The Public Art program at HCC, otherwise known as Grounds4Art, envisions a more vibrant and aesthetically appealing environment for students, faculty, staff and visitors to the college. These creative projects are designed to encourage social activation on campus, serving as informal gathering places for various programs and student life activities.
Explore Public Art at HCC
Click on the map pins to locate murals across HIllsborough College campuses.
Trinity Rivard’s “Graduation” is a vibrant and inspiring tribute to achievement, transformation, and the shared journey of higher education. Spanning an entire wall inside the cafeteria at Hillsborough College’s Dale Mabry Campus, the mural centers around a powerful image of a hawk—its wings fully outstretched, symbolizing freedom, ambition, and the courage to soar into the future.
Each outstretched wing unfurls a rich tapestry of imagery representing HCC’s diverse programs, student life, and collective aspirations.
Designed with input from the HC Dale Mabry Campus president and deans, “Graduation” honors both individual perseverance and the collective experience of the Hillsborough College community. It is a vibrant, affirming reminder that education is not only a personal milestone—it’s a launchpad for impact and opportunity.
Plant the seeds and help them grow
ArtisT
Zulu Painter
Location
Learning Resources Center (YLRC), facing west towards the Child Development Center playground (exterior courtyard), Ybor City Campus
Zulu Painter’s "Plant the Seeds and Help Them Grow" celebrates knowledge, creativity, and community through richly symbolic imagery.
Anchored by a classical column and the phrase “Learn & Grow”, the mural begins with a watchful bird perched over a flowering Earth, representing the interconnectedness of nature, knowledge, and care. Sunflowers—often symbols of growth and positivity—blossom across the mural, flanked by geometric and pixel-like designs that nod to both organic and digital forms of learning.
A tall ship sails out of an open book, positioning stories, history, and education as launching pads for exploration and adventure. This theme is reinforced by a stack of oversized books with painted titles like "Marsha’s Garden," "Quack," and "Calm," each evoking themes of wisdom, whimsy, and social harmony.
Each outstretched wing unfurls a rich tapestry of imagery representing HCC’s diverse programs, student life, and collective aspirations.
Bright, painterly elements blend realism and abstraction—hallmarks of Zulu Painter’s style—inviting viewers of all ages to discover personal meaning in each detail. The entire mural radiates optimism, reminding students and passersby that small seeds of knowledge, when nurtured, can grow into a world of possibility.
Beyond Innovation
ArtisT
Trinity Rivard
Location
Public Service Technology Building (YPST) 121, Ybor City Campus
Trinity Rivard’s “Beyond Innovation,” a 243 sq ft acrylic mural completed in late 2024 at HCC’s Ybor City Innovation Lab, is a vibrant collision of geometry, color, and meaning. Using bold, angular forms, the mural visually represents the evolution and integration of technology into human life—where innovation becomes an extension of our identity.
At the heart of the design is a stylized biometric eye—a symbol of vision, data, and surveillance—that anchors the piece both literally and conceptually. From this “eye,” geometric pathways radiate outward, weaving together motifs that celebrate HCC’s diverse academic disciplines:
Criminal justice is depicted through emblematic shapes reminiscent of badges and protective shields.
Firefighting emerges in fiery hues and helmet-like curves.
Digital media and multimedia are conveyed with chip‑like grids, pixels, camera apertures, and waveforms.
Ybor City’s rich heritage is respectfully woven into the tapestry—think vintage streetlamps, trolley silhouettes, perhaps hints of cigar‑factory reds—all harmonizing with the modern aesthetic.
The geometry converges and diverges, evoking networks, circuits, and the human brain’s synaptic dance—underscoring the symbiosis of humanity and machine. Rivard’s vibrant palette and intentional juxtaposition of organic curves with sharp, digital angles invite viewers to explore the interplay of old and new, local culture and global technology.
Now On View 2 - 2025
Artists
Victoria Alvarez, Tyler Gillespie, Jehoshaphat Jacinto, Erin Lekovic, Emma Quintana, Kali Rabaut
Locations
HCC Ybor City Performing Arts Building, 1411 E. 11th Ave., Tampa
Six Tampa-based artists transformed three Ybor City venues during HCC Art Galleries’ 2nd Annual Now On View on February 22, creating temporary public artworks exploring Tampa’s past, present, and future.
At Kress Contemporary, Victoria Alvarez unveiled a temperature-sensitive poster print honoring Tampa’s LGBTQIA+ history, while Erin Lekovic staged a 15-minute site-specific play.
A short walk away, outside Hotel Haya, the FAX 727 289 3069 collective built a poetry alley inspired by Tampa’s historical archives. Inside the hotel, florist Kali Rabaut welcomed visitors into an infinity booth where botanicals served as portals to memory and time.
Meanwhile, at Gallery114@HCC Ybor City Campus, Amanda Gabaldon choreographed a dynamic dance performance set within a hurricane-themed installation by artist Emma Quintana.
Rounding out the day’s events, on the HCC Ybor Building Patio, Jehoshaphat Jacinto and Tampa’s Street Dance Community energized crowds with lively demos of popping, locking, breaking, and voguing.
Eight artists converged on three Ybor City venues for HCC’s inaugural Now on View June 1, 2024. 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 were displayed in a one-day public festival in Ybor City with music, food, and other entertainment.
Gallery staff documented the festival in a 30-minute long HD video, “A Journey Through Now on View,” that takes viewers through Ybor City with Max Herman of Ybor Walking Tours. Stream it on your big screen to view the art, hear from the artists, and learn some fun facts about Ybor City’s history.
Renowned artist Ya La’ford was commissioned in 2022 to create a public artwork to inspire students, staff, and faculty to envision a better tomorrow. Titled Dial the Sun, the sculpture encourages both a literal and metaphorical sense of reflection. In parallel to ancient sundials, the sculpture symbolically connects earth and sky and casts a distinctive shadow that moves with the sun, indicating the passage of time. The circular geometric form is an echo of La’ford’s previous installation with the HCC Art Galleries entitled dis·tance (2021), which utilized visual patterns to inspire audiences to consider the integral nature of connection between people across time and space. In a similar manner, Dial the Sun emphasizes concepts such as temporality, transformation, and the complexity of the shared human experience. Much like the process of learning and education, the sculpture reminds viewers to think critically, forge their own pathways, create connections, and to be open to the possibilities of the present.
Contributors
This project is made possible by Drs. Paul and Rebecca Nagy.
Generations - 2023
Artist
Trinity Rivard
Location
Between Ybor Building (YBOR) and Faculty Building (YFAC), Ybor City Campus UNVEILED: 2023
Trinity Rivard’s Generations mural celebrates Ybor City’s past and present. The layered imagery communicates the story of the city as a place where generations of families worked and grew, chased their dreams, went to school, and contributed to the rich cultural and historical vibrancy of the community. The artist tells this tale in vignettes, such as a daughter reaching for her father’s hand while a mother holds her son affectionately, yet protectively. They stand tall together, proud of themselves and their home. This scene is a direct reference to the Immigrant Statue located in Ybor City’s Centennial Park, in a heartfelt homage to the city’s legacy.
Generations weaves together the diverse history of Ybor City with the transformative impact of education. The mural highlights several of the academic pathways unique to the Ybor City Campus, such as a graceful dancer referencing the Visual and Performing Arts department or the portrait of a welder alluding to the college’s workforce programs. In another scene, Rivard juxtaposes a student working on their laptop across from a worker rolling cigars, referencing the foundational role of Ybor City’s cigar industry in the early 1990s and the pivotal role of the college within the district today. As the first male in his family to graduate from college and the first person in his family to earn a Master's degree, Rivard knows that education is a pathway to a better life. Numerous HCC student and faculty volunteers helped paint the mural, bringing the HCC community together to help Rivard realize his vision.
The Generations mural is on display at the HCC Ybor City campus, in the hallway between the YBOR and YFAC buildings.
About the Artist
Trinity Rivard creates art in the hopes that each piece will connect with people. He holds degrees from both Florida State University and the University of South Florida. He has participated in numerous group and solo art exhibitions around the Tampa Bay area and his art can be found in private collections locally, nationally and internationally. Today, in addition to creating paintings on canvas, Rivard continues to work larger and larger, creating public and private murals. This allows him to step out of his studio space and into new, sometimes challenging environments where he uses the unique surroundings as inspiration when creating. As a Tampa native and former Ybor City resident, he has a deep connection to this area, which compelled him to create the Generations mural.
LOCATION Child Development Center Building (YCDC), Ybor City Campus
UNVEILED 2022
In 2021, alumna Bianca Russell was commissioned to create a mural commemorating the 20th anniversary of the HCC Dance program. The composition includes references to eleven different performances that occurred throughout the program’s history that highlight both the technical and cultural aspects of dance. During the project’s research phase, Russell worked with current HCC students to choreograph a movement they called “the in-between moments.” The artist then translated the choreography into fluid strokes of blue paint that visually and conceptually link the present to the history of the program
“I believe that public murals help to create community by radiating out stories and energy that touch everyone who passes by them… I hope that [this mural] will become a place where students can reflect in-between classes and talk about generations of past programs and those yet to come.” - Bianca Russell
Created by artists Jay Giroux and Edgar Sanchez Cumbas, Living Shades is HCC’s fifth public art project and the largest mural to-date for the Ybor City Campus.The mural is replete with references to Ybor City: a cast-iron street lamp, a close-up of trolley doors, the distinct medieval tower of the Castle nightclub, a portrait of Lady Columbia for the Columbia Restaurant (the oldest restaurant in Florida), and images of Ybor’s iconic roosters. Each symbol provides a colorful and layered view into the city’s distinctive attributes and history. The artists also celebrate the diverse cultural heritage of the district, found in imagery such as a portrait of Cuban poet José Martí (1853-1895), who gave many impassioned speeches for Cuban Independence to cigar workers in Ybor City, as well as a large blind contour drawing referencing the immigrant family sculpture (created by Steve Dickey in 1992) in Centennial Park. Floral and organic imagery found within the design likewise reference the nearby public art project NEST, also created in the spring of 2021, by artist Tory Tepp.
Woven together with a hexagonal pattern attributed to the pavers that line Ybor City’s sidewalks in the historic district, the mural’s composition also alludes to the legacy of the college’s visual arts program. Certain stylistic and symbolic elements layered within the mural were inspired in part by the creativity and passion of former HCC faculty and community artists who had a transformative influence on the visual arts at the HCC Ybor City Campus, especially Suzanne Camp Crosby (1948-2020), Carolyn Kossar (1949-2020), and Theo Wujcik (1936-2014).
Artists Jay Giroux and Edgar Sanchez Cumbas have each completed numerous projects in the public realm. Recent collaborative commissions include the Countable and Uncountable Stories of Rob City (2018) mural in Julian B. Lane Park created for the City of Tampa Public Arts Program. Jay Giroux (b. 1979 in Vermont) is an artist, designer, and educator whose paintings involve a continued exploration of incidental gestures and lowbrow symbolism culled from the urban streetscape. Giroux received his MFA in 2011 from the University of Houston and is a student of the late Theo Wucjik. Edgar Sanchez Cumbas (b. 1971 in Puerto Rico) is an artist and educator whose work explores themes of identity, cultural and visual transitions, and contemporary abstract expressionism. Cumbas received his MFA in 2013 from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
Nourishment, Education and Social Terraces (NEST) is a multi-campus public art initiative created by artist Tory Tepp that transformed sections of the HCC Dale Mabry and Ybor City Campuses into socially activated green spaces. Utilizing social practices while capitalizing on a local community’s assets and potential, NEST aims to empower creative solutions for addressing issues of food insecurity, sustainability and inclusion through the creation of accessible spaces to gather, interact, teach and entertain one another.
As a creative placemaking project, NEST included broad-spectrum public input during a research and design phase in the fall of 2020, leading to a fabrication phase the following spring with the support of nearly 100 community volunteers. The NEST site at the HCC Dale Mabry Campus features a distinct in-the-round design, with a central raised dais flanked by organically shaped earthen berms and circular tables tiled with the phases of the moon. At the HCC Ybor Campus, the NEST site re-imagines existing architectural features to create a proscenium stage, tiered earthen seating, and a mosaic of ceramic tiles designed by diverse Tampa Bay artists. At the project’s unveiling in April 2021, the NEST sites hosted performances by campus groups such as music, dance, and theatre as well as by local organizations like Tampa Homegrown. Today, the spaces are home to over 300 individual plants from more than forty different species—such as Muscadine Grape, African Blue Basil, Sunshine Mimosa, White Jade Pineapple, Butter Cream Mango, Pomegranate, and Tropical Milkweed, among others—and can be utilized as outdoor classrooms, performance venues, and gathering spaces.
For more information about reserving these public art sites for performances or events, please contact Amanda Poss (aposs@hccfl.edu).
About the Artist: Tory Tepp received his under-graduate BFA in painting from Parson’s, the New School for Design in New York City and an MFA in 2009 as part of the inaugural class of Suzanne Lacy’s Public Practice program at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. There he developed his practice around the exploration and reestablishment of the metaphysical connections between the social and environmental ecologies that shape urban communities. Tepp has completed projects all over the U.S., including New Orleans, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Death Valley, the High Sierra Mountains, New Smyrna Beach, Tampa, and the Wormfarm Institute in Wisconsin.
Inspired in part by the creation of a food relief program for HCC’s campuses, Grounds4Art commissioned Argentine-American artist Cecilia Lueza to create a large-scale mural focused on addressing issues related to food insecurity, mental and emotional health, and social and cultural inclusion. Designed with community feedback, Exuberance projects an image of inner strength and well-being. Showcasing Lueza’s trademark exploration of the visual effects of color and geometric abstraction, the mural prominently features a portrait of a young woman in profile. With outstretched arms and her gaze lifted to the skies, the figure imparts a sense of dynamic energy and hopefulness that parallels the community’s desire for perpetual growth and positive social change.
Lueza has worked on a variety of site-specific and public art projects in cities throughout the United States since 2000. Her work has been exhibited at Art Miami, Arteamericas, and Scope Miami Beach, and she has completed public art pieces in Washington D.C., Jacksonville, FL, West Palm Beach, and St. Petersburg, FL, among others. Lueza’s artwork can be found in public and private collections throughout the United States, Europe and Latin America.
West side of the Humanities building (DHUM), Dale Mabry Campus
Unveiled
2019
Description
Sponsored by the community organization Art2Action, Egyptian artist Aya Tarek’s mural is the second public art project to be completed at the Dale Mabry Campus. Over the course of two weeks, Tarek—a prolific artist who has created large-scale murals in Cairo, Berlin, São Paolo and Portland, among others—worked on campus with HCC students and community members to fabricate the mural.
As whole, the project Painting Ourselves Visible sought to celebrate and increase the visibility of Arab, Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) and Muslim communities in the Tampa area. In service of that goal, Tarek’s mural contains elements reminiscent of multiple artistic traditions, such as portraiture inspired by Fayum mummy portraits and iconographical elements drawn from Christian artwork made during the Byzantine and Roman Empires. The project culminated in a three-day celebration of MENA culture, including an official mural unveiling, a screening of the 2010 independent film Microphone featuring Tarek, and workshops led by Art2Action founder Andrea Assaf, Syrian stage director Kholoud Sawaf and visual artist Ameena Khan. Programming also included a panel on creative placemaking featuring Neil Gobioff, President of the Gobioff Foundation, Ashley Walden Davis, Managing Director of Alternate ROOTS, and Robin Nigh, Manager of Arts & Cultural Affairs for the City of Tampa.
Learning Resources Center (DLRC), Dale Mabry Campus
Unveiled
2019
Description
In honor of HCC’s 50th Anniversary, Grounds4Art commissioned Florida-based artist Michael Parker to complete the campus’ inaugural public art project. The result of Parker’s vision, which included a collaboration with the HCC community that empowered students to assist in conceptualizing and fabricating the mural, was a 67-foot-long mural titled Infinite Transitions.
Meant to honor the college’s unique history along with icons representing the campus itself, the mural features layered images that reflect upon the educational journey taken by HCC’s students. Embedded in the complex composition, one will find images such as the Social Sciences building (an homage to the first building constructed on the Dale Mabry Campus), aerial maps that recognize diversity of campus programs and infrastructure, campus pride reflected through two centrally located hawks, DNA strands noting the strength of the campus’ science and health programs, and portraits at either end of the mural noting the foundational and inspirational role of our students. The mural’s fabrication culminated in a public celebration in April of 2019 that brought together diverse student groups, including performances by Spoken Word and Hip-Hop Expression and documentation by the Film Club.
Major Contributors: George Anderton, Anonymous Donation in Honor of Katherine Gibson, The Dr. Lydia R. Daniel Honors Program, Deborah Leighty, Yann and Susana Weymouth
Contributors: Cecilia Carr, Herding Squirrels Writing Group, Debra Heysek, Joann Kakascik-Dye, Susann Kirchner, Karen Marra Nelson, Gayle Peterson-Palmberg, Connie and Jim Reed, Gina Ricard, Kathryn Smith, Dana Warner, Ann Menchen, Paula Porter-Smith, Gwendolyn Suarez, Beth Wyckoff
Supporters
Grounds4Art projects are made possible by the HCC Grounds4Art Endowment, established through the HCC Foundation by Drs. Paul and Rebecca Nagy with a generous $125,000 donation. Their visionary gift, along with ongoing support from Hillsborough College alumni, faculty, staff, and friends of the arts, helps fund temporary public art installations that activate outdoor spaces across Hillsborough College campuses. These projects enrich the student experience and enhance the visual landscape for the broader community. We are grateful to all who have contributed to making art more accessible and visible throughout our college environment.
Champions: The Gobioff Foundation, The Scheneker Family
Patrons: Dr. Ginger Clark and Dr. Anna Paula P. da Silva, Peter and Cynthia Zinober