In Safety Harbor – Whimzeyland – or Welcome to the Bowling Ball House

In 1986, artists Todd Ramquist and Kiaralinda bought a house in Safety Harbor. Over the years, they changed it whimzeland: A multi-colored dwelling in an eye-popping yard of lush plants, painted tile walkways, flowers made from plastic bottles, decorated bowling balls, and more.

The house at 1206 3rd Street North was known as the “Bowling Ball House” by many in the Tampa Bay area. whimzeland born. They have other houses in the neighborhood: one is called crazy house It is a retreat for artists and musicians.

61, both the actors, who call themselves the Whimzy Twins, spoke to them Tampa Bay Times About whimzeland,

What did the house look like when you bought it?

Kiaralinda: It was beige, which is not the color of the rainbow in our lives. There were no plants.

What color did you paint it first?

Kiaralinda: At the time, grey, mauve and white was what everyone else was doing as an interior… I wanted to make it lavender instead of mauve. ,

Again, I don’t know how many years later that changed. Everything became peach and oregano, plum and a teal color; So that was the second generation. … Then, each surface became a different color.

Neighbors complain? This deed is not banned, is it?

Todd: No, not at all. … the opposite actually happened to us. … when we were doing the big Christmas installation, people would come into Safety Harbor and look at it and say, “Dude, I want to be here.” Then we have friends that we met here who bought houses down the street and became friends. … they were all supporters, knew we were artists, knew we traveled all the time. We’ll do these big Christmas things. We had a lot of street parties, and they would all come to him.

You travel the arts festival circuit across the country, you say, from May to October.

Todd: We were doing local (festivals), and it must have definitely been a hobby. Then, we attended a show at the Las Olas Art Festival in Fort Lauderdale. A group of artists familiar to us said – “We had double-booked – they said don’t down the one here (Tampa Bay area) – down the one. It’s a completely different market.” So we went there (Fort Lauderdale), and we sold every single piece of art in the first two hours of the show. This had never happened before. … my cousin got married in Chicago and we signed up for a little show at Water Tower Place. It was an outlier, and the same thing happened there. We basically sold everything we had. It was a Friday-Saturday-Sunday show, and on Friday everything was gone.

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Kiaralinda: So we became snowbirds in reverse.

Bowling ball inspiration came when you saw a house that had a cactus garden decorated with bowling balls, you say.

kiaralinda: I thought, Wow, that’s a bowling ball. They use it for landscaping. We could do this. We could get them cheap, and we were poor. So we started looking and buying them at flea markets. And we didn’t buy so many, but we were starting to border small flower beds. ,

Then, we went to a flea market on 49th street, and there was a rack of balls. It (rack) said, “10 free bowling balls per person.” We were like, “Well this isn’t weird. Why would anyone want that other than us?”

Todd: I think he probably took someone’s place and they were there, and he wanted to get rid of them.

Kiaralinda: Then, I called my sister and she and her girlfriend got 20. So we had 40. Once you have 40 (bowling balls) in your yard, people start paying attention and bring them to you.

How many bowling balls do you have now?

Todd: is between 900 and 1,000. ,

Kiaralinda: We got one sent in the mail from Atlanta. It’s postmarked, and it didn’t come in a box. Our postman was panicking… He was like, “I hope no one else does this.”

How did the arts center develop from this?

Todd: Before we made plans, Pepsi did an ad for the Super Bowl and they did an event called “Refresh Your World”. If you were a nonprofit… you could annoy your friends enough and they had a substantial fan base. ,

When Pepsi happened, the competition took place during the summer. At art festivals we would say, “Hey guys, here’s a card. You can vote for us.” Everyone who bought the artwork voted. … So we won $50,000 from Pepsi, and then a private person gave us $55,000. … Those were our only two big charities, then. Everything else was like $5 to $20, but there were a lot of them. So we were able to build it.

You had concerts in your yard to raise funds for the center, and you say that actor Jeff Daniels performed (in 2011) in front of an audience of 171 people?

Todd: We used to do like $10 dollars, you got pizza and you could “BYOB”. It got more popular each time. … Then, Jeff Daniels found out we were going to build an arts center, and he moved from L.A. to his hometown (Chelsea, Mich.) and built a theater. He spoke in front of Congress a few months before coming here, what can happen if you make artistic things. He built the theatre, and suddenly the city came alive with restaurants and stuff. ,

The way we promoted it was “Mystery Guest”. He said that we can give clues but cannot reveal our names. So the first clue was, This guy has hosted Saturday Night Live more than once…

Not many people knew he was a musician, so when he went on stage everyone went, “Oh, Jeff Daniels. What’s he going to do?”

what does he play?

Todd: guitar. He is a really talented player. He tells stories of appearing in films from time to time.

Kiaralinda: He told everyone to get out their cameras and take a picture, and then put them away so we could pay serious attention. (That) super funny. He was very funny.

For more information, visit kiaralinda.com,