Eight artists converge on three Ybor City venues for HCC’s inaugural Now on View June 1. Their purpose: to create a series of temporary public artworks that invite the public to consider Tampa’s past, present, and future. The resulting artworks will be displayed in a one-day public festival in Ybor City with music, food, and other entertainment.
Tours will begin at the HCC Ybor City Campus, Performing Arts building (1411 E. 11th Ave., Tampa). Maps, light refreshments, and parking passes will be provided.
Participating NOW ON VIEW artists:
Samson Huang creates an “Interdependent Pavilion” comprised of local potted plants, color-changing lights, and origami alligators, cranes, birds, butterflies, fish, and squirrels, “The Interdependent Pavilion” reminds us of our connection to the ecosystem. Visitors engage with the art by writing their wishes for a sustainable future onto a tag and hanging it on the Pavilion.
Emiliano Settecasi, founder of The Department of Contemporary Art, Tampa, FL, brings a mobile music and arts venue to HCC Ybor. Settecasi’s custom-made utility cart can host artistic and musical performances when a rented venue is out of reach, a situation becoming more common in Tampa, where pandemic-induced inflation has made brick-and-mortar spaces unaffordable for many local artists. Settecasi’s mobile art space reflects on the current state of the arts in Tampa while providing a possible solution to rising rents. Rising local DJ T. Coutre starts the party with her signature mix of Latin, dancehall, house, baile, funk, Afro and Amapiano beats.
Mia Makes It stitches Tampa’s history to its present through a community art quilt. Before Now on View, the artist hosts embroidery workshops to teach participants to embroider a one to two-sentence reflection on Tampa’s past. During the festival, they’ll stitch the squares together with some of their own embroidery at HCC Ybor to create a community remembrance of Tampa.
Kali Rabaut brings her Flower Bike to Hotel Haya’s entrance for a build-your-own-bouquet experience. Rabaut’s bike holds enough flowers for 50-500 people to create a small bouquet to take home at the end of the day. Unlike your traditional florist who arranges Eurocentric blooms flown in from overseas, Rabaut prefers to use locally grown flowers and foliage in her floralscapes. In doing so, Rabaut connects herself and others to the place where they live.
Libbi Ponce brings sculpture and/or video installation to Hotel Haya lobby. Ponce combines sculpture and video to build worlds inspired by historic folklore, ancestry, and memory. At Now on View, she’ll use a combination of media to create an immersive environment exploring the role of Latinx ancestral history in the formation of South and Central American diasporic communities in the Tampa Bay area.
Emma Quintana reflects on Tampa Bay’s culinary history. Quintana’s Now on View project tells Tampa’s history through its food. Quintana created video combining footage of locals eating with video of Tampa Bay and its connected waterways. During Now on View, she’ll project this footage onto a wall in the historic Kress building to highlight food’s central role in placemaking.
Samantha Modder displays a temporary mural at Kress highlighting one of the first African American communities in Tampa Bay. Construction of the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway displaced several Dobyville families in the 1960s, a loss represented by the Selmon Expressway logo included among depictions of neighborhood kids in Modder’s digitally printed mural.
Nicole Villanueva Garcia invites the public to symbolically embrace newcomers by weaving yarn through the dowels of a Plinko board at Kress. The installation, inspired by underground tree networks and Garcia’s immigrant experience, recreates a colorful forest scene in which participants weave yarn from community trees toward a transplanted tree.
Now on View is organized by Grounds4Art@HCC and is made possible with the support of the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners. Additional support comes from our project partners, including the Arts Council of Hillsborough County, HCC Foundation, HCC Student Government Association, Hotel Haya, and Tempus Projects.