Designed by celebrated architect John Eberson, Tampa Theatre is one of several elegant movie palaces of the 1920s that featured his "atmospheric" style of theater design: a luxurious, faux-Mediterranean courtyard with old-world statuary, balconies and lighting under a faux nighttime sky of twinkling stars and floating clouds. In her new exhibit, Cloudland, Kym O'Donnell presents a series of mixed-media photographs inspired by those silent movie palaces and specifically by the flickering images on our historic theater's velvet-draped screen. Executed in partnership with Tampa Theatre — also the setting for the images — O'Donnell's goal was to create a sort of dreamscape "where memory blurs the set-like theaters, onscreen actors and theater patrons into scenes from the same hazy drama." An opening reception occurs from 7 to 11 p.m. Fri., Nov. 17. The images are on display through Dec. 3, at Para Gallery, 2929 N. 15th St., Tampa, free admission, 813-247-2030.
This article appears in Nov 15-21, 2006.