A downtown gallerist finds a home in Fruitville Road furniture store

Angela Ligon doesn’t know where she’s going to live. The lease on the short-term rental she found after her Lido Key condo got flooded — not once but twice — by hurricanes is going to end soon and there aren’t a lot of housing options during season in Sarasota.

But one thing that Ligon can count on is that the temporary art gallery that she set up earlier this year on the second floor of the luxury home furnishings emporium Clive Daniel gets to stay for awhile.

Ligon got the news last week and she was elated. “Yesterday was the first time I met Clive,” Ligon said in a telephone interview. “He loved the artwork. He thinks it’s something they need. He’s talking about renting the space to me long term.”

Clive Daniel was founded by the father-and-son team of Clive and Daniel Lubner in 2011 with a home furnishings store and design services in Naples.

The retailer has since expanded its wares and services to locations in Boca Raton, Sarasota and Fort Myers. The 70,000-square-foot showroom in Sarasota opened in Fruitville Commons near Lakewood Ranch in September 2022.

Like the massive store in which they are located, many of the pieces in Ligon’s art gallery are big. In fact, some are giant. My favorite is a mixed media tapestry by Majo, a female artist who uses only one name. It’s called “Vida” and is 69 by 96 inches.

“Vida” reminds me of the potholders I used to weave on my toy loom as a child. I saw it for the first time after Hurricane Helene, and it reminded me of the resilience of the Sarasota community.

With metallic threads, it’s got a bit of bling that runs through the colorful strips of fabric in a work that’s reminiscent of the old-fashioned rag rugs that people have been making for centuries.

Courtesy image

There are other massive showstoppers for people who want to adorn a wall in a high-rise condo surrounded by views of Sarasota Bay on three sides. They include S M Mancini’s “The Cellist,” a 60-by-48-inch mixed media work that has a cello literally jumping off the canvas. Another piece that will light up any room is Nancy Iannitelli’s cheerful “Mosaic Sun,” an acrylic on canvas work that is 60 by 60 inches.

Many postcard-like paintings inhabit Gisela Miller’s “Note to Self,” a wall sculpture made of seven wood boards that are each 55 inches tall and 8-1/2 inches wide.

“Note” invites conversation about travel, memory and adventure with images of the Eiffel Tower, an antique car and and affirmations like “Gratitude” and “Up, Up and Away.”

The high ceilings and spacious setting at Clive Daniel’s Fruitville Commons showroom provide the perfect backdrop for these large-scale works, many of which would look right at home in a museum.

For those looking for decorative objects, Ligon’s gallery features wood sculptures by Dennis Elliott made with maple and walnut burl and metal as well as Carrara marble pieces by Marton Varo, whose works are displayed all over the world, including at Ave Maria University in Florida.

Before she opened her art annex upstairs at Clive Daniel in August, Ligon ran gallery and event spaces in downtown Sarasota for nearly eight years. A self-taught artist, she moved to Florida in 2013 from Houston after a career in the petroleum industry.

Ligon’s first eponymous gallery was downtown at First Street and Lemon Avenue. The second was an art and event space in the Rosemary District, in a furniture store building restored by developer Howard Davis that’s now called the BOTA building.

One of the first questions Ligon asks upon meeting someone is: “Have you ever bought a piece of original art?” She’s not trying to sell you something per se; she’s spreading the word about the transformative power of art.

When Ligon recently delivered a piece of art to a client and hung it up in his office, he was overjoyed. “He was seemingly a big, tough businessman but a piece of art made him jump and down like a little kid. It was such a joy to see,” Ligon says. 

It would be a mistake to call Ligon merely a “gallerist” because she sees her mission as supporting not just visual arts but musicians, dancers and other performers. After some discussion during an interview, Ligon settles on a definition for a job. She wants to be known as a “community arts advocate.”

Perhaps her tagline says it best: “My mission is to fill your empty space with inspiration.”