miss it, they miss it.”
Because Off Island Studio is not air-conditioned, the Fullers don’t know if the exhibitions will continue during the hottest months of the year.
But with a large roll-up door in back that provides lots of ventilation, the studio might be the perfect summertime venue to screen works by local filmmakers and videographers, according to Linwood.
“We are open for any ideas,” he says.
The Fullers and their two boys, ages 12 and 14, lived in Fort Piece for 11 years before moving to Vero about 18 months ago. Saskia and Linwood started Off Island Studio a little over three years ago in Fort Pierce, in Art Mundo’s downtown “Art Bank” building. The pair still has strong ties to the Fort Pierce art community: last November they were part of the 6th Annual “Reflections of the Future” exhibition, a small group show organized by Main Street Fort Pierce at its historic Platts/Backus House.
Before moving to Fort Pierce the couple shared a life of adventure that forms the basis of Off Island Studio’s open-door policy. They met on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, a world away from Linwood’s hometown of St. Louis, MO, and the latest stop in a free-wheeling life of odd jobs and travel. He found employment on the island with a sail maker and local character, Manfred Dittrich. Saskia, meanwhile, was working for a German jeweler.
They met at a place in Charlotte Amalie called The Greenhouse, a restaurant that offered dancing at night.
Saskia had celebrated a personal milestone a week before Linwood, who also goes by Skip, came into her life.
“Skip was my 30th birthday present,” she says.
A German national who had attended art school in Pretoria, South Africa, Saskia was in St. Thomas on a year-long visa.
“I knew, after a year, I had to go back. I had applied to do a master’s degree in metalsmithing in Germany. So when we met I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do this, and how are we going to work this out?’” says Saskia.
Linwood, who had held jobs servicing paper mill machinery for several years prior to meeting Saskia, had an idea that would keep them together for a little while longer. The couple traveled to West Virginia where he quickly earned enough as a worker on a paper mill machine overhaul to finance a month-long tour of the U.S. on motorcycles for the two of them. Then Saskia left for Munich.
Linwood visited there twice, painting and drawing in Saskia’s 300-square-foot apartment during the day while she was at school. They were married in Orlando in June 1999, shortly after Saskia was awarded her degree.
They eventually landed in Fort Pierce to visit Linwood’s father, who, after spending his early retirement sailing in the Caribbean, had come to anchor there. He had friends in the boat building business, and Linwood got his first job in the city on the strength of his experience with industrial machinery. He soon graduated from aligning boat motors to making models of boat parts. Known as plugs, the precise representations would be used to make molds for boat decks or hulls.
Linwood’s nascent interest in sculpting in his high school days found full expression in the work.
When computerized machining made hand-formed plugs obsolete, Linwood quickly mastered the operation of a CNC (computer numerical control) machine.
A three-axis CNC router currently takes up one corner of the floor space at Off Island Studio. It can cut a four-by-eight sheet of plywood, Linwood says. At present he is running a test with the machine, drilling holes in a plywood sheet to form a pointillist picture of a South Seas Tiki figure.
He has ideas for 50 art projects that he wants to try out on the machine, he says. His plan is to help budding artist-entrepreneurs make prototypes of artworks that might later be manufactured as editions.
All he needs now are kindred spirits.
”I think that a lot of people are artists, they just – there’s a bit of a stigma that comes along with that,” he says.
“If someone is an engineer and wants to reclassify themselves (as an artist) that can be hard for them. So we just call them an inventor or whatever,” says the self-made artist-engineer.
“It’s a little more encompassing,” he adds.