Take a drive through downtown Tampa this week and you'll notice a new addition to the landscape at the corner of Jackson and Tampa streets. Across from the Hyatt, a flash of rosy-hued walls through plate glass windows and new green awnings announce the arrival of the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts.
FMoPA (for short) sounds new, but the institution has been around as the Tampa Gallery of Photographic Arts since 2001. Until this month, the nonprofit occupied a series of donated, and therefore temporary, spaces in Hyde Park. Earlier this year, the museum's board decided it needed a permanent home, even if it meant paying rent.
Downtown Tampa called to them. Most members of the eight-person board work there and champion the area's ongoing revitalization and potential as an artistic hub. One of them, former Tampa Tribune art critic Joanne Milani, will serve as the museum's new director.
Along with the move, the museum renamed itself FMoPA to better reflect its mission and aspirations as a statewide institution. The term "gallery" fit poorly from the beginning, explained museum manager Jessica Ivey. The nonprofit never sold works or represented artists; its mission has always been to collect and exhibit contemporary and historical photography. (The only time visitors can buy works on display is during the annual members' show.)
New offerings include a snazzy, user-friendly new website (www.fmopa.org) and a slate of classes and lectures designed to bring visitors to the museum during lunch hour and on weekends. That's great news for downtown Tampa, which often feels like a ghost town on Saturday or Sunday afternoons.
The first exhibit in the new space plays on the theme of urban revitalization. Nearly 50 images by renowned photographer Aaron Siskind transport visitors back to Harlem during the period just after the Great Depression up to World War II. A sense of the New York neighborhood's vibrant cultural life and bond of community pervade the urban landscapes. The folksy beauty of hand-painted shop signs and iconic brownstone stoops tell of a time, place and way of life.
Pint-sized children in fedoras huddle in the street; a jovial pie seller leans out his window to hawk his wares; and inside nightclubs people dance, sing and gather, regardless of skin color. (It's worth noting that Siskind was one of the very few white photographers to document Harlem at the time.)
If you're already planning your trip, you'll be glad to know that just a few blocks up on Ashley Street, the Tampa Museum of Art is in the midst of changing out its summer exhibits for fall's offerings.
The first arrival is a new series of paintings by former USF professor Theo Wujcik on the thorny topic of global warming. It's a situation the artist says has lately turned him into an activist. Using square blocks of color as pixels, Wujcik obscures portions of paintings of landscapes, people and symbols. The implication of censorship reflects the current state of denial about global warming, a source of frustration for the artist.
Two of his very latest canvases depict the interiors of luxurious homes blemished by pixels, echoing his conviction that not even the wealthy will escape the effects of climate change. One image plays on the caramel and chocolate tones of the décor and substitutes chocolate chips for pixels — further comment that while the polar ice caps melt, happiness remains, for many Americans, a warm cookie.
In conjunction with the exhibit, Wujcik is creating two site-specific paintings on walls in the museum's central gallery, including a cookie-studded backdrop for the chocolate painting. The current schedule has him painting daily from noon to 3 p.m. though Thurs., Sept. 14. Stop in and say hi — he'll gladly bend your ear on his current passion. (A group of 5th graders in house when I was there Friday sat patiently through talk of global warming to ask Wujcik why he chose to paint cookies on the museum wall.)
Across the bay, Florida Craftsmen and Studio@620 will both debut exhibits by Eckerd College professor Brian Ransom, who enjoys an international reputation for his finely crafted ceramic musical instruments, but rarely exhibits locally. (He just returned from a show at the American Museum of Ceramic Art near Los Angeles and was recently profiled in the book From Mud To Music.)
The St. Pete exhibits will showcase a broad variety of his work. An installation of bells will hang from the ceiling at the Studio@620, while flutes, pipes, drums, and water-filled vessels that emit ethereal tones when tipped and turned (more about them below), will go on display at Florida Craftsmen. The exhibits will present the pieces as visual works of art; to hear their musical potential, you'll want to check out two performances by Ransom and his ceramic ensemble band (including guitarist Rick Adams and percussionist "the Animal"), Friday night at Craftsmen and Saturday night at the Studio.
Ransom first hit on the idea of making ceramic instruments as a young musician and art student at Rhode Island School of Design in the '70s. Playing late nights with a jazz band and spending days in the studio, he had an epiphany that those two separate lives needed to come together. After making some bamboo flutes, he got the idea to make one out of clay and firing it. When he heard the wonderfully mellow notes that emerged from his creation, he knew he had found what he was meant to do.
Since then, Ransom has slowly perfected his method of sculpting and firing ceramic instruments, mixing his own combination of clays based on precise calculations of the shrinkage factor during the drying and firing processes. (The shrinkage changes the key of the instrument, so if he wants a flute tuned to B-flat, he has to make it exactly the right size.) As we stood in his Pinellas Point living room, surrounded by waist-high drums — ceramic bases topped with animal skins — a harp, countless pipes, flutes, whistles and a blue ceramic trumpet, he explained that each instrument had been through eight or nine generations of improvements.
Ransom's work with whistling water jugs stems from a Fulbright grant that took him to Peru to study the indigenous craft. His versions are scaled larger (24 inches to 36 inches tall) than traditional Peruvian ones and are coated with earth-colored glazes; geometric grooves cover the surface of his latest pair. The vessels are filled with water, which moves between interior chambers as a player tips and turns the vessel and forces air through a series of holes in the top. As the air moves, a chorus of spine-tingling "voices" emerges from the vessel.
To get an idea of what kind of music Ransom and his ensemble make with the instruments, I took a listen to his CD. The recording ranged from a sounds-of-the-rainforest track (filled with bird whistles and animal grunts that Ransom's instruments replicate uncannily) to Mingus-like jazz riffs and full-blown salsa. For a bunch of guys playing instruments that kind of look like pottery, they rock pretty hard.
This article appears in Sep 13-19, 2006.