Sundresses in the Park

First chances, soft launches, and the people who say yes before there is proof

March 28, 2026

When I received the Polk Arts and Culture Alliance Arts & Culture Impact Grant, I expected the Florida Field Guide tour to start fairly quickly. I got the grant in November, and in my head I was already imagining taking the mobile gallery out by February.

That did not happen!

Building an art gallery inside the back of a truck took considerably longer than I expected. While I was still working on the buildout, organizations were already opening applications for spring events, and I found myself in a strange position. I needed places to take the gallery, but I did not yet have a gallery I could photograph--try explaining that in a vendor application!

"Hi. I am building an art gallery in the back of a truck. No, I do not have photographs yet. Yes, I promise it is going to look professional. Here are some digital mockups of what I think it is going to look like."

I did not get a lot of direct noes. Mostly, I got the kind of response that feels like someone is giving you side eye through email--"Okay, weird art lady. Whatever you say."

I saw an advertisement for Sundresses in the Park in Auburndale. Auburndale was already on my list of communities I wanted to reach through the grant tour, and it does not have the same constant rotation of market events that some other cities do. I reached out to the organizer, Natalie Hawthorne, and essentially gave her the same slightly ridiculous pitch I had been giving everyone else.

"You're probably going to think I'm nuts, but I have this grant. I am building a mobile art gallery. It is not finished yet. I do not have photographs of the actual setup, but here are the mockups. I promise it is going to be good. Please take a chance on me."

And Natalie did!

She did not tell me to come back the following year when I had professional booth photographs. She did not require me to prove that the idea already worked before she would let me try it. She accepted my vendor application, I paid my fee like everyone else, and she gave me a good location for the truck. It was not a favor. It was a leap of faith.

Natalie did not waive the rules or carry me through the event. I still had to show up, advertise, pay my vendor fee, behave professionally, and deliver what I said I was going to deliver. What she gave me was the opportunity to prove that I could. Someone has to be willing to do that first.

By the morning of Sundresses in the Park, the mobile gallery was finally real. I could stop showing people renderings and saying, "Trust me." There was an actual truck sitting in an actual event with artwork hanging inside it and people walking through the door.

I was stressed. Of course I was stressed. It was the first time I had taken the truck out as part of the Florida Field Guide tour, and there are a thousand little things you cannot know until you actually do something. Where exactly should the truck sit? How will people move through it? Will the setup work in real life the way it worked in my head? Did I forget something essential? Is some completely unforeseen disaster about to reveal itself?

Natalie was completely unfazed. Her attitude was so supportive! The vibe was everybody has to do something for the first time sometime. Otherwise, no one ever does anything. That was exactly the energy I needed.

The day itself was fairly quiet. There was no enormous crowd surging through the back of the truck, and honestly, I am grateful for that now. Sundresses in the Park turned out to be less like a grand opening and more like the soft launch of a restaurant.

People came through. I sold some artwork. I had good conversations. Friends and family stopped by, which meant some of the first people to experience the finished mobile gallery were people who had already watched the project develop from an idea into a very strange construction project and finally into something that could travel around the state.

My family is incredibly supportive of what I do, so seeing them at an event is not unusual. They show up. They always have. But this was different because none of them had seen the finished truck functioning as a gallery before either. They had seen my artwork in brick-and-mortar galleries and at art shows. Now they were seeing this new version of the business for the first time.

The slower pace also gave me the opportunity to actually talk to people. I met an art teacher from Auburndale High School and several of her students. We talked about the possibility of my coming to the school to speak, and even about potential studio internship opportunities for students interested in learning more about the work and the business behind it.

Those are the kinds of conversations that can easily disappear at a huge event. When twenty people are waiting to enter your booth and you are trying to wrap a print, answer a question, run a credit card, and remember whether someone asked you about a bear or an alligator thirty seconds ago, there is not much room for a thoughtful conversation about what you might be able to contribute to the development of an art student.

Sundresses in the Park gave me room. Low stress. Low pressure. High value. It also gave me something I desperately needed at that point in the project: photographs. Until that day, I had been trying to persuade people to believe in something they could not see. After Sundresses in the Park, I had proof. I had images of the truck open, the artwork installed, people walking through it, and the whole idea functioning in the real world. Those photographs changed the way I could talk about the project. They also changed who noticed it.

When I posted photographs from the event on Facebook, a friend and follower from a local news station, Barry, saw them. The mobile gallery caught his attention immediately.

Wait a minute...Your new art gallery is in a truck?

Yes.

That is cool. I need to come interview you!

And just like that, a small community event in Auburndale helped tip off television coverage that would become one of the most important early pieces of publicity for the Florida Field Guide tour. I could not have predicted that when I sent Natalie an application with no real photographs and a handful of digital mockups.

That is one of the things I have learned repeatedly while building this business. We spend a lot of time trying to identify the big opportunity, the important person, the prestigious event, the thing that will obviously move everything forward.

It rarely works that cleanly. Sometimes the important event is the quiet one where you finally get usable photographs. Sometimes the important conversation is with a high school art teacher. Sometimes the important person is an event organizer who looks at an unfinished idea and says, "Okay. I'll give you a spot." And sometimes the post you make afterward happens to land in front of a television reporter who suddenly wants to know why you put an art gallery in a truck.

None of those things happen if you do not show up in the first place.

Sundresses in the Park was not the biggest stop on the Florida Field Guide tour. It was not the busiest, the highest grossing, or the most prestigious. I would not try to rewrite it now and pretend it was something it wasn't.

It was better than that!

It was exactly the event I needed at exactly the point when I needed it. I had spent months building something I had only been able to describe to people. Sundresses in the Park was the day the explaining stopped and the doing started.

Sundresses in the Park was THE first!

After that, I had photographs. I had experience. I had new community connections. I had proof that people would walk into the truck, look at the artwork, ask questions, and understand what I was trying to build. And soon, I had FOX 13 calling.

All because Natalie Hawthorne was willing to look at an idea that did not have much proof behind it yet and say yes.

There is real generosity in that kind of yes. Not because it guarantees anything, but because it gives somebody the opportunity to find out what might happen next.

Sundresses in the Park gave the Florida Field Guide tour that first chance.

And once the truck had somewhere to go, it became much easier to imagine all the places it could go next.