ST. PETERSBURG, FLA.- The University of South Florida Public Art Program announced a new permanent public art installation by the renowned Brazilian artist Sandra Cinto in the Kate Tiedemann College of Business at Lynn Pippenger Hall on the USF St. Petersburg campus. Commissioned with funds provided through Florida’s Art in State Buildings program, Cinto’s site-specific tile installation, The Invisible Telescope, is located on two exterior walls of the Collaboration Terrace and is visible from many vantage points throughout the building.
Inspired by the career of philanthropist Kate Tiedemann, an entrepreneur of instruments to improve vision, The Invisible Telescope provides a space or lens for viewers to contemplate new perspectives and dreams for the future. The immersive installation also responds to the building’s architectural design, and its function as an educational institution. The central circle or portal to an open sky, enveloped by its various shades of blue celestial fields, suggests a place of endless possibilities, and a universe to be explored through the freedom that knowledge and education provide.
Throughout her career, Sandra Cinto has developed a rich vocabulary of symbols and lines to create lyrical landscapes and narratives that hover between fantasy and reality. Using drawing as her point of departure, the artist renders intricate and mesmerizing environments of turbulent seascapes, violent rainstorms, and celestial skies that frequently engage with the surrounding architecture to a disorienting effect, creating the illusion of a weightless, spiraling universe. Evoking stories of human hardship and redemption, these fantastical landscapes serve as a metaphor for the human odyssey, while also pushing the limits and possibilities of drawing.
Born in 1968 in Santo Andre, Brazil, Cinto currently lives and works in São Paulo. Cinto studied art at the Faculdades Integradas Teresa D’Ávila, Santo André, Brazil, and later received fellowships from Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2000–01) and Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2005). Among Cinto’s many public projects and commissions, her most notable include One Day, After the Rain, commissioned by The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. (2012-2013); Encounter of Waters at Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Park Pavilion (2012-2014); A Casa das Fontes (The House of Fountains), an installation conceived for Casa do Sertanista in Sao Paulo (2013); When The Night Comes Into My Room, an outdoor public commission for Obra Viva/Esculturas Públicas (Living Work/Public Sculptures) at Parque Ecológico Municipal Estoril–Virgilio Simionatto in São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil (2012); and Japonism, a public commission for the SESC swimming pool in Santo André, Brazil (2011). Cinto’s work is well represented in public and private collections and has been exhibited at museums and institutions worldwide.
This public art project is funded by Florida’s Art in State Buildings program, created legislatively in 1979, which sets aside one half of one percent of any new state construction funds for the acquisition of artwork for public areas in and around the facility. Sandra Cinto was commissioned for the public art project by a local art selection committee, comprised of members representing USF’s Kate Tiedemann College of Business, Harvard Jolly Architects, the university’s facilities project manager, visual arts experts, the local community, and the Art in State Buildings user agent.
