The last person to join FMBAA before the late September hurricane swept the building away was Margie Smith, a retired educator. She remembers an eager volunteer took her hand and gave her the complete tour of the building. Art bins, Studio 2, the library, the summer show.
And then it was gone. Weeks later, Margie came to our open studio day at the Alliance for the Arts, our temporary home. She was eager to help, to belong, to make art. She even rewrote her membership check since the original was somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.
This season, she was our head of Hospitality. Since the hurricane about a dozen new members have found us. I like to ask them, “Why did you join an arts group with no building, makeshift painting space and shows in borrowed galleries?”
They say they’ve heard we have great energy, are friendly to newcomers. I’m inviting all of you to also join in FMBAA’s new adventure. Things will change. We’ll be challenged by new problems.
We can’t recreate the old FMBAA, but we can plunge into this new adventure. Almost one-third of our members – me included – have hardly known a normal season since they joined. First we had the pandemic, later the hurricane. So change has been with us for several years. And now our sandy lot on Shell Mound Boulevard has been scraped clear of debris. It’s waiting for us to erect a new framework, something special as our new
home.
Let’s look to next season with optimism. Here are some of the activities we’re planning next year, based on what you told us in the member survey:
Bus trip to an art museum in Tampa-St. Pete
More member-taught classes
Mixture of monthly speakers, demos, and potluck lunches and suppers
Opportunities for new members to get involved in newly revamped committees
Last fall, the first event we were able to organize was a group session with Chelsea Darling Havemann, an art therapist. I remember one longtime member hinting that it wouldn’t be successful. But the two dozen who came poured out support and empathy and caring. And Chelsea, just a few years out of graduate school, decided she liked us older artists well enough to become a member.
So let’s keep that energy burning brightly.
Sue
