Long-necked alpacas, sleepy owls and a doe-eyed giraffe graced the walls of Workspace on Saturday night. Inside, Cory Robinson’s playful installation featured small watercolors and larger acrylic pieces on glass canvases and the gallery’s windows.
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Outside, Florida Avenue was lined with painted wooden animals, including a bespectacled flamingo, a couple of cats and a bear.
The Best Friends exhibit was welcoming and childlike. It filled the air with a familiar nostalgia, as if you had stumbled onto a playground. Robinson and his wife, Jen Robinson, are sans children, but they do have a cat, Crail, who inspired some of the feline pieces.
There was a good turnout considering that Saturday was Tampa’s drunkest holiday.
Ladies, gents and some bundled babies milled about under Robinson’s handmade denim streamers and walked around back to Built, the larger woodshop that houses Workspace.
All of Robinson’s art was reasonably priced. “He actually wants to make art for people,” Jen said. “It’s accessible.” His paintings on glass, framed by wood or windowpanes, were a crowd favorite.
“We had a bunch of windows [at home],” Jen explained. “They became his canvas.”