Solivita Art Guild

Cheerleaders, open doors, and the people who carry your work into new rooms

May 11, 2026

There are people who buy your artwork, and then there are people who sell your artwork without ever ringing up a transaction.

Kathy Stutzman is one of those people.

Our paths have crossed for years in the way art-world relationships often do. I am pretty sure Kathy first appeared somewhere in my orbit through the Lake Wales Arts Council. I think she may have participated in either the Quarantine Creative show or the Sticky Steve Morrison exhibition, although at this point enough exhibitions have blurred together that I would not swear to which one.

Later, she submitted work for a Best of Polk exhibition that was hanging at Tree Swallow Art Gallery while I was running the space. She came to the opening, we talked, and somewhere along the way she became interested in some of the business classes I was teaching. The timing never quite worked out for her to take one, but she ended up on my mailing list.

Then the Florida Field Guide started growing.

I began sending newsletters more regularly, the mobile gallery started moving around Polk County, and Kathy started paying attention.

She came out to True Blue Winery in Davenport to see the mobile gallery and, more importantly, to see my paint carvings in person. Until then, she had not really experienced the work firsthand. We stood there talking for quite a while about the carvings, the process, and where the Florida Field Guide was heading.

I mentioned that I would be doing a paint-carving demonstration at the Haines City Public Library soon.

Kathy could not make it.

She actually emailed me afterward apologizing for missing it.

So I told her, essentially, “You're in Solivita. I am grant-funded. It will not cost the Art Guild anything. Work your magic and get me into Solivita.”

I was mostly joking.

Kathy was not.

She went to the Solivita Art Guild board, advocated for bringing me in, and somehow turned one conversation at True Blue Winery into an invitation to demonstrate paint carving for the guild.

That is the kind of person every artist needs somewhere in their corner.

Not necessarily someone with a title. Not necessarily someone writing checks. Not necessarily somebody who owns ten pieces of your work.

Someone who talks about you when you are not in the room.

There is enormous value in that.

Artists spend a lot of time thinking about collectors, buyers, followers, mailing lists, galleries, event organizers, and all of the other people who seem to have an obvious place inside the machinery of an art career. But some of the most influential people around your work do not fit cleanly into any of those categories.

They are simply enthusiastic.

They show up.

They tell somebody else.

They forward the email.

They say, “You should bring her in.”

Then suddenly you are driving through the gates of Solivita because one person decided other people needed to see what you were doing.

Solivita itself is enormous. It is a beautifully maintained 55-and-older community with gated entrances and its own little downtown area of restaurants, shops, and gathering spaces. It feels almost like a small town contained inside another town.

The Art Guild meeting was held in a private room off a bistro-style restaurant in that central area. I expected a respectable audience. I did not expect the room to be packed.

There were more than 30 people there, which made it the largest audience I had demonstrated for up to that point. Chairs filled the room, and a few people ended up standing in the back.

This was also summertime in Florida, when a substantial percentage of Solivita residents are traveling or spending time elsewhere.

So if that was the summer crowd, I was impressed.

The audience was engaged from the beginning. They wanted to understand the carving process, but they were also interested in the digital compositions behind the work, the Florida Field Guide itself, and where the project was heading. Questions came steadily. People joined the mailing list. They stayed afterward to talk. They wanted to see the prints and understand how the different pieces of the project fit together.

And this is where Kathy's role became interesting to me.

She did not have to work the room.

She had already done the important part.

She got me into it.

Of course she asked questions during the demonstration. Of course she encouraged people to come talk to me afterward. That is Kathy.

But she did not have to stand beside my table convincing people to care.

They already did.

Once the door was open, the work had to do the rest.

I think there is an important distinction there.

A good advocate can create an opportunity for you. They can make an introduction, recommend your work, get your name in front of the right board, or convince somebody to take a chance.

But eventually, you have to walk through the door yourself.

The room still has to respond.

The presentation has to work.

The artwork has to hold people's attention.

You have to be able to answer the questions, communicate what you are doing, and give people a reason to want more after the person who introduced you steps aside.

That is exactly what happened at Solivita.

Kathy built the bridge.

Then the audience crossed it on their own.

By the end of the meeting, people were already talking about what came next. The guild invited me back for another carving demonstration in October, when more of the seasonal residents would be around, and we began planning a hands-on paint-carving workshop for November.

One demonstration became another demonstration and then became a class.

That progression is one of the clearest signs I know that an event worked.

Not because everyone stood up and applauded. Not because I sold a particular amount of artwork. Not because somebody told me I was talented.

Because they wanted the next thing.

They wanted more time with the process.

They wanted to bring more people into the room.

They wanted to move from watching me carve to trying it themselves.

And Kathy, predictably, was right there pushing for all of it.

Since then, she has continued showing up. She came to Seven Rivers Water Festival in Winter Haven. She encouraged a group from the Solivita Art Guild to make the drive all the way to Lakeland for Fine Art at Magnolia so they could see more of my work in person.

At some point I started joking that I should create a special volunteer position for Kathy.

Maybe Business Development Department of One.

She has never bought one of my carvings.

I have absolutely sold artwork because of her.

That is worth thinking about.

We often evaluate support in the arts through purchases. Did somebody buy? Did somebody become a collector? Did they commission something?

Those are easy relationships to quantify.

Cheerleaders are harder.

How do you calculate the value of someone mentioning your name in a meeting?

How much is the email worth where somebody says, “I think you should see this artist”?

What is the value of the person who brings three friends to an exhibition, tells the board to book you, or keeps talking about your work long after the first event is over?

There is no clean number for that.

There is just the trail of opportunities behind them.

For me, that trail currently runs from a Lake Wales exhibition to Tree Swallow Art Gallery, from a mailing list to True Blue Winery, from True Blue to Solivita, from one demonstration to another, and from that demonstration into a workshop.

All because somebody kept paying attention.

I have written a lot lately about the people around the Florida Field Guide because, looking back, I am beginning to realize that this record of my art career is not really a list of events.

The events are the scaffolding.

The story is the people.

Some people buy the art. Some invite me into their spaces. Some teach me something. Some open a door. Some introduce me to someone else. Some tell their friends to come see what I am doing.

And every once in a while, someone becomes the person who keeps saying my name in rooms where I am not standing yet.

Kathy has been that person for me.

The Solivita Art Guild demonstration was the visible result: a packed room, a standing-room-only audience, lots of questions, new mailing-list subscribers, another demonstration scheduled, and a workshop growing out of it.

But the more interesting story started long before I walked into Solivita.

It started with somebody deciding the work was worth talking about.

Every artist needs a Kathy.