Meeting the Caravaggio of Captiva
A tribute to the work and unsung influence of artist Jim Mazzotta
Yes, I am an artist. Thirty years too late…
From my youngest days, I was drawn to drawing. A steady diet of cartoons coupled with a reliable supply of crayons will do that to a kid, especially an only child. My earliest memories of drawing go back to kindergarten. Each table of four kids was given a basket of crayons, a stack of construction paper, and a half hour. The rest was up to us.
I’m not sure how many days it took me to fall into a rhythm, but as sure as the tide, I began roughly recreating the same scene: me atop a surfboard, surrounded by beachy biota, and often cheered on a blonde beach babe.
A couple of years later, my family took our annual summer pilgrimage down to the beach where the seagulls preach. That year, my brother-in-law Mike introduced me to the cassette Songs You Know by Heart: Jimmy Buffett's Greatest Hit(s). I was musically mesmerized. These 13 songs formed the soundtrack for our summer vacation in St. Augustine Beach, the closest approximation to Margaritaville a grade-school me had yet experienced. We would cross the soaring State Road 312 bridge from whose apex the full grandeur of the St. Augustine skyline could be seen. It looks even better while He Went To Paris is playing.
Anastasia Island resembles a skinny whelk shell. St. Augustine Beach occupies the fattest part of the elongated shell. A1A splits in two near the north end and, as the island tapers down to a skinnier strip, the scenic byway reconverges one-third of the way south. At this nexus sits Anastasia Plaza, a shopping center anchored by a Publix whose twin entrances open onto tiled walls, adorned with murals celebrating the Ancient City and her coastal environs. A few storefronts down from Publix, in the 1990s, sat a simple t-shirt shop known as Palm Bay Republic. They sold many things, most notably shirts from the illustrated apparel company, Caribbean Soul.
The lizard logo can’t help but catch your eye. But the back of the shirts truly captivated my young imagination. Each served as a window onto magically realistic vistas, set in tropical climes, populated by colorful parrots, even more colorful pirates, and accessible only by sailboat or seaplane.
If Gustave Doré’s illustrations are the definitive visual take on Paradise Lost, then Caribbean Soul shirts are the definitive visual take on paradise found. The illustrated apparel company’s most notable shirts visualized the songs of professional beach bum, Jimmy Buffett. My first and still favorite shirt remains the one for A Pirate Looks at Forty.
Each shirt had a distinctive signature from the illustrator. His stylized John Hancock was hard to read and Google was not yet in all our pockets. Whoever this mystery man was, his tropical technicolor canvas added a new wrinkle to our summer traditions: to the low country boil, mini-golf at Fiesta Falls, and blueberry pancakes at the Oasis, was added a stop at the Palm Bay Republic. A new Caribbean Soul shirt was how we commemorated the fun had, tans gotten, waves caught, and memories made.
Once I hit middle school, Palm Bay Republic moved from the island to downtown St. Augustine on St. George Street, the Ancient City’s most frequented bazaar. At that location, while seeking a new Caribbean Soul shirt for the summer (and getting a few color caps), I first discovered Jimmy Buffett’s 4-disc anthology, Boats, Beaches, Bars & Ballads. For middle school me, this served as the Cambrian Explosion of my Buffett fandom. I played these CDs on a loop for the rest of that vacation and soon those songs were permanent features in my mental jukebox.
Summers and winters
Scattered like splinters
And four to five years slipped away…
Summers came and went. The sands of time shift as inexorably as the Anastasia dunes. I can’t remember exactly what summer we noticed that the Caribbean Soul brand had been renamed Goin’ Coastal. The illustrations were still as lush as the flora of the spice islands, but it just felt…off. And the selection had shrunk, with more shelf space allotted giving to the bland, uninspired monotonous Life Is Good junk whose logo is literally a black and white stick figure. These inauspicious signs were like the eerie green calm before a hurricane hits.
Trouble in Paradise
It wasn’t long before Palm Bay Republic’s brick-and-mortar store gave way to the Category 5 storm of online shopping and “e-tail”. Goin’ Coastal appeared to be goin’, goin’…gone. Goin’ Coastal maintained a small online presence. And Margaritaville Inc. was now an established corporate brand, but its offerings were decidedly derivative.
Caribbean Soulless if you will. It seems the sun had set on a once great creative enterprise.
Finding the man behind the brand
As my Caribbean Soul shirts started to show signs of age, I started doing some digging. What happened to something so synonymous with my summers? With the internet’s maturation, I finally discovered the name of the mystery man behind the merchandise: Jim Mazzotta.
He and his wife Kathleen ran Jungle Drums Gallery on Captiva Island. I was heartened. The Picasso of Parrots was still at the height of his powers, plying his trade in paradise. And I wanted to visit.
But excrement occurs. I left finance, a girlfriend left me, I found graphic design, fell into marketing, moved for work, COVID came and went, moved for work again, and yada, yada, yada, it was 2023, and I still hadn’t scratched off this Bucket List item. I was overdue for a road trip to the Paradise Coast. Time to gas up and go.
Making it down to Margaritaville
I stayed in Naples at the retro Gondolier Inn, and I ate at Molto. A couple times. But I saved a day down south to spend visiting Jungle Drums Gallery.
I drove up to Fort Myers and over the Sanibel Causeway and onto the island. The coastal carnage of Hurricane Ian was manifest everywhere. But shoots of rebirth were visible, too. Shuttered businesses, snapped trees, and devastation were offset by repair crews, new construction, and reopened businesses.
I drove the length of Sanibel Island and crossed over Blind Pass (not much wider than a creek) to Captiva Island. The islands resemble a fiddler crab’s dactyl claw pointing northwest out into the Gulf of Mexico with Captiva at the tip. Comedian Ron White has called it the real Margaritaville. And God’s funniest drunk was not wrong. Captiva’s coast is as close to the Platonic idea of a beach one can imagine.
I continue north and finally reach the market area and there, amidst the pastel storefronts and palm trees, I find Jungle Drums.
I ascended the steps and entered the gallery. I was welcomed by a dark-haired woman and a trim bespectacled man with strong features and a mature Van Dyke who were busy assisting other patrons. It was Kathleen and Jim Mazzotta. The Jim Mazzotta.
While they assisted other customers, I savored all the gallery had to offer. Jungle Drums is at once cavernous yet cozy, filled with artwork of every kind: paintings, metal wall art, sculptures, jewelry, coasters, t-shirts, greeting cards, and mixed media, all of which would really compliment a beachside condo or beautify an island bungalow. Not far from the entrance, an easel was set up with a wide array of brushes, paints, and mugs filled with colored, cloudy water and spattered with evidence of recent artistic endeavors. The vibrancy and craft behind so extensive a collection impressed me and brought me back to that primal wonder I has felt years before in Palm Bay Republic.
I picked out a couple of coasters, a small painting of an alligator, and, of course, in keeping with tradition, a t-shirt.
I brought my bounty to the register and the woman greeted me again with a smile. I introduced myself and she formally introduced herself as Kathleen Mazzotta (pronounced muh-ZAH-tuh, I learned). I told my story. I told her how Jim’s shirts were part of the warp and woof of my family’s summers in St. Augustine. Enthused, she called Jim over who was polite and unassuming; casual but not diffident. I repeated to him how much his art and distinctive aesthetic had meant to me and mine over the years.
Mazzotta generously recounted how everything got started in the mid-1980s, long before Jimmy Buffett, roving raconteur and obscure beach bard, was a fully incorporated lifestyle brand. Mazzotta spoke about how the shirts were the original social media; each one served as a walking, talking pop-up ad for Buffett’s unique ethos of escapism. Jim explained the inspiration for the name Caribbean Soul. It came from Buffett’s 1974 song, Migration (one that even I had never heard of).
I know we been doin' our part
Got a Caribbean soul I can barely control
And some Texas hidden here in my heart.
Mazzotta also explained how his work in the newspaper business helped him conceive of the punchy wordplay that, while not drawing directly from Buffett lyrics, verbally captured the wit so beloved by fans and perfectly complemented the look of the shirts.
The artist spoke about the early creative challenge of bringing visual vibrancy to songs about blue seas and white sails. It needed more pop. What’s more colorful and evocative of the tropics than parrots? In the macaw, Mazzotta had found his muse and Buffett’s swelling fanbase had its mascot, and, in short order, the term “Parrot Head”* was born.
Mazzotta explained the origin of the first Margaritaville store in Key West. It was established as a more permanent outpost for selling the shirts and associated merch to the flocks of Parrot Head’s on migratory pilgrimages to the Conch Republic.
Conversing with Jim was like spending an afternoon on the coconut telegraph. He had more stories on dis and dat from the past 30 years, but if you want to hear them, you’ll have to go back to the island and shake the hand of the man painting amidst the mangroves, the Caravaggio of Captiva, who continues to manifest the mythology of Margaritaville one brushstroke at a time.
*Parrott Head with two Ts is an alternate spelling that honors the two Ts in Buffett. But I choose to see it as equally honoring the double Ts in Mazzotta.