In funeral home, art provides solace

LAKELAND - A new art gallery just opened in Lakeland, in the most unlikely of places: a funeral home.

Lakeland Funeral Home and Memorial Gardens on Bartow Highway was remodeling recently.

When the owners were kicking around the idea of what they should hang on the walls, thoughts of a few paintings turned into a bunch.

And Polk County's newest space for art was born.

"We think it is brilliant, just brilliant," Shannon Lanier, a board member of Platform Art, told FOX 13 on Wednesday.

Platform Art, the center of the arts community in Lakeland, found the first few artists who are now exhibiting their work there. The organization plans to help the funeral home find others in the future as well.

The shows, which also include sculpture, will change every three months. At first, you might think an art gallery and a funeral home are an odd paring.

But Chuck Horvath, one of the owners of Lakeland Funeral Home and Memorial Gardens, says it is really not.

He says the gallery could offer people who are distraught a chance to calm themselves and lift their spirits.

"Someone could come and kinda get lost in an area that's full of life," said Horvath.