Art & Culture Features
New Art on the Block: Margaret Street Studios
Over on Margaret Street in Five Points is a collaborative space of six artist studios owned by well-known local power couple Fitz Pullins, of Fitz Pullins Interiors, and Steve Williams, artist and CEO of Harbinger. The focus is on artistic collaboration. “Community over competition is so important,” says Pullins. “Having a house full of creatives helps you to be more creative as an artist and opens your mind to other possibilities.”
read moreRestoring Debs Store
A huge piece of local history is being resurrected in downtown’s Eastside neighborhood, just north of TIAA Bank Field. The Debs Store and the Davis Rooming House next door (now razed) were built by Edward D. Mixson in 1913. The red-brick, neighborhood grocery store on the corner of 5th Street and Florida Avenue was opened in 1921 by Lebanese immigrant Nicolas Debs and closed 90 years later in 2011. Debs Store was a part of the fabric of its community and the Debs family a staple. Nicolas’s sons, Nick and Gene, knew nearly everyone who walked into the store, and once they both passed away, the family made the difficult decision to shutter it.
read moreForging a Bold City One Sculpture at a Time
Probably most famous for the photograph that appeared in national news during Hurricane Matthew, “Spiritualized Life” was created by Charles Adrian Pillars to honor those lost during World War I. The piece was privately commissioned by the Citizens Committee in 1920 and unveiled in Memorial Park on Christmas Day, 1924. It is one of the first pieces of public art in the city and still stands as one of the most iconic sculptures in Jacksonville.
read moreJacksonville’s Bicentennial Year is Here
We live in a city whose location we did not select, that we did not design or build, dependent on technologies that we did not invent, speaking languages that we did not create. And yet, the city is now ours. Our daily lives transpire in a place that we have inherited. That makes us just like the people of every other city, although we (and Jacksonville) are different from other cities. It also makes us the stewards of Jacksonville’s future.
read moreA City’s Bicentennial Only Comes Around Once
In 2020 protests over the tragic death of a Black man named George Floyd at the hands of a white policeman reignited a long-running national debate over the significance of Confederate monuments in public places. Some discussions widened to consider the names of schools, streets, parks, and even a city itself. Suggestions for renaming Jacksonville have included Jaxson, Duval, Cowford, and even Durstville, after Fred Durst, lead vocalist for the local band Limp Bizkit.
read moreThe Life Scrolls
Some would say the story began in 1918 when, just after the announcement that the Huns had surrendered their fight in the Great War, a group of businessmen in Jacksonville … well, more on that later.
read moreStatue of Limitations
The ongoing process of racial reckoning that’s been taking place around the country over the past few years has occurred on many different fronts, be it the classroom, the pulpit, or the streets of hundreds of cities from coast to coast. This process has peaked (so far) with the social protests we saw sweeping the nation after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. Locally, there were protests here in Jacksonville, St. Augustine, the Beaches, and beyond.
read moreLeading Ladies
Christine Hoffman; Atlantic Beach reelected Mayor Ellen Glasser; and Neptune Beach’s Mayor Elaine Brown was currently in office. This meant that history had been made—for the first time all three Beaches communities had female mayors. This lady triumvirate has become a synergistic team, leading their respective cities as well as bolstering each other and cementing close professional and personal relationships. These three women have different backgrounds and priorities, but as you’ll see from the interview below, there is also a lot of common ground. Perhaps their biggest strength and commonality is that they are contented Beaches residents themselves. In addition, they share an ability to read the needs of their fellow Beaches citizens, aligning their priorities.
read moreIt was Crooked. It was Blurry. It was Mad.
Local author Tim Gilmore, Florida State College at Jacksonville (FSCJ) English professor, historian, and creator of jaxpsychogeo.com, knows a lot about bizarre, local lore and our city’s most idiosyncratic characters. Virginia King is certainly one of those—she spent decades feverishly documenting 1960-80s Jacksonville by word and photo, ultimately writing some 8,000 pages by hand in an effort to “capture the city,” as Gilmore puts it. Gilmore wrote a book about King in 2015, titled The Mad Atlas of Virginia King, that has now been adapted into a play by the same name.
read moreJacksonville Naval Museum Ship Arrives
Jacksonville’s long talked about floating Naval Museum is becoming a reality, set to transport visitors back in time to the Cold War era in a piece of living history. The Jacksonville Historic Naval Ship Association (JHNSA) has chosen the museum ship— the ex-U.S.S. Orleck—to be the official centerpiece of the Jacksonville Naval Museum. The Orleck is a WWII-era Gearing Class destroyer, built in 1945 and named in honor of WWII Navy hero Lieutenant Joseph Orleck. The Orleck served in the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Cold War periods in United States Navy history.
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