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Bon voyage, MIZE Gallery
The good news: Prolific St. Pete artist Chad Mize is getting loads of commission work, between his murals, his paintings and his custom designs. The bad news: He’s closing down the gallery that bears his name. He’s too busy to continue curating and hanging a new multi-artist show every month.
Friend, opening Friday at MIZE Gallery, will be the last curated show. December will bring the annual holiday retail extravaganza, Stuff & Things & Stuff.
“I’m just going to take a little bit of a recess break,” Mize explains. “I committed to a five-year run, and my lease is up at the end of the year. So I’m ready for a change. I have other things that I want to focus on.”
Recent projects – for the likes of Disney and Coach – have taken Mize out of town. “My career itself has changed since I started the gallery,” he says. “I’m getting these big gigs, and then I’m there all week, and then I have to work the gallery on the weekend. So it’s like working eight days a week, basically.
“And I feel like I really want to get more of that type of work. And having the gallery space limits me. You’re not able to travel. And the gallery itself, I don’t make enough from it to hire people to work for me. It’s kind of like, I have to do it.”
Mize’s previous gallery, Blue Lucy, was open for five years. Then he took an extended break, and opened MIZE in 2018.
“In the beginning, it’s so fresh and new it’s exciting. I think once I hit year four I started feeling a bit of the fatigue from it. But I wanted to commit to the five.”
And so he has. “My goal was to have a show a month, so I’ve had 54 exhibits. And it was a lot. I feel like it’s kind of an obsession, in a way. Where you so have so many ideas. And I have a whole system that’s worked for me, managing artists and getting that done.”
He will, of course, maintain those connections, and he hasn’t ruled out the thought of curating exhibits once again, down the road. “I just won’t have a brick-and-mortar.”
Mize and his partner Dan Schmidt are going to renew the lease, and keep the space for an extension of Dan’s next-door restaurant, Uptown Eats.
“The plan,” explains Mize, “is to have more inside seating for the restaurant, and more storage. And we have some other ideas that’s we’re going to expand with the restaurant concept.
“That’s the bittersweet part of it – I’m really going to miss having the space for myself, but the fact that it’s still within our family is good.”
Sylvia Rusche’
November 1, 2022at6:09 pm
He’s so talented and prolific and I look forward to what’s next for him. :))
Georgia Earp
November 1, 2022at4:41 pm
It is sad that the days of Mize Gallery are limited, but an expanded Uptown Eats is welcome. Chad has given so much to the artist community and the City from the gallery to his murals, the Shine Mural Festival and his iconic Paris, London, Tokyo St Pete tee shirts. And in addition to all his accomplishments, he is a decent and kind man.