Yet another new space for art exhibitions has opened at 1365 18th Street, just south of 14th Avenue’s main gallery district.
“Art on 18th Gallery” is the brainchild of artist and art therapist Marcy Purdy, known to the fans of her art form, Gyotaku fish printing, as “MarSea.”
Purdy owns the mixed-use commercial building that includes the gallery, a small front room and a narrow hallway. The May exhibition features work by Julie Lounibos, a painter better known in Fort Pierce than Vero Beach.
Bringing in artists who have had little exposure in Vero is part of the gallery’s focus, says Purdy.
A St. Lucie County resident, Lounibos is an Art Mundo member who rents space at Orange Avenue Studios in downtown Fort Pierce. She has been there for about six years; before that she was briefly affiliated with Vero’s Artists Guild Gallery when it was on Royal Palm Pointe.
With the current exhibition, Purdy aims to reintroduce Lounibos’s work to Vero’s art audience.
“It’s very Florida,” says Purdy. “Fresh Florida. It’s bright and happy.”
Like Purdy, Lounibos finds inspiration in marine life.
“Lately, I’ve been into fish,” she says. “I’ve also been involved in an oyster shell series this past year,” she says.
She talks about the “vibrant” interior of a freshly-shucked oyster’s shell, and four of her oyster paintings are in the show. There are also compositions that show fish among flowers and leaves, and a scene of ibises sheltering in a mangrove thicket.
“Growing up along the banks of the Indian River has given me a love of its flora and fauna,” she says.
Lounibos and Purdy met at Orange Avenue Studios where Purdy, a 31-year resident of Vero Beach, has maintained a work space for the past three years. She is not the only Vero artist to find a collegial atmosphere there.
“I had to go to Fort Pierce to meet Vero artists,” she jokes.
One of those artists, Ginny Piech Street, is Purdy’s partner in Art on 18th.
Piech Street’s involvement in the gallery happened spontaneously. She was demonstrating some of her decorative printmaking techniques to Purdy when she learned of her colleague’s intention to open a gallery.
When Piech Street remarked that “the timing is perfect” for a new exhibition venue in Vero, Purdy asked for her help in organizing and hanging the shows.
“It has great potential,” says Piech Street. In her mind, the gallery’s limited space is a plus that encourages the exhibition of smaller-sized artworks.
“Small,” however, is not in Piech Street’s vocabulary when it comes to describing art.
“Intimate works need an intimate space for viewing,” she says. According to Piech Street, two kinds of artists will be drawn to exhibit at Art on 18th: those who work already in a small format, and those who “work large and want to try something different.”
Purdy’s desire to open a gallery reached a pivotal moment when she saw the new parking trolley for First Friday Art Strolls going by, headed for a stop just south of her at Project Space 1785.
She coined the term “SoVo” to describe the location of this “South Vero” part of the gallery district.
Piech Street notes that the shops and restaurants just off the beaten path of 14th Avenue can also use the catchy association with New York City’s fashionable arts district, SoHo. “It’s clever,” she says.
This is not the first time that Purdy has opened an art gallery in Vero Beach.
Purdy grew up in Michigan and received a bachelor’s degree in special education and a master’s in art therapy from Michigan State. Arriving in Indian River County via a brief stop in South Florida, she worked as a special ed counselor and art therapist at Wabasso School.
To reward students for good work, Purdy and her teaching colleagues would regularly take the children fishing at Sebastian Inlet.
“I didn’t like to fish, but I liked to print. So I started printing fish.
“I thought it was my own idea,” she says, smiling at the fact that she only later learned that the Japanese have made Gyotaku since the 19th century, when fishermen are thought to have recorded their catches by inking fish and pressing them onto rice paper.
Purdy soon tired of working in the school system, and in 1985 decided to open an art gallery in a shopping plaza, long since razed, on Beachland Boulevard.
“There was a pharmacy in there, a barber, a baker, and my art gallery. I thought I was going to bring contemporary art to Vero Beach. Well, that didn’t go over very well. It wasn’t the right time, it wasn’t the right place.”
Her enterprise lasted only one season; she later went into business for herself as an art therapist working mainly with children. Her office is in the same building as the gallery; she has owned it for nearly 20 years.
“My original plan was to have artist’s spaces and a gallery here. It didn’t work out that way. I wound up renting to acupuncturists, massage therapists and mental health counselors, mainly.”
A couple of artists have in the past rented studio space from her; Bea Bernhard, a member of the Florida Watercolor Society, was one of them.
“Bea would be in here painting, all day, every day,” says Purdy. Bernhart was the first artist to use the building’s hallway as an art gallery. That was over a decade ago.
The building is currently home to a psychologist’s evaluation rooms, a couple of private offices and Purdy’s art therapy office. The gallery is open to the public during First Friday Gallery Stroll evenings and by appointment.
“I thought, I have nothing to lose by opening this up, says Purdy. “I own the space, it would be fun to do.”
