It’s February 2008 and the Tampa Museum of Art is ready to demolish its current structure in preparation for a new home. What do you do, if you’re Rocky Bridges?

Where others see the fragments and sherds of architecture past its prime, you see the raw materials of a new work of art, incorporating the past as a comment on the present and, most likely, the future. You reclaim, you salvage, you recycle. And the result is more than a souvenir. It’s a contribution to the ongoing cultural conversation. And a visually provocative piece of art in its own right.

For the past two decades, the Florida-based artist has been winning Best of Show awards in major exhibitions with his found-object creations. He has studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and Cooper Union in New York, has had a solo exhibition at the Polk Museum of Art, and has shown at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D. C.

Bridges has won the Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in the Visual Arts and a Residency Fellowship from The National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. He was the recipient of the Japan Fulbright Memorial Scholar Award in 2007. He teaches at the Lois Cowles Harrison Center for the Visual and Performing Arts in Lakeland, Florida.