When an up and coming artist community is devastated by two hurricanes back to back, its resiliency shines even brighter.

See how devastation turned to triumph for Artmosphere in St. Petersburg.

[light music] I have been managing Artmosphere since the summer of 2023, and we officially opened in March of 2024.

Since then, we are a community in St. Pete and we give space to so many artists to create their work.

Also to showcase their work through our events that we do.

So I feel like the community is very important.

As you know, during those events, we open up to everybody.

You know, this is like a safe space for artists to make their work, create their art.

And we literally just open the.

It was just starting to pick up.

It was starting to create that community.

And then it was just gone.

Yeah, we were, you know, scared because, uh, you know, we were supposed to have the flood.

And with the Helene, on September 26th, the flood arrived.

We tried to, you know, remove as much stuff as we can, but it takes time.

And then during the the rehab, we heard another notice.

So the news was, oh, another one is coming.

Milton.

Wait a moment.

Let's see what's going on with Milton.

And then we start back again to fix everything.

You know.

I remember that I got the call from my handyman saying, hey, did you hear about the storm?

I came here, I prepped with all the artists.

I remember I sealed the doors with, like, black tape.

I put, like, trash bags, I put sandbags on top, and I was like, you know, I hope I'm doing this for nothing.

It's not going to be anything.

And then I remember going home.

And I was looking at the cameras because we have cameras here.

So I was like, okay, it's holding on pretty well.

It's going good, it's going good.

And then I just started to see like the water leaking through.

And I don't know, it was just so sad.

I don't know, it just there is a feeling of helplessness in which there is literally nothing you can do and just wait and then figure out something after.

[light music] What it was up to here.

So basically we had to redo all the walls.

This put us so behind because we not only had, you know, Hurricane Helene at first, and if Milton wasn't here, we would already be back.

But thankfully our team works so fast and so amazing.

Each studio was a different artist.

They really they put up.

For example, Marina in this studio.

She had so much artwork in here you don't even know.

Like if you just look at all the pins and screws and everything.

This studio was full of work and painting and everything.

Yeah, here or on my paintings for the whatever up to here.

So I was able to, you know, say, this is a mural.

It was all the way to the floor.

But now, of course, it's, uh, you know, they cut the piece out.

This artist right here.

This is Oliver.

He's been our first artist ever, and he's the one that got the most damage because, of course, he.

Imagine after a year of being here with all your supplies, all your art, and unfortunately, his house flooded as well.

So he's been dealing with so much.

I got the message that the studios had taken on water.

[light music] When I got that news, that's when I started getting a little bit of a sinking feeling that, okay, this looks like this was probably worse than what we thought it was going to be.

And it turned out that it was it was probably one of the hardest moments that I've ever faced on a very personal level.

And that's even going back and looking at 25 years.

Being in the military.

For me was a big surprise, because I'm from Western Europe.

Uh, we have not hurricanes.

And, uh, for me it was I was in shock, to be honest.

And, uh, uh, it's very unusual when you when you need to, like, save everything because just the ocean, uh, coming.

Uh, do you know, like, it was like a step back because studio must work day by day, every day.

I'm beginning.

I'm beginning for zero in the moment.

I need create new studio.

I came here after and it was just like chaos.

It was just like, so messy.

Everything was, like, all over the place.

Everything was, like, on top of each other.

It was dirty.

It was smelly.

So it was just, like, very discouraging, I would say at first.

And then slowly, because we have like an amazing team, we were able to rebuild everything.

Studios were reopening was huge.

It was good and it was heartbreaking at the same time because you see the amount of work that had to go into rebuilding everything.

It was a bittersweet moment.

If you lost something, you of course it's sad in the moment, but after this, after this, uh, I'm feeling I have.

I had a new I had a new wave.

I had a new wave for energy to do new art works, and I did.

It it was sad.

But at the end we are here again.

And then, you know, we survived.

So now that everything is back to normal, I'm definitely feeling really good.

It's so nice to come here, have all the artists work in their space and just, you know, walk in the hallways and I peek in and I see, you know, somebody working on their new painting, somebody working on their new sculpture, photography projects and so on.

And I'm back into showing the art studios for new artists.

I show the event space, so it's really fun.

I was blaming myself for like a long time, and then I realized that my creative energy was going to something equally beautiful, which was, you know, creating a community and a space for other artists to create.

Then slowly, once everything went back to normal, it became a pleasure again to be here.

To find out more, visit artmospherestpete.com.