Public Art Review issue 35 - 2006 (fall/winter) by forecastpublicart

Public ArtReview a publication of FORECAST Public Artworks

Issue 35 fall /winter 2006

www.publicARTrevlew.org

453 ROUTE 17K ROCK TAVERN NY 845.567.9464 www.polich.com

GORDON

HUETHER

www.gordonhuether.com

tel: 707.255.5954

KANSAS MURALS A TRAVELER'S G U I D E L O R A JOST A N D D A V E

LOEWENSTEIN

Foreword by Saralyn Reece Hardy "As m u c h a b o o k o n Kansas land and history as a b o u t its m u r a l art, this is a portrait of a place a n d its people, i n c l u d i n g an u n u s u a l n u m b e r of Native American artists. From beloved cliches to unexpected innovations, Jost a n d Loewenstein's selections take us from a wild-eyed J o h n Brown to the 'ornate b o x turtle capital of the world,' f r o m silos to post offices, covered w a g o n s to rocket ships, graffiti to 'architectural heaven,' a n d local k i d s to J o a n Miro. Read this even if Kansas is not o n y o u r itinerary."—Lucy R. L i p p a r d , a u t h o r of Lure of the Local

"A fascinating, beautifully illustrated, a n d well-organized

9 6 pages, 99 color photographs, 4 black-and-white

w o r k that also provides b a c k g r o u n d histories, artist

photographs, 8 color maps, Cloth $35.00, Paper $19.95

biographies, a n d first-hand a c c o u n t s by the muralists t h e m s e l v e s . " — R o b i n D u n i t z , a u t h o r of Painting the Towns:

A v a i l a b l e a t b o o k s t o r e s o r f r o m t h e press.

Murals of California a n d Street Gallery: Guide to 1,000 Los Angeles

Murals

U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS O F K A N S A S P h o n e 7 8 5 - 8 6 4 - 4 1 5 5 • Fax 7 8 5 - 8 6 4 - 4 5 8 6 • w w w . k a n s a s p r e s s . k u . e d u

Paintings in Blown Glass

in CM

the public art of Guy Kemper

O) uo oo

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The City of Las Vegas Arts Commission artists Registry

in all media to participate for upcoming

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NEW INSTALLATIONS Glendale, Arizona Left: Gordon Huether • Right: H a i Y i n g W u •

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Brought to you by the Western States Arts Federation

For more i n f o r m a t i o n on how t o license CaFE; c o n t a c t : Phone: 888-562-7232 Email: cafe@westaf.org Web: www.callforentry.org

www.ScottsdalePubiicArt.org | 480-874-4645 7 3 8 0 E. S e c o n d S t r e e t , S c o t t s d a l e , A r i z o n a 8 5 2 5 1 James Turrell, Knight Rise, 2001, a public "skyspace" commissioned by tbe Scottsdale Public Art Program for tbe Nancy and Art Scbwalm Sculpture Garden, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Photo: Opus Advertising, LLC

University of Southern California | Roski School of Fine Arts

and contemporary art (practice or curatorial). This may also include Public Art History, Public Art Administration and/or Policy, Community Based Arts, Contemporary Urbanism, 20th Century Architectural History, or Non-Profit Management. Candidates must be able to articulate a vision of the future of Public Arts Studies' expansive role in artistic production, audience reception and the social realm within the context of diverse regional, national and global cultures. The selected candidate will both teach courses and work with the USC Roski School of Fine Arts to develop the future direction of this program.

Please send a letter of interest and Curriculum Vitae to: PAS Director Search Committee USC Roski School of Fine Arts Watt Hall 104, University Park Campus Los Angeles, CA 90089-0292

DEGREES OFFERED

M a s t e r of Public A r t Studies, M a s t e r of Public A r t S t u d i e s / M a s t e r of P l a n n i n g , and M a s t e r of Public A r t S t u d i e s / M a s t e r of A r t s in Jewish C o m m u n a l Service

USC ROSKI

Public Art Studies | U S C Roski School of Fine Arts | http://roski.usc.edu/pas

SCHOOL OF F I N E ARTS

M e t r o A r t c o n g r a t u l a t e s t h e f o l l o w i n g artists for their public a r t contributions t o our transit system:

1. S a m m Kunce, In the Living Rock 2. Ricardo Duffy, A Florence

Moment

3. Ricardo M e n d o z a , The Will to Progress 4. Peter R e i q u a m , Civic Center

Benches

5. Bob Zoell, No Title A f f i r m i n g t h a t art can m a k e t h e t r a n s i t experience more inviting and meaningful for the public, Metro c o m m i s s i o n s a r t i s t s for a w i d e array o f p r o j e c t s t h r o u g o u t Los A n g e l e s County. To f i n d o u t m o r e or t o a d d y o u r n a m e t o o u r d a t a b a s e f o r new art o p p o r t u n i t i e s , call 213.922.4ART or visit

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ION

SPAYDE

FOREWORD

IN SUPPORT OF GREAT W R I T I N G T H I S ISSUE OF PUBLIC CHANGING

ART

REVIEW

REPRESENTS A P A U S E A N D A S T O C K - T A K I N G . PAR

HAS CHRONICLED THE A L W A Y S -

P U B L I C A R T SCENE " U P C L O S E " FOR S E V E N T E E N Y E A R S , T H R O U G H T H E EYES O F M A N Y

OF THE

FIELD'S

M O S T A S T U T E CREATORS, C U R A T O R S , CRITICS, A N D T H E O R I S T S .

A few m o n t h s ago, p u b l i s h e r Jack Becker d e c i d e d t h a t t h e t i m e h a d c o m e for a s p e c i a l k i n d of "best-of" issue, one that took a long look at t h e field f r o m t h e m i d d l e d i s t a n c e . He a s k e d PAR's w o r l d w i d e n e t w o r k of c o n t r i b u t o r s a n d f r i e n d s in t h e p u b l i c art s p h e r e — p l u s i m p o r t a n t a r t i s t s a n d w r i t e r s w h o were probably u n a w a r e of t h e m a g a z i n e — a s i m p l e question: What's t h e best piece of w r i t i n g on p u b l i c art you've read, a n y w h e r e ? T h e idea: Choose a n d r e p r i n t t h e c r e a m of t h e crop. S i n c e I've worked as a critic a n d a n editor of a n t h ologies, Jack invited me to c o o r d i n a t e t h e p r o c e s s of s i f t i n g t h r o u g h t h e pieces suggested. T h e r e s p o n s e to our r e q u e s t w a s o v e r w h e l m i n g a n d t h e r e were m a n y fine pieces to c h o o s e from, r a n g i n g f r o m r e v i e w s a n d career s u m m a r i e s to p o l e m i c s a n d poems. As I looked t h r o u g h t h e suggestions, I b e c a m e m o r e a n d m o r e c o n v i n c e d that w e ought to go b e y o n d s p e c i a l i z e d arts j o u r n a l i s m , however well executed, to assess t h e i m p a c t of p u b l i c art on t h e c u l t u r e as a w h o l e as it h a s registered in t h e sensibilities of novelists, j o u r n a l i s t s , poets, h i s t o r i a n s , a n d o t h e r writers. So t h e seven pieces of w r i t i n g we've " a n t h o l o g i z e d " in t h i s issue r e p r e s e n t a range of genres a n d a p p r o a c h e s u n u s u a l in an art m a g a z i n e . We have pieces by m a j o r m a i n s t r e a m journalists, a p o e m by one of America's greatest poets, a comicnovel excerpt, a h i s t o r i a n ' s take on terror a n d t h e v i c t i m s of terror, a m e m o i r by one of t h e most i n n o v a t i v e t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y artists, a n d a letter f r o m a p u b l i c art fan. Along w i t h t h e collection of q u o t a t i o n s on page borders, t h e s e pieces r e m i n d us that p u b l i c art is i n t e n d e d to reverberate far into t h e c u l t u r e — a n d does. O f t e n , of course, t h e reverberation is a r u m b l e of discontent: of p u b l i c d i s a p p r o v a l , a r t i s t i c f r u s t r a t i o n , c u l t u r a l angst, e t h n i c anger. T h o u g h I c e r t a i n l y h a d n ' t p l a n n e d it t h a t way, nearly every piece in our section registers a problem w i t h public art as it's been p r a c t i c e d s i n c e t h e 1960s: w h i t e a r t i s t s r e p r e s e n t i n g c o m m u n i t i e s of color; t h e legal a n d p r o c e d u r a l pitfalls of t h e public-art process; t h e public's h y p e r s e n s i t i v i t y (or obliviousness) to art in p u b l i c places; t h e role of t h e "art e x p e r t " in a g e n r e t h a t deliberately places itself o u t s i d e t h e elite "art world"; w h a t it m e a n s to m e m o r i a l i z e h e r o i s m in an age of t e r r o r i s m ; and that old jawbreaker: Can art c h a n g e t h e w o r l d — a n d s h o u l d it try? All of t h i s s h o u l d c o m e as n o s u r p r i s e . Not only is p u b l i c art an inevitable catalyst of conflict, but good w r i t i n g about a n y t h i n g d e p e n d s on d r a m a , a n d d r a m a b e g i n s w i t h trouble. I t h i n k t h e vigor a n d passion of t h e s e pieces p r o v e s that w h e n art ceases to be trouble, it is in trouble. Elsewhere in t h i s i s s u e — u n d e r t h e suggestive h e a d i n g T r u t h & Consequences—Janet Kagan m o u n t s a spirited attack on w h a t s h e sees as p u b l i c art's captivity to p u b l i c issues

s u c h as e c o n o m i c d e v e l o p m e n t , civic identity, a n d t o u r i s m . J e a n n e n e P r z y b l y s k i offers a p l a i n - s p o k e n " u n o f f i c i a l m a n i festo." My favorite bullet p o i n t : "I a m for a p u b l i c art t h a t r e f u s e s to r e p e a t itself into invisibility." F r o m Chicago, t h a t h o t b e d of t r o p h y p u b l i c art projects, Jeff H u e b n e r d i s s e c t s t h e p r e t e n s i o n s of t h e celebrated M i l l e n n i u m Park. Jack Becker tells s o m e s o - s a d - t h e y ' r e - f u n n y stories of T w i n Cities projects f u e l e d by c o r p o r a t e c a s h a n d h u b r i s . A n d on a m o r e u p b e a t note, Craig David offers a day-byday c h r o n i c l e of i n t e r n a t i o n a l c a m a r a d e r i e , m u t u a l i n s p i r a tion, a n d flying g r a n i t e d u s t at t h e Minnesota Rocks! s c u l p t u r e s y m p o s i u m . Jane D u r r e l l gives f u r t h e r e v i d e n c e t h a t p u b l i c s c u l p t u r e is alive, well, a n d e v o l v i n g in h e r a c c o u n t of t h e I n t e r n a t i o n a l S c u l p t u r e Center C o n f e r e n c e in C i n c i n n a t i . Lee M o d i c a a n d M a r k O r m o n d i n t r o d u c e us to t h e t h r i v i n g p u b l i c art s c e n e in Florida, a n d Robin Rice travels to M e x i c o City for t h e 2006 I n t e r n a t i o n a l M u r a l P a i n t i n g E n c o u n t e r . Nichole G o o d w e l l r o u n d s out o u r r e p o r t s w i t h her a c c o u n t of t h e P u b l i c A r t N e t w o r k (PAN) P r e c o n f e r e n c e in M i l w a u k e e , a c c o m p a n i e d by a f r e e - r a n g e selection of " g r i p e s " c o l l e c t e d by PAR at t h e gathering. I h o p e t h a t t h i s i s s u e offers you a n i l l u m i n a t i n g b a c k d r o p against w h i c h to look at t h e c o m p l e x a n d o f t e n c o n f u s e d state of p u b l i c art today. For d e c a d e s A m e r i c a n p u b l i c art tried to negotiate one of t h e t r i c k i e s t i s s u e s in o u r h i s t o r y : C a n w e rely on t h e private v i s i o n s of i n d i v i d u a l s (artists) to r e p r e sent o u r p u b l i c ideals? M e a n w h i l e , art itself h a s t u r n e d m o r e a n d m o r e t o w a r d i r o n i c c r i t i q u e of t h o s e ideals. Fair e n o u g h . But t h e c a p a c i t y of o u r c o m m e r c i a l - c u l t u r e w e b to a b s o r b c r i t i c i s m , p a r o d y , a n d " i n v e s t i g a t i o n " a n d t u r n t h e m into " p r o d u c t " s e e m s infinite. T h i s is a r e c i p e for gridlock, a n d w e ' r e t h e r e . I'm not surp r i s e d t h a t in all t h e c o n f u s i o n w e ' r e s e t t l i n g for safe a n d m e d i o c r e p u b l i c art. My r e c i p e for a w a y out is u n w i e l d y a n d n a i v e — a sort of s e c o n d , i m p r o v i s e d , n o n g o v e r n m e n t a l WPA a r t s project, in w h i c h a r t i s t s get to k n o w p e o p l e all over A m e r i c a , in t o w n s a n d in cities a n d on f a r m s , listen to t h e m , be s u r p r i s e d by t h e m , a n d accept t h e fact t h a t t h e y w i l l n e v e r adequately "represent" them. Then, from that fertile impossibility, t h e y w i l l r e c o n s t r u c t p u b l i c art f r o m t h e g r o u n d up. u s i n g all t h e r e s o u r c e s of i n t e l l i g e n c e a n d e d g i n e s s t h e y possess. But that, as they say, is a n o t h e r issue. JON SPAYDE is a w r i t e r a n d editor b a s e d in St. Paul, M i n n .

Special thanks to all the generous folks who offered suggestions for this issue, and thanks to artist Siah Armajani for inspiring its development.

Bustei Simpson Offcimg Hot WK*

Teiry wlen Modem Cjmmufication

Kansas City Municipal Art Commission, Kansas City, M O

JoJin T. Siott Jazz Panthool

cimo,

WWW.

FORT

WORTH C

Avenue

Roberl MOlffflW// Wall

PUBLIC

Cliff Garten

ART

Light Studio

www.fwpublicart.org

Meeting the Specific Needs of the Fine Arts

MUSEUM SERVICES

Community

Corporate and Residential Installation

Specialty Fabrication

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PUblicArlReview a publication of FORECAST Public Artworks

OUR M I S S I O N FORECAST

I S S U E 35

of public

FALL/WINTER 2006

audiences

V O L U M E 18 - N U M B E R 1

SUGGESTED READING G U E S T EDITOR Jon S p a y d e

EDITOR Jack Becker

Public Artworks

art locally,

is a 501(cl3 nonprofit

regionally

and assisting

and nationally

ADVERTISERS

that strengthens

participation,

and advances

supporting

artists,

the

field

informing

communities.

The board and staff of FORECAST recent group of advertisers

organization

by expanding

and

Public

Artworks

gratefully

acknowledge

the generosity

of our

most

donors!

Issue 35

COPY EDITOR

4culture • A m e r i c a n s for the Arts: Public Art Network • Arizona State U n i v e r s i t y • Art & Architecture

Dave Healy

Journal • Arts & S c i e n c e Council • Banner Creations • Blumenthal S h e e t Metal • Broward Cultural

DESIGNER / PRODUCTION MANAGER

D i v i s i o n • City of Dallas Public Art Program • City of G a i n e s v i l l e , Florida • City of Glendale, A r i z o n a

Nichole Goodwell

• City of Palm Desert, California • City of St. Petersburg, Florida • City of Winter Park, Florida • David

ADVERTISING Nichole Goodwell

Griggs • Derix Art Glass Consultants • Florida A s s o c i a t i o n of Public Art Administrators • Florida's Art in State Buildings Program • Forth Worth Public Art • Framework: T h e F i n n i s h Art R e v i e w • Franz

RIGHTS COORDINATOR

Mayer of M u n i c h , Inc. • Gordon Huether • Guy Kemper • Jacksonville International Airport • Kansas

Craig Cox City M u n i c i p a l Art C o m m i s s i o n • Las Vegas Arts C o m m i s s i o n • Lights o n Tampa • Los A n g e l e s C o u n t y

PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS

Metropolitan Transportation Authority • Maryland Institute College of Art • M i a m i - D a d e Art in Public

Kaitlin Frick Kristof Marden Anna M u e s s i g PUBLIC ART REVIEW

Places • M u s e u m Services • P h o e n i x Office of Arts and Culture • Pinellas C o u n t y Arts Council • P o l i c h Art Works • Ralfonso Kinetic S c u l p t u r e s • Scottsdale Public Art • Surbeck Waterjet C o m p a n y • Tampa ADVISORS

David Allen, P e n n y Balkin Bach, Tom Bannister, Ricardo Barreto, Cathey Billian, Fuller C o w l e s , Greg Esser, T h o m a s Fisher, Gretchen Freeman, Glenn Harper, Mary Jane Jacob, Mark Johnstone, S t e p h e n Knapp, S u z a n n e Lacy, Jack Mackie,

International Airport • T h e Guild • University of Southern California: Roski S c h o o l of Fine Arts • University Press of Kansas • Via Partnership • Walla Walla Foundry • Western States Arts Federation DONORS

MAY through OCTOBER

2006

A n n e A l w e l l & Tullio A l e s s i • A n o n y m o u s • Baha'i A s s e m b l y of M i n n e a p o l i s • T h o m a s Bannister • Harriet Bart • Jack Becker & N a n c y R e y n o l d s • T h e B e i m F o u n d a t i o n • The Bridge • B u s h F o u n d a t i o n • A n d r e w Caddock • Niki Carlson • Carolyn F o u n d a t i o n • Howard Christopherson • City of M i n n e a p o l i s

Jill Manton, Jennifer McGregor, Patricia

N e i g h b o r h o o d Revitalization Program • City of St. Paul Cultural STAR • City of St. Paul N e i g h b o r h o o d

Phillips, Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz,

STAR • Scott Coran/Coran Visual • Dan Cornejo • Carol Daly • Katharine & Jerry D a s t y c h • Jonathan &

Phil Pregill, S h e l l y Willis

Cordelia D. Early • East Lake Liquors • Susan Fiene • Barbara Grygutis • Guaranty Bank • Rex Gulbranson • Diane H e l l e k s o n • International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 292 • Irwin A n d r e w Porter

FORECAST S T A F F Jack Becker Executive

F o u n d a t i o n • Jerome Foundation • A d a m Johnson • N a n c y Johnson • Shirley & Gerald Keating • Bob Kost • Marilyn & Donald Larson • Carol Letofsky & Jim D a v n i e • L o n g f e l l o w C o m m u n i t y C o u n c i l •

Director

Robert & N a n c y Lunning • Elisabeth & Daniel Marshall • Kelly Marshall/Custom W o v e n Interiors • Nichole Goodwell Program Associate

Lisa McLean • M a l c o m & W e n d y McLean • Caroline M e h l h o p • M e t r o p o l i t a n Regional Arts Council •

M e l i n d a Hobbs Program / Administrative

Minnesota State Arts Board • Laura & P h i l i p M u e s s i g • National E n d o w m e n t for the Arts • Stuart N i e l s e n Assistant

• Linda Olup • Betsy Ringham • Robert Roscoe/Design for Preservation • Daniel Schiel • Jon S c h o o n m a k e r • Vicki Scuri • Stanton Sears & Andrea Myklebust • S h a p c o Printing, Inc. • Joe S t a n l e y & Lori Zook-

FORECAST B O A R D O F D I R E C T O R S A n d r e w Caddock, Niki Carlson, Joe Colletti, Carol Daly, A d a m Johnson, N a n c y

Stanley • Teresa Sterns • Target Corporation • T h e McKnight F o u n d a t i o n • U n i t e d Arts Workplace Giving Program • A n n Viitala • Rusty Wadsworth • West River Dental • James W h i t n e y & S u z a n n e Bring • Claire W i l h e l m • S h e l l y Willis

Johnson, Bob Kost, Robert Lunning,

Special t h a n k s to S h a p c o Printing, Inc. a n d U n i s o u r c e W o r l d w i d e . Inc. for their h e l p w i t h t h i s issue.

Caroline M e h l h o p , Linda Olup, Betsy Ringham, Jon Schoonmaker, Stanton Sears, Joe Stanley, Teresa Sterns, A n n Viitala

•

ZZZZZ

(ISSN: 1040-21 Ix)

STATU ARTS BOARD

N A T I O N A L

endowment

FOR THE ARTS

jerome *w

THE MCKNIGHT FOUNDATION

foundation

Bush Foundation U U J I U U M U U U M "

S u p p o r t from the Minnesota Slate Arts Board is t h r o u g h an a p p r o p r i a t i o n from the M i n n e s o t a State Legislature a n d a grant by the NEA.

is published twice annually by FORECAST Public Artworks, located at 2324 University Ave, West, Suite 104, Saint Paul, MN 55114 USA Phone: 651-6411128; MN Relay Service: 1-800-627-3529; Fax: 651-641-1983; E-mail: info@publicARTreview.org; Website: publicARTreview.org. Annual subscription rates are $20 for USA, $26 for Canada/Mexico, and $31 for Overseas. Public Art Review is not responsible for unsolicited material. Please send SASE with material requiring return. Opinions expressed and validity of information herein are the responsibility of the author, not FORECAST, and FORECAST disclaims any claims made by advertisers and for images reproduced by advertisers. Public Art Review is indexed by Art Index and Art Bibliographies Moderne. S e n d c h a n g e of a d d r e s s to: 2324 University Ave. West, Suite 104, Saint Paul, MN 55114 USA / or / info@publicARTreview.org

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PHOENIX

O F F I C E OF A R T S A N D

P U B L I C

A R T

CULTURE

P R O G R A M

Phoenix welcomes Art is a Guaranty of Sanity by Louise Bourgeois at t h e Phoenix C o n v e n t i o n Center, c o m p l e t e d July 2 0 0 6 .

Celebrating 20 years of Public Art in Phoenix 1986-2006. For a full schedule of 20th Anniversary events, completed projects, milestones opportunities, publications and more, visit w w w . p h o e n i x . g o v / A R T S .

Public

Review Issue 3 5 • Fall/Winter 2 0 0 6 • Volume 18 • Number 1

Directory

Slide Set or

CD-ROM

City Art by Eleanor Heariney Conservation

and Maintenance

of Contemporary

Public

Art

edited by Hafthor Yngvason Dialogues On the Road Again:

in Public Art by Tom Finkelpearl Creative

Transportation

Design

edited by Dian Magie PLOP: Recent

Projects

from the Public Art

Fund

texts by Tom Eccles, Dan Cameron, and Katy Siegel

Member Price: $90.00 Nonmember Price: $110.00 Product #: 100090

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""ARTS SERVING COMMUNITIES, ENRICHING LIVES

FEATURE CONTRIBUTORS J A N E K R A M E R has written the "Letter From Europe" in The New Yorker magazine since 1981. Among her many books on European and American culture are studies of the poet Allen Ginsberg, German reunification, and the world of American right-wing militias, along with several collections of her New Yorker columns.

KIRK S A V A G E , associate professor in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh, specializes in the history of American public m o n u m e n t s . His Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America won the John Hope Franklin Prize for the best book in American Studies in 1998.

WALLACE S T E V E N S (1879-1956) was one of the preeminent American poets of the past century. His books, of which the first was Harmonium (1923), express a sophisticated sensibility, in debt to French Symbolism and dedicated to exploring the relationship between imagination and the everyday world. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1955.

ALLAN KAPROW (1927-2006) was a force in avant-garde art for half a century. The "environments" and " h a p p e n i n g s " he developed beginning in the late 1950s were crucial precursors of installation and performance art, and his teaching influenced several generations of artists committed to blurring the boundaries between genres as well as the line between art and life.

WILLIAM G A D D I S (1922-1998) published only four novels in his lifetime—dense, intense works that abandon many familiar guideposts of realist fiction. In books such as The Recognitions (1955) and JR (1975), floods of language build a texture of literary allusion and satirize American excesses. A posthumous novel, Agape Agape, appeared in 2002.

FEATURED ARTIST M I C H E L E O K A D O N E R is an internationally acclaimed artist and designer. Among her m a n y public art commissions are projects for New York's Herald Square subway station and the Miami International Airport. Living in Florida and New York, Oka Doner creates work fueled by a lifelong study and appreciation of the natural world.

EFRAIN VAZQUEZ lives in the Bronx. T O M WOLFE's early articles and books—of which the best known is The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1967)—were the most visible and innovative works of the vivid, personalistic school of 1960s nonfiction writing called the New Journalism. Since then he has also written three novels, of w h i c h the most recent is I Am Charlotte Simmons (2005).

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CONTRIBUTING CARTOONIST S E R I K K U L M E S H K E N O V graduated from Russia's College of Architecture in 1982 and has been a freelance graphic artist since 1985. He lives in Minneapolis, Minn., working in illustration, printmaking, fine art, and photography. He has exhibited internationally, has earned n u m e r o u s international awards, and is featured in m u s e u m collections worldwide.

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This study of the furor surrounding john Ahearn's portrait statues of three "typical" South Bronx dwellers is the only essay in the issue to have received more than one nomination from our informal panel of artists, critics, and experts. Bay-Areabased art consultant Donna Graves called it "an excellent case study of a public art controversy," and New York artist Joyce Kozloff told us she "admired its complexity. " Complex it certainly is, weaving together accounts of Ahearn, his volatile South Bronx neighborhood, and the touchy cultural politics of 1990s New York. From a N e w Yorker article (December 21, 1992), later published as a book by Duke University Press (1994), we've selected the opening section and one later passage.

i t c o u l d be a r g u e d that t h e S o u t h B r o n x b r o n z e s fit right i n t o t h e n e i g h b o r h o o d — t h a t w h a t e v e r a c o u p l e of p e o p l e said a b o u t b a d role m o d e l s a n d n e g a t i v e images a n d political i n c o r r e c t n e s s , t h e r e was something seemly and humane, and even, in a r u e f u l , c o m p l i c a t e d way, "correct," a b o u t casting R a y m o n d a n d his pit bull, Daleesha a n d h e r roller skates, a n d Corey a n d his b o o m box a n d b a s k e t b a l l in t h e metal of Ghiberti, D o n a t e l l o , a n d R o d i n a n d p u t t i n g t h e m u p on p e d e s tals, like p a t r o n s a i n t s of Jerome A v e n u e . John A h e a r n , w h o m a d e t h e s t a t u e s , says that h e t h o u g h t of t h e m m o r e as g u a r d ians t h a n as saints, b e c a u s e t h e i r job w a s a m b i g u o u s , s t a n d i n g , as t h e y d i d for a c o u p l e of d a y s last year, b e t w e e n t h e d r a b n e w station h o u s e of t h e city's 4 4 t h Police P r e c i n c t a n d w h a t is arguably o n e of its poorest, s a d d e s t , s h a b b i est, m o s t d r u g - i n f e s t e d , A I D S - i n f e c t e d , v i o l e n t n e i g h b o r h o o d s . John h i m s e l f is a m b i g u o u s about " a m b i g u o u s . " H e says that w h e n t h e city a s k e d h i m to " d e c o rate" t h e p r e c i n c t h e t h o u g h t of t h e Paseo d e la Reforma, in M e x i c o City, w i t h its b r o n z e h e r o e s — a m i l e of h e r o e s . H e t h o u g h t that m a y b e it w o u l d be inter-

OPPOSITE PAGE: John Ahearn, Toby and Raymond, 1986, oil on fiberglass, 47x43 x 39 inches, New York. ABOVE (from left to right): John Aheam, My mi Raymond, 1986; Daleesba, 1992, bronze, lifesize; Corey, 1992, bronze, lifesize; New York.

e s t i n g — o r at least a c c u r a t e to life o n a c a l a m i t o u s S o u t h B r o n x street, a street of s u r v i v o r s — t o c o m m e m o r a t e a f e w of the people he knew w h o were having t r o u b l e s u r v i v i n g t h e street, e v e n if t h e y were trouble themselves. He w a n t e d t h e p o l i c e to a c k n o w l e d g e t h e m , a n d he wanted the neighbors, seeing them cast in b r o n z e a n d u p on p e d e s t a l s , to stop and think about w h o they were and a b o u t w h a t h e calls t h e i r " S o u t h B r o n x attitude." R a y m o n d , Corey, a n d D a l e e s h a m a y not h a v e b e e n t h e best of t h e n e i g h b o r h o o d . R a y m o n d Garcia, at t h i r t y - t h r e e , is in a n d o u t of jail. Corey M a n n , at t w e n t y four, is in a n d o u t of jobs. D a l e e s h a , at f o u r t e e n , is a street c h i l d , in a n d o u t of j u n i o r h i g h s c h o o l . But t h e y are a h o m e g r o w n part of t h e n e i g h b o r h o o d , a n d John, w h o lives in t h e n e i g h b o r h o o d , too, a n d likes it, likes t h e m — i n a n edgy, a p p r e h e n s i v e way. T h e y exasperate John, a n d o c c a s i o n a l l y t h e y a l a r m h i m , the way they do the other people on the block, a n d , i n d e e d , t h e p e o p l e in t h e i r o w n f a m i l i e s , b u t t h e y b e l o n g to tlie reality of t h e s h a t t e r e d social c o n t r a c t w e call t h e i n n e r city, a n d John w a n t e d

t h e m to stand in s o m e t h i n g of the same relation to the precinct policemen that they do to h i m and the neighbors. They may be trouble, but they are h u m a n , a n d they are there. John is neither an i n n o c e n t nor a fool. He is one of the best artists of his generation. He has a reputation. Right now, there is a s h o w of his work at the Baltimore M u s e u m of Art, and people have seen the painted casts he makes, in the South Bronx, at the Whitney and the Tate and the Art Institute of Chicago and a dozen other important m u s e u m s . Those casts, at the Brooke Alexander gallery, on Wooster Street, in SoHo, cost

fiberglass casts of the neighbors on four big building walls and plaster "portraits" in nearly everyone's apartment. Some people in the art world f o u n d that work sentimental, a n d John says that w h e n he started making his bronzes for the 44th Precinct he was d e t e r m i n e d "to make art, make a statement," something with edge and irony and "complications." He says n o w that this w a s his mistake: he should have been thinking about making people happy. Five days after he put the bronzes up, he hired a truck and took t h e m d o w n , a n d they e n d e d u p in the yard at P.S. 1 in Long Island City, the m u s e u m w h e r e w h i t e people from Manhattan of-

good side of the neighborhood to w h i t e people driving d o w n Jerome to Yankee Stadium for a game, or taking a Bronx shortcut to their peaceful, prosperous suburban neighborhoods. A couple of policemen w a n t e d statues of friendly policemen, h e l p i n g people across the street or playing with babies. A couple of black bureaucrats talked about the pain of the neighborhood, and about people like Raymond, Corey, and Daleesha, lost to the streets, and about what h a p p e n e d w h e n w h i t e artists like John Ahearn "glorified" that loss and insulted them. A lot of p h o n e calls got m a d e before the movers came, and a lot of politicians

He was d e t e r m i n e d "to m a k e art, m a k e a statement," s o m e t h i n g w i t h e d g e a n d i r o n y a n d "complications." H e says n o w t h a t this w a s his m i s t a k e : he should have been thinking about making people happy. a n y w h e r e from twelve to forty t h o u s a n d dollars. Some of John's neighbors call h i m "saintly," since they do not easily u n d e r s t a n d w h a t a f a m o u s w h i t e artist—a " d o w n t o w n " artist, w i t h a fancy gallery, a n d m u s e u m shows, and critics at his door, and a big retrospective catalogue—is doing living in a strippedd o w n , sixth-floor, slum apartment on one of the worst streets in New York City, hanging out with people like Raymond and Corey, and they suspect he has some sort of crazy penitential Christian purpose, like Father Hennessy, his priest at the Church of Christ the King, a r o u n d the corner. John and Patrick Hennessy and a h o m e l e s s street sweeper n a m e d Roberta Nazat, w h o s e own Christian purpose is cleaning the right side of 170th Street between Walton and Jerome (and w h o sleeps on a couch at John's w h e n the nights get cold), are about the only w h i t e people in the neighborhood, but John does not put himself in the same class of "saintly" as Father H e n n e s s y or Bobbie t h e Sweeper. Sometimes he describes himself as "like an itinerant portrait painter," and sometimes as "like R a u l , " w h o m a n u f a c t u r e s plaster santeros for the Bronx botanicas, but that is ingenuous. W h e n he is talking about art, the n a m e s he invokes are Caravaggio, w h o took the poor for his m o d e l s "and blew art history away," and van Gogh, w h o took the p o s t m a n a n d his wife and m a d e t h e m live forever. John has work u p all over the n e i g h b o r h o o d — t h e r e are

ten go to look at "statements." T h e statues themselves look safe, even benign, at P.S. 1, but they do not look like they belong there. They are, in the jargon of public sculpture, "site specific"—though some of the policemen w h o saw them at the corner of Jerome Avenue and 169th Street last year prefer the word "confrontational" to describe them. No one w h o saw t h e m could deny they had the " b a d " South Bronx attitude. W h e n they were u p on their pedestals-at the edge of a little concrete park the city calls a "traffic triangle"—they looked less like m o n u m e n t s than like the Corey, Raym o n d , and Daleesha w h o m Jolin tliought everybody knew, only metal. They were part of the crowd. They belonged to the cocky, come-on quality of the street, to the rusty train trestle a n d the trashed cars and the m a c h i n e shops and gaudy botanicas and rice-and-beans counters, to the dealers and hookers and welfare studs and the hip-hop children hurrying h o m e from school with their clothes on backward, and even to the angry and respectable neighbors w h o complained about negative images—ghetto images— and convinced John that he should take them d o w n . Some of those neighbors w a n t e d statues of Martin Luther King or Malcolm X, or statues of children in their graduation gowns, or of mothers carrying h o m e the groceries, or of men in suits on their way to important jobs d o w n t o w n — s o m e t h i n g to s h o w the

started worrying about petitions and protests and television crews and the Reverend A1 Sharpton, and about John's three statues turning into a full-blown race scandal. It m a d e no difference that the black Mayor of New York City, David Dinkins, had borrowed a fiberglass cast of Corey with his basketball and boom box and installed it on the lawn at Grad e Mansion w h e n Ire presented the keys to the city to the black filmmaker Spike Lee. Or that the people w h o w a n t e d statues of m e n in suits instead of Corey, Raym o n d , and Daleesha might be mocking the pain of the neighborhood as m u c h as they thought Jolin had mocked it, since in the South Bronx the men in suits are generally the men w h o are trying desperately to leave, not the men w h o have to stay. It m a d e no difference that Corey, Raymond, and Daleesha might not think of themselves as "negative stereotypes"—though Raymond often says that as far as any kind of "correctness" goes he does not have m u c h of a reputation. Raymond was distressed for his pit bull, w h o had died, because he loved the dog, and the thought that it w o u l d "live in b r o n z e " consoled him. Raymond heard that "the c o m m u n i t y " d i d n ' t like the statues—but as far as he was concerned the c o m m u n i t y was the block where he and Corey and, indeed, John lived. T h e c o m m u n i t y was four buildings on Walton Avenue between 171st Street and 172nd Street, and had nothing to do with a n y o n e five blocks south

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and one block west, at the traffic triangle. Raymond was right, because five blocks south and one block west turned out to be as far away as Manhattan, Raymond's community liked the statues, but to the people complaining at the traffic triangle John Ahearn was a white man, and Raymond, Corey, and Daleesha were just the statues that shamed them.

l o one knows how to settle, or even define, the argument over public art and political correctness. The art world says it's about censorship. The activists say it's about "controlling the images." The critics (depending on their politics) either quote Gilles Deleuze and say it's about

"the indignity of speaking for others," or they quote Hilton Kramer and say it's about saving Western civilization. The politicians like to call it "the multicultural dialogue," but the truth is that at this particularly angry moment in New York City the multicultural dialogue is really a lot of strange and disheartening monologues. People are talking, but they are not talking to each other. It doesn't matter if they are talking about public art, or about "the white male literary canon." or about whether students at law school have to argue briefs for fathers w h o want custody of their children because their wives are lesbians, or about whether Cleopatra was black, or about whether Raymond with his pit bull is a proper

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role m o d e l for the South Bronx children. It doesn't matter if art is an accident of its "interpretive m o m e n t , " as the deconstructionists say, or if art is "timeless" and a d d r e s s e s p u r e aesthetic values, as a lot of artists w o u l d say—though not John Ahearn, w h o says, "Hey, making s o m e b o d y u n h a p p y ? That's not interesting, that's heavy!" It doesn't matter if a statue of R a y m o n d and his pit bull offends t h e guys at the Jerome Avenue pizzeria because they have n o "taste" or because Raymond refused to leave the dog outside w h e n he was ordering pizza a n d there w a s n o t h i n g they could do about it, since the dog w a s vicious, or because they t h i n k the neighborhood should be " r e p r e s e n t e d " by a statue of a m a n in a suit, or, indeed, by one of them. People are suffering in the South Bronx. They live w i t h poverty and crime and crack and u n e m p l o y m e n t , and they die young, from illness and overdose and overexposure if they are not m u r d e r e d first. In the language of the debate, they are '"dise m p o w e r e d , " and to the extent that the language is correct they cannot do m u c h about it except attack what they take to be the symbols of their powerlessness—a statue they d i d n ' t make, a textbook they d i d n ' t choose, a vocabulary of a s s u m p tions about culture that are not their a s s u m p t i o n s . S o m e t i m e s the symbols

focus them. More often, the symbols subvert them, and they exhaust what little energy surviving in the South Bronx has left them. As John says, "On my block, even getting yourself on welfare implies a high level of getting it together." Today, the neighbors w h o objected to John's statues are without a work of art for their traffic triangle, because they were more interested in the argument than in the alternatives, more interested in talking about the correctness of the statues than in replacing them. No one has written to the city, or to the newspapers, saying, "We're the community, a n d we're going to make a n e w work possible." In fifteen months, no one has even asked. This is John's neighborhood: it is part of the poorest congressional district in the country; it has the fourth highest rate of h o m i c i d e in the city; a h u n d r e d and twenty t h o u s a n d people live there, and a h u n d r e d and eighteen t h o u s a n d are black or Hispanic; every second person is on some sort of public assistance; one out of every three adults is u n e m ployed; one out of every four w o m e n tests H.I.V. positive w h e n she goes to the hospital to have a baby, and no one k n o w s h o w many m e n w o u l d test positive if there were a way to get them to the hospital, any more than a n y o n e knows h o w m a n y m e n w o u l d test positive for

crack or heroin or any of the street mixtures k n o w n as "speedballs." T h e facts, of course, are misleading. They do not account for t h o u s a n d s of illegal immigrants; they do not distinguish between black, white, and Indian "Hispanics" (who are listed as " n o n - w h i t e " in the census) or, for that matter, between "Hisp a n i c s " and "Latinos," w h o may or may not have S p a n i s h as their first language. They do not distinguish between the Dom i n i c a n dealers and the Jamaican posses w h o come to the Bronx for a couple of years and split with their drug money and the Puerto Rican mothers and grandmothers w h o appear at three in the afternoon, w h e n school lets out, to chase those dealers off the street so the children can play. T h e facts are stereotypes of race and class and c u l t u r e — m u c h more than John Ahearn's statues were stereotypes—which is w h y people w h o thought the statues should stay worry about what it m e a n s about "stereotypes" w h e n poor people give something away for nothing in return. John wants to replace the statues, but the city might have to sell Raymond, Corey, and Daleesha to pay for the bronze and the foundry, and it is not certain n o w that John (or art or the neighbors) w o u l d survive the process of choosing the subjects of "correct" representation u n d e r the scrutiny

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of his c o m m u n i t y board, the police, the city bureaucracy, the guys at the pizzeria, and the w o m a n w h o stood at the traffic triangle stopping traffic last fall to ask people if Corey, shirtless and a little flabby, was the "representation" they wanted.

ro one seems to remember w h o m a d e the first p h o n e call. Claudette LaMelle is a black therapist with a degree in social work w h o was the executive assistant to the Department of General Services Commissioner and who, along with attorney Arthur Symes, c o m p l a i n e d about the statues. She remembers that "the feeling of inappropriateness here" was brought to the attention of the people on Columbus Circle—and this was certainly true, because Linda Blumberg remembers a call to her commissioner "about a work we c o m m i s s i o n e d that was going u p w i t h i n a week and that was 'outrageously racist,'" and Tom Finkelpearl remembers Linda coming into his office that m o r n i n g and the two of t h e m sitting there, bewildered and distressed, and talking about what to do. They talked all morning. They talked about h o w m u c h

son with the story—she w a n t e d her to know that John w a s an artist of integrity, the best artist s h e could imagine for the project—and t h e n s h e and Tom w e n t d o w n t o w n to General Services. T h e y were not prepared for a n y t h i n g like t h e anger they e n c o u n t e r e d w h e n they took out their slides a n d said, "Let's s h o w you this in context." Linda Blumberg had w a n t e d to m a k e a " p r e s e n t a t i o n . " She thought that their slides from the South Bronx w o u l d h e l p A r t h u r S y m e s and Claudette LaMelle "get to k n o w John and his work in the c o m m u n i t y , " but Arthur Symes and Claudette LaMelle were affronted and upset, and they were clearly not interested in a slide show. T h e y w a n t e d the people from Cultural Affairs to accept that the South Bronx bronzes were racist—that they d i d n ' t represent the struggle of t h e c o m m u nity or h a v e a n y t h i n g to do w i t h t h e way that struggle should be represented, that Corey was an outrage, "out of s h a p e and out of w o r k , " and R a y m o n d w a s a drug dealer, and Daleesha w a s a "zombie." They d i d n ' t u n d e r s t a n d w h y t h e p e o p l e from Cultural Affairs kept talking about "creative f r e e d o m " and "artistic f r e e d o m . " They said later, "Does

They didn't understand w h y the people from C u l t u r a l Affairs k e p t t a l k i n g a b o u t "creative f r e e d o m " a n d "artistic f r e e d o m . " T h e y said later, " D o e s t h a t m e a n freedom to do whatever?" a part of his c o m m u n i t y John was, and about trying to " e x p l a i n " John to the people at D.G.S.—they w e r e sure that if they did those people w o u l d u n d e r s t a n d that the last thing you could say about John Ahearn was that his work was racist. They talked about w h a t w o u l d happen if the South Bronx bronzes became a scandal, and about protecting John, and about protecting art from politics. They talked about w h a t w o u l d h a p p e n if people all over the city started removing the city's statues. Mary S c h m i d t Campbell h a d just left Cultural Affairs for the Tisch School of the Arts, at New York University, and a w o m a n n a m e d C h a r m a i n e Jefferson was standing in as c o m m i s s i o n e r until the mayor n a m e d s o m e o n e to replace her. Linda Blumberg w e n t to Mrs. Jeffer-

that m e a n freedom to do whatever?" And the people from Cultural Affairs d i d n ' t u n d e r s t a n d w h y they w e r e talking about John Ahearn as "a w h i t e artist in a Third World c o m m u n i t y . " T h e y k n e w that John w a s a m e m b e r of that community, but A r t h u r S y m e s a n d Claudette LaMelle seemed to be saying w h a t Arthur Symes still believes, a year later: "He's not of the c o m m u n i t y because he's not black—it's simply that." Arthur Symes says that w h e n h e saw John's project d r a w i n g s "my first thought was, 'This guy's not a black artist.'"He compares John trying to "represent" the South Bronx to himself trying to design a building for C h i n a t o w n that w o u l d say to the people, "That's Chinese!" He doesn't t h i n k it's possible, and Claudette LaMelle doesn't t h i n k it's

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possible. Claudette LaMelle says that if John were really part of the community "he would have befriended Raymond m u c h differently"—by which she means he would have spent his time straightening Raymond out instead of wrapping him in plaster. She doesn't credit what Raymond says—that John, wrapping him in plaster, did more to straighten him out than anyone else, anyone from the community, ever had. The meeting was a standoff, though Linda Blumberg says that Arthur Symes. especially, moved her with his arguments. Symes had talked about losing people to drugs and the streets—"He saw John's pieces as m o n u m e n t s to everything he'd been trying to save his own c o m m u n i t y from"—and Linda knew his sadness was genuine. She left his office "filled with contradictory feelings," and she and Tom went back to their office wondering what they should have known or thought or done, wondering what had gone wrong with the "process." They had thought that the process was as fair as it could get: they gave three-quarters of their commissions to minorities; they spread those commissions around to cover all the boroughs and all sorts of neighborhoods. Tom himself had gone out of his way to compensate for the fact that "for every white middle-class artist in SoHo w h o sends in slides there's a black or Hispanic artist somewhere in Brooklyn or the Bronx w h o has never heard of us." There were outreach programs at Percent for Art. Linda says that they had done their best to see that the process—of selection, of approval—was clean and at the same time that the commissions were diverse, aesthetically and even politically. She knew that any physical site in New York City was also a political site, and involved a lot of people taking political power seriously.

John installed his bronzes the next day. He had heard about the meeting. Linda Blumberg had told him there were "problems," but everyone at Percent for Art supported John, and as far as he was concerned General Services wasn't "the community." He wasn't worried about the community. And he wasn't worried about the site. He was excited about the site. "I w o u l d n ' t say the basketball player or the girl are my best pieces," he says. "It was the site that counted." After five years, he wanted to see his statues installed. He wanted to walk across Jerome Avenue from the El and into the community and see Raymond, Corey, and Daleesha standing there like guardians, and he

was sorry the cops at the 44th Precinct w o u l d n ' t be there to see them, too. Their new thirteen-million-dollar station had been such a boondoggle, with so many labor and construction problems, that no one had been able to move in. John says now that what happened that day—it was September 25, 1991— was a kind of "spontaneous protest," and that he knew right away that it was happening. He hadn't wanted an official occasion—just the pleasure of people walking by and stopping and maybe saying, "Wow, finally, this is really us!"—but he says that when the crane was lifting the bronzes from the truck "the mood wasn't right and I had real unease." Corey was at the installation, with his mother, and John was glad she got to see it, because

she was terribly sick by then; by the next morning she had died. John's girlfriend, Daisy Maxey, was there—she had driven in from Long Island for the installation— and so were Tom Otterness and Nancy Owens, and Charlie, who was making a video, and a couple of other downtown people. But mainly it was "the community" that came, or, more accurately, it was whoever happened to be out on Jerome Avenue that Wednesday morning and was curious enough to stop and watch. A w o m a n named Alcina Salgado was out watching. Her apartment, on Gerard Avenue, overlooked the triangle, and she took a proprietary interest in the site. She had been complaining about it ever since the police station was a vacant lot, with a Montefiore methadone clinic

co corner that day—a prim black w o m a n in steel-rimmed glasses, a w o m a n of propriety and grit w h o had a n s w e r e d an ad forty years ago in Minas Gerais, and come to America and worked hard and sent four c h i l d r e n to college—and she stopped the traffic. She cornered people on the street and s h o w e d t h e m the bronzes, and asked them, "Isn't this awful? Who is responsible?" She w a s asking them that w h e n John went h o m e to his a p a r t m e n t to pace—he w a s trying to figure out what to say to p e o p l e like Alcina Salgado, and he still w a s n ' t sure and she was there asking t h e m w h e n he c a m e back to the triangle, two or three hours later. John walked u p to her and said, "I'm John Ahearn, I'm the artist. I want to talk." All he k n e w was that he w a n t e d to get this small, formidable w o m a n away from t h e site, to s o m e p l a c e calm, someplace neutral. He took Mrs. Salgado to Walton Avenue. He s h o w e d her his Back to School m u r a l on the wall, gave her his catalogue called South Bronx Hall of Fame, asked her w h a t she w a n t e d . " S h e w a n t e d college kids," he says. "She told me, 'I w o r k e d all my life to raise my kids in t h e right way,' and I could get into that. She thought the bronzes were evil, ugly images. She loved me. b u t she said. 'These things are going to go.' After two h o u r s ' conversation, those were her parting words!" That night, John started t h i n k i n g about Raymond. He decided that Raym o n d looked "like Halloween." In the morning, he got u p and went back to t h e triangle w i t h a can of epoxy paint and thought s o m e more and t h e n he repainted Raymond's face. He gave Raym o n d a "sweet expression." He w a n t e d to make Mrs. Salgado happy. He k n e w w h y Raymond scared her. He says he could get into that—more, anyway, t h a n he could get into the "art p e o p l e " w h o looked at Raymond a n d said that he w a s "like a Hopper, staring into the m i d d l e distance." He w a n t e d Mrs. Salgado to see "the other R a y m o n d " in the Raym o n d w h o , as likely as not, had robbed his apartment two times, the Raymond w h o always h u n g a r o u n d high, making John and everyone else on the block nervous. He believed there w a s something Raymond k n e w — s o m e secret, some truth—that he himself might never experience but that a statue he p a i n t e d "right" might capture and even c o m m u n i c a t e to a w o m a n w h o w a s afraid. He w a n t e d Mrs. Salgado to see that R a y m o n d w a s "beautiful and heavy." PAR

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operating out of an e m p t y synagogue at one end, and an a c c u m u l a t i o n of weeds, and garbage piled u p everywhere. Mrs. Salgado likes to describe herself as "the lady w h o cleans u p the neighborhood," and she knew exactly h o w m a n y w e e d s and how m u c h garbage, because she was the person w h o went out one day in 1978 and collected it, and put it in blue plastic garbage sacks, and saw to it that the city c a m e and took it away. She d i d n ' t want the police station. She complained about the station going up, and then she c o m p l a i n e d about parking places a r o u n d the station. She w a n t e d "the decent p e o p l e " to reclaim the neighborhood, the way decent people had reclaimed her building, after she organized the tenants in 1983, and collected money and hired a lawyer and took their powerful slum landlord to court. They ended u p with fresh paint, an intercom, a lock on the front door, an elevator that worked, n e w w i n d o w s and mailboxes, a new roof, a n e w super, and a rebate for a year w i t h o u t services. "I'm a neighborhood stalker" is the way Mrs. Salgado puts it. "If I see a h y d r a n t broken, or a streetlight out, I pick u p the p h o n e . " She is not on C o m m u n i t y Board Four, but she goes to meetings—though not to the meeting John went to—and the people on the board k n o w her, because w h e n Mrs. Salgado picks u p the phone it is usually to call them. She called the board about John's statues. She d i d n ' t know John, or that John h a d made the neighborhood walls, or that she and John had a Walton Avenue connection, because Roy Cohn grew u p on Walton, back w h e n it was a Jewish street, and Mrs. Salgado had worked as "head h o u s e k e e p e r " for the family of G. David Shine, t h e f a m o u s Private Shine w h o helped Cohn p u t together the "evidence" for Senator Joseph McCarthy. But she k n e w she d i d n ' t like the statues. "There are people w h o go to school and people w h o go to work, and then there are the people w e find on the roof," she says, and she had no doubt that the statues she saw at the traffic triangle that day were statues of the "roof people." It was bad enough to have t h e m on the roof, smoking crack, hanging out, making trouble, and to have to confront them; Mrs. Salgado d i d n ' t want to look out of her w i n d o w every m o r n i n g and see them in front of the station, too. on pedestals. She w a n t e d the police to protect her from people like that. She seemed to think that if John Ahearn was angry at the police and w a n t e d to confront them, he should have put his o w n statue on one of those pedestals. She stood at the

Recommending "Anecdote of the Jar," from Stevens's H a r m o n i u m (1923), artist Ed Levine reinterpreted a work usually seen as on allegory of art versus nature. For him, Stevens' jar—a prototype of the art object—also sets in motion the dialectic of private versus public. "The poem suggests," he wrote, "that art establishes and constructs new boundaries between the private and the public realms. It is a radical act and a constructive act. Art organizes our space, creating neiv and conflicting experiences that transform both realms. Once the artist 'places' the work, we are in a paradoxical and binary situation—publicness of art creates the paradoxes of the public and art."

Anecdote of the Jar WALLACE STEVENS

I placed a jar in Tennessee, And round it was, upon a hill.

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It made the slovenly wilderness Surround

that

hill. 27

The wilderness And sprawled

rose up to it, around, no longer

The jar was round upon the

wild.

ground

And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion

everywhere.

The jar was gray and

bare.

It did not give of bird or bush, Like nothing

else in Tennessee.

"Anecdote of the Jar", copyright 1923 and renewed 1951 hy Wallace Stevens, troni THE COLLECTED POEMS OF WALLACE STEVENS by Wallace Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Tom Finkelpearl. former director of the percent-for-art program in New York and currently executive director of the Queens Museum of Art, suggested this rollicking satire of the legal profession, which also m a n a g e s to get in some hard jabs at the pretensions of public artists and the absurdities of the public art process. Gaddis creates immense works in which the banalities of American speech and American habits of expression pile up and persist until they turn into a strange music. This excerpt is a pitch-perfect parody of legalese originally presented in The New Yorker on October 12, 1987, and later published as part of a book entitled A Frolic of His Own (Poseidon Press, 1994).

In the United States District Court Southern District of Virginia, No. 105-87 OPINION OF THE COURT Crease,

fudge

he facts are not in dispute. On the morning of September 30 while running at large in the Village a dog identified as Spot entered under and therewith became entrapped in the lower reaches of a towering steel sculpture known as Cyclone Seven which dominates the plaza overlooking and adjoining the depot of the Norfolk & Pee Dee Railroad. Searching for his charge, the dog's master James B. who is seven years old was alerted by its whines and yelps to discover its plight, whereupon his own vain efforts to deliver it attracted those of a passerby soon joined by others whose combined attempts to wheedle, cajole, and intimidate the unfortunate animal forth served rather to c o m p o u n d its predicament, driving it deeper into the structure. These futile activities soon assembled a good cross section of the local population, from the usual idlers and senior citizens to members of the Village Board, the Sheriff's office, the Fire Department, and, not surprisingly, the victim's own kind, until by nightfall word having

spread to neighboring hamlets attracted not only them in numbers sufficient to cause an extensive traffic jam but members of the local press and an enterprising television crew. Notwithstanding means successfully devised to assuage the dog's pangs of hunger, those of its confinement continued well into the following day w h e n the decision was taken by the full Village Board to engage the Fire Department to enter the structure employing acetylene torches to effect its safe delivery, without considering the good likelihood of precipitating an action for damages by the creator of Cyclone Seven, Mr. Szyrk, a sculptor of some wide reputation in artistic circles. Alerted by the media to the threat posed to his creation, Mr. Szyrk moved promptly from his SoHo studio in New York to file for a temporary restraining order 'on a summary showing of its necessity to prevent immediate and irreparable injury' to his sculptural work, which was issued ex parte even as the torches of deliverance were being kindled. All

•

• •

•

• • • • • • •

•

Where my

• •

•

beasts of their own 29

wrong without my will and knowledge break another's close I shall be punished, for I am the trespasser w

this occurred four days ago. Given the widespread response provoked by this confrontation in the media at large and echoing as far distant as the deeper South and even Arkansas but more immediately at the site itself, where energies generated by opposing sympathies further aroused by the police presence and that of the Fire Department in full array, the floodlights, vans, and other paraphernalia incident to a fiercely competitive television environment bringing in its train the inevitable placards and displays of the American flag, the venders of food and novelty items, all e n h a n c e d by the barks and cries of the victim's own local acquaintance, have erupted in shoving matches, fistfights, and related hostilities with distinctly racial overtones (the dog's master James B. and his family are black), and finally in rocks and beer cans hurled at the sculpture Cyclone Seven itself, the court finds sufficient urgency in the main action of this proceeding to reject d e f e n d a n t s ' assertions and cross motions for the

with my beasts. • • • • • • •

•

reasons set forth below and grants s u m mary judgment to plaintiff on the issue of his motion for a preliminary injunction to supersede the temporary restraining order now in place. To grant s u m m a r y judgment, as explicated by Judge Stanton in Steinberg v. Columbia Pictures et al.. Fed. R. Civ. R 56 requires a court to find that 'there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.' In reaching its decision the court must 'assess w h e t h e r there are any factual issues to be tried, w h i l e resolving ambiguities and drawing reasonable inferences against the moving party' (Knight v. US Fire Ins. Co., 804 F.2d 9, 11, 2d Circ., 1986, citing Anderson v. Liberty Lobby. 106 S.Ct. 2505, 2509-11, 1986). In plaintiff's filing for a restraining order his complaint alleges, by counts, courses of action to w h i c h d e f e n d a n t s have filed a n s w e r s

and cross claims o p p o s i n g m o t i o n for a preliminary i n j u n c t i o n . T h e v o l u m i n o u s s u b m i s s i o n s a c c o m p a n y i n g these cross m o t i o n s leave n o factual issues concerning w h i c h f u r t h e r e v i d e n c e is likely to be p r e s e n t e d at a trial. Moreover, the factual d e t e r m i n a t i o n s necessary to this decision do not involve conflicts in t e s t i m o n y that w o u l d d e p e n d for their resolution on an assessment of w i t n e s s credibility as cited infra. T h e interests of judicial e c o n o m y being served by deciding t h e case at its p r e s e n t stage, s u m m a r y judgment is therefore a p p r o p r i a t e . N a m i n g as d e f e n d a n t s t h e Village Board, the dog's master James B. t h r o u g h his guardian ad litem, ' a n d s u c h other parties a n d entities as may emerge in the course of this proceeding,' Mr. Szyrk first alleges animal trespass, s u m m o n i n g in s u p p o r t of this charge a citation f r o m early law h o l d i n g that ' w h e r e my beasts of their o w n w r o n g w i t h o u t my will a n d k n o w l e d g e break another's close I shall be p u n i s h e d , for I am the trespasser w i t h m y beasts' (12 Henry VII, Kiehvey

3b), w h i c h exhibit the court, finding no than milk teeth however sharp, and howing sites elsewhere in the land, wherein clear parallel in the laws of this Comever extreme the throes of his despair, can among the four and on only one occamonwealth, dismisses as ornamental. have wreaked irreparable harm upon his sion a similar event occurred at a Long Concerning plaintiff's further exhibit steel confines this appears to be without Island, New York, site in the form of a of village Code 21 para. 6b (known as foundation. Further to this charge, defenboy similarly entrapped and provoking 'the leash law'), we take judicial notice dants respond, and the court concurs, cit- a similar outcry until a proffered ten dolof defendants' response alleging that, ing plaintiff's original artistic intentions, lar bill brought him forth little the worse. however specific in wording and intent, that these steel surfaces have become However, a boy is not a dog, and wherethis ordinance appears more honored pitted and acquired a heavy patina of as in the instant case Cyclone Seven in the breach, in that on any pleasant rust following plaintiff's stated provision posed initially a kind of ornate 'jungle day well k n o w n members of the local gym' to assorted younger members of that his creation stand freely exposed dog c o m m u n i t y are to be observed in the community, we may find on the part all their disparity of size, breed, and of Spot absent his testimony neither a other particulars ambling in the raffish perception of challenge to his prowess camaraderie of sailors ashore d o w n at climbing nor any aesthetic sensibility His trespass * , luring him into harm's way requiring the Village main street and thence « • wherever habit and appetite may • • a capacity to distinguish Cyclone take them undeterred by any w a s entirely inadvertent and • Seven as a work of art from his citizen or arm of the law. Spot, « « usual environs in the junk yard so named for the liver col presided over by defendant ored marking prominent on •» in good likelihood dictated by a mere James B.'s father and guardhis loin, is described as of ian ad litem, where the progi mixed breed wherein, from eny of man's inventiveness

call of nature a s abounding evidence of

his reduced stature, silken embraces three acres of rustcoat, and 'soulful' eyes, ing testimony thereto, and that of spaniel appears to that hence his trespass was , similar casual missions on the part of » prevail. His age is found to entirely inadvertent and in be u n d e r one year. Whereas good likelihood dictated by a in distinguishing between \ • other members of the local dog commu- • mere call of nature as aboundanimals as either mansuetae ing evidence of similar casual or ferae naturae Spot is clearly missions on the part of other nity in the sculpture's immediate to be discovered among the for• • members of the local dog commumer 'by custom devoted to the ser" nity in the sculpture's immediate •# vicinity attest. # • vice of m a n k i n d at the time and in vicinity attest. the place in w h i c h it is kept' and thus In taking judicial notice of defengranted the indulgence customarily acdant's counterclaim charging allurement corded such domestic pets, and further we hold this charge to be one of ordiwhereas as in the instant case scienter to the mercy or lack thereof of natural nary negligence liability, already found is not required (Weaver v. National Bisforces, wherewith we may observe that a to be without merit in this proceeding; cuit Co., 125 F.2d 463, 7th Circ.l 1942; dog is not a boy, much less a fireman branhowever, we extend this judicial notice Parsons v. Manser, 119 Iowa 88, 93 N.W. dishing an acetylene torch, but nearer in to embrace that section of plaintiff's re86, 1903), such indulgence is indicaits indifferent ignorance to those very sponse to the related charge of dangertive of the courts' retreat over the past forces embraced in the pathetic fallacy ous nuisance wherein plaintiff alleges century from strict liability for trespass and so to be numbered among them. We damage from the strong hence derogatory (Sanders v. Teape & Swan, 51 L.T. 263, have finally no more than a presumption implication that his sculptural creation, 1884; Olson v. Pederson, 206 Minn. 415, of damage due to the inaccessibility of with a particular view to its internal com288 N.W. 856,1939), we find plaintiffis this inadvertent captive's immediate viponents, was designed and executed not allegation on this count without merit cinity, and failing such evidentiary facts merely to suggest but to actually convey (citation omitted). we find that the standards for prelimimenace, whereto he exhibits extensive On the related charge of damages brought by plaintiff the standard for preliminary relief must first be addressed. Were it to be found for plaintiff that irreparable harm has indeed been inflicted upon his creation, and that adequate remedy at law should suffice in the form of money damages, in such event the court takes judicial notice in directing such claim to be made against the Village Board and the dog's master in tandem, since as in the question posed by the Merchant of Venice (I, iii, 122) 'Hath a dog money?' the answer must be that it does not. However, as regards the claim that the dog Spot, endowed with little more

nary relief have not been met and hold this point moot. Here we take judicial notice of counterclaims filed on behalf of defendant James B. seeking to have this court hold both plaintiff and the Village and other parties thereto liable for wilfully creating, installing and maintaining an attractive nuisance which by its very nature and freedom of access constitutes an allurement to trespass, thus enticing the dog into its present allegedly dangerous predicament. Here plaintiff demurs, the Village joining in his demurrer, offering in exhibit similar structures of which Cyclone Seven is one of a series occupy-

dated and annotated sketches, drawings, and notes made, revised, and witnessed in correspondence, demonstrating that at no time was the work, in any way or ways as a whole or in any component part or parts or combinations thereof including but not limited to sharp planes, spirals, and serrated steel limbs bearing distinct resemblances to teeth, ever in any manner conceived or carried out with intent of entrapment and consequent physical torment, but to the contrary that its creation was inspired and dictated in its entirety by wholly artistic considerations embracing its component parts in an aesthetic synergy wherein the sum of these

sharp planes, jagged edges and toothlike projections aforementioned stand as mere depictions and symbols being in the aggregate greater than the sum of the parts taken individually to serve the work as, here quoting the catalogue distributed at its unveiling, 'A testimony to man's indiminable [s/c] spirit.' We have in other words plaintiff claiming to act as an instrument of higher authority, namely 'art,' wherewith we may first cite its dictionary definition as '(1) Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter or counteract the work of nature.' Notwithstanding that Cyclone Seven clearly answers this description especially in its last emphasis, there remain certain fine distinctions posing some little difficulty for the average lay observer persuaded from habit and even education to regard sculptural art as beauty synonymous with truth in expressing harmony as visibly incarnate in the lineaments of Donatello's David, or as the very essence of the sublime manifest in the Milos Aphrodite, leaving him in the present instance quite unprepared to discriminate between sharp steel teeth as sharp steel teeth, and sharp steel teeth as artistic expressions of sharp steel teeth, obliging us for the purpose of this proceeding to confront the theory that in having become self-referential art is in itself theory without which it has no more substance than Sir Arthur Eddington's famous step 'on a swarm of flies,' here present in further exhibits by plaintiff drawn from prestigious art publications and highly esteemed critics in the lay press, where they make their livings, recommending his sculptural creation in terms of slope, tangent, acceleration, force, energy and similar abstract extravagancies serving only a corresponding self-referential confrontation of language with language and thereby, in reducing language itself to theory, rendering it a mere plaything, which exhibits the court finds frivolous. Having here in effect thrown the bathwater out with the baby, in the clear absence of any evidentiary facts to support defendants' countercharge 'dangerous nuisance,' we find it without merit.

• W ' ee next i turn to a related complaint contained in defendant James B.'s cross claim filed in rem Cyclone Seven charging plaintiff, the Village, 'and other parties and entities as their interests may appear' with erecting and maintaining a public nuisance in the form of 'an obstruction making use of passage inconvenient and unreasonably burden-

some upon the general public' (Fugate v. Carter, 151 Va. 108, 144 S.E. 483, 1928; Regester v. Lincoln Oil Ref. Co., 95 Ind. App. 425,183 N.E. 693, 1933). As specified in this complaint, Cyclone Seven stands 24 feet 8 inches high with an irregular base circumference of approximately 74 feet and weighs 24 tons, and in support of his allegation of public nuisance defendant cites a basic tenet of early English law defining such nuisance as that 'which obstructs or causes inconvenience or damage to the public in the exercise of rights common to all Her Majesty's subjects,' further citing such nuisance as that which 'injuriously affects the safety, health or morals of the public, or works some substantial annoyance, inconvenience or injury to the public' (Commonwealth v. South Covington & Cincinnati Street Railway Co., 181 Ky. 459, 463, 205 SW 581. 583, 6 A.L.R. 118, 1918). Depositions taken from selected Village residents and submitted in rem Cyclone Seven include: 'We'd used to be this nice peaceable town before this foreigner come in here putting u p this [expletive] piece of [obscenity] brings in every [expletive] kind of riffraff, even see some out of state plates'; 'Since that [expletive] thing went u p there I have to park my pickup way d o w n by Ott's and walk all hell and gone just for a hoagie'; 'Let's just see you try and catch a train where you can't hardly see nothing for the rain and sleet and you got to detour way round that heap of [obscenity] to the depot to get there': 'I just always used the men's room u p there to the depot but now there's times w h e n I don't hardly make it'; 'They want to throw away that kind of money I mean they'd have just better went and put us u p another [expletive] church.' Clearly from this and similar eloquent testimony certain members of the community have been subjected to annoyance and serious inconvenience in the pursuit of private errands of some urgency; however recalling to mind that vain and desperate effort to prevent construction of a subway kiosk in Cambridge, Massachusetts, enshrined decades ago in the news headline 'PRESIDENT LOWELL FIGHTS ERECTION IN HARVARD SQUARE,' by definition the interests of the general public must not be confused with that of one or even several individuals (People v. Brooklyn & Queens Transit Corp., 258 App.Div. 753, 15 N.Y.S.2d 295,1939, affirmed 283 N.Y. 484, 28 N.E.2d 925, 1940); furthermore the obstruction is not so substantial as to preclude access (Holland v. Grant County, 208 Or. 50, 298 P.2d 832, 1956;

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Ayers v. Stidham, 260 Ala. 390, 71 So.2d 95, 1954), and in finding the former freedom of access to have been provided by mere default where no delineated path or thoroughfare was ever ordained or even contemplated this claim is denied. On a lesser count charging private nuisance, H. R. Suggs Jr., joins himself to this proceeding via intervention naming all parties thereto in his complaint on grounds of harboring a dog 'which makes the night hideous with its howls' w h i c h the court severs from this action nonetheless taking judicial notice of intervener's right inseparable from ownership of the property bordering directly thereupon, to its undisturbed enjoyment thereof (Restatement of the Law, Second, Torts 2d, 822c), and remands to trial. Similarly, whereas none of the parties to this action has sought relief on behalf of the well-being and indeed survival of the sculpture's unwilling resident, and whereas a life support system of sorts has been devised pro tem thereto, this matter is not at issue before the court, which nonetheless, taking judicial notice thereof should it arise in subsequent litigation, leaves it for adjudication to the courts of this local jurisdiction. We have n o w cleared away the brambles and may proceed to the main action as set forth in plaintiff's petition for a preliminary injunction seeking to hold inviolable the artistic and actual integrity of his sculptural creation Cyclone Seven in situ against assault, invasion, alteration, or destruction or removal or any act posing irreparable harm by any person or persons or agencies thereof under any authority or no authority assembled for such purpose or purposes for any reason or for none, under threat of recovery for damages consonant with but not limited to its original costs. While proof of ownership is not at issue in this proceeding, parties agree that these costs, including those incident to its installation, in the neighborhood of fourteen million dollars, were borne by contributions from various private patrons and underwritten by such corporate entities as Martin Oil, Incidental Oil, Bush AFG Corp., Anco Steel, Norfolk & Pee Dee Railroad, Frito-Cola Bottling Co., and the Tobacco Council, further supported with cooperation from the National Arts Endowment and both state and regional Arts Councils. The site, theretofore a weed-infested rubblestrewn area serving for casual parking of vehicles and as an occasional d u m p ing ground by day and trysting place by night, was donated under arrangements worked out between its proprietor Mill-

er Feed Co. and the Village in consideration of taxes unpaid and accrued thereon over the preceding thirty-eight years. In re the selection of this specific site plaintiff exhibits drawings, photographs, notes and other pertinent materials accompanying his original applications to and discussions with the interested parties aforementioned singling out the said site as 'epitomizing that unique American environment of moral torpor and spiritual vacuity' requisite to his artistic enterprise, together with correspondence validating his intentions and applauding their results. Here we refer to plaintiff's exhibits drawn from contemporary accounts in the press of ceremonies inaugurating the installation of Cyclone Seven wherein it was envisioned as a compelling tourist attraction though not, in the light of current events, for the reasons it enjoys today. Quoted therein, plaintiff cites, among numerous contemporary expressions of local exuberance, comments by then presiding Village Board member J. Harret Ruth at the ribbon cutting and reception held at nearby Mel's Kandy Kitchen with glowing photographic coverage, quoting therefrom 'the time, the place and the dedication of all you assembled here from far and wide, the common people and captains of industry and the arts rubbing elbows in tribute to the patriotic ideals rising right here before our eyes in this great work of sculptural art.' Responding to plaintiff's exhibits on this count, those of de fendant appear drawn well after the fact u p to and including the pres ent day and provoked (here the court infers) by the prevail ing emotional climate expressed in, and elicited by, the print and television media, a p p e n d i n g thereto recently published statements by former Village official J. Harret Ruth in his current pursuit of a seat on the federal judiciary referring to the sculptural work at the center of this action as 'a rusting travesty of our great nation's vision of itself' and while we may pause to marvel at his adroitness in ascertaining the direction of the parade before leaping in front to lead it we dismiss this and supporting testimony supra as contradictory and frivolous, and find plaintiff's exhibits in evidence persuasive.

Another count in plaintiff's action naming defendants both within and beyond this jurisdiction seeks remedy for defamation and consequent incalculable damage to his career and earning power derived therefrom (Reiman v. Pacific Development Soc., 132 Or. 82, 284 P. 575, 1930; Brauer v. Globe Newspaper Co., 351 Mass. 53, 217 N.E.2d 736, 1966). It is undisputed that plaintiff and his work, as here represented by the steel sculpture Cyclone Seven, have been held u p to public ridicule both locally and, given the wide ranging magic of the media, throughout the land, as witnessed in a cartoon published in the South Georgia Pilot crudely depicting a small dog pinioned under a junk heap comprising old bedsprings, chamber pots, and other household debris, and from the Arkansas Family Visitor an editorial denouncing plaintiff's country of origin as prominent in the Soviet bloc, thereby distinctly implying his mission among us to be one of atheistic subversion of our moral values as a Christian nation,

whereas materials readily available elsewhere show plaintiff to have departed his birthplace at age three with his family who were in fact fleeing the then newly installed Communist regime. We take judicial notice of this exhibit as defamatory communication and libellous per se, tending 'to lower him in the estimation of the community or to deter third persons from associating or dealing with him' (Restatement of the Law, Second, Torts 2d, 559), but it remains for plaintiff to seek relief in the courts of those jurisdictions.

E(0 03 X Similarly, where plaintiff alleges defamation in this and far wider jurisdictions through radio and television broadcast we are plunged still deeper into the morass of legal distinctions embracing libel and slander that have plagued the common law since the turn of the seventeenth century. As slander was gradually wrested from the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts through tort actions seeking redress for temporal damage rather than spiritual offense, slander became actionable only with proof or the reasonable assumption of special damage of a pecuniary character. Throughout, slander retained its identity as spoken defamation, while with the rise of the printing press it became libel in the written or printed word, a distinction afflicting our own time in radio and television broadcasting wherein defamation has been held as libel if read from a script by the broadcaster (Hartmann v. Winchell, 296 N.Y. 296, N.E.2d 30, 1947; Hryhorijiv v. Winchell, 1943, 180 Misc. 574, 45 N.Y.S.2d 31, affirmed, 267 AppDiv. 817, 47 N.Y.S.2d 102, 1944) but as slander if it is not. But see Restatement of the Law, Second, Torts 2d, showing libel as 'broadcasting of defamatory matter by means of radio or television, whether or not it is read from a manuscript' (#568A). Along this tortuous route, our only landmark in this proceeding is the aforementioned proof or reasonable assumption of special damage of a pecuniary character and, plaintiff failing in these provisions, this remedy is denied.

m reaching these conclusions, the court acts from the conviction that risk of ridicule, of attracting defamatory attentions from his colleagues and even raucous demonstrations by an outraged public have ever been and remain the foreseeable lot of the serious artist, recalling among the most egregious examples Ruskin accusing Whistler of throwing a paint pot in the public's face, the initial scorn showered upon the Impressionists and, once they were digested, upon the Cubists, the derision greeting Bizet's musical innovations credited with bringing about his death of a broken heart, the public riots occasioned by the first performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and from the day Aristophanes labeled Euripides 'a maker of ragamuffin mannequins' the avalanche of disdain heaped upon writers: the press sending the author of Ode on a Grecian Urn 'back to plasters, pills, and ointment boxes,' finding Ibsen's Ghosts

'a loathsome sore unbandaged, a dirty act done publicly' and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina 'sentimental rubbish,' and in our own land the contempt accorded each succeeding work of Herman Melville, culminating in Moby Dick as 'a huge dose of hyperbolical slang, m a u d l i n sentimentalism and tragic-comic bubble and squeak,' and since Melville's time upon writers too numerous to mention. All this must most arguably in deed and intent affect the sales of their books and the reputations whereon rest their hopes of advances and future royalties, yet to the court's knowledge none of this opprobrium however enviously and maliciously conceived and however stupid, careless, and ill informed in its publication has ever yet proved grounds for a successful action resulting in recovery from the marplot. In short, the artist is fair game and his cause is turmoil. To echo the words of Horace, Pictoribus atque poetis quidlihet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas, in this daring invention the artist comes among us not as the bearer of idees regues embracing art as decoration or of the comfort of churchly beliefs enshrined in greeting card sentiments but rather in the aesthetic equivalent of one who comes on earth 'not to send peace, but a sword.' The foregoing notwithstanding, before finding for plaintiff on the main action before the court set forth in his motion for a preliminary injunction barring interference of any sort by any means by any party or parties with the sculptural creation Cyclone Seven the court is compelled to address whether, following such a deliberate invasion for whatever purpose however merciful in intent, the work can be restored to its original look in keeping with the artist's unique talents and accomplishment or will suffer irreparable harm therefrom. Bowing to the familiar adage Cuilibet in arte sua perito est credendum, we hold the latter result to be an inevitable consequence of such invasion and such subsequent attempt at reconstitution at the h a n d s of those assembled for such purposes in the form of members of the local Fire Department, whose training and talents such as they may be must be found to lie elsewhere, m u c h in the manner of that obituary u p o n our finest poet of the century wherein one of his purest lines was reconstituted as 'I do not think they will sing to me' by a journalist trained to eliminate on sight the superfluous 'that.' For the reasons set out above, summary judgment is granted to plaintiff as to preliminary injunction, PAR

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Jack Becker: One morning the phone rang at the PAR office. It was Jeanne-Claude, responding to the letter we had sent to her and Christo requesting suggestions for this section. Sounding harriedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the artists were between tripsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;she said she hadn't had time to read back issues of PAR and pick her favorite piece. I said, "No, it can be anything you've read, anywhere." She told me that she and Christo get many letters from complete strangers. They had just received a particularly wonderful one and would be glad to fax that. 34

"What do you like about it?" I asked. "Just read it," she said.

March 16, 2006 Hey you Guys: Hope you Guys are creating beautiful art together and feeling good, h a p p y and healthy. Forgive me for calling you, "hey you Guys." I do it with love and m u c h respect. You will always be my Guys since I yelled it out to you in Central Park. I am writing to let you k n o w s o m e t h i n g that I did not even w a n t to tell my wife. It took me more than a year before I told her; because she helps m e print m y letters; so I had to let her know. Now, she probably thinks that I am crazy. It was like I had a mystical m o m e n t , a m e t a p h y s i c a l e x p e r i e n c e or if I was in the twilight zone. It was one cold winter day w h e n I w o k e u p at 3:30 A.M. to go to Central Park to catch the sunrise with the Gates. I told you that I h a d s t o p p e d in Harlem to p u r c h a s e cameras. It was so early and I did not realize that the s u n w o u l d not rise until m u c h later. I stayed in my car freezing looking into t h e park a n d at times j u m p ing out to see how the Gates swirled w i t h t h e w i n d . I tried to get a p i c t u r e at a certain m o m e n t and I was never able to c a p t u r e the same image twice. I w a s waiting in m y car until 6:00 A.M. I looked out and I see t h e Gates w a v i n g at me, like inviting m e to come into the park. I laughed and kept on looking and t h e m o r e I looked, t h e more they w a v e d at me. I went into the park to greet my w e l c o m i n g committee; all this time the Gates kept on their provocative m o v e m e n t s like flirting w i t h me. As I w a s walking in and s n a p p i n g pictures the Gates were swirling and dancing. T h e y were so beautiful and I am turning, turning, trying to catch all these different m o v i n g images. I am climbing rocks, r u n n i n g to different positions and the Gates kept on s h o w i n g off for me. They were telling m e "look over here"; I looked and s n a p p e d s o m e m o r e pictures and then another one w o u l d tell m e "look over h e r e " that kept going o n until I was exhausted. I was there for h o u r s and I w a s freezing, m y fingers could not press the camera's switch any longer. I finally told the Gates "I can't play a n y m o r e " and all of a s u d d e n the Gates s t o p p e d moving like if they were sad. I said "o.k. I will play for a little longer." Then, they started to d a n c e again. While w e w e r e playing at o n e point I fell d o w n and I could not get u p right away. Two ladies c a m e by and asked m e if I was o.k. I said "yes, I am enjoving t h e view from the g r o u n d . " We told each other h o w magnificent the Gates were. They told m e that they h a d c o m e from Boston a n d we parted goodbyes. I told the Gates once more that I was leaving. T h e Gates m a d e s o m e loud scary noises. They began to snap and tried to w h i p me. I said " d o n ' t be angry" "I will c o m e back later on." They calmed d o w n and I am walking out of t h e park e x h a u s t e d . I saw a m a n coming into the park with his dog; I thought to myself " h o w lucky this m a n is to h a v e this artwork in his backyard." I asked the m a n " h o w do you like t h e Gates?" I still feel very emotional about the beautiful experience that I just had w i t h t h e Gates. I could not believe my ears w h e n he r e s p o n d e d : "it does not m a k e any sense." I was shocked and I did not say a n o t h e r word. I w a l k e d out of the park, t h i n k i n g to myself that he must be crazy. T h e n . I thought that this m a n was not the one w h o w a s playing and talking to the Gates, like I did. That w a s m y personal experience. I felt fortunate to experience such beautiful emotions w i t h t h e Gates w h i l e others took t h e m for granted. I guess that is the art of your Art. T h a n k you for my m e m o r a b l e m o m e n t . Love you guys.

P.S. I cannot believe that I am writing to you again. I am not the kind of person that is easily fascinated with anyone or anything.

^J/ie (Worship

of l A r i

N o t e s on m e N ew G o J TOM WOLFE

When we contacted New-Journalist-turned-novelist Tom Wolfe, known for his acerbic essays on what he calls the "art village," we were secretly hoping that he might live up to his reputation for healthy self-regard and recommend one of his own pieces. We were not disappointed. "With a mighty effort," he wrote, "I am going to take the heavy yoke of modesty off my shoulders and recommend an article Tom Wolfe wrote for Harper's in October 1984. " Published during the Tilted Arc controversy (Richard Serra's sculpture was still in place), "The Worship of Art" crystallizes the discontent that led to new ideas about art's public role in the next decade. This excerpt is from the second half of the article.

Q t is precisely in this areaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;public sculptureâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that the religion of art currently makes its richest contribution to the h u m a n comedy. A h u n d r e d years ago there was no confusion about the purpose of public sculpture. It glorified the ideals or t r i u m p h s of an entire community by the presentation of familiar figures or symbols, or alternatively, it glorified the person or group w h o paid for it. The city w h e r e I grew up, Richmond, Virginia, was the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War. After the war, Robert E. Lee ascended to the status of a saint in the South, and above all in Richmond. In 1888, a six-storyhigh statue of Lee on his horse was commissioned. In 1890, w h e n it arrived by boat u p the James River, the entire city turned out and went d o w n to the harbor. The men of Richmond took off their seersucker jackets and rolled u p their sleeves and, by sheer manpower, hauled the prodigious figures of Lee and his horse Traveller u p a two-mile slope to the crest of M o n u m e n t Avenue, where it n o w rests. Then they stepped back and cheered and wept. Such was the nature of public sculpture a century ago.

Other public sculpture, as I say, was created simply for the glory of whoever paid for the building it stood in front of. My favorite example is the statue of James B u c h a n a n Duke of the American Tobacco C o m p a n y that stands in the m a i n quadrangle of the Duke University c a m p u s . He's leaning debonairly on his walking stick and has a great r o u n d belly and a jolly look on his face and a cigar in his left h a n d . T h e statue just comes right out and says: "He m a d e a lot of money in tobacco, he gave you this place, he loved smoking, a n d here he is!" That, too, was the nature of public s c u l p t u r e u p until World War II. Shortly before the war, the Rockefeller family erected a m o n u m e n t to itself k n o w n as Rockefeller Center, a great building c o m p l e x featuring two major pieces of sculpture (and m a n y smaller sculptures and bas-reliefs). One, at the skating rink, is a gilt statue of Prometheus, rampant, by Paul Manship. T h e other, on Fifth Avenue, is Lee Lawrie's highly stylized rendition of Atlas supporting the globe. T h e use of mythological imagery was typical of public sculpture at the time, and the local meaning was clear enough: the Rockefellers and American business were as strong as Atlas and P r o m e t h e a n in their daring. But what did the Rockefellers commission in the way of public sculpture after World War II? The Rockefellers' N u m b e r O n e Chase M a n h a t t a n Plaza w a s the first glass skyscraper on Wall Street. Out front, on a bare Bauhausstyle apron, the so-called plaza, was installed a sculpture by Jean Dubuffet. It is m a d e of concrete and appears to be four toadstools fused into a gelatinous mass with black lines r u n n i n g u p the sides. T h e title is Group of Four Trees. Not even Group of Four Rockefellers. After all, there were four at the time: David, John D. Ill, Nelson, and Laurance. But the piece has absolutely nothing to say about the glory or even the existence of the Rockefellers, Wall Street, Chase M a n h a t t a n Bank, American business, or the building it stands in front of. Instead, it proclaims the glory of contemporary art. It fulfills the n e w p u r p o s e of public sculpture, w h i c h is the legitimation of wealth through the n e w religion of the educated classes. Six years after N u m b e r One Chase Manhattan Plaza w a s built, the Marine Midland Bank building went u p a block away. It is another glass skyscraper with a mean little Bauhaus-style apron out front, and on this apron was placed a red cube resting on one point by Isamu Noguchi. Through the cube (a rhombo-

hedron, strictly speaking) runs a cylindrical hole. One day I looked through that hole, expecting at the very least that my vision would be led toward the board room, where a man wearing a hard-worsted suit, and with thinning, combed-back hair, would be standing, his forefinger raised, thundering about broker loan rates. Instead what I saw was a w o m a n who appeared to be part of the stenographic pool probing the auditory meatus of her left ear with a Q-Tip. So what is it, this red cube by Noguchi? Why, nothing more than homage to contemporary art, the new form of praying in public. In 1940, the same sculptor, Noguchi, completed a ten-ton stainless steel bas-relief for the main entrance of Rockefeller Center's Associated Press building. It shows five heroic figures using the tools of the wire-service employee: the Teletype, the wire-photo machine, the telephone, the camera, and the pad and pencil. It is entitled News. Noguchi's sculpture in front of the Marine Midland building is entitled Rhombohedron. Even a title suggesting that it had anything to do with American banking would have been a gauche intrusion u p o n a piece of corporate piety.

v—' Vx> doubt some corporations find it convenient not to have to express what is on their minds, nor to have to make any claims about being Promethean or Atlaslike or noble or even helpful in any way. How m u c h easier it is, surely, to make a devout gesture and install a solemn art icon by Jean Dubuffet or Isamu Noguchi or Henry Moore. Noguchi's solid geometries, lumps, and extruded squiggles, and Moore's hard boluses with holes in them, have become the very emblems of corporate devoutness. This type of abstract public sculpture is known within the architectural profession, sotto voce, as the Turd in the Plaza school. The term was coined by James Wines, w h o said, "I don't care if they want to put up these boring glass boxes, but why do they always deposit that little turd in the plaza when they leave?" We are long since past the age w h e n autocrats m a d e aesthetic decisions based on what they wanted to see in public. Today corporations, no less than individuals, turn to the clerisy, saying, in effect, "Please give us whatever we should have to certify the devoutness of our dedication to art." If people want to place Turds in the Plaza as a form of religious offering or prayer, and they own the plazas, there

isn't m u c h anybody else can do about it. But what h a p p e n s w h e n they use public money, tax money, to do the same thing on plazas owned by the public? At that point you're in for a glorious farce. The fun began with a competition for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial. In 1955 Congress created a commission, which called in a jury composed of art curates, h e a d e d by an orthodox Bauhaus-style architect n a m e d Pietro Belluschi. By 1955 this seemed natural enough. In fact, it was a novel step, and an indication of the emerging power of the art clerisy. In the case of the Lincoln Memorial, completed in 1922, Congress appointed a commission, and the commission solicited entries from only two men, Henry Bacon and John Russell Pope, both classicists, and chose Bacon. To make sure that the Jefferson Memorial, completed in 1947, w o u l d match the Lincoln Memorial, another congressional commission chose Pope. In the case of the Roosevelt memorial—a project initiated just eight years after the completion of the Jefferson Memorial— neither Congress nor the public could figure out what hit them. As soon as the idea of building a memorial was a n n o u n c e d , every American w h o had lived through the Depression or World War II could envision Roosevelt's prognathous jaw and his grin with more teeth than a p o s s u m and his cigarette holder cocked u p at a forty-five-degree angle. So what did they get? T h e jury selected a design by a devout modernist sculptor n a m e d Norman Hoberman: eight rectangular w h i t e concrete slabs— some of them as high as 200 feet. That was it: homage not to Franklin Roosevelt but to—of course!—Art. The Roosevelt family and Congress were n o n p l u s s e d at first and, soon enough, furious. T h e press named the slabs Instant Stonehenge. Congress asked to see the designs of the other five finalists. But there was nothing to choose from. All five designs were abstract. To this day no Roosevelt memorial has been built, even though the project remains officially alive. This opera bouffe has been repeated with stunning regularity ever since. Our own period has been especially rich, thanks in no small part to the General Services Administration's Art-in-Architecture program and the Veterans Administration's Art in Public Places program, u n d e r w h i c h the federal government in effect gives the art clerisy millions of tax dollars for the creation of public sculpture. In 1976, the city of Hartford decided to reinforce its reputation as the Ath-

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ens of lower central m i d w e s t e r n New England by having an important piece of sculpture installed d o w n t o w n . It followed what is by n o w the usual procedure, w h i c h is to turn the choice over to a panel of "experts" in the field—i.e., the clerisy, in this case, six curators, critics, a n d academicians, three of t h e m chosen by the National E n d o w m e n t for the Arts, w h i c h put u p half the money. So one day in 1978 a man n a m e d Carl Andre arrived in Hartford with thirtysix rocks. Not carved stones, not even polished boluses of the Henry Moore sort—rocks. He put t h e m on the ground in a triangle, like bowling pins. T h e n he presented the city council with a bill for $87,000. N o n p l u s s e d and, soon enough, furious, the citizenry hooted and jeered and called the city council members imbeciles w h i l e the council members alternately hit the sides of their heads with their h a n d s and m a d e imaginary snowballs. Nevertheless, they approved payment, and the rocks—entitled Stone Field [pictured below]—are still there. One day in 1981, the Civil Service workers in the n e w Javits Federal Building in M a n h a t t a n went outside to the little plaza in front of the building at lunchtime to do the usual, w h i c h was to have their tuna puffs and diet Shastas, and there, r u n n i n g through the m i d d l e of it,

was a wall of black steel twelve feet high and half a city block long. N o n p l u s s e d and, soon enough, furious, 1,300 of t h e m drew u p a petition asking the GSA to remove it, only to be informed that this was, in fact, a major work of art, entitled Tilted Arc, by a f a m o u s American sculptor named Richard Serra. Serra did not h e l p things measurably by explaining that he was "redefining the s p a c e " for the poor Civil Service lifers and helping to w e a n t h e m away from the false values "created by advertising and corporations." Was it his fault if "it offends people to have their p r e c o n c e p t i o n s of reality changed"? This seventy-threeton gesture of homage to c o n t e m p o r a r y art remains in place.

he public sees nothing, absolutely nothing, in these stone fields, tilted arcs, and Instant Stonehenges, because it w a s never meant to. T h e public is looking at the arcana of the n e w religion of t h e educated classes. At this point one might well ask w h a t the clerisy itself sees in them, a question that w o u l d p l u n g e us into doctrines as abstruse as any that engaged the medieval Scholastics. Andre's Stone Field, for example, was created to illustrate three devout theories concern-

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ing the n a t u r e of sculpture. One, a sculpture s h o u l d not be placed u p o n that bourgeois device, the pedestal, w h i c h seeks to elevate it above the people. (Therefore, the rocks are on the ground.) Two. a s c u l p t u r e s h o u l d "express its gravity." (And what expresses gravity better t h a n rocks lying on the ground?) Three, a s c u l p t u r e s h o u l d not be that piece of bourgeois pretentiousness, the "picture in the air" (such as the statues of Lee and Duke); it s h o u l d force the viewer to c o n f r o n t its "object-ness." (You want object-ness? Take a look at a plain rock! Take a look at thirty-six rocks!)

If a work of art troubles

if you detest it, it s probably great.

Public bafflement or opposition is taken as e v i d e n c e of an object's spiritual w o r t h i n e s s . It m e a n s that t h e public's " p r e c o n c e p t i o n s of reality" have been c h a n g e d , to use Serra's words. W h e n George S u g a r m a n ' s s c u l p t u r e for the plaza of t h e n e w federal c o u r t h o u s e in Baltimore was protested by both the building's e m p l o y e e s and the judges, S u g a r m a n said: "Isn't controversy part of

what m o d e r n art is all about?" These are devout incantations of the Turbulence Theorem, which has been an article of faith within the clerisy for the past forty years. It was originally enunciated by the critic Clement Greenberg, who said that all great contemporary art "looks ugly at first." It was expanded u p o n by the art historian Leo Steinberg, w h o said that the great artists cause us "to abandon our most cherished values." In short, if a work of art troubles you, it's probably good; if you detest it, it's probably great. In such a situation, naturally you need expert counsel: i.e., the clerisy. The notion of "the art expert" is now widely accepted. T h e curators of programs such as Art-in-Architecture and Art in Public Places are c o n t e m p t u o u s of the idea that politicians, civic leaders, or any other representative of the public—much less the people themselves—should determine what sculpture is installed in public. T h e director of the Art-in-Architecture program, Donald Thalacker, once said: "You go to a medical expert for medical advice; you go to a legal expert for advice about the law. . . . Yet w h e n it comes to art, it seems they want the local gas station attendant in on things." This is a lovely piece of nonsense—as anyone w h o sought to devise a licensing examination for an art expert or, for that matter, an artist, would soon discover. An "art expert" is merely someone w h o understands and believes in the tastes and val-

ues of the tiny art village of New York. The public is n o n p l u s s e d and, soon enough, becomes f u r i o u s — a n d also uneasy. After all, if u n d e r s t a n d i n g such arcana is the hallmark of the educated classes today, and you find yourself absolutely baffled, what does that say about your level of cultivation? Since 1975, attendance at m u s e u m s of art in the United States has risen from 42 million to 60 million people per year. Why? In 1980 the Hirshhorn M u s e u m did a survey of people w h o came to the m u s e u m over a seven-month period. I find the results fascinating. Thirty-six percent said they had come to the m u s e u m to learn about contemporary art. Thirty-two percent said they had come to learn about a particular contemporary artist. Thirteen percent came on tours. Only 15 percent said they were there for what was once the conventional goal of museumgoers: to enjoy the pictures and sculptures. The conventional goal of m u s e u m g o e r s today is something quite different. Today they are there to learn—and to see the light. At the Hirshhorn, the people w h o are interviewed in the survey said such things as: "I know this is great art, and n o w I feel so unintelligent." And: "After coming to this m u s e u m , I n o w feel so m u c h better about art and so m u c h worse about me."

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TRAUMA, HEALING, THE THERAPEUTIC MONUMENT KIRK S A V A G E The legacy of September 11, 2001 is as big a problem for artists as it is for politicians. Representing an event so supercharged with grief and passion is asking for trouble, and public commemoration of the dead is the most fraught task of all. Daniel J. Sherman, director of the Center for 20th-century Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, recommended "Trauma, Healing, and the Therapeutic Monument" as a clear-sighted take on the problem in the context of a new, ambivalent type of American monument: one that equates victimhood with heroism. Our excerpt is the last four pages of Kirk Savage's essay, which appeared in Terror, C u l t u r e , Politics: R e t h i n k i n g 9/11 (Indiana University Press, 2006), edited by Daniel /. Sherman and Terry Nardin.

I 41

ALLAN K n

I h e V i e t n a m Veterans M e m o r i a l h a s s h a p e d not o n l y A m e r i c a n m e m o r y of t h e w a r in V i e t n a m , b u t m o r e g e n e r a l p a t t e r n s of c o m m e m o r a t i o n ever s i n c e . Its s u c c e s s h a s r e l e g i t i m a t e d t h e p u b l i c m o n u m e n t by c r e a t i n g a p o w e r f u l m o d el for h o w m o n u m e n t s h e l p t r a u m a t i z e d g r o u p s heal. It h a s e s t a b l i s h e d a d e s i g n s t a n d a r d for t h e t h e r a p e u t i c m o n u m e n t , in w h i c h t h e m o n u m e n t is n o t a fixed m o r a l text or i m a g e b u t r a t h e r a flexible, m u l t i f a c e t e d s p a c e in w h i c h "to e v o k e feelings a n d create m e m o r a b l e e x p e r i e n c e s " (to q u o t e t h e m i s s i o n s t a t e m e n t for t h e O k l a h o m a City N a t i o n a l M e m o rial). T h e focal p o i n t for t h e s e feelings a n d e x p e r i e n c e s is a l m o s t i n v a r i a b l y a list of t h e n a m e s of t h o s e lostâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;as if t h e n a m e s s o m e h o w s p e a k for t h e m s e l v e s , as if in that o n e fixed set of u n a r g u a b l e h u m a n losses t h e m o n u m e n t finds its m o r a l c e n t e r a n d its justification. Yet t h e n a m e s a l o n e c a n n o t d o t h i s didactic work. Why these names? W h y n o t n a m e s of o t h e r s w h o h a v e d i e d tragically? If w e look at h o w t h e t h e r a p e u t i c

m o d e l h a s b e e n a p p l i e d i n t h e case of t h e O k l a h o m a City National M e m o r i a l — t h e m o s t direct p r e c e d e n t for the c o m m e m o r a t i o n of 9 / 1 1 — w e see that t h e p r o b l e m of self-justification i n h e r e n t in t h e t h e r a p e u t i c m o n u m e n t b e c o m e s i n c r e a s i n g l y a c u t e as w e m o v e f u r t h e r a w a y f r o m t h e w a r m e m o r i a l prototype. For t h e V i e t n a m Veterans M e m o r i a l justifies its e x i s t e n c e in part o n t h e a s s u m p tion that t h e d e a d exercised s o m e meas u r e of a g e n c y — t h a t t h e y "gave" their lives in t h e service of t h e U.S. a r m e d forces. But this a s s u m p t i o n d i s a p p e a r s altogether for t h e citizen v i c t i m s of an u n e x p e c t e d terrorist attack. O n e c o u l d

do, a n d d y i n g w i t h o u t even the opport u n i t y to c h o o s e or to act. "I believe w e heal better w h e n w e accept the t r u t h , " W h i c h e r w r o t e later. " T h i s w a s n o t h i n g m o r e t h a n a d a m n waste of lives. All t h e m o r e w o r t h y of our heartbreak, a n d the families, all the m o r e w o r t h y of our sympathy." T h e very a b s e n c e of c o n s c i o u s p u r p o s e to their d e a t h s only intensified the t r a u m a , she suggests, a n d m a d e t h e suffering of family m e m b e r s a n d survivors even m o r e w o r t h y of recognition. W h i c h e r ' s o w n heroic effort to resist t h e comforting d i d a c t i c i s m of "sacrifice" for the n a t i o n a n d to tell t h e truth about h e r h u s b a n d ' s death exposes the core

THERAPEUTIC THE

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MONUMENTS

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THE "TRUTH"

argue w i t h t h e assertion of even partial agency f o r t h e A m e r i c a n soldiers i n Vietnam, especially s i n c e t h e draft w a s in force. But t h e U.S. military force i n V i e t n a m w a s not a c o n s c r i p t army, as is o f t e n m a i n t a i n e d . Most of t h e A m e r i c a n s w h o served a n d d i e d t h e r e w e r e e n l i s t e d m e n , not draftees. A n d even t h e d r a f t e e s k n o w i n g l y faced a choice: p o s s i b l e combat in Vietnam, p u n i s h m e n t at h o m e , or exile abroad. Not an easy c h o i c e b y a n y stretch of t h e i m a g i n a t i o n , but a c h o i c e n e v e r t h e l e s s . T h e m e n , w o m e n , a n d child r e n w h o s p e n t their d a y s at t h e M u r r a h Federal B u i l d i n g in O k l a h o m a City did n o t h a v e s u c h a choice; t h e y d i d not go to t h e b u i l d i n g e x p e c t i n g to face a lethal attack, m u c h less to fight it. T h e victims of T i m o t h y McVeigh's b o m b u n d e r w e n t a m o r e c o m p l e t e loss of agency, a m o r e absolute victimization. H o w e v e r , t h i s d i d not stop s o m e f r o m a p p l y i n g t h e r h e t o r i c of military sacrifice to t h e e v e n t . At t h e d e d i c a t i o n of t h e n a t i o n a l m o n u m e n t in O k l a h o m a City i n 2000, t h e n - P r e s i d e n t Clinton c o m p a r e d t h e site t o Valley Forge a n d Gettysburg, all places "scarred by freed o m ' s sacrifice." T h e rhetoric b r o u g h t an e l o q u e n t r e j o i n d e r from P a m W h i c h er, t h e w i d o w of a Secret Service agent w h o h a d died in the blast; for her t h e r e w a s a clear d i f f e r e n c e b e t w e e n d y i n g w h i l e d e f e n d i n g t h e life of t h e presid e n t , w h i c h h e r h u s b a n d w a s willing to

reality of that e x p e r i e n c e , h o w e v e r o n e u n d e r s t a n d s or a p p r e h e n d s it, does not a u t o m a t i c a l l y grant it a collective significance that e x p l a i n s w h y t h e extraordinary recognition of a p u b l i c m o n u m e n t is called for. To resolve this d i l e m m a , the therap e u t i c m o n u m e n t m u s t invent a n e w kind of m e a n i n g that e m b r a c e s both t h e reality of i n d i v i d u a l suffering a n d t h e collective significance of that suffering. T h e r e is n o reason, a priori, w h y s u c h m e a n i n g c o u l d not be articulated in any t r a u m a t i c situation, w h e t h e r it be a terrorist attack or sexual abuse. It is possible that t h e i m m e n s e c h a l l e n g e of m e m o -

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d i l e m m a of the t r a u m a t i c memorial. For t h e invocation of sacrifice a n d martyrd o m is a t i m e - h o n o r e d way of fixing t h e collective significance of violent death, a n d if that invocation is rejected, s o m e other e x p l a n a t i o n is n e e d e d . W h i c h e r is absolutely right that the lack of p u r p o s e m a k e s t h e O k l a h o m a City victims' d e a t h s even m o r e heartbreaking, but millions of other violent deaths are equally heartbreaking for the s a m e reason. T h r o u g h out history, structural i m b a l a n c e s of p o w e r h a v e left o n e group exposed to victimization by a n o t h e r (slaves to slav e o w n e r s , wives to h u s b a n d s , c h i l d r e n to fathers) w i t h death just as w a s t e f u l a n d t r a u m a just as intense as i n Oklah o m a City the day that a n o b o d y n a m e d McVeigh, for o n e fleeting m o m e n t , took control of t h e M u r r a h Building.

rializing t h e events of 9 / 1 1 m a y lead to a solution of this p r o b l e m . T h e e n o r m o u s c o n c e n t r a t i o n of t h o u g h t a n d energy on this project, from so m a n y quarters, augurs a w i l l i n g n e s s a n d desire t o m o v e b e y o n d past m o d e l s . In the m o r e i m m e d i a t e a f t e r m a t h of 9/11, past m o d e l s p r o v e d irresistible. Traditional d i d a c t i c i s m certainly resurfaced, especially in official observances. T h e term " h e r o " quickly c a m e into use, w i t h o b v i o u s justification, for all those "first r e s p o n d e r s " involved i n t h e resc u e o p e r a t i o n — e s p e c i a l l y those w h o lost their lives. But t h e term has b e e n s t r e t c h e d on occasion to e n c o m p a s s everyone w h o d i e d , t h u s conflating t h o s e w h o deliberately risked their lives w i t h those w h o w e r e u n w i l l i n g l y v i c t i m i z e d . At t h e first a n n i v e r s a r y of 9 / 1 1 at t h e World Trade Center site, t h e governor of N e w York, following i n Clinton's footsteps at O k l a h o m a City, read t h e Gettysburg A d d r e s s ; an official v i e w i n g f e n c e • f course I am not advocating a installed at t h e t i m e bore t h e n a m e s of r e t u r n to t h e traditional didacticism of all the dead d i s p l a y e d u n d e r t h e legthe p u b l i c m o n u m e n t . Nor am I arguing e n d , "Heroes of S e p t e m b e r 11." Besides that t h e r a p e u t i c m o n u m e n t s are u n j u s the appeal to heroism, the therapeutic tified. But t h e r a p e u t i c m o n u m e n t s are m o d e l refined at O k l a h o m a City also caught on t h e h o r n s of a d i l e m m a . T h e l o o m e d large. In t h e s u m m e r of 2002, traditional d i d a c t i c i s m that invokes nothe Families A d v i s o r y C o m m i t t e e (FAC) tions of self-sacrifice to a n o b l e c a u s e of t h e Lower M a n h a t t a n D e v e l o p m e n t d e n i e s t h e victim's real situation a n d Corporation (LMDC) p r o d u c e d a draft therefore violates t h e " t r u t h " of t h e m i s s i o n statement for t h e World Trade t r a u m a t i c experience. Yet h e w i n g to t h e Center m e m o r i a l that w a s closely m o d -

eled on the O k l a h o m a City prototype, with its stress on the priority of the victims, survivors, and their families. T h e draft actually repeated m u c h of the same language, calling, for example, for a memorial "that focuses on the victims and survivors" and for a "learning center" to help people " u n d e r s t a n d t h e senselessness of terrorism." Yet once the first anniversary of the event passed in the fall of 2002, the movement for a memorial took a n e w direction. While the high-profile design competition for rebuilding the World Trade Center site captured the headlines, the LMDC also sponsored a less

sion statement committee debated loaded terms such as "senseless," "sacrifice," and " h e r o " — n o n e of w h i c h , incidentally, appear in the final draft. They also deliberately rejected "establishing any hierarchies" and settled on a very brief statement that does not a p p e a r to give precedence to one group over another; gone is the explicit " f o c u s " on "victims and survivors," though recognition of the victims is the first of four goals articulated. T h e four goal statements m o v e clearly from the idea of loss to r e d e m p tion, from the injunction to r e m e m b e r the t h o u s a n d s of innocent people "murdered by terrorists" to the h o p e that the

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memorial will h e l p "reaffirm respect for life, strengthen our resolve to preserve freedom, and inspire an end to hatred, ignorance and intolerance." T h e a c c o m p a n y i n g program statement, also radically c o n d e n s e d , deals m u c h more explicitly w i t h the question of the event's collective significance t h a n did the far longer FAC draft. Of the eight guiding principles in the program statement, at least three deal directly with the question of meaning. These urge t h e m o n u m e n t to: "evoke the historical significance and w o r l d w i d e impact of September 11, 2001"; "inspire a n d engage people to learn more about t h e events and impact of September 11, 2001"; and "evolve over time." Neither this nor

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the mission statement tries to "fix" the m e a n i n g of the event; they do not even ask the m o n u m e n t to do so. Instead, the m o n u m e n t is s u p p o s e d to address the question of m e a n i n g in a way that enables a n s w e r s to "evolve." Moreover, the m o n u m e n t must do so in a setting "distinct from other m e m o r i a l structures like a m u s e u m or visitor center." T h e s e p r i n c i p l e s are certainly o p e n to m u l t i p l e i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s . S o m e might d e c i d e that t h e best way to create a mem o r i a l that " e v o l v e s " is to avoid the q u e s t i o n of m e a n i n g altogether, to create a " n e u t r a l " m e m o r i a l that asks visitors to generate their o w n " p e r s o n a l and p r i v a t e " i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s of the event. But a n o t h e r r e s p o n s e to these requirem e n t s w o u l d be to c o n f r o n t the question of m e a n i n g , not to fix it or i m p o s e it in the traditional d i d a c t i c m a n n e r but to g u i d e visitors to reflect on the problem in p a r t i c u l a r ways. M o n u m e n t s can f r a m e q u e s t i o n s rather t h a n a n s w e r s , still leaving room for u n d e r s t a n d i n g to evolve. Yet h o w can a m e m o r i a l enact the r e d e m p t i v e m o v e m e n t of t h e mission s t a t e m e n t , p r o c e e d i n g from t h e recognition of "tragic loss" to i n s p i r i n g "an end to hatred, ignorance a n d intoler-

ance," w i t h o u t actively guiding visitors emotionally and intellectually? A list of n a m e s alone certainly cannot: it can just as easily inspire hate and a desire for revenge. Indeed, the memory of 9/11 has been used by the political leadership of t h e U.S. to justify a relentless campaign of violence against real or potential security threats, a campaign that has no end even in theory. However just or unjust one believes these specific actions are, this campaign has the overall effect of reproducing the trauma of 9/11 in other lands: to leave loved ones dead, children o r p h a n e d , young men tortured, communities devastated. The redemptive message of the World Trade Center memorial mission statement, like the plea in the Oklahoma City statement to grasp the "senselessness" of violence, boils d o w n simply, in the end, to the hope that their trauma will not be revisited on others. A memorial that takes this hope seriously must w a d e into deeply political waters. Its significance must reverberate far beyond the "sacred g r o u n d " of the World Trade Center site and connect outward to the trauma of the innocent everywhere. For would-be designers there is no

road map. Architect Daniel Libeskind, the w i n n e r of the larger site-planning competition, envisaged leaving the slurry wall at the site exposed (the wall that held back t h e river water from flooding lower Manhattan) and making the memorial a pit seventy feet deep, an evocation of "Ground Zero." His proposal w o u l d have created a journey of descent and reascent similar to the one pioneered by Lin at the Vietnam Veterans f Memorial, yet the underlying question I of the memorial's m e a n i n g w o u l d have j remained submerged beneath a fixed, \ edifying image of resilience in the face \ of attack. T h e various local memorials j to 9/11 that have sprung u p all around j the country often go a step further in this 1 direction and refashion icons of the t w i n 1 towers or the Pentagon, sometimes using \ relics salvaged from the buildings' ruins. % The jury for the World Trade Center me4 morial avoided iconic solutions such as 1 these because their very fixity violated J the core principle of the project, w h i c h J was to reflect and encourage "an evolv' ing process of memory." T h e jury's final g choice, a design d u b b e d "Reflecting Ab| sence" w h i c h features two s u n k e n pools f in the tower footprints s u r r o u n d e d by I

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groves of trees, is relatively m i n i m a l i s t , neutral, a n d n o n d i r e c t i v e . More "maximalist" s o l u t i o n s that c a m e close t o w i n n i n g , s u c h as t h e " G a r d e n of Lights," were riskier b u t p o t e n t i a l l y m o r e i n n o v a tive. T h e " G a r d e n of Lights" w o u l d h a v e filled t h e t o w e r f o o t p r i n t s w i t h " p r a i r i e s " of w i l d f l o w e r s r e p l a n t e d e a c h year by a different g a r d e n e r c h o s e n from a r o u n d the w o r l d ; its design aesthetic o p e n l y defied t h e m o d e r n i s t grid of t h e towers. With t h e s e gestures, this entry w a s o n e of the few that actively tried to redirect the visitor's attention t o w a r d an e m b r a c e of life b e y o n d t h e e n c l o s e d w o r l d of t h e towers. A few blocks from t h e World Trade Center site sits the most recent disaster m o n u m e n t erected i n N e w York City. The m o n u m e n t to the Irish potato f a m i n e , designed by artist Brian Tolle, w a s d e d i cated in t h e s u m m e r of 2002 as t h e w o r k of clearing G r o u n d Zero a p p r o a c h e d its end. A p p r o a c h i n g from t h e d i r e c t i o n of the WTC, t h e visitor e n c o u n t e r s a gentle slope of fallow earth h o l d i n g the r u i n s of a cottage brought f rom Ireland, a little slice of the Irish c o u n t r y s i d e u n e x p e c t edly d r o p p e d into t h e c o n c r e t e sea of lower M a n h a t t a n . Passing t h r o u g h t h e

ruins of the house, w e emerge into a totally different e n v i r o n m e n t : a silver-gray wall w i t h long, thin horizontal bars of w o r d s that seem t o h a v e n o e n d — c o m m e n t s and statistics about h u n g e r not only from t h e case of the Irish f a m i n e but from m o r e recent times a n d places as well. T h e r e are n o lists of names, n o docu m e n t a t i o n to m e a s u r e the m a g n i t u d e of the catastrophe. T h e memorial does not focus o n the victims of this particular tragedy, w h o are long gone, their personal c o n n e c t i o n s to present generations n o w obviously attenuated. Instead the m e m o rial is all about the reverberations of the event across time a n d space. T h e event reverberates across t h e Irish landscape, in an a b a n d o n e d field a n d a c r u m b l i n g house; it reverberates in the m o n u m e n t ' s view of N e w York harbor, w h e r e so m a n y Irish immigrants c a m e t o flee their poverty; it reverberates in t h e w o r d s that link hunger to ongoing social injustice; it reverberate in the very city s u r r o u n d i n g the m o n u m e n t , w h e r e extremes of wealth a n d deprivation persist. T h e m o n u m e n t is at once a peaceful oasis in the m o n e y driven city a n d a challenge to it. PAR

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New-genre public art pioneer Suzanne Lacy has been pondering the impact of Allan Kaprow on her generation of feminist artists. "[He] gave us permission for framing life—domestic life, political life, relational life, and public life—as art," she writes in an essay-in-progress. "Success and Failure," reprinted from Lacy's anthology Mapp i n g t h e Terrain: N e w G e n r e P u b l i c Art (Bay Press, 1994), looks back to a time when Kaprow, though uneasy about doctrinaire art, forged an alliance with the very political educational theorist Herbert Kohl to change classroom life. Their success was ephemeral. But, as Lacy suggests, "by firmly establishing art as inquiry [Kaprow] made public practice possible—and by introducing the notion of imperfection. We did not have to, nor in fact could we, succeed completely in this most precarious of art practices."

I n t h e late sixties, an e d u c a t i o n a l exp e r i m e n t called Project O t h e r Ways took p l a c e u n d e r t h e w i n g of t h e Berkeley, California, U n i f i e d S c h o o l District. Educator Herbert Kohl a n d I w e r e its stewards, assisted by a Carnegie C o r p o r a t i o n grant. Its p u r p o s e w a s to bring t h e arts into a central role in t h e p u b l i c s c h o o l s ' c u r r i c u l a . To do this, t h e project acted as an agency w h i c h d r e w together school a d m i n i s t r a t o r s , t e a c h e r s , a n d their stud e n t s w i t h y o u n g poets, storytellers, sculptors, architects, photographers, happeners, and even athletes w h o saw their s p o r t as art. Participation was more informal t h a n strict; m e m b e r s h i p v a r i e d f r o m ind i v i d u a l s to t e a c h e r s a n d their classes (K t h r o u g h 12). S o m e a t t e n d e d o n l y w o r k s h o p s w h i l e o t h e r s w e r e c o m m i t t e d to s e m e s t e r projects. We w e r e located in a storefront not far from t h e Berkeley h i g h s c h o o l , w h i c h m a d e u s p l e a s a n t l y accessible to passersby, b u t m u c h of o u r w o r k e x t e n d e d out into t h e city's c l a s s r o o m s and the everyday environment.

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At the time, Berkeley, along with nearby Oakland and San Francisco, was the scene of massive social upheaval, and armed forces were everywhere. It is important to m e n t i o n this because our activities rarely addressed the conflict directly, yet they reflected its paranoias and p o w e r f u l energies, as well as the surge of Utopian fervor that fueled it. Most of our efforts, in fact, focused on learning staples such as reading, writing, math, and c o m m u n i t y studies, and w e believed that the arts could foster them. But no one could ignore the tension and the smell of tear gas, and our experiments sometimes a p p r o a c h e d the edges of social boundaries. For example, there was a sixth grade class in one of the Oakland schools whose kids were considered unteachable illiterates. I forget the official label but it was enough to sentence t h e m to permanent societal rejection. Their days in school (when they s h o w e d up) were largely a matter of disciplinary supervision, not education. Some of them came

to our storefront with their teacher one afternoon. We h a d just been given a n u m b e r of c h e a p Polaroid cameras and film, and I invited the kids to take a walk with me and snap pictures of anything they liked. On t h e way, they took pictures of each other making faces, of their s h a d o w s , of helicopters in t h e air, of army tanks and cops; but mostly, they seemed to prefer graffiti on the sidewalks and walls of buildings. I w o n d e r e d why, if they were illiterate, they were so interested in words, especially sexual ones. So I said let's take photos of the graffiti in men's and w o m e n ' s public toilets. T h e kids thought that was a great idea, especially if the girls could go into t h e men's toilet stalls and vice versa. We went a r o u n d t o w n to filling stations and motel restrooms and shot off dozens of film packs, most of w h i c h d i d n ' t come out. But of those that did, it w a s clear that the kids u n d e r s t o o d four-letter words and related descriptions a r o u n d certain drawings. Illiterate? Not quite. Kohl and I saw the germ of an idea

in w h a t had just h a p p e n e d . We covered the walls of our storefront offices w i t h large sheets of b r o w n w r a p p i n g paper, provided felt-tip pens, paints and brushes, staplers and rubber cement. We invited the kids back the following week and put on a table the p h o t o s they had taken. T h e y were asked to m a k e graffiti, using the photos a n d any d r a w i n g s they w a n t e d to make, like the graffiti they h a d seen on our tour. At first they w e r e hesitant and giggled, but w e said there w e r e n o rules and they w o u l d n ' t be p u n i s h e d for dirty w o r d s or drawings, or even for making a mess. Soon there w e r e photos all over the walls. Drawn and p a i n t e d lines circled and stabbed them, extending genitalia a n d the n a m e s of locals they obviously recognized. T h e s e names, like Huey (probably Black P a n t h e r Huey Newton, t h e n u n d e r arrest), Bobo (an area gang leader), a n d Cesar (Cesar Chavez, farmworkers labor leader) were painted in large letters. S o m e t i m e s o p p o sition n a m e s w o u l d be followed by verbs like " s u c k s " and other equivalents.

Their o w n n a m e s and images began to a p p e a r in t h e next days, often with the h e l p of our staff, occasionally by h e l p i n g one another. Later on, the kids w e r e encouraged to tell stories about w h a t they had d o n e and what they saw on other parts of the walls. T h e better writers were asked to print the stories at the a p p r o p r i a t e places. These were usually n o more t h a n two- or three-word labels (like m u c h public graffiti), rarely c o m p l e t e sentences. But after a week, a guarded e n t h u s i a s m replaced shyness a n d a core of active literacy began to emerge. Kohl heard that the school system's textbook depository was discarding o u t m o d e d Dick and Jane early reader books, and that w e could have as many as w e w a n t e d . T h e thought was to have our small group rewrite and reillustrate them. If any young people could possibly h a v e been interested in the primers' stereotyped narratives in those years of social challenge, they could only have been the sons and daughters of patently sexist a n d racist parents. But there d i d n ' t seem to be m a n y of t h e m willing to speak out in Berkeley then, and that w a s one of t h e reasons the city w a s getting rid of the books. Our a s s u m p t i o n w a s that the kids' sensitivity to these biases (the majority were black or Hispanic) w o u l d provide us the openings for frank discussion, and w o u l d m a k e attractive the prospect of w h o l e s a l e revision of the texts. We were right. Dick and Jane were transformed into monsters with wildly colored hair. Images were cut out and replaced by d r a w n ones. Pages were reordered to create time reversals. A n d the text became a parody of "Run, Spot, run!," as "Run, m a n , fuzz!" seemed s u d d e n l y more real. One of the kids w a s h e l p e d in typing the texts on the office typewriter, w h i l e others h a n d lettered the books. A small exhibit of the results was s h o w n to the school officials, w h o were impressed enough to consider reclassifying the students. Was the e x p e r i m e n t a success? It dep e n d s on our criteria. Conventionally, in our culture, s o m e t h i n g is either art or it's s o m e t h i n g else; either a p o e m or a telep h o n e call to a relative. But Project Other Ways was intent on merging the arts with things not considered art, namely training in reading, writing, math, and so on. Significantly, the innovative art m o v e m e n t s of the day provided the m o d e l s for our objectives. T h e Japanese Gutai, E n v i r o n m e n t s , H a p p e n i n g s , Nouveau Realisme, Fluxus, events, noise music, c h a n c e poetry, life theater, f o u n d actions, b o d y w o r k s , earthworks, concept

art, information artâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the list could go onâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;confronted publics and arts professionals with strange occurrences bearing little resemblance to the known arts. The identity problem these movements caused in arts circles (that is, what exactly were these new creatures, and how should we deal with them?) was nothing compared with the potential confusion we could sense lying a short distance away in the education community. We at Project Other Ways were privileged in this regard, by grant money and experience as artists, to play and change as we saw fit, where in the average classroom it would have been almost impossible. Educational philosophy and teacher training would have to be radically revised. We said so, and were under no illusions that the task would be easy.

Can experimental art anil experimental education get together for the common good? If the n e w arts were bewildering to m a n y within their own arts circles, they shared two conditions. One was that the borders between the arts and the rest of life were blurred. The other was that their makers wanted them to be still k n o w n as art. And in order to be considered art, they had to be acknowledged and discussed within the arts' institutional frameworks. So the artists saw to it that this connection with the machinery of validation was solidly maintained. Their work was widely promoted as art, in the form of photo documents, recordings, and descriptive texts, by galleries, new music and dance impresarios, collectors, and arts journals. Although I personally intended our educational experiment at the project to be art at the same time as it was a way to increase literacy, and some students and colleagues heard me say so, the work was never published or exhibited. Thus, by the rules of the game at the time, it failed to count as art. Today, twenty-five years later, the story is about to be printed in an art book. T h e art frame will descend u p o n it. Does it become art at last? A n d if so, is it good art? A complicating factor is that in my

own thoughts a n d writings about Happenings and their progeny in the sixties, I placed a strong e m p h a s i s on identity ambiguity: the artwork was to remain, as long as possible, unclear in its status. By this standard, the experiment at Project Other Ways was good art (up to now, to me at least), as long as I kept the story mere hearsay among friends. My guideline was simple: one s h o u l d n ' t rush too quickly to label life as art; it may d e a d e n the game. Has enough time elapsed to allow the story of the event to become useful gossip todayâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;useful because it could act as permission for others to leave straight art for the art/life game? Hard to answer. Or, instead, have I devalued the game by casting it in the cement of art history, that is, as nothing but art? Maybe. Being merely art, the potential influence it might have on public education, and on art itself, can be shelved indefinitely. As a safeguard against this possibility, s u p p o s e that right here I w i t h d r a w all art status from a past event that I once designated art. S u p p o s e that a consensus of art and education professionals in the nineties is willing to go along (and w h y not?). T h e n what we did in the sixties was an educational experiment quite separate from art. This maneuver, at least, w o u l d maintain for the art reader the necessary ambiguity of m e a n i n g I referred to, and w o u l d save the event from being limited by art and its special discourses. It could remain open to educational review. For t h e educator, therefore, w h o may not be concerned with art, a particular goal was achieved. A group of children was helped toward literacy and some degree of interest in learning. But was that an e x a m p l e of good education? Here, again, difficulties arise. Without some controls and measures, some ways of replicating the activity, what happened between us and a dozen kids in Berkeley can hardly be considered a textbook classic. Almost a n y o n e will seem to flower if u n u s u a l attention is paid to them. It's what h a p p e n s over the long term that matters. Rephrasing the question above to "What h a p p e n e d to the kids after they left us?" probably must be answered: "They returned to the way they were." A n d so, if sustained instruction and growth are necessary for lasting value, as I believe they are, the whole thing was an educational diversion. At best, they were entertained. Superficially, that's what art can do. Can experimental art and experimental education get together more substantively for the c o m m o n good? Perhaps, like

On the rare occasions when the arts are introduced on a professional level into the nation's schools; they arrive as bright spots.... They appear one day and are gone the next. most new art, such investigations may be, and should be, only on a laboratory, model-making level. This may seem u n d u l y skeptical, but over the years I have come to see that on the rare occasions w h e n the arts are introduced on a professional level into the nation's schools, they arrive as bright spots, dashes of salt, in an academic atmosphere normally devoid of the arts. They appear one day and are gone the next. Artists themselves tend to view their o w n fields as "something special" in a drab or afflicted world. They have shows, plays, concerts, poetry readings, each offered piously as a m o m e n t of joyful creativity. Except in professional schools of the arts serving adults, exhibiting artists usually don't teach in the public schools on a daily basis. So it is no surprise that they share with the schools the same cultural bias in w h i c h the arts are marginal to a central education. Real education goes on every day; art comes on holidays (holy days). Project Other Ways explicitly tried to correct this entertainment notion of the arts, by urging that they be taken seriously as core subjects of a normal school's program. It was h o p e d that, ultimately, the project could train and refer full-time teachers to the school system. But limited f u n d i n g , c o m b i n e d with exhaustion from the political upheavals in the Bay Area, e n d e d the experiment after about two years. To have had some basis for evaluating its effectiveness, in my view, w e w o u l d have n e e d e d at least ten years. Most artists, of course, are less keenly interested in ambiguity of identity and p u r p o s e than I am. O p e n - e n d e d n e s s , to me, is democratic and challenges the mind. To others, it is simply waffling and irresponsible. It d e p e n d s on what kind of art one is talking about. And on what segment of the public. W h e n art as a practice is intentionally blurred with the m u l t i t u d e of other identities and activities w e like to call life, it becomes subject to all the problems, conditions,

and limitations of those activities, as well as their u n i q u e f r e e d o m s (for instance, the f r e e d o m to do site-specific art w h i l e driving along a freeway to one's job, rather t h a n being constrained by the walls of a gallery; or the f r e e d o m to engage in e d u c a t i o n or c o m m u n i t y work as art). T h e m e a n s by w h i c h w e m e a s u r e success and failure in s u c h fleeting art must obviously shift from t h e aesthetics of the self-contained painting or sculpture, regardless of its symbolic reference to t h e world outside of it, to the ethics and practicalities of those social d o m a i n s it crosses into. A n d that ethics, representing a diversity of special interests as well as the deep ones of a culture, cannot easily be disentangled from the n a t u r e of the artwork. Success and failure b e c o m e provisional judgments, instantly subject (like the weather) to change. O n c e the artist is no longer the primary agent responsible for the artwork but must engage with others, s o m e t i m e s u n d e f i n e d a n d loosely organized like the school kids, sometimes highly defined like government or corporate structures, the artwork becomes less a " w o r k " t h a n a process of meaning-making interactions. O n c e art departs from traditional models and begins to merge into the everyday manifestations of society itself, artists not only cannot a s s u m e the authority of their "talent," they cannot claim that what takes place is valuable just because it is art. Indeed, in most cases they dare not say it is art at all. Serious public art in an America u n t u n e d to art culture may one day b e c o m e a vital presence in the forms and places most resembling ordinary living. T h e situation, then, would be truly experimental. T h e late artist Robert Filliou once said that the p u r p o s e of art was to reveal h o w m u c h more interesting life is. T h e task for contemporary experimental artists may well be to probe that paradox, day by day, again and again. T h e n , perhaps, their gift to the public could be the mystery of tying a shoelace, PAR

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Mia Westerlund Roosen, Courtesy Betty C u n i n g h a m ballery, New York

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PREVIOUS PAGE: MslPage by Michele Oka Doner | Our featured artist has strong roots in Florida. This original artwork combines her love of nature and books, and offers a page of meditation.

FEATURED STATE

Percent-for-Art in Florida (circa 2006) LEE MODICA

Between the cities of Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale lie Boynton Beach and Coral Springs, two small municipalities among many that lie along the h u n d r e d s of miles of Florida's southeast coast. Yet these small communities have established two of the state's newest and most progressive public art programs, and they represent a new surge of confidence in the importance of public art as an integral part of a modern community. As with most successful public art programs, the groundwork for these new programs began with months, sometimes years, of activism by local residentsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;educating their fellow citizens, elected officials, and local business people on the desirability of a formal policy for government acquisition of art in public spaces. These supporters believed that a public art program's long-term viability is increased with the stability of an ordinance. To work towards that goal, they drew on the expertise of professionals who could assist in evaluating their community and help them create a plan that, while following the precepts of national standards, also focused on their own unique needs. The philosophy of equating public art with community identity, espoused by most newer public art programs, is grounded in a keen awareness of the economic rewards that come to a community displaying, in a vibrant and unique way, a special quality that proclaims it both proud of its past and ready to stride into its future. Clearly, public art is now a popular way to create such vibrancy, infusing the city's social and business climate with new enthusiasm. Citizens are pleased to live there, tourists are glad to visit, and investors are happy to tap the excitement. It is no wonder that one community, seeing the success of another, seeks to emulate it. One might ask whether a flourishing public art program is one outcome of a vibrant city, or whether such a program helped create such a city. Which comes first is a fascinating topic for debate, but there is no denying the recent rapid increase in the number of communities seeking to develop their own public art programs. Evidence of recent growth in the number of Florida public art programs can be observed in a single countyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Broward. After decades of watching the successful Broward Public Art and Design program, many smaller municipalities are moving to emulate their example. Coral Springs, one of the largest small cities in Broward County, which also includes Fort Lauderdale, passed a public art ordinance in 2003 based on a professionally developed master plan. Seven other municipalities in Broward County are also creating public art programs: Lauderhill, Sunrise, and Tamarac have adopted ordinances, while ordinances are being proposed in Lauderdale Lakes, Coconut Creek, Miramar, and Pompano Beach. These newer Florida programs are building on a strong foundation created by those established in the state in the first wave of public art enthusiasm that resulted from the major

national public art installations of the 1960s: Miami-Dade County in 1973, Broward County in 1976, and the Art in State Buildings Program created by state statute in 1979. An Art in Public Places ordinance was passed in Miami in 1973, providing 1.5 percent of the cost of new county construction to create public art for those facilities. Like many other programs, Miami's has evolved from non-sitespecific acquisition of art pieces to the current approach of commissioning artists to create site-specific works integrated with the architecture whenever possible. New proposed changes to the original ordinance will expand the program to include 1 percent of renovations over S500.000 and of infrastructure projects, allowing artists to significantly affect sidewalks, medians, parks, and other open spaces.

Jose Bedia, aerial view of the lobby floor (detail) at the Delores and Sandford Ziff Ballet Opera House, 2006, Miami.

The second Florida public art program, Broward Public Art and Design, began in 1976 in a part of the state that s o m e residents and visitors considered artistically sparse. But progressive citizens and government officials believed that establishing Broward County Art in Public Places w o u l d be a guaranteed i m p e t u s for further cultural d e v e l o p m e n t . After seven years of successfully placing individual artworks in public spaces, the program began to investigate a more integrated approach. Jerry Allen and Associates, a p r o m i n e n t San Francisco consulting firm, was contracted for a detailed study of the existing program. After two years of intensive c o m m u n i t y research, this study resulted in a n e w 2 percent ordinance that encompassed a m u c h more c o m p l e x system of policies affecting infrastructure, collection management, artist development, and c o m m u n i t y outreach. Florida's Art in State Buildings Program sets aside 0.5 percent for artwork to be acquired for state-funded facilities. Since the program's beginnings in 1979, over 1,300 works of art have been p u r c h a s e d or commissioned and placed in public spaces. They can be found in almost every county, in state office buildings, in Department of Transportation complexes, in Department of Health facilities, in district courthouses, in highway patrol stations, and in Florida National Guard Readiness Centers, as well as on the m a n y c a m p u s e s of the eleven state colleges and universities. Recent strong growth in enrollment has created a surge in construction at the state's universities and a consequent increase in public art acquisitions. A second wave of public art in Florida echoed the first, with programs in the 1980s and early 1990sâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Orlando in 1983, Tampa in 1985, Hillsborough County and Gainesville in 1989, Brevard County (the Space Coast) in 1990, St. Petersburg in 1991, and Sarasota in the early 1990s. Tampa's Public Art Program was f o u n d e d by ordinance in 1985, setting aside 1 percent of f u n d i n g for m u n i c i p a l construction projects for public art. It does not apply to infrastructure but does permit pooling f u n d s . In its early years, the collection followed national trends, starting with sculpture c o m m i s s i o n s in plazas, some community-based projects, and a portable works collection. Now the program is very strong, growing fast, and most artwork is well integrated into its site. Its ordinance n o w also applies to private d e v e l o p m e n t in the central business district. In 1989, the city of Gainesville created an Art in Public Places Trust to e n h a n c e the quality of the c o m m u n i t y ' s visual environment, both natural and built, consistent with the goal of the state c o m p r e h e n s i v e plan. Their percent-for-art ordinance sets aside 1 percent of the f u n d i n g for original construction or major renovation of a local government building to be u s e d for art. Located in an ecologically distinctive area of the state, m u c h of the art acquired for the Gainesville program has a natural focus. A public art program ordinance was passed in Sarasota in the early 1990s, but adoption of the program into the city's land development code in 1998 meant that private development was included along with city-funded projects. Public Art Consultant Pamela S u m n e r h e l p e d the Planning Department write a n e w policy for including private development, resulting in a collection of art n o w worth almost $300,000. In the late 1990s, an expansion in the n u m b e r of Florida public art programs began that is continuing today: Jacksonville and Martin County in 1997, Pinellas County and Key West in 2000, Orange County in 2002, Coral Springs in 2003, Delray Beach and Boynton Beach in 2005. Most of these recently enacted programs i n c l u d e requirements for private businesses

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to p a r t i c i p a t e , e i t h e r by a c q u i r i n g p u b l i c art for large n e w p r o j e c t s or by c o n t r i b u t i n g to a p u b l i c art f u n d . Jacksonville p a s s e d an o r d i n a n c e in 1997 r e q u i r i n g that 0.75 p e r c e n t of s p e n d i n g on h a b i t a b l e b u i l d i n g s be p l a c e d in a p u b l i c art f u n d . S i n c e 2000, w h e n a city i m p r o v e m e n t p l a n g e n e r a t e d s u b s t a n t i a l c o n s t r u c t i o n projects, t w e n t y - t h r e e p u b l i c art projects h a v e b e e n i n s t a l l e d . Sitting m i d w a y u p t h e state's A t l a n t i c coast, M a r t i n C o u n t y i n c l u d e s t h e p i c t u r e s q u e o l d e r c o m m u n i t i e s of S t u a r t a n d Jupiter. In 1997, t h e c o u n t y created a P u b l i c Art A d v i s o r y Board to g e n e r a t e a m a s t e r p l a n for p u b l i c art. T h e i r 1 p e r c e n t Art in P u b l i c Places o r d i n a n c e has g e n e r a t e d n u m e r o u s a r t w o r k s for p a r k s , fire stations, a n d libraries. T h e city of Key West f o r m e d a P u b l i c Art C o m m i t t e e in 2000. W i t h t h e s u p p o r t of city g o v e r n m e n t , this active c i t i z e n ' s b o a r d w o r k s w i t h o u t an o r d i n a n c e , p u r c h a s i n g a n d c o m m i s s i o n i n g art for p u b l i c s p a c e s entirely t h r o u g h d o n a t i o n s f r o m public and private sources. In 2002, O r a n g e County, w h i c h c o n t a i n s t h e city of O r l a n d o , e s t a b l i s h e d a g r o w i n g p u b l i c art p r o g r a m w i t h a n e m p h a s i s on citizen i n v o l v e m e n t . T h i s w i n t e r a n o t h e r O r a n g e C o u n t y c o m m u n i t y , W i n t e r Park, h o p e s to s t i m u l a t e local interest in a p e r m a n e n t p u b l i c art p r o g r a m by i n s t a l l i n g a f o u r - m o n t h exhibit of i n t e r n a t i o n a l l y k n o w n s c u l p t o r s [see p a g e 88], A f t e r years of p l a n n i n g by p r o f e s s i o n a l s a n d local e n t h u s i a s t s , t h e city of C l e a r w a t e r h a s created a P u b l i c Art a n d Design P r o g r a m , w h i c h will receive 1 p e r c e n t of t h e b u d g e t to c o n s t r u c t or r e n o v a t e city b u i l d i n g s , trails, p a r k i n g facilities, bridges, a n d o t h e r a b o v e - g r o u n d projects. T h e p r o g r a m also a p p l i e s to p r i v a t e d e v e l o p e r s of p r o j e c t s over $5 m i l l i o n , r e q u i r i n g t h e m to d e d i c a t e 1 p e r c e n t of t h e i r b u d g e t to an onsite p u b l i c art project or c o n t r i b u t e 0.75 p e r c e n t to t h e city's P u b l i c Art F u n d . T h e N a p l e s City C o u n c i l e s t a b l i s h e d a P u b l i c Arts A d v i s o r y C o m m i t t e e in 2001 to d e v e l o p i m p l e m e n t a t i o n g u i d e l i n e s ; a r t w o r k selection p r o c e d u r e s ; a n d p o l i c i e s for t h e a c q u i s i t i o n , d o n a t i o n , a n d loan of p u b l i c art. After f u r t h e r r e s e a r c h a n d c o m m u n i t y e d u c a t i o n , final passage of a p u b l i c art o r d i n a n c e that a p p l i e s to b o t h c i t y - f u n d e d p r o j e c t s a n d large p r i v a t e d e v e l o p m e n t is e x p e c t e d in fall 2006. P u b l i c art p r o g r a m s of p e r m a n e n t a c q u i s i t i o n s or t e m p orary e x h i b i t s are also f o u n d in m a n y of F l o r i d a ' s airports. Pensacola, Tallahassee, Jacksonville, T a m p a , O r l a n d o , Fort L a u d e r d a l e , M i a m i , N a p l e s , a n d Fort Myers all h a v e active p r o g r a m s created a n d s u p p o r t e d by t h e a i r p o r t a u t h o r i t y or local m u n i c i p a l g o v e r n m e n t . Like t h e n e w e r Florida p r o g r a m s , s o m e of t h e o l d e r p r o g r a m s h a v e e v o l v e d to f o l l o w a c u r r e n t n a t i o n a l t r e n d of i n c l u d i n g m a j o r p r i v a t e d e v e l o p m e n t s as w e l l as p u b l i c l y f u n d ed p r o j e c t s u n d e r their o r d i n a n c e s . Strong p u b l i c e d u c a t i o n efforts a n d excellent c o m m u n i c a t i o n w i t h progressive p r i v a t e b u s i n e s s e s a n d d e v e l o p e r s h a v e led to p r o g r a m m a t i c structures that a l l o w for flexible a r t w o r k a c q u i s i t i o n m e t h o d s . M o r e p u b l i c art p r o g r a m s w i t h m o r e s o u r c e s of f u n d i n g h a v e led, inevitably, to m o r e q u a l i t y a r t w o r k in m o r e p u b l i c spaces. A n d that state of affairs, o n e h o p e s , is l e a d i n g to a t i m e w h e n p e o p l e will a u t o m a t i c a l l y e x p e c t to see art in p u b l i c s p a c e s a n d will w o n d e r w h a t is w r o n g w i t h a c o m m u n i t y that d o e s n o t p r o v i d e it. LEE MODICA has administered Florida's Art in State Buildings Program since 1994. She was elected to the first Council of the Public Art Network and is current president of the Florida Association of Public Art Administrators, which she helped found in 1997.

OPPOSITE PAGE (above): Jorge Orta, Luminographic Concert (two views), 2006, choreographed images and sounds in three modules, fagade of H.B. Plant Hall, University of Tampa. OPPOSITE PAGE (below): Alice Aycock, Mae2000,2002, milled aluminum, University of South Florida, Tampa. ABOVE: Jonathan Christie and Caroline Madden, Lyrical Light, 2006, glass and stainless steel, Times Union Center for the Performing Arts, Jacksonville. Donated by the College of Fine Arts, Jacksonville University. BELOW: Celso Gonzalez and Roberto Biaggi, Sun Rising in Spring, 2005, Coral Springs.

., PERCENT-FOR-ART C H R O N O L O G Y 1973

MIAMI-DADE COUNTY www.co.miami-dade.fl.us/publicart

1976

BROWARD COUNTY www. browa rd. org/a rts/pad

1979

A R T I N STATE B U I L D I N G S (ASB) www.florida-arts.org/programs/statebuildings/index.htm

1983

ORLANDO www.cityoforlando.net/arts/public.htm

1984

M I A M I BEACH www.miamibeachfl.gov

1985

TAMPA www.tampagov.net/dept_art_in_public_places/index.asp

1987

WEST PALM BEACH www.cityofwpb.com/art.htm

1989

GAINESVILLE www.gvlculturalaffairs.org/website/services/APPT/APPT.html HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY www.hillsboroughcounty.org/publicart TALLAHASSEE / L E O N C O U N T Y www.netcrc.org

1990

David Griggs,

FljMheel, 2006, Children's Commission building

BREVARD C O U N T Y www.artsbrevard.org VOLUSIA COUNTY www.celebratingculture.com

Jacksonville.

ART O N C A M P U S P R O G R A M S

1991

ST. P E T E R S B U R G www.stpete.org/publicart.htm

Florida A & M University Tallahassee www.famu.edu

1992

SARASOTA www.imaginesrq.org/updates/downtown/public_art

1995

JACKSONVILLE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT www.jiaarts.org

1996

CHARLOTTE C O U N T Y www.charlotte-florida.com/ArtAndCulture/Community.htm

1997

JACKSONVILLE www.culturalcouncil.org

Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton uavp.fau.edu/uavp Florida Gulf Coast University Fort Myers www.fgcu.edu

MARTIN COUNTY www.martinarts.org

Florida International University Miami www.fiu.edu Florida State University Tallahassee www.fsu.edu N e w College of Florida Sarasota www.ncf.edu

MONROE COUNTY www.keysarts.org 1998

TAMPA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT www.tampaairport.com/about/guest_services/public_art

1999

ST. L U C I E C O U N T Y www.stlucieco.gov/culturalaffairs

2000

KEY WEST www.keywestcity.com/agenda/ArtBoard/artHome.asp

University of Central Florida Orlando www.cas.ucf.edu/art/state%5Fbuildings University of Florida Gainesville www.arts.ufl.edu/asb

PINELLAS C O U N T Y www.pinellasarts.org 2001

NAPLES cs.naplesgov.com/public_art.asp

2002

ORANGE COUNTY www.orangecountyfl.net/cms/dept/countyadmin/arts

University of N o r t h Florida Jacksonville www.unf.edu University of South Florida Tampa www. usfca m. usf.ed u/PA/pa_a bout, htm I University of W e s t Florida Pensacola www.uwf.edu

PALM BEACH C O U N T Y www.pbcgov.com/fdo/art 2003

CORAL SPRINGS www.coralsprings.org/publicart

2005

CLEARWATER www.clearwaterartsfoundation.org DELRAY BEACH www.delrayconnect.com

FEATURED STATE

Artists Create Success in Florida MARK ORMOND

Artists who live and work in Florida have become successful at understanding the public art process, engaging the community in a creative dialogue, and increasing the quality of public art. The most successful projects are those that do not compromise the art's integrity. Organizations and committees that recognize the need to find solutions that combine the artist's vision with community dialogue are usually the most viable. And with the building boom in Florida continuing, private developers are discovering the benefits of embracing art as important to their projects and recognizing the creative initiative artists bring to the table. Myriam Springuel, a cultural planning consultant who works in public art, said one of the most important challenges is "recognizing an opportunity early enough to take advantage of it." Many Florida cities are using art and culture to attract tourists and citizens. "We are in the midst of a real estate boom," said Springuel. "Public art programs that are not developer-mandated see they are missing the boat." Springuel sees "a surge in communities that have gone through a planning process where they have articulated things that are important for quality of life," and these often include public art. Many communities are moving toward more community involvement. Judith Powers-Jones, executive director of the Pinellas County Arts Council, reported that they "will have community engagement as a major focus of their Boca Ceiga Millennium Park project." Pinellas County recently "completed a big cultural plan where there was lots of support for public art," and the city of Clearwater has approved a public art requirement. Margo Walbolt, cultural affairs manager there, is looking at "an ordinance going into effect in October that requires public art for developer projects of $5 million and

above, including single-family residences." She added that 'the only exclusion is affordable housing as defined by the Economic Development and Housing Department of the city." In the City of Sarasota Public Art Program, developers can meet their requirement by including the percentage required in their design. Robert Chambers, w h o is based in New York and Miami, was engaged by the firm Arquitectonica to propose something for the new Sarasota Herald Tribune building on Main Street. He created Ellipsota, a seven-part sculpture with three pods in the lobby and four on the exterior. Chambers's work succeeds in transitioning between the massive scale of the building and the stature of pedestrians walking past. His 600-pound white fiberglass composite pods also act as a foil to the structure's blue-green glass and hard edges. Said Chambers, "I was inspired by Bernardo Fort-Brescia, the building's designer, and the generosity of Alfonso Jurado, who was the project manager." Chambers said he decided to take an Asian approach to the site. He "tossed seven one-inch ellipsoidal black Japanese river pebbles across the blueprint of the building, aiming for the lobby and courtyard." He then drew outlines around each pebble on the blueprint to decide where the pods would be installed. His interest in Zen gardens led him to this method of establishing "aesthetic asymmetry, simplicity, and tranquility in and around the building." The sculptures have been a huge hit. Chambers said that building staff have seen people come u p and hug them.

Robert Chambers, Ellipsota, 2006, fiberglass with gel coating, Herald Tribune Building lobby and plaza, Sarasota.

3 ÂŁ | â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

Pamela Sumner, an artist w h o also served as the administrator of two Florida Art in State Buildings projects for New College of Florida, was approached by Whole Foods to help them through Sarasota's public art requirement. She recomm e n d e d Jean Blackburn to create the panels for the exterior and suggested that Whole Foods acquire a portfolio of art to display throughout the store. They bought her idea, and she bought the work from artists. "Their philosophy is to ask how they can relate to the community," Sumner said. For another wall on the north side of the building she suggested a collaboration with the Boys Club and Girls Club. The children drew pictures of healthy food that she translated into a ceramic tile mural. Sumner, who is LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified from the United States Green Building Council, said, "When Whole Foods called, I knew their corporate philosophy was to be a green building and the art should have some relationship with that. My contribution was to find the right imagery and an artist who had never done public art and bring that person into the public art arena." The artist she chose was Jean Blackburn, whose family has lived in the region for generations. For Blackburn, "It was rewarding to be a participant." She was happy with the "evolution of images and how it applied the Whole Foods philosophy and how it related to regional themes." Blackburn was a perfect match since she grows her own organic food in a wildlife habitat. The City of Sarasota Public Art paid for four of the eight tile murals Blackburn produced on First Street. "They made me stretch and explore," she said, "to come u p with new parameters for myself." Jeff Whipple, an artist, writer, and filmmaker, has completed m a n y public art projects throughout Florida. Two in particular stand out: the Johnson Library in St. Petersburg, a n d a recent commission that was part of Lights on T a m p a , an u n u s u a l and successful public/private partnership. The Johnson Library became the city's largest branch library, located in a section of town that originally had the smallest one. Whipple's contribution was an oil and acrylic mural on a 300-foot by 148-foot canvas, which includes likenesses of dozens of library patrons whom Whipple photographed. He recognized that community ownership of the

building creates a lasting presence: "Because I used the actual library patrons as models for the project, it's not just a mural, it's a reflection of the people who use the library." Community response to this gesture was electric and immediate. Ann Wykell is manager of cultural affairs for St. Petersburg and oversees their Public Art Program. She described Whipple's Reading Power as "the ideal intersection of stakeholders because we let the artist be an artist. He did not have to twist his ideas around what the community wanted. He found a way to engage the community." She added, "[The finished mural] was virtually the design he presented. A generation from now it still will be suitable to the site." She compared Whipple's creation to St. Pete Skies, by Miami Beach artist Andrew Reid at the South Branch Library, just three miles from the Johnson Library. "The process had a lot of input from the community that changed the project. It became focused on the plant life and architecture of the neighborhood." More recently, Whipple created Illuminations of Ruminations, a 300-foot-long illuminated mural that is now a permanent installation at the Tampa Museum of Art and is jointly owned by the museum and the City Public Art Program. Another component of this project was a fifteen-minute video, Long Time No See, that was projected on the entrance fagade of the Tampa Museum of Art beginning March 17, 2006, and was on view for four weeks. According to Whipple, "Creating the video to fit the fagade required making four separate videos to be projected from four projectors. The videos were carefully coordinated to work as one long piece with continuous interaction from one side to the other, exploring how the public looks at art." In addition to writing, directing, shooting, and editing the video, Whipple also created the animated elements, and he performs in it with five other actors. "The large-scale technical difficulties and time limitations made the whole project extremely challenging, and getting all that resolved was very rewarding," he said. He particularly liked the "counterbalance of the complicated technology involved with editing the video and the raw expressive energy of slapping paint on the mural." Leslie Fry, an artist who divides her time between studios in Vermont and St. Petersburg, prefers to respond to the site, including the architecture, history of the region, and the

landscape. She recently completed a four-part commission for the Broward Public Art and Design Program in Fort Lauderdale. "A long time ago I never thought I'd want to do public art," she said. Now she has done numerous projects and thinks that public art "makes you stretch as an artist." The challenge in Broward was "so many project managers. Every part of the commission [each of the four branch libraries] had a different set of problems." When the third project manager in three years was brought on board, Fry knew more than anyone. In general, Fry said, "I steer away from [calls to artists] that are overly specific. For me the site always comes first." She noted, "There is a lot of public art that is abstract because it does not push buttons of race, sex, and religion." She was careful in responding to input from different neighbors at the branch locations, fashioning bodies that were blue or orange or bright yellow so as not to exclude any particular group. Fry said she "loves working with symbols and recognizable images." She used suggestions from the meetings because for her ÂŤ "it is important h o w it is all connected." 2 Fry said that public art committees should be "more will5 ing to take risks and to look for artists who are exciting and | imaginative." She wishes "there was more trust and credit f given to artists who do research and plan something for the S site." For her, one of the most rewarding aspects of the libraries H project was the initial committee meetings in the four different I neighborhoods. The participants spoke their minds. After view5 ing examples of her work that were about form and consisted 1 mostly of grey concrete, they said they wanted color. "So I made | things with bright colors," she said. "That was good for me." Âť In each library Fry created a distinctive wall relief with f fiberglass and steel that responded to the location and the com| munity. In Pompano Beach, Swimming in Knowledge had pomi, pano fish (the city emblem) jumping out of a sea of numbers and 1 letters. For Leaves of Knowledge, at the Margate Catherine Young | Branch Library, Fry used images of flora to convey learning and 4 growth. Plants and pages became hands looking for knowledge. 1 In History Quilt, for the Northwest Branch Library, she made a 3 patchwork quilt to represent the neighborhood's cultural diver| sity and its history as a produce center. Fry studied the fabric 5 patterns of the Seminole and Miccosukee as well as those from the Congo, Ghana, and Nigeria. These are blended with images

OPPOSITE PAGE: Jeff Whipple, Reading Power (with detail), 2002, Johnson Library, St. Petersburg. LEFT: Jeff Whipple, Illuminations olRuminations (two views), 2006, Tampa Museum of Art. ABOVE: Leslie Fry, History Quilt, 2005, Northwest Branch Library. Lake Mary. BELOW: Leslie Fry, Swimming in Knowledge, 2005, Pompano Beach Library.

of fruits and vegetables. At the Tyrone Brvant Branch Library, she said, people wanted to "bring the outside inside," including sports activity in the park as well as nature. The imagery of Moving, Growing, and Thinking combines undulating elephant ear leaves with details of bodies. Exciting projects are happening outside the municipal and state programs as well. Private developers such as Jorge Perez and his company, The Related Group of Florida, have included art programs that will engage dozens of artists in making art inside and outside his buildings. The Oasis project in downtown Ft. Meyers will include the work of thirty artists. This is a wave of the future, and no matter w h o provides the f u n d i n g it will be important to hire artists with strong interest in dialogue with the community to see their ideas carried through to completion. MARK ORMOND is an art historian, curator, writer, and lecturer who has worked with artists and arts organizations in Florida for twenty-five years.

L I G H T S ON TAMPA

L i g h t s O n T a m p a ™ r e t u r n s in J a n u a r y 2 0 0 9 , as T a m p a p r e p a r e s t o h o s t S u p e r B o w l XLIII. L i g h t s O n T a m p a ™ is t h e city's p r e m i e r Public Art experience. 2 0 0 9 CALL T O ARTISTS AVAILABLE N O W AT www.liqhtsontampa.org

L i g h t s O n Tampa™ is a public/private partnership and a project of t h e City of Tampa

Janet Echelman installation November 17, 2006

Public A r t P r o g r a m . www.lightsontampa.org

BROWARD Broward Cultural Division Public Art & Design Program $

Call to Artists Highway Gateway Project Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International

Airport

Deadline: December 8, 2006

Jacksonville International Airport Public Art Program

For artist opportunities www.JIAarts.org

David Engdahl, Migration of t h e Paper Airplanes, 2 0 0 4

The Broward County Cultural Division Public Art & Design Program is seeking to commission an artist to create an integrated large-scale artwork or a number of smaller artworks that relate to each other using sculpture, landscape, light, or multimedia as medium of choice. The artwork(s) will be integrated into the design of the main entrance and exit roadways of the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. This is a high visibility project where the artwork will b e c o m e the gateway to the airport for visitors arriving and departing via ground transportation. The site will be the link between the airport and the surrounding landscape of South Florida, as well as the future Intermodal center that would b e c o m e the transportation hub linking the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport to Port Everglades. The total budget for the project is not to exceed $1,050,000. To see a full version of the Call, including the project description, eligibility, and submittal requirements, please visit us at: http://www. broward .org/arts/pad/calls. htm Questions: Christina Roldan 954.357.8542 or email croldan@broward.org

Florida's A r t in S t a t e B u i l d i n g s Program D e p a r t m e n t of State Division of Cultural Affairs "From Pensacola to Key West... from local health clinics to University campuses... Florida's Public Art Program makes this state a beautiful place to visit, work, and live" Lee Modica, Program Administrator (850) 2 4 5 - 6 4 7 6 or lmodica@dos.state.fl.us www.Florida-Arts.org/programs/ statebuildings/index.htm

Carol May and Tim Watkins Garden of Motion: Roadway Boogie Woogie Turkey Lakes Service Plaza, FL Dept. of Transportation

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mission: t o e n h a n c e t h e q u a l i t y o f t h e v i s u a l e n v i r o n m e n t in the Gainesville c o m m u n i t y , b o t h natural a n d built

FOR A D D I T I O N A L I N F O R M A T I O N : CITY OF GAINESVILLE ART IN PUBLIC PLACES TRUST D E P A R T M E N T OF PARKS, RECREATION AND CULTURAL AFFAIRS Erin Friedberg, Visual Arts 352.334.5064 ext. 302 NE 6th

5532

Avenue

Gainesville, FL 32601 www.gvlculturalaffairs.org

Coordinator

TRUTH & CONSEQUENCES / / / / / / / / / / / / / / m ^ ^

Been There? Done That? An Arts Commissioner Tells Some Truths About Public Art JEANNENE PRZYBLYSKI

As an arts commissioner I often play the role of booster for public art. Sometimes this is a great pleasure. Working with the talented, dedicated staff of the San Francisco Arts Commission, as well as with my fellow commissioners, the citizens of San Francisco, and artists from San Francisco and elsewhere, it can be deeply satisfying to follow a project through from the selection panel to the public dedication, and an honor to be a spokesperson for the value of art in enriching our city. Yet as an artist and cultural historian, I am just as often slightly uncomfortable in this role. This is because the perceived need to relentlessly "boost" public art in the face of ongoing public anxieties about its forms and content, and an ongoing scarcity of thoughtful political leadership, sometimes seem to involve abandoning any critical perspective and notion of quality—just to get the job done. There have been a few times, w h e n standing before the less-than-inspiring results of a frequently protracted public art process (and mentally recounting the litany of excuses: too m u c h c o m m u n i t y involvement, not enough c o m m u n i t y involvement, budget cuts, building redesign, an uncooperative client agency, materials malfunction, political expediency), I have wondered if we would have been better off without any art at all. Other times having no public art has seemed a more effective spur to public engagement and discussion than any art might have been. A case in point: Several years before my tenure as a commissioner, the city endured one of its more raucous and unfortunate public art controversies when a proposed sculpture by the nationally recognized artist Buster Simpson was targeted for outrage by a local newspaper columnist and eventually quashed by our board of supervisors. To this day, everyone from politicians to the person on the street uses the "foot" (Simpson's sculptural concept was a monumental one, poised to "embark" from our waterfront Embarcadero) as a point of reference to explain what they love or hate about the most recent piece of public art on display. Ironically, Simpson's Embarkation achieved more presence in San Francisco's aesthetic imagination as an absence than it might ever have done if realized. Interestingly, it has been my graduate students at the San Francisco Art Institute who have been even more skeptical about the state of art where public art is concerned, despite the fact that it may be a viable career path for some of them, as m u c h a potential source of income as the elusive dream of a gallery contract or a tenured teaching gig (and several faculty members at SFAI enjoy very successful public art careers). The students w o n d e r why public art can seem so formulaic, so predictable, and, well, so academic. They are more bored than tantalized by the possibility of architecturally integrated or functional art. (Clearly the Russian Constructivists and the Bauhaus are but a dim memory.) One of the most sobering moments in a course on Art in the Public Realm came when I showed the 150-plus slides in an annual Year in Review bestof-public-art collections compiled by Americans for the Arts. Many students questioned whether m u c h of what we were looking at merited being called art at all. Several threatened to

drop the class unless we studied something besides "that public art stuff." One may be tempted to write off their ideals and high principles, as well as their lack of patience and charity, to youth and inexperience. But one might also envy their unfettered ability to utter the word "bad" in conjunction with the words "public art," and their demand that public art at least be interesting to talk about, which is perhaps the m i n i m u m threshold for any definition of artistic quality. So it is in their honor, since I also made them write one, that I tender the following personal public art manifesto. Like my students, I may merely be acting out. And like any art manifesto worth the paper it's printed on, this one is intended to be cranky, idiosyncratic, polemical, energized as m u c h by what it doesn't like as what it does, and ultimately unenforceable. No apologies. No manifesto was ever meant to make everyone happy. Public art's tendency toward conservatism is rooted in its position as de facto official art, paid for mostly by the government, courtesy of the taxpayers, who can be every bit as demanding, self-absorbed, narrow, and intoxicated by power as the most overindulged, big-money private art patron—but also as surprisingly discerning, open-minded, curious, and public-spirited as some of those private patrons turn out to be. At the same time, public art is often created by artists who imagine themselves still part of an artistic and cultural avantgarde, and a healthy avant-garde disdain for the status quo might not be such a bad idea right now. Let's face it: You know that public art is no longer in its infancy w h e n there are coffee table books published on it. It doesn't necessarily need to be coddled to survive; cities continue to add public art programs, and private developers tend to pony up without hesitation for the public art requirements that come with their development rights—despite the occasional public dust-up over one project or another. But precisely because public art has been so thoroughly institutionalized, it may well need to be subjected to a newly invigorated critique, especially as we look to it now more than ever to define place, build community, and affirm a broad civic commitment to culture. With those goals in mind, we shouldn't be so easily satisfied. Certainly, some of our local constituencies are not. Recently I attended a selection panel where the community representatives were emphatic: "Please don't give us something that looks like the same old public art." Maybe there is cause for hope. And so this manifesto is in their honor as well. (Caveat emptor: Any mention of my institutional affiliations is intended for identification purposes only. This manifesto reflects no official position on the part of San Francisco or any of its institutions or agencies.) JEANNENE PRZYBLYSKI is associate professor in the School for Interdisciplinary Studies at the San Francisco Art Institute, and executive director of the San Francisco Bureau of Urban Secrets, an arts and urbanism think tank.

i t UNOFFICIAL MANIFESTO for TELLING T H E TRUTH About Public Art IEANNENE PRZYBLYSKI

I am for a public art that aspires to rise above the stature of the merely "appealing I am for a public art that resists embracing the celebratory as a means of pandering to its public. I am for a public art that seeks to do something besides giving a community "pride when the community already has it (see no. 2). I am for a public art that makes as much room for irony as it does for earnestness. I am for a public art that believes irony alone is an insufficient perspective, as is earnestness. I am for a public art that doesn't think for a moment that playfulness must.equal purposelessness. Living with someone else's whim can be exhausting. I am for a public art that challenges itself to go beyond the mere display of historical artifacts in order to tell a story. I am for a public art that doesn't pretend that everyone's story is intrinsically interesting to everyone else. I am for a public art that never offers the spectacle of technology alone to address the complexity of urban life. I am for a public art that never resorts to banal nature motifs to evade the complexity of urban life. I am for a public art that doesn't use temporary initiatives as a way to avoid making a commitment, as in "Don't worry about whether you really like this art because it's Only temporary." I have news for you: Art is always worth worrying about. 12.

I am for a public art that believes with all sincerity that risk is a permanent condition I am for a public art that defines site specificity by the highest possible standard, which means the piece and the place are mutually necessary to each other. Art is present because it needs to be there. I ann for a public art that is energized by controversy, that doesn't go looking for it but doesn't run from it either, and will not consent to go quietly into mediocrity. Quality may mean many things in many different contexts, but it certainly means something in the end: You should be willing to fight for it (see no. 1 2).

15.

I am for a public art-that refuses to repeat itself into invisibility.

TRUTH & CONSEQUENCES /////////////////^^^^

Millennium Pork and the Bean JEFF HUEBNER

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The "Chicago Picasso" wasn't an instant hit when it was unveiled in Civic (now Daley) Plaza in 1967. It took years for the Cor-Ten baboon-bird-woman, which ushered in the art-inpublic-places movement, to become an unlikely civic symbol. Lucky for him, artist Anish Kapoor didn't suffer the same image problems. When a maquette of his untitled sculpture— soon anointed "the Bean"—was unveiled in 1999 to become the public art centerpiece of Millennium Park, Mayor Richard M. Daley remarked that it "will join the Picasso, the Chagall, and the Dubuffet as ,.m a new Chicago icon." Daley may not have imagined how right he'd be. In recent years, as the mammoth 110-ton silver blob— n o w titled Cloud Gate but still dubbed the Bean—was tented and untented twice while ironworkers welded, grinded, and polished its 168 stainless-steel plates (each weighing up to a ton) to a seamless reflective finish, the sculpture became stupendously popular. Residents and visitors thronged to its guarded plaza to snap pictures of themselves in its funhouse-mirror surface, and the drawn-out installation was recorded with a stream of news articles (BEAN-DOGGLE headlined the Chicago Sun-Times on May 26, 2005, as costs and delays piled up). After all, Kapoor's first public artwork in the United States was now Chicago's art icon for the twenty-first century, sweeping Picasso and company to the dustbin of plaza-art history. The Bean was finally dedicated May 15, nearly two years after the 24.5-acre d o w n t o w n "culture park"—featuring a t h e m e park-like collection of architecture, art, and landscape design—officially opened to the public. Paradoxically, while most everyone loves the sculpture (and Millennium Park in general, including its free musical events), almost no one asked for it. Since it wasn't a percent-for-art project, under the aegis of the city's Public Art Program, it wasn't subjected to the usual "public" advisory process. The Bean and other works in Millennium Park were paid for by 125 private donors who kicked in about $230 million through the nonprofit vehicle of Millennium Park, Inc. In turn, these corporations, foundations, and individuals donated the elements to the city, which owns and operates the park as a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs. Cost overruns, however, forced Daley to tap public coffers, primarily through Central Loop Tax Increment Financing District funds, at an additional cost of about $270 million. (The park was projected to cost $150 million and open in 2001.) Taxpayers also foot the bill for the private firms that provide upkeep and security. But this was a privatized planning and construction process in which there was little civic participation in h o w tax money should be spent on public art.

The Bean's final cost was $23 million, up from an initial estimate of $5 million. Ameritech Corp. (later acquired by SBC Corp.) contributed $3 million for naming rights—first it was Ameritech Plaza, then SBC Plaza—but after SBC was acquired by AT&T Corp., it's now technically called Cloud Gate on AT&T Plaza. Millennium Park, Inc. picked up the rest of the tab. What we got for the money was a public-art metaphor for the postindustrial era—and I don't just mean the Bean's high-tech design process (chief engineering credit goes ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ to Ethan Silva of Oakland's Performance Structures, Inc.). As Chicago art critic James Yood noted in the June/July 2004 issue of Bridge, Millennium Park "treat[sj the visitor as a viewer who must be optically stimulated at every turn, as if parks now compete with cable TV and high-speed internet.... It looks as if it was designed on Sim City." This is not by accident. As cities from Chicago to Paducah increasingly morph into centers of cultural consumption rather than industrial production, revitalized by the new "creative economy" based on information technology, tourism, entertainment, media design, festival malls, and simulated historicism, pieces like the Bean transcend aesthetic meanings. Blurring the edges between physical art object—industrially forged—and virtual-reality nonobject, they become symbols of the morphing, dematerializing city. "An artist is not a manufacturer of objects—who cares?" Kapoor commented in a postdedication talk at the Chicago Cultural Center. "You make an object to have it prompt a series of psycho-physical realities." The Bean could be seen as being about perception, ephemerality, or spirituality—as something sublime. Yet I see it and think that perhaps only a city like Chicago, rightfully big-shouldered yet historically insecure about its own artistic accomplishments, could have produced such a m o n u m e n t to sublimely self-reflexive boosterism: "Look at me! Look at us! See how world-class we look!" Kapoor offers us "psychophysical" validation. Yes, Millennium Park has brought Chicago global attention and pumped untold millions of dollars into the local economy. Conversely, as the Chicago Tribune ventured in a January 2, 2005 article, its construction sucked up tens of millions in local philanthropic dollars that otherwise would have enriched the arts community. If Chicago really wanted to be seen as worldclass, it could have funneled some of that unprecedented largesse to local artists, who always complain about the lack of high-profile public art commissions, except gimmicky tourist extravaganzas like 1999's Cows on Parade. None were tapped for Millennium Park, although Jeff Koons, with whom Kapoor vied for the project, is an a l u m n u s of Chicago's School of the

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Art Institute. But then early last year, in a conscience-stricken afterthought, the city joined forces with another corporate sponsor to commission the Chicago-based h u s b a n d - a n d - w i f e team of Adelheid Mers and Patrick McGee to create a sculptural installation in the atrium of the Exelon Pavilion, the M i l l e n n i u m Park Welcome Center, w h i c h r u n s on solar energy. Their $65,000 work, Heliosphere-Biosphere-Technosphere, is m a d e of three nine-foot-diameter two-way mirrors that reflect each other and are also backlit to reveal imagery and text related to self-sustaining energy sources. Too bad barely a n y o n e knew about this t h o u g h t f u l gem, w h i c h (despite its promotional aspect) at least was about bread a n d not circuses. Mayor Daley, trying to make Chicago the "greenest" city in North America, spoke at the July 2005 dedication, b u t all reporters asked h i m about were the latest revelations to emerge from the city's ongoing patronage hiring and bribery scandals. And that's what m a d e the news. With citizens' increasing resistance to m u n i c i p a l pork (present park excluded), the corporate u s u r p a t i o n of public space may no longer be news. As Timothy Gilfoyle has written, "Some predict that private p h i l a n t h r o p y like that witnessed in the creation of M i l l e n n i u m Park will b e c o m e ever more critical to park and cultural d e v e l o p m e n t in American cities." In other words, get ready for the "Chicago Way."

JEFF HUEBNER is a Chicago-based arts journalist lance writer who frequently writes on public art.

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OPPOSITE PAGE and ABOVE: Anish Kapoor, Cloud Site, 2005-2006, stainless steel, Millenium Park, Chicago. BELOW: Adelheid Mers and Patrick McGee, Heliosphere-Bmphere-Technosphere, 2005.

TRUTH & CONSEQUENCES ///////////////^^^^

The Political Packaging of Public Art JANET KAGAN

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Tragically, w e keep trying to redefine the value of public art rather than recognize that each time we experience a work of art our sensory and cognitive connection to it will change. The tendency to overemphasize an economic benefit of public art commodifies its f u n d a m e n t a l purpose and jeopardizes a pressing need to revisit and reposition the conjunction between the work of art and the individual. While I am not the first to ask what h a p p e n e d to the art in public art, I will extend the charge that public art programs have lost their way and further claim that this may be terrific. Program managers seem mired in the quicksand of selling the craft of art-making rather than offering the goal of experiencing artworks, which should startle and disorganize us with each visit. Why did we lose this critical aesthetic dimension of the experience of art? The production of value is a siren call among public art supporters. To this end, the field seems convinced of the need to sell public art in order to foster a sense of community, encourage civic dialogue, provide economic enhancement, and revitalize or beautify the public sphere. But is the primary mission of public art really to promote cultural tourism and economic development? Many competitive contradictions confront public art programs. I suggest that we have corrupted our priorities about public art. Specifically, the primary role of art is to manifest an artist's sensibility. A secondary consideration is what an artwork does to each of us who interact with it. All tertiary attributes we ascribe to art are less significant except insofar as they prime the p u m p for future financial c o m m i t m e n t s to commission artists to make great art. In 1996, Jennifer Dowley cogently summarized the phases of public art in America. The period 1967-1979 she identified as the M u s e u m Paradigm, in w h i c h curated works were moved outside. The 1980s were the Urban Design era, which deepened the relationship of an artwork to its site and recognized the collaborative role of the artist with the design team. Since the 1990s w e have been advancing Community Engagement, in w h i c h artists reinterpret the ineffable values and desires of a citizenry. This present model for public art mandates a creative process whereby the transparency of public participation is one of the most critical evaluative measures of a project's success. Yet those w h o do not directly participate in developing a work judge it by standards that may be irrelevant. For those projects accomplished with public funds, the pressures on public art to satisfy an entire community have eclipsed our personal relationship with the work itself. Artist Norie Sato states that the problem with this approach is that "everyone thinks they should have an equal say in the public realm. If one person does not like the work, then it will have failed. It is important to remind ourselves that not everyone is supposed to like everything." Indeed, public art is being held responsible for the obligations of government: economic prosperity, education, increasing the value of neighborhoods and private property, decreasing v a n d a l i s m , providing recreation, and preserving natural e n v i r o n m e n t s . In sum, public art must be relevant to current social need. Public art programs and their sponsors have embraced a political tenet by w h i c h every public art

project is obligated to have a practical impact on the daily life of the citizenry. The market pressures that affect public art are significant. Independent nonprofit status, which characterizes many public art programs, has a relatively recent history w h e n compared with similarly structured nonprofit charitable organizations, a distinction not inconsequential to the present confusion confronting public art. Nonprofit 501c3 status typically relies on earned income and a commitment to education programming, but this organizational framework reflects neither the artistic process nor funding approvals for percent-for-art projects. Yet public art agencies, facilitators, and boards that support and sponsor public artworks continue to draft their calls and implementation guidelines to emphasize discrete elements that satisfy the educational and audience priorities of the government's tax laws. Regrettably, it is these guidelines for artists that by default become project and program evaluation criteria: how many people the project served, who participated in its development, whether there was minority involvement, how project goals were met.

We are grappling with a blurring of boundaries among art, design, decoration, and infrastructure, which has confounded how public art is "packaged." Public art programs and projects seem to thrive on quantitative data: return on investment, economic stimulation, how the work has promoted or enhanced a social agenda. This orientation not only suppresses artistic invention and imagination but requires an implicit endorsement of the work beyond its engagement with the site. Sadly, public art is being sold to government and taxpayers with expectations that are both inappropriate and unattainable. The assumption that public art alone can rectify bad urban design, resolve architectural details, or please everyone has boxed and misdefined public art. Many professional public artists and experienced public art facilitators are frustrated by this direction; they would prefer to create opportunities for artists to produce great art regardless of utilitarian benefit or unanimity of acclamation. It is time for public art programs to invigorate the qualitative experience of the works themselves and to promote personal pleasure, the identification of beauty, and the opportunity for a vision into realms both nourishing and edifying. These are the vital signs of public artworks. The experience of the work should be the core value of public artâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not economics, civic dialogue, decoration, or the expression of community values. I do not mean to imply that wonderful works of public art cannot or do not become destinations, create buzz, generate an unusual social milieu, create place, change perceptions and expectations, or add immeasurably to our vitality and spirit.

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Great public artworks can and do transform spaces. But public art programs are addicted to a logic claiming that art increases a community's economic vigor, which should be secondary to w h y we want to live with art. Two recent, large, complex, extraordinary projects—The Gates, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude in New York City [pictured above], and Cloud Gate, by Anish Kapoor in Chicago [see page 71]—are privately financed artistic ventures that made people yearn to share public space. Because of The Gates, winter in Central Park will always include our new relationship to the park's vistas and design. In Chicago, it is hard to resist the compelling urge to physically connect with Kapoor's work of art, which profoundly reorients us to ourselves and others. I hope we can agree that neither artist found inspiration from any elusive economic benefit that might accrue to the city. As artist Larry Kirkland has said, "We have lots of object makers; we need more place makers. We also need a chorus of voices to admonish us whenever we neglect to cite w h y we need artists working in our communities regardless of other attributes we bestow on a project. When was the last time [as an administrator] you asked the artist: 'Would you be inspired by our community to make art about it?'" We need leaders in the field who can communicate and accentuate art's strengths while also helping show how to enter into a private physical and emotional dialogue with art. When we attend to a work of art, we experience a self-referential connection and understanding that inevitably realigns us. Art is personal. When we carefully attend to an artwork, the aesthetic process should be the same whether the venue is a museum, public plaza, private gallery, or classroom. Art is art. Public artists and program managers need to facilitate formal and informal dialogues within their communities and educate residents h o w to connect with the artist and the work, learn to revisit initial responses, be curious and attentive, and expand their aesthetic reach. We are grappling with a blurring of boundaries among art, design, decoration, and infrastructure, which has confounded how public art is "packaged." Other fields h a n d l e this challenge with ease. Museum curators establish a context—and a "why"—for discrete works of art in galleries. Interpretive labels and audio guides narrate the story of the work, its place in a relevant canon (thematic, historic), the importance of its unique materiality, or h o w to think about an entire collection or the growth of an individual artist. Performing arts organizations, especially theatres and orchestras, offer audiences information about the artist(s), a contemporary analysis of the work's relevance, and a director or conductor's statement about his or her attraction to the work. In contrast, public art programs rarely

offer such information, interpretation, or analysis of existing public art or new commissions. Marcel D u c h a m p proved that context classifies a work of art. For some programs, it may be advantageous to strategically place artworks in context for a viewer, citing their u n i q u e qualities and the impetus for the project: idea, artist, materials, budget, funding source, significance of the site. Other institutions effectively use a shared vocabulary to describe artworks; regretably, public art has no such vernacular. A common language with w h i c h to talk about public art w o u l d help the broader community of residents, elected officials, funding agencies, and the media learn h o w to engage public art. Learning about art also occurs through actively participating in organizing a project. For many public art programs, bringing the community into drafting a call, interviewing artists, walking a proposed site, and analyzing a budget w o u l d enhance their understanding of h o w an artist might approach a project and the work's quality. Judgments about w h i c h public art projects to p u r s u e are frequently based on personal trust among public art facilitators, elected officials, and benefactors. Public art programs, therefore, need to establish a reputation not only as informed sources about artists and artworks but also as interconnected with, albeit not necessarily driven by, the priorities of collectors, galleries, politicians, influential organizations, government staff, regulatory boards, and public commissions. This commitment to public art is further advanced through an extended and well-respected network of arts professionals and community activists. To restore confidence in the power of art, we must emphasize its temporal and spatial dimensions while identifying opportunities for artists that are sometimes adventurous or risky. Program leadership and vigorous advocacy should distinguish between promoting the work of art and the role of the artist. This approach to h o w public art is introduced and subsequently perceived gives the public and elected officials a vocabulary with which to speak about public art, permission to say h o w they feel about the work, and opportunities to participate in a process that informs artists and affirms that art is complex and varied. To be sure, we cannot prescribe h o w to experience public artworks, but w e can encourage people to let a work evoke a response within them. In American democracy, controversy is expected; we should not suppress debate—especially about public art. JANET KAGAN is a principal in the Percent for Art Collaborative, an interdisciplinary research and consulting group. She plans and develops public art programs and projects that engage aesthetic sensibilities and physical environments.

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Tales of Enlightened Self-Interest ...or Commerce and the Common Good JACK BECKER

Overheard at a Rotary Club meeting: "We should do one of them Vietnam Memorials here, only with a flag!" In a corporate board room: "It's too late to change the color of the carpeting to match the mural, so let's ask the artist to adjust the colors a bit." At a City Council debate: "If it's too cutting someone might get hurt."

edge,

God knows there are lots of problems with public art— rampant mediocrity, unprepared artists and administrators, u n d e r f u n d e d programs, no standards, feeble media, weak criticism—but the most insidious problem may well be the misguided good intentions of folks with money. When it comes to art in the public sphere, every philanthropist is a critic, every hot-shot executive is a designer, and everyone's got great suggestions for the artist. Better yet, forget the artist. We know what will work! We're trapped in a Christopher Guest mockumentary full of Waiting for Guffman local notables who hog the mike at meetings like it's their fifteen minutes of fame, while passing around vacation snapshots of "this really cool buffalo made out of car fenders." Free expression by artists has been all but forgotten in the rush to commission work-for-hire art—art that's little more than corporate commercials and feel-good messages to feed civic narcissism.

At one corner of a busy d o w n t o w n intersection in Minneapolis stands Mary Tyler Moore, a bronze rendition of the frozen moment from the opening credits of Mary Tyler Moore's successful 1970s TV show, w h e n the show's lead character, Mary Richards, tossed her tam gleefully into the air. Never m i n d that the statue doesn't stand where Mary did—in the m i d d l e of the street. The sidewalk is as close as any big hunk of metal could be safely placed. The news of the bronze Mary's i m p e n d i n g arrival caused quite a stir in the local arts community. How could a cultural mecca like Minneapolis invest precious resources to commemorate a fictional TV character? Why not a recently departed champion of the people like Hubert H u m p h r e y ? How about a local hero, or a real cultural icon like Bob Dylan or Prince? Sure, Mary was cute, the show was a hit, and it did promote Minneapolis, but—observers asked—is this the best we can do? Turns out that " w e " didn't do it—not entirely, anyway. The statue was f u n d e d by Viacom, parent company of TV Land, the cable network that shows reruns of the sitcom. (They'd already commissioned a version of Jackie Gleason as bus driver Ralph Kramden for New York City's Port Authority.) Mary is "on loan" to Minneapolis—no public f u n d s involved. Viacom covered installation and maintenance, and even agreed to remove the statue should the city so desire at some point in the future. The real Mary made a somewhat awkward appearance

at the well-attended dedication, which was a PR person's wet dream, complete with a live feed to Good Morning America. Mary joked that the statue had a better tan than she did, and everyone had a good laugh. There are plenty of other statues depicting fictional characters, and there's likely more to come, despite dustups like the recent one over a statue of the late Don Knotts as Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show. Members of his family opposed it because, well, it wasn't a real Don Knotts memorial. What's different about the Minneapolis case is, of course, that Mary Tyler Moore is still alive and well. Presumably, once the real Mary does die, a candlelight vigil will encircle the effervescent figure on the street corner. Flowers will pile up, making pedestrian passage impossible, and every national media outlet will be on hand to capture the sad moment. At that point it's very unlikely that anyone will demand its removal.

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Back in the late 1990s, the city of St. Paul was struck by the tsunami of cookie-cutter fiberglass statues that i n u n d a t e d the country after Chicago's big success with painted cows. St. Paul leaders decided to honor the memory of the late cartoonist Charles Schulz, w h o spent m u c h of his childhood here. Nobody around here had paid any special attention to Schulz while he was alive, other than to take the kids to Camp Snoopy at the Mall of America once in a while, but n o w that he was dead, commemorating his life seemed like the right thing to do. And so for five years, the streets were filled with Peanuts characters, starting with Snoopy, then Charlie Brown, then Lucy, then Linus, and then Snoopy again, this time on his doghouse with his pal Woodstock. The first year was a big fiberglass-figurine love fest, with a different Snoopy featured daily in the newspaper and families trekking all over town to fill their photo albums with every version they could find. Imagine everyone's shock u p o n reading this big frontpage headline one morning: "Snoopy Beheaded!" Tragically, someone had chopped off a beagle head and it was missing. Days later, a collective sigh of relief followed the news that the head had been found buried in someone's back yard. Charges were filed and order restored. All was well and the love fest continued. Eventually people grew tired of the game. Like most of the glorified lawn ornaments across the nation, the Snoopys were auctioned off to benefit a local charity. In this case some of the money was actually used to commission a permanent memorial to Schulz, or at least to the Peanuts gang. Now for those who get nostalgic, all the beloved Peanuts characters have been recreated in bronze and scattered about a prominent d o w n t o w n plaza. Monochromatic—yet big on cuteness—these huggable metal figurines are designed for the ages. And best of all, there's no way to remove Snoopy's head.

Then there's the fable of Target Corp., headquartered in Minneapolis, and its ill-fated attempt to donate a ready-made m o n u m e n t to the city. Actually, the m o n u m e n t was more of a skeleton, in the form of the Michael Graves-designed scaffolding that encased the Washington Monument in our nation's capital for a couple of years during its restoration. This towering structure was hailed as major artistic statement in its own right—some folks liked it better than the m o n u m e n t it surrounded, especially w h e n it was illuminated at night. The players in this Minneapolis minidrama included a high-ranking executive at Target, corporate sponsor of the

OPPOSITE PAGE: Gwendolyn Gillen, Miry Tyler Moore, 2002, Minneapolis.

LEFT: ill-American Hog and Snoopy the Worii Tmeler, 2000, St Paul.

RIGHT: Day and night views of the Washington Monument with scaffolding.

— >

restoration project; Graves, w h o had just completed a series of practical household products for Target, including a toilet brush, a toaster, and a trash can; Evan Maurer, former director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA), on w h o s e board the Target executive served; and Minneapolis Mayor Sharon Sayles-Belton, c h a m p i o n of an equally ill-fated initiative to create an Avenue of Arts connecting d o w n t o w n with the MIA, about eight blocks to the south. Even before the scaffold was removed. Target a n n o u n c e d that it planned to move the skeletal structure to Fair Oaks Park, nestled in a leafy neighborhood adjacent to the MIA. No doubt the towering skeleton would make it easier for folks to find the Institute from just about anywhere in the city. At 550 feet, the tower was actually too tall, so Target suggested using just the top 300 feet. But what would hold u p the scaffolding? No problem, just build a 300-foot concrete obelisk. But what about safety? Kids might climb on it. No problem, just start the scaffolding portion about twelve feet off the ground, so there would be nothing but concrete at ground level. Yep, it seemed like the execs had all the right answers. Of course, the a n n o u n c e m e n t sent a m o n u m e n t a l shock wave through the neighborhood and the rest of the city. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board proclaimed that the proposed gift w o u l d require a thorough review before permission could be granted. Meanwhile, the $6 million Target initially estimated it w o u l d cost to move and reconstruct the tower soon grew to $8 million, due to delays in decision making and the rising cost of storing the scaffolding over several months. Residents protested: the media had a feeding frenzy. The Target execs declared that $8 million was their upper limit, and it looked like the approval process w o u l d push the tab higher. So Target backed down, the money went away, and nobody k n o w s where the scaffolding ended up. There's a screenplay in here somewhere. Does anyone have Christopher Guest's p h o n e number?

JACK BECKER is executive director of FORECAST Public works, the nonprofit publisher o / P u b l i c Art Review.

Art-

SYMPOSIUM REPORT

CRAIG

DAVI

MN ROCKS! International Stone Carving Symposium â&#x20AC;˘ St. Paul, Minnesota M a y + June, 2 0 0 6 MN ROCKS! (www.minnesotarocks.org) was a six-week stone carving symposium organized by Public Art St. Paul. Fourteen sculptors participated: eight international and six from Minnesota. The resulting sculptures now grace the public byways of St. Paul. Participating sculptor Craig David kept a journal during the symposium.

dau I 1 Symposium orientation. All the artists meet at Macalaster College, where the visiting sculptors are housed. We are all guys but one, Lourdes, our friend from Oaxaca and Minneapolis. Casual conversations abound along with instructions by our fearless organizers: Christine, Philip, and Tom. Opening ceremonies take place, with many speeches by dignitaries. Duane blesses the stones by performing a poignant Ojibway pipe and flute ceremony. The stones are tremendous! clou X Sculptors are sitting on stones, thinking. They are walking in groups, h a n d s motioning in animated discussion about the properties of individual stones. Tools are inspected and placed in work station boxes. There is an underlying mutual respect among artists, all craftspeople of stone. dau 3 We begin with a morning meeting at the symposium site and are instructed to select a stone and share tools. Many begin work immediately. Diamond-bladed stone saws create huge clouds of dust in the s u m m e r breeze. Groups of sculptors are splitting stones. An artist is cut by a fleck of steel. The paramedics are called as a precaution. Tinkling hammers echo from all directions.

cJau 5 1 Dust is everywhere on the great lawn of the symposium. Electrical cords, air and water hoses, and compressors are spread out among huge pieces of granite, taconite, and limestone. Sculptors congregate in groups, consulting with one another. Troops of school children witness the shaping of stone. We are working in dust, pain, sweat, dust, pain, sweat. Raindrops dry instantaneously on stone in the m i d d a y sun. Blood from small cuts m a d e by flying chisel debris splatters and dries on the slab. The stone is warm on my braced leg.

Hot breezy Sunday. Dust spews from the sculptors' saws. Lei's stone begins to portray the face of a woman. Lazarus has hurt his hand and is unable to carve. Peter and Michael have chosen extremely hard stones that most sculptors would scorn. Artists nap, bug-bitten on the lawn, under the locust trees. Viewers gaze and chat and photograph the life emerging within the stones. Heat-exhausted sculptors head home early. Mary and Philip Rickey prepare an elegant dinner for all the artists and we enjoy a convivial evening at their home. dau 8 Memorial Day. A magnificent day of socializing and budding friendships on Little Lake and the home of Christine, Kent, and Jeannie Larson. A paradisiacal spot under great maples. Fishing heaven for Salah, Lazarus, Atsuo, and Pasquale, who slay the monster crappies and blue gills. Sculptors try their hand at canoeing and batting practice. Artists nap, walk, and play Frisbee with the dog. JAU 9

Why do we destroy ourselves for beauty, for truth? Repeating over and over the dance, we become the movement necessary for the evolution of the stone, the spirit within "becoming." Back, neck, arms, and hands are sore from the tedious struggle. As we sweat, we have a goal, our individual goal. Stretching, pushing, bending, we seek the end of our process, our vision. We seek adversity through this journeyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;warriors, carvers of stone. We are gestating the life within our stones. J a u 10 Last night I became aware that my friend and great mentor, the sculptor Richard Beckman, has died. I worked in sorrow all day. Tears splattered on the sedimentary painting within my stone. Amid the noise of compressors, saws, and grinders... silence. The silence of Richard's heavenly forms, sentinels at the gates of our art. d a u 11 ' Today is the loveliest of working days. Breezy, sunny, and Minnesota June cool. The dust of our making blows beyond our work site. The air is crisp and clear.

Jau

Behind the mask, other-worldliness struggles to emerge. Muffled voices come from all directions. The distant tap of hammer is heard from under the shroud of ear protection. Dust and sweat create a vision surreal, blurred, and unearthly, sculptors and stone in the sun. I? Big meeting last night over beer, wine, and soup: installation site-selection process. Most sculptures have not been created as site-specific, but artists have seen the sites and have favorites. The work is beginning to flesh out. We are all tiring. No one seems to work twelve-hour days, as some did in the first weeks. The heat of an u n u s u a l l y warm June is taking its toll. JAU

Jau

' T h i s morning Atsuo and I went looking for pavers and stones to be incorporated into his piece. Searching under the Third Street bridge and then to the old brickyard, looking for fossils and bricks along the way. Walking u p to the old clay pits on the bluffs, Sancho (the dog), Atsuo, and I played stick along the way. He told how the Japanese believe a stone is a living entity, not simply a building material. He remembered w h e n he had a large piece of granite he wanted to split. As he began, he stopped to think. For a moment, then days, he thought how this beautiful stone did not wish to be split. Finally, he relented to the wishes of the stone. Jau as A late-night political conversation with Salah. One of the goals of the symposium was to develop international understanding. Conversations between artists found many at the same crossroads, holding the same ideologies, the same frustrations. We are not sure h o w the creation of our art makes the world a better place; we are simply certain that it does.

J a u 38

It begins to sink in what we have been doing here, plowing the garden of stones. Flowers are beginning to bloom. Jau

42 Sculptures—dark, brooding, tender, even the h u m o r o u s — have become a love song, a dance between the spirit of stone and sculptor, the hope, the ideal. Jau

4? 1

J a u 3O

Tired, we go on daily; many spectators come by while we work. Some sculptures are completed. Artists make small stone pieces or add elements to their work. My work comes slowly. A flame has become a table, undulating on the top, painted taconite, brush marks of black, gray, green, and red. "Peace Table" is the undulating form that will face up with two red granite benches alongside and gardens surrounding. J«u 3i Mary and I had a sculptors' party last weekend. Beautiful garden in bloom, evening lights, wonderful food. Dancing, drinking, and much laughter. Jau

' This day the holes drilled deeply in the large red granite block come to fruition. The Japanese believe the stone is alive. This stone has a great desire to be split. Under the watchful eyes of Saki, Lourdes, Juergen, Atsuo, Ho Shi, and Jessie, we prepare the worn feathers and wedges for thirty-one holes. Once set, we begin tapping methodically around the stone, beginning at the bottom of one side, working our way around the top, and then from the bottom, up the other side. Slowly, the stone begins opening. While we are waiting for the final giving way, we slowly tap our way along the wedges. Together we celebrate the splitting, the separation, the gorgeous magenta red roughness of the inner heart revealed. Solstice.

Knowing this day w o u l d come—seeing smiling, tearful faces leaving, arms around one another in tenderness. At the site, melancholy withdrawals have begun. No bell ringing of h a m m e r on chisel. No sculptors, workers circling the gold and gray stones. The buzz of electric motor and w h i n e of d i a m o n d blade on groove are gone. The air is clean and clear, though for the lack of rain, the scotch pines still wear their mantle of dust. Touching the stones brings solace. I stand before each work absorbing that w h i c h is given and understood. These sculptures will continue their journey, begun millions, if not billions, of years ago. We cannot know exactly h o w they will affect our city, our world. We can only hope that the spirit revealed by the artist's h a n d will take future viewers to the marvelous places we, as sculptors and friends, have gone. Through the symposium, the works and sculptors have become one in love. It seems clear on this day that people are more important than sculptures, and that is w h y we have m a d e them. I would like to thank, on behalf of myself and the artists, all those who worked so very hard to make the symposium a huge success, especially Christine Podas-Larson and Philip Rickey.

CRAIG DAVID, a.k.a. Art Davidii. is a St. Paul-based public artist whose work centers on stone sculpture, environmental installations, and mosaic murals.

CONFERENCE REPORT janed International Sculpture Center Conference • Cincinnati, Ohio J u n e 21-24, 2 0 0 6

T h e I n t e r n a t i o n a l S c u l p t u r e C e n t e r (ISC) 2006 C o n f e r e n c e a t t r a c t e d a l m o s t 600 s c u l p t o r s a n d a s p i r i n g s c u l p t o r s w i t h a tightly p a c k e d s c h e d u l e e n c o m p a s s i n g p u b l i c art, s c u l p t u r e as social c o m m e n t a r y , u r b a n r e n e w a l , a n d t h e n u t s a n d bolts of technology and doing business. A lively s e s s i o n on " P u b l i c Art a n d t h e Collaboration P r o c e s s " b r o u g h t t o g e t h e r artist Brooke Barrie; p u b l i c art cons u l t a n t W e n d y F e u e r ; t h e d i r e c t o r of p u b l i c art for t h e Arts C o u n c i l of I n d i a n a p o l i s , M i n d y Taylor Ross; a n d t h e director of o n e of t h e oldest c o r p o r a t e c o l l e c t i o n s , Don McNeill of General Mills. T h e p a n e l w a s m o d e r a t e d by s c u l p t o r a n d t e a c h e r Valerie Eickmeier, H e r r o n S c h o o l of Art, IUPUI, I n d i a n a p o l i s . F e u e r said that transit s y s t e m s a n d a i r p o r t s are c u r r e n t l y good p r o s p e c t s b e c a u s e t h e y h a v e f u n d i n g . N a r r a t i v e art can c a u s e c o n t r o v e r s y , s h e n o t e d , b e c a u s e it, u n l i k e abstract art, can b e " r e a d . " S h e a d d e d that artists m u s t " c o o p e r a t e w i t h t h e e n e m y " (i.e., architects), a r e l a t i o n s h i p m a d e m o r e difficult by t h e u n f o r t u n a t e d i v i s i o n of art f r o m a r c h i t e c t u r e on c a m p u s e s . O n t h e o t h e r h a n d , t h e r e is n o w "a r e n e w e d f o c u s on t h e larger civic l a n d s c a p e . " Barrie, w h o is also d i r e c t o r of t h e G r o u n d s for S c u l p t u r e P a r k in N e w Jersey, s p o k e a b o u t p l a c i n g art in n o n t r a d i t i o n a l p l a c e s — v i s i b l e , for i n s t a n c e , f r o m i n t e r s t a t e s or train lines Jonathan Borofsky, Man with Briefcase, 1987, General Mills headquarters, Minneapolis. ( " T h e p i e c e s n e e d to b e u n d e r s t o o d f a s t " ) — a n d i n c o r p o r a t i n g s c u l p t u r e into g a r d e n s . M c N e i l l , r e f e r r i n g to " t h e p r i v a t e s i d e of p u b l i c art," d i s c u s s e d G e n e r a l Mills' t w o d e c a d e s of f o c u s f o u n d t h e c o n f e r e n c e "a reality c h e c k a n d a l i t m u s test all at on o u t s i d e s c u l p t u r e . " T h e artists h a v e a lot of say in t h e sites," the same time." h e r e p o r t e d . " W e ' r e p r o v i d i n g o p p o r t u n i t i e s t h e y m i g h t not " C o n f e r e n c e s are u s e f u l for t h e v a l u a b l e i n f o r m a t i o n y o u h a v e o t h e r w i s e . " Taylor s p o k e of p u b l i c art as "a p a r t i c u l a r gain about w h o gives out m o n e y a n d for m e e t i n g o t h e r s c u l p d i s c i p l i n e , " o n e r e q u i r i n g " a n e n o r m o u s n u m b e r of p e o p l e at tors," said N e w York-based s c u l p t o r R i c h a r d H e i n r i c h , an ISC board m e m b e r . "You i d e n t i f y t h e players; it all c o m e s d o w n to t h e table, f r o m p o l i t i c i a n s to artists." F e u e r w o n d e r e d if this is personal connections." necessary, n o t i n g that " t h e y d o n ' t h a v e t h a t for e n g i n e e r s . " A n o t h e r w e l l - a t t e n d e d s e s s i o n , " S c u l p t u r e a n d Social Steve Miller, of Marietta, Georgia, w h o e n t e r e d s c u l p t i n g C o m m e n t a r y , " i n c l u d e d a p a n e l of a r t i s t - e d u c a t o r s m o d e r a t e d from a b a c k g r o u n d in a u t o b o d y w o r k , also liked t h e contacts. by Mary Jane Jacob, c u r a t o r a n d f a c u l t y m e m b e r at t h e School " T h e n e t w o r k i n g w a s fantastic," h e said. His favorite part of t h e c o n f e r e n c e , h e a d d e d , w a s t h e m e n t o r i n g sessions. at t h e Art I n s t i t u t e of Chicago. T h e d i f f i c u l t y of b a l a n c i n g risktaking w i t h t h e k n o w n w a s a r e c u r r e n t t h e m e . P u b l i c artists Rob Glover, of L o v e l a n d , O h i o , also a p p r e c i a t e d m a k i n g contacts, a d d i n g that a session on p u b l i c s c u l p t u r e " o p e n e d ( A n d r e w Leicester, t h e t e a m of Roberto B e h a r a n d Rosario m y eyes to t h e fact that I c o u l d give it a s h o t . " Margot Gotoff, M a r q u o d t ) w e r e part of t h e p a n e l for "Is it S c u l p t u r e or C i n c i n n a t i , t h o u g h t t h e r e w a s "good give a n d t a k e . " A r c h i t e c t u r e ? " in w h i c h s c u l p t u r e , " t h e m o s t u n r u l y a n d transgressive of t h e a r t s , " a n d a r c h i t e c t u r e w e r e c h a r a c t e r i z e d as H e i n r i c h a n d o t h e r s w o u l d like to h a v e s e e n m o r e of t h e city, finding t h e c a m p u s m e e t i n g location a n d s u b u r b a n hotel " i n e x o r a b l y b o u n d " by m o d e r a t o r T i m o t h y Rub, C l e v e l a n d isolating. Glover e n j o y e d h e a r i n g k e y n o t e s p e a k e r s Jackie M u s e u m of Art director. In a p a n e l d i s c u s s i o n on u r b a n Winsor a n d Chakaia Booker but w o u l d like to h a v e h a d a keyr e n e w a l , Joyce S o m m e r s f r o m t h e I n d i a n a p o l i s Art Center said note s p e a k e r " w h o r e p r e s e n t e d or w o r k e d w i t h artists so w e t h e c e n t e r is "a h u g e a d v o c a t e of p u b l i c art," a n d h e r colleague c o u l d hear t h e other s i d e . " David T h o m a s agreed. "Artists n e e d to be engaged h a n d s - o n in u r b a n r e n e w a l , " h e said. Booker, a striking figure in a h e a d d r e s s as broad as h e r s h o u l d e r s a n d w e a r i n g an intricately layered dress, told h e r A d m i n i s t r a t i v e c h a n g e s at ISC n e c e s s i t a t e d p o s t p o n i n g a u d i e n c e , "I s c u l p t myself every m o r n i n g . " S h e said of p u b l i c t h e c o n f e r e n c e f r o m 2 0 0 5 , w h i c h w a s t h o u g h t to a c c o u n t for art that artists n e e d to b e m o r e o r g a n i z e d t h a n they w h e n crer e d u c e d a t t e n d a n c e . O t h e r ISC c o n f e r e n c e s h a v e d r a w n 800ating t h e smaller w o r k s that interest p r i v a t e collectors. Long 1,200. S t u d e n t s , w h o u s u a l l y r e p r e s e n t 10 to 15 p e r c e n t of h o u r s are r e q u i r e d just to h a n d l e t h e b u s i n e s s of art, s h e nott h e total, a c c o u n t e d for half t h e p a r t i c i p a n t s t h i s y e a r as t h e ed, a s i d e f r o m actually m a k i n g art. "I h a v e n o social life, no r e s u l t of s c h o l a r s h i p s p r o v i d e d by s e v e r a l f o u n d a t i o n s . T h e i r f r i e n d s , n o visits w i t h m y family," said this s u c c e s s f u l sculptor. p r e s e n c e , e n t h u s i a s m , a n d i n t e r e s t w e r e w e l c o m e d by m o r e e x p e r i e n c e d a t t e n d e e s . S c u l p t o r M i l l i c e n t Young, of Ruck- " T h a t ' s m y c h o i c e . " e r s v i l l e , Virginia, s p o k e of " t h e s t r e n g t h of t h e n e w b a t c h of J A N E D U R R E L L writes on the visual arts and on travel for a s t u d e n t s , [ i n c l u d i n g ] w o m e n , y o u n g a n d not, n o t f l i n c h i n g variety of publications. in t h e t r a d i t i o n a l l y ' m a c h o ' field of s c u l p t u r e . " Y o u n g also

R O B I N RICE

CONFERENCE REPORT

International Mural Painting Encounter • Mexico City M a y 16-18, 2 0 0 6

A legal clash in the United States between Portland muralThe fact that the 2006 International Mural Painting Encounists and Clear Channel Outdoor Division (a billboard company) ter took place at all is a testimony to the resilience of muralwas presented as a free speech issue by artist Joe Cotter, who is ism as a movement and the resolve of Guadalupe Rivera Marin, representing Portland muralists in court. A 1998 ruling abolishfounder and chair of the Diego Rivera Foundation. Rivera Marin ing the distinction between billboard advertising and mural art was inspired by Philadelphia's National Conference on Mural is currently u n d e r appeal. Because Clear Channel is an internaArt in 2004 to develop an even more ambitious program, tional company, the case could have broad implications. inviting participants from around the world to Mexico City. But Conference participants tended to fall into either the Rivera Marin, who is a doctor of law as well as the daughter theoretical and scholarly camp or the hands-on artist camp. of twentieth-century muralist Diego Rivera, and the rest of the Desmond Rochfort, Ph.D., head of the School of Fine Arts at Conference Organizing Committee considered canceling the the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, has written exevent when the Mexican Secreten'a de Educacion Publica withtensively about Mexican muralists. He described this as the drew promised financing just a month before the meeting. most international of mural conferences he's attended. His Fortunately, many scholars, artists, and administrators thoughtful paper, "The Politics of Mural Painting," aroused found ways to come to the "Encounter" at the Diego Rivera considerable interest. Rochfort is engaged by the diversity of Foundation in Coyoacan, a suburb of Mexico City. Frank political functions that murals perform. He locates the initial Hyder, a professor at Moore College of Art and Design and an political implications of public murals in prehistory, relating international muralist who frequently shepherds students to them to property and power and the expression of c o m m u n a l Mexico, advised colleagues to seek small travel grants, adding, psychology. But, he pointed out, all political murals are not "Attending the conference will demonstrate to the Mexican alike. "Those in Belfast are real icons of sectarianism," he said, government that the mural movement is about people." while others unite communities or anticipate change. One In spite of the scaled-back plans, Rivera Marin said, "I am example Rochfort found intriguing at the conference was really very satisfied because the people who came here were South African Sabine Marschall's analysis of the way black excellent." Of 120 visitors, most were from the accessible artists began to inject political imagery into hand-painted United States, but Australia, Canada, New Zealand, England, advertising billboards toward the end of apartheid. France, South Africa, Germany, Cuba, Ireland, Uruguay, and Juan Bauk presented a list of ethical and artistic princiArgentina were also represented. Everyone who commented ples endorsed by Argentinean muralists. Toward the end of shared Hyder's conclusion: "One of the things that was emthe conference there was an attempt to systematize a similar powering about the conference was the sheer scale of muralinternational agenda, but the issues and opinions were too making in the international arenas." various. However, many, including Klaus Klinger (Germany), Mexico City itself was another plus. As Jane Golden, head Debra Padilla (United States), and Raquel P. Coballasi (Mexof Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program, said, "It was wonderico), would like to see the establishment of an international fully inspiring to be in a city that embraces public art. The mural painting network. One clear outcome of the conference conference validated murals as an art form that has had a very was the desire for a more formal m e c h a n i s m for international noble history." "The people in Mexico were very surprised, projects and a collective forum. too," Rivera Marin noted. "They never thought that Mexican Some attendees felt there were two intertwined conferencmuralism was so important to the rest of the world." es: one scholarly and one artist/technique based. Rochfort said. Muralist Don Gensler and architect Paz Gutierrez (United States), who recently established Gensler+Gutierrez, an art/ "I think the mural movement needs some intellectual rigor to it. [The 2006 conference] is the beginning of a dialogue. The quespublic space practice, were impressed by plenary speaker Jose tions raised need to be asked and discussed more fully." He Manuel Springer's contextualization of contemporary Mexican would like to confine the next Mexican conference (planned mural painting within the practice of video art, performance for 2007) to theoretical papers submitted for review and let art, and installation. Springer was able to give a voice and artists make their presentations of local programs at another vocabulary to concepts that have been gathering in the thoughts time. Invited to propose a theme. Rochfort suggested Painting of many public artists. on Walls: Sites of Representation, Ritual, Faith, Ideology, and Historical perspectives and numerous specific programs Community (not coincidentallv also the topic of a book he's were discussed. "The Influence of Pre-Hispanic Painting Techwriting for Thames & Hudson). No doubt many artists, includniques in the Preservation of Mural Painting" (Haydee Orea, ing Gensler and Gutierrez, w o u l d also like to be present at this Mexico) provided a rich background to the value of mural discussion. conservation, in a session led by Walther Boelsterly Urrutia of Henry A. J. Ramos (United States) has compiled an excelMexico. lent overview of conclusions d r a w n from the conference. It is Government funding for murals generated the most unavailable through Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program at www. resolved—and perhaps irresolvable—controversy. Judy Baca, muralarts.org. sometimes called the "mother of American muralism." speaking on "Politics of Mural Art and Artist's Rights," questioned whethROBIN RICE is an adjunct associate professor at the Universier a mural program can accept government funding and retain ty of the Arts in Philadelphia. She is co-author o / P h i l a d e l p h i a its integrity. It's difficult to imagine that many murals could be Murals and the Stories They Tell (Temple University Press. made without money from some institutional source—govern2002) and this year's sequel More Philadelphia Murals. ment or corporate—but many artists share Baca's frustrations.

CONFERENCE REPORT

NICHOLE

COODWELL

Publ ic Art Network Preconference • Milwaukee, Wisconsin June 1-2, 2 0 0 6

Milwaukee played host to this year's Public Art Network preconference, part of the annual Americans for the Arts (AFTA) Convention (artsusa.org/pan). Over 250 community leaders, public art professionals, and artists gathered in Wisconsin's largest city for presentations, sessions, and tours of the Milwaukee Art Museum (with a recent addition by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava), the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in nearby Sheboygan, and local public artworks. Elizabeth Diller, cofounder of the interdisciplinary studio Diller, Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R). presented the keynote address. She highlighted her team's recent projects, including Facsimile, a permanent media installation for the San Francisco Arts Commission at the new Moscone Convention Center; Blur Building, a temporary fog-covered pavilion commissioned for the Swiss EXPO in 2002; and Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art, DS+R's first building in the United States (the September 17th opening was postponed to December 10th). The studio's work defies categorization by combining architectural design, performance, and electronic media with creative innovation. Diller emphasized the use of space as a material in all her projects, recognizing that each work starts not with a blank canvas but with site-specific elements that are as influential as the artist's creation. Diller's keynote address introduced a significant thread at this year's preconference: the role of the artist in public art. As an interdisciplinary field, public art engages numerous complex systems and involves a variety of professionals. In order to keep artistic voices at the table, the PAN Council has m a d e it a primary objective to increase participation of artists in its activities. According to Council Chair Jean Greer, "We believe the greater the dialogue between and among artists and arts professionals in the public art field, the greater benefit to all." Through a last-minute funding request from the Council, an additional $12,500 was allocated by AFTA to this year's preconference budget to underwrite the attendance of artists unable to f u n d conference expenses on their own. This allowed PAN to place at least one public artist on each session panel and to begin discussing the option of a discount registration category for artists to attend future preconferences. A session titled "New Media, New Materials" introduced the work of public artists Ned Kahn and Bruce Shapiro. Shapiro is a pioneer in applying computer-controlled kinetics to his installations. For over a decade, he has been designing software to automate a range of machines—from a stratograph, w h i c h makes highly-detailed sand art, to an embolograph that's capable of reproducing faces and other images through a highresolution raster display of air bubbles working as pixels. Kahn strives "to create artworks that enable viewers to observe and interact with natural processes." He recently installed Wind Leaves, a cluster of seven, twenty-six-foot-tall leaf structures in Veterans Park, adjacent to the Milwaukee Art Museum. The surfaces of the leaves are covered by thousands of stainless steel disks that move in the wind. Hand wheels on the support columns allow viewers to turn the sculptures and interact with the artwork. Both artists agreed that there ought to be more opportunities for temporary public art projects, which allow artists to try out new ideas without having to promise that the Sausage vendor awaits customers next to Robert W. Smart's SS Core (2005) on the Kilbourn Street bridge, part of Milwaukee's RiverWalk District.

works will last forever. "Napkin" ideas can be realized and creative innovations brought to the field. An evening session at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, led by artist Judy Baca and author Erika Doss, focused on controversy in public art. Projects discussed included Dennis Oppenheim's commission for the Milwaukee International Airport—Blue Shirt—which garnered thirty-one fullpage news articles before the artist's contract was terminated. The airport cited "breach of contract" when the installation date was extended; the artist insists that the cancellation was political, with arguments in the press debating whether the piece would be seen as a pejorative comment on Milwaukee's reputation as a blue-collar town. Baca spoke evocatively about the turbulence that erupted twelve years after she installed her multifaceted design for the Baldwin Park Metrolink station near Los Angeles. Protests at the site in 2005 between the anti-illegal-immigration group Save Our State and area residents required considerable expenditures for crowd control and riot police. At issue was an inscription on the piece—"It was better before they came"— that Save Our State claimed was discriminatory toward European Americans. In fact, the inscription is a quotation uttered by a white Baldwin Park resident in the 1950s, lamenting the influx of persons of Mexican ancestry into the San Gabriel Valley following World War II. A variety of other inscriptions from the past and present appear in five languages at various areas of the installation. The debate continues online at www. saveourstate.org and www.judybaca.com. The final day of this eye-opening conference featured an off-site tour to the John Michael Kohler Art Center (JMKAC) and the Kohler Co. foundry in Sheboygan. Tour groups donned protective eyewear for a behind-the-scenes look at the nation's leading manufacturer of plumbing products, where an average of sixteen artists annually participate in JMKAC's arts/industry program. Established in 1974, the program is acclaimed as a unique collaboration between arts and industry in the United States. Through two- and six-month residencies, Kohler Co. manufacturing facilities are made available for artists from around the world to work alongside industrial personnel and explore forms and concepts not possible in their own studios. Details are available at www.jmkac.org/arts_industry. NICHOLE GOODWELL (formerly Nichole Alwell) has served as program associate for FORECAST Public Artworks since 2004 and is currently the designer and production manager for Public Art Review.

i framework Issue 5 / J u l y ' 0 6

GiMC? At this year's Public Art Network preconference, PAR staff hosted a "Gripe Session" that invited attendees to share their complaints about the public art field in general. Here's a sampling of the responses we received:

> EDUCATE government officials so they aren't intimidated to talk about the art, but proud of it. EDUCATE the public in new ways. THINK! > Too much public art is of anecdotal quality, superficial, of a decorative nature (i.e., ceramic tiles with children's handprints, trite narrative content). Selection panels need to be more discriminating. > We used to talk about art all the time, then we talked about politics, now all we talk about is money. > Government entities are hiring public art managers who have no experience in public art or art. Some are MBAs with no knowledge of the profession's practices or standards. > Often employees say, "I expected you to teach me the politics." How do you teach someone that? > Any major city in the U.S. without a percent-for-art program should be taken out at dawn and shot. > Elected officials cannot serve as advocates for the arts because their understanding and education in visual arts is sadly lacking. > I was hired to administer and facilitate a public art program. Instead, I spend all my time defending [the idea] that there should be a program at all. The funding is always at risk and the unofficial controls on funding result in it looking like we can't spend the money and therefore don't need it. > If we can't get people with a background in art into public art, then we have no hope [of improving the field], > I want art to continually push new boundaries. It is difficult to find that middle ground of creative expression and responsible use of public funds. > I am sick of the assumption that everyone must like the work!

Detachment www. f r a m e w o r k . fi

i h c h n n i s h art

review

BOOK REVIEW

ROBB M

(j«o»gt J'

DEFENDIN^COMP^xiTY |Art, Politics, and the New World Order]

AMERICA STARTS HERE: Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler Ian Berry and Bill Arning, editors Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006 216 pages, $45 (hardcover)

D E F E N D I N G COMPLEXITY: Art, Politics, and the New World Order Eleanor Heartney Lenox, Mass.: Hard Press Editions, 2005 300 pages, $29.95 (paperback)

When Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler's public art collaboration was at its zenith, from 1985 to 1995, conceptual art was "assigned to the past," as Boston's List Visual Arts Center curator Bill Arning writes in his foreword, and the art marketplace inspired young, egotistical artists to do big, funky paintings. Instead of working in Lower East Side lofts or a Queens studio, making objects for museums or galleries, Ericson and Ziegler created site-specific, time-based, noninterchangeable works, and the whole country was their canvas. Their public artworks spoke directly to local communities using socially coded natural materials and found w o r d s that have b e c o m e c o m m o n p l a c e in the vocabulary of p u b l i c artists today. Rather than creating stylized expressions of individual angst or vision, the couple shared fully in the production of artworks, and their collaborative authorship made a distinctive mark on public arts. Routinely, Ericson and Ziegler were required to engage local citizens and businesses with site-specific plans, w h i c h had them painting houses, landscaping, or even building a house in exchange for people's permission to be used by conceptual art. Even though their projects, m a d e in multifarious communities, had strong social and political components, they were not didactic or without wit and humor. For instance, Ericson and Ziegler paid a private h o m e o w n e r in Hawley, Pennsylvania, to refrain from mowing half of his lawn for two months. By staging social-code-altering events in communities outside urban centers (where the avant-garde can seem mundane), the couple drew puzzlement and questioning from local media, thus beginning a dialogue. America Starts Here is an authoritative documentation of this important collaboration, which ended with Ericson's 1995 death of cancer at age 39. The book is beautifully constructed, with ample large, high-quality photos accompanied by essays and interviews that tackle their concepts with depth and illumination. Ericson and Ziegler's work together defied the limitations of galleries and museums, yet because of their scope and the systems of interaction they deployed, this book is a satisfying read for artists, historians, and collectors, and could be used as a template for describing other important collaborators in the field of public art.

Art provides an alternative window through which we can view and understand the world, and in recent decades this has been especially evident in Iran. As Heartney makes clear in her essay "Modernity and Revolution," if our understanding of Iran were limited to the "official" version of our government, the people of this rich and layered culture would be reduced to the center of the "axis of evil." Thank God for complexity. And for films, photography, literature, and art from a country in the midst of an upheaval of values brought on by modernity, religious and spiritual change, and a revolution in praxis sparked by nationalism and evolving Iranian identity. As Heartney notes in "War and Its Images," postmodernism revealed that "truth" is shaped. A never-ending worldwide war predicated on lies, the hysteria of war hawks, and two consecutive American presidents who expended their political capital trying to reshape their place in history, mark the popular arrival of postmodernism as a proactive stance. The best step toward an informed, democratic public is to defeat the strict black and white, right and left, red and blue, simplistic and emotional rhetoric that has made public debate devolve into in a quagmire of anti-intellectualism. The only way to fight didacticism, as Heartney suggests in her title, is with a defense of complexity. Heartney's topics range from the pay-to-exhibit policies of national art museums to the visual bombast of New York's Houston Street billboards and wall murals to the blending of entertainment, education, theatricality, and blatant commercialism of Giorgio Armani fashions or a BMW motorcycle show at the Guggenheim. While most of Heartney's essays—compiled from previous publications in Art in America as well as the Washington Post, New Art Examiner, and The New York Times—are thoughtprovoking, not all deserve to be reprinted. Still, in this period of briny public debate, we need more culturally enriched discussion, not less. For if we reduce countries like Iran to simple numbers, strategic power points, and the hyperbole of reactionary politicians bent on global warfare, we will forever sacrifice our next generations. R O B B MITCHELL has written about art and film in for over twenty years.

Minnesota

palmer

BOOK REVIEW

Collective Space

PUBLIC WORKS / IF Y O U C A N T F I N D IT, GIVE US A R I N G COLLECTIVE SPACE / LUCY + JORGE ORTA R I C H A R D W O O D S / AS BIG AS A H O U S E Birmingham, UK: ARTicle Press Publishers & ixia, 2006 Each title is approximately 90 pages of text and images/plates, £6.99 per title (paperback) Three recent publications from ARTicle Press Publishers and ixia form the New Thinking in Public Art series, offering extended thematic essays about the built environment and public art. These books are provocative in ways that are not always obvious. They offer a way of thinking about public, space, and art without purporting to provide solutions or presuming one way of thinking about public art; rather, these three books create an interesting ensemble that explores art, architecture, and public space at different scales and with keenly honed attitudes. Public Works/If You Can't Find It, Give Us a Ring is organized in four parts: a foreword, an interview with the artists, a description of the project, and a critical essay. The foreword, by Anna Douglas, series production editor, is a one-page introduction to the series and to this particular book, celebrating a unique collaboration among editors, interviewers, artists, and a critical essayist. The interview, by Kathrin Bohm and Andreas Lang with John Butler and Janet Hodgson, obviously grew out of a well-crafted, intimate, and provocative conversation. It touches on control, intention, participation, process and outcome, evaluation, architectural practice, social change, site, authority, and contestation. The third section, the project, is the heart of the book: a graphic narrative of "a new spatial reading and illustration" of a project by public works. Park Products, which was commissioned by the Serpentine Gallery and took place in and around Kensington Gardens, London, between September 2003 and October 2004. The layout of this section is informative and engaging, even though the two-dimensional representation does not seem to do the project justice. The essay "Working with Uncertainty Towards a Real Public Space," by the architectural theorist Doina Petrescu, is organized around questions about community, public, art, and architecture, each worthy of a more extended essay. This section is a fine ending to this book, a reminder that "rather than being a master, the architect should understand himself/herself as one of the 'participants,' and work with meaning as a perpetual practical accomplishment." Collective Space/Lucy + Jorge Orta also contains a foreword, interview, project description, and critical essay. The interview

of Lucy Orta by Nigel Price and Jayne Bradley begins with attention to this book's theme: environment. The environment for Studio Orta's work is the neighborhood and the street. Price and Bradley's questions engage Orta in a captivating conversation about nostalgia, reactions from communities and participants, transferability, participants versus spectators, precedents for Studio Orta's work, the status quo, the body, boundaries, space, and politics. The project discussed in this book is 70 x 7 The Meal, w h i c h describes a meal for seven guests, w h o in turn invite seven more, and so on. Options—with attendant settings (sites), logistics, artworks (e.g., plate designs), table settings, and contingencies—are described in words and images. "Each meal, in the form of an act, proposes a new educational, social and environmental debate and a pretext for new encounters for multiples of seven guests." Paul Chatterton's essay, "Retrofitting the Corporate City: Five Principles for Urban Survival," is a call to action and an agenda for urban regeneration. "This is not an exercise in making cities more interesting places to live," Chatterton writes. "It is a question of urban survival." He p r o m p t s readers to think about the evolving corporate nature of city centers, encouraging us not to be corralled into "a very narrow version of how we might live and what we might do." He concludes with five principles for living our lives and taking back our cities. Chatterton implies that Orta's work promotes these principles. or even creates opportunities for such a city to occur. Chatterton's manifesto is a thought-provoking piece on its own, but the combination—interview, project description, and five principles for urban survival—is a powerful means to inspire citizens and artists to take responsibility for both their actions and their communities. Richard Woods/As Big As a House describes As Big As a House, a series of colorful plates that tease the eye and prompt thoughts about authenticity, nostalgia, vernacular, making, and identity. The interview by Noha Nasser and Gavin Wade ranges from the origins of the patterns Woods uses to more provocative questions about cultural forms and identities, paper architecture and the making of habitats, context, fictional space, contradictions and conflations, projection, branding, and class. The book ends with an essay by the architectural theorists Sarah Chaplin and Eric Holding, "Manufacturing Authenticity." an overview of threats to authenticity and a discussion of the connections among public art, architecture, experience, emotion, culture, patronage, and development.

BOOK REVIEW

joni m palmer & Melissa Constantine

Two Minds Artists and Architects in Collaboration Edited by Jes Femie Makardn s Hi i Im dbr. i <*fmtanadnreto It Body npdkm lorandear* to I paaartaswss l» n r i n M ) tram nd gaAng aM yw mi but maybe amng I wanrtotomwwgwhd ywtaighlid aqht be Worianj w* rtnts tch n on I pyrspewr. itaoquewf»rt birrs ustoftcsnadef our oaa pcslm*) jw! sharpen cw taughh Mnh n tfmci urn b open* mgr? win m omw» tod hnag carta idas li i stt «No m I lead lorepaidtoaM s dreadytonB a it Mama Mm* a canopM and a otata apprer-ArcMtch anctres are my camphcaM -Iky cowling have to fUW i ytassetaendftt*taiquI spend hm* end money NOI paJdyng nr^wi Wtih am nol wxsstn>i natural obhoraters or suded la jroyKl aoriitarways m»y betoomessy. too loo mat, or tao tmcksivt Sol mostatehIm • itagn sanstaty H* capacdytopi^ i bnd and he cmta enerfas wfach deadtas retwu ta?og 6 deMeuraa don't start Iran a deogn postal JtawfyottakngtslaMB,'0 many artels Itafci alm tan i land draprRwwfrecAxn and ilamj hot often associate) tuft art Dan archdeclure to gmral. arcfcdeds Ida la buM a tutagtasskk,load ad stable Ik artel it sfriaq tor i mare Ma. Mphl and uadnnfrq approach,as art shwdd M Joards »»end olfee|nt«d. Ajtai and l had developed a level aHetepathy I auid sty Ifcd social tkore. d s a Ixl Ve-..•» d brt. bui <l rendsrntd MMfedywpot Tta ahaittoatalonlBStrenflid experience. M wtets an i-surfy mare ahit!k| Ihaa vddeds Ihe artel places cwitunpnry proMam d Ike baarl d In acMy, whereas he arttad Ms la M taa Kcdhs percepbon d things j differs tram mm substantialy and be lightness d his design approach bnngs a vary refreshing | element n our work Cobborsfeng wdh Ke* his made me aware hw much IVe been atahoned to ctrta schemata as an archded and b how tar I like mdtnsksahon, structure and a tad desapi methodology lor graded Black Dog Publishing

G R O U N D B R E A K I N G : The Artist in the Changing Landscape Iwan Bala, editor Bridgend, Wales: Seren, 2005 200 pages, £19.99 (paperback) This book is a collaboration between Seren, an independent literary publisher, and Cywaith Cymru/Artworks Wales, the national organization for public art in Wales. Seren's aim is "not simply to reflect what is going on in the culture in which we publish, but to drive that culture forward, to engage with the world, and to bring Welsh literature, art and politics before a wider audience" (www.seren-books.com). Cywaith Cymru/ Artworks Wales was established in 1981 "to encourage the placing of art in the environment through commissions, exhibitions and residencies. The wide range of work covered by the organization is supported by a strong commitment to the cultural life of Wales, seeking to bring about new work which is particular to its environment and which reflects the culture from w h i c h it comes" (www.cywaithcymru.org). Groundbreaking is composed of essays and striking images of projects from the Cywaith Cymru portfolio. The foreword is by Iwan Bala, an internationally accomplished Welsh writer and artist, w h o invokes "the engagement between the public and art," touching on some of the difficult core issues of public art today: communities, sites, artists, politics, the social role of public art, the responsibilities of an informed public, and the consequences of development and tourism. Eight writers are included: Tamara Krikorian (Realizing Dreams), Hugh Adams (Mapping the Field), Shelagh Hourahane (Sites Revisited: Art Work in our Public Places), John Gingell (Public Art as Vision, Praxis, Civitas), Peter Lord (A Narrative), Robin Campbell (Signs of Life), Stephen West (Making Sense of It: Artists in Rural Communities), and Simon Fenoulhet (Poets and Evangelists). These eight essays are (thankfully) not just descriptions of the Cywaith Cymru works; rather, they are compelling evocations of places, people, and installations. These intelligent, analytical essays are about history, ideas, politics, motivations, and poetic proclamations that honor the past, celebrate the present, and suggest a d y n a m i c and powerful future of public art in Wales—and if enough people outside of Wales read this, the future of public art everywhere.

joni m palmer is a doctoral student sity of Colorado at Boulder.

in geography

at the Univer-

T W O M I N D S : Artists and Architects in Collaboration Jes Fernie, editor London: Black Dog Publishing, Ltd., 2006 174 pages, $39.95 (hardcover) Two Minds is an introduction to recent partnerships between leading contemporary figures in art and architecture. The book contains essays by two international writers/curators/academics: Philip Ursprung (Zurich) and Cara Mullio (Los Angeles). Ursprung places artist-architect projects in the context of the Gesamtkunstwerk (total artwork), referencing a history of artist involvement in myriad public affairs. Mullio speaks to h o w such collaborations have helped change the face of her hometown, Los Angeles, noting seminal collaborative works by Frank Gehry and Mike Kelley, and describing Richard Meier and Robert Irwin's combative dynamics during their work on the J. Paul Getty Museum and garden. The rest of the book is divided into three classifications of artist-architect work: "Groundscapes," "Buildings," and "Things." Editor Fernie's curatorial choices tend towards the Eurocentric, and the work surveyed varies dramatically in scope, scale, and dynamic. The least impressive projects shown are those in which the artist and architect seemed to work in conjunction rather than collaboration, producing no better than graphic buildings. The most interesting projects are those that change the process of designing public space (Shared Ground: Southwark, London; muf); create a didactic, interactive building (Laban Centre: Deptford, London; Herzog & de Meuron and Michael Craig-Martin); or publicize understated detail (Stortorget: Kalmar, Sweden; Eva Lofdahl and Caruso St. John). Such projects forge new frontiers simultaneously in both disciplines, but more importantly offer new potential for the pedestrian experience. Although Two Minds acknowledges a range of artist-architect collaborations, it lacks a critical stance with respect to the work it presents; success of the projects is measured by the quality of collaboration and is not examined objectively. Thus, the effectiveness and import of the projects are underinterpreted. In further scholarship, this reader would like to see focus shifted from the process of collaboration (or the fact that it happens) to the characteristics of the work being produced, resulting in a more detailed inquiry into how collaborative work (among artists, architects, and other professionals) can augment the experience of public space. MELISSA CONSTANTINE lives and works in St. Paul, She is interested in architecture and urbanism.

Minn.

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K A N S A S M U R A L S : A Traveler's G u i d e

b e g i n n i n g s as an i n d u s t r i a l landfill a n d illegal

Jake S m a l l m a n a n d Carl N y m a n

Lora Jost a n d Dave L o e w e n s t e i n

d u m p i n g area t o t o d a y ' s c o m m u n i t y w a t e r f r o n t

N e w York: M a r k Batty Publisher, 2 0 0 5

Lawrence: U n i v e r s i t y Press o f Kansas, 2 0 0 6

park a n d w o r l d - r e n o w n e d gallery.

160 pages, $27.95 ( h a r d c o v e r )

2 9 6 pages, $19.95 ( p a p e r b a c k )

field.

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H A N D P A P E R M A K I N C : V o l u m e 21, N u m b e r i

Stencil graffiti is s w e e p i n g t h e globe. M e l -

Lavishly i l l u s t r a t e d g u i d e t o over 6 0 0 o f t h e

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state's m u r a l s , o f f e r i n g new p e r s p e c t i v e s o n

M i n a Takahashi, e d i t o r

its c u l t u r e a n d history.

Beltsville: H a n d P a p e r m a k i n g , Inc., 2 0 0 6

A SCULPTURE READER: Contemporary

4 8 pages, $18

Sculpture Since 1 9 8 0

R E M A P P I N G H I G H W Y C O M B E : Journeys

G l e n n H a r p e r a n d Twylene Moyer, e d i t o r s

Beyond the Western Sector

t h e Paper in Flight s y m p o s i u m , s h o w c a s i n g a

H a m i l t o n : I n t e r n a t i o n a l S c u l p t u r e Center

John Rogers

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U n i q u e a n t h o l o g y o f articles o n s c u l p t o r s

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T h i s issue o f Hand Papermaking

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JAMES C A R P E N T E R : Environmental Refractions

d r a w n f r o m t h e twenty-five-year r u n o f

Sandro Marpillero

m a g a z i n e , o f f e r i n g an o v e r v i e w o f three-

N e w York: P r i n c e t o n A r c h i t e c t u r a l Press, 2 0 0 6

d i m e n s i o n a l art since 1980.

Sculpture

Publication and D V D represent the o u t c o m e o f Cathy a n d John Rogers's p r o j e c t t o r e - m a p a n d r e - i m a g i n e H i g h W y c o m b e b e f o r e t h e start o f

176 pages, S55 (hardcover)

t h e city's m a j o r r e d e v e l o p m e n t p r o j e c t .

Beautifully showcases C a r p e n t e r ' s w o r k , w h i c h

T H E CREATIVE C O M M U N I T Y

b l e n d s s c u l p t u r e , fine art, a r c h i t e c t u r e , a n d

H A N D B O O K : H o w to Transform Communities

BUILDER'S T H E M U R A L S O F | O H N P U G H : Beyond

engineering.

U s i n g Local Assets, Arts, a n d C u l t u r e

T r o m p e L'Oeil

T o m B o r r u p / Partners for Livable C o m m u n i t i e s

Kevin Bruce

P U B L I C ART: T h i n k i n g M u s e u m s Differently

St. Paul: F i e l d s t o n e A l l i a n c e , 2 0 0 6

Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2 0 0 5

Hilde Hein

256 pages, $34.95 (paperback)

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L a n h a m : A l t a M i r a Press, 2 0 0 6

T h i s text gives t h e reader s u c c e s s f u l strategies,

First-ever c o l l e c t i o n o f John P u g h ' s highly

192 pages, $26.95 ( p a p e r b a c k ) , $75 ( h a r d c o v e r )

best practices, a n d h o w - t o g u i d a n c e t o t u r n

skilled w o r k offers an i n s i d e r ' s p e r s p e c t i v e

Hein draws upon a m o v e m e n t toward

c u l t u r a l g e m s i n t o effective c o m m u n i t y change.

o n his creative process a n d f u l l - c o l o r

e p h e m e r a l i t y a n d i m p e r m a n e n c e in p u b l i c art. She p r o p o s e s a new d y n a m i c for t h e m u s e u m

r e p r o d u c t i o n s o f thirty-five n o t a b l e m u r a l s . T H E EPITAPH

PROJECT

t h a t is t e m p o r a l and pluralistic, w h i l e r e t a i n i n g

P u b l i s h e d in c o n j u n c t i o n w i t h t h e e x h i b i t i o n

W H E N TILLAGE BEGINS O T H E R ARTS

a g r o u n d i n g in m a t e r i a l t h i n g s .

" t h e e p i t a p h p r o j e c t 1995-" by Joyce B u r s t e i n

F O L L O W : Grant W o o d and Christina Petersen

L.A.: O t i s College o f Art a n d D e s i g n , 2 0 0 6

Murals

EDUCATION, SCIENCE, A N D ART

Burstein's project—a chalkboard t o m b s t o n e

Lea Rosson D e L o n g

W i l f r i e d Lentz, e d i t o r

w i t h a box o f c h a l k — l o c a t e d in c e m e t e r i e s

A m e s : Iowa State U n i v e r s i t y Press, 2 0 0 6

SKOR Art Projects Part 3, 2 0 0 6

a n d o t h e r sites, i n v i t e d viewers t o w r i t e

398 pages, $55 ( h a r d c o v e r )

Looks at f u n d i n g practices i n v o l v e d in t h e

e p i t a p h s , w h i c h t h e artist c o l l e c t e d as a series

A history o f the historically significant

D u t c h F o u n d a t i o n for Art a n d Public Space's

o f h u m o r o u s , sad, a n d t h o u g h t - p r o v o k i n g

Public W o r k s o f A r t Project in I o w a a n d an

c o l l a b o r a t i o n s a m o n g art, science, a n d

photographs.

examination of the Grant Wood and Christian

e d u c a t i o n (in D u t c h w i t h t r a n s l a t i o n i n s e r t ) . www.skor.nl

Petersen m u r a l s at Iowa State College.

FROM THE HOME FRONT LIFE I N T H E T W I N C I T I E S T H I S S U M M E R W A S T W I C E AS E N J O Y A B L E D U E TO T H E P R O L I F E R A T I O N OF P U B L I C ART A C T I V I T I E S ALL OVER T O W N . H E R E ' S A BRIEF T O U R

THE H I G H L I G H T S .

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Intermedia Arts hosted its annual week-long B-Girl Be: A Celebration of Women in Hip-hop, featuring performances, film screenings, and some great graffiti mural-making. Intermedia's entire exterior fagade served as the canvas for a colorful outburst of free expression, including some refreshingly controversial imagery (www.intermediaarts.org/Pages/Programs/ b-girl be). Likewise, Intermedia's annual art car parade drew throngs, dropped jaws, and generated lots of smiles. A perennial favorite was action artist and athlete JAO and her traveling one-minute mural performance in the back of her pickup truck. Accompanied by speakers blaring the William Tell Overture, she attacked a giant sheet of paper with wild abandon, quickly dispelling the myth of the "lazy artist" (www.jaoart.com). Albuquerque's Evelyn Rosenberg and St. Paul's Craig David completed major works for the new Paul and Sheila Wellstone Center for Community Building. The center's main tenant is Neighborhood House, a century-old resettlement organization on St. Paul's West Side. Rosenberg's interior "quilts" of copper and mixed media, a tribute to the Wellstones, employs "detonography," a process she invented for imprinting detailed imagery on sheets of thin metal via carefully controlled explosives (www.evelynrosenberg.com). David's intricate stone mosaic—the first of four panels planned—is a stunning addition to the exterior. David also participated in the blockbuster international sculpture symposium Minnesota Rocks!, hosted by the nonprofit Public Art Saint Paul (www. publicartstpaul.org) [see page 76 for his account]. Not far from Neighborhood House, in the area known as District del Sol, FORECAST organized the summer-long FOOD sCULpTURE project. Using food and culture as unifying themes, a group of local artists led 110 children enrolled in the All Around the Neighborhood Camp in the creation of h u n d r e d s of mouth-watering—yet inedible—food sculptures. These lightweight, oversized fruits, vegetables, and prepared delicacies were later installed as a festive canopy overlooking La Placita, a small gathering space and evolving market place managed by the Riverview Economic Development Association. There was a dizzying array of suspended groceries, from a big can of Blue Sky Natural Soda to a prize-winning eggplant (surprisingly, there's no can o' peas). Red Grooms would be proud (www.forecastart.org). The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum hosted another summer-long series of creative art and nature collaboratives. This year's program, Secret Gardens, featured a wonderful collection of twenty sculptural gardens, walk-through environments, and unusual horticultural projects. Fifty-five artists from around the United States submitted proposals, and participants were offered a $2,500 stipend to defray costs. Many partnered with local contractors, nurseries, and garden centers to help build their "secret garden." Among the highlights were

FROM THE TOP: Detail of the B-Girl Be Mural at Intermedia Arts, Minneapolis; JAO in action at the Art Car Parade, Minneapolis; detail of Evelyn Rosenberg's Wellstone memorial at Neighborhood House, St. Paul; installation view of food sculptures at La Placita, St. Paul; all 2006.

FROM THE HOME FRONT

Gail Katz-James's Leaf Tunnel and Richard Bonk's Magic Mirrors Mandalas (www.arboretum.umn.edu/). Among the stellar collection of new cultural facilities opening this summer were the impressive new Guthrie Theater by the French architect Jean Nouvel, Michael Graves's addition to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the new d o w n t o w n Minneapolis Central Library, designed by Cesar Pelli, which is deceptively light and airy. The library hosts a number of new artworks, including a sprawling floor piece by Lita Albuquerque, a large exterior bronze by Beverly Pepper, a playful digital elevator project by Ben Rubin, and a series of artist-designed fireplaces by Donald Lipski, Teri Kwant, Jackie Apple, and Tacoumba Aiken (www.mplib.org/ncl_publicart.asp). On the other side of town, the newly opened Rondo Community Outreach Library in St. Paul features fresh new projects by artists Susan Warner, Seitu Jones, Mary Hark, Harriet Bart, and Steven Woodward. Warner's fireplace mosaic is a fun and engaging game of wordplay and related imagery. Jones and Hark's sculptural "tree" in the m i d d l e of the children's area is a magnet for imaginations, and Bart's etched glass wall of concrete poetry from around the world rewards repeated viewings. Outside the library, city of St. Paul artist-in-residence Steven Woodward installed a series of beautifully engraved granite tile insets for the sidewalk (www.stpaul.lib.mn.us/ rondo/artwork.html). It should be noted that Jones recently began his new job as an artist-in-residence for the city of Minneapolis. Now both cities are engaging creative talents in the development of public spaces. And at Ridgedale Library in Minnetonka, a newly redesigned entry features a three-part project by Randy Walker, Josh Blank, and Sheryl Tourila. Walker's intricately woven, light-catching fiber sculpture hovers over Blank's sprawling terrazzo tile floor, punctuated by Tuorila's colorful, undulating mosaic benches. The works are intended to abstractly express the paths of information and ideas in the building. A dedication celebration was held October 23. The area's newest and most compelling mural is nestled into a stairwell at Minneapolis' South High School, the result of a two-year effort by art instructor Denny Sponsler. At Sponsler's invitation, Mexican muralist Gustavo Lira, a long-time resident of the Twin Cities, led a group of students, alumni, and other artists to produce the 1,275-square-foot mural. Themes of h u m a n rights and social justice enhance school pride while promoting future partnerships with other schools and local organizations to create murals elsewhere in the community. The mural was dedicated September 18. That's the end of our tour, but if you'd like to spend more time with these artists or projects, please go online and visit the websites listed. Happy trails.

FROM THE TOP: Richard Bonk's Magic Mirrors Mandalas at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, Chaska; detail of Susan Warner's fireplace mosaic for the Rondo Community Outreach Library, St. Paul; Sheyl Tourila's steel/mosaic benches and Josh Blank's terrazzo tile floor at the Ridgedale Library, Minnetonka; detail of South High mural, Minneapolis; all 2006.

NEWS

W I N T E R PARK H O S T S M A J O R W O R K S W i n t e r Park, Florida, has d r a m a t i c a l l y raised t h e bar for sidewalk art displays w i t h t h e o p e n i n g o f its A r t o n the Green e x h i b i t i o n in t h e city's Central Park, w h i c h is c e l e b r a t i n g its 1 0 0 t h anniversary t h i s year. C u r a t e d by N e w York-based art c o n s u l t a n t Joyce P o m e r o y Schwartz, t h e e x h i b i t i o n features t e n w o r k s by i n t e r n a t i o n a l l y r e n o w n e d artists, i n c l u d i n g V i t o A c c o n c i , Red G r o o m s , a n d Louise N e v e l s o n . The exhibition opens N o v e m b e r 1 and runs t h r o u g h February 19, 2 0 0 7 . Details at w w w . c i . w i n t e r - p a r k . f l . u s . [Photo of Crooms's D o g V e n d o r courtesy Marlborough

MOVING

Hot

Gallery.]

Liesel Fenner, k n o w n f o r her w o r k w i t h t h e N e w England F o u n d a t i o n for t h e Arts ( N E F A ) , began her new p o s i t i o n as m a n a g e r o f p u b l i c art for A m e r i c a n s for t h e A r t s o n S e p t e m b e r 26. Fenner w i l l take t h e h e l m o f t h e Public A r t N e t w o r k , f o r m e r l y m a n a g e d by G r e g Esser. H e r w o r k as NEFA's Public A r t P r o g r a m M a n a g e r led t o such n o t a b l e p r o g r a m s as A r t & C o m m u n i t y Landscapes, Fund for t h e A r t s , Lewis & Clark B i c e n t e n n i a l A r t C o r p s , Visible Republic, a n d B u i l d i n g C o m m u n i t i e s t h r o u g h C u l t u r e . Fenner has been an active m e m b e r o f t h e P A N C o u n c i l a n d served as p l a n n i n g chair for t h e recent a n n u a l c o n v e n t i o n (see r e p o r t o n page 8 0 ) .

BANKSY STRIKES A G A I N T h e U.K.'s m o s t celebrated graffiti artist, Banksy ( w h o m a d e a s p l a s h in Los Angeles recently w i t h his p a i n t e d e l e p h a n t ) , r e t u r n e d t o his h o m e t o w n o f Bristol t h i s s u m m e r a n d m a d e his m a r k o n a local sexual health clinic near t h e City C o u n c i l ' s offices. Banksy's realistic stencil m u r a l d e p i c t s a w i n d o w in w h i c h a w o m a n in her u n d e r w e a r is s t a n d i n g . A s u i t e d m a n leans o u t t h e w i n d o w , w h i l e a G U Y T O N C O N N E C T S DOTS IN

DETROIT

Move to the Rear). O n c e a s c o r n e d eyesore, t h e

naked m a n hangs p r e c a r i o u s l y o n t o t h e ledge.

T h e i n f a m o u s H e i d e l b e r g Project (www.

H e i d e l b e r g Project evolved i n t o a successful

Rather t h a n r e m o v e t h e r o g u e a r t w o r k , the

h e i d e l b e r g . o r g ) c e l e b r a t e d its t w e n t i e t h

c o m m u n i t y organization and tourist magnet,

Bristol City C o u n c i l d e c i d e d t o leave t h e fate

a n n i v e r s a r y o n A u g u s t 28 at its h o m e in

e m b r a c e d by t h e city. T h e o r g a n i z a t i o n w o n

o f t h e u n c o m m i s s i o n e d m u r a l in t h e h a n d s o f t h e p u b l i c via t h e city's w e b s i t e , c l a i m i n g t h a t

D e t r o i t . T h e p r o j e c t s t a r t e d o u t as a s p r a w l i n g

t h e i n t e r n a t i o n a l E n v i r o n m e n t a l Design a n d

u r b a n f o l k a r t w o r k by Tyree G u y t o n in r e s p o n s e

Research A w a r d in 2 0 0 5 a n d was a silver m e d a l

if e n o u g h locals like it t h e n it w i l l stay. In July,

t o his d e t e r i o r a t i n g n e i g h b o r h o o d . G u y t o n

w i n n e r o f the Rudy Bruner A w a r d for U r b a n

t h e tally was 97 p e r c e n t in favor o f leaving t h e

c o v e r e d h o u s e s in p o l k a d o t s a n d i n t e r i o r

Excellence. G u y t o n ' s f u t u r e plans i n c l u d e m o r e

m u r a l , so it stays. C o u n c i l l o r Gary H o p k i n s

f u r n i s h i n g s , filled tree b r a n c h e s w i t h d a n g l i n g

a r t w o r k s , a m u s e u m , a n d a v i s i t o r center.

m a d e clear t h a t " t h e d e c i s i o n t o keep t h i s

pairs o f shoes ( r e f e r e n c i n g t h e l y n c h i n g o f

[Melanie

A f r i c a n - A m e r i c a n s ) , created n u m e r o u s o u t d o o r

Photos by Greg Campbell

w o r k s , a n d d o t t e d a Rosa Parks bus ( e n t i t l e d

Buffington

contributed

to this piece.

and Elayne

Cross.]

Banksy i m a g e is n o t a green l i g h t for m o r e graffiti in t h e city." To v i e w t h e piece visit: news, bbc.co.uk/i/hi/england/bristol/5193552.stm.

NEWS O B I T U A R I E S A L L A N K A P R O W , 78, o n A p r i l 5 in San Diego. O n e o f the m o s t influential a r t i s t s o f t h e t w e n t i e t h century, he w a s first k n o w n for his a s s e m b l a g e s a n d p a i n t i n g s f e a t u r i n g m o v a b l e parts f o r viewers to manipulate. Coining the w o r d " H a p p e n i n g s , " he o r g a n i z e d his

first

s u c h e v e n t in N e w York in 1959. A m o n g his p e r f o r m e r s w e r e Pop a r t i s t s Robert R a u s c h e n b e r g a n d Jasper Johns. K a p r o w ' s w o r k s m o v e d i n t o t h e streets, v a c a n t lots, e m p t y w a r e h o u s e s , c l o s e d s h o p s , railway s t a t i o n s , a n d even a cave. Eventually K a p r o w s h i f t e d his p r a c t i c e i n t o w h a t he called " A c t i v i t i e s , " i n t i m a t e l y scaled pieces for o n e or several players a n d d e v o t e d t o e x a m i n i n g everyday b e h a v i o r s a n d h a b i t s â&#x20AC;&#x201D; nearly i n d i s t i n g u i s h a b l e f r o m o r d i n a r y life. H e a u t h o r e d m o r e t h a n 1 0 0 j o u r n a l articles a n d a n u m b e r o f b o o k s , films, a n d v i d e o t a p e s . A c c o r d i n g t o Kaprow, " T h e l i n e b e t w e e n art a n d life s h o u l d be kept as f l u i d , a n d p e r h a p s i n d i s t i n c t , as p o s s i b l e . " P H I L L I P S V. F I D E L I T Y

C O FLY A K I T E To celebrate t h e i r t w e n t i e t h anniversary

A r t i s t D a v i d Phillips, w h o d a r e d t o fight Fidelity

o n O c t o b e r 28, 2 0 0 6 , Hand

I n v e s t m e n t s , has been dealt a legal setback

Papermaking

m a g a z i n e h o s t e d Paper in Flight, a d a y - l o n g

t h a t c o u l d e n d his three-year legal battle

s y m p o s i u m at t h e M a r y l a n d I n s t i t u t e College

against t h e c o m p a n y . H i s one-acre s c u l p t u r e

o f A r t in B a l t i m o r e . In a d d i t i o n t o p r e s e n t a t i o n s

park at Eastport Park, located near B o s t o n ' s

by artist Byron K i m a n d kite expert Scott

W o r l d Trade Center, was c o m m i s s i o n e d in 1 9 9 9

Skinner, t h e r e were e x h i b i t i o n s o f kites a n d

for $575,000. W i t h i n a few years, a l a n d s c a p e r

h a n d m a d e paper a r t w o r k s . In t h e e v e n i n g ,

hired by Fidelity t o redesign Eastport Park

guests rode t o t h e nearby College Park a i r p o r t

t o m a k e it m o r e accessible r e c o m m e n d e d

for t h e u n v e i l i n g o f a s t u n n i n g t e n - f o o t h a n d -

r e m o v i n g and relocating Phillips's sculptures,

m a d e paper kite by Lesley Dill, a n d t h e

a c c o r d i n g t o c o u r t files. W h e n Phillips

l a u n c h i n g o f h a n d m a d e paper hot-air b a l l o o n s

p r o t e s t e d , Fidelity agreed t o keep t h e m a j o r i t y

a n d kites. Pictured above is Lesley Dill's

Divide

o f the sculptures, but wanted to make changes

Light #2 kite, 4 2 by 42 inches, p r o d u c e d by H a n d

t o walkways a n d o t h e r aspects o f his w o r k .

P a p e r m a k i n g , Inc. at D o l p h i n Press & P r i n t /

Phillips still o b j e c t e d , a n d filed his l a w s u i t .

M a r y l a n d I n s t i t u t e College o f A r t w i t h s u p p o r t

H e a r g u e d t h a t he was p r o t e c t e d u n d e r t h e

f r o m The Drachen Foundation and H i r o m i

federal V i s u a l A r t i s t s Rights A c t a n d t h e

Paper I n t e r n a t i o n a l .

M a s s a c h u s e t t s A r t Preservation Act, b o t h

[Photo by Matthew

m e a n t t o p r o t e c t artists f r o m d i s t o r t i o n or

Stubbs.j

o t h e r c h a n g e s o f t h e i r w o r k . Phillips w o n r o u n d o n e in 2 0 0 3 , w h e n a U.S. D i s t r i c t C o u r t j u d g e issued a r e s t r a i n i n g o r d e r b a r r i n g Fidelity L O N D O N PILOT PROGRAM

LAUNCHED

f r o m m a k i n g c h a n g e s . But f o l l o w i n g a series

O p e n House, the London-based organization

o f appeals o n b o t h sides, t h e U.S. C o u r t o f

c o m m i t t e d to raising the standard o f London's

A p p e a l s ruled o n A u g u s t 2 4 t h a t Fidelity can

b u i l t e n v i r o n m e n t , was selected by A r t s C o u n c i l

r e m o v e P h i l l i p s ' s w o r k . C i r c u i t Judge K e r m i t V.

(See K a p r o w ' s essay o n page 46.) I S A A C W I T K I N , 69, o n A p r i l 23 in S o u t h Jersey. B o r n in J o h a n n e s b u r g , W i t k i n m i g r a t e d t o t h e U.S. f r o m L o n d o n , w h e r e he e s t a b l i s h e d his career as a s c u l p t o r in the mid-1960s, along with other notable artists f r o m t h e St. M a r t i n ' s S c h o o l o f A r t , s u c h as A n t h o n y Caro, W i l l i a m Tucker, a n d Phillip King. H e e v o l v e d his s i g n a t u r e a b s t r a c t s a n d - c a s t s c u l p t u r e s after s e e i n g c a s t i n g spills in f o u n d r i e s . F r o m t h e late 1970s he w o r k e d m a i n l y in b r o n z e , prod u c i n g o u t d o o r s c u l p t u r e s for c o l l e c t i o n s a r o u n d t h e w o r l d . H e w a s i n s t r u m e n t a l in the development o f G r o u n d s for Sculpture Park in H a m i l t o n T o w n s h i p , N.J. H e p e r s u a d e d t h e artist a n d p a t r o n J. Seward J o h n s o n Jr., heir t o t h e J o h n s o n & J o h n s o n f o r t u n e , t o buy t h e p r o p e r t y w h e n it was t h e a b a n d o n e d state f a i r g r o u n d s , a n d in 1996 he was t h e first a r t i s t t o have a s o l o s h o w o n its g r o u n d s . H i s p u b l i c c o m m i s s i o n s i n c l u d e w o r k s for t h e GSA Social Security B u i l d i n g , B a l t i m o r e ; A L C O A Inc., P i t t s b u r g h ; city o f S p r i n g f i e l d , M a s s . ; a n d t h e Public A r t Trust in Florida.

E n g l a n d t o i n c u b a t e a new agency t o p r o m o t e

Lipez ruled t h a t t h e federal act d i d n o t apply

a n d advise o n art in t h e p u b l i c realm. For a

t o " s i t e - s p e c i f i c " w o r k s such as Phillips's. In

M I C H A E L F A J A N S , 58, killed in a m o t o r -

two-year p i l o t p e r i o d t h e i n i t i a t i v e will offer an

2 0 0 4 , t h e state's S u p r e m e Judicial C o u r t h a d

cycle a c c i d e n t o n June 12 in Seattle. Fajans

advocacy, advisory, a n d i n f o r m a t i o n service;

ruled t h a t t h e M a s s a c h u s e t t s act d i d n o t apply

a n d his p a i n s t a k i n g l y d e t a i l e d m u r a l s

an archive a n d research base; a n d p r o f e s s i o n a l

t o t h e case because t h e c o n t r a c t b e t w e e n

influenced the development of the public

n e t w o r k i n g a n d d e v e l o p m e n t o p p o r t u n i t i e s for

Phillips and Fidelity was n o t r e c o r d e d in t h e

art scene in Seattle in t h e 1970s. A m o n g

artists, c o m m i s s i o n i n g agencies, architects,

c o u n t y registry o f deeds. Future plans for t h e

his m o s t s u c c e s s f u l p r o j e c t s was a set o f

and p l a n n e r s i n v o l v e d in t h e sector, a i m i n g t o

Fidelity site have n o t been revealed.

m u r a l s for t h e U.S. C o u r t h o u s e in Seattle.

" i n s p i r e a n d e n c o u r a g e h i g h q u a l i t y new art

O t h e r w o r k s can be f o u n d at t h e Port o f

c o m m i s s i o n s t h a t w i l l shape and a n i m a t e t h e

Seattle, Sea-Tac A i r p o r t , a n d t h e Pike Place

city." A c c o r d i n g t o Sarah Weir, executive

M a r k e t C h i l d Care Center.

d i r e c t o r o f A r t s C o u n c i l England, L o n d o n , " L o n d o n ' s l a n d s c a p e is c h a n g i n g fast, p a r t i c u l a r l y in r e l a t i o n t o t h e 2012 O l y m p i c and Paralympic g a m e s , and T h a m e s Gateway. We believe t h a t it is vital, t h e r e f o r e , t o engage artists, s t a k e h o l d e r s a n d t h e p u b l i c in t h e challenges o f s h a p i n g o u r city for t h e f u t u r e . "

L U I S J I M E N E Z , 65, o n June 13 in H o n d o , N . M . H e sustained injuries w h e n part o f a thirty-two-foot-high sculpture being moved f r o m his s t u d i o c a m e loose a n d p i n n e d h i m a g a i n s t a steel s u p p o r t . Featured in continued

on next page

NEWS O B I T U A R I E S continued

from

page

p u b l i c art c o l l e c t i o n s t h r o u g h o u t t h e U.S., Jimenez's m a s s i v e — a n d occasionally controversial—fiberglass objects often depict Hispanic and Native American d a n c e r s , c o w b o y s , a n d barrio w o r k e r s w i t h d i s t o r t e d faces a n d n e o n - c o l o r e d , s p r a y - p a i n t e d c l o t h i n g . H i s w o r k s are in major m u s e u m collections, including the Art Institute o f Chicago, the M e t r o p o l i t a n M u s e u m o f Art, and the Whitney M u s e u m o f A m e r i c a n Art. C O R D O N C H U R C H , 58, o n July 31 in A l b u q u e r q u e , N . M . C h u r c h ' s career in p u b l i c art s p a n n e d t w e n t y - f i v e years. H e f o u n d e d p u b l i c art p r o g r a m s in t h e city o f A l b u q u e r q u e , B e r n a l i l l o County, a n d t h e s t a t e o f N e w M e x i c o , a n d p a r t i c i p a t e d in t h e early e f f o r t s t o d e v e l o p A m e r i c a n s f o r t h e A r t s ' s Public A r t N e t w o r k . N E W PUBLIC ART T E C H N I Q U E S A R L E N E R A V E N , 62, o n A u g u s t 1 in N e w

UNVEILED

G e r m a n artist Claus W i n t e r d e v e l o p e d a new

York. N o t e d f e m i n i s t critic, art h i s t o r i a n ,

a p p l i c a t i o n for Internet-interactive p u b l i c art

a n d f o r m e r N e w York e d i t o r of

w i t h his Water Curtain.

Performance

High

m a g a z i n e , Raven p u b l i s h e d

Inaugurated on

O c t o b e r 5 in Paris w i t h a t e m p o r a r y i n s t a l l a t i o n

n i n e b o o k s o n c o n t e m p o r a r y art, i n c l u d i n g

in t h e street, t h e project gives w e b s i t e visitors

Art in the Public Interest

t h e o p p o r t u n i t y t o type a w o r d , w h i c h is t h e n

(1991), a n d w r o t e

for a w i d e variety o f p u b l i c a t i o n s i n c l u d i n g

p r o d u c e d in water d r o p l e t s f a l l i n g t o t h e g r o u n d .

The Village Voice. In 1973 Raven c o - f o u n d e d

T h e t h e m e for this p r e s e n t a t i o n was Paris itself

t h e F e m i n i s t S t u d i o W o r k s h o p , part o f

and w o r d s t h e artists associate w i t h it.

t h e l a n d m a r k W o m a n ' s B u i l d i n g in Los

Karolina Sobecka d e v e l o p e d a p r o j e c t i o n

Angeles. T h e r e she l a u n c h e d t h e Lesbian A r t Project in 1977, in w h i c h she t o o k part as a p e r f o r m e r ( a p p e a r i n g o n t h e cover o f High Performance

# 8 , 1979).

s y s t e m t h a t operates f r o m m o v i n g cars. For her Wildlife

project this s u m m e r ( p i c t u r e d above),

t h e m o v e m e n t s o f a n i m a l s were p r o g r a m m e d t o m a t c h t h e speed o f t h e car f r o m w h i c h they

OUTDOOR PHOTOGRAPHY

were p r o j e c t e d . A c c o r d i n g t o Sobecka, "As

The Hartford-based United Technologies

D I A N E S H A M A S H , 51, o n A u g u s t 13 in

t h e car m o v e s , the a n i m a l runs a l o n g s i d e it,

C o r p o r a t i o n (UTC) c o m m i s s i o n e d artists

N e w York. S h a m a s h m a n a g e d Seattle's

s p e e d i n g u p a n d s l o w i n g d o w n w i t h the car.

Chuck Close, M i t c h Epstein, a n d Dayanita

Public Art P r o g r a m f r o m 1987 t o 1993. M o s t

As t h e car s t o p s , t h e a n i m a l stops also. T h e

Singh t o p h o t o g r a p h , respectively, N e w York,

recently, she led the Floating

f r a m e rate o f t h e m o v i e c o r r e s p o n d s t o t h e

Boston, and Hartford, d o c u m e n t i n g their

speed o f t h e wheel r o t a t i o n , picked u p by a

reactions t o t h e c h a n g i n g u r b a n e n v i r o n m e n t .

t h e W h i t n e y M u s e u m o f A m e r i c a n Art, and

sensor." w w w . f l i g h t p h a s e . c o m / a b o u t . h t m l

T h e r e s u l t i n g fifteen p h o t o g r a p h s were

w o r k e d as t h e f o u n d i n g d i r e c t o r o f M i n e t t a

[Photo by Frank

d i s p l a y e d large-scale in M a d i s o n Square Park

Island project

in N e w York last year in c o n j u n c t i o n w i t h

Pichel.]

EXHIBITION

Brook, an o r g a n i z a t i o n t h a t presents p u b l i c

in N e w York City, o n t h e N o r t h e r n A v e n u e

art projects a n d e x h i b i t i o n s .

Bridge in B o s t o n , a n d in H a r t f o r d ' s B u s h n e l l RALEIGH LOSES PLENSA PROJECT Broadcast executive Jim G o o d m o n is

RECENT

EVENT

w i t h d r a w i n g his $2.5 m i l l i o n pledge t o w a r d a p u b l i c art p r o j e c t in d o w n t o w n Raleigh, N o r t h Carolina, because city leaders rejected

H o w does the postindustrial agricultural

t h e plan he s u p p o r t e d . G o o d m o n , C.E.O. o f

e c o n o m y affect t h e c u l t u r a l life o f rural

Capitol B r o a d c a s t i n g C o m p a n y , offered t o

c o m m u n i t i e s ? H o w can c o n t e m p o r a r y

help pay for a w o r k d e s i g n e d by Spanish artist

artists get engaged? These a n d o t h e r ques-

Jaume Plensa. H e ' d d e s i g n e d a grassy plaza

t i o n s w e r e recently d e b a t e d at S H I F T I N G

w i t h a c a n o p y g r i d o f t w i n k l i n g lights a n d

G R O U N D — N E W PERSPECTIVES O N

ART

Park. T h i s m u l t i s i t e e x h i b i t i o n , e n t i t l e d Cities in T r a n s i t i o n , o p e n e d S e p t e m b e r 19 a n d c o n t i n u e s u n t i l N o v e m b e r 15, 2 0 0 6 . T h i s is t h e s e c o n d i n s t a l l m e n t o f t h e UTC's Public A r t Project, w h i c h was i n i t i a t e d last year w i t h t h e Billboard Project, f e a t u r i n g artists Alex Katz, Gary H u m e , a n d Lisa Sanditz. [Photo by Mitch

Epstein, courtesy

UTC.]

c a s c a d i n g water. City M a n a g e r Russell A l l e n

piece c o u l d have been an a n c h o r in m a k i n g

A N D R U R A L C U L T U R E , an i n t e r n a t i o n a l

said in A u g u s t t h a t t h e city s h o u l d d r o p the

p u b l i c art t h e c e n t e r p i e c e for d o w n t o w n

c o n f e r e n c e h e l d O c t o b e r 19-21, 2 0 0 6 in

p r o j e c t because it w o u l d block t h e view f r o m

Raleigh. Instead, t h e Triangle sank deeper i n t o

Clare, Ireland. H o s t e d by t h e Clare C o u n t y

a r e n o v a t e d p o r t i o n o f d o w n t o w n . T h e city's

G o o b e r v i l l e w h e n Raleigh officials said t h e

Arts Office and Galway-Mayo Institute o f

Arts C o m m i s s i o n d e c i d e d o n new criteria

art w o u l d destroy t h e view f r o m t h e Capitol

Technology, t h e p r o g r a m f e a t u r e d keynote

for Plensa's p r o j e c t t h a t w o u l d e l i m i n a t e t h e

t o M e m o r i a l A u d i t o r i u m . Even folks w h o o w n

speakers S u z a n n e Lacy a n d S i m o n Sheikh,

plaza. G o o d m o n says he d o e s n ' t w a n t p e o p l e

velvet Elvis p a i n t i n g s u n d e r s t a n d t h a t art

as well as t e m p o r a r y i n s t a l l a t i o n s ,

t o t h i n k he's p u l l i n g o u t because he o p p o s e s

b e c o m e s part o f t h e v i e w — i t d o e s n ' t o b s t r u c t

t h e p r o j e c t ; he says it's because t h e p r o j e c t ' s

it. T h a n k g o o d n e s s guys like t h e s e w e r e n ' t

film

s c r e e n i n g s , a n d t o u r s . For p r o g r a m details, visit: w w w . s h i f t i n g g r o u n d . n e t / c o n f e r e n c e _ programme.htm.

initial v i s i o n w o u l d be c o m p r o m i s e d . Said Rick

in charge w h e n France w a n t e d t o d o n a t e t h e

M a r t i n e z in The News aj Observer, " T h e Plensa

Statue o f Liberty."

U.S. RECENT PROJECTS

F r o m July 5 t o S e p t e m b e r 4, N a n c y Rubins, t h e q u e e n o f p e r i l o u s l y p e r c h e d j u n k art,

filled

t h e sky at L i n c o l n Center w i t h her n e w w o r k , B I G P L E A S U R E P O I N T . This m o n u m e n t a l s c u l p t u r e was m a d e o f m o r e t h a n sixty r o w boats, kayaks, c a n o e s , s m a l l s a i l b o a t s , surfb o a r d s , w i n d s u r f b o a r d s , jet skis, p a d d l e b o a t s , catamarans, and other watercraft. Hovering at 45 feet h i g h by 55 feet w i d e , t h e b o a t s are c o n n e c t e d by w e l d s a n d w i r e t o a m e t a l a r m a t u r e a n d t o o n e another. Big

Pleasure

Point was p r e s e n t e d by Public A r t Fund a n d T h e D a v i d & Peggy Rockefeller A r t Fund. [Photo fay Erich Ansel Koyama, Art Fund and Cagosian

O n July 26, Barbara G r y g u t i s u n v e i l e d her

blasted w i t h a p a t t e r n , t h e o t h e r was p a i n t e d by

newest w o r k , L U M I N A R I A S . Its f o u r glass

h a n d , a n d t h e n t h e t w o sides w e r e l a m i n a t e d

t o w e r s m e a s u r e t w e n t y - s e v e n feet h i g h by six

together. Each t o w e r fills w i t h s u n l i g h t d u r i n g

feet w i d e and are placed a l o n g t h e entry p a t h

t h e day a n d g l o w s f r o m a f l o o r - m o u n t e d p h o t o -

t o t h e Twin Rivers C o m m u n i t y Park in Greeley,

cell at n i g h t . T h e t o w e r s evoke t h e c h a n g i n g o f

C o l o r a d o . T h e t o w e r s w e r e fabricated at Franz

t h e seasons f r o m s u m m e r t o s p r i n g , a n d are

Mayer o f M u n i c h t h r o u g h a u n i q u e process.

designed to blend w i t h the natural flow of the

O n e side o f t h e t e m p e r e d glass was sand-

landscape. [Photo courtesy Pat Alles.]

courtesy

Gallery.]

Public

U.S. RECENT PROJECTS

Texas Tech U n i v e r s i t y ' s Public A r t P r o g r a m has installed a new s c u l p t u r e by Jesus M o r a l e s . D e d i c a t e d M a r c h 3, S Q U A R E S P I R A L A R C H : A P O R T A L O F D I S C O V E R Y was c o m m i s s i o n e d for t h e U n i v e r s i t y ' s E x p e r i m e n t a l Sciences B u i l d i n g in 2 0 0 2 . T h e " p o r t a l " features a circular arch w i t h lines o f texture t h a t radiate o u t w a r d s , a n d a c o n t r a s t i n g a n d highly p o l i s h e d rectangular path t h a t cuts t h r o u g h its center. To p r o d u c e c o n t r a s t i n g results in t e x t u r e a n d f o r m , r e p r e s e n t a t i v e o f h u m a n s a n d nature, M o r a l e s used p o w e r d i a m o n d saws, drills, g r i n d e r s , and t r a d i t i o n a l h a n d t o o l s t o slice, split, chip, b u r n , g r i n d , a n d p o l i s h t h e granite. T h e circle-and-square m o t i f o f t h e piece serves as a visual m e t a p h o r for H e a v e n a n d Earth, w h i l e t h e d y n a m i c e l e m e n t s o f t h e piece shift w i t h l i g h t a n d s h a d o w p r o d u c e d by t h e specific t i m e o f day a n d season. [Photo courtesy Texas Tech

In M i r a m a r , Florida, a ten-year p r o j e c t finally c e l e b r a t e d its c o m p l e t i o n o n M a y i 8 . W o r k i n g f r o m open marshland, Mags Harries and Lajos H e d e r p l a n n e d T E R R A F U C I T w i t h i n a 2 0 0 - a c r e r e g i o n a l park. Latin for " l a n d flies," t h e n a m e plays o n t h e phrase " t e m p u s f u g i t , " m e a n i n g " t i m e flies." T h e n a m e reacts t o t h e recent b o o m in land d e v e l o p m e n t in S o u t h F l o r i d a â&#x20AC;&#x201D; i t s e e m e d t o H e d e r " l i k e the l a n d was f l y i n g away." H i s p r o j e c t b o t h c r i t i q u e s a n d p a r t i c i p a t e s in t h i s process o f d e v e l o p m e n t : " H u m a n s create l a n d s c a p e s here in a few m o n t h s t h a t usually take g e o l o g i c a l forces m a n y m i l l e n n i a t o a c c o m p l i s h . T h i s p o w e r is w o r t h y o f b o t h c e l e b r a t i o n a n d great c a u t i o n . " H a l f e a r t h w o r k s c u l p t u r e , h a l f p u b l i c park, t h e one-acre " p a s s i v e r e c r e a t i o n " area features a water t h e m e a n d i n c l u d e s an o p e n lakeside gazebo housing a h a n d - p u m p e d " b u r p e r " t h a t radiates waves, an elevated l a n d m a s s o v e r l o o k i n g t h e lake, coral rock l i m e s t o n e c u t i n t o seats, a m o a t - e n c i r c l e d l a n d preserve, a n d a p a v e d w a l k w a y s u r r o u n d i n g t h e area t h a t ' s i m p r i n t e d w i t h fossils a n d s a n d b l a s t e d text a b o u t p l a n t s a n d a n i m a l s t h a t were o n c e native t o t h e area. [Photos courtesy the

artists.]

I f an o p i n i o n a t e d n i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u r y satirist a n d n e w s p a p e r p u b l i s h e r were here today, w h a t w o u l d he say? To a n s w e r this q u e s t i o n , Bleu Cease o r g a n i z e d t h e O B E D I A H DOCBERRRY SOCIETY

(www.obediahdogberry.

o r g ) . W i t h t h e i n t e n t t o reawaken an i n t e r e s t in r e g i o n a l history a n d t h e " f r e e - t h o u g h t " press, Cease o r g a n i z e d a m u l t i v e n u e , m u l t i m e d i a p r e s e n t a t i o n t h r o u g h o u t the t o w n o f Rochester, N.Y. b e t w e e n A u g u s t i a n d S e p t e m b e r 10. E m p l o y i n g w o r k s o n paper, an e x h i b i t i o n , v i d e o d o c u m e n t a t i o n , p u b l i c signs, a p u b l i c w a l k i n g t i m e l i n e , a free newsletter, a n d a w e b s i t e , t h e O b e d i a h D o g b e r r y Society i n v o k e d t h e t h o u g h t s a n d history o f O b e d i a h Dogberry. Dogberry, a p s e u d o n y m for A b n e r Cole, p u b l i s h e d n e w s p a p e r s t h a t a d v o c a t e d h u m a n i s m , e d u c a t i o n , a n d t h e free exchange o f information. Dogberry's billboard quotations, a l t h o u g h over sixty years o l d , are eerily fitting for o u r t i m e a n d are o n c e again p r e s e n t in t h e m i n d s o f Rochesterians. [Photos courtesy Bleu Cease.]

University.]

U.S. RECENT PROJECTS

W e i g h i n g in at 107 t o n s â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a s m u c h as t w e n t y e l e p h a n t s â&#x20AC;&#x201D; A l b e r t Paley's A N I M A L S A L W A Y S is t h e w o r l d ' s largest z o o s c u l p t u r e . T h e piece d e p i c t s sixty a n i m a l s a n d t h e i r n a t u r a l h a b i t a t s a n d serves as a c e r e m o n i a l archway for the St. Louis Z o o . R e i n f o r c i n g t h e z o o ' s m i s s i o n , t h e piece seeks t o help v i s i t o r s u n d e r s t a n d life's basic i n t e r c o n n e c t e d n e s s . " I w a n t e d t o create a w o r k you walk t h r o u g h a n d share t h e space w i t h t h e a n i m a l s , w h i c h are t h e s a m e scale as you are. I h o p e t h a t p e o p l e w i l l have m o r e s y m p a t h y for the need for coexistence a m o n g species f r o m e x p e r i e n c i n g it," says Paley a b o u t his w o r k , w h i c h was d e d i c a t e d M a y 25. H i s p r o d u c t i o n process i n c l u d e d

O n M a y 1, San A n t o n i o M a y o r Phil H a r d b e r g e r

F i t z G i b b o n s also a d d e d p e r f o r a t e d m e t a l -

paper sketches, c a r d b o a r d m o d e l s , a n d finally

" t h r e w the switch" and illuminated both under-

capped c o l u m n s to both bridge entrances.

c o m p u t e r images and vector conversion

passes o f Interstate H i g h w a y 37 w i t h t h e city's

M o t i v a t e d by c o m m u n i t y p r i d e , n e i g h b o r h o o d

s o f t w a r e t o cut t h e i m a g e s in the steel plates.

newest d e s i g n e n h a n c e m e n t p r o j e c t . L I G H T

c o m m e r c i a l r e v i t a l i z a t i o n plans, a n d a c o m m i t -

Beyond t h e i m p r e s s i v e n e s s o f its size, Paley's

C H A N N E L S , a p e r m a n e n t i n s t a l l a t i o n by Bill

m e n t to p r o m o t i n g d o w n t o w n tourism, this

f i g u r a t i v e s c u l p t u r e is also p e r s o n a l l y s i g n i f i c a n t , as nearly all o f his w o r k s have been abstract in t h e past. [Photo courtesy Paley Studios

Ltd.]

F i t z G i b b o n s , features a c o m p u t e r - c o n t r o l l e d

p r o j e c t m a r k s t h e first-ever c o l l a b o r a t i o n a m o n g

LED l i g h t d i s p l a y t h a t reflects s l o w l y - c h a n g i n g

t h e Texas D e p a r t m e n t o f T r a n s p o r t a t i o n , Bexar

colors o n t o surrounding c o l u m n s and

County, t h e city o f San A n t o n i o , a n d St. Paul

sidewalks. To create a " c o l o n n a d e " effect,

Square A s s o c i a t i o n . [Photo

T h i s s u m m e r , t h e M i s s i s s i p p i River, m y t h -

by Bill

FitzGibbons.]

river, b e g i n n i n g w i t h t h e h e a d w a t e r s at Lake

o l o g i z e d p i p e l i n e for H u c k l e b e r r y Finn a n d

Itasca, w i n d i n g d o w n t o M i n n e a p o l i s , t h e Q u a d

s t e a m b o a t p a d d l e w h e e l s , was a v e n u e for

Cities, St. Louis, M e m p h i s , N e w O r l e a n s , a n d

t w o p u b l i c a r t w o r k s . O n A u g u s t 10, t h r e e

e n d i n g at t h e river's m o u t h : Venice, L o u i s i a n a .

t w e n t y - f o o t - l o n g h o m e m a d e rafts m a d e o f

C u r a t e d by M a r y l e e H a r d e n b e r g h , t h e

recycled, salvaged, a n d d o n a t e d m a t e r i a l s ,

community-based performances featured

began a 7 0 0 - m i l e j o u r n e y f r o m M i n n e a p o l i s

d a n c e o n t h e river a n d o n its banks. Each

t o St. Louis. T h e M I S S R O C K A W A Y A R M A D A ,

performance team involved a choreographer,

( w w w . m i s s r o c k a w a y . o r g ) c r e w e d by twenty-five

p r o j e c t m a n a g e r , a n d e n v i r o n m e t a l advisor,

veterans o f arts collectives, m a n y f r o m

a l o n g w i t h local r e s i d e n t s a n d w o r k e r s f r o m

Brooklyn, took a trip that e m b o d i e d the

each locale. U n i t e d by live r a d i o s i m u l c a s t s a n d

" h a n d s - o n , life-by-example a p p r o a c h t o

visual i n t e r a c t i v e e l e m e n t s , t h e p r o j e c t a l l o w e d

creating change within our culture." The trip

a u d i e n c e s t o p a r t i c i p a t e in a seven-way call-and-

was m a d e p o s s i b l e by f u n d s raised t h r o u g h art

response a m o n g people and c o m m u n i t i e s .

a u c t i o n s a n d c o n c e r t s , a n d t h e creative reuse

T h e goal o f t h e p r o j e c t was t o e m b r a c e t h e

o f t w o V o l k s w a g e n b i o d i e s e l - c o n v e r t e d Rabbit

M i s s i s s i p p i River a n d its w a t e r s h e d as a s h a r e d

e n g i n e s . T h e w e l l - d e c o r a t e d rafts i n c l u d e d

resource a n d i n t e r d e p e n d e n t e c o s y s t e m , a n d

s y s t e m s for r a i n w a t e r c o l l e c t i o n , solar o v e n s ,

t o b r i n g c o m m u n i t i e s t o g e t h e r as better stew-

w i n d - p o w e r e d lights, a n d a b i k e - p o w e r e d Ferris

ards o f t h e river. N e w O r l e a n s M a y o r C. Ray

wheel, s o u n d - s y s t e m , a n d w a s h i n g m a c h i n e .

N a g i n r e m a r k e d t h a t t h e p e r f o r m a n c e s created

A l o n g t h e river, t h e A r m a d a m a d e t h e i r artistic

"a sense o f i n t e r c o n n e c t e d n e s s t h a t t r a n s c e n d s

e x p e r i m e n t in s u s t a i n a b l e t e c h n o l o g y acces-

o u r local c o m m u n i t y r e l a t i o n s h i p s , r e m i n d i n g

sible t o all w h o w a n t e d t o p a r t i c i p a t e t h r o u g h

us t h a t w e are all o n e in a great, eternal w h o l e ,

w o r k s h o p s , skill-shares, a n d p e r f o r m a n c e s .

so w e m u s t p r o t e c t a n d n u r t u r e o u r b o n d s . " (www.onerivermississippi.org)

O n June 24, O N E R I V E R M I S S I S S I P P I , called t h e " l a r g e s t site-specific d a n c e p e r f o r m a n c e e v e r " t o o k place at seven l o c a t i o n s a l o n g t h e

[Top photo courtesy Allen T h e N e w York T i m e s . Bottom the

artists.]

Brisson-Smithfor photo

courtesy

U.S. RECENT PROJECTS A n i s h K a p o o r ' s first p u b l i c art piece o f a m o n u m e n t a l scale in N e w York City, S K Y M I R R O R , o p e n e d t o the p u b l i c o n S e p t e m b e r 19 at Rockefeller Center, a n d r e m a i n e d u n t i l O c t o b e r 27. T h e t h i r t y - f i v e - f o o t - d i a m e t e r concave mirror, made o f twenty-three tons o f p o l i s h e d stainless steel, presents viewers w i t h a v i v i d i n v e r s i o n o f t h e city's skyline. S t a n d i n g nearly t h r e e stories tall, t h e s c u l p t u r e ' s c o n c a v e side reflects an u p s i d e - d o w n p o r t r a i t o f t h e iconic 3 0 Rockefeller Plaza skyscraper, w h i l e its convex side reflects viewers a n d their p o s i t i o n w i t h i n t h e streetscape. F u n d a m e n t a l l y a b o u t the space it o c c u p i e s in t h e d e n s e heart o f a d e n s e city, the piece engages its a u d i e n c e s directly, f u s i n g o b j e c t , viewer, a n d e n v i r o n m e n t i n t o o n e physical, c o n s t a n t l y f l u c t u a t i n g f o r m . Its s e a m l e s s a n d u n i n t e r r u p t e d surfaces c h a n g e t h r o u g h t h e day a n d n i g h t . K a p o o r ' s project is p r e s e n t e d by T u m i , o r g a n i z e d by t h e Public A r t Fund, a n d h o s t e d by Rockefeller Center o w n e r T i s h m a n Speyer. [Photos by Seong Kwon, courtesy Public Art

Fund.]

In July, N e w York's M e t r o p o l i t a n T r a n s p o r t a t i o n A u t h o r i t y ( M T A ) : Arts for Transit u n v e i l e d t h e i r newest p u b l i c arts c o m m i s s i o n at the Riverdale t r a i n s t a t i o n o n t h e M e t r o - N o r t h Railroad H u d s o n Line. T h e H u d s o n Line f o l l o w s t h e H u d s o n River a n d sees 550 c o m m u t e r s a day. Dennis O p p e n h e i m ' s sculpture R I S I N G A N D S E T T I N G is m a d e o f flat plates o f p e r f o r a t e d steel t h a t s p a n eighty feet a n d rise twentyt h r e e feet. O p p e n h e i m says t h e w o r k evokes n e i g h b o r h o o d h o u s e s in s h a d o w as they m i g h t be seen at d u s k or daybreak, w i t h y e l l o w h o u s e s g r e e t i n g N e w York C i t y - b o u n d c o m m u t e r s in t h e m o r n i n g , a n d blue h o u s e s g r e e t i n g e v e n i n g c o m m u t e r s . T h i s c o m m i s s i o n is p a r t o f an $89 m i l l i o n capital i m p r o v e m e n t p r o j e c t o f t h e MTA a n d M e t r o - N o r t h Railroad t o renovate nine H u d s o n Line s t a t i o n s . [Photo by Brian

Cronin.]

I n s p i r e d by t h e u n i q u e history a n d e c o l o g i c a l i m p o r t a n c e o f the colossal dawn redwood ( m e t a s e q u o i a ) , artists M a r g o M e n s i n g a n d John M c Q u e e n , in c o l l a b o r a t i o n w i t h KSS A r c h i t e c t s a n d J. S h e r m e t a , have created t h e latest site-specific p r o j e c t at t h e M o r r i s A r b o r e t u m in P h i l a d e l p h i a , m e t a : M E T A S E Q U O I A . Located in t h e a r b o r e t u m ' s m e t a s e q u o i a grove, M e n s i n g a n d M c Q u e e n ' s piece features an a r t w o r k - a s - v i e w i n g - p l a t f o r m for v i s i t o r s t o c l i m b t w e l v e feet i n t o t h e lower branches o f t h e tree canopy. Like a tree itself, t h e piece m o v e s gently w i t h the w i n d , a n d sways as v i s i t o r s c l i m b its t r u n k . A n a r r a t i v e s o u n d piece, meta meta,

installed on the observation platform,

a d d s a n o t h e r level t o t h e p r o j e c t by c o m b i n i n g a p o e t i c d i a l o g u e o f i n s i g h t s r e l a t i n g t o the trees w i t h a m u s i c a l c o m p o s i t i o n . T h e sixth in a series o f c o m m i s s i o n e d p r o j e c t s , M e n s i n g a n d M c Q u e e n ' s p r o j e c t was s u p p o r t e d by t h e M a d e l e i n e K. B u t c h e r Fine A r t s E n d o w m e n t , a n d was c u r a t e d by Julie Courtney. [Photo

courtesy Jâ&#x20AC;˘ Shermeta/KSS

Ross Stout/Taylor

Photographies.]

Architects

A t 12:01 a.m. o n A u g u s t 14, only five days

b e g i n n i n g o f a w e e k - l o n g creative a d v e n t u r e that

before their pieces were t o be p e r f o r m e d ,

c u l m i n a t e d in t w o p e r f o r m a n c e s o n A u g u s t 19.

choreographers Douglas Dunn, N o ^ m i e

Fort Jay, a 250-year-old military installation, has

Lafrance, Elizabeth Streb, Reggie W i l s o n , a n d

largely been o f f - l i m i t s t o visitors for the past

Yasuko Yokoshi were notified o f the site o f their

2 0 0 years, but is n o w e m b a r k i n g o n a b o l d civic

p e r f o r m a n c e . Each c h o r e o g r a p h e r p a r t i c i p a t i n g

p l a n n i n g effort. This m a d e t h e site perfect for

in D a n c i n g in the Streets's B R E A K I N G G R O U N D

such a charrette, as a vital part o f D a n c i n g in the

chose o n e o f five u n m a r k e d envelopes, w h i c h

Streets's m i s s i o n is t o a n i m a t e sites t h a t are in

c o n t a i n e d a p h o t o g r a p h o f a specific site in

transition (www.dancinginthestreets.org).

Fort Jay at G o v e r n o r ' s Island, N.Y. This was t h e

[Photo byJulieta

Cervantes.]

INTERNATIONAL RECENT PROJECTS

D u r i n g June and A u g u s t , the G e r m a n city o f N u r e m b e r g , in h o n o r o f t h e W o r l d C u p soccer g a m e s held there, p r e s e n t e d T h e Large Piece o f Turf: C o n t e m p o r a r y A r t in t h e Public D o m a i n . Ten i n t e r n a t i o n a l artists were c o m m i s s i o n e d by c u r a t o r s Florian W a l d v o g e l a n d Raimar Stange t o create new w o r k s a d d r e s s i n g the q u e s t i o n o f p u b l i c d o m a i n in an age o f g l o b a l i z a t i o n , as well as t o reflect o n t h e h i s t o r i c a l a n d a r c h i t e c t u r a l qualities o f N u r e m b e r g itself. T h e c o m m i s s i o n s were p r e s e n t e d u s i n g a w i d e range o f p u b l i c venues. W o r k s i n c l u d e d a b i l l b o a r d p o s t e r series by D a n Perjovschi, a v i d e o by U r i Tzaig screened o n public buses that showed collaborative (not competitive) t e a m s p l a y i n g w i t h t w o balls instead o f one,

A d i d a s also j u m p e d o n t h e W o r l d C u p

(each s p o n s o r e d by A d i d a s , o f c o u r s e ) . G i v e n

a n d A U F W I E D E R S E H E N , a seventeen-meter-

b a n d w a g o n t h i s s u m m e r . In a 2 0 by 4 0 - m e t e r

Z i d a n e ' s e x p u l s i o n f r o m t h e finals, p e r h a p s his

h i g h s c u l p t u r e by O l a f M e t z e l u s i n g 7 0 0 o l d

fresco, W o r l d C u p soccer stars w e r e elevated

place a m o n g t h e g o d s s h o u l d be r e c o n s i d e r e d .

s t a d i u m seats, e n s h r o u d i n g a c e n t r a l p u b l i c

to the status o f gods that h u n g above the m a i n

A d i d a s c o n t i n u e d t h e i r larger-than-life p u b l i c i t y

fountain. The exhibition catalogue further

t r a i n s t a t i o n in C o l o g n e , G e r m a n y , f a c i n g t h e

c a m p a i g n w i t h a 65 by 18-meter i m a g e o f

b l u r r e d t h e lines between s p o r t a n d art by

l a t e - n i n e t e e n t h - c e n t u r y C o l o g n e Cathedral.

O L I V E R K A H N , G e r m a n y ' s star goalkeeper,

a d o p t i n g t h e m o d e l o f a f o o t b a l l city guide,

It t o o k i l l u s t r a t o r Felix R e i d e n b a c h f o u r days

diving across the four-lane highway leading

c o m p l e t e w i t h c o l l e c t a b l e stickers.

t o c o m p l e t e each athlete, i n c l u d i n g France's

to and f r o m the M u n i c h airport.

[Photo by Wolfgang

Zinedine Zidane and England's David Beckham

[Photo courtesy

Gunzel.]

Adidas.]

INTERNATIONAL RECENT PROJECTS Artists ranging f r o m Aristotle to Archigram have e n v i s i o n e d u r b a n Utopias by c r e a t i n g ideal city plans, b e l i e v i n g r a t i o n a l city plans create balanced s o c i o - p o l i t i c a l d y n a m i c s . T h e e x h i b i t i o n Ideal City - I n v i s i b l e Cities (www. idealcity-invisiblecities.org) a d d r e s s e d this s u b j e c t by p r e s e n t i n g site-specific w o r k s for o n e o f the few realized Utopian cities, Z a m o s c , Poland. Forty i n t e r n a t i o n a l artists w e r e c h o s e n t o react t o t h e t h e m e s o f m e m o r y a n d t h e g r i d d e d g e o m e t r i c regularity t h a t identifies m a n y ideal cities. Projects i n c l u d e d the r e - i m a g i n i n g o f p u b l i c space t h r o u g h s c u l p t u r e , p a i n t i n g , p o s t e r s , and new a r c h i t e c t u r a l projects. Pictured is C o l i n Ardley's P Y R A M I D F O R Z A M O S C . The e x h i b i t i o n covered t h e e n t i r e city o f Z a m o s c f r o m June 18 t o A u g u s t 22, t h e n m o v e d t o P o t s d a m , G e r m a n y , f r o m S e p t e m b e r 8 t o O c t o b e r 29, w h e r e t h e s a m e artists reflected o n a city far f r o m ideal d u e t o the m e l a n g e o f styles and plans after w a r t i m e d e s t r u c t i o n and m o d e r n i s t r e b u i l d i n g . T h e p r o j e c t was c u r a t e d by E u r o p e a n A r t Projects a n d financed by the G e r m a n Federal C u l t u r a l F o u n d a t i o n . [Photo

courtesy European Art

KrzysztofZielinski, Projects.]

O n June 24, passers-by o f a highly visible landfill site in Surrey, England, were asked t o take a s e c o n d look at t h e land a r o u n d t h e m . Lee S i m m o n s , a l o n g w i t h a t e a m o f local firefighters,

t i n t e d t h e face o f B e t c h w o r t h

Quarry pink using water-soluble, nontoxic c h i l d r e n ' s p o w d e r paints. She also p a i n t e d g r a z i n g sheep in p r i m a r y c o l o r s w i t h spray p a i n t used for w o o l m a r k i n g . S i m m o n s i n i t i a t e d Q U A R R Y : 2 because she w a n t e d t o b r i n g a t t e n t i o n t o t h e c o n t r o v e r s i a l quarry, w h i c h was recently filled in a n d may n o w be c o n t a m i n a t i n g d r i n k i n g water. S i m m o n s said this p r o j e c t b r o u g h t t o g e t h e r a b r o a d range o f d i f f e r e n t people, f r o m f a r m e r s t o architects, t o address q u e s t i o n s o f r e s p o n s i b l e l a n d use and ownership. The project brings "the hidden t o t h e s u r f a c e " in h o w w e i n t e r a c t w i t h t h e land. Quarry: 2 was f u n d e d by t h e A r t s C o u n c i l E n g l a n d S o u t h East and Surrey C o u n t y Arts. A p u b l i c a t i o n a b o u t t h e p r o j e c t is expected later t h i s year. A n interactive b l o g o n the p r o j e c t can be f o u n d at w w w . l e e s i m m o n s . o r g . [Photo by Emma

Brown.]

As a p r o t e s t against t h e D a n i s h i n v o l v e m e n t in t h e war in Iraq, a g r o u p o f k n i t t e r s a n d crocheters f r o m E u r o p e a n d t h e U.S. c o v e r e d a c o m b a t tank used in W o r l d War I w i t h 3 , 0 0 0 15 by 15-centimeter squares m a d e o f v a r y i n g shades o f p i n k s t r i n g or yarn. F r o m A p r i l 7-11, t h e t a n k , e n t i t l e d P I N K M . 2 4 , was placed in f r o n t o f the N i k o l a j C o p e n h a g e n C o n t e m p o r a r y Art Center. V o l u n t e e r s w e l c o m e d passers-by t o a d d t o t h e t a n k before they e n t e r e d the m u s e u m . A v i d e o o f t h e process was o n v i e w at t h e A r t Center f r o m A p r i l 27 t o June 4 . T h e collective a c t i o n o f m a n y d i f f e r e n t people c o n t r i b u t i n g in t h e i r o w n u n i q u e styles was w h a t m o t i v a t e d M a r i a n n e Jorgensen, the o r g a n i z e r o f t h e w o r k . She has m a d e several o t h e r p i n k t a n k s a n d i n t e n d s " t o keep d o i n g t h a t u n t i l t h e war e n d s . " [Photo courtesy the

artist.]

INTERNATIONAL RECENT PROJECTS

F r o m February t o O c t o b e r , the veteran p r o j e c t G o i n g Public, u n d e r t h e artistic d i r e c t i o n

What if do-it-yourself wasn't a hip trend but

o f Claudia Z a n f i f r o m a M A Z E C u l t u r a l Lab,

a way o f life? A u n i q u e c o l l a b o r a t i o n b e t w e e n

p r e s e n t e d A t l a n t e M e d i t e r r a n e o , a series

D u t c h artists i n t e r e s t e d in DIY a r c h i t e c t u r e a n d

of urban interventions, workshops,

t h e c i t i z e n s o f N e w C r o s s r o a d s T o w n s h i p in

films,

debates, c u l t u r a l exchanges, a n d p u b l i c a t i o n s

Cape T o w n , S o u t h Africa ( m a n y o f w h o m live in

o n t h e c h a n g i n g identity o f the M e d i t e r r a n e a n .

DIY h o m e s ) c a m e t o g e t h e r in M a r c h t o t r a d e

Five cities were c h o s e n as case s t u d i e s for

t e c h n i q u e s a n d b u i l d creative a n d practical

researchers, artists, s t u d e n t s , a n d locals

o b j e c t s in t h e t o w n s h i p . After f o u r weeks o f

t o explore a h o s t o f c o n t e m p o r a r y issues,

workshops C A S C O L A N D

including the European Union and the interplay

c o m ) c u l m i n a t e d in t e n days o f p r e s e n t a t i o n

M a r k u s B r u e d e r l i n at t h e K u n s t m u s e u m

b e t w e e n M e d i t e r r a n e a n a n d Eastern c u l t u r e s .

( M a r c h 3-12), in c o o r d i n a t i o n w i t h t h e a n n u a l

W o l f s b u r g , explores t h e c o l l a b o r a t i v e d y n a m i c

G i a n m a r i a Conti created T H E M E M O R Y

Cape T o w n Festival. A l o n g w i t h a full p r o g r a m o f

o f m o d e r n sculpture and m o d e r n architecture.

BOX,

(www.cascoland.

w h i c h m a d e s t o p s in b o t h t h e Turkish- a n d

activities, i n c l u d i n g p a p e r m a k i n g ,

G r e e k - c o n t r o l l e d areas o f Cyprus. The

based a r c h i t e c t u r a l p r o j e c t s , f o o t b a l l (soccer)

Memory

community-

T h e e x h i b i t i o n , A r c h i S c u l p t u r e , c u r a t e d by

In c e l e b r a t i o n o f t h e e x h i b i t i o n , f a m e d Swiss a r c h i t e c t s Jacques H e r z o g a n d Pierre d e

Box, "a history o f t h e 2 0 t h c e n t u r y as t o l d by

g a m e s , a n d c o n c e r t s , final s t r u c t u r e s i n c l u d e d

M e u r o n created J I N H U A S T R U C T U R E II

c o m m o n p e o p l e , " h i g h l i g h t s the d i s c r e p a n c i e s

used-tire a r c h i t e c t u r e , f u r n i t u r e , a n d toys, a n d

V E R T I C A L . T h e s c u l p t u r e is m e a n t t o e m b o d y

between political history a n d lived stories by

a p o o l (a rare find in t h e d u s t y Cape flats) l i n e d

the many iterations o f a changing architectural

a s k i n g residents s i m p l e q u e s t i o n s a b o u t h o m e

w i t h b o t t l e caps. A r t i s t Bert K r a m e r created an

design project using digital tools and was

a n d the r e p e r c u s s i o n s o f global influence.

inflatable b e d - a n d - b r e a k f a s t f a s h i o n e d o u t o f

created specially for t h i s e x h i b i t i o n .

T h e m o b i l e box features a c o u c h a n d a v i d e o

flexible PVC fabric t u c k e d w i t h i n t h e c o n c r e t e

Structure

Jinhua

II - Vertical m a r k s o n e o f t h e rare

c a m e r a inside, a m o n i t o r p l a y i n g i n t e r v i e w

shell o f an u n f i n i s h e d b u i l d i n g . Roger van W y k ,

public works of this powerful architectural duo,

clips o u t s i d e , a n d a (yet-to-be-finalized)

o n e o f C a s c o l a n d ' s o r g a n i z e r s , said part o f t h e

w h o d e s i g n e d t h e Walker A r t Center a d d i t i o n in

I n t e r n e t archive. D u r i n g G o i n g Public Square

a c h i e v e m e n t o f C a s c o l a n d is " t o d e m o n s t r a t e

M i n n e a p o l i s a n d t h e Tate M o d e r n in L o n d o n .

events, l e m o n a d e was o f f e r e d in exchange for

t h e p o w e r o f creativity in a c t i v a t i n g p u b l i c

T h e s c u l p t u r e has a h e i g h t o f t h i r t y feet a n d a w e i g h t o f t w e l v e t o n s , a n d s t o o d near t h e

a story. In D e c e m b e r , d o c u m e n t a t i o n o f t h e

space a n d p u b l i c life." C a s c o l a n d in N e w

entire n i n e - m o n t h Atlante Mediterraneo

C r o s s r o a d s was d e v e l o p e d by t h e D u t c h

m u s e u m f r o m M a y 23 t h r o u g h S e p t e m b e r 10.

project will be c o m p i l e d in a c a t a l o g u e /

C a s c o l a n d Team, Public Eye, a n d t h e

[Photo courtesy Kunstmuseum

reference b o o k .

M a n d l o v u initiative.

Wolfiburg.]

[Photo by Roger van Wyk.] [Photo courtesy aMAZE

Cultural

Lab.]

l a * .

T E M P O s t a n d s in t h e center o f t h e m a i n roundabout entrance to Husnes, a small i n d u s t r i a l t o w n o n t h e w e s t e r n coast o f Norway. T h e w o r k was created by t h e Laboratory for E n v i r o n m e n t s , A r c h i t e c t u r e & D e s i g n ( L E A D Inc.) after receiving a c o m m i s s i o n f r o m a local a l u m i n u m refinery plant. S t a n d i n g t h i r t y - t h r e e feet h i g h , it has a

Wm: ill /

wmi

)

H mm

c u r v a c e o u s exterior m a d e f r o m s e v e n t y - t w o

Best k n o w n for his glass s c u l p t u r e , U.K. artist

s t r a i g h t a l u m i n u m pipes w e l d e d at a 140-

S i m o n H i t c h e n s t r i e d his h a n d at u r b a n d e s i g n

degree r o t a t i o n , w i n d i n g a r o u n d a Gore-Tex

w i t h C O A S T L I N E for W o r k i n g t o n ' s n e w t o w n

fabric f u n n e l . I l l u m i n a t e d by s u n l i g h t d u r i n g

s q u a r e in t h e C u m b r i a r e g i o n o f E n g l a n d . T h e

t h e day, t h e s c u l p t u r e softly fades in a n d o u t

w o r k ' s m a j o r e l e m e n t s are locally q u a r r i e d

o f c o l o r p a t t e r n s e m a n a t i n g f r o m 216 LED

g r a n i t e b o u l d e r s , clear resin, a n d

l i g h t s as d u s k a p p r o a c h e s . Ali H e s h m a t i f r o m

l i g h t i n g m a d e i n t o benches, l a n d s c a p i n g , a n d a

LEAD, Inc. said t h e s t r u c t u r e was i n s p i r e d by

s t u n n i n g red-granite obelisk. The flame-finished

c o n t e m p o r a r y basket w e a v i n g as well as

g r a n i t e p a v i n g f e a t u r e s text i n s p i r e d by t h e

t h e m o v e m e n t in Nude Descending

IT . 'Âť.

Staircase

fiber-optic

i n d u s t r i a l history a n d local dialects o f C u m b r i a ,

(1912) by M a r c e l D u c h a m p . R o o t e d in t h e

a n d LED l i g h t s t h a t trace t h e s i l h o u e t t e o f

d y n a m i c s o f " p e r c e p t i o n at t h e t u r n a b o u t , "

the C u m b r i a n coastline. The granite benches,

t h e s c u l p t u r e was b u i l t w i t h t h e help o f t h i r t y

u n d e r l i t t h r o u g h a clear resin base, have a

c o m m u n i t y m e m b e r s , a n d since its A u g u s t 26

levitative quality. T h e p r o j e c t was u n v e i l e d o n

u n v e i l i n g has i n s p i r e d a local d a n c e

A p r i l 17 a n d was f u n d e d by a g r a n t f r o m t h e

p e r f o r m a n c e a n d t h e c r e a t i o n o f a line

N o r t h West Regional D e v e l o p m e n t A g e n c y a n d

o f glassware.

o r g a n i z e d by W o r k i n g p A r t s Public A r t C o n s u l -

[Photo courtesy Ali

Heshmati.]

tancy. [Photo

by Charlie

Hedley

Photography.]

LAST P A G E

SERIK

KULMESHKENOV

Cheryl Foster: " E m e r y , You L i g h t U p M y L i f e " E m e r y Recreation Center Washington, D.C. 2006 Acrylic a c t i o n figures (24" x 60') a n d e t c h e d p o r t r a i t c o l u m n s (16" x 10') e d g e lit w i t h m u l t i - c o l o r c h a n g i n g L E D lighting. O r i g i n a l c o m m i s s i o n by t h e D . C . C o m m i s s i o n on the Arts and H u m a n i t i e s a n d t h e D i s t r i c t of C o l u m b i a D e p a r t m e n t of P a r k s and Recreation.

J a n e t Z w e i g a n d E d w a r d del R o s a r i o : Details from "Carrying O n " 2004 1200' frieze of 194 s t a i n l e s s steel figures, w i t h m a r b l e a n d slate a c c e s s o r i e s , for t h e P r i n c e Street s u b w a y s t a t i o n , N e w York City. E a c h figure is a p p r o x i m a t e l y 9 i n c h e s h i g h . C o m m i s s i o n e d by t h e M e t r o p o l i t a n T r a n s i t Authority.

surbeck waterjet company, LLC Ray King: "Northern Cascade" B r o o k d a l e R e g i o n a l L i b r a r y in M i n n e a p o l i s , M N 2005 21'h x 12'w x 12'd s u s p e n d e d s c u l p t u r e c o n s i s t i n g of h u n d r e d s of d i c h r o i c g l a s s d i s c s s t r u n g on c a b l e s a n d w o v e n i n t o a c o m p l e x c r o s s w e a v e of t h r e e d o m e s and suspended from the lobby's rotunda.

••••••••••••••

Paul H e n r y Ramirez: "Going Up Up U p " P.S.2S4. Q u e e n s , N e w York 2006 24' x 9' x 3 " A l u m i n u m A n d Urethane Paint C o m m i s s i o n e d by t h e N Y C D e p t . of C u l t u r a l A f f a i r s a n d N Y C D e p t . of E d u c a t i o n . C o u r t e s y of C a r e n G o l d e n F i n e Art Gallery, N e w York Photograph: Jason Mandella

M e l B o c h n e r a n d M i c h a e l Van V a l k e n b u r g h : " T h e Kraus C a m p o " 2005 12" X 12" P o r c e l a i n T i l e C a r n e g i e M e l l o n University, P i t t s b u r g h , PA Photograph: T i m Kaulen and Annie O'Neill

www.surbeckwaterjet.com

CONSILIENCE by Paul Marioni University of Houston - Clear Lake

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office@derixusa.com

(510) 428-9978