By Tristram DeRoma
The Story Behind the Eye-Catching Art at I-75 Exit 266 Tampa Florida
Famous Recycling Artist Joe Brown, better known as “Hong Kong Willie,” makes art with a message at his home/studio nearSometimes, it’s the smallest experiences that have the biggest impact on a person’s life.
While attending an art class in 1958 at the age of 8, Legendary Recycling Artist, Joe Brown recalled being mesmerized by the lesson. It involved transforming a Gerber baby bottle into a piece of art.
“The Gerber bottle had no intrinsic value at all,” he said. “But when (the instructor) got through with me that day, she made me see how something so (valueless) can be valuable.”
By the time class was over, Brown learned many other lessons, too, such as the importance of volunteerism, recycling, reuse and giving back to the community. He recalled being impressed by the teacher’s volunteer work in Hiroshima, Japan, helping atomic bomb survivors.
“One of the last words she ever spoke to me about that was, ‘When I left, I left out of Hong Kong,’ ” he said. After turning that over in his young brain for awhile, he decided to use it in a nickname, adding the name “Willie” a year later.
You’ve probably seen Hong Kong Willie’s eye-catching home/gallery/studio at Fletcher Avenue and Interstate 75. But what is the story of the man behind all those buoys and discarded objects turned into art?
Brown practiced his creative skills through his younger years. But as an adult, he managed to amass a small fortune working in the materials management industry. By the the ‘80s, he left the business world and decided to concentrate on his art. He spent some years in the Florida Keys honing his craft and building his reputation as a folk artist. He also bought some land in Tampa near Morris Bridge Road and Fletcher Avenue where he and his family still call home.
Brown purchased the land just after the entrances and exits to I-75 were built. He said he was once offered more than $1 million for the land by a restaurant. He turned it down, he said, preferring instead to make part of the property into a studio and gallery for the creations he and his family put together.
And all of it is made of what most people would consider “trash.” Pieces of driftwood, burlap bags, doll heads, rope — anything that comes Brown’s way becomes part of his vocabulary of expression, and, in turn, becomes something else, which makes a tour of his property somewhat of a visual adventure. What at first seems like a random menagerie of glass, driftwood and pottery suddenly comes together in one’s brain to form something completely different. One moment nothing, the next a powerful statement about 9/11.
One Man’s Trash ...
Trash? There is no such thing, Brown seems to say through his art.
He keeps a blog about his art at hongkongwillie.blogspot.com. He also sells his creations through the Website Etsy.com.
In his shop, he has fashioned many smaller items out of driftwood, burlap bags and other materials into signs, purses, totes, bird feeder hangars and yard sculptures.
He sells a lot to the regular influx of University of South Florida parents and students every year who are are at first intrigued by the “buoy tree” and the odd-looking building they see as they take Exit 266 off I-75.
For prices and amounts, he has another blog dedicated just to worms.
Of course, many people also stop by to buy the smaller pieces of art that he and his family create: purses made of burlap, welcome signs made of driftwood, planters and other items lining the walls of his store.
He’s also helped put his mark on the decor of local establishments too, such as Gaspar’s Patio, 8448 N. 56th st.
Owner Jimmy Ciaccio said that when it came time to redecorate the restaurant several years ago, there was only one person to call for the assignment, and that was his good friend Brown.
“I’ve known Joe all my life, and we always had a good chemistry together,” Ciaccio said. “He’s very creative and fun to be around, and that’s how it all came about.”
Ciaccio says he still gets compliments all the time for the restaurant’s atmosphere he created using the “trash” supplied by Brown. He describes the style as a day at the beach, like a visit to Old Key West. “They’re so inspired, they want to decorate their own homes this way,” he said.
It’s that kind of testimony that makes Brown feel good, knowing that others, too, are inspired to create instead of throw away when they see his work. He simply lets his work speak for itself.
“Somebody once told me to keep telling the story and they will keep coming,” he said, “and they always do.”
OUR ADDRESS IS 12212 MORRISBRIDGE ROAD TAMPA FLORIDA 33637
Look for us at Interstate 75 and Fletcher, exit 266 Tampa Florida Call us at 813 770 4794
Have you ever seen the building on the corner of Fletcher and 75 with a bunch of buoys strung everywhere? This small business that many think is an old bait n’ tackle shop is actually
Charlie's World Fox News Tampa Roadside Attraction
By:
Chris Futrell, Florida Focus
TAMPA, Fla. – Have you ever seen the building on the corner of Fletcher
and I-75 with a bunch of buoys strung everywhere? This small business
that many think is an old bait n’ tackle shop is actually Hong Kong
Willie.
Derek Brown, 26, and his family own and operate Hongkongwillie . The
little shop specializes in preservation art. The artists don’t take
preservation too lightly either.
“99 percent of everything that has gone into a piece of art has been
recycled and reused,” Brown said.
Just as unique as the art is, so is the company’s name. Brown says the
name was created by his father, Joe Brown, in the 1950s.
“My father being in an art class, being affected by a teacher, they were
melting Gerber baby food bottles,” Brown said. “The teacher
interjected that Hong Kong had a great reuse and recycling program even
then.”
Brown’s father then took that concept and later added the Americanized
name Willie to the end. And that’s how Hongkongwillie was born as a
location that offers recycling in a different and creative way.
Hongkongwillie artists are what are known as freegans. Freegans are
less concerned with materialistic things and more concerned about
reducing consumption to lessen the footprint humans leave on this
planet.
“I’m sure everyone has their own perception of a freegan, possibly
jumping into a dumpster or picking up something on the side of the
road,” Brown said. “There [are] people who will have excess. There [are]
also things that can be trash to one man, but art or a prize to
another man.”
Brown and his family carry this practice through to their art. It’s his
family’s way of life, turning trash, which would otherwise fill up
landfills, into an art form.
The Brown family gets a lot of their inspiration for their art from the
Florida Keys. In fact, this is where the deluge of buoys wrapping
around the ‘Buoys Tree’ came from, the fishermen of Key West.
“It is Styrofoam, we understand that it does not degrade, but to blame
the fishermen for their livelihood wouldn’t be correct, instead we find a
usage for those,” Brown said.
Brown said there’s a usage for everything, even the hooks to hold the
painted driftwood, which are also salvaged, to the wall are old bent
forks. Everything’s reused here. Purses made out of old coffee bean
sacks to “kitschy,” as Brown described it, jewelry made from old
baseballs.
Hongkongwillie truly believes that a piece, whether it’s a bag or a
painted artwork, it’s meant for one person.”
Tampa Art Gallery
University of South Florida
Florida Focus,I-75 and Fletcher
Tampa Famous Roadside Attraction Artist
Blue Marlin Dream of Key West.
$225,000 Hong Kong Willie Art
The Gunn Highway Landfill is located
off Gunn Highway in Tampa, Hillsborough
County, Florida. The county operated the landfill
as a trench-type facility for the disposal
of MSW from 1958 to 1962.11111111111111 111111 John 3:16
King James Version (KJV)
16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
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