Tag: HCC

A Mindful Mural

When this article was written, the Public Art Committee and I were full of enthusiasm and anticipation. Months of meetings, preparation, and planning were beginning to culminate in the realization of a new mural and in a series of community-driven programs that would accompany the mural’s unveiling. Students and volunteers from the community were gathered to assist with the fabrication. However, with the arrival of COVID-19 in March, it was no longer safe for communities to gather the way we were used to, and many plans were suspended. 
Despite all of this, creativity continued on. Cecilia Lueza safely worked alone to complete a vibrant mural, titled Exuberance, which exudes an uplifting message of well-being that feels all the more necessary in the midst of a pandemic. Once it is safe to gather together once again, we still plan on hosting events to celebrate the completion of Exuberance and to raise awareness of health and wellness resources for our community–and I, for one, am looking forward to that day!
Amanda Poss, Gallery Director, Gallery221@HCC Dale Mabry Campus

The 2019/2020 Grounds4Art@HCC
Health & Wellness Mural 

by Jeffrey Rubinstein

Students, faculty, staff, and visitors to Hillsborough Community College’s Dale Mabry campus must be noticing a much higher presence of art, murals, and especially, student involvement in the college’s public art projects. Recently, HCC has also increased its footprint for health, wellness, and food security programs. With the ever-growing awareness of the connection between food security and academic performance, members of the HCC Public Arts Committee, Feeding Tampa Bay, Bay Art Files, and The City of Tampa Arts and Cultural Affairs joined forces and began meeting last year to design and create a large, visually engaging mural on the exterior of the Social Sciences building of the busy, urban Dale Mabry Campus in Tampa. The mural will be a permanent reminder that each of us must proactively sustain our well-being through health and wellness.

Under the direction of Gallery Director Amanda Poss, Gallery 221@HCC received a grant from the Arts Council of Hillsborough County for the 2019-2020 mural project. The project was conceived by the Grounds4Art@HCC initiative, HCC’s public art program, formed in 2018. Two other community-centric exterior mural projects have been completed to date, with more in the works as additional funding and sponsorships become available.

The first Grounds4Art@HCC Mural was created by Florida-based artist Michael Parker in collaboration with HCC students during the spring of 2019. Visible from the main courtyard of the campus, the 67-foot-long mural titled Infinite Transitions is located on the ground floor of the Learning Resources Center (DLRC) and is directly below Gallery221.

Egyptian artist Aya Tarek’s large-scale mural was the second public art project to be completed on the HCC Dale Mabry Campus. Tarek, a prolific artist who has created murals in Cairo, Berlin, São Paolo, and Portland, worked on campus with HCC students and community members to fabricate the mural. Titled Painting Ourselves Visible, the mural project and related programming sought to celebrate and increase the visibility of Arab, Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) and Muslim communities in the Tampa area. Organized in conjunction with the community organization Art2Action, this project was made possible with the support of the Gobioff Foundation Treasure Tampa Grant and can be seen on the west side of the Humanities building (DHUM).

Poss explains and gives us insight into the process for such a large project involving so many various local entities: “Our newest Grounds4Art@HCC mural is envisioned as a creative placemaking project that sheds light on the theme of health and wellness. The mural will provide vibrancy and color to the heart of campus while at the same time highlighting the Social Sciences building as the home of our campus’ newly established food pantry.  It will be a large canvas for the artist to work on–over 65 feet in length spanning the upper section near the building’s southwest entrance.“

Artist Cecilia Lueza at work on one of her numerous public art projects located throughout Florida and the southeastern United States.
In early 2020, artist Cecilia Lueza participated in a comprehensive and interactive discussion about health and wellness with HCC Dale Mabry Campus students, faculty, staff, the campus Public Arts Committee, and members of the Tampa Bay community.

The focus of this exciting project is health and wellness, will culminate in a dynamic and visually engaging mural by Cecilia Lueza, an Argentinian-American artist-based in Tampa Bay. The mural will be the final step in a long process that involves HCC students from its inception. In early 2020 on the HCC Dale Mabry Campus, the public arts committee, the artist, staff, faculty, students, and members of the Tampa Bay community engaged in a comprehensive and interactive discussion that allowed the artist to hear directly from students about how they think about health and wellness, and how this can be interpreted visually. The artist will ultimately, create the mural, but the image is based on feedback suggested by HCC students. Lueza described the feedback she received, “The majority of the students suggested the mural should inspire, connect, beautify, stimulate thought, have a sense of motion, and be geometric, bright, energetic, lively and represent mental health in a positive way.” Lueza presented three design options on February 14th and voting commenced until the 17th.

Based on the winning design, the mural will be an impressive composition of a fit and healthy young person, possibly a student, her head and eyes skyward, all in a palette of vibrant tones, at the prow of a flowing wave of energy that she creates. The image is provocative enough to allow viewers to contemplate the mural’s themes. Health and wellness are more than what we eat or how often we go to the gym. It is a mindset and lifestyle that includes our thoughts and attitude toward life and the energy we create and leave behind us.

Poss expands: “The majority of the mural’s fabrication took place in March and April and we are planning a free public unveiling party and related programming to occur in the Fall of 2020. Everyone who would like to participate in will be encouraged to attend, whether they are a part of the HCC community or a member of the Tampa Bay area community at large.”

Artist Cecilia Lueza high above the ground in a cherry picker during the Spring 2020 installation phase of Exuberance, the newest addition to HHC’s public art program on the Dale Mabry campus. Located on the exterior of the Social Sciences building, the mural takes its inspiration from issues related to food insecurity, mental and emotional health, and social and cultural inclusion.

To be officially dedicated and unveiled in the Fall of 2020, the mural Exhuberance will be on permanent display on the HCC Dale Mabry Campus in Tampa and will be a visual reminder to the entire community that health and wellness are part of a journey to be embraced that includes more than exercise and nutrition but exposure to the arts, as well.

About the author

Professor Jeffrey Rubinstein is the English Discipline Chair and the college-wide Tenure Committee Chair at Hillsborough Community College in Florida. Based on the Dale Mabry Campus in Tampa, he is a founding member of Grounds4Art@HCC.

About the artist

Argentine American artist and sculptor Cecilia Lueza, studied visual arts at the University of La Plata in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Today, she is well known for creating vibrant public art pieces in a range of mixed media. Since 2000 she has been working on a variety of public art projects in many cities throughout the United States. Her work has been exhibited at Art Miami, Arteamericas, and Scope Miami Beach, and in the last year she completed public art pieces in Washington DC, Jacksonville FL, West Palm Beach, and St Petersburg FL among others.

Additional reading

Maggie Duffy, Bright Spot and Art Reporter
Tampa Bay Times
April 28, 2020

What’s it like to paint a mural in isolation? This Tampa artist shares her experience Cecilia Lueza socially distanced on a lift for the project at Hillsborough Community College.

Our Country’s Family Pictures: Here and Now

Our Country’s Family Pictures: Here and Now

Tyra Mishell

Untitled (Memories) from the series Family Pictures, 2016. Image courtesy of the artist and Samsøñ.

Walking into this exhibition, steve locke: the color of remembering, I was first drawn to the photos with the ornate picture frames. Looking at the frames, I was instantly reminded of the sort of objects in my mother’s home and the sticky vinyl inspirational messages written in cursive on the walls of her kitchen. But after looking closer at a pretty light blue frame that read “MEMORIES” [Untitled (Memories)] on a golden plaque, I had to look away. I was not saddened or shocked by the photo of a Black man strung up on a tree, surrounded by observing multigenerational white bodies. I’ve seen photos like this before. I have seen photos like this recently. I looked away as a reflex. As a coping mechanism. These kitschy picture frames, photographed on top of a smooth wooden surface and a vibrant colored backdrop, looked like television screens to me. These domestic, familiar picture frames look just like my newsfeed.  Steve Locke’s Family Pictures series are mementos inside of the homes of America’s dominant culture. The work in this series brings into focus America’s continuing tradition of violence and subjugation of Black people. Locke does this in a clever way by bringing us into Somebody’s living room and having us come to accept that this tradition is as American as my own mother’s “ EAT DRINK AND BE MERRY” vinyl quote on the kitchen wall.

I had the privilege of attending Steve Locke’s artist talk at the opening of the show and hearing him talk about the subject of the work was helpful in understanding Family Pictures in today’s political and social climate. After the talk and we spent some time discussing the spectacle nature of “Black Death” in the media. Violence towards Black people often goes viral in a sensationalized way. It feels like the announcement of a new “Black Death” is like the release of the most current iPhone. The hype comes and goes like new technology and returns when replaced with the next one. Media outlets delight in providing the public with new and exciting footage for controversy’s sake. In his exhibition statement, Locke goes on to write: “You can see a video, repeatedly (or even as a background image) as two people discuss a man being strangled or shot. To death. The prohibition of showing the deaths of victims is waived when the victim is black. Their last words are broadcasts. Their bodies left in the street as a warning, or as a provocation. You cannot imagine seeing the victims of Columbine or hearing the tapes of Sandy Hook, but for some reason, you can see a black man killed on your television. You can sit in a pub, a waiting room, your well-appointed home with its flat screen tv and see someone killed. These images are public and private and downright quotidian.” The images that we see every day are not coincidental, but deliberate attacks. It is about power and dominance. Our ability to spread information quickly has resulted in a different kind of cultural consciousness.

Untitled (I Can’t Believe We Did That!) from the series Family Pictures, 2016. Image courtesy of the artist and Samsøñ.

Two works in particular that have been stuck in my memory for weeks are Untitled (I Can’t Believe We Did That!) and Untitled (Mother). Both photographs involve something so uncomfortable literally reframed into something more pleasing, more palatable to look at.  The frames resemble mass-produced picture frames with someones staged memory inside. Looking at Untitled (I can’t believe we did that) in all of its pretty blue glory seriously messed me up. The photo shows the lynching of two Black men (Thomas Shipp and Adam Smith) in Indiana in the year 1930.  Below them, is a crowd of white spectators pointing at their bodies and looking at the camera. At the bottom of the frame, it reads “I Can’t Believe We Did That!” This historical picture was originally produced as a postcard, a keepsake, a pleasant memory. It is a funny statement. I’ve heard many variations of “I Can’t Believe We Did That!” From white people apologizing to me about slavery, Jim Crow, and police violence. I imagine the white people in this picture to have thought the same way. I imagine that they too could not believe that they were lucky enough to get such good seats at a hanging and be able to memorialize it.

Untitled (Mother) from the series Family Pictures, 2016. Image courtesy of the artist and Samsøñ.

I am always drawn to images representing Black womanhood, especially ones that involve racial archetypes. I believe that it is important to remember and notice the roots of these inherently violent stereotypes. In Untitled (Mother) we immediately associate the woman in the picture as a caretaker or the “Mammy” archetype. According to a source, the woman is Mattie Lee Martin and the image is dated between 1950-1960. It is a beautiful portrait, with Mattie Lee Martin smiling while holding up a cheerful looking white baby. The text underneath the photo reads “Because of you, my world is a better place.” The narrative behind the Mammy character would claim that she would have loved the child as she would love her own and that she would have been content in her domestic role. The quote on the frame is a true statement. In this country, Black women have had to survive. As apart of her survival she has had to maintain the lives of white families, and raise them up through her mental, physical, and emotional labor. I think of this now in a contemporary context. I think of myself when navigating white spaces. I think of myself having to coddle white folk’s feelings when they’ve mistreated me. After reflecting on my own interpretations of the work, I thought about how non-black people were responding to the pictures. I ignored the weird, sympathetic, and disbelief that was coming from their mouths. I wanted to know how their insides felt.

I love how Locke’s work forces us to acknowledge the disconnect between the dominant culture and everybody else. I believe that the disconnect is both subconscious and conscious. The circulating of the past photos used in Family Pictures resemble the 24/7 unproductive and dehumanizing distribution of Black Trauma in the present. We want to remember these atrocities as atypical and that only the most evil people were complacent. We want to remember it all as a rarity. We want to believe in the “good ones.” As we refuse to recognize this as tradition and common practice, we continue to silence the oppressed and commit ourselves to misunderstand.

Tyra Mishell was born and raised in Bradenton, Florida in 1994. She is currently residing in Tampa where she will receive her BA in studio art from the University of South Florida in Spring 2019. She is a New Genres artist specializing in video, new media, sound, and performance. With a combined interest in media studies and the make believe, she produces IN SPACE TV, an experimental net-based television show.

steve locke: the color of remembering is on view at Hillsborough Community College’s Gallery 221@HCC on the Dale Mabry campus through March 7, 2019. In addition to the photographs from the 2016 Family Pictures series, there is an installation of Three Deliberate Grays for Freddie (A Memorial for Freddie Gray). Locke is an Associate Professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, MA.

Tampa-based artist Omar Richardson exhibits large black and white woodblock prints and unique mono prints in Omar Richardson: My Story, My Truth on display in Gallery 3@HCC on the third floor. There is a public closing reception on Thursday, February 28 from 5 to 8 pm, with Richardson speaking at 6 pm.


steven locke: the color of remembering

steven locke: the color of remembering

On view through March 7th at Hillsborough Community College’s Gallery 221 as part of an annual exhibition celebrating African American heritage and presented in conjunction with the Tampa Bay Black Heritage Festival.

  • steve locke: the color of remembering is on view at HHC’s Gallery 221 though March 7th.

This exhibition examines how African Americans have been depicted in ways which betrays explicit and implicit cultural prejudices depending, in this case, the age of the memory. From schematic diagrams of slave ships, historical photographs of lynchings, to modern day video, brutality and racism – institutional or otherwise – images have been made and disseminated which tacitly imply values which we should, indeed, must find deplorable.

Not only by subject matter but, significantly, it is through the means of presentation that Locke employs in the photography series Family Pictures, 2016, that he addresses how different standards apply, in particular, that there isn’t an universal sense of respect and dignity when it comes to the memorialization of the atrocious. Locke himself memorializes images of the barbaric, setting them in unexceptional frames, engraved with the platitudinous and set against strong colored backdrops – notions of remembering and color are brought to the fore – the colors are strong but it is an overall sense of banality which is most provocative and the taint on remembering which Locke communicates most powerfully.

steve locke: the color of remembering is on view at HHC’s Gallery 221 though March 7th.

In Three Deliberate Grays for Freddie (A Memorial for Freddie Gray), Locke further confronts how there remains to this day a biased filter as to presentation of the African-American experience in the media. In this case, the tragic death of Freddie Gray on April 12th, 2015 whilst in the custody of the Baltimore Police Department. The intrusive and the demeaning combined with sensationalized reporting to ignore the dignity and suffering of this man. Validly, it might be asked had this not been a young African-American man whether the coverage would have taken on a different tone. By distilling the color palette of three commonly circulated photographs of Freddie Gray down to three hues of gray, Locke speaks to the debasement of this individual, his suffering and brutal death. Freddie Gray became a media-currency. His life and death had determined a value, that of a commodity. One that was exchanged between us and the news outlets. Locke shows us how we are complicit in this process, that the communication of outrage embraces complexities which have at their foundation the self same prejudices which they seek to make clear, here it is literally gray.

steven locke’s: the color of remembering at is a powerful exhibition. By bringing together the history of slavery, racism and subjugation through to the contemporaneous he threads a course of prejudices towards African Americans from the overt to the more hidden. It is instructive, in particular, how this exhibition focuses us on the modern day and practices which covertly but evidently seek to assuage the sensibilities of the mainstream at the expense of Black experience. The works themselves, are compelling and visually strong. The replication of composition in Family Pictures is one which has an unerring sense of imbalance. The images contained, framed with frames and repetitively composed powerfully suggest a diluting of content whilst, in fact, communicating the exact opposite. Steven Locke shows a consistent mastery of practice and sheer intellectual energy in working with the complexities of this difficult but very important subject matter. To be asked to re-think, indeed, re-remember and to give life and color to the challenging is the significant and worthy success of this exhibition.

At Bay Art Files, we have asked Tyra Mishell, who is pursuing a BA in Studio Art at the University of South Florida, to write about this powerful and timely exhibition. Her impressions of viewing the exhibition and meeting with the artist will post soon.