A portrait of a woman with a rose in her hair in front of a field. Credit: Alvarez-Valdez and Company, "Donna Tampa, A" (1922). Tampa Cigar Industry and Art Collection. Image 73.

As previously reported, Tampa Art Week is in full swing, and it comes to a head this weekend with multiple gallery openings and a big installation, too.

Tampa Art Week’s grand finale comes on Saturday, Feb. 22, when six Tampa artists bring interactive public art projects to three Ybor City venues—Kress Contemporary, HCC Ybor and Hotel Haya—for Now on View.

The free, one-day-only public art festival features a Tampa-inspired version of Fax 727’s Poetry Alley, an original Kress-inspired play by Erin Lekovic, a dance battle, a floral galaxy, and a tribute to Tampa’s LGBTQIA+ history by Victoria Alvarez.

To commemorate the arrival of FAX 727 289 3069 in the 813, St. Petersburg poet and author Tyler Gillespie—who runs the organization with Keifer Calkins and Eleanor Eichenbaum—is sharing an ekphrastic poem inspired by a cigar label I saw in the USF archives. “Donna Tampa” (stylized in all-caps) is complimented by another poem (“City Palimpsest,” also stylized in all-caps), which contextualizes the visual element of FAX 727 289 3069 large-scale’s installation at Hotel Haya.

Copies of the poems, as well as buttons and other prints, will be available for free when “Now On View” arrives at Hotel Haya in Ybor City on Saturday, Feb. 22.

Read both of them below, and click the titles to see images of the poems.

‘DONNA TAMPA’ by Tyler Gillespie
can smoke a cigar
with the boys
but she will never
be one of them.
She is the type
of girl who sings
church hymns at the club.
Because she believes
we are all sinners
who just want to find
a dance partner
   while there is still
   a two-step left in us.
Donna Tampa might be
   pro-union, but she
is way too beautiful
to be political.
At least, as political
   as politicians paint her.
   She thinks those men,
   in ill-fitted suits, need
   to work more
   on their own drag.
   Because she knows:
   it’s much easier
       to look at yourself
      in the mirror
      if you’ve got
      nothing to hide.
          & when your makeup
      is as beat as these streets.

‘CITY PALIMPSEST’ by Tyler Gillespie

everything is built
on layers on top
of layers on top of other
   layers on top of dirt
   road stories cobble-
   stoned images: layered
on each other then painted
& papered over with other images:
a HELP wanted sign.
One for missing teens.
Placed near a metal
   band poster for a show,
   layered over an apartment
   for rent that’s unaffordable
    even back then, on top
      of a lover’s classified ad,
   over political image, over
   a flyer for a cigar/tattoo shop,
   over the ad for a local psychic
who urges seek & you shall
   find. & when this poem did,
    it came across you.
Viewing a city layered
      with the before, after & now:
       it’s time for you to help decide
         the images that get
         layered here next.

UPDATED 02/20/25 11:16 a.m. Updated to note that Keifer Calkins and Eleanor Eichenbaum are also a part of FAX 727 289 3069.

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This article appears in Feb 13-19, 2025.