BEST OF ARTS ACTIVISM Recent months have seen an incredible mobilization of arts activists hoping to rescue local culture from the wrecking ball. Here are some of the best examples:
BEST PROTEST BY (GRAPHIC) DESIGN
John Langley's mobile NO sign
The plywood sign painted with a gigantic red "NO" on white gets an A in graphic design, political science and public relations. John Langley, a Tampa architect and founder of Gala Corina, made the sign, which appeared at art venues over the summer and most eloquently in front of the old federal courthouse on Florida Avenue as a response to Mayor Iorio's proposal to move the Tampa Museum of Art to the abandoned building. The public weighed in with its opinions of the move by penning messages on the sign, while Langley's message was abundantly clear.
BEST ARCHITECTURE ACTIVISTS (KILEY PARK DIVISION)
Yard Ops; Sue Thompson, Landscape Architect; Roger Grunke, Architect
Not your garden-variety ecoterrorists, Yard Ops (Young Architects Resisting Destruction of Public Spaces) arrives with brooms, garbage bags and pruning shears to save the landscape. The positive approach of Chris Vela and other young architect colleagues was instrumental in helping the City of Tampa's parks department to maintain the neglected Dan Kiley-designed park at 400 N. Ashley Drive. Their grassroots effort helped win the mayor's commitment to protect (some of) this historic masterpiece of landscape architecture.
Thompson and Grunke put together a symposium, wrote historic preservation applications, lobbied City Hall, and passionately and persuasively convinced the city and citizens to protect the Dan Kiley design. yardops@yahoo.com; savekileypark@comcast.net.
BEST ARCHITECTURE ACTIVISTS (BELLEVUE BILTMORE DIVISION)
Diane Hein and Rae Claire Johnson
These two preservationists have worked tirelessly to prevent the owners of the 100-year-old Henry Plant hotel in Belleair from selling its destruction. Owners Urdang and Associates threaten demolition of the structure, but the reluctant town council is finally hearing the citizens' requests for a local historic preservation ordinance with teeth. Still trying to save the Biltmore, the two have parted ways over the preservation alternatives they seek. Hein can be reached at www.savethebiltmore.com; Johnson at raeclaire@aol.com.
BEST FRIENDS OF ARTS IN POLITICAL OFFICE
Tampa City Councilperson Linda Saul-Sena and Hillsborough County Commissioner Kathy Castor
Saul-Sena continued her commitment to arts and culture in Tampa this year by standing up for Kiley Park, listening to the arts community and voting for creative development at every opportunity. And at the Hillsborough County Commission, what ought to seem like logic rather than heroics counts as a momentous historic vote: Kathy Castor was the only one of our elected commissioners to vote against the ban on gay pride. Come on, we all know that a vote in support of gay pride is a vote for the arts.
BEST POLITICAL RESURFACING FOR THE ARTS
Jan Platt and Sandy Freedman
Former Hillsborough County Commissioner Jan Platt spoke out in favor of keeping the Tampa Museum of Art's current waterfront site. Freedman made her first public speech in 10 years (last time she spoke she was Mayor of Tampa) to oppose private development in place of the museum on the riverfront.
BEST MAGIC ACT
Nick Cutro and The Renaissance Center
This guy is unbelievable (and modest). He spent five years single-handedly rescuing and rebuilding the burnt-out remains (three walls, no roof) of a 90-year-old Gothic Revival church in Tampa Heights to create the perfectly named Renaissance Center for the Arts, a conservatory offering art, music and gardening classes to at-risk youth in the neighborhood. Volunteers mobilized by Cutro have made the not-for-profit center an immediate success in its first year. The sunlit space is beautiful (with a 50-foot ceiling and a stage built from the Church's salvaged rafters), the acoustics are amazing and the jazz performers top notch. The children's garden, which includes butterflies, herbs and exotic fruit trees, will soon have a koi pond, stream and gazebo. 2201 N. Florida Ave., Tampa, 813-221-9448, www.rcarts.org.
BEST ARTISTIC RESPONSE TO POLITICAL BIGOTRY
Just Say Know: Family Values Portrait Project
Gallery Director Carrie Mackin and cultural anthropologist Shari Feldman set up a portrait studio at Covivant Gallery in response to the Hillsborough County Commission's legislated discrimination against gay pride. Friends, neighbors and families of all sexual orientations came for family portraits. Love the red velvet, love the expansiveness of "family" that the word represents. A sweet and simple idea — a family portrait to remind the neanderthals of how civilized people respect each other and live together. 4906 Florida Ave., Tampa, 813-234-0222, www.covivant.com.
BEST OF VISUAL ART
BEST PARKING LOT ART
Maria Saraceno's MFA thesis project
Maria Saraceno brought us free lunch, a sewing circle and a neighborhood gathering place for several months of Sundays in the parking lot of a Circle K on Gulf Boulevard in Pass-A-grille. For her master's thesis project at USF, Saraceno, an Italian-American, sought to build an outdoor community space in her own neighborhood with a plastic table, Coleman stove, pasta and some beads. She easily defended her thesis that the "plaza" and its community-building nexus are tragically missing from American cities and suburbs, by creating a new plaza on a scorching, traffic-bound little corner of asphalt. There is one beautiful, beaded tablecloth coming out of the project, and a lot of neighbors left hungry for pasta and community.
BEST FASHION SHOW
Wearable Art
Apparently some Dunedin residents were scandalized by the fashions at this summer's art/fashion show, but the Dunedin Fine Arts Center had its biggest opening ever (by the hundreds) and what seemed like a very happy audience. For those who weren't offended by gowns made of condom packages or metal bustiers bursting with glitter and ringing their bells, it was a riot (the good kind). Promising designers Frank Strunk III ("I'm not a fashion designer, I'm a fabricator"), Orianna Kurrus and Carly Champagne (both USF art students) pushed the limits of fabric, aluminum and rubber, raising issues of gender/fashion/torture and how to belly dance in armor. We hope it will be an annual event — although this year's couture will be hard to beat. Dunedin Fine Arts Center, 1143 Michigan Blvd., Dunedin, 727-298-3322, www.dfac.org.
BEST MUSEUM EXHIBITION (DEAD ARTISTS)
Monet and the Thames
The Impressionist name drew the crowds, but the research and planning of curator Jennifer Hardin and staff, the excellent catalogue and the views of London at the height of industrialism exceeded our expectations. Newly discovered prints of the period and Whistler's jewel of a "Nocturne" were revelations. The gallery housing the MFA's prized "Houses of Parliament" surrounded by other shimmering Monets on loan was not too shabby, either. Museum of Fine Arts, 255 Beach Drive N.E., St. Petersburg, 727-896-2667, www.fine-arts.org.
BEST MUSEUM EXHIBITION (LIVE ARTISTS)
Los Carpinteros: Inventing the World
Clever wood constructions and a ghostly tent city on USF's green lawn were part of a show by Los Carpinteros that was the visual highlight of the Arte 2005 festival. A collaborative of young Cuban artists — Marco Castillo, Dagoberto Rodriguez and Alexandre Arrechea — Los Carpinteros combine visual puns (a missile of Cuban bread) with intellectual weight, exquisite craftsmanship and political insight. USFCAM director Margaret Miller and curator Nicole Smith co-curated; Graphicstudio facilitated fabrication of some works by local cabinetmaker Bob Ballard. A Cuba-Florida artistic exchange was managed over difficult political waters. University of South Florida, Contemporary Art Museum, 4202 E. Fowler Ave., Tampa, 813-974-4133, www.usfcam.
BEST ARTIST RETROSPECTIVE
Bud Lee: Picturemaker
Not just a local legend and sentimental favorite, Bud Lee's important '60s and '70s photographs were shown in beautiful new digital prints at the Tampa Museum of Art. The show was curated by Jill Jimenez under Emily Kass' directorship, before both became casualties of Tampa's ongoing museum upheaval. Every one of Lee's photographs — from portraits of rock 'n' roll icons Janis Joplin and Mick Jagger to Florida's carnival of weirdness — shines in its uniqueness. The prints are now part of the museum's permanent collection. 600 N. Ashley Drive, Tampa, 813-274-8130, www.tampagov.net/dept_Museum/.
BEST PUBLIC ART PROJECT
Tampa Photographer Laureate
It's not just exploding chickens and mini bronze mayors. The best public art is contemporary work made for the public and about the public realm. Robin Nigh, the City of Tampa's public art administrator, is an unsung hero of Tampa art and culture. She continues to innovate with new public art projects — the Tampa Photographer Laureate project, now in its third year, is a far-sighted idea with distinguished roots in the past (notably the great WPA project with Dorothea Lange and other great photographers of the Depression era). Other public art programs around the country are already using Nigh's project as a model for their own communities. Each year a call to artists is posted and a jury selects one photographer to document that year in and about Tampa. In 2003, Beth Reynolds photographed the diversity of the people and their everyday life. In 2004 Suzanne Camp Crosby photographed and manipulated Tampa scenes with her directorial/surrealist style (all of her photographs were on view at the Tampa Museum of Art recently). 2005 will bring us Tampa as seen through the pinhole camera and mixed media of Rebecca Sexton Larson. Through this project the city is building a collection of great photography that is also a historic archive. www.tampagov.net/dept_art_in_public_places/.
BEST NEW GALLERY (TAMPA)
Kama
Katherine Kearney wanted to give artists a venue — those who might not otherwise find a space for their unknown, outsider or new work. Unschooled artists, young photographers and newly formed theater groups will be given slots if one is available. The rented storefront building in Tampa Heights has hosted a refreshing calendar of arts in its inaugural year. Kearney doesn't round up the usual suspects, and that is appreciated. 2929 N. 15th St., Tampa, 813-241-6939.
BEST NEW GALLERY (PINELLAS)
The Studio@620
Next-door neighbors Dave Ellis and Bob Devin Jones discovered they shared a vision: presenting arts of many cultures and media with a focus on education to St. Petersburg. Ellis, an industrial and exhibition designer, brought clean visuals and a history of exhibition design to the project; Devin Jones brought his years of theater work as an actor, director, playwright and producer. Housed in a renovated building in downtown St. Pete, The Studio@620 had a great first year, mixing it up among cultures and formats. Florida Highwaymen paintings, African-American quilts, spoken word performances and original plays by Devin Jones performed by local actors are just some of the accomplishments. 620 First Ave. S., St. Petersburg, 727-895-6620, www.thestudioat620.com.
BEST ALL-AROUND ART VENUE
Bleu Acier
Erika Greenberg Schneider's building in Tampa Heights is her home, printmaking studio, gallery, salon of dance, music, poetry, film, video, theater, haute cuisine etc., etc. Working with serious and cutting-edge artists (to name-drop a few: Elsa Valbuena, Chef Gui, Robyn Voshardt/Sven Humphrey, Neil Bender), she presents cross-disciplinary art events that are always fresh in the intimate setting of a salon (think Gertrude Stein, Picasso, Paris…). Erika has opened her space not only to her international printmaking contacts and USF colleagues and students, but to the entire cultural community of Tampa Bay. Her labor of love has been a gift to local artists, connoisseurs and collectors. Bleu Acier imbues Tampa Bay with a bit of bohemia. 109 W. Columbus Drive, Tampa, 813-272-9746, bleuacier@verizon.net.
—mary.mulhern@weeklyplanet.com
This article appears in Sep 21-27, 2005.