Let’s Get in Transformation

July 23, 2019July 25, 2019 / strazmarketing

The Americans with Disabilities Act turns 29 on Friday. We’re celebrating with a free concert in Maestro’s Restaurant featuring incredibly talented local artists of mixed abilities. Let’s meet a few.

On July 26, 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed the world’s first comprehensive civil rights law acknowledging the right of access and inclusion for people with disabilities. That monumental, historic demonstration of America’s commitment to equality turns 29 years old this Friday, and we are rolling out the red carpet with our friends from the Mayor’s Alliance for Persons with Disabilities and the Hillsborough County Alliance for Citizens with Disabilities to throw a party.

Part One: Let the Shameful Walls of Exclusion Finally Come Tumbling Down

In his public remarks that day, President Bush exhorted the world’s governments and directed American citizens to “let the shameful walls of exclusion finally come tumbling down.”

President Bush signs the Americans with Disabilities Act on the White House South Lawn on July 26, 1990.

After a brutal history of cloaking disabilities in shame and ostracism, America made a pioneering effort with the ADA to bring citizens with disabilities into the fold both socially and economically. It was supremely successful, driving business and leading to social improvements that benefitted everyone. Today, we have large print, automatic sliding doors, access ramps and beeping crosswalks thanks to the ADA. The notion of “disabilities” is being eclipsed by the understanding of “different abilities.”

Many years ago, as leadership at The Straz searched for ways to expand our own efforts at inclusion, we held a community round table to ensure we were doing our best to make the performing arts accessible for all. We made some great friends and partners during this process, one of whom is Brenda Clark, the project director and employment services coordinator for the Florida Center for Inclusive Communities at the University of South Florida.

If you come to the get-together Friday (the first part of the celebration is at the John F. Germany Library across the street starting at 3:30 p.m.), there’s no doubt you’ll see Brenda. Enthusiastic, excited about ways to implement inclusion and accessibility and a lot of fun to be around, Brenda worked with the Straz Center’s Acting Director of Community Engagement Alice Santana to hold the first-ever performing arts component of the annual ADA celebration.

Part Two: TRANSFORMATIONS: Building a World of Access and Inclusion

This year, the annual ADA anniversary celebration, titled TRANSFORMATIONS: Building a World of Access and Inclusion, takes place in two parts at two locations—The John F. Germany Library and the Straz Center—and features artists from Pasco, Pinellas and Hillsborough counties.

“Our event is also partnered with Arts for All, which is a statewide visual arts competition,” says Brenda. “We’ll announce the awards with a first, second and third prize. The John F. Germany Library offered to host a gallery of the visual art. We thought, ‘This is so great! Let’s see what else we can do.’ It was my wildest dream to showcase our local pool of performing artists, and I wanted the performing arts involved so badly. When we met Alice, everything started falling into place. The Straz is so professional. It’s real. It’s not something that someone is doing as a handout. So, at the concert at The Straz, we’ll have a dance troupe. We have singers. We have a classical pianist. The Straz is providing an accessible stage, lighting, sound and Fred Johnson will emcee. We’re just super, super, super exited about it. I may be more excited than anyone.”

The celebration concert at The Straz starts around 6 p.m. We have a full roster of performers including drummers, spoken word and sign language performance artists. We thought we’d introduce you to a few to give you a taste of the awesomeness that will be this Friday night event. The entire 29th anniversary celebration of the ADA is called TRANSFORMATIONS: Building a World of Access and Inclusion and is entirely free. All are welcomed and encouraged to attend.

MATT WEIHMULLER, jazz musician

“I will be presenting my ensemble as a jazz quartet, comprised of myself on saxophone, along with a rhythm section which includes, piano, bass, and drums. We will perform music that is representative of traditional straight-ahead jazz. We’ll also play my own modern interpretation of the genre in an original composition titled “Dots On a Page.” It means so much to me to be able to share this musical composition because I get to present it to an audience which the piece was intended for, and this is the ultimate goal of any performer.

I wrote the song “Dots On a Page” as a tribute to learning braille music. As a visually impaired musician, it has always been my goal to continue to champion the cause of braille literacy. Braille is made of a six-dot system, so it seemed appropriate to name my composition “Dots On a Page.” Performing music is freedom to me because playing jazz, which is an improvisational artform, means that there are no barriers for creativity. I hope I can inspire others through performing music to have the same outlook I try to have each day, to be able to turn any disadvantage they may have into an advantage through their disability.”

STEPHANIE SLAGLE, singer

“I will be presenting two of my favorite musical theatre songs for my performance: “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” from The Phantom of the Opera and “I Could Have Danced All Night” from My Fair Lady.

This performance is special to me for many reasons. The Straz Center itself is special to me; I have many beautiful memories of seeing shows at The Straz, and I’ve performed here for an All State conference in the concert choir and participated in a couple of Patel Conservatory’s summer classes. Being here to help celebrate the ADA 29th Anniversary is amazing! The ADA is so important because it gives opportunity and support to people who need it. When I give my performance, I want it to be representative of the amazing things the whole community can do for people—those with disabilities and those that have helped them grow to success beyond their wildest dreams.”

JOHNATHAN DAVIS, pianist/vocalist

“Johnathan is so grateful for the opportunity to perform at The Straz! Although he is autistic and blind since birth, he has developed his talent and loves to share his gift. His joy in life is making people happy. He does this through his music. Johnathan is an accomplished pianist/vocalist and will hopefully touch the hearts of our guests at this special event.” –Cheryl Worsham, Spokesperson for Johnathan Davis

The Can Do Man

September 25, 2018September 25, 2018 / strazmarketing

Mural artist Eric Hornsby, known as esh, has put his work on The Cube in the Jaeb Courtyard for a few years. Now he gathers some of the area’s premier mural artists to open a brand new Art on the Walk exhibit during our Open House Party on Oct. 6.

Eric “esh” Hornsby in action. (Art/photos: Eric Hornsby)

Caught in the Act recently sat down with aerosol artist (a.k.a. medium of choice is spray paint) and friend of The Straz Eric Hornsby to find out more details about his story, his artistic process and the upcoming Art on the Walk exhibit that features him and other great Tampa-area mural artists Eddie Rivera, zeros, the Capco crew and reda3sb. Together, they’re installing panels of mural art inspired by people and places of Tampa during our annual free festival, the Open House Party, on Oct. 6.

Woman with gharial (Art/photo: Eric Hornsby)

Eric’s roots in Florida go deep, starting when his family moved to Thonotosassa from the northeast after his grandfather, a retired New York police officer, bought a mobile home park in that rural area of Hillsborough County. “I have to give a lot of props to my Uncle Joe who passed away two, three years ago,” Eric says. “He had a canoe, and we didn’t even have to ask, we’d just borrow it. Literally walk five miles with the thing on our back to the lake and paddle out. I was a nature lover from the go. Living like Huckleberry Finn out there for real. We made homemade bows and arrows; we’d just camp out and cook anything we shot. We ate all that stuff. I used to swim from Sargent’s Park to Morris Bridge, that part of the Hillsborough River, for the adventure of it. Alligator-infested water,” he laughs.

Eric’s upbringing in the Florida woods led to his first career in the wilderness, first as a canoe guide, then as a park ranger, then to his job as an on-site land manager for Hillsborough County’s conservation department. Wild as he was in this career, he kept returning to his first love: art. Mostly self-taught by emulating manga, cartoon styles and comic books, Eric’s artistic style, a mash up of those styles with lurid nature symbolism, evolved. He wanted to be a professional artist, and the time came for him to put up or shut up.

Mystery of the disco melon ball (Art/photos: Eric Hornsby)

“I read a book by Tim Ferris. Somewhere he says, ‘if you’re not doing the things you love …” essentially meaning if you’re not choosing the life you want, you’re living a false life. I was like, ‘I can’t live a false life!’ It really hit me hard, so I started moving from point A to point B, reading a lot of books to motivate me to do what I wanted to do,” says Eric. He dropped down to part time and focused on becoming a professional artist.

“Eat, Sleep, Hustle,” or esh for short, emerged.

To hear Eric speak more in-depth about his transformation and about when you can meet him and the other artists at The Straz, plug into Act2, the Straz Center’s official podcast. Our interview with Eric goes live on Thursday, 9/27/18. During the interview, we discuss his work outside of The Cube, including the paintings and murals pictured above.

We’ve included a few favorites from The Cube that you may remember below.

The Threepenny Opera-inspired art by Eric Hornsby.

Wicked-inspired art by Eric Hornsby.

RENT-inspired art by Eric Hornsby.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime-inspired art by Eric Hornsby.

Come meet Eric at our Open House Party with the other mural artists (samples of their art pictured below) and remember to catch his interview on Act2.

Art on the Walk exhibit artist: 20-year street art veteran, zeros.

Art on the Walk exhibit artists: Capco mural team, Juan Pablo and Vanessa Parra

Art on the Walk exhibit artist: Tampa graffiti legend Eddie Rivera

Art on the Walk exhibit artist: International artist Reda3sb

Art on the Walk exhibit artist: Eric “esh” Hornsby

The Art and Work of the Contortionist

November 28, 2017 / strazmarketing

397px-Contortionist,_posed_in_studio,_ca._1880

A contortionist, posed in studio, ca. 1880. From the George Eastman House Collection.

First, let’s dispel the double-jointed myth. Joints don’t come in multiples; however, they do come with what science dubbed hypermobility or joint laxity, both terms for people who can stretch and bend naturally farther than anyone else at the cocktail party.

In certain cultures, or in certain eras – such as the heyday of the American circus at the turn of the 20th century – hypermobility offered a ticket to elite schooling, training muscles, ligaments and bones to configure into impossible-looking shapes, with body parts of all sorts touching each other in some wild game of solo Twister.

The contortionist, the old saw goes, is the only professional who really knows how to make ends meet.

Contortion came to the west from the east during the weird days of colonialism, when European men wrote the narrative of “exotic orientals” and festishized flexibility. Contortionists found work in circuses, in freak shows and wowed their Puritanically-influenced counterparts with what appeared to be a “born that way” aberration of body mobility. What the narrative omitted included the cultural tradition of contortion schools in China and Mongolia as well as the yogic traditions of India that codified a strict curriculum of training, breath work, strengthening exercises and spiritual discipline. That discipline and training required years, starting in childhood, eventually incorporating a fluid artistry to create a serpentine dance of the human body. Contortion emerged, in its home turf, as an exquisite commitment to the belief that the human body is limited only by the smallness of the mind.

Contortion as an art form requiring study and practice caught on in western civilization, leading to a cadre of contortion professionals who continued to try to educate the public about the fact that they looked like rubber people not because they were rubber people but because they spent hours a day, day after day, year after year, training their bodies to put their feet next to their ears. Apparently, other public misconceptions this group faced were assumptions that they had access to special treatments that would give them flexibility advantages. Perhaps they soaked in special Chinese oil or bone-softening chemicals. Ted and Jean Ardini, well-known Australian contortionists, penned an article for Acrobatics magazine in 1971 attempting to stop, once and for all, the outlandish questions spectators asked contortionists about how they could do what they do: “The answer to all the above questions and others too numerous and ridiculous to mention is DEFINITELY NO.” No exotic salves, no chemical baths, no secret elixirs, no sleeping in a bathtub filled with oil. The disappointing truth, the Ardinis revealed, was that contortionists “were all people, quite normal people, who enjoy our work.”

As a rule, the greatest contortionists still hail from Mongolia, a country so steeped in its monopoly on exceptional training that Cirque du Soleil hires Mongolian contortionists almost exclusively. The trainer for their acclaimed water show O is Angelique Janov, a former student of Tsend-Ayush, arguably the most influential contortionist of the 20th century. The magnificence of the cultural heritage imbued in contemporary training inspired a steering committee of Mongolian nationals to nominate Mongolian contortion for inclusion in UNESCO’s list of intangible heritage in 2011. The organization has yet to add it although remains flexible to the idea.

The art of contortion is believed to have originated from Buddhist meditation practices and poses imitating animals. (Photo: Christine Schindler)

China, too, continues to turn out unforgettable contortion artists who work in the country’s legendary acrobatic circuses that perform all over the world. With its origins in traditional Buddhist Tsam dances and influenced by Buddhist animal poses, contortion reflects its spiritual roots in modern performances. Audience members who know what to look for have a greater appreciation for performance as art versus mere spectacle.

In America, contortion stayed within its prescribed circus limits even though the performers themselves knew they were operating at a physical and artistic level often under-appreciated by general circus-going folk. Because of well-founded concerns for animal welfare and a growing shift in tastes for the American public, the circus entered a new era, and the term “circus arts” began to float in the mainstream. Silks, aerialists, strongmen/women – and contortionists – now find themselves on the cusp of widespread acceptance of their disciplines as performing arts instead of gewgaws in a traveling show. In metropolitan areas, studios offer contortion classes and workshops. In recent years, the profession formalized, hosting a regular International Contortion Convention. The last one took place in Las Vegas in 2016.

The Martial Artists and Acrobats of Tianjin, People’s Republic of China.

You’ll have a chance to exercise this new appreciation for the artistry of contortion at
China Soul: The Martial Artists and Acrobats of Tianjin, People’s Republic of China. The show features the beloved favorites of the art form from one of the most well-known acrobatic troupes in China: juggling, gymnastics, Shaolin kung fu and, of course, a handful of people bending to the will of their superbly-trained hypermobility.

The Man Behind the Mission

November 7, 2017 / strazmarketing

Governor and former Tampa mayor Bob Martinez on growing up Tampanian, the creation of The Straz and what it meant for the growth of Tampa.

Construction of Festival Hall, now Carol Morsani Hall.

With Caribbean blue eyes, an easy smile and a rambling drawl that flows through stories of Tampa history like the Hillsborough River ambles through this vast county, Robert “Bob” Martinez makes for an enchanting conversationalist on the subject of The Straz and what Tampa was like all those many years before it housed a world-class performing arts center.

This season, we celebrate 30 years of The Straz. As part of this celebration, we are gathering stories, “the million little stories that make up who we are,” and we decided that we might as well start at the beginning – with Bob Martinez.

Martinez’s grandparents came to Tampa from Spain, mingling with the other immigrant cultures of Ybor City and West Tampa – Italians, Cubans and Germans – and, like those new Americans, Martinez’s grandparents joined the mutual aid societies of the area.

“I grew up here, and we belonged to Centro Español. For twenty-five cents or fifty cents a week for your whole family, you had hospital care, a clubhouse, doctors, a cemetery. It really was care from birth to death,” Martinez recounts from the penthouse conference room in the Regions Bank building where, though in his 80s, he works as a senior policy advisor for Holland & Knight, LLP. From this bird’s-eye view, the swooping lines of the deep blue Hillsborough Bay hug the sprawling cluster of white and terra cotta rooftops. Like exotic hot air balloons, railroad tycoon Henry B. Plant’s Moorish minarets spring skyward, an opulent reminder of Tampa’s first renaissance, now on the campus of University of Tampa, home to the Bob Martinez Athletic Center. This view looks like it does now mostly because of Martinez’s mayoral agenda in the early ’80s, the second renaissance for Tampa.

Robert “Bob” Martinez.

As worker-centered social clubs, the mutual aid societies came to represent the hard-working and community-centered ethos that would dominate Tampa until the abrupt socio-economic changes of the mid-20th century. Part of the vital fabric of the mutual aid societies was culture. “I went to live productions all the time,” Martinez says. “We had live talent [at the mutual aid societies], and I was taken to all the shows at five and six years old even though I probably fidgeted through most of them.”

In school, Martinez worked on the grade plays – 6th, 9th and senior year – as crew. “I wasn’t a participant. They were mostly musicals.” (He confided later to a singing ability so bad he won’t even attempt to exercise it in the shower or car. However, he’s a crackerjack dancer.)

Dirt roads led in and out of his neighborhood, near where Raymond James Stadium sits today. To get to any excitement, you had to board a streetcar that would click and clack to the action: downtown. “In the ’40s and ’50s, the entertainment center was Downtown Tampa,” he recalls. “Movie houses, hotels. All the hotels had restaurants and live entertainment. I dated my future wife, Mary Jane Marino, at every movie house in Downtown Tampa. Downtown was the core, and that probably stuck in my mind. All the streetcars led to downtown – that’s impressionable to someone young, as I was then. I probably got it in my mind that anything that would happen for Tampa would happen downtown.”

By the 1970s, Martinez, who had been a much-loved high school teacher, bought Café Sevilla, a Spanish restaurant with a reputation for attracting a who’s-who from business, politics and entertainment. “If any famous actors were in town filming a movie, somebody would bring them by Café Sevilla,” Martinez says. “We had Ricardo Montalban, Vikki Carr, Fernando Lamas.” People knew Bob Martinez, and a month after he took over the restaurant, then-Governor Reubin Askew called Martinez to serve on the board of the Southwest Florida Water Management District.

The call jump-started Martinez’s political life, and, in 1979, he announced his mayoral bid. The major focus of his platform?

“I announced I wanted to build a performing arts center. Downtown.”

Photo of downtown Tampa before the Straz Center was built.

Martinez, who would later advance to Governor of Florida and eventually serve as Drug Czar under President George H. W. Bush, saw that the Downtown Tampa of his youth had stagnated, mired in random industrialization and unable to revitalize after the cigar industry collapsed. “In July of ’79, I released three white papers, the first one explaining how job creation and economic development were tied to the performing arts center. You see, in order to attract new businesses, the CEOs and their spouses would need something to do, a reason to want to be here. They wouldn’t want to come to a place with limited culture. That’s how I sold it. I tied it to economic development. Nobody was going to come here without some kind of culture.”

At a candidate forum on Davis Islands, Martinez openly spoke about his vision for Tampa and how that vision depended on 1) a performing arts center and 2) everybody’s buy-in. “I explained that bringing a performing arts center to Tampa allowed middle-class people and others to enjoy Broadway and other shows. For a lot of people, it would be the first time in their lives. But it was more than that. A performing arts center would give children who were arts-oriented a chance to develop their strengths and talents. Children who were arts-oriented ought to have the same opportunities to develop those talents as children who have athletic talent, and we had Little League fields all over the county.”

The idea took. The daily papers supported the platform, and Martinez received almost zero push-back on the proposal – impressive, considering it carried a multi-million-dollar price tag that taxpayers, would, in part, cover. He won the 1979 election.

“As soon as I was elected, I gathered a task force to figure out how to build one [a performing arts center]. I called H.L. Culbreath, who was a good friend and customer at the restaurant, and I wanted him to chair the task force. We compiled a list of names, H.L. made the calls, and we had it.”

The groundbreaking for the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, now the Straz Center.

Martinez and the performing arts center task force faced a formidable challenge: how to raise the funds. “This had never been done in Tampa before, raising that much money,” Martinez says. The $15 million he thought would cover the one-hall center was a far cry from the 25-cents-a-week price tag of the mutual aid societies. But, the community spirit was still there, carried on the wind from the remaining shells of cigar factories lining West Tampa and Ybor City. “We realized, though, that if people were going to have to give, it should be to a non-profit organization, not the local government,” Martinez remembers, “so the city doesn’t run it, but the non-profit does.”

The design phases of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center (renamed the David A. Straz, Jr. Center for the Performing Arts in 2009) proved challenging, with a few hiccups along the way but no major bumps in the road. The biggest problem – if you could call it that – was that everyone involved with the concept and construction wanted the best of the best. “The biggest surprise in the whole project was how big it ended up being,” he laughs. “I thought it would be one hall – not two or three or four! But, H.L. kept saying ‘I think we need to add this … ’ and it just sort of grew. The people on the committee were all local business and community leaders, we were doing this for our community, for the growth of Tampa, and a lot of the people involved in the construction were local. We wanted to do it right.” The total costs far exceeded Martinez’s initial thoughts, but the community commitment and business leadership followed through to the end, when the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center opened for business in 1987.

The success of The Straz’s public-private partnerships set the standard of business for what Martinez calls “a community ticket facility.” “It’s the best model,” he says. “We used the same non-profit concept we established for the performing arts center for the zoo and all the museums with ticket sales.”

Many people don’t know that, before the plans for The Straz began in earnest, a group of “baseball enthusiasts” courted Martinez over lunch to build a pro baseball stadium instead of the performing arts center. Martinez enjoyed his meal, thanked the enthusiasts and said no. “I ran on building a performing arts center, not a baseball stadium. I had to keep my promise.” Martinez, himself a baseball talent who passed on a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers to get married and attend college, saw that the zeitgeist for Tampa’s second renaissance would be in the arts.

Grand opening celebration of the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center in 1987. (Photo: Cliff McBride)

“If, for some reason the performing arts center hadn’t materialized, it would have been first a denial to the young people who needed arts education. Second, it would have been a denial to people who can’t afford to go to Broadway. It would have had an adverse impact on recruiting business. A performing arts center showed that we were a growing, sophisticated community,” Martinez says. “If we hadn’t built the Straz Center, Tampa wouldn’t have seen growth of the same magnitude.”

An unintended outcome of building a performing arts center as a juggernaut of metropolitan growth was the effect The Straz’s success had on subsequent projects. “Building a performing arts center opened the citizens of Tampa Bay’s pocketbooks for other organizations. The zoo, the history center … once you invest, you’re an advocate. You have skin in the game,” he says. “As you can see, I’m real proud of our community.”

Martinez left Tampa for several years to follow his political trajectory – which, incidentally, led to a parallel side-job related to the performing arts. He landed a walk-on role as a customs officer in the James Bond film License to Kill after meeting with producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, who invited him to the set in Key West. Broccoli later allowed Martinez to use pre-release screenings of the film to raise funds for a children’s organ transplant foundation. Martinez then got a speaking part on a “drugs and go-fast boats” pilot for a television movie called Thunder Boat Row but it didn’t get picked up.

Despite the fact that he has both an IMDb (Internet Movie Database) listing and a former place in the Presidential Cabinet, Martinez returned home, to the place of his cherished memories, his grandkids and to the bustling city poised on the next renaissance. In his spare time, he works towards efforts to restore and renovate Centro Español, the mutual aid society building of his youth. But, he is not riding on nostalgia.

View from river

“The future looks wonderful. For a city our size to have two sports teams, arena football and all of our cultural institutions with hardly any corporate headquarters … that’s one great story to tell about the Tampa people. That they wanted these things for themselves. To me, it’s an incredible story,” he says. “And what we have at the Straz Center is second to none.”

Bob Martinez gambled on the economic savvy of relying on the performing arts to drive growth – and won. This incredible story started simply enough, with a teacher-turned-restaurateur who knew that the power of culture could transform a town into an international destination.

Live and Local

August 15, 2017August 15, 2017 / strazmarketing

The Straz Center brings “think globally, act locally” to the performing arts.

Live and Local artists performing at the Straz Center’s Open House.

If you’ve been around The Straz for the past few years, you’ve noticed the changes transforming our outdoor spaces to places meant for getting together, enjoying some cool art, having conversations and making the most of our primo waterfront property. We are blessed with one of the greatest downtown locations, so it makes sense that people would come here to relax, catch a sunset, enjoy some food and drinks and take in the creative vibes.

One of the best ways to soak in these spoils is to stop by on the weekend for Live and Local.

This free performance series presents a local musician in the Jaeb Courtyard, our magical outdoor play space complete with twinkle lights and café seating for supreme al fresco chill time.

The man in charge of Live and Local is Joel Lisi, who is himself something of a magical experience, as many longtime Tampanians recognize him as the guitarist for the jazz power instrumental trio Beanstalk and the jazz improv group Ghetto Love Sugar.

Joel Lisi performing with Beanstalk.

“This is really cool, man, you know,” he says about booking acts for the stage and growing the series from year to year. “There used to be a metallic statue in the courtyard, maybe it belonged to the city and the city took it back, but it was gone, and all we had was landscaping rocks and this round rotundo space. We had to get some entertainment in for an event that weekend and we thought, ‘hey, there’s this weird rock space. Let’s put someone there.’ Because of my music background, I was asked to find someone. So, I called a friend, and we had him perform where the statue used to be.”

While gathered at the event that night, Lisi and a few Straz execs realized they were onto something. “We saw how the trees create this half-dome orchestra shell over the stage, and we were like ‘wow—this is the perfect outdoor music space’,” Lisi says. They began to strategize, thinking it would be cool to host a free performance before a weekend Broadway show (but pay the performer, of course). Some Straz patrons noted that the season programming lacked local artists, so this new space seemed to be a perfect solution.

“Roberto DeBourg—he’s known as Chachi—was our first musician. This was before SteamHeat Café or any of our plans for that space had fleshed out. But, we tried it before a Saturday night Broadway show, and it worked,” Lisi says. “That was the birth and it’s grown from there. Now, The Cube [featuring Broadway-themed graffiti art by Eric Hornsby] is there—and SteamHeat [the coffee shop serving local Buddy Brew roasts]. Everybody wants to hang out there. We went from six performances the first season to 20 this year. So, Live and Local is about exposing people to local culture, to local artists. It’s nice to make a connection to the local scene when you’re a big performing arts center.”

Eric Hornsby painting The Cube before Motown The Musical arrived earlier this month. Check out more of his art on Instagram: @artist_esh

The Live and Local series still coincides mostly with the Saturday Broadway show, but artists perform before the Sunday opera matinee and before certain other big shows like Next Generation Ballet’s Nutcracker.

Lisi curates the pairings, making sure the Live and Local act meshes with the tone of the main stage show. “I try to theme it, so yeah, there would be someone like Greg West, a rock guy, before a show like American Idiot, and Francesca Ani, this crazy-talented 17-year-old singer-songwriter who just won a big radio contest, before Nutcracker. It’s taken on a life of its own, and we’ve even been able to get some of our Live and Local artists to open for big touring acts playing The Straz.”

Check out this clip of Francesca performing at the Straz Center Open House in 2016:

Always on the lookout for solid Live and Local talent, Lisi keeps a generous spirit about getting Tampa Bay artists on the stage. “Yes, I always need people. I’ve been in a restaurant and some guy in the corner is killing it, and I’ll approach him and ask if he wants to perform. I’ll take suggestions, too.”

If you want to be considered as a Live and Local artist, send an email to joel.lisi@strazcenter.org with relevant details and where you are in the Tampa Bay area (gotta keep it local, folks).

If you want to know the lineup this season, we should have the bulk of it on the website by the end of August. For now, bookmark us and check back regularly. Here’s our Live and Local page.

“The bottom line,” Lisi says, “is that it’s just fun. You can come early for your show and hang out, not have to fight traffic. You can enjoy some live entertainment outside with your friends and just have a good time. That’s what it’s all about.”

The Fine Art Mystery of Morsani Mezzanine

August 8, 2017 / strazmarketing

Dr. Jay and Ann McKeel Ross Art Exhibit

A drawing of a robe. Toddler dresses. Abstract boxes in a row. What are these art works hanging unceremoniously on the walls of Morsani Mezzanine? Where did they come from? What do you mean some of the greatest visual artists in the world are on display at the Straz Center?

The Tampa Bay area is a land of many secrets.

Our history holds several little-known treasures: the West Tampa cigar workers who rolled the instructions for the first Cuban revolution into the cigar destined for Havana; Woodlawn Cemetery, which features a fairly nondescript section dedicated only to circus folk, and Keith Richards, whose stint at the Jack Tar Harrison Hotel in Clearwater churned out the guitar lick to “Satisfaction.”

Perhaps one of the most enduring and prolific gems in Tampa’s atlas of uniqueness is the University of South Florida’s Graphicstudio, an experiment in art and education started by artist and professor Dr. Don Saff in 1968 that goes strong right now, even as you read this.

Rauschenberg in his studio with Graphicstudio staff Patrick Foy, Tom Pruitt and Donald Saff, working on In-Dependents/ROCI USA (Wax Fire Works) in 1990. (Courtesy of Saff Tech Arts. Photo: George Holzer)

USF Graphicstudio has provided, over the last several decades, a refuge and workspace for some of the most famous, most promising, most daring visual artists to push the evocative, provocative printmaking form. Graphicstudio holds a well-deserved revered status in the art world as a studio at the forefront of international fine art publishing. One of the first artists to work with them was none other than the innovative genius Robert Rauschenberg.

Although The Stones were making headlines in the ‘60s, the boundless eruption of experimental art flourishing in the United States had a home with a group of artists in New York inventing what would be known as Pop Art. Its purveyors – Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist and Claes Oldenburg – pole-vaulted into the vaunted halls of fame, fashion, fortune (for some) and made art focusing on popular culture a “thing,” a “happening.” Soup cans transformed to colorful social commentary, collages aping advertising slicks erased boundaries between high and low art, and these artists purposefully muddied the waters around concerns with the interbreeding of politics and mass media, consumerism and community integrity. These artists built the complex platform of cultural questioning that each of us stands on today, and two of these Pop Art all-stars – Lichtenstein and Rosenquist – worked in Graphicstudio.

But before them came Rauschenberg, whose style, labeled Neo-Dada, built the scaffolding for the later work of the Pop Art movement. Rauschenberg is a legend. There’s no other way to put it. He was the one who reconsidered and reconfigured what constituted artistic materials. He put found objects on painted canvases and threw the distinction between sculpture and painting into a tailspin. Rauschenberg was the guy whose White Paintings – canvases covered in uniform strokes with nothing but white house paint – totally confounded the definition of art, making some people really angry and awakened others to a canvas’s possibility for the artistry in shadows or as a backdrop to the art of life. Rauschenberg’s audacity made people question their fundamental assumptions, which made him both loved and loathed, as most great artists are.

Contemporaries admired him, art historians uphold him as one of the most influential American artists of all time and critics continue to debate interpretations of his kitsch-meets-classical work style that upended the boundaries of what it means to make art. Rauschenberg spent years, from 1972-1987, in and out of Graphicstudio, an effort that resulted in 60 editions of prints that experimented with form and technique. Rauschenberg, with the dedication of USF faculty, staff and students, tested his ideas in photo transfer, cyanotype, sepia prints, printing on cloth and ceramics, new material sculptures and a hundred-foot-long photograph during his tenure with Graphicstudio. His works Made in Tampa Two, Made in Tampa Eleven and Made in Tampa Twelve now hang in the easily accessible pop-up gallery of the Morsani Mezzanine.

Rauschenberg’s Pop Art contemporary, Rosenquist, noted for his deft and original use of juxtaposition, also has two works from his time with Graphicstudio on display in Morsani: Iris Lake and Discover Graphics Smithsonian. After noticing the Rauschenbergs and the Rosenquists, a leisurely stroll across the Mezzanine reveals the art placards carry one gigantic name after another:

• There are four Untitled works from the master maverick of the Pop Art era, Nicholas Krushenick, whose ultra-bold simplistic color blocks lined with black traces conjure an almost Simpsons-esque aesthetic – only 25 years before Matt Groening became a maverick in his own right. It’s worth noting that during this artistic time period, when almost everyone could be categorized somewhere from Op Art to Pop Art to post-Abstract Expressionism, Krushenick is the only one who defies category. He belongs everywhere and nowhere, which is an admirable feat among the wild bunch of enfants terribles cranking out art in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s.

• Chuck Close, whose John I and John II appear near the staircase, is one of the last living giants of the age. His singular, mosaic-style of painting meticulous portraits from a grid, often using each 1×1 square as a minute canvas as part of the whole canvas, reinvented the art of portraiture.

• Miriam Schapiro, the printmaking revolutionary who invented “femmage,” a collage-like style that must include at least seven of fourteen distinct criteria including scraps, sewing, patterns, photographs and a woman-life context, is represented by one of her most enduring works, Children of Paradise, created during her time at Graphicstudio from 1983-1984.

• Jim Dine, Nancy Graves, Robert Stackhouse and the founder of Graphicstudio himself, Don Saff, all have work on the wall in Morsani mezzanine.

That a collection so impressive, so unique hangs rather humbly in the Morsani Mezzanine raises a very important question: how did they get there? The answer lies with Jay and Ann McKeel Ross. Ann Ross, who moved to Tampa around the time that Rauschenberg was collaborating as set designer with the Paul Taylor Dance Company on Taylor’s 1957 The Tower, graduated from USF. Ann and her husband Jay loved Tampa, loved this area – and they loved art and culture. In 1968, they helped Saff start Graphicstudio, leveraging their relationships to create a pool of supporters to start a subscription program to help fund the artist residency. The subscribers, now called Research Partners, make an annual contribution to support the research mission. In return, they have opportunities to purchase work from Graphicstudio artists for a special price. (Note: anyone can buy full price Graphicstudio prints and sculptures from the studio’s website.)

A Straz Center trustee, Ann – along with her husband Jay – has been a long time donor to The Straz. She loaned these pieces of her personal collection for community enjoyment and appreciation of the fine work happening at Graphicstudio, which is now recognized as the nation’s leading university-based art research workshop.

Ann and Jay Ross.

“Ann and Jay are the only collectors that have been members of the subscription program since its inception and therefore have a complete collection of prints and sculptures produced for our Research Partners over the last 50 years,” says Margaret Miller, the director of Graphicstudio. “They have been generous in loaning works from their collection. How fortunate we are to have Ann and Jay in our community. They continue to demonstrate their commitment to advancing art and culture in this region.”

We are very proud and honored to be able to exhibit such a high caliber of work in an open community space like the Morsani Mezzanine, and we encourage you, on your next visit to The Straz, to come early and spend some time with the pieces from Ann and Jay’s collection. If you would like to get involved with Graphicstudio, check out their website: graphicstudio.usf.edu.

Stay Savvy and Be Art Smart

July 25, 2017July 25, 2017 / strazmarketing

How to avoid online ticket scams. The lowest-priced tickets *always* come from strazcenter.org.

strazcenter.org is the ONLY official online ticket seller to Straz Center performances.

Straz Center season tickets are about to go on sale to the public. We feel it’s our duty to remind you to buy straight from our website if you want the lowest ticket prices. The other websites look legit, but they’re tricking you into paying sometimes hundreds of dollars more for a single ticket. It’s a simple scam, and one our audience members fall for year after year. We try to combat this fraud, but we can’t succeed without you being aware of what’s happening.

Strazcenter.org is the only official online ticket seller to performances in our halls. Anywhere else online will be a scalping scam.

The names look real, and theirs are usually the first and foremost to pop up on an internet search for “Book of Mormon tickets” or “tickets Phantom of the Opera” or “tickets to Straight No Chaser.” They are names like tampatickets.com, carolmorsanihall.com, and even strazcentertickets.com. These companies target unsuspecting buyers who click on whatever websites show up first after an internet search – usually the “sponsored ads” that look almost identical to a search result.

Right now, these types of sites are deceiving Straz Center patrons about ticket prices, availability and seat locations. Unfortunately, many Straz Center patrons have been fooled by such scalping scams that run rampant on the internet.

“The leading factor is haste,” says LeeAnn Douglas, digital marketing director at the Straz Center, who sees first-hand the evidence of ticket brokers buying our tickets under several accounts, reselling them online (or selling the same seats to several people) and then hearing the complaints about ticket prices being too expensive or the anger of customers who have been taken in by online scalpers.

“The easiest way to see that our tickets are being scalped is to search Google for an show’s name plus tickets and Tampa and various ticket brokers’ Google ads will pop up. It’s true especially for the blockbuster shows. Click on any one of these ads and you can see that these brokers are selling tickets at three and four times the actual price,” she says.

A screenshot of the results the pop up when you search “motown tickets tampa.” Our official website (outlined in red) shows up after four ads from ticket brokers.

The ticket broker business of buying performance tickets and reselling them online at four and five times the value tallies millions of lost dollars for patrons and the local economy each year.

Because most of these brokers work remotely in other states and sell tickets from as many venues as they can – not just the Straz Center – the fraudulent resell of tickets results in dollars derailed into other states and patrons taking a hard blow to the pocketbook.

Arts and entertainment patrons, who are unaware that these “ticket brokers” pose as allies of the venue yet, in reality, are poaching and price-gouging tickets, unwittingly contribute to keeping the scalping rings in business. “I had a friend text me that she wanted to see Il Divo but the tickets were too expensive,” LeeAnn says. “When I asked her to send me the link, I could see right away that she wasn’t on our site. I redirected her to strazcenter.org, and she was very happy because she was able to get orchestra seats for a quarter of the price the ticket broker was asking. In the end, she got great seats with a VIP package from our website for the same price that she would have paid a ticket broker for nosebleed seats.”

With the sheer number of brokers nationwide running these companies, it is impossible for the Straz Center to stop them from buying tickets.

But it is possible – and simple and easy – for patrons to stop supporting these businesses. “We need to educate the buying public on how to avoid buying from a broker,” says LeeAnn. “Instead of automatically clicking the top search result, which is always a paid advertisement, they need to make sure they take a moment to look at the search results and find the Straz Center’s official site. Or better yet, bookmark one of the Straz Center’s websites [www.strazcenter.org or https://shop.strazcenter.org], and then any time they want to buy a ticket for one of our events, there is no need to perform a search at all.”

So, if you purchase tickets online, make sure you, your family and friends use strazcenter.org. Otherwise, you will be overpaying to scalpers without even knowing it.

This is how the Straz Center’s official website, strazcenter.org, appears on a mobile device.

The Straz Center and its arts and entertainment allies continue efforts to fight on behalf of our patrons. A $300 ticket to a Broadway show from a broker could pay for dinner, an overnight hotel stay and a show at the Straz Center price – all money nourishing our local businesses and economy.

The Straz Center’s mission is to inspire audiences and artists to dream and discover, to create and celebrate, and part of our commitment is to make sure audiences know the truth about consumer issues in the arts.

Please help us spread the word about buying tickets directly from our website as we prepare for another spectacular season of performing arts. This way, we can all stay savvy and be art smart.

Caught in the act

official blog of the Straz Center

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