The Tampa Tribune from Tampa, Florida • 1

iii ill IS THE TAMPA TRIBUNE Monday, March 2, 1992 festival rewards crowds and artists Steve Otto With retirement, FerrerVs touch will be missed Every afternoon at 3 p.m., they will still iTf a -L i gather in the back room for coffee. day. "We'll easily have 150,000 to 170,000 here over the two-day period," he said. The curator of 20th-century art at Washington, D.C's National Gallery of Art, William "Jack" Co-wart, spent the weekend selecting the 35 winners of art awards totaling $60,000. For Cowart, who has been judging regional festivals such as Gasparilla for the past 20 years, the Tampa event rated high in terms of arts professionalism.

"This is one of the largest, most complex and happiest among the festivals I've judged," he said. Coward praised Koole, a one-time St Petersburg resident, for the technique and ambition in his drawings and his sculptures, which are made from wood strips, tar and wire. "It has an illustrative, moody, abstract presence," said Cowart of Koole's chalk drawings, which showed ambiguous shapes caged inside wire-like barriers. One of the sculptures, a 5-foot-long, boat-shaped construction with a pointed prow, is titled "Pollinator." "They're meant to start your imagination, rather than end it," said Koole of his works. Richard Judd of Paoli, won the $7,500 Board of Directors Award for his work in wood, while Charlotte Schultz of Largo won the $3,500 Gasparilla Award for her painting.

The $2,500 Anniversary Award went to Lakeland sculptor James Bassham. Tennessee watercolorist Terry They always have, at least since Sam Ferreri said that was the civilized thing to do. The only difference now is that he By JOANNE MILANI Tribune Staff Writer TAMPA Tampa is known for its "fun in the sun" lifestyle, but it was the fine arts in the sun that drew crowds to the 22nd annual Gasparilla Sidewalk Art Festival Saturday and As many as 170,000 people attended the free, two-day event along the Hillsborough River between the Tampa Museum of Art and the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. That's where 275 painters, sculptors, jewelers, ART REVIEW ceramicists, photographers mamm and other artists from across the United States set up their booths for one of Florida's most popular outdoor art festivals. At the same time, local performers staged live entertainment marathons on the stages of the Performing Arts Center.

An Orlando-based artist who has exhibited in Gasparilla since 1979 and who never won more than $750 walked away with the $15,000 Best of Show Award. Thomas Koole described himself as "dazed" after he won the show's biggest award for his sculptures and drawings. Traffic was backed up on Ashley Drive near Interstate 275, and parking garages were filled by noon Sunday as people came to look at the outdoor displays and to tour the Tampa Museum of Art and the backstage facilities at the Performing Arts Center. "Every parking space in downtown Tampa for several blocks around is taken," said Tampa Police Department Cpl. R.N.

Dias at midday Sun won't be there. Oh, he'll probably stop off at some little coffee house on the Left Bank, or maybe pause for some "Kaffee mit schlag" in old Vienna, at 3 p.m., in whatever time zone he's in. It's the civilized thing to do. A lot of you have been touched by Sam Ferreri these past 36 years. I was sitting with a couple of peo ple from Tampa Bay Pediatrics, where Sam nas laDorea so long, Tribune photograph by JAY CONNER -A I talking about this phy Thomas Koole won best of show honors with pieces such as his See PERSEVERANCE, Page 5 5-foot-long, boat-shaped "Pollinator." sician.

We tried to come up with some numbers. Ferreri "I think you would U2 turns up red-hot for tour warm-up be safe in saying Sam has treated well over 200,000 children in his career," said a col league of his. Think about that number for a second. I tried to imagine how many barrels of that By PHILIP BOOTH Tribune Staff Writer LAKELAND "Five years, five years," U2's Bono said, moments before the band ripped into the pulsing rhythmic thump, churning guitar textures and haunting melody of "Mysterious Ways." "Too long," said the charismatic singer, clad in shiny black vinyl and hiding behind black fashion pink glop they prescribe every time a kid comes down with a virus or hasn't done his homework and wants to stay home. Sam Ferreri is retiring.

They threw a little deal for him Sunday evening and invited about a hundred people. If they'd tried to invite all the kids he had treated over the decades they would have had to rent Tampa Stadium, the Suncoast Dome in St. Pete, the Sun Dome at USF, the new Tampa Convention Center and all the school auditoriums in the county. They still would have had to do it in shifts. And that was just the kids.

When you are a pediatrician, you don't Just treat kids. You treat anxious parents. You soothe worried parents. shades, prompting a deafening roar from the crowd at the Lake MUSIC REVIEW Bono, guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. were unafraid to pump music from the "Achtung Baby" album, which debuted at No.

1 upon its release late year. The band splashed down with the distortion-laced thud of "Zoo Station" and didn't touch earlier material until seven other new tunes had passed: The obsession-informed "The Fly," for which Bono reserved his most passionate delivery; the punchy "Even Better Than the Real "Mysterious the dense, slowly building the stark "Until the End of the World" (from the Wim Wenders film of the same name); the sing-along-provoking "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild and "Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World." yj An already intimate show like a club date compared with the sold-out 1987 Tampa Stadium concert turned into a kind of "MTV Unplugged" segment for the soulful "Angel of Harlem," from "Rattle and Hum." land Civic Center Arena. "Too long." That the Irish superstar rock band maintained a low profile after the critical and commercial disappointment of 1988's "Rattle The right touch and Hum" rockumentary and soundtrack album was no il U2's return Saturday night to til). the American concert stage, though, was an unexpected The opening concert on the 31- NOLAN Tribune photograph by JAY Light and sound envelope U2's lead singer Bono at the band's show in Lakeland. city "Zoo TV" tour was a visually stunning, sonically resonant show that blended new music with a high-tech video sideshow.

Taking cues from French New Wave Bono, on a small mid-arena platform at the end of a short runway, beckoned to his band mates to join him for a low-tech reading that had Mullen See U2, Page 2 Over one million served," "Everyone is a racist except you," "Guilt is not of God" and "Pessimism is a self-fulfilling dictory messages about love, God and media manipulation. Flashed in quick succession were such slogans as "Rock and roll is entertainment filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, the band used dozens of television monitors and four large video screens to display often contra Architect Cheikh T. Sylla draws on vision and purpose Remember all those times you've waited in those little doctor's cubicles, all the while trying to convince your son or daughter that some mad doctor with a 3-foot needle wasn't going to come storming in? That's when you've appreciated the touch of the Sam Ferreris of the world, who treat people like people and not just another customer. So it's difficult to measure the impact a person like Sam Ferreri has had on a community over a lifetime of work, except to say that it is immeasurable. Sam is one of us.

He was born in Tampa, grew up in Ybor City. His folks ran the LaFrance shoe store on Seventh Avenue. The store is still there today, except it is a consignment shop. Like a lot of families in that time and in that place, it was a large, extended family. "I think," says his brother Frank, who runs Metropolitan Pharmacy on Seventh Avenue, "that there were five families of aunts, uncles and cousins living in houses around each other.

We grew up taking care of each other as one big family." That part stuck. After Sam graduated from Hillsborough High and went off to Tu-lane and then residency at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, he met Dolores on a blind date. That was five kids and 36 years ago. After medical school and a stint with the Army at Fort Campbell, Sam came home to set up practice. He teamed up with the late Buddy Deen.

That was 32 years ago. He still practices in the same office on Azeele Avenue, except that the building has been enlarged three times and there are now three offices around town where his group practices. Now he's giving it up to do the things he likes best: travel and eat "You've got to mention eating," said a colleague, demanding anonymity. "That's all he talks about around the office: where he's been and what restaurants he ate at." Such a deal He's earned it. It's been a long time since one of his early clients offered him a "'no 1 if I 1 -11 fill -J 0 V1 By RENEE GARRISON Tribune Staff Writer TAMPA As an architect, planner, scholar and teacher, Cheikh T.

Sylla has distinguished himself as a man with vision and purpose. One of a handful of black architects in the city, Sylla has taken an active role in its urban design issues since he arrived in Tampa in 1988. He currently serves as chairman of the Chamber of Commerce's Neighborhood Revitalization Task Force. "I like to be involved A PIECE in thins that 1 believe Of The Dream sS Ls 2S mmmmmammmm hope that I am asked to participate on committees because I can make a meaningful contribution not to advance my own interests." Viewing a successful city as more than bricks, stone, steel and glass, Sylla, who has a master's degree in urban planning, has proven to be a theorist of exceptional insight. "He has always made very good recommendations to us in the planning department," says Wilson Stair, urban design manager for the city of Tampa.

"He is very astute about community design. In many cases, architects design buildings as individual objects. But Cheikh is very sensitive to the neighborhood and the context where he puts his buildings. He has the ability to link buildings to the community." Born in Senegal 37 years ago, Sylla arrived at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1982 with little more than a basic grasp of English. "I had taken it in high school, so I could say 'My name is Sylla recalls with a grin.

"But I had to learn the language fairly quickly." That was not a stumbling block to his wife, Cy-nette, who met her husband at a freshman orientation there. "I was an architecture student, too, and I fell in love tfith his artwork," she says with a smil "The orientation was held in a gallery where his art was being shown." Their home, which they share with their 7-year-old daughter, Khoudia, and 4-year-old son, Mous-tapha, is adorned with his canvases. A self-taught artist, Sylla began painting African abstracts and later switched to surrealism. His work has been compared to that of Salvador Dali, and he regrets that his schedule no longer permits him to paint. In addition to his firm, Sylla ArchitectsPlanners, Sylla teaches architecture at Hillsborough Community College and has helped graduates of the two-year program transfer to Penn State University, Clemson University, Savannah College of Art Design and the University of Florida.

In his spare time, Sylla also teaches interior design at the International Academy of Merchandising and Design, where Cynette is completing her degree. "I have a kind of restless, intellectual passion," he admits. "Teaching is one of the very few outlets I have and it's something that I know I can do well." However, his early educational roots in West Africa, coupled with a European sojourn spent showing his artwork, has left Sylla questioning the American educational system. "The thing that I think is lacking in this country is a proper attitude about knowledge," Sylla theorizes. "Here, we equate education with getting a job.

We miss the larger context, which is education for the love of education. A more subliminal objective Involved is the legitimate contribution to the body of human knowledge that has occurred from one generation to another. If each generation that comes along fails to make a contribution, the bc-dy of knowledge will decline." He insists that educational Institutions aren't the only source of knowledge available to students. "A person who has developed the right attitude ee NOTHING, Page 5 cow. "Actually, the man was terribly grateful," said Sam's colleague.

"Sam had literally saved his little girl's life. But he was a farmer during some tough times and there was no way he could begin to pay the expenses. "The farmer asked him if he would rather have a cow, which the farmer offered to butcher up for him, or a parcel of land. "Well, Sam had no use for a piece of farmland that would never amount to much, so he opted for the cow. "How was he to know that one day that piece of land would become Carrollwood?" Tribune photograph by DAVID KADLUBOWSKI Cheikh T.

Sylla, left, and his wife, Qynette, relax in the lobby of Helnan Riverside Hotel in Tampa, which they remodeled..