The Caloosahatchee Manuscripts consists of two bronze, lantern-like cylinders – eight feet high and five feet in diameter. Illuminated by the Florida sun by day, and metal halide lamps by night, the water jet-cut bronze lanterns grace the sidewalk in front of the Sidney & Berne Davis Art Center in downtown Fort Myers casting their manuscripts on passers-by, and the Neo-Classical columns and Florida Keystone exterior of the historic site. Take a minute when you visit to step back in history, catch the light and read the interpretive plaque located to the west of the building in the grassy area that translates the Latin and Maskoki text of Jim Sanborn’s Caloosahatchee Manuscripts. 

The eastern illuminated, lantern-like sculpture drum contains the text of a story told by Maskoki Indian leader Tchikilli to James Oglethorpe about the migration of Native Americans into Florida. The Seminoles, Miccosukee and Creek trace their ancestry to Tchikilli and his people. 

The western drum contains the Latin names of 500 botanicals that Thomas Edison tested in an effort to develop a local source of latex from which to make rubber in order to help out his friends Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone.

Artist Jim Sanborn is a sculptor of large-scale public art-works. His pieces are often inspired by history and many include ancient or encrypted international or Native American Language texts, which challenge the viewer to solve an apparent mystery contained in the work, or to discover the metaphorical content of the piece. Among his many works are a piece for the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. called “Covert Balance,” one titled “All the Ships Sailed in Circles” that graces the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts in the Republic of China, and “Kryptos” a piece at the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, that still intrigues cryptographers.