This man helped shape St. Petersburg’s culture. Now he’s retiring.

ST. PETERSBURG — When Bob Devin Jones strolled into Craft Kafe on a recent Wednesday, he was greeted with nods and salutations, proof that even when he’s away from the Studio@620, everyone knows him.

A man working at the coffee shop had recently held an event at the studio Jones founded 20 years ago.

At the intimate brick-colored space on First Avenue South, the answer is, famously, always yes — and Jones has become a big part of this city’s creative legacy as a result.

After decades of greenlighting community events and helping the arts and literary scene, Jones, 69, is retiring as artistic director in June.

As he’s prone to do, Jones quoted the Boyz II Men song “End of the Road” while talking about his departure, singing, “Although we’ve come to the end of the road.” With his extra time, he’ll concentrate on writing, he said, and has a plan to write a memoir that will contain interviews, poems and his mother’s recipes.

Part of why he’s retiring is his health: He was hospitalized for nine days due to COVID-19 in 2020, then discovered that what he thought was a long-term version of that illness was actually Parkinson’s disease.

Erica Sutherlin, a local actor, director, writer and former educator, will take over the artistic director role at Studio@620. Jones said she was his first and only choice.

“We would not be gifted with another person with Erica’s skill set,” he said, adding that it’s also important to him that she is African American.

Sutherlin, who was first introduced to the Studio@620 in 2008 as an actor, is now focused on planning a retirement party for Jones on June 30.

But Jones isn’t quite done: He just finished directing the Studio@620′s production of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”

A place unlike any other

Jones founded the Studio@620 in 2004 with David Ellis, who died in 2018.

Jones was an actor, director and playwright from Los Angeles. Ellis was an exhibition designer who created the Great Explorations museum on St. Petersburg’s Fourth Street. They met as neighbors in St. Pete and bonded over a desire to create a multidimensional community space. It wouldn’t just be for theater and arts, but a place to foster discussions on a variety of topics, eventually including a social justice roundtable series.

They took the idea to various arts leaders. Jones’ partner, James Howell, proposed that members of the community could buy shares in the company for $10,000 each to help fund it, which was successful. When they got the space at 620 First Ave. S. — the former location of a blueprint company — it was in rough shape, with the ceiling falling down and no floor on the second level.

At the groundbreaking in June 2004, local performer Sharon Scott sang “We Are Standing on Holy Ground,” an omen of sorts.

The Studio@620 opened on Dec. 31, 2004, during St. Petersburg’s New Year’s celebration First Night. Hundreds turned out for two performances by the Hallelujah Singers of Beaufort, South Carolina, despite some concern that the location was too far from the epicenter of downtown.

The first art exhibition, “Grand Ma’s Hands: One Hundred Years of African American Quilting,” also debuted that night.

In its first year, the Studio@620 presented a Film Noir festival, the Say What spoken word celebration, an exhibition of work by artist Neverne Covington and another exhibit of paintings called “The Florida Highwaymen — Further Down The Road.”

Word got out: Come to the studio with an idea, and the answer will be yes.

“We didn’t have any crystal ball,” Jones said. “We’ve learned from saying yes. ... And we’ve been amazed sometimes. But how are you going to find the next Zora Neale Hurston or the next Truman Capote?”

Giving platforms for growth

In its first 15 years, the Studio@620 launched several series that still happen, including the Radio Theatre Project, “Through Our Eyes: Midtown and Beyond” and Holizaar, an artist and maker market.

It was also the springboard for several organizations that have grown, including the Sunscreen Film Festival, Keep St. Pete Lit and Tombolo Books.

Artists who got their start at the studio include Obie Award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Aleshea Harris and Alexander Jones, the studio’s first artist in residence, who started dance company Project Alchemy there.

Visual artist Jake Troyli also has roots at the studio. Jones gave Troyli his first solo art exhibit after he got his undergraduate degree, a pivotal moment in his career. He’s gone on to have a residency in Paris and is represented by the prestigious Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago, and his works have been collected by the Tampa Museum of Art and the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art.

“It’s super important to hear yes, when you’re someone who’s making work and having to think about whether or not that work has any sort of place in the world,” Troyli said. “(Jones) and the mission at Studio@620 ... have always been important to the community, and it’s something that has contributed to the growth and the seriousness of the scene.”

Before it had its own space, St. Petersburg’s Freefall Theatre got its start at the Studio@620 in 2008, with the production “The Wild Party.” Artistic director Eric Davis said it gave them an opportunity as a new company that hadn’t yet been established.

After Freefall went professional and got its own venue, Jones was a member of its board of directors and also played the role of the Stage Manager in its production of “Our Town.”

“One of the reasons we wanted him to play the Stage Manager was because of the kind of meta quality of who he is in our community,” Davis said. “It felt so appropriate for him to be the leader in a play that’s about community and savoring the moment and experiencing life as it happens and enjoying the beauty in life.”

Building on a creative community

Jones said he’s been in love with St. Petersburg since he arrived in 1997.

“It must be something, as I always say, in the dirt,” he said. “The dirt is magical here. But you have to be true to your school and the school I’ve learned the most from are the people.”

What Jones has created with the studio is palpable. Once, after NPR journalist Corey Flintoff came to the studio for an event, Jones said Flintoff remarked that he loved the feeling in the room.

“I think the walls are seasoned with the aspirations and the dreams and deployment of all kinds of art,” Jones said. He also commented on the all-hands-on-deck spirit that is in the “DNA of this town.”

Board chairperson Amber Brinkley said that Jones has normalized diversity in the city.

“You walk into the studio, and it just feels like a real reflection of St. Petersburg and it doesn’t feel curated or awkward,” she said.

St. Petersburg has returned the love. Jones was given a key to the city by former Mayor Rick Kriseman in 2021 and also served on his transition team when he was taking office in 2014.

With Howell, his partner of 26 years, Jones has also literally fed people in the community at large dinner parties at their home in the Old Southeast. Jones learned this tradition — and just about everything else he knows, he said — from his mother, who would whip up meals to feed their large family.

Jones knows he’s been a major part of the city’s artistic renaissance and likes to mention the people who planted the seeds decades ago: Al May, Hazel and Bill Hough. He gives credit to early supporters of the studio, including Dar Webb and Pat and Ron Mason.

He’s proud of the fact that he cooked dinner for historian John Hope Franklin and that local academic Ray Arsenault is a friend of the studio. His circle of artists includes the cast he personally called on for “Hamlet,” including John H. Bambery (Hamlet), David Warner (King Claudius) and Tiffany Faykus (Queen Gertrude).

He knows the best could be yet to come. The first quarter of the year has been the studio’s best ever financially, he said.

“This is a very fecund place,” he said. “Creativity, the ecology is ripe for it. And we just said yes to it and it said yes back to us.”

Tampa Bay Times archives were used in this report.