Atlas Obscura,Florida Famous Art . Updated 5/16/2023

Famous Florida Artist

 Atlas Obscura

In Tampa, a Wonderful World of Junk

Hong Kong Willie is so much more than a roadside attraction.

by Eric Grundhauser

Hong Kong Willie’s is a cacophony of art and reuse. All photos by Eric Grundhauser

The domain of Hong Kong Willie covers an odd corner just off of a busy Tampa, Florida, highway. Nestled on a stretch of road largely populated by drab hotels, the clutch of brightly colored shacks that make up Joe Brown’s artistic empire stand out like a neon lighthouse of creativity.

Brown splits his time between his Tampa outpost and the place where his heart truly seems to lie, Key West. In a bright Hawaiian shirt and shorts that show arms and legs regularly baked by the Florida sun, his look might accurately be described as something like a modern island pirate.

Nearly every inch of space on Hong Kong Willie’s lot is home to some piece of art, decorated piece of detritus, or other found object. The walls are covered in old buoys, each node painted with a unique design. Under an old chair lies a pile of clip-on pagers. In the corner of the yard is a skeletal helicopter, covered with string lights; next to that towers what looks like a colossal Christmas tree made of those same lobster buoys. Even the asphalt driveway is covered in splatters of bright paint, so that it looks better on Google Earth, according to Brown. “Everything is precious,” he says, summing up the ethos of reuse, reinvention, and imagination his unique roadside attraction embodies.

All junk is precious.

If Hong Kong Willie, a moniker Brown himself sometimes takes on, sounds like like the lovechild of an art gallery and a seaside trash heap, that’s because it pretty much is. Brown, who says he was “born an artist,” has been shaped by both creativity and junk since an early age. Now in his 60s, Brown says his father once donated a chunk of their family’s land to Hillsborough County so that it could be used as a much-needed landfill, but was never compensated or acknowledged for the gift. Still, Brown grew up exploring the landfill, scavenging for treasures. Surrounded by what most people consider junk, he developed a special appreciation for things that get thrown away. “I was meant to paint on boards,” he says.

At the age of eight, Brown took an art class where his teacher shared that she had spent a lot of time volunteering in Hiroshima. Learning that there was a strong local tradition in Hiroshima of turning tossed off items into art, this too had an impact on Brown. This same teacher later told him that she had left Asia out of Hong Kong, and this little factoid apparently led to his adoption of the name Hong Kong Willie. She also passed on a passion for art. Brown would eventually start a career in the technology industry, but since then he’s returned to his artistic roots.

Hong Kong Willie’s main shack.

Perched on top of one of the small structures on Brown’s land are large, reused letters that say “art station,” but this place really couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. When Brown first established the Hong Kong Willie site, he says there was a collective of five artists working on the project, but now the living gallery is run and supplied only by him and his wife, Kim. Inside the art station, the space is bursting. One of Hong Kong Willie’s signature items are rugged pieces of locally sourced scrap wood and boards that Kim adorns with colorful painted works. There are birds, beach scenes, abstract shapes, and other designs that look unmistakably Floridian.

THE IRONY OF IT ALL
 Hong Kong Willie Art ,Blue Marlin Dream of Key West. $225,000 To Inquire  about Hongkongwillie Art Call  Hongkongwillie

 

 

 

 

Local Honey Honey for sale in Tampa .Updated 3 /22 /2024

  Local Raw  Honey Sold in Tampa . Honey sold in Tampa Florida.

 Tampa Gold Honey  comes from the Wildernesses

Tampa Local Honey

Pint Mason Jars of Our Local  Raw  Honey is $17.50
Quart Mason Jars of Our Local Raw  Honey is $29.50
1/2 Gallon Mason Jars of Our Local Raw  Honey is $48.00
1 Gallon of Our Local Raw  Honey is $80.00

 Tampa Gold Honey is A Wilderness Honey.A wilderness is an area of land that has been largely undisturbed by modern human development. Wilderness areas usually lack roads, buildings, and other artificial structures. This provides a natural environment for Producing  Local Honey at its Finest.
Far from Houses,Buildings.
  Local Honey rich with Pollen.
Tampa Gold Honey,Not Filtered, We do not Heat,.
Nothing but what nectar was Gathered.
You can savor the smell of the blossoms in the Honey .
The concern from sprays used in our neighborhoods are reduced from the distance .
We do not put our hives in Orange Groves. The grooves have been sprayed for years.
WE DOT SELL ORANGE BLOSSOM HONEY FOR THAT REASON.
The mystique of premium honeys, each with its own signature blend of flavors, has faded to a distant memory in the wake of our drive-thru lifestyle.

Our  Tampa Local honey is “as it exists in the beehive.” It is extracted from the beehive, strained and poured straight into the bottle, bypassing commercial processing methods.
WE ONLY SELL Real RAW HONEY
.. OUR BEES are never feed Sugar.
HONEY IS LEFT IN THE HIVE FOR THEM to feed when nectar is not available.
FEEDING SUGAR IS NOT LIKE THE NECTAR .

WE ADD NOTHING TO THE HONEY

Many have asked why not state or have our Honey certified ORGANIC.

1 . FIRST OF ALL NO BEE KEEPER IS AWARE OF THE TRAVELS OF EACH BEE.

2 . Any USA Certified Organic honey sold in the United States is imported from other countries and certified organic by that country. ... A US beekeeper can have non-certified organic honey that is raised organically. But it is nearly impossible to produce organic honey.

3. Currently, to be certified organic, honey must meet the general USDA organic standards. But there aren't yet requirements specific to honey. USDA does have recommended guidelines, but an actual organic standard for honey has been in the works since 2001.

 .
                                                                                                                                      Wilderness honey is made by bees that have collected nectar from a local source of wildflowers. The taste and composition of wildflower honey can vary depending upon the variety of flowers in bloom at the time the honey is made. The potential health benefits of Raw Wilderness Honey are many due to its nutrient rich content and anti-microbial properties. 
Wilderness Honey Basics
Bees collect nectar, which contains carbohydrates, from flowers and take it back to their hive. The nectar is partially digested into more simple sugars and stored in the honeycomb inside the hive. Eventually it loses moisture and condenses into thick, sweet honey. The type of flowers the nectar came from influences the color and flavor of the resulting honey.If the bees use a variety of flowers found in nature, the honey is simply referred to as wilderness honey. Some naturalists feel that honey made from the nectar of local wildflowers can relieve you of seasonal allergies. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine reports that local honey is often eaten by allergy sufferers -- with the belief that it boosts the immune system and acts much like an immunization by building up your body’s antibodies to allergens and pollen. Wilderness Honey is not one plant specific.                                                                                                    

  WE ONLY SELL RAW HONEY.
 WE  NEVER FEED OUR BEES SUGAR WATER, HONEY IS LEFT IN THE HIVE FOR THEM TO SURVIVE.

FEEDING SUGAR WATER  IS NOT A REAL SOURCE, LIKE THE NECTAR THEY BRING IN FROM FLOWERS

NOTHING IS ADDED TO THE HONEY
      
  Why not state or have our Honey certified ORGANIC.

1 . FIRST OF ALL NO BEE KEEPER IS AWARE OF THE TRAVELS OF EACH BEE.

2 . Any USA Certified Organic honey sold in the United States is imported from other countries and certified organic by that country. ... A US beekeeper can have non-certified organic honey that is raised organically. But it is nearly impossible to produce organic honey.

3. Currently, to be certified organic, honey must meet the general USDA organic standards. But there aren't yet requirements specific to honey. USDA does have recommended guidelines, but an actual organic standard for honey has been in the works since 2001.

                                                                                 Sold By Tampa Gold . Our Family roots have been in the business for over 3 generations. 12212 Morris Bridge Rd Tampa, FL 33637                                                                                                                                                 Hours
Mon Closed
Tue 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
Wed 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
Thu 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
Fri 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
Sat 10:00 am - 3:00 pm
Sun Closed                                                                          

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Things to do in Tampa . Updated 5/16/2023

Tampa gallery practices the art of creative reuse By Kerry Schofield ,Things to do in Tampa

 The year was 1958.Famous Florida Artist Joe Brown, 8, lived next to a county dump site in Tampa, Fla. Brown found old junk, fixed it up and sold it. Brown knew he had a higher calling in life — he was destined to be an artist. Brown, who is now 60, makes art from trash at his Hong Kong Willie Art Gallery. He has embellished the outside of the gallery with splashes of Caribbean-color paint and found objects reminiscent of Key West. Brown is as colorful as the gallery — he wears a bright tropical shirt with red, white and blue plaid shorts. Patrons tell him they can smell the salt water when they drive up. The gallery, however, is perched inland near Morris Bridge Road and Interstate 75 where a rusty-hair hen named Fred, first thought to be a rooster, patrols the property. Fred, abandoned five years ago by tourists, trots between the gallery and adjacent hotel leaving a trail of droppings behind her. Brown lived on the Gunn Highway Landfill from 1958 to 1963. The Hillsborough County landfill operated for four years and was closed in 1962. “It was astounding how quick they could fill the 15 acres in pits that were enormous,” Brown said. An apartment complex now sits on top of the old landfill. A report by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection indicated that a lining was placed underneath the complex when it was built to block methane gas from leaking. The gas is a byproduct of rotting garbage. As a child, Brown lived on his father’s dairy and beef farm. Brown said during heavy rain, the low land on the farm flooded the neighboring Gunn Highway. In 1957, Hillsborough County officials offered to elevate the low land to stop the flooding by turning it into a landfill. When the property was sold in 1984 by Brown’s father, soil testing revealed heaps of old paper and punctured cans of spray paint. “They dug up and took out newspapers like the day they were put in,” Brown said. “It reminded me of nuclear bombs that were going to go off. They dumped everything in the landfill.” As a child, Brown foraged at nearby dumpsters. County workers saved junk for him that people dropped off. One day, Brown’s parents got a call from his elementary school teacher and told them that Brown had $100 in his pocket and that he must be stealing. Brown picked up the saved junk after school and turned it into something new. Contrary to his elementary school teacher’s accusation, he wasn’t a thief after all. Instead he was a young entrepreneur who sold other people’s trash. “There was so much excess coming into the landfill,” Brown said. “There was so much waste from our society.” However, Brown’s mother wanted him to pursue his talents and dreams, not money. But he developed a business sense during his young junk collecting days and told his mother, “I’m not going to be an artist. I’ve read that artists starve to death.” Brown’s mother became concerned. He said his mother knew “the value of happiness and the travels of life” and sent him to a summer art class. The art teacher inspired awe in Brown. She taught him how to reuse baby food jars by melting the glass and adding marbles to the mix to create paper weights. The teacher had traveled to Hong Kong, China and Hiroshima, Japan after World War II. She saw how people were forced to recycle and reuse items out of necessity after the war. This left an impression on Brown. It was at this time that he personified the name Hong Kong Willie, which harkens back to China where the mass production of merchandise occurs. The “Willies” are people like Brown and other environmentalists who try to reuse trash instead of throwing it into landfills. After high school, Brown went to college to study business but dropped out after three years. He worked in the material handling industry until 1981. Although Brown had achieved a successful career and lifestyle, he had become discouraged in 1979. “The change came from knowing that I had come to the point of what people call success,” Brown said. “I wasn’t happy inside.” He had been diagnosed with depression in 1973, a condition that was caused from high fructose intake and that lasted for more than four years. In 1985, Brown and his artist wife, Kim, bought the half-acre property off Fletcher Avenue and Morris Bridge Road. For two decades the two small wooden shacks, built around 1965, that now house the gallery operated as a bait and tackle shop. Nowadays, Brown raises and sells worms by the pound mainly for composting. He recycled 250 thousand pounds in the worm bed in 2009. Brown still sells the worms for $4.50 a cup for fishing. In 1981, Brown resurrected the Hong Kong Willie name from his childhood art class. In the early 1980s, both he and his wife, Kim, began upcycling trash into art. Brown entered another world when he left his mainstream lifestyle behind — he joined the art scene and booked rock bands at the same time. The Brown family spent half their time in Tampa and the other half in a small home on Boot Key Harbor in Marathon. Brown gained the reputation of the Key West lobster buoy artist. “I had a total different appearance when in Key West,” Brown said. “I used to have hair down to my waist.” When Brown came back to Tampa, he lived in the woods for months at a time, much like Henry David Thoreau in “Walden,” who had lived a simple lifestyle in a one room cabin near Walden Pond in Concord, Mass. Back in Key West, Brown became friends with local fishermen. He and others organized efforts to clean up plastic foam buoys that had collected in the waterways from years of fishing. “You would go and find buoys floating in the mangroves, up on the shore and they had trashed up everything,” Brown said. The Earth Resource Foundation reports that plastic foam is dumped into the environment. It breaks up into pieces and chokes animals by clogging their digestive system. Brown sells the buoys from the Hong Kong Willie Art Gallery for $8.00 a piece. He said he has sold from 30 to 40 thousand buoys in the last ten years. Some of the buoys are more than 50 years old and are collected by tourists from China and Japan. “If you go to the Keys right now and you see a buoy floating, you’ll see someone slam on the brakes to get it,” Brown said. “They’re the most prized buoys of the world.” Brown made a holiday buoy tree 12 years ago from the Key West buoys. Hundreds of buoys are strung on rope and wrapped around a utility pole next to the gallery. Brown hopes the novelty of the buoy tree will inspire and stimulate children to find new ways to reduce, reuse and recycle garbage. In Kate Shoup’s “Rubbish! Reuse Your Refuse,” the author said much of what we get is designed to be scrapped after only a few uses. We easily throw away pens, lighters, razors and dozens of other items. Shoup said Americans consume 2 million plastic drink bottles every 5 minutes. Likewise, Brown finds uses for items that would otherwise end up in a landfill. He buys used burlap bags from coffee and peanut producers. He sells them to the U.S. National Forestry Service for the collection of pine seeds and Samuel Adams for hops production. Brown and his wife, Kim, also make art hippie bags from the burlap sacks and sell them in the gallery. Kim, also an artist, paints fish, turtles, crows, parrots and the like on driftwood and on wood that Brown has salvaged from saw mills and from old buildings in Key West. Brown said art is viewed and appreciated by certain people. “If it all came out the same, it would be like bland grits all the time,” Brown said. He likes to refer to the gallery art as reused rather than recycled, which takes waste and turns it into an inferior product. Reuse on the other hand involves remaking an item and using it again for the same intended purpose. “I also try to stay away from imprinting a definite use for a definite item,” Brown said. He explains that 2-liter bottles are not limited to making bird feeders. The bottles can be used for art and craft projects as well. Brown said the larger message he wants to communicate is that the disposal of garbage today is creating a toxic environment. “I still have the original Gerber baby food bottle that I melted” Brown said. “It’s sitting on my mom’s little table
.”Things to do in Tampa

Tampa Famous Recycling Artist ,WEIRD FLORIDA: ROADS LESS TRAVELED

Charlie Carlson visits one of the weirdest guys in the world, the one and only Hong Kong Willie. WEIRD FLORIDA: ROADS LESS TRAVELED Things to do in Tampa


Raised on Tampa city dump,like living in the Penthouse in the upper east side.

FUNDING FOR THIS PROGRAM IS MADE POSSIBLE BY THE
S.L. GIMBEL FOUNDATION.
IN THIS EDITION OF "WEDU ARTS PLUS,Hongkongwillie

Blue Marlin Dream of Key West.

$225,000  Hong Kong Willie Art

Gunn Highway Landfill

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.
 
It,(was the dump) that had all this media, and a young enterprising mind. Not enough time to capture it all.

Art Hong Kong Willie's way

 Published in TB2
BY SOHINI LAHIRI
Growing up in Tampa, I spent a period of time fascinated by a quirky, eye-catching landmark at Fletcher Avenue and Interstate 75. This was also the period of time I spent obsessed with making binoculars out of toilet paper rolls and necklaces out of pop tops. To me, this sight was the epitome of similar creative craziness, and I often found myself looking for it during car journeys, hoping it hadn’t disappeared overnight.
But time passes and so does the urge for pop-top necklaces, and observant eyes don’t notice the same sights. It wasn’t until recently that I once again took note of the scene, with its broken down orange helicopter, a tree made of what seems to be indestructible balloons and a blue-and-white house covered with trash remade into art.
It’s the home of Hong Kong Willie, artist of reuse.
I finally paid a visit to this art gallery after many years of wondering about the story behind it. The pavement leading to the door is painted with handprints and splatters, the store edged with upside down Coke bottles. Streams of lobster buoys hang from the roof and also make up the “tree” I marveled at so often from my car window.
Various shoes, bottles, clocks and signs are glued to the side of the store, and there’s a tribute to Sept. 11 off to the side. No one seemed to be home, so I called the number on the “WE’RE OPEN” sign, which brought a middle-aged man in a bright Hawaiian shirt from behind the store.
After a few basic questions, Joe Brown begins to open up about the history surrounding his art.
Brown, better known as Hong Kong Willie, says he was an artist from the start. “Everyone is born an artist,” he said. “However some are granted the gift of being able to express that art.”
As a young boy, his mother decided to send him to art school, which he says changed the course of his life forever.
At the age of 8, Brown recalls being heavily influenced by the lessons, which included transforming a Gerber baby bottle, something with no real value, into a piece of art. His teacher had spent an enormous amount of time and effort in Hiroshima, Japan, helping those affected by the atomic bombs. Brown learned many lessons about recycling from this teacher, who had come from Hong Kong. Brown added an American name, Willie, to Hong Kong for his nickname Hong Kong Willie.
While Brown grew up to be an artist, he left the world of mainstream art to return to his background in technology.
“But on Nov. 13th, 1981 … on a Friday at 1:30 in the afternoon, I had an epiphany,” Brown says. “I was at a friend’s house right across the street,” pausing to point at a row of apartments across from his store, “and a series of events led me to rejoin the art world.”
With the help of two other artists, Brown set up his business in the Florida Keys in the early 1980s, then moved it to Tampa. Together, they believed that they were predestined for the Green Movement, and have been making art out of recyclables for close to 30 years.
How’s business? He smiles. “It’s pretty wild.”
Inside, Hong Kong Willie’s art includes glossy pieces of driftwood restored and painted with beautiful landscapes and kernels of truth, some of the gorgeous work priced in the six figures. But there’s also a wide collection of handmade bags, wooden sculptures and sassy bracelets for more moderate prices.
A portion of the proceeds go to benefit the Green Movement, Brown says.
With a laid-back swagger, Brown continues. “We live pretty minimally. And all the funds we get from donations and our art sales are delegated to green projects.”
I’m not sure what I was expecting when I decided to visit Hong Kong Willie. Certainly not the breathtaking art inside, and definitely not the history behind it. I’m feeling thick-headed for not visiting years ago, and say so.
Brown offers a last bit of insight:
“I’m a big believer in predestination and timing. If someone is not ready to view art, the door is closed. Every piece of art that is made, and every project we do is done for a reason. It doesn’t matter if that reason shows up the next day, or walks in six years later; every piece of art will find a home.”


  To Live a life in the art world and be so blessed to make a social impact. Artists are to give back, talent is to tell a story, to make change. Reuse is a life experience  

Tampa Famous Recycling Artist Hongkongwillie Art
MYSTERIOSITY

 



$176,000 U.S. Dollars
  Hong Kong Willie Gallery