A studio portrait of a person with wavy brown hair, a beard, and glasses, looking directly at the camera with a neutral expression. They are wearing a blue and white vertically striped button-down shirt and have black gauge earrings, all set against a solid grey background.Patrick Carew at Dave Decker Photography in Ybor City, Florida on Jan. 12, 2026. Credit: Dave Decker / Creative Loafing Tampa Bay

Tampa art insiders know Patrick Carew as the curator of Reverb, a small gallery in Kress Contemporary programmed by graduate students from USF’s College of Design, Art and Performance. Or at least, he was Reverb’s curator in 2025.

In 2026, as Carew prepares to graduate from The University of South Florida in Tampa, he’s focused on a new body of work exploring what it means to experience HIV in the post-prep era.

It’s a fitting project for USF, which has several connections to the history of HIV healthcare. Robert Gallo, one of the scientists credited with discovering HIV as the cause of AIDS, is the founding director of the USF Health Institute for Translational Virology and Innovation. And Phillip Furman, co-inventor of Retrovir (AZT), graduated from USF in 1972.

But outside of a laboratory, how does a photographer/printmaker at the USF’s School of Art & Art History capture a virus that can only be seen with an electron microscope? Carew chose to image bodily fluids.

“I was thinking of the ways HIV is tested for,” Carew told CL.

These days, there are both blood and saliva tests for HIV, so Carew tried imaging both, placing saliva or blood onto a piece of plastic, then using that makeshift slide as a photographic negative.

He started with spit, but once he saw how blood appears in darkroom prints, he stuck with that. “Blood happens to be the exact right color to block out light perfectly in the dark room,” Carew explained.

In some cases, the photo itself is the art. In other cases, Carew transfers his photographic images onto an etching plate using photo polymer, thus creating an etching.

Sometimes he collages others’ photos. Lately, Carew’s been collaging porn from the height of the AIDS epidemic.

A surreal, multimedia collage depicting two figures in a room shaking hands. The figure on the left wears a white button-down shirt, while the figure on the right wears a pink blazer; however, their heads and hands have been replaced with paper cutouts. The left figure's head is a black-and-white abstract pattern, and the right figure's head is a dense cluster of many different human mouths showing teeth. In the background, a vintage television and a framed picture of a cat are visible on the wall.Patrick Carew’s ‘Heaven Knows They Need It’ Credit: c/o Patrick Carew

Carew shares artworks from this series in “From All Sides of the Page At Once: a group exhibition of traditional (and not so traditional) printmaking” at Tempus Projects Flash Gallery from Jan. 15-March 19 in Ybor City.

But that’s just the beginning. Carew’s work will also be featured at the University of South Florida’s MFA Thesis Exhibition, which coincides with ArtHouse each year. The School of Art and Art History’s signature event happens in April, is free and open to the public, and features live music, open studios and affordable student artwork for sale.

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This article appears in Jan. 29 – Feb. 04.

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