WhimzeyLand: Florida’s Wildly Colorful “Bowling Ball House”
There are ordinary houses. There are colorful houses. And then there is Whimzeyland — a place where the house, yard, walkways, gardens and seemingly every available surface have become part of one enormous, ever-evolving work of art.
Located at 1206 3rd Street North in Safety Harbor, Florida, WhimzeyLand is the home and creative playground of artists Todd Ramquist and Kiaralinda, often known together as the Whimzey Twinz. What began as a fairly ordinary home more than four decades ago has grown into one of the Tampa Bay area's most delightfully unusual folk-art environments.
It All Started With a House — and Some Bowling Balls
Todd and Kiaralinda were childhood friends who met while growing up as neighbors and became friends in middle-school art class. They eventually purchased their Safety Harbor home in 1985. But the rather plain house wasn't destined to remain plain for very long.
One of the defining moments came after the pair encountered free bowling balls at a flea market. Instead of seeing discarded sporting equipment, they saw art supplies.
Those bowling balls began appearing around the property as decorations, eventually becoming such a prominent feature that locals nicknamed the place “The Bowling Ball House.” Over the years, the balls were joined by mosaics, sculptures, painted surfaces, recycled objects and an ever-growing assortment of wonderfully eccentric creations.
And somewhere along the way, a decorated house became WhimzeyLand.
A House Where More Is Definitely More
Minimalists may want to avert their eyes.
WhimzeyLand gleefully embraces the opposite philosophy: if one color is good, twelve might be better.
Visitors encounter brightly painted bowling balls winding through gardens, elaborate mosaic pathways, bottle trees, sculptures, mirrored surfaces, hanging ornaments and unexpected pieces of art tucked into nearly every corner. Tropical Florida vegetation grows around and through the installations, making the property feel almost like an enchanted garden assembled from the contents of an artist's imagination.
The result isn't simply a house with unusual decorations. WhimzeyLand is considered an art environment — a place where artists gradually transform the space in which they live into the artwork itself.
That distinction is important. There isn't necessarily a boundary where the artwork begins and ends.
The environment is the artwork.
Finding Beauty in Things Other People Throw Away
One of the most appealing aspects of WhimzeyLand is its use of repurposed and unexpected materials.
Objects that might otherwise be discarded are incorporated into mosaics, sculptures and decorations. Bowling balls become garden ornaments. Bottles become colorful trees. Bits and pieces of everyday life are transformed through color, pattern and imagination.
Todd and Kiaralinda are described as folk artists without formal art training, and their work reflects the freewheeling spirit associated with visionary and outsider art environments. They've also traveled extensively and visited celebrated art environments around the world while collecting and trading artwork with other artists.
WhimzeyLand therefore feels simultaneously personal and communal. It represents the work of its creators while also reflecting decades of friendships, travel, collecting and artistic exchange.
The Little House That Helped Inspire Something Bigger
Perhaps WhimzeyLand's greatest legacy isn't sitting in the yard at all.
The creative community that developed around the house eventually helped inspire the nearby Safety Harbor Art And Music Center, better known as SHAMc.
Todd and Kiaralinda, together with friend Heather Richardson and a large community of supporters and volunteers, developed the center as a place where art, music and community could come together. SHAMc opened in 2015 and has itself become an extraordinary art environment, covered with hundreds of mirrored mosaic panels, sculptures and repurposed materials.
In that sense, WhimzeyLand didn't merely transform one Florida house.
It helped transform the artistic identity of a community.
Visiting WhimzeyLand
WhimzeyLand remains a private home as well as an art environment, but visitors are welcomed onto the grounds to explore and take photographs. The property is at 1206 3rd St. N., Safety Harbor, FL 34695, just a few blocks from SHAMc.
For visitors who want the stories behind what they're seeing, SHAMc also offers reservation-required guided tours of the larger complex, including WhimzeyLand and the Safety Harbor Art and Music Center. Current guided tours are listed at $25 per person, so visitors should verify tour arrangements before making plans.
A Celebration of Creative Freedom
The magic of WhimzeyLand isn't really about bowling balls.
It's about what happens when someone looks at an ordinary object, an ordinary house or an ordinary patch of yard and asks:
“Why does it have to stay ordinary?”
For Todd Ramquist and Kiaralinda, the answer apparently was that it didn't.
Decades later, their home has become a joyful landmark filled with color, humor, recycling, imagination and the unmistakable evidence of two people who decided their surroundings should reflect the way they wanted to see the world.
WhimzeyLand is strange. It's exuberant. It's gloriously excessive.
And that is precisely the point.
