St. Pete artists remember a longtime friend and supporter

St. Petersburg’s tightly-knit art community is mourning the passing of one of its earliest and most vocal supporters. Word arrived last week from Bandera, Texas that Pat Jennings, the longtime proprietor of the city’s longest-lived art supply store, died Sept. 5 of esophageal cancer. He was 70.

Many of his friends and contacts here lost touch with Jennings after he closed the Art Supply Store, 2429 Central Ave., in 2017.

Jennings and his artist wife Claudia Strano left New York City for St. Petersburg in 2002. They opened Central Art Supply, a 645-square-feet hole in the wall adjacent next to the State Theatre.

Although he wasn’t an artist, Strano said, Jennings was adept at both business and customer relations. “He created shopping lists for the schools,” she recalled. “The students would come to the store, and they didn’t even need to shop for anything. We had everything set up in a little shopping bag for them.”

Artista Building mural, 2009, by Alan Hampton.

Jennings sponsored downtown’s first juried art festivals, providing the prize money himself. After his business was re-branded the Art Supply Store, and relocated to 24^th and Central (after a period in another location) he sponsored Urban Elements, a show of graffiti and street art.

He had a vision, he told the St. Petersburg Times: “Places in town would say ‘I have a blank wall, wouldn’t it be nice to have something up, to see it’s not gang related or untoward but just another creative expression of artwork.

“The young people have gravitated toward this and on some levels it’s an art form that’s here to stay.”

Five years later, the SHINE Mural Festival made its debut, founded by muralist Leon “Tes One” Bedore and other artists who knew and respected Pat Jennings.

Jennings and Strano split and reunited several times, and she eventually sold him her share of the business. They divorced. Then they lost contact.

After he sold the Arts Supply Store, Jennings dove headfirst into the world of competitive bicycling.

Remembering Pat

Leon “Tes One” Bedore, artist and muralist: The scene was much smaller than it is today. And he had this very St. Pete art store. He believed in the artists here, he knew them personally. He truly supported them. He was carrying products that none of the big box stores carried – they were the tools that we otherwise had to buy online or whatever. This truly is before St. Pete was synonymous with murals and street art.

Laura “Miss Crit” Spencer, artist and muralist: He really started the conversation long before the SHINE Mural Festival.

Derek Donnelly, artist and muralist: That store was a mecca. It was the only art store in town, and the first place to sell the fancy spray paint that we all use. Our form of art, painting these murals every day, is still not a normal job but it was far less common back then. In 2010, 11, 12, it was all just starting, especially in our little town. Pat’s was the only place we could go to get this crazy spray paint that we’d see in the magazines. And he carried everything, no matter what kind of artist you were. I remember Sebastian Coolidge going in there once to get these old-school paintbrushes – stuff you weren’t going to find at Michael’s. Or Hobby Lobby.

Andrea Pawlisz, artist and muralist: He was the first to hire a muralist – Chris James (Chapter One) – for the side of the building where the Art Supply store was on the 2400 block. And he ended up renting the small building on the corner, that he named the Artista Project. That brought people in to teach classes, how to do things. And he hired me, Alan Hampton and Dan Lesata to mural on the front of that building. That had to be around 2009. And my thought is that those were the first, earliest murals that were done in this city.

Jennings with his Art Supply Store staff: Mía Culbertson, left, Heidi Daige and Laura Spencer.

Spencer: I worked for Pat for about four years, at both Central Art Supply and when we re-branded as the Art Supply Store. Goodness knows, I would still work at that store if Pat still had it open today. The store was really quite a connective tissue for people in the city of St. Pete. It was more than just an art supply store. I met the majority of the artists I know to this day, in the Tampa Bay area, through working there.

Donnelly: I think he understood that there was an immense amount of talent in St. Pete, that was looking for a way to express themselves and help our city become the arts destination that it is today. Pat and the others that worked there had expert knowledge. And it was one of the only places you could go to get information about what was going on, with art shows and stuff. Almost the last breath of the old way of doing it, where there was flyers and little things like that. Social media didn’t run the world like it does today.

Spencer: Any time you can get artists in the same room together, talking about their creativity, I think that’s really important. And an art supply store is the perfect spot for that. We had a database where we would create an account for each artist that came in … so if you couldn’t remember exactly which color paint you bought last time, we could look it up.

Pawlisz: Laura probably stayed at the store too long. It was a safe and comfortable haven for her. And Pat was really trying to push her out the door to really launch her career. It eventually happened, but closing the store forced her to do that. I think Pat was a great figure for her, and pushed her into doing some of the things she’s doing now. I couldn’t be more proud of her

Bedore: He was one of the first people I told about SHINE. He genuinely loved the idea of it. He loved to contribute in any way that he could. And thank goodness that he did, because the concept of SHINE was very hard to get off the ground. Trying to convince people there was going to be murals all over the city, that it was art for the sake of art. All of this was at the time very foreign and different, and not in the mix like it is now. Pat saw the potential in this idea and lent his support to it. If it wasn’t for him, I’m not sure we would’ve got it off the ground. There were a few key people who really helped stitch this thing together, and he was a big piece of that.

Pawlisz: Before he left St. Pete, he donated all of his artwork to The Studio @620, and they had a giant auction. I bought as much as I could, because most of them were sentimental pieces … Pat wasn’t an artist, but he was a collector, and he was an extremely good businessman. And without Pat, none of us would be who we are today.