Artist as Prisoner

Unimpressed, government prosecutors filed a motion in January to prohibit the defense. "Moreover, whether defendant identifies his avant-garde use of child pornography ... simply has no legal significance on his culpability," the motion stated. "[The artist defense] would improperly allow defendant to turn the trial into a symposium on the First Amendment."

The trial, which began February 12, lasted four days. Assistant U.S. Attorney Norman Hemming insisted on showing the jury some of the most disturbing images recovered from Bobb's computers. The prosecution also called a half-dozen witnesses, including the FBI agents who searched Bobb's computers and arrested him. There was also an official from the Oklahoma children's group that unwittingly hosted child pornography on its Website, as well as someone from Bobb's Internet service provider.

Schwartz and Horstman called no witnesses. "Who would we call?" Horstman says. "Unless there's someone who's going to say, Yeah, it's my child pornography,' which is unlikely." The trial's final day stretched into the evening on Valentine's Day. Horstman sensed a growing impatience as she made her closing argument. "I remember thinking all these women and men are wanting to get home for their Valentine's Day."

The jury took only an hour and a half to reach a verdict. Tomorrow Judge Ungaro-Benages will decide Bobb's sentence. Federal guidelines mandate a minimum of five years in prison.

While most of Bobb's friends and colleagues support him, they've also struggled to understand. Some wonder how well they actually knew the artist.

"The whole thing is extremely uncomfortable," says Charles Recher, who taught film studies with Bobb at MDCC. He speaks deliberately between frequent pauses, saying "you know" in almost every other sentence. "He always worked with images from the culture, transforming images."

Recher says he hadn't seen Bobb much in recent years. He hadn't heard anything about child porn. Although Recher wrote a letter to the court about Bobb's upstanding character and his contributions to the Miami arts community, he admits, "There are still a lot of things about it that I don't understand."

Stephanie Garcia, a fellow student of Bobb's at the New World school, says she can't begin to understand the case either. It seems another inexplicable piece of an unusual puzzle. "He's like this 18-year-old stuck in a 50-year-old's body," Garcia says of her soft-spoken classmate.

"To think of him as a geeky pornographer is just unthinkable," says Marilyn Gottlieb Roberts. "He just doesn't seem creepy. He doesn't seem damaged."

Some are too disturbed by the charges to speak about the case. Responses like that of Kevin Arrow, chief registrar at Miami's Museum of Contemporary Art, are typical. "I'd prefer that you just cross me off the list and move to the next name," Arrow says when asked about Bobb.

It's not surprising that Bobb's case makes some uncomfortable, says Gustavo Matamoros. "The importance of artists in a community is that they're people whose job is to challenge."