Nearly 50 Florida artists are about to fill a downtown Orlando gallery with abstract and figurative work spanning a wide range of mediums. Jessy Jones Collections will present Collection Retrospective starting Nov. 19, timed to coincide with downtown Orlando's monthly Third Thursday arts event.
According to WFTV Channel 9 Orlando, the opening runs from 5 to 10 p.m. at 103 E. Pine St. Featured artists include Selfismo, Jonathan Tyson, Michael Lusk and Bob Smedley, and those four are also expected to display and sell additional work at tables set up outside the gallery, per the outlet's reporting.
The exhibition draws heavily from curator Alexandria Trevor's personal collection, the station reports, and Trevor is set to walk visitors through the gallery, introducing them to artists and explaining how to either buy an existing piece or commission something new. Commission prices and completion times vary by artist and project, according to the same report. Organizers said the works were acquired at several price points to show that people can begin collecting original art with a single purchase and build a collection over time.
A Night Built Around Conversation With Artists
Participating artists are expected to attend the opening itself, giving visitors a chance to ask about their work, their creative process and what it might cost to commission something custom. For those who can't make the Nov. 19 date, private tours will be available by request during the week before and the week after the opening, the station's report notes.
Jessy Jones Collections sits near CityArts and Eola View in downtown Orlando, placing it within walking distance of some of the city's other arts anchors. The gallery plans to change its selections quarterly and has said it intends to host additional exhibitions featuring Central Florida artists going forward, according to the same account.
Part Of A Busy Stretch For Florida Art Shows
Collection Retrospective arrives after a run of sizable Florida-artist showcases across the region this year. The SOBO Art Gallery in Winter Garden hosted “Florida Roots: Land, Light & Life” through Sept. 26, an exhibition that, as reported by orlandosentinel.com, showcased nearly 70 artists working in paintings, drawings, sculpture, mixed media and photography, including a piece by Roy McLendon, one of the original Florida Highwaymen.
Other recent exhibitions have run smaller. The Orlando Museum of Art's 12th annual Florida Prize in Contemporary Art featured a dozen Florida-based artists, while the Casselberry Arts Center's “Experience Contemporary 2026: A Wrench in the Gears” highlighted five, orlandosentinel.com reported. Nearby, CityArts marked 20 years in Orlando with its own retrospective, noting it has displayed more than 36,000 artworks since first opening as CityArts Factory in 2006, according to orlandoweekly.com. That gallery moved to its current Magnolia Avenue location in 2019.
Downtown Orlando's creative calendar has also leaned into public art this year. The Orlando Mural Festival, now in its third year, brought together around 15 artists to paint large-scale murals across downtown and included a special exhibition of studio work from past muralists, per clickorlando.com. The free festival launched in 2024 and drew more than 8,000 visitors last year, giving Collection Retrospective a lively backdrop of ongoing arts activity as it prepares to open its doors next month.
