Art@ 830 Gallery

Art @ 830 sits on Caroline Street in the Historic Seaport district, and it is owned and run by two working Key West artists, Tony Gregory and Christine Scarsella. That matters to the experience. This is not a gallery staffed by someone reading off a card. The people who made a good portion of what is on the walls are the people you will be talking to, and they have been part of the island's art scene long enough to have opinions about it.

Gregory left a teaching job in Maryland in 1976 and came to Key West, and he built his reputation as an airbrush artist during the island's loud and productive late seventies and eighties. He paints in acrylic and oil as well, moving between abstract and representational, and the through line is color: the florals, the water and the sunsets that make people take photographs they are disappointed by later. His running series is a Key West alphabet, one painting per letter, each one paired with island imagery like conch shells, hibiscus, pelicans and palm trees. It is the kind of thing people buy one of and then come back for a child's initial. His own description of the work is better than any pitch: "when I'm painting, I never feel like I'm working."

The gallery is not a one-artist shop. Alongside the owners' work there is hand blown and contemporary art glass, sculpture, ceramics, carved and turned wood, and custom jewelry, plus rotating shows that give wall space to emerging artists. The tone across it all runs whimsical and inventive rather than solemn, and the range means the room works whether you are shopping for a serious piece or for something small that will actually fit in a suitcase.

Gregory and Scarsella ran an earlier Duval Street gallery called Open Minded, which opened in 1994, before setting up here. Gregory also shoots weddings and events around the island and still turns up with an airbrush at local events, so if the gallery is quiet when you walk in, it is worth asking what he is working on.