Islamorada's Art on a Whim Gallery

Art on a Whim is Judith Chesher's gallery and curiosity shop in Rain Barrel Village, at mile marker 86.7 in Islamorada. She carries work from roughly thirty different Keys artists, and the sorting principle is hers: she looks for things that are unusual, which she says is not hard in a place where, in her words, the Keys are full of artists doing all kinds of weird things. The mix runs across art, handmade jewelry and pottery, and the range of prices is wide enough that you can walk out with a small thing or a serious piece.

The "Curiosity Shoppe" half of the name is doing real work and should not be skipped. This is a browsing shop rather than a hushed white-wall gallery. Thirty artists in one room means the inventory is genuinely unpredictable, and it changes as she finds new makers, so it rewards a slow look and a second visit on a later trip.

Rain Barrel Village is a destination in its own right and makes this an easy stop. It is one of the last surviving roadside attractions from the era when they lined U.S. 1 all the way from Jacksonville, named for the cisterns that once supplied drinking water down here, and it is now a cluster of low, brightly painted buildings full of working studios and shops. It is also home to Betsy, a fiberglass spiny lobster 30 feet tall and 40 feet long, finished by artist Richard Blaze in 1985 and reportedly the second most photographed thing in the Florida Keys after the Southernmost Point buoy. Walk the village, see what people are making, get the lobster photograph, and go into Art on a Whim on the way through.