The Artist

This public art project consisted of two rear-video-projections onto a storefront window of hands rolling cigars. The history of Tampa is long and varied, and includes the civil war, Spanish American war, and English colonial rule. One of the most defining moments in Tampa’s history however was the cigar industry. With the fire of 1886 in Key West, Tampa’s population almost doubled as the cigar industry took off. Rolling cigars by the “tablatures” (tobacco rollers) was not simply a manual job. The “toreadors” who rolled the finished cigars, especially, thought of themselves as “more of an artist than a worker.” This public art-work harks back to this honorable trade. Showing a manual task on this scale, and repeated, highlights the means of production. In contemporary culture, manual labor is not respected as much as white-collar labor. Tablatures were artists, respected and educated. A larger than life projection of the hands honors this manual trade and expresses the strength and tactility of the task of rolling cigars. This installation was made possible by the Lights on Tampa – Satellites event.

This was a collaborative project with Anat Pollack. The installation was located at The Towers of Channelside in downtown Tampa, Florida. [January 2009]