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Artifacts @ Hartline

Description: Located at the centrally located public bus transfer station, UATC, University Area Transit Center. This project includes 104 sand-cast glass tiles of culturally significant objects collected from the community neighborhoods of Tampa. Each tile is enhanced with gold leaf, installed on the concrete columns, and surrounded by the cobalt blue tile.

Details of tiles: Native American Conch Hammer, Teddy Roosevelt, and boat propeller.

Commissioned by: HARTline; Hillsborough Regional Area Transit Authority

Location: HARTline, University Area Transit Center Tampa, Florida

Size: 10" x 10" x 3" - individual tile dimension

Date: 2000

This was a community based project that involved numerous citizen organizations in the creation of the tiles. Some of these included The Rough Riders, Rogers Golf Course, Tampa Bay Fossil Club, Ybor City Museum, and many more. The groups came to Susan's Phoenix Glass Studio and brought objects that represented the Tampa Bay community that HARTline serves. These objects were cast into the glass tiles. The project consists of 104 glass tiles mounted to 52 columns.  Each tile is backed with 23 karat gold leaf.

Examples of some of the 104 tiles can be seen here. Each cast glass tile tells a story of community, past and present. They are icons of the people who live here and use the transist system everyday. Some of these include: Native American tools, horseshoe crabs, horse conchs and native shells, boat propellers, beads from Gasparilla, flip flops from the beach, an antique cigar press, the fineals from the the neighborhood fences, ancient fossils from the Liesy Shell Pits,  the face of Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, golf clubs of Roger's Park, representations of the train that Henry Plant brought here, and so many more items and objects, pressed into sand and cast into glass for the community to learn from and enjoy.