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Where cigars were rolled, works of art will now be sold

The old A. Santaella & Co. cigar factory has new life as a haven for artists. They will celebrate that new purpose with an art show tonight.

By ALEXANDRA ZAYAS
Published March 24, 2006

It's Jacob Stoneburner, 13, in the Pac-Man T-shirt, who got on his belly to shoot the Columbus Drive bridge. And it's Adrian Errico, 15, in the cool plastic jewelry and pigtails, who made a metaphor out of a window in an Ybor City parking garage.

"I think it's kind of like a girl's like hiding herself," said Alex Taman, 14, about Adrian's photo, a silhouette of a girl standing in the shadow of a caged window. "Like, she's really there, but she's like - she feels she's trapped behind bars."

The teens talk texture, tone, contrast and frames with teacher Maida Millan, a professional photographer who leases space in the building.

The group has spent the past couple of weeks learning the next step in making art - marketing. They'll mat and frame their photos, price them, hang them and sell them tonight alongside the works of many local working artists.

They are the youngest artists displaying work at this year's "Signs of Life" exhibit at the old Santaella cigar factory, 1906 N Armenia Ave.

"Signs of Life" was designed to show that passion for creating within the factory walls did not die with the cigar rollers of the past century, Millan said. A living, creative presence exists in the form of painting, sculpture, music and photography.

The building is owned by the Ellis-Van Pelt furniture company, which operates from the ground floor. Artists rent space upstairs and work with their doors open, occasionally wandering into each others' studios to collaborate.

Resident artists include Guillermo Portieles, Tom Land, Alex Espalter-Torres, Elena Cifuentes, Lori Ballard and Lazlo Horvath - a group known as Gallery 1906.

Millan began working out of the building five years ago but fears rising rent and widespread loft and condo development might push her out.

In the struggle between preservation and development, Millan says West Tampa artists are calling for balance. Manny Leto of the Ybor City Museum Society sees the artists there as good examples.

"What's going on at 1906 is really a model of how these factories can be put to a modern use and a good use," Leto said. "It's a really good adaptive reuse of a structure."

At the "Signs of Life" show, the Ybor museum will display its exhibit of Ybor and West Tampa newspapers published between 1886 and the 1980s, "Otras Voces: The Radical and Alternative Press in Ybor City." Musicians will perform Latin jazz.

In addition to the building tenants, about 18 artists from TampaArtist.com are expected to participate, including painters Raymond Paul and Trinity Revard and Rich Frederick, known as RLF.

This year's "Signs of Life" theme is new to Gallery 1906, but the show began five years ago. The last show two years ago drew about 800 people, and Millan expects more this year.

Portieles, one of the resident artists, thinks most will come to experience the cigar factory.

"It's a piece of art itself," he said.

Alexandra Zayas can be reached at 226-3354 or azayas@sptimes.com.

[Last modified March 24, 2006, 11:51:15]