HCC Art Galleries’ free one-day public art festival “Now on View” returns to Ybor City on Saturday, February 22nd with the eclectic mix of art forms and creatives HCC launched the event to showcase.
“People’s eyes light up when I tell them we have everything from projection mapping and interactive photography to dance battles, a poetry alley, and a botanical installation,” HCC Art Galleries Director Amanda Poss says. “It’s expanding the idea of what art is and can be.”
On top of spotlighting the diverse local art scene, “Now on View” explores themes of Tampa’s past, present, and future as the city goes through rapid growth and transformation. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., the public can check out six art installations and performances spread across three venues, HCC’s Ybor campus, Hotel Haya, and the Kress Contemporary.
At the HCC Ybor Performing Arts Building, 1411 E. 11th Ave., “Legacy Systems,” a collaborative, hurricane-inspired immersive dance and sculpture installation by Emma Quintana, the University of Tampa’s digital fabrication coordinator, and interdisciplinary dance artist Amanda Gabaldon, is at Gallery114@HCC. Among other things, the installation includes oversized flamingo and beach chair sculptures, Florida icons like palm trees and neon signs, and dancers in vintage beachwear and in raincoats and weatherproof clothing who represent our area’s ongoing dance with disaster,” an HCC description says.
At the HCC Ybor Building Patio, 2001 N. 14th St., “Resilient Rhythms: Honoring Tampa’s Diverse Dance Voices” features a dance battle led by dancer and educator Jehoshaphat Jacinto and Tampa’s street dance community.
“This unique, immersive street dance battle celebrates Ybor City’s rich and diverse blend of dance cultures, with a special focus on amplifying the voices and contributions of minorities and the LGBTQIA+ community,” a description in HCC’s guidebook for “Now on View” says.
Freestyle, hip-hop, litefeet, popping, locking, breaking, vogue, waacking, and house dance will all be represented.
Over at Hotel Haya, 1412 E. Seventh Ave,. the large-scale installation “everything is built on layers on top of other layers on top of other layers” is part poetry, part art collage. It’s the creation of FAX 727 289 3069, a trio that artists and poets Tyler Gillespie, Keifer Calkins, and Eleanor Eichenbaum formed and named after Calkins bought a fax machine in 2024.
They’ll create a fictional Ybor history by “flyering” a poetry alley with layers and layers of handmade fliers featuring poets, pirates, punks, and cigars. Outside Hotel Haya’s Café Quiquiriqui, FAX’s creation will have poetry on pillars, hanging pennants, and free handmade buttons for the public.
Botanical artist Kali Rabaut’s installation “Untitled (Floral Galaxy)” at Hotel Haya is an immersive experience, with an infinity mirror booth/tunnel that takes viewers “into a mesmerizing floral galaxy,” HCC’s description says.
At the Kress Contemporary, 1624 E. Seventh Ave., playwright and producer Erin Lekovic presents “Ybor Interrupted,” a 15-minute site-specific play inspired by Samuel Kress, the five-and-dime tycoon who had a store location in this historic building that bears his name.
“Set in both the 1910s and today, the story follows a newly arrived Samuel Kress as he attempts to charm a cigar factory heiress—while rumors swirl that he’s daring to sell New York cigars in Ybor City,” HCC’s description says. There are performances at 10:45 a.m., 11:45 a.m., 12:45 p.m. and 1:45 p.m.
Also at the Kress, Tampa native and LGBTQIA+ advocate Victoria Alvarez’s “Back to Black” is a temperature-sensitive installation that reveals photographs of Tampa’s LGBTQIA+ community.
“Tampa has a long history of its LGBTQIA+ community,” a description in HCC’s festival guidebook says. “The queer pioneers of the 1950s left Tampa with safe spaces, churches and memories that show the queer community was not just a current wave of transplants but something that holds strong in the very fabric of Tampa’s history.”
Following the first “Now on View” last June, HCC Art Galleries set out to give the performing arts a larger presence at this year’s festival. Poss says that included specifically mentioning the performing arts in a call to artists and reducing the total number of installations from eight to six. That way, a larger stipend was available for dance groups and theater troupes with multiple people.
Poss and Jennifer Ring, who handles marketing and membership for HCC Art Galleries, like the results.
“I think we’ve got a really great mix of artists this year,” Ring says.
Poss says HCC Art Galleries is well-situated to organize a festival that brings together a broad range of art forms.
“The intent from the onset of this project was to really celebrate the full spectrum of arts and creative folks here in Tampa,” she says. “Perhaps we have a unique perspective into that because our gallery at the Ybor City campus is actually located within the Performing Arts Building. And our department, the home of the Visual and Performing Arts, is all together here in Ybor. We’re all together, whereas at a larger university, you may have a performing arts department separate from visual arts. So we’re constantly working together and collaborating with our colleagues in theatre or dance. We saw the value of that early on and knew that our creative community in Tampa was also broad like that. So it’s always been intended to be this kind of bridge.”
HCC Art Galleries suggests starting the tour at the Ybor campus Performing Arts Building to pick up a free festival guidebook. Max Herman and Jorge Contreras of Tampa Bay Tours are also leading three free English-language walking tours. Those tours begin at the Performing Arts Building at 10 a.m., 11 a.m., and 12 p.m. A fourth tour, in Spanish, begins at 1 p.m. The tours take participants through Ybor, stopping at the three “Now On View” venues and dispensing fun facts about Ybor’s history along the way.
“You can make that connection between the art and our history as you go,” Poss says.
For more information and to register for a tour, go to Now on View tours
Black History Month events
The Tampa Bay History Center celebrates Black History Month with a series of events highlighting the Black community’s impact on Tampa's history.
At 10 a.m. on February 15th, the Downtown Tampa walking tour explores the stories of courage and strength behind the F.W. Woolworth lunch counter sit-ins and other events in Tampa’s Civil Rights movement.
At 6:30 p.m. on February 19th, “Florida Conversations: Chitlin’ Circuit” features NPR journalist Eric Deggans leading a discussion about the network of Black-owned clubs that thrived in Tampa during the Jim Crow era, launching the careers of artists like Ray Charles. The free program is presented by WUSF.
On February 22nd, there’s a West Tampa Black History walking tour led by Black History Curator Fred Hearns. But that event has already sold out.
The month culminates with the Black History Month Reception at 5:30 p.m. on
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Leonard George JrFebruary 28th. This year’s keynote speaker is West Tampa native, attorney, and sports and media trailblazer Leonard George Jr. In 1968, George became the first African American to sign a football scholarship with the University of Florida. After UF, he pursued a career in television journalism at Tampa’s WTOG and practiced law in Atlanta and Tallahassee, including work for the Florida Attorney General’s Office. The evening also includes live music, gallery access, and the presentation of the Dr. Bernard LaFayette Jr. History Award.
For more information, go to Tampa Bay History Center
“Black History They Don’t Want You to Know,” a new play written by playwright Lance Felton and directed by Bob Devin Jones, is at Stageworks Theatre in the Channel District’s Grand Central at Kennedy at 7 p.m. on February 12th and 13th. The play uses a mix of poetry and live theater to explore untold truths and hidden history.
For more information and tickets, go to Black History They Don’t Want You to Know
The 2025 Tampa Bay Collard Green Festival is 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, February 15th at the Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum of Florida in St. Petersburg’s The Deuces neighborhood. The festival includes a collard green cook-off, an intergenerational agriculture zone, a youth entrepreneur row, a family zone, a galleria of greens, live entertainment, and food trucks.
It also includes the Inkclusive Pages Book Fair, which brings together authors, readers, and literature lovers for discussions, workshops, and exploring a wide array of books.
For more information, go to Collard Green Festival
“iMAGiNE NATiON,” a new exhibit by local artist iBOMS, opens at Creative Pinellas on February 20th.
The solo exhibit uses graphite, spray paint, resin casting, and digital design to explore the imagination as the infinite “motherland of all knowledge,” a Creative
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"iMAGiNE NATiON," a solo exhibit by iBOMS, is at Creative Pinellas Pinellas description says. The Woodson African American Museum of Florida in St. Petersburg and Creative Pinellas are presenting the exhibit in partnership. The Woodson’s Communications Manager Danny Olda curates the exhibit.
“We’re excited to be working with Creative Pinellas to make this stunning solo exhibition of iBOM’s work possible and to introduce his deeply imaginative art to new audiences,” Woodson Executive Director Terri Lipsey Scott says in a press release. “His unique way of using the imagery of music, fashion, and spirituality is one reason we’re especially thrilled that his art is being showcased in connection with Black History Month.”
The artist tour of the exhibit is 5:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. on February 20th. The opening reception runs from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. “iMAGiNE NATiON” is on display through May 10th at Creative Pinellas, 12211 Walsingham Rd. in Largo.
For more information, go to iMAGiNE NATiON
The Tampa Theatre’s Black Love Classics movie series returns on three Sundays in February. The series launched in 2022 and focuses on a different theme each year. This year, the theme is “Blerds,” or “Black nerds.”
The lineup of films is “Fast Color” on February 9th, “Nope” on February 16th, and “Hidden Figures” on February 23rd. All films start at 3 p.m.
For more information, go to Black Love Classics
The Hillsborough County Public Library Cooperative has a busy month of events planned.
There are screenings of the films “Race,” “Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” “The Great Debaters,” “Respect,” “Harriet,” and “Hidden Figures.”
There are also several book discussion groups throughout the month.
For more information, go to HCPLC Black History Month
The Clearwater Public Library System’s eighth annual Night at the Library Black History Month celebration is 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday, February 25th at the North Greenwood Library.
The theme for this year’s event is “Achieving a Legacy Through Learning.” Put on in partnership with the Clearwater Historical Society, the event includes several guest speakers.
For more information, go to Night at the Library