Messina has a mission: "All that is not given is lost." We settle on cinnamon tea in his knotty-pine kitchen while he ex-plains his Apartment E concept -- art-fueled informal gatherings to celebrate and nurture local talent. Named after an actual apartment he lived in where he struggled just to pay the electric bill, it's symbolic of those whose "passions are being beaten out of them from their jobs, or from just surviving, or money problems." It's also his answer to what he sees as the lack of giving by clubs, galleries and theaters to the local arts culture. Future endeavors might include the re-turn of Light Up Orlando, originally organized to celebrate home-town talent. "I've got a new name for it though," he says, smiling slyly. "Lighten Up Orlando, because if you want to play a kazoo backwards, you should be able to do it."

Where to begin? In the here and now, of course; so mark those social calendars with a big star for the Apartment E 15th Anniversary Party, Saturday at the Moose Lodge Family Center in Pine Castle. Moose Lodge in Pine Castle? Yup, there is such a homey place tucked away on South Orange Avenue in unincorporated Orange County. It’s hard to believe that this is the chosen site for a megacelebration of Orlando’s creative bounty. And it’s even harder to believe that one person is the magnet drawing the energy together: Frankie Messina.

Messina is the unassuming man of mystery behind Apartment E, an arts network that’s best explained by a visit to  www.apartmente.com . It’s not a place, though he really was living in an apartment E when he came up with the name in 1993. It’s not a business, because Messina makes his money as a waiter at Disney and has for years, since shortly after he moved to town in 1989 from New Orleans. Raised with seven brothers in Alexandria, La., his folksy style and down-home charm make him a genuine gentleman in a jean jacket and trucker hat.

After moving here, lonely and eager for fun, Messina started doing what comes naturally to him: meeting and befriending people, while stimulating, supporting and nurturing artistic expression and appreciation in any form. As he says, “I like looking in a room and seeing people who would never have been with each other; everyone has something to give.” He’s always reaching out to bring someone new into his seemingly infinite circle of friends. “Exclusive” isn’t in his vocabulary.

During a recent conversation with Messina, it was obvious that his countless threads of involvement are securely woven into the tapestry of the local arts and culture scene. For a back-in-the-day sampling, consider that he was partnered with Jason Neff during the mid-’90s heyday of the defunct Central Florida Film & Video Festival. Along with arts guru Victor Perez, Messina was in the thick of the underground stew stirred up into the original down-and-dirty Nude Nite, now grown into a sophisticated multiday affair. Messina’s other early collaborators/mentors: David “Wavy Davy” Jordan, Glenn Dobkins and Terri Binion.

In last week’s column, I railed about the railroading given to Rebecca Morgan and bemoaned the loss of WMFE’s Arts Connection radio show. How now, I gnashed, will artists reach their Central Florida audiences? For balance, this week I want to share positive arts community news, courtesy of people who – I am ashamed to admit – sometimes get short shrift in this space. 

I’m primarily a performing arts guy, by experience and inclination, and as a result I sometimes don’t give Orlando’s visual artists the emphasis that they deserve. The past month-plus of Fringe madness, theme park debuts and personal projects has put a particular damper on my art-watching efforts. So it was serendipitous when items of visual art interest recently crossed my e-desk. Like Alger allegories for the aesthetically inclined, these stories involve local artists bootstrapping themselves up to buck the economic climate.

For over a year, an unassuming office building on the corner of Robinson Street and Magnolia Avenue has housed an interesting experiment for downtown’s art community. Early in 2007, Correll Development and Palm Properties, owners of the circa-1956 Magnolia Quarters building, allowed artist Idith Levy to organize a collective of eight individual artists’ studios on the edifice’s second floor.

The Office Gallery and Art Studios quickly became my habitual final stop on monthly Third Thursday art crawls. With an eclectic and often-changing mix of tenants, I almost always find something there to grab my interest; most recently, Mark Biddle’s excellent exhibit of hi-fi/low-tech multimedia. But I began worrying when I heard founding member John Carollo was vacating. I wondered if today’s volatile market could sustain such an economically uncertain endeavor.

 Enter Frankie Messina of Apartment E (est. 1993), the eccentric evangelist for everything artistic in Orlando. Fifteen years ago, while patronizing the building’s ground-floor Kinkos, he used to gaze up at his then-vacant future office, wondering “what the hell was going on with that building.” Levy recently approached Messina to become a primary tenant and manager of the property, hoping that he’d inject new life in the project. Late last month Messina put out a call for artists and says he received an overwhelming response. Frankie has room to house more than a dozen fine artists, with up to three sharing a single studio to keep rents reasonable. Longer term, he plans to fill the Office with creative businesses, including a black-box theater and an arts lounge with a “Café Tu Tu Tango feel.” Messina’s mantra: In today’s economy, there must be “interaction between business and art, or no one will survive.”