BRADENTON, FL — Artist Lee Firestone was known for his kind nature, his willingness to help anyone in need and his love of the Village of the Arts, where he owned the Firestone Gallery with his wife, Annie Firestone.
That’s why his death in July 2022 was such a big loss for the arts district, artist Kristin Anderson told Patch. “He just lived to be a friend to everyone. He had such a presence here and lifted everyone up. His death left such a huge void in the village.”
Now, she’s found a way to honor Lee, a Waste Pro employee who was killed while performing maintenance on a garbage truck.
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Anderson is hosting a showcase of repurposed guitar art created by artists in the area, friends of Lee and others, Friday and Saturday, during the village’s monthly art walk, at the Art of Life and Music. It also coincides with the annual Cigar Box and Music Festival.
Lee grew up in a tiny farm town in Indiana and grew up playing in bands and creating art. Days after his high school graduation, he moved to Florida, his wife, also known as her radio DJ name, Liz Wilde, told Patch.
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He was always creative, but stopped making art for a period, she said. The couple met while working for 96k-Rock in Fort Myers.
“On my first tour of the studios by him, we both fell in love instantly,” Annie said. “I went on the air 15 minutes after meeting him and declared for two million ‘Liz-bians,’ ‘I think I just met my Captain Caveman, lumberjack, wood-chopping husband!’ I was having an out-of-body experience. My show staff was so, so shocked as I repeated it on the air several times.”
The pair “didn’t even kiss” for a couple of years, she added. “But it was hard to stay away from each other. We were in a creative environment and I quickly saw that he was my soulmate.”
The couple, who lived in Matlacha, for years, dreamed of owning their own art gallery and studio there one day.
Lee worked in waste management at the time and he asked his garbage truck drivers to bring him any discarded instruments.
“After over a year or so, he had been brought over 400 trashed guitars of every kind and the occasional violin or horn,” Annie said.
His work took him to Bradenton. They eventually relocated to Perico Island because she was nervous about her husband making the long commute on his Harley Davidson every day.
It was after this move that Lee “became an art guitar and collage-making machine,” his wife said.
They eventually found a home in the Village of the Arts and opened the Firestone Gallery. By then, both had amassed a collection of work to display and sell.
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“He had never seen such a wild and free place before, not in Indiana! A place where you can sell art out of your house that you live in,” she said. “We were smitten with the colorful 1920s cottages, the wildly varying types of artists that lived and worked there, and its grittiness, unlike the gentrified Towles Court in (Sarasota) or Central Avenue in St. Petersburg.”
The village was “the perfect fit” for her husband, who fell in love with the district, she said.
He quickly befriended the other artists, business owners and residents in the village and jumped in to assist them whenever he could.
“He was the type of man who literally gave the shirt off his back or extended a hand to help at every turn,” Annie said.
Anderson called Lee “a gentle giant.”
“He was large in stature and people were intimidated by him if they didn’t know them,” she said. “But he was a goof. He was so unassuming and so kind. And he was so talented and creative, but so humble. And he was always looking for ways to bring people into the village.”
She distributed 35 guitars to people, asking them to transform the instruments into repurposed art for this weekend’s show.
“It’s the perfect tribute to Lee, who would do anything for this village,” Anderson said. “He’d love to see the show coming together.”
Annie hopes the show will become an annual event and plans to put together a grant fund to help with the display and acquisition of instruments. She hopes his former Waste Pro coworkers will donate guitars from the trash for it.
“The village gave Lee and I a beautiful, productive, helpful, creative life well lived there. It’s important, I think, to keep his legacy alive there with public art and an annual celebration of his life and talents, upcycling people’s discarded instruments,” she said. “Please, let’s honor a great man taken way too soon. Let the love of my life live on!”
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