Tag Archives: Florida State College at Jacksonville

The 800 Pound Sculptures that Flew from the Airport to the College

Click below for this week’s story, or navigate the city through the search bar or the direction buttons at the top of the page:

Longtime locals still associate the 800 pound laminated wood sculptures with the airport, where they floated over escalators from 1980 to ’89, but they’ve hung suspended by stainless steel cables here beside the cafeteria at Florida State College of Jacksonville’s South Campus Student Center now for nearly 35 years. This is the story of architect and sculptor David Engdahl’s largest sculptures, Ascent and Descent.

Banned Book Displays at Chamblin’s!

Click below for this week’s story, or navigate the city through the search bar or the direction buttons at the top of the page:

As books are banned in schools across Florida, as teachers and students feel increasingly threatened by the State, as Florida politicians seek to make education “ideological,” saying, “Education is our sword,” banned book displays at Jacksonville’s Chamblin Bookmine and Chamblin’s Uptown encourage reading banned books and parents use banned book lists as shopping lists.

A Poet’s Circle: Francis Poole’s 55 Years & Thousands of Miles

Click below for this week’s story, or navigate the city through the search bar or the direction buttons at the top of the page:

In 1968, Francis Poole had been chasing Soviet submarines up and down the East Coast when he started college on a campus made of former military barracks and published his first poems in a new student-led magazine named The Experience. When he returns in early February, his circle will have come through Morocco and Portugal and 55 years of writing and publishing poetry.

Florida State College at Jacksonville’s Original Shero: Professor Mildred Barnert

Click below for this week’s story, or navigate the city through the search bar or the direction buttons at the top of the page:

At first, Professor Barnert’s protest was tame. Florida Junior College had fired her, but wouldn’t say why. Faculty had no tenure, no union. After Barnert’s “sleep-in” made the front page of The Jacksonville Journal, male administrators rated her looks and belittled her. Though she loved her students, she didn’t need the job. She protested “on principle” and won rights for those who followed.

 

Remembering O.Z. Tyler, Epic Poet on Willow Branch Canal

Click below for this week’s story, or navigate the city through the search bar or the direction buttons at the top of the page:

A quarter century ago, the ancient epic poet, “the Colonel,” opened his Tudor style home on Willow Branch Canal to a poet in his 20s. Orville Zelotes Tyler, Jr. wanted to be to America, to the South, to Jacksonville what Homer was to Ancient Greece, and his subject was Osceola, the Seminole leader who’d resisted the U.S. Army and was only captured under truce. 

From Mini-Museum to Big-House: The Art of Richard McMahan

Click below for the full story:

Richard McMahan’s intensity does not waver. Whether it’s the thousands of miniatures he’s created of Van Goghs, Frida Kahlos, Picassos and duChamps, or it’s the prison stories and illustrations, the collection of shackles and prison uniforms, Richard’s work is obsessive.

courtesy Community Foundation of Northeast Florida & laird/blac palm inc

Everything Richard does forms part of a life’s-work. His Mini-Museum offers a survey of the world’s great art, while his Big-House project asks “the biggest question[s] of all.”

photo by James Hunter

Hansontown Lies Beneath FSCJ’s Downtown Campus

Click below for the full story:

Hansontown lies beneath Florida State College at Jacksonville’s Downtown Campus, figuratively and, in part, literally.

When Florida Junior College consolidated its downtown locations into the new Downtown Campus in the late 1970s, it eliminated the last of Hansontown, a century-old neighborhood built for freed slaves and former U.S. Colored Troops.

Some FSCJ leaders now espouse views on urbanism much like those the college abandoned by building Downtown Campus.

New Story: A Magnolia Tree and the Need for Student Mental Health Services

 

Click on the links below.

Imogen Cunningham's magnolia

“Magnolia Blossom,” by Imogen Cunningham, circa 1925, courtesy Museum of Modern Art, New York

She took pills for Bipolar Depression, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and Auditory Processing Disorder: “Those are the main ones.”

“I stand in front of the magnolia,” she said in a monotone.