Public Art Review issue 37 - 2007 (fall/winter) by forecastpublicart

RiblicArfReview a publication of F O R E C A S T Public Artworks

issue 37 â&#x20AC;¢ fall/winter 2 0 0 7

THE PRESENT STATE England Ireland Scotland

and Wales

Alyson Shotz, Art Glass Walls. MSKCC, New York, NY

Barbara Grygutis "Luminarias: The Seasons", Greeley, CO

F r a n z M a y e r of M u n i c h , Inc.

5 T u d o r City Place N e w York, N Y Phone:

A r c h i t e c t u r a l A r t Glass a n d M o s a i c since 1 8 4 7 T h e Professional S t u d i o for t h e I n d e p e n d e n t A r t i s t

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Ellen Driscoll "Pro Patria Mori...", Mosaic Panels for the Entrance Gate at Liberty Memorial, Kansas City, MO

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Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art Johnson County Community College â&#x20AC;¢ Overland Park, KS

Opening October 27, 2007

www.jccc.edu/museum

S t o m u Miyazaki " A T a p e s t r y of New R o c h e l l e " 2 0 0 6 New Rochelle T r a n s i t Center, New Rochelle, N Y 4 ' x 10' x 1 / 8 " Stainless Steel Panels C o m m i s s i o n e d and owned by the City of New Rochelle Photograph: Greg Morris

Mel B o c h n e r and Michael Van Valkenburgh "The Kraus C a m p o " 2005 C a r n e g i e Mellon University, P i t t s b u r g h , PA P h o t o g r a p h : T i m Kaulen and A n n i e O'Neill

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ASC PUBLIC ART > S E R V I N G CITY O F C H A R L O T T E , M E C K L E N B U R G COUNTY, + PRIVATE P A R T N E R S > C O L L A B O R A T O R A N D C A T A L Y S T IN B U I L D I N G A M E M O R A B L E C I T Y

ARTS & SCIENCE COUNCIL Charlotte-Mecklenburg

TOM PATTI, "FLIGHT DIALOGUE" CHARLOTTE-DOUGLAS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, 2 0 0 7

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PAN 2007 YEAR IN REVIEW

w Winner of the Americans for the Arts 2007 Public Art Network Award

This June I had the privilege of sharing the prestigious Public Art Network Award with FORECAST Public Artworks, the organization where I've channeled my passions for almost thirty years. The award came at a significant moment in my life. After five years dealing with a degenerative heart disease, I had a heart transplant in May. Now I'm back at work, bringing renewed energy—and a broader perspective—to FORECAST. As a reader of Public Art Review, I urge you to join a special group of donors who recognize what it takes to build a lasting legacy, to expand content for the journal, to support more artists, and to assist more communities engaged in public art. Please consider a gift to our 30th Anniversary Campaign. Your investment will enable us to continue our award-winning work well into the future! - Jack Becker

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by Donald Lipski, 2 0 0 7 Three-story interactive sculpture p u r c h a s e d t h r o u g h Scottsdale's Art in Private D e v e l o p m e n t Program a n d g i f t e d to the City's p u b l i c art c o l l e c t i o n .

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FORECAST PUBLIC ARTWORKS P U B L I C ART REVIEW ISSUE 37

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M e t r o congratulates artists for contributions to t h e a w a r d - w i n n i n g M e t r o N e i g h b o r h o o d Poster series C o m m i s s i o n e d by M e t r o t o c o n v e y t h e d i s t i n c t i v e c h a r a c t e r a n d vitality o f n e i g h b o r h o o d s a n d d e s t i n a t i o n s s e r v e d by t h e M e t r o t r a n s i t n e t w o r k , the posters are displayed o n trains a n d buses, stations and facilities for the enjoyment o f thousands o f transit customers. The posters, along with n o t e c a r d s , are available f o r sale at t h e M e t r o Store,

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Featured in photos at t o p a n d above:

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Row 1 (left t o right): Pasadena, Walter Askin;

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Griffith Park, Bob Zoell; Miracle Mile, Jody Zellen

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Fneden

a • • 1 R o w 2 (left to right): Echo Park, Manny

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Cosentino; Chinatown, )ohn Trevino; Highland Park, Raoul de la Sota; Leimert Park, Sam Pace H

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Row 3 (left to right): NoHo Arts District, Karl Abramovic; Van Nuys, Roland J. Llanos; Topanga Canyon, Nicolas Fedak II; Pomona, Sonia Romero

R o w 4 (left to right): Watts, Patricia Fernandez;

Alhambra

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HUNT

FOREWORD

THE PRESENT STATE Since then there have been several cul-de-sacs. The moveThe title of this issue of PAR comes from the preface ment to gain one percent for art in new building construction, to A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain by the based on models in the U.S., didn't gain the support of the pioneering journalist and novelist Daniel Defoe (1660-1713). national government and turned into a series of gentlemanly Written between 1724 and 1726, the book primarily describes agreements between local authorities and property developthe state of manufacturing and commerce in Britain just priers; art was sometimes introduced as a general social benefit or to the industrial revolution. "Here is the present state of alongside benches and flower beds. This period was marked the country describ'd," writes Defoe, "the improvement, as by a lack of coordinated political advocacy; there existed no well in culture, as in commerce, the encrease of people, and regular means to present documentation, strategy, and policy employment for them: Also here you have an account of the to central government as support for parliamentary legislaencrease ofbuildings, as well in great cities and towns, as in tion to fund art in development projects. This failure of coorthe new seats and dwellings of the nobility and gentry; also dination resulted in a missed opportunity for art as the real the encrease of wealth, in many eminent particulars." estate and construction sectors of the economy expanded. In its celebration of the economic power of the bourgeoiBut something miraculous also happened: a deus ex sie and the opulence of the upper classes—for Defoe, culture machina to fund public art. Between 1996 and 2002, one bilmainly meant the architecture and antiquities of the counlion pounds from the United Kingdom National Lottery was try homes of the wealthy merchants and aristocracy—this spent through the ACGB on art in public passage reminds us that British civilizaplaces, which had the effect of revitaliztion has never been entirely comfortable THE REDESIGN OF ing the cultural economy. The redesign with the artistic and political values that of Britain's failing urban infrastructure, define public art. Britain has a Puritan BRITAIN'S FAILING a stale stew of 1960s high-rise and dereheritage, a history of greater literary than artistic achievement, and a tendency to U R B A N INFRASTRUCTURE lict nineteenth-century city architecture, was rebranded as "regeneration," and art undemocratic thinking. ... W A S REBRANDED AS merged with concepts of space, place, And yet, there is a public art boom in and community. The idea that artists Britain today, generating an estimated "REGENERATION," could contribute to the creation of a Med£150 million yearly. Cultural mobility is iterranean aesthetic of street culture—in part of this diverse and cosmopolitan artA N D ART MERGED which the pedestrian experience fostered istic practice; international artists such a lively relationship with the city and as Jochen Gerz, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, W I T H CONCEPTS OF with other people—circulated at high pofames Turrell, Vito Acconci, Alfredo Jaar, litical levels. and Robert Wilson regularly work in the SPACE, PLACE, A N D United Kingdom. The ACGB was decentralized; reborn COMMUNITY. How did this surprising situation as Arts Council England, it dispersed come about? There were, of course, early funds and independence to the regions precedents for collaboration among artists, designers, and of England. Generous funding allowed Wales and Scotland, architects, of which William Morris and the arts and crafts who were already administratively separate, to promote their movement he helped to create are the best known. And national and cultural identities. Thanks to the complexities today's boom can be read as a clear outgrowth of the small of history, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland act window of democratic creative empowerment that opened in independently in the economic and political spheres, but these islands after 1945. The work of the Omega Group, the they are increasingly addressing their bitterly divisive secThames-side Festival of Britain exhibition in 1951, the This tarian community issues through artistic collaboration. is Tomorrow show in 1956—which introduced Britons to the The Present State examines the present state of public emerging pop-art sensibility—and displays of Henry Moore art as it's produced within the borders of England, Scotland. sculptures in public parks sponsored by the Arts Council of Ireland, and Wales—separate nations with their own identiGreat Britain (ACGB), all typified this opening to cultural deties, flags, languages, and cultures—in the context of Britain's mocracy and multidisciplinary art practice. confrontation with the challenge of cultural diversity over But a recognized public art movement only emerged the last fifty years. It also takes up internal debates within after a conference at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in public art, particularly the perennial one about whether art London in 1982. The conference resulted in the formation in the service of social programs like "regeneration" limits of the Art and Architecture Society and subsequently, in the independent creativity of the artist. It's a portrait of a 1983, the Public Art Forum, a group of fifteen largely publicpublic art world that has become dynamic and promising "in ly financed public art administrators who met to divide the many eminent particulars." United Kingdom into kingdoms within an art empire. This centralized approach reflected the controlling authority of the ACGB, the government cultural agency that distributed JEREMY H U N T is the editor of Art & Architecture Journal most of the significant funding for public art in the United (www.artandarchitecturejournal.coml and guest editor for Kingdom, and which also had a political advocacy role. this issue o/Public Art Review.

Jumping Trout, by Violet Costello and Bob Thomasson Water Garden, by Linda Covit From the Clouds to the Water, by George Duncan Strung II, by Gord Ferguson

Celebrations (detail) 2004 by Barbara Amos Crenellated Habitat (detail) 2005 by Tony Bloom

Tracking the Trail, by Roger Gaudreau The Colour of Snow, by Barbara Grygutis Untitled, by Jim Hirschfield and Sonya Ishii The Language of Life, by James Holroyd Bridge, Abridged, by Adam Kuby

From the Clouds to the Water (detail) 2004 by George Duocan

Steward, by Thomas Sayre An Auspicious Find, by Lori Sobkowich

Welcome to the artists for our 2 0 0 7 Percent for Art projects: Jill Anholt Sans fagon: Tristan Surtees & Charles Blanc

For information on projects and artists, go to http://www.calgary.ca/publicart

www.calgary.ca/publicart

Jumping Trout (detail) 2007 by Violet Costello and Bob Thomasson Strung II (detail) 2007 by Gord Ferguson

PUbticArtReview issue 3 7 • f a l l / w i n t e r 2 0 0 7 • v o l u m e 1 9 • n u m b e r 1

THE PRESENT STATE England, Ireland, Scotland, a w / Wales

FEATURES 18

Culture Tanks on t h e Lawn of Society: Public Art's New Role in England JEREMY HUNT

Notes f r o m W a l e s WIARD STERK

The A c c i d e n t a l C h a r a c t e r of Public Art in S c o t l a n d PENNY LEWIS

Irish Public Art P r a c t i c e ANNETTE MOLONEY

The Art of B e c o m i n g Civil in N o r t h e r n I r e l a n d : Practice-Based Research at INTERFACE

I •J •

IAN BANKS J

Last P a g e : U.K. Renegades FRANCESCA GAVIN

Slinkachu, Tourists, 2 0 0 6 , London, England. Photo courtesy the artist.

PUblicArtReview issue 37 • fall/winter 2 0 0 7 • volume 19 • number 1

T H E P R E S E N T STATE

DEPARTMENTS 46

Artist P a g e : Alec Finlay

The P r e s e n t S t a t e R e v i s i t e d The U.K.'s public art boom is being powered by an ambitious culture ministry and widespread urban renewal. A team of experts weighs in on some specific promises and problems of a very public public art scene. 48

Building Cultures One Rebellion at a Time: A Manifesto of Possibilities CAMERON

Artists Taking the Lead: Visionary Shift in U.K. Arts Policy or Just Cultural Spin? IAN

BANKS

30 Years of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park PETER

CARTIERE

MURRAY

Art and the BBC: Two Media Art Commissions and a Program ISABELVASSEUR

The Art of Common Space ELIZABETH

Artists Crossing Borders LAURA

WOODS

DANIELSON

F e a t u r e d S t a t e : Ohio Rural tradition and urban vitality combine in a state whose public reflects both local pride and a taste for international trends. J A N E D U R R E L L , S T E V E N LITT, a n d T R A C Y Z O L L I N G E R

72 74

TURNER

F r o m t h e H o m e Front Conference Reports KARIN WOLF, GEORGINA TURNER, and JON

SPAYDE

Book R e v i e w s joni m palmer, JANE D U R R E L L , M E L I S S A C O N S T A N T I N E , P A T R I C E C L A R K ROB MITCHELL, H A R R Y SHEFF, and WILLIAM BRYANT

w w w . f o r e c a s t P U B L I C a r t • Org

art

Recent Publications

News

Recent Projects

C O R R E C T I O N from

Issue

KOELSCH,

LOGAN

Cathy Bvrd's article Atlanta's Big Picture (pages 50-51), inadvertently omitted S u s a n Todd-Raque's n a m e as one of the co-founders. Also, Atlanta Celebrates Photography's The Big Picture project began with a national call for artists (and was not limited to Atlanta). We apologize for these errors.

ON THE COVER Felice Varini, Three Ellipses for Three Locks. 2007, Cardiff Bay Barrage. Wales. C o m m i s s i o n e d by CBAT The Arts and Regeneration Agency and Cardiff Harbour Authority. Photo by AndrS Morin. See more on page 29.

Arte^ArchitectureJournal

The leading UK magazine for public art collaboration, contemporary urban culture & architecture. Art Architecture Journal 70 Cowcross Street London EC1M 6 E J United Kingdom E aaj@artandarchitecturejournal.com www.artandarchitecturejournal.com The AefcAJ is published quarterly as a 64 page colour magazine with over 40 articles per annum providing professional information and intelligence on public art commissions, projects and collaboration for a specialist readership working within the areas of art, contemporary urban culture and architecture. The Art ^Architecture Journal is organiser of the National Public Art Conference programme in the UK.

www.artandarchitecturejournal.com

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England Ireland Scotland

and Wales

CULTURE TANKS ON THE LAWN OF SOCIETY:

Public Art's New Role in England

JEREMY

HUNT

"1 call [most contemporary public art] cultural abuse, a new crime that I'm seeing a lot of today. People expect results from art that isn't just looking beautiful. They want it to have some sort of social experiment effect. That might happen. But don't expect it. These culture tanks are parked on the lawn of society." -Grayson Perry, artist

The current enthusiasm for art in public spaces generates something like ÂŁ150 million yearly in the United Kingdom, and employs thousands of artists, curators, and administrators in the commissioning process, in both the public and private sectors. Exact figures are difficult to come by, but there has been phenomenal growth in public artâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a growth that's all the more remarkable given that there is no central coordination of management or information at a national level, and individual organizations tend to believe that their efforts are unique. There is, at the same time, a demand for communication, education, evaluation, guidelines, and research in the field that is being met by a growing number professional partnerships among key organizations. Art and Architecture Journal is concerned with creating a platform for information at a national and European level. The magazine also initiated Art in Public: the National Public Art Conference Programme, a series of six events per year, which aims to promote knowledge-sharing and peer-networking. Ixia, which bills itself as "the think tank for public art," provides guidance and advice on the role of art in the public realm. Situations is a research and commissioning program at the University of the West of England. Public Art Online is a comprehensive online source for detailed information on

Dan D u b o w i t z , The Peeps ( w i t h detail of interior v i e w ) , 20D7, M a n c h e s t e r , England. For the past four years, D u b o w i t z has served as artist-in-residence in the A n c o a t s neighborhood of east M a n c h e s t e r . For his series The Peeps, brass peepholes are installed into walls of f o r m e r industrial buildings, such as this disused public toilet t h a t o n c e e m p t i e d straight into t h e canal. D u b o w i t z intends the w o r k to offer a n e x p e r i e n c e that retains e l e m e n t s of m y s t e r y a n d change.

public art practice. Axis is another online information resource, with a section called Commissioned Art in the Public Realm that presents an active archive of works. The site champions best practices and innovation in the field and helps commissioners find new artists for their projects. Research into, and evaluation of, public art practice are also expanding in British higher education. Goldsmiths' College, the Royal College of Art, and Birkbeck, University of London, are among the schools that have developed master's programs in curating contemporary art and in arts policy and management. Artist Charles Quick, based at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, has been appointed Britain's first Reader in Art in Public Places. Despite these developments in the direction of planning and long-term thinking about public art, the majority of commissions in the last twenty-five years have been generated by a fragmented network of visionary curators and art consultants. The result has been a very diverse public art scene. Global art stars have parachuted in to appear on television programs that tout community makeovers through iconic landmark art; artists have engaged in playful, ephemeral performance hijinks outside the studio; and "gateway" objects have continued to be placed on traffic roundabouts. The value of artists' contributions to well-designed urban environments is acknowledged in some quarters, but many artists and curators feel strongly that the process of civic regeneration misuses artists' creativity. Increasingly, there are two intellectual platforms for art in public, and although they should not be viewed as rigidly opposed, there is a sense of polarization between them: art in the service of political engineering and social values, and on the other hand, art centered mainly on artistic concepts and aesthetic ideals. At the root of this debate is funding, power, and control. The total Arts Council England (ACE) budget is currently £411 million annually, provided by the government, which has dictated that publicly funded arts should make a measurable contribution to its sustainable-communities agenda. Art is expected to improve education in impoverished schools, raise health standards, reduce crime, compensate derelict neighborhoods, reverse the decline of heavy industry, and encourage ethnic inclusion and active citizenship. Since they are forced to serve both mammon and politics, it is little wonder that arts administrators place community interests first. The current culture minister, Margaret Hodge, has a vision of a Cultural Olympiad to parallel the London Olympics in 2012—an opportunity to transform the way the United Kingdom is perceived in the world. Of the £40 million earmarked for games, £24 million is dedicated to media fireworks and flagwaving at the opening and closing ceremonies. The head of the Cultural Olympiad, Keith Khan, has a budget of £16 million and has promised a nationwide Olympic carnival with celebrations that will have, in his words, a "modern, democratic feel" and will "emphasize Britain's diversity and embrace youth, fashion, and technology. ...[attracting] the 'iPod generation' with the use of digital technology and concepts used by websites such as MySpace and YouTube." The antagonism between purist and pragmatic thinking was aroused by celebrity artist and Turner Prize-winner

Grayson Perry. As famous for his alter ego, the glamorous, frock-wearing Claire, as for his ceramic art, Perry drew national media attention by expressing outrage at state art policies that were, in his words, "eager to foster spurious community identity [and] park hundreds of anodyne public sculptures like tanks in a war of cultural aggression against the relatively uneducated. They hope that these civic: baubles will replace social capital that has been lost to decades of upheaval in patterns of work, family, and leisure time. What people really need are jobs, good public services, and a lot less TV." He was supported by sculptor Antony Gormley, who expressed the concept more cerebrally. "In broad terms," he said, "it's naive to think a piece of art is going to do what good planning and a lively community spirit can do." And even then-minister of culture David Lammy chimed in on the same theme: "Bad public art deadens the spirits and sucks the life out of its surroundings. So it's not enough to plonk down a random lump of concrete and aluminium in a city centre, give it a pretentious title, and expect regeneration to magically occur." Meanwhile, a beleaguered Sarah Weir, executive director of London's ACE office, defended the regeneration agenda. "We've seen the enormous impact of increased cultural infrastructure on the regeneration of cities like Newcastle-Gateshead," she said. "For the first time, more people are moving to the northeast region than moving out of it, citing 'quality of place' as the reason." Public art commissions, agencies, and administrators aside, what current public art is innovative, intelligent, witty, frivolous, positive, interesting, spine tingling, dazzlingly brilliant, or even worth traveling to see? There are many sublime individual projects: Antony Gormley's, Another Place, 100 cast-iron totemic Everyman statues on Crosby Beach in Merseyside [see page 51] and Event Horizon, 30 sculptural figures cast from the artist's body, sited on the skyline of central London and on approaches to the Hayward Gallery [see page 97]; Andy Goldsworthy's interventions with wood, clay, stone, and cow dung in the landscape and galleries at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park; Rachel Whiteread's Room 101, a plaster cast of Room 101 at the BBC's Broadcasting House, alluding ominously to the terrifying Room 101 in George Orwell's 1984 [see page 54). Shop Local is a set of five large 1950s-style commercial wall murals around Shoreditch, London, by Bob and Roberta Smith, the double pseudonym of one artist named Patrick Brill. "Bob has a genius for joining together different rhetorical styles to make something mildly anarchistic," writes Brit Art commentator Matthew Collings. "Even the mildness has a touch of genius." Collings goes on: "Using humour as his weapon. Bob and Roberta Smith believes in art and democracy and invites us to question high art and the role that aesthetic elitism plays in society today. Key to his practice is sign-writing, often used for faux political proclamations or revolutionary-in-spirit sloganeering. Shop Local operates on a number of levels. It has a strong campaigning element, which is anti-branding, antiglobalisation, anti-corporate marketing, anti-carbon emissions and anti-yuppification. It is also perhaps tinged with nostalgia, championing the little guy in the face of capitalism and urban development."

Art is e x p e c t e d to improve education in impoverished schools, raise health standards, reduce crime, c o m p e n s a t e derelict neighborhoods, reverse the decline of heavy industry, and e n c o u r a g e ethnic inclusion a n d active citizenship.

Michael Pinsky, The Lost 0,2007, at the junction of Somerset and Wellesley Roads, Ashford, Kent, England. As a memorial to Ashford's lost ring road, Pinsky gathered redundant road signage to create this sculpture, which w a s on display f r o m July 7 to October 3 1 , 2 0 0 7 . For more information about Pinsky-curated projects as part of The loslO program of installations, see page 9 7 a n d visit www.losto.org.

Ruth Ewan, Bill You Kiss the Foot that M e d You?, 2007, London, England. Commissioned and produced by Artangel.

Other projects are indefinable and expansive. Grizedale Arts is a commissioning and residency agency based in Grizedale Forest in the rural Lake District. The organization recently extended its program to the Greenland Street Contemporary Art Space in Liverpool, and the resulting project, Virtual Grizedale, offered a live, web-based multimedia extravaganza from three sites, Japan, Egremont in Cumbria, and Liverpool itself. In July 2007, The Lost O, curated by artist Michael Pinsky, marked the transformation of the ring road in Ashford, Kent, into a shared pedestrian and automobile space with a program of temporary art installations involving eleven invited international artists, who subverted road signs, created sheep-bell concertos, and built an immense paper house. Since the early 1990s Artangel (www.artangel.org.uk) has become increasingly influential in the United Kingdom and abroad. The organization doesn't set agendas but acts solely as a patron, provoking new ideas from filmmakers, writers, visual artists, composers, choreographers, and performers and creating events in which relationships among artist, place, and context are central. For her 1993 Artangel project, House, Rachel Whiteread created cast-concrete house in Hackney, East London that caused international notoriety and acclaim. Recent projects include Ruth Ewan's Did You Kiss the Foot that Kicked You?, in which more than one hundred musicians played for London commuters along their routes to work. Paul Pfeiffer's The Saints is a sound installation and film created to mark the opening of the new national sporting arena replac-

ing the old and iconic Wembley Stadium. An empty building which stands in the shadow of the new Wembley is filled with crowd noiseâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;fans cheering, chanting, and singing "Rule Britannia," "Deutschland iiber Alles," and "When the Saints Go Marching In" at the most famous sporting event ever staged in Britain, the 1966 World Cup Final between England and Germany. Penny Woolcock's Margate Exodus, inspired by the Old Testament Book of Exodus, was a film, a performance involving thousands of residents, and a twenty-five-meter-high (eighty-two feet) sculpture of a man that was set afireâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;all in the southern coastal town of Margate. Roni Horn's Vatnasafn/ Library of Water is a long-term installation in which the artist has transformed a community centre and former library in the town of Stykkisholmur, on the western coast of Iceland, by replacing the book stacks with a constellation of glass columns containing glacial water from many locations in Iceland. Originally trained as an architect, Dan Dubowitz has established himself, under the title of Civic Works, as a cultural master planner who maps out strategies for the definition, creation, and delivery of culture in relation to urban regeneration. In 2003, Dubowitz became artist in residence in the redevelopment of a nineteenth-century textile neighborhood in Ancoats, east Manchester. The project explored an alternative vision of the role of artist and art works; for example, it was funded as part of the street management budget rather than as a

M Âť

Paul Pfeitfer, The Saints, sound and video installation, 2007, W e m b l e y , England. Commissioned a n d produced by Artangel.

traditional public art project. Dubowitz worked with the project team and local residents in the early stages of regeneration as entire mills were cleared out; his goal was to influence the overall project, including saving from demolition some of the historical elements like walls, disused electrical sub-stations, and underground tunnels. What emerged was The Peepsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an artwork incorporating a series of brass peepholes into walled up spaces of the former industrial buildings, making visible hidden, submerged, and latent spaces in zones such as a tunnel, a bell tower, and a mill room that had been walled up for more than fifty years [see pages 16-19|. A number of unusual machines and mechanisms uncovered during the restoration were also renovated and immured. What you see when you peep through the wall, looking into a room in a mill or a machine room, appears at first straightforward. But soon doubts arise about the size of the space or the reality of the object. Some of the images at which visitors peep are digital screens. Sometimes the scene is different from the one seen on a previous viewing. There are no interpretive panels, signs, or guidebooks. Dubowitz doesn't intend the work to be seen as a finished, accomplished, traditional public artwork, but as an experience that retains elements of mystery and change. "Peeps is a response to an environment, a place in transition, a diaspora of community," he writes. "It is a project about place making. It is a civic work for civic spaces in the hope that the project might contribute to the public spaces; the streets becoming

civic spaces that mediate relationships between people and place and that a new community with a sense of ownership and belonging might emerge." At Scotswood in Newcastle, several thousand new houses are planned, and the city council commissioned a cultural masterplan to establish a framework to integrate creativity into the physical regeneration project. Here, Dubowitz contributed the idea of Nenlopia: a curated series of practical and ephemeral civic projects including a meadowtopia, cabintopia, shedtopia, bunkertopia, playtopia, and greentopia. Meadowtopia is the future housing site planted as a wildflower meadow. The future streets are to be mowed regularly and the building plots left to grow, displaying the seasonal colors of wildflowers. Cabintopia will be a series of temporary buildings, designed to look like they came from Mars, to be used by the site contractors and for community members for radio stations, band practice rooms, or cafes. An opportunity to transform a place in this way comes only once in a community's lifetimeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and Dubowitz's ingenious, human-scale project stands as one of the most creative and promising ventures in Britain's current marriage of convenience between public art and urban regeneration.

J E R E M Y H U N T is editor of Art and Architecture journal (www. artandarchitecturejournal.com).

Marjetica Potrg, Urban Farm (with details), 2 0 0 6 , Cardiff Bay, Cardiff, Wales. Temporary installation for the Urban Legacies conference. More information at www.cbat.co.uk/projects/legacies.litm.

W t o t e s \

^ ^

WIARDSTERK

I am writing this report from Cardigan 1 , a small town on the western coast of Wales and once an important port, trading in agricultural products and locally quarried slate and lime. It was also a point of departure for many, including the family of whisky distiller Jack Daniels, who boarded the fast-sailing brigs Albion, Active, or Triton to seek a better life in New York or New Brunswick. I am here to progress work on a project with Channel 4, an independent television company, as part of the Big Art2 program to be broadcast in the spring of 2008. Cardigan was selected as one of seven sites across the United Kingdom to be featured in the program as the lucky recipients of major public art commissions. As curator for this project I am working closely with a local steering group, and we have commissioned Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer 3 to develop a proposal. Lozano-Hemmer is best known for his large light installations, such as Vectorial Elevation, Underscan, and Pulse Front, the latter of which was recently included in Toronto's Luminato festival. Some of his more intimate pieces can be seen at his show in Venice, where he represents the first Mexican included in the Biennale, and in New York's Museum of Modern Art, where his work 33 Questions per Minute has been acquired for the collection and is currently included in the show Automatic Update. It is this latter approach that we are exploring for Cardigan. This project, has a target budget of ÂŁ500.000. and the choice of artist indicates a change in the expectations and ambitions for public art in Wales. Part of this change is the very recent formation of what is currently titled Public Art Wales (PAW), until a more imaginative name is created. This organization was set up to facilitate the merger of CBAT the Arts and Regeneration Agency 4 and Cywaith Cymruâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Artworks Wales. 5 Both agencies have a substantial track record, CBAT for its work in Cardiff Bay and elsewhere in South Wales, Cywaith for its strong links with Welsh-language cultural activities and the rural areas of Wales. Increasingly, the work of the two organizations has overlapped. An important catalyst for change was the election of the first National Assembly for Wales in 1999. This allows the country a greater degree of autonomy in determining public policy and associated budget allocations. Culture is included in the powers devolved from Westminster to the assembly, and Wales now has its own culture minister. Pliolos by Betina Skovbro.

Other significant events that signal increased confidence in the arts are the inclusion of a Welsh pavilion in the Collateral Events at the Venice Biennale" since 2003, and the foundation of the ÂŁ40,000 Artes Mundi prize,7 which will be awarded for the third time in Cardiff in the spring of 2008. The shows in Venice have included Bethan Huws, Cerith Wyn Evans, and Richard Deacon, and are held in the Ex-Birreria on the island of Giudecca, where its parties have developed something of a reputation. The two previous Artes Mundi winners were Finnish artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila and Chinese artist Xu Bing, both selected from impressive shortlists of established artists and those just breaking through on the international scene. The associated exhibitions attracted record attendance at the National Museum in Cardiff. Another crucial factor is the perhaps uniquely strong position of the arts and culture in Wales, encouraged through the bilingual nature of the country, best illustrated by the annual National Eisteddfod." This week-long cultural festival, conducted entirely in the Welsh language and attended by some 150,000 visitors and participants, is held in a different location every year, and although the main program centers on music and poetry, the visual arts and architecture are increasingly recognized as significant participants. For some years, the artStructure, a commissioned project creating both a sculptural intervention and a performance place, has been a feature, and this year will see Sean Harris install his take on this brief, creating Y Pair, a large silo illuminated by various film projections. Other regular events on the art calendar, which include temporary and ephemeral installations in public locations, are Loews 9 in Swansea and the Urban Legacies'" program in Cardiff. Loews, launched in 2000, is an initiative by Swansea-based artists Tim Davies (also a previous Artes Mundi nominee) and David Hastie (responsible for an Eisteddfod artStructure in 2003). The project sees the work of Wales-based artists mixed with that of artists from smaller European nations installed at various public locations in the city, responding to its developing social, political, and architectural context. Urban Legacies, a biennial event initiated by the author in May 2004, includes a two-day conference and curated program of temporary interventions, as well as a gallery-based exhibition. These have been curated to date by Gordon Dalton," a Cardiff-based writer, curator, and artist. The conference program aims to explore the points of convergence between the various creative practices operating in the development and regeneration of the built environment, and includes presentations by artists, curators, architects, engineers, urban planners, and landscape designers, as well academics and politicians. The 2006 event took on the theme of situationist architecture and the work and theories of the Dutch artist and Constant Niewenhuys, one of the founders of the experimental Cobra group. The commissions included the piece Urban Farm by Slovenian artist Marjetica Potrg, an inflatable installation by the Estonian architect and artist Veronika Valk, a projection work by Cardiff-based Anthony Shapland (who also runs the gallery space G 3912), and a newly composed work by the English composer Morgan Hayes, performed by the Music Theatre Wales Ensemble on the steps of the new debating chamber for the National Assembly, Y Senedd, designed by Richard Rogers. The Senedd itself, completed just two year ago, is an iconic building and Europe's most ecologically sound. It includes a number of integrated commissions by Richard Harris, Alex Beleschenko, and Martin Richman, and often serves as a focus for cultural events, such as a recent presentation to raise political awareness and explore sponsorship opportunities for the Big

Brian Fell, The Merchant Seafarers' War Memorial, 1996, Pierhead, Cardiff Bay, Wales.

Art project in Cardigan. Just outside the Senedd sits Brian Fell's war memorial commissioned to commemorate merchant seamen from Cardiff who were lost in the convoys during World War II. Fell's imaginative approach and its fortuitous location makes it one of the most photographed works in Cardiff Bay. There is currently a very high volume of commissions in progress in Wales, stimulated by strong investment in regeneration and property development as well as changes in planning policy, placing a much stronger emphasis on quality of design in the built environment. PAW is managing a portfolio of work with a value of over ÂŁ5.5 million. Some of this work is outside Wales (Derry and Belfast in Northern Ireland and various locations in England), but the vast majority is in Wales, with most of that again in the three South Wales cities of Cardiff, Swansea, and Newport and the "Heads of the Valley" 13 region just to the north of these. Below follows a quick overview.

Cardiff The Welsh capital is undergoing a major transformation. Besides the extensive and ongoing regeneration of Cardiff Bay, the former Docklands, which delivered some 160 public works since 1987 (including a work by Welsh expatriate Mac Adams), the city center is transformed through a ÂŁ665 million investment by the St David's 2 partnership.14 The first three commissions for this project have recently been advertised and short-lists will be announced in August. In addition, a program of temporary commissions is in development, alongside various outreach projects undertaken by Artes Mundi. Further commissions include the Arcade Project, a two-year research project by Jennie Savage. Other recently completed projects in Cardiff include Three Ellipses for Three Locks by Swiss artist Felice Varini, commissioned by Cardiff Harbour Authority as the first of three projects on the Cardiff Bay Barrage, and the second incarnation of Water Towers by architectural glass artists David Pearl and Amber Hiscott. The artists were asked to replace their original glass work, which suffered irreparable damage due to vandalism, and responded with a work in anodised aluminium, a new material for the artists. David Mackie completed a memorial project that commemorates the Irish community of Newtown, a lost Cardiff docklands neighbourhood, and was unveiled on Saint Patrick's Day in 2005. This small paved and walled area carries the family names of all who lived there, as

ABOVE: Amber Hiscott and David Pearl, Water Towers, 2 0 0 5 , Callaghan Square, Cardiff, Wales. B E L O W : David Mackie, The Hen/Ion Memorial Garden (with detail), 2 0 0 5 , Pierhead, Cardiff Bay, Wales.

well as an inscription in three languages (Welsh, Gaelic, and English), composed by a local poet and is now a stop on annual famine walks, which commemorate the Irish "Great Hunger" of the 1840s. In addition to the St. David's 2 development, there are a number of commissions in progress with major residential developers with further major development schemes planned for the near future, and these will include an increasingly imaginative approach to public art commissions. Recent commissions have been awarded to furniture maker Gitta Gschwendtner and painter Paul Morrison.

Newport Not wanting to be outdone by its larger neighbour, Newport is also transforming its city center and improving access to the River Usk. The inclusion of some major commissions is currently in discussion, following the delivery of a limited strategy by PAW. The recently completed Waterfront Theatre includes commissions by artists Sebastian Boyesen (who was designated as Newport's City sculptor) working in metal, and Catrin Jones working in glass. Jones was also responsible for a large window in Newport's refurbished indoor market and is one of the many excellent artists working in architectural glass who, having studied at the Swansea Institute, settled in Wales to build their professional practice. Others include Amber Hiscott, David Pearl, and Alex Beleschenko.

Swansea Many integrated works were included in its waterfront developments during the early 1990s, and Swansea was the first city in Wales to adopt a percent-for-art policy. Implementation of the policy has been patchy, and one major new waterfront development, S A l , has yet to engage a consultant or curator, although they committed to doing so four years ago. The city center is undergoing regeneration work, and commissions have been taken forward within retail developments and, most recently, the new National Waterfront Museum, designed by Wilkinson Eyre 15 with seating created by Gordon Young, who was inspired by the art deco posters of Adolphe Mouron Cassandre on industrial and transport themes. In 1929 Cassandre designed an alphabet called Bifur, which, to the artist, looked like a plan-view drawing for three-dimensional forms. The resulting two levels of the letters allowed them to be used as seating, executed in steel and concrete. Each letter includes further text referencing an object in the museum's collection.

Heads of t h e Valleys The Heads of the Valleys is an area stretching across five unitary authorities, and the name defines its geographical location at the head of the former South Wales coalfield. Since the closure of most of the deep mines and steelworks that provided the mainstay of the area's economic base, several attempts have been made at reversing the resultant decline. The Heads of the Valleys program is a concerted effort by the Welsh Assembly and the unitary authorities to coordinate these attempts and ensure an effective use of structural funds received from the European Union. A comprehensive public art strategy has been commissioned, building on the many initiatives and projects that are already in progress, including a large glazed canopy by Martin Donlin and an eye-catching footbridge in the village of

ABOVE: Andrew Rowe, St. Paul's,FoothfUge, 2 0 0 5 , Cym, Wales. B E L O W : Martin Donlin, I k Blass Canopy, 2 0 0 5 , E b b w Vale, Blaenau Gwent, Wales. OPPOSITE PAGE: STiP: a psycho-topography of place by Jennie Savage.

Cwm, which resulted from a collaboration between the artist Andrew Rowe and the engineering company Rowecord. New projects in this region include a large landmark commission recently awarded to New Yorker Brian Tolle. It is expected that the regeneration program and the associated investments will generate a substantial number of further works. Similar projects are ongoing in North Wales, in particular around the Conwy Marina and on the Island of Anglesey, or Ynys Mon to give it its Welsh name. Here, various artists, including North Wales-based Howard Bowcott, are integrating works responding to the particular mix of manmade urban and industrial interventions and the spectacular landscape of North West Wales.

Cardiff-based artist Jennie Savage proposed an extensive (and expensive) project as part of the first Urban Legacies show that involved radio broadcasts produced by artists in collaboration with a particular community, the so-called STAR (Splott, Tremorfa, Adamsdown, Roath) area of Cardiff. Through a lucky break we (then CBAT, now Public Art Wales) received additional European funds for community focused projects, and STAR Radio10 was commissioned. Savage based herself in an empty shop and held regular drop-ins to produce the radio programs, which eventually were broadcast for one week between 7 AM and 11 PM. The community radio license did not allow us to broadcast beyond the one-mile radius that was the catchment area the program was aimed at. The full collection of programs is still available online and in the subsequent publication, STAR: a psycho-topography of place (CBAT, 2006) [see details on page 82], This approach contrasts starkly with Landmark Wales,17 a proposed £18 million project to erect major landmark gateway structures on the borders and points of entry of Wales. The project is currently being considered by the Big Lotto for funding but will require substantial additional contributions from the public purse, potentially draining vital resources away from other initiatives. Some exciting projects were submitted, in particular a proposal not unlike STAR Radio by Atelier Brueckner and a concept for a growing, self-sustaining city by Acconci Studio. In the final selection, however, the focus of the project remained solidly object-based, and in the absence of any attempt to integrate or collaborate with existing initiatives, many in the arts community have expressed deep concern if this were to go ahead in its current form. Regardless of the success of this project, Wales is making a major leap forward and can legitimately claim to be at the forefront of current trends in the development of public art practice. is Executive Director of Public Art Wales-Celf Gyhoeddus Cymru, formed by the recent amalgamation of CBAT the Arts &• Regeneration Agency and Cywaith Cymru— Artworks Wales. W I A R D STERK

LINKS 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardigan%2C_Ceredigion

www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/B 'bigart

www.lozano-hemmer.com

www.cbat.co.uk

www.cywaithcymru.org

www.walesvenicebiennale.org

THREE VIEWPOINTS

www.artesmundi.org/am20G6/index.php

From a precise vantage point, elements of Swiss artist Felice Varini's ana-

www.eisteddfod.org.uk

morphic mural f o r m - a s its title suggests -Three http://locwsinternational.com

www.cbat.co.uk/projects/legacies.htm

www.mermaidandmonster.com

www.g39.org

Ellipses for Three Locks

[see cover image]. Commissioned by Public Art Wales (formerly CBAT) and completed in a two-week period this March at a cost of £ 2 5 , 0 0 0 , Varini's ellipses were painted onto the working locks, gates and even the outer sea wall at the Cardiff Bay Barrage on the Bristol Channel. The

new.wales.gov.uk/topics/businessandeconomy/property/HofV/?lang=en

www.stdavids2.com

www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/swansea

www.starradio.org.uk

www.landmarkwales.org

artist spent a year preparing for his first work in the U.K., which involved photography, projection, and painting, as well as professional mountain climbers, w h o were required to access the barrage's difficult high structures. The Harbour Authority approached CBAT to commission the piece, which complements another thirty public art projects dotted around the bay area. As the artist stated, "I start from an actual situation to construct my painting. Reality is never altered, erased or modified, it interests and seduces me in all its complexity. I work 'here and now'." See more of Varini's work at www.varini.org. Photos by Andre Morin.

in SCOTLAND PENNY

LEWIS

S o m e arts organizations a n d artists m a y c o m p l a i n about t h e fruitless consultation exercises

Scotland has a rich affiliation with twentieth-century artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;including Ian Hamilton Finlay, Richard Demarco, Andy Goldsworthy, George Wylie, and Eduardo Paolozziâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;who have produced exciting work for the public realm. Today, Glasgow has the most dynamic visual arts scene in the United Kingdom after London, and graduates from Glasgow School of Art repeatedly pick up awards like Beck's Futures and the Turner Prize. Many successful and internationally recognized artists such as Peter Howson, Jim Lambie, and Toby Paterson live and work in the city, creating an interesting dynamic around studios and galleries like the Modern Institute. In spite of these highlights, you can count the number of high-profile, big-budget contemporary public art works on the fingers of one hand. The official, state-sponsored infrastructure for public artworks has been in free fall in recent years. You won't find many public arts officers or a national guide to new commissions on the web. and the majority of Scotland's major cites do not appear to have clearly defined public arts strategies. The notable exception is Dundee, where the Dundee Public Art Programme, which originated in 1982, has gained a national reputation in assisting in the commissioning of over 120 public artworks. In spite of the lack of infrastructure, however, public art projects are happening in the cities and in the rural Highlands and islands, and in some ways, the disparate, accidental character of public art in Scotland makes it interesting. In 2002 and 2003, the Scottish Arts Council (SAC), the main arts funding body in the country, undertook a review of public art and decided to combine budgets of existing agencies to invest in strategy and advocacy. After four years, nothing appears to have happened, but in fact, the SAC does fund individual public art projects, and has been working behind the scenes on advocacy and strategy. In October 2007, SAC will launch a web-based public art resource to provide a record of contemporary practice and a forum for professional development. A key aspect of the site's design is to launch a database of past SAC lottery-funded projects, making the information public for the first time.

According to Amanda Catto, head of visual arts at SAC, the Public Art Resource and Research Scotland will be "inclusive," not to act as an arbiter of taste, but rather with the aim to raise ambition. SAC is also keen that practitioners are not constantly reinventing the wheel. It has been sponsoring events for artist on the theme Working in Public, with U.S. artist Suzanne Lacy, currently associate professor at Gray's School of Art, who is leading discussions about power and representation and the nature of public engagement. Scottish politicians of all colors are keen to stress the importance of culture to the success of a nation that has ambitions to be the "best small country in the world." Yet cultural policy is currently in limbo while a new culture bill initiated by the previous Labor-led government goes through development. The plan is to create an agency called Creative Scotland by April 2009. In England, public art programs have been supported by the government-sponsored Commission for Architecture and Built Environment as part of the agency's role as a design champion for public space and architecture. While Scotland was the first country in the United Kingdom to produce an official architecture policy, the organization set up to implement the policy, Architecture and Design Scotland, has a small budget and has been far less proactive on the issue of public space. Some arts organizations and artists may complain about the fruitless consultation exercises and a lack of support from the SAC and its political masters, but public art in Scotland may have benefitted from being overlooked. It seems to have escaped the crude instrumentalism and lack of reflection that is often exhibited in other parts of the United Kingdom. Oneoff artist-led initiatives for private clients or temporary events have produced some very interesting works. These include Alex Frost's Maverick, a beautiful and disturbing mosaic head (102 x 102 x 110 inches) made from ceramic tiles and produced for the independent gallery of Sorcha Dallas Contemporary Art and privately funded for the Glasgow International Festival in 2005; and Mathew Dalziel and Louise Scullion's photographic billboard project Breath Taking (2005), inspired by the controversial debate about wind farms, produced for Aberdeen-based Deveron Arts directed by Claudia Zeiske.

and a lack of support f r o m the Scottish Arts Council a n d its political masters,

but public a r t in Scotland m a y have benefitted

f r o m being overlooked.

Alex Frost, Maverick, 2 0 0 5 , for Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow, Scotland.

ABOVE: Stephan Balkenhol, Everyman, 2007, Edinburgh, Scotland. B E L O W : Donald Urquhart a n d Dysart Artworks, Sea Beams, 2007, Dysart, Fife, Scotland.

One of Scotland's most significant permanent public works is the Artworks Programme in the Gorbals, an infamous neighborhood previously occupied by high-rise blocks and currently being redeveloped on a New Urbanist model. In the 1990s, postindustrial Glasgow embraced the concept of cultural regeneration. Some pioneering initiatives led by artists, including Kenny Hunter, in turn gave rise to a handful of public arts agencies and companies, including the Heisenberg Studio, and Sans fagon, along with the Gorbals Arts Project. Following some developer-funded artworks, Heisenberg (run by Dan Dubowitz and Matt Baker) drew up a cultural master plan for proposed new developments involving twenty artists. Seven years on, this work is now complete and is evaluated in a book called Arcade-Artists and Placemaking (Black Dog Publishing, 2006). In the book. Matt Baker sums up the ambiguities felt by many artists working on contemporary public projects. He describes the position of the artist in contributing to the imaging and making of new places as "weaving an individual path through professional interests intent on a new 'brand' and a community mistrustful of outsiders and certainly of attempts to represent 'their' culture." He goes on to describe the artworks as a "series of suspended question marks that gradually add a color and an atmosphere, provoke discussion, or contribute to the ever evolving story of the area." Baker's reticence to make grand claims for the artwork may reflect a broader reserve among artists working in Scotland, who have tended to adopt a critical attitude towards the concept, often promoted by regeneration agencies, that public art and the artists can manufacture a sense of place. Three of most high-profile, recently completed permanent public art projects are the Dysart Artworks and Town Trail, produced for a small, run-down coastal village in Fife on Scotland's East Coast; a series of artworks for Aberdeen Children's Hospital; and a single work for Edinburgh's new city council headquarters. The Dysart project was the outcome of extensive community consultation and takes the landscape, and in particular the spectacular views across the Firth of Forth, as its inspiration. Local representatives formed part of the client steering group, the team ran poetry workshops, and children and residents were invited to take photographs of the sea in different light conditions to inform the palette of colors for Sea Beams. All residents were kept informed through an exhibition of the proposals. "Rather than clutter the town and coast line with 'object sculptures' each artwork acts as a device to view familiar aspects of the landscape and the town in new ways," says the landscape architect. At Aberdeen Children's Hospital, fifteen artists, including sculptors, photographers, textile artists, graphic artists, and furniture designers, made public artworks in locations across the four public floors of the hospital. The project was organized by PACE, an Edinburgh based public arts agency led by Julia Dean. The work includes seating, colorful signs, floor designs, environmental graphics, light boxes, and a water feature, working to a budget of £600,000. A consultation exercise involved establishing a young advisors group with children from surrounding schools, which led to the development of an arts strategy for the hospital. This is based on the assumption that children have a higher visual literacy than we give them credit for and they can appreciate a wide range of art including conceptual works. Among the artists involved were Lucy Casson, who created life-size plaster creatures for the hospital roof, and Dalziel + Scullion, who created a garden of imaginary Scottish trees.

g | s J § | | I s .g | f I, f | £ 1

Dalziel + Scullion, Omological Trees, 2 0 0 5 , for Aberdeen Children's Hospital, Scotland.

Art in Partnership, established in 1985. was the first public art commissioning agency in Scotland. The organization's projects include an art strategy and a collection of Scottish artists for the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, Edinburgh including Callum Innes, Will Maclean. Christine Borland, Alison Watt. Art in Partnership's commission for Stephan Balkenhol's ÂŁ100,000 Everyman sculpture, for the public courtyard of the City of Edinburgh council's new Waverley Court headquarters, stands over seven meters (twenty-three feet) high and is intended to represent the "spirit of mankind." Arising from design proposals for a site-specific work that reflected the city's vision of "Edinburghâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;-Inspiring Capital," it has attracted much controversy. The statue divided the city's artists, with its supporters celebrating its "unthreatening" qualities. Toby Paterson, whose work plays with ideas of the integration of art and architecture and the experience of the built environment, with a particular focus on postwar architecture and an interest in processes of abstraction within visual art, created a sculpture on three walls. Potential Forms (Black, Blue and White Isometric), for the Saltire Centre at Glasgow Caledonian University. On the corporate front, a large steel and paneled structure by Paterson will sit adjacent to the building the BBC's new building designed by David Chipperfield. Even if the central infrastructure for the promotion of public artwork is absent, Scotland has more than its fair share of public events that provide funds for temporary works. The key

players are the Edinburgh Festival and the Glasgow Arts Fair and its partner, Glasgow International, and more recently, the Six Cities Design Festival. This year, the organizers of the Edinburgh International Festival commissioned Katrina Brown of The Common Guild, a new visual arts organization established by the former curator at Dundee Contemporary Arts, to curate work for this year's event. The outcome was Jardins Publics, a series of works also inspired by Patrick Geddes, the late-nineteenth-century polymath often credited with inventing modern planning and conservation. Linking the world of the fine artist and the public artist, Brown commissioned Michael Lin. Apolonija Sustersic, and Scottish artist Richard Wright to consider the garden as an essentially social rather than natural space. Sustersic, who specializes in the creation of places in which people can come together and exchange ideas, worked with architect Meike Schalk and the residents of one of Edinburgh's historic closes, to design garden furniture, equipment, and planting to breathe new life into a communal space. Glasgow-based artist Richard Wright, one the United Kingdom's most respected artists, produced two works: One in a tiny structure on the banks of the Water of Leith, and another in a grand private apartment in the heart of the New Town. Two other festivals in Glasgow are developing visual art commissions. Glasgow International, the city's annual contemporary visual arts festival, worked with the international

WE" M U S I CULTIVATE OUR GAR

ABOVE: Nathan Coley, We Must Cultivate Our Garden, 2 0 0 6 , Edinburgh, Scotland. B E L O W : Two projects f r o m Jardins Publics: Michael Lin's East Princes Street Hardens (with detail); and Apolonija Sustersic and Meike Schalk's Garden Service, 2007, Edinburgh, Scotland.

commissioning agency Artangel and Catherine Yass to produce HIGH WIRE, a film of Didier Pasquette, the high-wire artist, walking between the top floors of the Red Road flats, two iconic blocks that are soon to be demolished. Radiance, a biennial "festival of light," is also employing a range of international and local light artists. A cross-disciplinary organization that is working with artists and commissioning public art works is The Lighthouse, Scotland's Centre for Architecture, Design, and the City, and one of the main mechanisms through which the Scottish government delivers its architecture policy. The Lighthouse organized the Six Cities Design Festival, a two-week event that set itself the ambition of convincing businesses and the public that "design matters." Six Cities commissioned graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister to produce Everybody Always Thinks They Are Right, an installation of six gigantic inflatable white monkeys, which forms part of Sagmeister's global project, Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far. The monkeys were located throughout the city, and each carried one word of the title statement. The project attracted a lot of media attention, which is fortunate because the project relied on media reporting to make any real sense. Like Sagmeister himself, the work occupies that interesting spaceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the boundary where public art meets advertising. In 2006, The Lighthouse commissioned a show called Northern City, which set out to explore Edinburgh, respond to the idea of the "contradictory city," and investigate both the Scottish Enlightenment and the work of Patrick Geddes. Although the show was originally conceived for a gallery, the individual works were subsequently displayed in public. The project consisted of four artworks from artist Nathan Coley, work by landscape architect Eelco Hooftman (who leads the firm Cross Max), and two collaborative projects of architects and artists: Northroom by artist Victoria Clare Bernie and architects Mark Dorrian and Adrian Hawker, and Latitude by artists Dalziel + Scullion and Sutherland Hussey Architects. Each of these works embraces the idea of the Enlightenment with a different degree of enthusiasm. In Nathan Coley's light piece, a large-scale single line of illuminated green text spelled out the words, "We must cultivate our garden" on the rooftop of an office building on Edinburgh's Saint Andrews Square. The sentiment, from Voltaire's Candide, is an ambiguous statement that could be understood as an argument for social "cultivation," or even a critique of the failure of Scotland's to give sufficient support to its artists. Outside of the urban centers and up in the Highlands and islands, on the fringe of the cultural fringe, there a number of major arts projects. The recently completed Pier Arts Centre in Orkney by Reaich and Hall architects houses the fabulous collection of British modern art collected by Margaret Gardiner. The new building exhibits, and is in turn inspired by, two artists, Ragna Robertsdottir and Roger Ackling, both of whom

ABOVE: Stefan Sagmeister, [neiybod/ 4/wsys Thinks They tre Right, 2007. Thirty-toot inflatable monkeys w e r e placed in six cities-Glasgow, Edinburgh, Inverness, Aberdeen, Dundee, and Stirling-for the Six Cities Festival that ran M a y 1 7 - 1 8 , 2 0 0 7 (www.six-cities.com).

have exhibited in the architect's Edinburgh gallery. The most interesting architectural-artistic collaborations have emerged in cases like this oneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;because the architects are already in dialogue with the artistsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;rather than as a result of a policy initiative. The Pier Arts Centre is not alone.

PENNY LEWIS is an architectural journalist and cultural commentator based in Glasgow. She edits Prospect magazine and the website www.architecturescotland.co.uk. Lewis has published two monographs on the work of Glasgow-based architects Gordon Murray and Alan Dutllop.

CTICE

ANNETTE MOLONEY

W h e n I chose the lime tree I t h o u g h t of m y m « c « C i a r a , w h o * my G o d - d a u g h t e r . S h e is o n l y t w o y e a r s old. so I c a n n o t tell her yet that I d o n a t e a tree for her in B a l l y m u n . I a m not d o i n g this only for her. but m y s e l f t o o . s i n c e I d o n ' t s e e h e r o f t e n e n o u g h The y o u n g t r e e a n d t h e y o u n g girl w i l l g r o w u p together in t h e p l a c e w h e r e I h a v e w o r k e d f o r f o u r y e a r s , a n d w h i c h h a s b e c o m e m u c h m o r e t h a n a w o r k p l a c e for m e . T h e lime tree w i l l a d d t o t h e b e a u t y a n d t h e f u t u r e o f t h e n e w Ballymun a n d t h i s i s w h a t w e all w a n t t o s e e .

J o c h e n Gerz, imiptocire (installation and plaque detail), 2 0 0 6 , Ballymun, Dublin.

National guidelines on public art practice in Ireland were published as Public Art: Per Cent for Art Scheme: General National Guidelines in 2004. developed by the Irish Department of Arts, Sports, and Tourism with input from the Arts Council of Ireland. The statement above appeared as part of the consultation process for this policy document. The central notion is that public art is fundamentally a process of exchange and dialogue and that the artwork commissioned is essentially a byproduct of that discourse. The level and quality of commissions of public art in Ireland has noticeably improved over the last five to ten years, but to echo the sentiments of Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern in his recent reelection campaign, it really is a situation of "work done, more to do." In his introduction to the document the Irish Minister for Arts, Sports, and Tourism states that a "high-quality environment is essential for good quality of life and high-quality public art is necessary to create that environment, be it an open space, public building, hospital, or education facility." These guidelines offer a broad definition of public art, including works that exist "within or across many art forms, such as visual art, music, theatre, dance, opera, film, literature, and architecture." The document goes on to cast a wide net for these forms to

include "all aspects of contemporary arts practice, such as performance, live art, multimedia, video art, sound art, etc. Projects can be of any duration, temporary or permanent and can be centered in an urban or rural context." 2 Opportunities for artists' projects in the public realm are available through private or corporate commissions, publicly funded galleries and venues working in off-site locations, and public events and festivals. But the majority of public art opportunities for artists in Ireland are funded through the Per Cent for Art Scheme, which creates about €5-10 million annually for the commissioning of new arts projects, and provides opportunities for artists to participate in the development of public infrastructure such as new roads, hospitals, schools, and housing projects. This funding represents approximately five to ten percent of the complete state arts funding, which is administered through the Arts Council of Ireland, the national development agency for the arts. The Per Cent for Art Scheme has made considerable progress in Ireland, developing from the Artistic Embellishment Scheme, under which commissions were dominated by requests for object-based sculpture, and artists often felt like they were being asked to make cheap costume jewelry for expensive

L E F T : Sean Taylor, 100Paces, performed in February 2 0 0 7 at the National M u s e u m in Dublin. R I G H T : Model a n d clay version tor John Byrne's equestrian statue, 2007. O P P O S I T E PAGE: J o c h e n Gerz, design for Ballymun Plaza, 2 0 0 5 , as part of amspwcare.

s 7

designer buildings. While innovative sculpture remains part of the picture, the scheme is now more firmly connected to the breadth of international contemporary arts practice. This broader scope can be linked to developments in policy and guidelines on public art, but it can mainly be credited to artists who have challenged the traditional perceptions of commissioning and public art practice to allow flexibility and accommodate new ideas and ways of working. The scheme is open to all art forms, and while the majority of commissions still focus on visual art, it has a cross-disciplinary basis that supports literature, music, and theatre and allows artists to collaborate across the arts. In the development of national guidelines, practicing artists contributed their experiences and concerns, and as a result, the guidelines' best-practice principles for public art commissioning are clearly defined. These include the importance of time for dialogue, early integration of arts projects, informed artistic advice from the onset, a clear and creative artists' brief, and professional project management throughout the process. It is recognized that the best work may very well happen outside of the parameters of a published procedure or policy guidelines, and some commissioners have set out to support an artist-centered approach. Breaking Ground is Ireland's largest public art program, connected to the large-scale regeneration of Ballymun in north Dublin, where Per Cent for Art Scheme budgets were pooled, allowing the development of a ten-year strategy. A large-scale project by Jochen Gerz, amaptocare, focuses on the issue of public ownership and attitudes toward public spaces. The artist put out a call for residents in the area to donate a tree of their choice to the area of Ballymun and to have it planted in their own selected site. Each tree donor then met with the artist, who asked the question, "If this tree could speak, what would it say for you?" The donor's response was then printed as an enamel panel sited beside each tree. The names of all the donors are to be engraved in the stone pavement of a large-scale plaza in the centre of Ballymun, which also has a map marked with lights showing the site of the donated tree. "What I am proud of is to contribute to the democracy, to the authorship of people," Gerz explains. "Public space should not only be 'walk' 'don't walk.' It can be more personal, more contradictory." Ireland declared itself a republic in 1916, and compared to many other European countries it has a relatively small col-

lection of monumental and historical sculpture. At times public perception of the Per Cent for Art Scheme has led to the belief that it is designed to redress this by providing a myriad of public sculpture, seemingly at the entrance to every public housing estate. A project by John Byrne at Ballymun is connected to this relative dearth of historical monuments in Ireland. He is creating a large-scale sculpture of a horse and rider using the language of traditional equestrian statuary, but he is using digital technology to scan the image of a local teenage girl who will serve as the model for the bronze cast. The work is also intended to note the widespread ownership of horses in Ballymunâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a reference to the Travellers, a native minority Irish group who, although traditionally nomadic, have settled in the area. Sean Taylor's 2 00 Paces is a Per Cent for Art project that stemmed from the development of a new wing at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, which houses a permanent exhibition on the history of the Irish Army. The artists' brief was to address the history of the museum building, previously used as an army barracks. During a site visit, the project architect expressed his wish for the commission to result in a statue of a heroic soldier giving his life for Ireland. As an artist who works mainly in the area of sound art and new media, Sean Taylor was quite disappointed at this limited creative opportunity. He decided, however, to challenge the architect on his preconceptions of public art, and although the brief did not suggest that artists work directly with the soldiers, Taylor did just that. Over a period of five months he worked as an artist in residence with a troop of more than fifty soldiers on a performance-art work based on traditional marching and drill movements, flavored with elements of contemporary choreography. The work also integrated choral aspects by having the soldiers chant and shout words based on the Irish National Anthem, The Soldiers Song. 100 Paces was publicly performed by the army in February 2007 and is available as a DVD artwork on permanent display in the National Museum. Although the architect and commissioner did not get what they initially expected, they were ultimately pleased with the result. By the time of the live performance, the army had reached such high levels of interest in and ownership of the work that they had practically forgotten that the project was an artist's idea. At a regional level in Ireland, local authorities have been very active in accessing large commissioning budgets through the Per Cent for Art scheme for capital construction projects such as the building of new roads and housing. This has led them to become proactive and policy driven in their approaches to commissioning, and most of the thirty-four Irish local authorities have appointed specialist public art staff to provide professional advice and curatorial direction. This has led to a

focus on the development of long term public art programs and less emphasis on individual commissions. In order to achieve an artist-centered approach to its public art program, In Context 3, South Dublin County Council commissioned John Byrne to make a short film about the county to be included in the artists' briefing document. This aimed to give Irish and international artists, who were being invited to develop projects, an honest flavor of the people, time, and place through the eyes of another artist. The program recently appointed five artists in residence to be based in the area over a two-year period, representing visual art. contemporary music, and literature. Each artist received a fee of €30,000 per annum for research and development, with an additional budget of €500,000 for the production of projects. Rural and coastal areas such as counties Sligo, Mayo, Donegal, and Carlow have also developed ambitious, artist-centered approaches to public art commissioning. County Wexford, a coastal area in the southeast of Ireland, commissioned The Sea, curated by Cliodhna Shaffrey, which resulted in a collaboration between composer Stephen Gardner and artist Gary Coyle. The starting point for a collaborative film and music piece was a shared passion for the sea—especially the 200 kilometers (125 miles) of the Wexford coastline. Both artists are keen swimmers. Gardener's score for the work has a dark undertone and aims to address the mysterious aspects of the sea. Images to accompany the score were captured by Coyle while swimming in the sea through the use of a head-mounted digital video camera. The result is a mesmerizing reflection on what it is like to be swimming alone in the midst of the cold, murky water of the Irish Sea. The work has been made all the more poignant, since it was launched last autumn, by the loss of a number of large fishing vessels off the coast of Wexford. The strength of public art commissioning in Ireland is the connection between the Per Cent for Art Scheme funding op-

portunities and contemporary arts practice. This connection allows commissioners to be brave and take risks in developing public art projects. While in general, public definitions of public art still hinge on object-based sculpture and monuments, almost every government department and public body can now cite examples of how they have used the Per Cent for Art Scheme in a developmental and progressive way to commission projects that are unique to their context and challenging for artists' practice. Practicing artists in Ireland have been in a position to push the boundaries and perceptions of what public art might be in the twenty-first century. These commissioning experiences are what will hopefully inform the next stage of policy development for public art in Ireland and encourage and support artists to do what they do best—to tell us something that we don't already know. ANNETTE MOLONEY is a freelance public art consultant and artistic director for the Public Art Programme at Clare County Council.

NOTES 1

(Irish) Department of Arts, Sport, and Tourism. Per Cent for Art Scheme: General National Guidelines. Scope of the Scheme: 16. 2004. O n l i n e at www.publicart.ie. 2

Per Cent for Art Scheme-. 5.

LINKS

• Per Cent for A r t Scheme, General N a t i o n a l Guidelines: w w w . p u b l i c a r t . i e • B a l l y m u n , Breaking Ground: w w w . b r e a k i n g g r o u n d . i e • Sean Taylor, 300 paces, John Erickson M u s e u m of A r t : w w w . j e m a . u s • South D u b l i n County C o u n c i l , In Context 3: i n c o n t e x t . s o u t h d u b l i n . i e • Visual Artists Ireland: www.visualartists.ie—a resource organization that advertises new commissions and offers advice to artists on preparing professional proposals, budgeting, and project management.

The Art of Becomini] in Northern Ireland: | | s 2 T

The term constructive ambiguity is widely attributed to Henry Kissinger. It refers to the political art of circumnavigating sensitivities through a deliberate "fudging" of issues in order to advance a political purpose. Nowhere could its use be more applicable than in the complex and sensitive area of continuing devolution in Northern Ireland. Here, in the Belfast Agreement, 1 even the fundamental first section on constitutional issues is a masterpiece of non-specificity—it challenges all rules of legal drafting and testifies to its politically expedient nature.- Thus it is that Irish Nationalists get their reference to the mutual consensus of "the people of the island of Ireland alone," whilst British Unionists get reference to the "consent of the majority" of the people of Northern Ireland. Each side knows that this is a fudge but can live with it and sell it to their own constituents as a victory—or at least not a defeat. The classic problem with constructive ambiguity, however well-meaning, is that it postpones real agreements until some future date, when so-called differences can be aired without prejudice. Professor Declan McGonagle, director of INTERFACE, 3 the Centre for Research in Art, Technologies and Design at the University of Ulster, believes that power-sharing like this is also, in a sense, power-splitting—"divide and rule." Such compromise, however, can also be used positively as a creative collaboration, when brokered after careful research and negotiation with all parties. Launched in November 2004, INTERFACE stands on a platform of such research excellence, but now concerns itself additionally with practice-based research that explores the healing of community tensions, including the creation of what McGonagle calls a "new civil society." INTERFACE is a new interactive hybrid, concerning itself with research into both fine art and textiles, and as its name implies, bridging the gap between art and design, theory and practice, and art and social space. McGonagle sees its fine-art strand as having a contemporary link to the current lived experience in Northern Ireland; whereas he sees the textiles dimension rooted within the historical cultural identity of the province. One of INTERFACE'S recurring themes of investigation is of contemporary art as a response to the idea of social citizenship and the notion of our public space as civil space. It is also a strand woven through much of McGonagle's work since graduating from Belfast College of Art in 1976 and being appointed the first organizer of the Orchard Gallery in Derry in 1978. In addition to curating at the Orchard Gallery, his subsequent practice involved working at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. He was eventually short-listed for the Turner Prize in 1987—one of only two curators ever to have been nominated—for "making

Twelve community groups from across Belfast designed and hand-sculpted sections of The Bellsst Wheel (2005) depicting landmarks that define their community. Sited on the corner of Lisburn and University Roads. This project and the murals presented in this article w e r e produced by the New Belfast Community Arts Initiative program "Re-Imaging Communities." Learn more at www.newbelfastarts.org/projects/reimaging.hirii Photos courtesy Conor Shields, New Belfast Community Arts Initiative.

IAN BANKS

ABOVE: Lower Old Park Community Association, The Four Rivers, 2006, Alloa Street, Belfast, Ireland (replacing loyalist mural pictured at right).

the Orchard Gallery an international center for the artist." More recently, in 2004, McGonagle completed the Dublin City Arts Centre's Civil Arts Inquiry, 4 a two-year review to explore the assumptions underlying the City Arts Centre's operations. Through a series of public consultations and discussions, the Civil Arts Inquiry opened up further questions on the role of arts and culture in society. McGonagle firmly believes that public art in Northern Ireland must now begin "moving beyond the physical aesthetic," and leave behind an obsession with the notion of permanence. He believes that major public art budgets are too often controlled by large public procurement funds, and that curatorial vision needs to be shifted back to the cultural organizations or a "professionalized arts unit." Instead, he says, "Roads Services have more to say on public art spending" than arts professionals. Belfast City Council and the Department of Social Development, for example, have ambitions to spend £400,000 on roundabout art for the Broadway Junction, the city's main gateway from the south—spending that could become a dangerous norm if left unchallenged. Of course, the constantly rolling national Per Cent for Art schemes 5 seen throughout the Irish Republic are a constant reminder to the province of this regeneration-led public art approach, although McGonagle maintains that some Per Cent for Art projects, like those commissioned by Ballymun Regeneration as part of the Breaking Ground'' program, can facilitate "creative interventions" of artists and craftspersons. The problem, McGonagle believes, is that "we behave as if we have a consensus over what the term public means." On the contrary, like much of the rest of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland has quite some way to go on this cultural journey. Some programs, like Belfast City Centre's Public Realm Improvement Strategy, which includes the Belfast: Streets Ahead action plan, 7 are undoubtedly engaging and visionary, but even these are perhaps not exploring the degree of civil consider-

ations that INTERFACE aspires to, although Belfast's recently launched Integrated Cultural Strategy" may help in this regard. Such integration is important, as McGonagle believes public art should not be driven by any one single agenda. He believes that there are very few existing models with a meaningful degree of true collaboration—an element he feels is the key to success. As an example, he cites the recent Arts Council England publication Art of Negotiation,9 an exploration of eight artistled collaborative projects at different sites across England. Arts Council of Northern Ireland also articulates its policy through a public art handbook, 10 published in 2005 by Paul Harron, the architecture and public art officer. The council also supports a dedicated public art program designed to aid the commissioning of new art for public places throughout Northern Ireland, and funded out of the national lottery program. So where does INTERFACE'S ambition for a new civil society fit into all this? When setting out his vision for the research unit at his launch speech in June 2006, McGonagle quoted A. C. Grayling," Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College, who during a 2003 talk in Dublin, described the shift in ancient Greece from a "society [that] valued the warrior as the person who could protect society," to one that valued the civilian, or "civil man." 1 2 Nowhere is this ethos better showcased than in the three-year funding scheme of Northern Ireland's arts council called Re-Imaging Communities. The program helps communities in urban and rural areas focus on

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KINautN COUH'

ABOVE: Lower Ormeau Residents' Action Group, Ho Yoo Remember, 2 0 0 6 , Dromara Street, Belfast, Ireland (replacing republican "No Marching" mural at top left). RIGHT: Woodvale Community Centre & Ardoyne Youth Club, Our Perfect World, 2 0 0 6 , Crumlin Road, Belfast, Ireland (replacing a "No Marching" mural).

positive ways to express what culture means to them artistically and creatively. In West Belfast, for example, it has helped engage a transformation of the mural tradition into something more civil,' 3 effectively mirroring the same shift from warrior to civilian traditions that Grayling alludes to. In Greece, this shift was assisted by the art form of cultureâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in particular theatre, where the collective of the chorus began to gain a more influential voice. McGonagle believes that this history provides a powerful metaphor for Northern Ireland. As a result, INTERFACE has been commissioned by Belfast's Regeneration Office to research and develop an overarching strategy for public arts in this highly complex part of the city. INTERFACE also joined the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, which has been working here since 1988, in the slow "incremental practice" of helping the development of the thriving, unique community of West Belfastâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the largest designated area of social need in Northern Ireland, which also contains a growing number of hard-to-reach migrant workers. Parallel to these efforts, Channel Four's Big Art Project 14 is working with the community in North Belfast around the Waterworks Park to create a series of new artworks in the park, based on negotiation with the surrounding communities. Community representatives proposed the park as a setting for art interventions as part of a longer term communitydriven reclamation of the park as a shared civil space. The Big Art Project sees itself as helping to raise the difficult but important question, "Can art build bridges?" McGonagle certainly believes it can and thinks the same questions of bonding and bridging civil space are also exercising the body politic generally. INTERFACE'S intention is to produce a user-friendly working document that sets out clear

mechanisms, opportunities, and processes for public arts programming across these areas of the city, with a high level of community involvement. It is intended also to link new public arts programming to parallel activity in the City Centre and Laganside neighborhoods, and will take full account of other overlapping strategies, supporting community development, arts provision, and economic and social regeneration. The preparation of this document and its subsequent implementation has the potential to provide communities with a means to improve the quality and extent of the public arts. It will create new ways of working and developing art in context to enhance environment and quality of life, and also begin to create opportunities for active community participation in the process. The strategy document is due to be completed this year, and will then form the basis for the development of public arts initiatives in the medium- and long-term development of West Belfast and Greater Shankill. Alluding to Joseph Beuys' famous phrase, McGonagle believes that "everyone is an artist." Beuys talked of art as a true social organism with an "evolutionary-revolutionary" power to dismantle and then rebuild. So it can be on the Shankill and Falls Roads, where McGonagle hopes for a required "shift in society and shift in culture." To aid this shift, he visualizes a "permanent programme of temporary projects" and the idea of the city as a gallery. Crucial, however, is his central idea of the artist as negotiator as well as producer, forming a "new deal" between artist and society. In this aim, technology is not an end in itself, but a means to achieve larger social and civil goals and a method by which creative industries are prized not only for their economic potential but for their values of

Women of substance p L u f l The changing roles of

g d B ^ N women in the Market area

needed to buy the much-needed time to rigorously research, explore, and engage with the complex social issues and deeprooted historical scars that places like West Belfast hold. INTERFACE certainly has the potential to build on its innovative programs of action research, but no doubt does not expect quick wins in turning public space into civil space. McGonagle talks of a much-needed "art of negotiation," and accepts and embraces the complexities by making reference to a poignant popular saying in the province: "If you are not confused, then you don't understand."

A B O V E : Women of Substance m u r a l in t h e M a r k e t s a r e a of central Belfast f r o m 2 0 0 6 ( r e p l a c i n g s e c t a r i a n graffiti p i c t u r e d b e l o w ) .

IAN BANKS is the director of Atoll, a collaborative art and architecture practice (www.atoll-uk.com). engagement and participation. Technology has the power to "connect communities of interest to communities of place," as McGonagle puts it, whilst being "placed locally but connected globally." INTERFACE has tuned in to an opportune moment of change in both the academic and broader contexts of Northern Ireland. McGonagle sees the organization as being a potential catalyst for a seismic shift in the inherited assumptions and values that underpin the nature and meaning of art and practice more broadly. He believes that these assumptions have depended historically on a separation of the artist from society, and that this separation of "arts-aesthetic" responsibility from ethical, social, and moral responsibility needs to be bridged in the public's mind. He believes that there is no better place to explore such ambitious aims than in a post-conflict Northern Irelandâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in spite of the scale of the task of bridging that gap, as well as the length and intensity of people's memories here (as the trials and tribulations during the establishment of the Northern Ireland Assembly following the Belfast Agreement testify). In that respect, McGonagle quotes Sir Nicholas Fenn, the former British joint chairman of Encounter, 15 the independent organization established by British and Irish governments to "contribute to the improvement of relations" between those two entities. Fenn once said that "the Irish remember too much... and the English not enough." Indeed, perhaps the big mistake of any engaged cultural strategy here is trying to cover too much ground too soon, and to attempt to provide all the finished solutions overnight. In that regard, perhaps a more fluid organic policy of creative ambiguity or artistic license is

NOTES and LINKS 1

www.nio.gov.uk/the-agreement

The Belfast Agreement, also known as the Good Friday Agreement or Stormont Agreement, was reached in Belfast in April, 1998. It set out the plan for devolved government in Northern Ireland on a "stable and inclusive basis." The Agreement proposed an interconnected group of institutions governing three "strands:" internal affairs, the Republic of Ireland, and mainland Britain. The agreement resulted in the establishment of the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly in November 2003, but it has been variously dissolved or suspended since, until devolution was finally restored to the assembly on May 8, 2007. 3

www.interface.ulster.ac.uk

www.cityarts.ie

www.arts-sport-tourism.gov.ie

www.breakingground.ie

' www.belfaststreetsaheadni.gov.uk 8

www.belfastcity.gov.uk/culture

www.arts.org.uk/publications

www.artscouncil-ni.org

www.acgrayling.com

McGonagle quote from: INTERFACE Research in Art, Technologies and Design: Report No. 1: 11/04-05/06. Price, Sarah, ed. Belfast: INTERFACE, University of Ulster, 2006. 1

www.newbelfastarts.org/gallery/reimage.html

www.channel4.com/bigart

www.british-irish-encounter.com

Lower Ormeau Residents' Action Group, Say No lo Blow, 2 0 0 6 , corner of Farnham Street and Balfour Avenue, Belfast, Ireland (replacing a republican mural).

v/s/s// THE PRESENT STATE REVISITED ///////////////^^^^^

Building Cultures One Rebellion at a Time A Manifesto of Possibilities CAMERON CARTIERE

During the past year, I have been involved in a small rebellion taking place in London. Not quite a revolutionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;more like an intellectual uprising against what many fear might soon be the unalterable bureaucratization of public art in the United Kingdom. Like most movements, this one began with a conversation. As part of the Building Cultures series sponsored by the London Centre for Arts and Cultural Enterprise (LCACE), I organized a three-part conversation series that examined the role of art in community engagement, regeneration, and activism. It brought together artists, educators, politicians, and community activists to take a holistic look at the role of art in our changing city. The first session occurred on May 8, 2006 at Tate Modern and focused on public art and community engagement. 1 The open discussion quickly turned to evaluation trends and concern that calls for proposals and pre-evaluation checklists are too all-encompassing and unrealistic. Artists in the audience were concerned that given the current trends, when they prepared a proposal for a public work, they needed to demonstrate how the work would inspire a community, reduce crime, respond to the environment, contribute to urban renewal and/or support rural sustainability, provide educational and cultural opportunities, and inspire debate without being confrontational. The second session, held at the Greater London Authority on May 16, explored the topic of art, community, and urban regeneration. 2 Under the weight of London's continually rising house prices, and with the upcoming 2012 Olympic Games poised to radically change the landscape of the eastern reaches of the capital, the lively and sometimes heated discussion quickly turned towards concerns about mass redevelopment, community displacement at the proposed Olympic venues, and the homogenization of the remaining unique neighborhoods that currently surround the Olympic sites. The third and final session took place on May 24 at Whitechapel Gallery and concerned art activism and the community. 3 This was a surprisingly calm session considering the auditorium was filled to capacity with art activists; however, the discussion was far from passive. The central questions of the evening revolved around concerns of how to maintain community involvement over an extended period, finding

true representation in the political arena, and fostering change through "slow activism." One of the common concerns that surfaced across the series was that throughout the past decade, artists have heard a repeated call from arts agencies for the need to educate the public as to the potential and promise of public art. The concern for many artists now is that arts commissions and funding bodies need to be reeducated to have realistic expectations of art in the public realm. The initial hope for the series was to go beyond the common "one-off" evening panel discussion and instead create an opportunity for an extended conversation around some of the key issues facing artists working in a publicly engaged practice within the city's current social and political climate. Over the course of the three evenings, a significant percentage of the audience returned; panel members from earlier sessions voluntarily became audience members; and the overlapping concerns of community engagement, urban regeneration, and art activism bubbled to the surface of the discussions without having to be forced to a boil by the respective panel chairs. Despite the fact that there was a feeling of success in creating an opportunity to take the conversation beyond previous limitations, there was still a feeling of frustration that these groups of highly motivated and concerned people had been brought together for a discussion that did not have a finite consequence. In response, I collaborated with Sophie Hope (of B+B) to see if we could take the project further. With the continued support of LCACE and a team of volunteers, we organized an event that aimed to produce something tangible to benefit to our community. This next event, held on February 15, 2007, was structured as an action workshop rather than a traditional conference. It was emphasised to all participants that their active involvement in the workshop was crucial to the objective of the day, which was to compose a set of action points that could be taken forward into a manifesto document. The workshop began with a presentation of the dominant themes from a collation of the three previous events. The six key areas were: The Changing Roles of Public Art, Public Art and Urban Renewal, Regeneration and Gentrification, The Public Art Profession, Evaluation, and Public Art as a Negoti-

The concern for many artists now is that arts commissions and

funding bodies need to be reeducated to have realistic expectations of art in the public realm.

ARTIST PAGE (previous) by Alec Finlay. Resting side by side, these two views, one of the path that leads to the site of Ludwig Wittgenstein's house on Lusterfjord. Norway, and the other of woods surrounding Glenn Gould's cabin by Lake Simcoe, Ontario, refer to buildings that no longer exist. These wild northern landscapes are where LW and GG retreated to forge a style and a philosophy. The juxtaposition of these gentle natural thresholdsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the little arch of branches, the glade opening to sky-suggest a connection between the lives and temperaments of the "porcupine- and the recluse. Alec Finlay and Guy Moreton published a study of the Wittgenstein House at Skjolden (lutmg Wittgenstein: There Where Yen Are Not. Black Dog. 2005). These artist pages propose a companion volume on Gould's cabin. Zoe Irvine is working on Contrapuntal Journey, a sound work featuring the voices of people who collaborated with Gould on his recordings. Alec Finlay is an artist, poet and publisher. Bom in Scotland, he now lives and works in Byker, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, www.alecfinlay.com

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The function of public art for regeneration is to sex up the control of the under-classes.

ating Power. The delegates were divided into break-out groups and given the task of devising at least two action points which would address concerns in each of the five areas; an ambitious task and one which created much heated discussion. The strategy yielded excellent results, with each group presenting a set of action points for wider debate in a feedback and discussion session chaired by Baroness Lola Young. Proposed action points included calls for artists to be granted equity with other professionals involved in public art projects; the development of systems to allow knowledge sharing, particularly in reference to models of evaluation and good practice; and the recognition of the importance of risk in delivering successful public art projects. The action points that were generated at the workshop formed the foundation of the manifesto. An online draft version of the document was launched on May 1, 2007 in the form of a wiki,4 and for two months there was an opportunity for individuals to actively discuss the content. The aim of the manifesto is to identify areas of concern within current public art practice and present recommendations from this "community of common interest" for ways forward. It is an admittedly ambitious experiment, but one that is inspired by the enthusiastic spirit and optimism of the series participants. The creation of this manifesto does not represent the end of the argument; instead it is intended to engage all those working in the public realm to join the debate. CAMERON CARTIERE leads the Master of Arts program arts management for the Faculty of Continuing Education Birkbeck, University of London.

in at

Freee, The Function ol Public krt tor Regeneration is to Sex up the Control of the tinier-Classes,

2005,

Roding Road, H o m e r t o n High Street, H a c k n e y , London. C o m m i s s i o n e d by B + B for Real Estate: A r t in a C h a n g i n g City, a n exhibition c u r a t e d by B + B ( w w w . w e l c o m e b b . o r g . u k ) . This w o r k is a continuation of a series of text w o r k s entitled The Three Functions t h a t discuss t h e functionality of public art. F r e e e is a n English art collective bringing t o g e t h e r the practices of D a v e B e e c h , A n d y Hewitt, a n d M e l J o r d a n . Freee's a r t practice is c o n c e r n e d w i t h t h e tension b e t w e e n f u n c t i o n a n d a u t o n o m y in art, reflecting o n t h e history of a v a n t - g a r d e strategies, in particular questions related to t h e reconciliation of a r t a n d life a n d t h e t r a n s f o r m a t i o n of t h e social relations of art. R e c e n t w o r k s contest t h e idea of a d e m o c r a t i c public sphere, a d d r e s s i n g issues of functionality w i t h i n art practices a n d seeking to explore the d e v e l o p m e n t of a c o u n t e r public sphere. M o r e a t w w w . h e w i t t a n d j o r d a n . c o m / f r e e e .

NOTES 1

Session one's panel, chaired by the author, included artist Peter Fink of Art2Architecture; Alan Rossiter from Free Form: Louise Wardle, producer of Channel 4's Big Art Project; and Sophie Hope and Sarah Carrington of B+B. a curatorial partnership specializing in art projects in the public realm. 2

Session two, chaired by Birkbeck lecturers William Ackah and Penny Koutrolikou, featured panel members Ben Seymour of the London Particular; Justine Simons, cultural strategy manager for the GLA; Anna Harding of Space Studios; and Isabelle Fremeaux from Birkbeck's department of Film and Media Studies in the Faculty of Continuing Education. 3 Session three, chaired by Professor Annie E. Coombes. included lane Trowell from PLATFORM; Baroness Lola Young of Hornsev; artist and writer David Beech of Sheffield Hallam University; and art activist Poulomi Desai. 4

wiki.bbk.ac.uk/Buildingcultures/index.php/Manifesto_of_Possibilities

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Artists Taking the Lead: Visionary shift in U.K. arts policy or just cultural spin? IAN BANKS

^ 5 | 3

Public art has often been used for political ends. Most United Kingdom, or indeed, whether they can be sustained benotable was its widespread use by the Bolsheviks after the yond the next general election due in 2009 and 2010. Newly October Revolution, a policy that eventually led to a installaappointed culture secretary James Purnell 5 certainly seems to tion of public art of heroes and artists in every village of the think so, and has just vowed to release arts organizations from new Soviet Union. Lenin himself apparently insisted that art the pressure of what he has called "crude targets" to look at in a revolutionary society should be temporary and avoid the how the government can empower "artists and organisations to creation of "hero cults." The resulting constructivist movebe the best." Speaking recently at the National Portrait Gallery, ment also dismissed "pure" art in favor of one used more as an Purnell spoke of an "open, iconoclastic culture" being a preinstrument for social purposes—specifically the construction condition for a modernising, tolerant country. "I see cultural of a socialist system. The subsequent emergence of monumenpolicy as a pyramid, with participation the foundation, educatal sculpture in the Soviet Union came after the rise of Stalin. tion the way up, and excellence the apex," he said. Purnell also Public art in the United Kingdom is currently at a much stated that the Labour Party's past insistence on using targets more benign cultural and political watershed, but it faces the to widen access has resulted in a "dumbing down" of the arts. paradox of being torn between two cultural poles—that of Therefore, with the Olympics due in London in 2012," he be"art for art's sake" versus a "target-driven arts" agenda. Tantallieves that the United Kingdom now has its best chance in a isingly, in an age of spending cuts for subsidised arts, public generation to showcase to the world its truly unique cultural art commissioning budgets appear to be getting bigger, more ambition and quality. diverse, and of higher profile. This is due no doubt to patrons being drawn into funding from ever wider distances from the arts and culture center. As a result of this distance, however, the small-print conditions that dictate the nature of public art are becoming increasingly political and economic. The burgeoning physical regeneration seen in Tony Blair's Britain over the last ten years has been a major feature here, including the political fallout from the respective devolutions Peter Hewitt, chief executive of Arts Council England, has of power to Scottish, Welsh, and most recently, Northern Irish welcomed the new secretary of state's vision. Arts Council assemblies. The result has been a demand for iconic statements England personnel also believe that the findings from its own of varying scale to mark independent political freedom and to recent Arts Debate7 program—the first large-scale enquiry into set aspirations for future economic prosperity, whether based how people in England define, engage with, and value art and in country, province, region, or urban center. public investment in art—will provide invaluable insight into This monumentalism is typified in England, in the exhow to realize such a cultural aspiration. The four governing treme, by the £4.5 million fast-track investment in public art arts councils of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireled by The Northern Way,1 a consortium of regional develland each have individual cultural aims and objectives, but all opment agencies in the north that aims to promote regional will be drawn together inexorably as a result of the buildup to marketing and tourism. The same motives seem to be driving the 2012 London Olympics. This process will have negative Landmark Wales, 2 a program to harness £18 million of public results in the form of country-wide arts funding cuts to pay art funding into key "entry" and "transitional" points throughfor Olympic overspends, and positive effects through centrally out Wales—potentially funded out of the Big Lottery Fund's funded, shared cultural programs. For example, the London Living Landmarks 3 program. Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games At the other end of the cultural spectrum, the grassroots has recently announced a formal role for the funded arts sector social agendas of New Labour's Sustainable Communities plan in a Cultural Olympiad." All four arts councils will be asked has also tasked the arts to engage difficult-to-reach groups, and to support a program entitled Artists Taking the Lead, through to help create that elusive elixir of "liveability" and "placewhich artists will be challenged to lead a celebration of the making" that good design and architecture apparently seems excellence, diversity, innovation, and internationalism of the incapable of achieving. The independent public art think tank arts across the United Kingdom. The program will include ixia 4 certainly believes that public art can add value to the twelve artists' commissions—presumably public art in some public realm, and that quality artworks are achieved through form—charged with "responding to and celebrating our local a greater understanding of community—an understanding that and national cultural life in each of the nine English regions is certainly improving through the committed work of such and in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales," by creating organizations, although it still has a long way to go. "great art in iconic and unexpected places." Each commission will encourage collaboration across art forms, aspire to a legacy It will be interesting to see if the recent replacement of beyond 2012, and have the creative energy of children, young Tony Blair by Gordon Brown as prime minister has an impeople, and communities at its heart. mediate bearing on any cultural funding strategies within the

The small-print conditions that dictate the nature of public art are b e c o m i n g increasingly political and economic.

Culture Minister James Purnell's belief in an "open iconoclastic culture" speaks the right language in opposing generally accepted beliefs and traditions, but it remains unclear whether this is his government's genuine ambition or yet more political spin intended to buy a fourth Labour Party term. Ironically it is the spin of regional marketing and tourism agencies that often provides the most relaxed brief and the least conditional terms of public art engagement. The only rub with this comes with the fact that often the "hero cult" that celebrity artists bring to big iconic art works can become something of an obsession to these uninitiated commissioners. Alternative public art approaches must be embraced to move things forward. Huge opportunities exist to push at these boundaries, and the Cultural Olympiad, if scoped and funded innovatively, could provide a much needed impetus. For example, use of more temporary and integrated projects throughout the country could be consideredâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;both on a macro and micro scale, and everywhere in between. Major projects with the ambition of the Liverpool Biennial's public art program,9 NVA's Storr project1" and Half Life,11 Artangel's Margate Exodus,' 2 and Royal de Luxe's Sultan's Elephant" could provide the ultimate example of challenging public art engagement on a mass-populist scale. At grassroots level, integrated networks of public art initiatives like Channel 4's Big Art Project1'1 could also show that socially driven art agendas can deliver quality, challenge, and meaning without artistic compromise. In order to realize projects of these scales, a debate in alternative public art policy and approaches is required. The four-year interim between the Liverpool Capital of Culture in 2008 15 and London in 2012 is a crucial time for this discussion. It is therefore essential that the government's comprehensive spending review 10 and budget settlements of the devolved regions, all to be announced later in 2007, be adequately funded to engage, inform and realize this vision. The pressure is on for the four United Kingdom arts councils to consult and collaborate with one another to ensure that effective lobbying takes place. A generosity of funding, along with a genuinely innovative vision, could create a softer yet more challenging cultural antidote to a post-j4nge7 and post-Blair Britain that, in public realm terms, has become somewhat obsessed with littering the country with the political statements of iconic gateways. So bring on a new cultural revolution in public artâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;-and let us genuinely see artists placed at the lead in this cathartic process! IAN BANKS, architect, is the Director of Atoll Ltd. (www.atolluk.com), a collaborative art and architecture practice. He is also the part-time director of public realm at Beam (www.beam. uk.net), the Yorkshire-based center for art and architecture. The writing of this article was co-funded by Arts Council England (artscouncil.org.uk), under its Grants for the Arts funding program.

Antony Gormley, Another Place, 2 0 0 5 , Crosby Beach, Liverpool. The work consists of 100 cast-iron figures molded from the artist's body, each facing the open sea for three kilometers on either side of the tideline. Originally installed as a temporary piece in advance of Liverpool being Capital of Culture in 2008. it has now been purchased as a permanent work. Another Place forms part of Liverpool Biennial's wider public art programme for the city.

LINKS 1

www.thenorthernway.co.uk

www.landmarkwales.org

www.biglotteryfund.org.uk

www.ixia-info.com

www.culture.gov.uk

' www.london2012.org

www.arts.org.uk/artsdebate/index.php

news.bbc.co.uk/l/hi/uk/6226550.stm

www.biennial.com

www.nva.org.uk

www.halflife.org.uk

www.margateexodus.org.uk

www.thesultanselephant.com

www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/B/bigart

www.liverpool08.com

www.hm-treasury.gov.uk

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30 Years of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park PETER MURRAY

S | si

With little fanfare—but great expectations—the Yorkshire Sculpture Park opened its gates to the public on September 24, 1977, armed with a grant of £1,000. It was the first permanent sculpture park in England. Over the years, the original concept of a museum without walls has expanded to include indoor galleries and visitor facilities, but the initial aims of open access and support for artists have not diminished. In the past three decades, YSP has established an important international reputation. At times it has been a hard struggle, but three decades of development has resulted in an exciting journey and huge changes. YSP started at Bretton Hall, a college established on the Bretton Estate in 1949 and one that was committed to the arts in education. As principal lecturer responsible for postgraduate studies in art education, I was fascinated by the aesthetic contribution that art can make to child development, interested in utilising alternative spaces for the display of art, concerned with open access to the arts, and intrigued by landscape and sculpture. From this background, YSP started to emerge.

In 1977, there was little support for contemporary sculpture in public places and YSP was seen by some as a radical, controversial project. Prior to the establishment of YSP the grounds of Bretton Hall College were not open to the public and the move from private to open access raised many issues, as did the development of an infrastructure to support YSP and the need to develop an audience. In the early years, great patience and ingenuity were required to deal with the bureaucracy, politics, and lack of funding. Artists provided generous support and help from the outset, and the regular presence of artists on site has made an enormous contribution to the practical, aesthetic, and philosophical evolution of the park. We have always strived to reciprocate such support, providing assistance to artists in many ways, including exhibitions, installations, residencies, and research projects. One of our first acts was to establish a residency scheme for artists, providing support at an early or critical stage in their careers, assisting and encouraging artists from David Nash in 1979 to Alec Finlay in 2006. Henry Moore made a visit very early in the park's development. Born in nearby Castleford and proud of his Yorkshire roots, he liked the YSP landscape, was impressed with the vision, and offered support. He became our founding patron, lent work, and provided some financial support. These links have continued through the Henry Moore Foundation, which was founded the same year as YSP. Without the support of the foundation, it would have been impossible for YSP to have embarked on an ambitious program of exhibitions which has become the lifeblood of the park, attracting artists and visitors from many parts of the world. In 1987 the Henry Moore and Landscape exhibition, sited throughout 200 acres of YSP, was a fitting memorial to an artist who had contributed so much to art of the open air. Today, the ninety-six acres of our historic Deer Park now provide a perfect site for a significant group of monumental bronzes on loan from the Henry Moore Foundation, the Tate, and other organizations. Another important Yorkshire artist, Barbara Hepworth, died two years before YSP opened. She was born in Wakefield and the Yorkshire landscape was a strong influence on her sculpture. "No sculpture really lives," she once wrote, "until it goes back into the landscape." Hepworth's majestic Family of Man has occupied the hillside at YSP since 1979. A multi-part sculpture of nine upright forms of stacked elements, the siting seems to have fulfilled the artist's dream of creating sculpture for the landscape. The landscape of the Bretton Estate is richly layered, bearing the imprint of centuries of thought, toil, skill, and innovation. Conceived as a pleasure park for a privileged minority, the emphasis today is on open access and creating opportunities and experiences for artists and the public. It is an elegant landscape designed to provide a multiplicity of views with vantage points and vistas all planned to focus the eye and create different moods and experiences—to delight, surprise,

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Henry Moore, Reclining Figure Arch Leg, 1 9 6 9 - 7 0 , Yorkshire Sculpture Park. O P P O S I T E PAGE: Andy Goldsworthy, Hanging Trees (detail), 2007, Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

and reveal. It has taken us some time to understand the complex nature of the landscape and to integrate these elements into the siting of sculpture, a process that has resulted in many memorable exhibitions by Kan Yasuda. Anthony Caro, and Phillip King, as well ass Joel Shapiro's elegant sculpture sited in the formal garden, Ursula von Rydingsvard's powerful forms displayed near the lakeside, and the 100 sculptures which formed Magdalena Abakanowicz's powerfully moving exhibition. On average ten exhibitions or projects are organized each year. These range in scale from Christo's works on paper to monumental displays requiring great physical feats of engineering such as the unforgettable Eduardo Chillida exhibition. We also have an impressive collection, including works on loan, which includes Sol LeWitt, Mark di Suvero. Jonathan Borofsky, Grenville Davey, and many others. Securing the land for future generations has always been our aim, and early in our development we embarked on an integrated landscape management plan to reunite the landscape and establish a clear vision of the way forward. In 1999, with the support of Arts Council England's (ACE) national lottery program, we purchased Longside, 237 acres of land together with derelict out buildings and a riding arena, which formed the south section of the historic designed parkland. With financial support from the European Regional Development Fund, architect Irene Bauman converted the old buildings into studio and workshop spaces, and the former riding arena became a magnificent 615-square-meter (6,600-square-foot) gallery with spectacular views of the landscape. ACE, with the help of Tony Fretton Architects, invested further in the Longside development, creating a base for more than 500 sculptures in the council's collection. ACE shares with YSP the programming of the Longside Gallery. Although we now have more than 12,000 square meters (120,000 square feet) of indoor exhibition space, the 500 acres of historic landscape remains our main source of inspiration. Recently, Alec Finlay created Circleivalk, a poetic mapping of the landscape. Performance artist Simon Whitehead created Walks to Illuminate, a piece that invited visitors to harvest solar

energy as they journeyed around the sculpture park, creating energy to power "light shoes" for night walks on seasonally important dates. In 2008, New York-based artist Brandon Ballengee will develop a field-based research project revealing amphibian decline and deformities in the United Kingdom. A greater understanding of the complex nature of the historic landscape has provided the confidence to consider the development of a limited number of significant site-specific projects to be constructed in different parts of the estate. The first was completed last year by the American artist, James Turrell, famous for his "skyspaces" and the awe-inspiring Roden Crater, which he has spent the last thirty years developing in Arizona's Painted Desert. At YSP, Turrell has converted a nineteenth-century deer shelter into a skyspace by tunnelling into the back to create an inner chamber that enables visitors to sit and gaze at the sky through a carefully constructed aperture so that "the sky is no longer out there, but is right on the edge of the space you are in." The contrast between the interior minimalism of the concrete passages and the chamber against the exterior triplearched brick and stone structure of the deer shelter exemplifies our concern to form a link between the historic and the contemporary. The second major site-specific project, Hanging Trees, was created by British artist Andy Goldsworthy to coincide with his major exhibition at the end of March this year. This monumental work is also concerned with restoration, conservation, and contemporary art, and opening up new areas of landscape. On the southern tip of the estate, Goldsworthy chose to work with part of the dilapidated ha-ha, or sunken fence, which he described as "an interface between the designed landscape and agriculture." In the ha-ha, Goldsworthy and his team of stone-wall craftsmen excavated deep into the ground to construct three large open rectangles of stone, each containing a suspended tree. The present Andy Goldsworthy exhibition is spread throughout 500 acres and reflects the artist's development since 1987, when he was artist in residence at YSP. The exhibition is a testimony to Goldsworthy's great achievements and international status, as well as to the experience and achievements of YSP. The exhibition took over two years to bring to fruition with work starting on-site in February 2006. It combines indoors and outdoors, site-specific projects, working with the landscape, farmers, stone wall craftsmen, a huge and highly skilled workforce, careful research work, project management, and most importantly, the establishment of a sensitive partnership with the artist. The exhibition reflects the multifaceted approach pioneered by YSP and the level of assistance required to support the ambitions and vision of artists such as James Turrell, Andy Goldsworthy, and others. Taken together, the achievements at YSP confirm the view of the late and much lamented curator Bryan Robertson, who wrote in 1978 that "in Yorkshire, the convergence of an educated idealism among students, a perfect venue of cultivated and wild landscape, access to works of art and a responsive public, seems without precedent and this convergence could gradually affect the character of sculpture in England as well as its enjoyment." PETER MURRAY. OBE. is the executive shire Sculpture Park, wivw.ysp.co.uk.

director

of the York-

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Art and the BBC: Two Media Art Commissions and a Program ISABEL VASSEUR

In 2007, when art manifests itself in a plethora of online spaces such as blogs, mailing lists, Skype, YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia and probably many other electric theatres, it is curious to meditate on the orthodoxy of public art and the media's current interest in it. It is true that the media will devote hours of time to how shocking art can be, but it is as if having warned us against art, it has itself become the embodiment of the terror, therefore making the idea of actually commissioning artists all the more daring. Until very recently, programs on art and artists have helped to provide plinths for fame but not platforms for new commissions. Instead, a recent dawning of the possibilities of commissioning new work came from an entirely different and more prosaic direction. The success of public art has, after all, been one acknowledged and applauded by the public at large and its representatives, local government. The first absolute evidence of genuine public enthusiasm came in 2005 when an intrepid Channel 4 invited the public to nominate sites for permanent or temporary artworks for a planned 2008 program. The 1,400 responses were the largest score for any invited response to a television program on any subject. And the more amazing aspect of this public enthusiasm was the near universal belief of the respondents in the

All six locations were in need of transformation, in quite different and touching ways: Waterworks Park in North Belfast is an area where a quarter of the deaths of the Troubles occurred and where the nominators wanted to bring the two previously warring communities together. Saint Helens Colliery is a disused mine where the former miners want to place a new work "to commemorate the past and point to a new future." On the Welsh coast, the small and very pretty port of Cardigan has decided to acquire a new artwork to help put it on the cultural and tourist map. In Sheffield, two enterprising designers spearheaded a movement to get an artist to help them and the community to preserve two cooling towers, landmarks from a mammoth disused power station. Finally, the Isle of Mull off the West Coast of Scotland is the destination for an ambitious arts program. James Turrell has been invited to visit the dreamy terrain to consider creating an installation there, and the people of the island look to a new and televised process to remind tourists of another reason to visit Mull. In spite of the frustrations endemic to public art commissioning, Channel 4's Big Art Project has reached the exciting but nerve jangling stage of selecting artists, and among them are a good hand of emerging and international artists, in spite

transformative effect that art would have on their lives, towns, cities, social problems, and communities. For Channel 4, the potential connectedness to the public promised the currency of human interest; the program was in fact conceived as part of the station's public service, and a perception of commissioned art was shared by public and the station alike. Nearly all had visions of replicating either an identical Antony Gormley Angel of the North or a devise of equal magnitude and visible success. From the extensive spectrum of submissions, six locations from across the United Kingdom were selected, with telegenic members of the public representing them. With the exception of only one in the South (in Newham, East London, the home of the 2012 Olympics), all were located in more exotic, not to mention telegenic, regional locations.

of the seduction of the obvious. Greyworld, Rafael LozanoHemmer, Lanternhouse International, Jeppe Hein, and Jaume Plensa are the beginning of an intriguing new hall of fame for Channel 4. Five years ago, in 2000, the BBC had a more pressing need to employ public art when it was planning to remodel its headquarters, Broadcasting House, in the center of London. Westminster City Council insisted that the corporation include a percent for art within the new extension. To the architects, MacCormac Jamieson Prichard, it was an established habit, and they appointed the commissions agency Modus Operandi Consultants to create a project that would harmonize with the ambitions of their building. The BBC was suddenly bedecked with plans and installations, unprecedented since the original G Val Meyer building was erected in 1932 and Eric Gill's sculp-

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ture of Prospero and Ariel graced its prow. Modus Operandi employed a strategy that encompassed permanent and temporary commissions, artists on-site, as well as education and community projects—the latter an inevitability in all publicly funded projects in the United Kingdom. When completed, the Portland Place will be the largest live broadcasting center ever. It will be adorned with contrasting works by Jaume Plensa, Tony Cooper and Martin Richman, Mark Pimlott, Ron Haselden, and Antoni Malinowski—all of which will mediate between the iconic building and its admiring and nearly genuflecting public. To serenade the evolution of the BBC's property portfolio (an outcome of a curious and not universally admired government funding scheme entitled the Private Finance Initiative in which the private sector builds for the public and then rents it back to the public tenant) a series of quite startling banners were draped over Broadcasting House: brilliant skeins of invention by Fiona Rae and Liz Rideal. Inside, the soon to be rejuvenated interior, studios, and storerooms of ancient and mythical status were appropriated by artists—including Room 101, which, although immortalized by George Orwell in 1984, his novel describing a totalitarian state, was discovered with some uncertainty as nobody new where it was. But having finally found the mysterious Room 101 Rachel Whiteread replicated its void and presented its plaster cast in the Victoria and Albert Museum. In the sound-effects storeroom, Brian Catling and William Furlong were let loose. In 2001, the BBC started to consider other destinations for new commissions in what it quaintly names the "nations and regions," where studios stand for important local benefit. In White City, West London enormous administration and studio spaces by architects Allies and Morrison were to be erected

desire of the media to be linked to celebrity. Finally, decisions were made and artists selected. The superb colorist and painter Yuko Shiraishi became the color guru of the design team, providing wild schemes and thoughtful devices to an otherwise blank built canvas. Simon Patterson suggested the illusions of all silver screens and their ability to camouflage in a wall painting, resonant of the WWI dazzle ships. Filmmakers, rap poets, designers, performance artists, photographers, composers, and neoanthropologists took part. The team included Jeremy Deller, Ori Gersht, Bill Fontana, Nikolai Larsen, the French group Dig Dang Dong, John Morgan, and more surprisingly, Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. The entire project was adventurous and popular and blessedly economical when it hit disaster—and was, with the Broadcasting House scheme, prematurely demobilized. Instead of completing in 2010 as planned, its termination had a surreal coincidence with the 2004 release of the Hutton Report, the subsequent resignation of the Director General Greg Dyke, and the in-house shift of power. It was as if the brief marriage of media and new art had to be abandoned to address some other mysterious demand. Timidity returned and a certain terror struck. Maybe because the BBC in particular is the bedrock of British culture we have too strong a belief in its infallibility. We should not expect it to behave like a reliable patron of physical manifestations of the arts. It occupies a virtual and dangerous world and the current artists' movement that embraces television and radio broadcasting for its own sake could be said to be more accurately attune with it: CBAT's STAR Radio in Cardiff; London's first art radio station Resonance 104.4 FM; and the most aleatory, CAC TV, a weekly slot on a Lithuanian commercial channel created by Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius. CAC TV's manifesto includes the text "Failure is the

close to the BBC's other iconic building, the circular, fifties Television Centre. We at ArtOffice were appointed to produce an ambitious program of permanent, ephemeral, and outreach work. We also insisted on an audit being made of the BBC's holdings of existing artworks throughout the United Kingdom, for it appeared that in spite of the aforementioned terror, some daring, rather bad, and very respectable art had been bought, hung, and enjoyed by the corporation over the years. It was only when selecting the artists that some of the idiosyncrasies of a media driven organization appeared: Shown a long list of artists to choose from, this curator was told by an otherwise affable senior BBC executive that he had checked the names of the artists (one of whom was to be a Turner prize winner in three years' time) with the art impresario Charles Saatchi and he had not heard of any of them. Such is the strong

underwriter of these programs and cancellation is one of several goals we have before we can call this a success." A credo any arts endeavor should be mindful of. ISABEL VASSEUR is director of ArtOffice, an agency which orchestrates temporary and permanent projects. Online at www.artoffice.co. uk.

F R O M T H E LEFT: Liz Rideal's t e m p o r a r y installation Kertuttte at the B B C Broadcasting House, 2 0 0 4 ; Yuko Shiraishi's coloration for the halls of the B B C Media Village in W h i t e City, 2 0 0 1 ; Rachel Whiteread's M M for Room 101 at the B B C Broadcasting House, 2 0 0 4 ; Yuko Shiraishi's reception desk at the B B C Media Village, 2 0 0 1 ; J a u m e Plensa, Breathing (with detail), B B C Broadcasting House, 2 0 0 5 .

v/s/s// THE PRESENT STATE REVISITED ///////////////^^^^^

The Art of Common Space EILEEN WOODS

The indefinable boundary where local meets global has long been a predicament of our modern times, as technology and travel advance at unaccountable speeds. When thinking of the physical spaces that mark our communities, the same predicament applies, and the role of the arts in our parks and open spaces in urban, suburban, and rural locations, should be considered as a local issue affected by international influences. Parks are places for discovery, play, and imagination, and while the natural world can be our one common experience, regardless of geographical location, how we are conditioned to respond to this experience is not always common. Gunpowder Park, located at the top of Greater London, England, is a new 90-hectare (220-acre) public "country park" for the benefit of people, wildlife, and the arts. It was regenerated from its former use as a Royal Ordnance munitions testing facility by Lee Valley Regional Park Authority, managers of the Lee Valley Park, which runs north from the Thames and will see some of the Olympic Games developments for 2012. After 100 years as a closed site, Gunpowder Park has been transformed into four distinct, dynamic, and accessible landforms, bordered by Greater London's ethnically diverse communities, whose perception and experience of the park and activities within differ significantly. Since its opening in 2004, Gunpowder Park has become a beacon for arts and environmentalism, providing innovative programs that combine arts, science, and nature. These programs attract international artists and organizations who share a commitment to an interdisciplinary working practice^â&#x20AC;&#x201D;one that actively promotes and contributes to the wider understanding and critical debate of contemporary culture in the public realm, and that aims to provide a new, meaningful experience of open places.

Gunpowder Park's program is run by a not-for-profit organization, Landscape+Arts Network Services (LANS), through a long-term relationship with the Lee Valley Regional Park Authority. Gunpowder Park's heritage of experimentation has from the outset informed the creative policy: to explore the meaning and use of open space in our society through research, arts-led collaborations, education, events and publishing; in essence, to create, through the exchange of ideas. Today, creative professionals enjoy unprecedented conceptual and physical freedom to create work in the landscape of the park, supported by the arts producers, environmental specialists, and publicrealm professionals who make up the LANS team. Shaping the future of democratic common space is the motivating creative force behind Gunpowder Park, where in this previously controlled space dedicated to perfecting weapons of destruction, these weapons were then employed to protect democracy and commonality. What goes around comes around. Yet, the open fields and marshlands of Gunpowder Park are far from the only open spaces where LANS' work is having an impact. Working in the arts and environment arenas, LANS develops and manages new opportunities where artists are positioned to inform initiatives that can make a positive and dramatic impact on the quality of life and sustain the future of our communities and our environment. Projects in the U.K. include integrating arts activities into regeneration processes, such as influencing the development of master planning, to produce more creative and democratic results. These new processes are then used to create and embed new policies in local, regional, and national governments. Whether a LANS project develops new commissions in the park, or a creatively led regeneration scheme, the common denominator remains the exchange of ideas and the facilitation of thought processes.

y////////////////////////////^^^^ The Art of Common Space provides the platform for the arts to be a leading catalyst instigating significant debate and discussion surrounding the future of public spaces and developing lasting international relationships that will continue the exchange of ideas and creative interdisciplinary collaborations. A key element of the project is to reduce the perceived and real barriers of language, culture, and socioeconomics that can separate the arts and the public audience. As comTony Beckwith, Eileen Woods, and Robert Wilson in the Field Station at Gunpowder Park. mon space employs the tenets of democracy to encourage a democratic use of public space, so The Art of Common Space ethnic communities and audiences. The process began with aims to employ democratic means to produce a work which a series of creative workshops at the Watermill Center, which is accessible to all. Following this ethos and the commitment shares a similar heritage to that of Gunpowder Park: Watermill to interdisciplinary collaborations, each stage of the project is was a closed testing facility for Western Union that has been developed through workshops and dialogues between a range transformed by Wilson and The Byrd Hoffman Watermill Founof creative practitioners, public realm professionals and the dation. In May 2006, Wilson and I rejoined at Gunpowder Park public. and cocurated a second series of workshops. Seventeen indiHaving started with a transatlantic exchange, The Art of viduals from seven countries came together for the first time to Common Space network and dialogue continues to create a construct a series of concepts for a new workâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;large scale, site space where local ideas are exchanged on a global level, rapspecific, collaborative. The landscape and scale of Gunpowder idly inspiring partners from all disciplines. The project's next Park fused with the indefinable energy of the diverse talents international debate will be hosted by Benjamin Barber as part of the workshop participants to generate ideas and relationof Interdependence Day in Mexico City, where the delegates ships which have continued to evolve under the long standing will discuss the shared responsibility of art, architecture, and ethos of creative exchange. Benjamin Barber, a distinguished design. Observatorium. a creative think tank for open spaces senior fellow at the New York-based public policy research based in Rotterdam, Netherlands, will partner on dialogue organization Demos, participated in the workshop and has bereferring to the innovation of public spaces for public intercome a key member of the LANS team, providing an informed est. In the U.K., renowned artists Mark Wallinger, Chris Drurv. international perspective. In his view, "The challenge of Gunand Michael Pinsky have been invited to create works and powder Park is in fact nothing less than the challenge of the instigate debate to challenge the notion of a common experinew millennium: Can we still constitute ourselves as a public? ence, supported by institutions such as the Southbank Centre, Can we recreate in the anonymity in this particular landscape headed by Jude Kelly who also runs Metal, an arts laboratory, something like a new commons?" and the art and ecology program at the Royal Society for the Gunpowder Park's program of arts, science, and nature Encouragement of Arts. Manufactures, and Commerce. looks at ways to engage and incorporate the voice of people The dialogue between these international contributors who might be positively affected, or adversely afflicted, by begins to expand upon the progressive evolution of public art. public art. In its many manifestations throughout history, pubIn the past, practitioners have aimed to leave the static object lic art has been defined by its physical presence, whether civic behind and have professed to interact with members of the monuments or community workshops. It has always sought to public art audience on issues relating directly to their lives. influence the communal experience of the open spaces. Now, This process of engagement, successful in many ways, still inwhere open spaces reach as far as the commons of the internet fluences engagement practices today, yet it lacks the evidence into a global community, it no longer seems fitting to speak of of sustainability and an international perspective, partially as only the local physical experience, or indeed target just one a reaction to the local perspectives. The Art of Common Space, specific audience, no matter how local they may appear to be. with Gunpowder Park as its experimental base, continues this The work that has evolved from the Wilson-Gunpowder Park historical notion of dialogue, but creates a common space of workshops aims to consider such multicultural communities, communication which reaches beyond a transatlantic locality and is entitled The Art of Common Spaceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a series of arts-led to illuminate the most pertinent concerns of open and natural events, commissions, and debates, both live and virtual, that spaces through the creative exchange of ideas. respond to the question: What is common space in our twenty-first century multicultural society? Through an extensive EILEEN WOODS, originally from New York City, lives and exploration by creative professionals around the world, this works in London. England. She is a senior partner of Harinternational network will challenge the built environments ing Woods Associates, www.haringwoods.com. a director of that increasingly dominate our communities and ask how Landscape+Ai1s Network Services and artistic director for open spaces can continue to provide a common experience. Gunpoivder Park, www.gunpowderpark.org. As cities and countryside continue to merge their boundaries.

In 2005, I initiated a transatlantic exchange of ideas with American artist and theatre director Robert Wilson and his "academy for the twenty-first century"â&#x20AC;&#x201D; The Watermill Center in Long Island, New York. Sharing a commitment to multidisciplinary creative approaches, and understanding that the arts are a mechanism for both social and physical change, Wilson and I, with the LANS team, embarked upon a creative partnership to collaborate with international practitioners and make work for their diverse social and

v/s/s// THE PRESENT STATE REVISITED ///////////////^^^^^ H I *

Artists Crossing Borders LAURA DANIELSON

g sa 58

Coral Lambert is free at last. The British iron sculptor, now founding director of the USUK International Cast Iron Sculpture Symposium (www.usuksymposium.org), has a green card, and that means, she says, "full independence to work in either my home country, the United Kingdom, or my adopted country, the U.S. This opens up many more opportunities in my capacity as an artist working and exhibiting internationally." But it wasn't easy. Over the past twenty years, immigration laws have become notoriously strict in the U.S. Before Lambert could even apply for the green card, with all of its hassles, she had to obtain a temporary work visa for artists—known as the O-l—which was itself a challenge. (She describes the process as "extremely thorough, long, and gruelling.") And although it's a bit easier on the other side of the pond, American artists who want to establish themselves in the United Kingdom have some major hoops to jump through as well. One thing is certain: Foreign artists who plan to live and work in either country, even for short periods, should plan ahead. They should inform themselves about immigration law, carefully consider the applicable visa options, and in many cases, make applications months in advance of their arrivals. The O - l Shuffle Although there is a "visa waiver" program allowing citizens of either country to travel freely between the U.S. and the United Kingdom, it's meant only for short-term visitors who have no intention of working. An artist who wants to work in the U.S. is in a much more complicated situation. First, there's the definition of "working." Merely showing and selling artwork in the U.S. is not considered employment, as long as the art was created abroad. So British artists can come to the U.S. without visas, provided they are only displaying what they previously created. Many public artists, however, fabricate their work on site, and doing that in the U.S. technically requires a visa, particularly when the artist is being compensated for the work. The visa that's required is the O-l, and not just anybody can get one. Unless their work is considered "culturally unique," foreign artists must prove that they are distinguished nationally or internationally. To back up the claim, they have to provide critical reviews, testimonials from experts in their field, and evidence that their work has been shown in important venues. They also must provide a favourable written advisory opinion from a relevant union (or from a recognized expert, if such a union does not exist). The decision-makers at the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services are not, of course, artists themselves or even necessarily familiar with the arts. They're government bureaucrats whose job is to oversee the entry of all foreign workers into the U.S. Their decisions are not based upon subjective notions of merit; they need to see a well documented, proven history of acclaim.

This is not easy, particularly for younger artists. Except for those few artists who are widely recognized and publicly renowned, most find it a daunting and time-consuming task to document their achievements and obtain letters of support. Those who have kept careful records of their careers are ahead of the game here; as one British artist in his twenties recently exclaimed, "I am so lucky my mum saved everything!" An additional issue for many artists is that O-l visas cannot be self-petitioned, meaning that the artist must have a sponsor—either an agent or an employer—who actually makes the request for the visa. (If the petitioner is an agent, then the artist's itinerary must be well mapped out. If the petitioner is an employer, then there must be an agreement for payment.) This is often difficult for artists who are used to functioning independently as self-employed people, and being tied to an agent or employer can greatly diminish artists' flexibility and work opportunities. Artists who plan to remain in the U.S. for any significant amount of time are well advised to draft their immigration applications as broadly as possible to maximize their employment opportunities. For example, an artist who is sponsored by a gallery may want to include the option of teaching or being subcontracted to other venues. The O-l visas are good for an initial maximum period of three years, with one year extensions available after that. Artists who want to live in the U.S. permanently go for the green card. There, they face an even higher bar: They must either prove that they are among the few who have risen to the very top of their field or that there are no U.S. artists available to fill their positions with a U.S. employer. Many are forced to remain on the O-l, making annual renewal applications until their careers reach the necessary level of acclaim. As can be imagined, this process is exceedingly difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. It often takes many years before an artist is qualified and able to make the jump between the 0 - 1 and the green card. B r e a k i n g into B r i t a i n Remember how easy it is for a foreign artist to enter the U.S. without prior permission if he or she intends to display artwork created elsewhere? The Brits don't allow this. An artist who merely intends to show in the United Kingdom still has to obtain work permission. It's part of an immigration system that gives artists more choices than the a foreigner gets in the U.S., but still requires advance knowledge and plenty of planning well prior to setting out for the United Kingdom. You can apply to enter Britain in one of the following immigration categories: as a self-employed artist, a highly skilled migrant, or as a work-permit holder. Self-employed artists must document a standard of recognition similar to that required for the 0 - 1 . They have to show that they are established outside of the United Kingdom and have exhibited original work recognized for its artistic merit. They also have to prove that they

have been supporting themselves and any dependents they may have solely through their work, that they intend to work only in relation to their self-employment as artists, and that they can continue to support themselves financially without going on public assistance. The highly skilled migrant category offers artists greater flexibility in that they may take up any related employment or self-employment, including teaching. The application is based on points from a list of specific categories; successful applicants have to prove that they qualify for at least seventy-five points. lust as in the U.S., younger candidates will probably find it difficult to qualify for either of the above categories. The work permit is a good option for them, if they have an offer of a job with an employer based in the United Kingdom and possess certain qualifications, such as a degree or relevant experience. In some cases, the employer may be required to advertise the position to demonstrate that there are no suitable candidates available in the local labor force. So although there are more immigration options for artists travelling to the United Kingdom, advance immigration permission is still required. Both countries are similar in that regard, and artists ought to consider these hurdles well in advance of travel. What about permanent residence in Britain? Successful applicants in all three United Kingdom immigration categories are granted permissionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;with extensionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to live there for a period of up to five years. After that, they are eligible to apply for permanent residence, which is a much simpler transition than it is for artists in the U.S. As for Coral Lambert, her experiences with the immigration shuffle have inspired her to create an international ex-

Coral L a m b e r t , Shape Shifters and Sphere, 2 0 0 5 - 2 0 0 7 , cast a l u m i n u m , e n a m e l e d cast iron a n d steel. Pictured h e r e at Pier W a l k in Chicago, t h e piece w a s later installed at C o u r t h o u s e S q u a r e in C o l u m b u s , Indiana. B o m in England in 1 9 6 6 , Coral L a m b e r t studied a t Central School of Art in London, C a n t e r b u r y College ot Art, K e n t a n d received h e r M F A in S c u l p t u r e f r o m M a n c h e s t e r M e t r o p o l i t a n University in 1 9 9 0 . Since t h e n L a m b e r t has s h o w n h e r w o r k extensively in England a n d A m e r i c a . M o r e at w w w . c o r a l l a m b e r t . c o m .

change residency for artists between the two countries. The USUK Contemporary Cast Iron Sculpture Residency Program takes place in Britain and the U.S. in alternate years, and provides an opportunity for artists from various countries who do not have visas to get together, make work, and engage in dialogue. Lambert is committed to this exchange and believes that "it is especially important in an ever smaller global community for artists to be able to freely explore and therefore expand the dialogue of the visual richness of the world." LAURA DANIELSON. an attorney, chairs of the immigration department at Fredrikson & Byron in Minneapolis. Minnesota. She is a frequent speaker at national conferences, particularly on the topic of arts- and entertainment-related immigration, and has taught immigration law at the University of Minnesota Law School. She is co-author of Immigration Law and Procedure in a Nutshell (West Group Publishing, 2005] and is a founding member of the Academy of Business Immigration Lawyers. Special acknowledgement to Laura Devine and Natasha Chell, of Laura Devine Solicitors in London for their assistance w i t h this article.

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C o m p l e t e d projects, current events, milestones opportunities, publication r e q u e s t s a n d m o r e i n f o r m a t i o n at w w w . p h o e n i x . g o v / A R T S .

F E A T U R E D STATE Ohioans

like to joke that their state is "round

a sculptural complex

object.

place where Midwest

Most dwellers

in America's

meets East, North

coastal

rural, but one of its hallmarks people

each, including

Orchestra,

cultural

projects

the geographical

who tend to confuse

middle

the city. Cincinnati,

past—which

sits Columbus,

town with a lively art scene centered arts council

is also a notable

percent-for-art

program

Cincinnati

huge Pyramid Maya

capitals,

one of the most culturally

throughout

three decades

and Dayton,

Hill Sculpture

urban decline communities.

abound,

Cleveland

with bold public

art projects.

nonprofit

city with a And right

a sprawling

college Dublin's

metro areas like Toledo, the first city in Ohio to adopt

boasts the Fitton Center for Creative

sculpture

park, add richness to the mix.

Arts, a major innovator

twenty-one

thousand)

in arts education,

has bragging

Hamilton, and

the

rights as the birthplace

earthworks.

more than its share of economic and public art has played

The works of art surveyed

to the

Public Art, a lively independent Line, is a conservative

largely

100,000

and OSU's Wexner Center for the Arts; nearby

ills; its northern

in the 1970s and 1980s, and its small communities

But stories of recovery

think of Ohio as

and home of Ohio State University,

ago and home to a world-class (population

state, a

Belt.

cities in the country—home

down by the Mason-Dixon

of public work. Midsize

Lin and is home to one of her major

Ohio has, of course, suffered

important

hasn't kept it from experimenting

Park, while Athens

in this venerable

it with Iowa, probably

Center, and Cleveland

seat of government

very name is something

and private,

The state has seven cities with more than

in its Short North district

promoter

both public

meets South, and Rust Belt meets Corn

is its rich and diverse urbanism:

Cleveland,

sense of its German

between

of art and culture,

the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Sculpture

that generates vibrant

on the ends and high in the middle"—Ohio's

And why not? There's a wealth

tier of Rust Belt cities became

have struggled

a significant

here are just a hint of the public

along

role in restoring art patrimony

with the rest of rural vitality

to any number

of the Buckeye

rS^Qgrnv I v:-*

State.

icons of America. of

Ohio

FEATURED STATE

Julian Stanczak, Additive

5 and Additive

6, 2007, Cincinnati

Fifth Third Bank's block-long, admittedly boring garage fagade in downtown Cincinnati leapt into life last summer with Julian Stanczak's Additive 5 and Additive 6. The title makes quick reference to the arithmetic underlying the banking business and to the function of the piece, which is simply to add visual interest where there was none. Stanczak, an intellectual force in painting's op art movement, moves to three dimensions without missing a beat. Three hundred and twenty-two hollow aluminum bars, each 48-feet tall, are set vertically against the north-facing wall, 287 of them painted in unique combinations of seven different colors and the remaining thirty-five identically patterned. Two hundred 36-foot, 8-inch diagonal bars, each in one of six different colors, slant across the verticals, interrupted only by a 22-foot square cast glass panel set above the walkway to the public square beyond. The work is designed with the pedestrian viewer in mind. To someone walking along, it provides "constant changes and surprises," says the artist. Indeed—another title for this kaleidoscopic work might be Surprise on Sixth Street. -J.D. [Note: Directly across the street, Stanczak's works are on view at the Contemporary Art Center through February 11, 2008.]

INTERVIEW

with her recently

Irene Finck has been coordinator of the Ohio Arts Council's Percent for Art program about the challenges and satisfactions of fostering public art in Ohio.

PAR: From where you sit, what's special about Ohio? I r e n e F i n c k : It's unusual for a state to have three large cities— Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati—and then three more large second-tier cities—Dayton, Akron, and Toledo—and each one with a unique flavor. That diversity can impact how we think about art in this state. Ohio's Percent for Art legislation provides more than four million dollars for art in and around public buildings, and as it turns out, most of those buildings are on college campuses. So we're always dealing with a mix of city culture and campus culture. Cincinnati is very conservative, but the University of Cincinnati has been open to taking what some might perceive as risks with their public art. Dennis Oppenheim's Crystal Garden is a very challenging work UC purchased, but there was absolutely no concern about how it would be received. They just had the confidence to move forward with a big-name artist without worrying about what people would say.

since

1994. PAR

talked

But being located in a big city doesn't guarantee that a campus will find it easy to accept challenging work. Cleveland State University is a little younger than Ohio State or the University of Cincinnati, and they were more tentative through the process. It was harder for them to let go of control, because they whole thing was new to them. And that seems to be the rule: if, like Ohio State, the University of Cincinnati, or Ohio University in Athens, a school has gone through the public-art process a few times and are on their eighth or ninth piece, they're ready to let go of control; they've seen how it's worked before. PAR: What about smaller towns and smaller campuses? F i n c k : The smaller towns and community colleges are very concerned about the community and their opinion. They want an Ohio artist, and they worry about content, of course. I always tell them that an artist who works in the public realm

1 | f I

FEATURED STATE Emerson Burkhart, Music, 1934, Columbus For sixty-six years, Emerson Burkhart's WPA-funded mural Music lived under whitewash. Painted in the auditorium of Columbus' Central High School, it was covered over four years later on the orders of the principal of the school, because, according to him, "it was too sexy and had too much oomph." As Burkhart became more and more widely recognized as one of the region's most significant twentieth-century painters, the outcry over the loss of the mural grew. In 1996, experts from McKay Lodge Conservation Laboratory in Oberlin determined that the piece was restorable, but to make it affordable, more than a thousand Columbus high school students volunteered their time (supervised by the conservationists) over a six-year period, completing approximately $ 1 8 5 , 0 0 0 worth of the restoration. The mural currently hangs in the city's convention center, its figures free to display all the " o o m p h " they like. -T.Z.T.

Claes Oldenburg, Free Stamp, 1991, Cleveland Beloved, hated, and widely debated, the Free Stamp sculpture created by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen in the 1980s still retains an air of controversy. Commissioned by Standard Oil Company, the work was meant to adorn the firm's new downtown skyscraper. The artists designed a 48-foot-high rubber stamp to be mounted face-down on a monumental pad of granite. The letters of the word free were to be visible for those who could interpret the shape of their outside contours. When BP America took over Standard Oil in the mid-80s, the company rejected the sculpture, perhaps sensing the satire implied by a giant rubber stamp at its front door. The company offered the sculpture to the city, and in 1991. Mayor Michael White decided to place it in Willard Park, next to the city's neoclassical City Hall. In an unusual twist, the artists sliced the stamp on a diagonal and installed it with the word free fully visible, as if it had been tossed aside by a giant from the top of the BP building and partially buried in the earth. - S . L .

is sensitive to these issues. The only bad moments we've had have been when somebody perceived a body part that just wasn't there! It's important to understand that these small campuses may only get one new building in twenty years. So they really want a work of art associated with it to be a community piece more than just a campus piece. On the big campuses they can look more toward putting a collection together, because they all have sculpture and art they've obtained in other ways. A smaller school says, "This is our chance; let's make sure we make everyone happy." PAR: As Percent for Art coordinator, you are a nonvoting member on the campus committees that select and purchase public art. What's your biggest challenge? F i n c k : I guess it's dealing with the desire of committee members to redesign the art. I have to let them know that there's a

fine line between making suggestions to an artist in response to their proposal and expecting the artist to execute what you want. Back when the process was pretty new for everybody, people tended to want the artwork to be everything. Gateway, signage, symbolâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;sometimes the list of criteria was just impossible. As I got more experienced I found myself more and more able to say, "Hey, this can't be everything to everybody." PAR: And your greatest satisfaction? F i n c k : I don't always have the opportunity to be at the site to hear comments from viewers, so my satisfaction comes from the committee process. Sometimes people are appointed who don't really want to be there, and the magic for me is when they start to buy into it, to see what art can bring to their campus. You can almost see it physically shiftingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;they might be frowning at the first meeting and then a little bit later they smile and hint that this is kind of fun.

FEATURED STATE

Fabian Marcaccio, Circulation,

2006, Dayton

Paid for by Ohio's Percent for Art Program, Fabian Marcaccio's Circulation is an unusual semiabstract mural measuring three feet high by 275-feet long that winds its way inside and outside Simmons Hall, the student center at the University of Akron. The artist, born in Argentina and based in New York, collaborated on the project with Cleveland architect Christopher Diehl, who designed the building. The work is one of Marcaccio's "paintants," a word he coined to express the hybrid nature of these works. Fashioned with silicon gel combined with oil paint and laid on in a heavy impasto. Circulation incorporates digital images and photographs and embeds realistic objectfragments in wavy undulations of sculpted goo. Embedded into the virtuoso passages of brushwork are tire tracks, a PacMan, maps, and other images. The work didn't get an entirely warm reception after it was finished early in 2006. When university officials complained that they found sexual imagery in it, Marcaccio reluctantly agreed to rework a section. "I've created a painting that's almost one million inches long [sic], and people find two inches that are upsetting," he told the Akron Beacon Journal. "That's too petty. It's not a work done to upset people." - S . L .

Georgia and David K. Welles Sculpture Garden, Toledo In 2001, the Toledo Museum of Art dedicated a new outdoor sculpture garden that wraps around the front of its neoclassical main building, which was designed by architect Edward B. Green of Buffalo in the first decade of the twentieth century. The garden, facing Monroe Street, includes twenty-two works by important modern and contemporary artists, including Tony Smith, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Jim Dine, Ellsworth Kelly, George Rickey, Scott Burton, and Deborah Butterfield. The ensemble easily ranks as one of the most important displays of its kind in Ohio, if not the entire Midwest. Among the major works on view is Alexander Calder's Stegosaurus (1973, pictured below) and Mark di Suvero's Blubber, a monumental work in steel I-beams, acquired by the museum in 1984. Also noteworthy is a David Smith painted steel sculpture consisting of two flat discs with shapes cut out of their centers. The work was featured on the cover of a history-making exhibition of contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1971, curated by Henry Geldzahler. - S . L .

Marshall Fredericks, The Fountain

of Eternal Life, 1964

The Fountain of Eternal Life in downtown Cleveland is one of the city's most important works of monumental figurative sculpture. Michigan artist Marshall Fredericks, fresh from military service in the Pacific, received the commission in 1945 to create a monument to commemorate Cleveland-area service personnel killed in World War II. At its center is a forty-foothigh bronze figure of a young man reaching heavenward from spiraling flames. He rises from a hollow globe with images depicting ancient hatreds that ignite war. Around the base of the fountain are four enormous sculptures in dark, polished granite. The monument is the centerpiece of the southernmost third of the Cleveland Mall, a 900-foot-long outdoor space designed in 1903 by Chicago architect Daniel Burnham as the heart of the city's government center. - S . L .

FEATURED STATE

Philip Johnson, Turning Point, 1996-2000, Cleveland Few architecture buffs realize that the celebrated American architect, Philip Johnson, also viewed himself as a sculptor. Late in his career, between 1997 and 2001, he completed one of his largest outdoor sculptural ensembles in the U.S. on Case Western Reserve University's campus in Cleveland. First came the Turning Point sculptures, a series of five 20-foot-high abstract forms, which huddle around a bend in a major pedestrian pathway on campus. Made of steam-bent Douglas fir covered with fiberglass, the sculptures form an airy grotto of jagged geological forms. The university then invited Johnson back for an encore. A second group of four sculptures, scattered on a campus green next to Turning Point, are semi-functional objects that exist somewhere between architecture and sculpture. They include a jagged enclosure made of folded surfaces of chain link mesh, a 50-seat outdoor amphitheater wrapped by a spiral wall, and a slender tower, shaped like an ice cream cone, which contains lights and utilities for the amphitheater. - S . L .

Maya Lin, Input, 2004, Athens Long before she became the prodigious and controversial creator of monuments like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C.. Maya Lin, the daughter of two professors at Ohio University, was listening to the sounds of the seventeenyear cicadas and eating at the Tastee Freeze in Athens, Ohio. In 2004, Lin and her brother Tan collaborated on the massive earthwork Input at the school's Bicentennial Park. A series of large rectangular depressions and raised areas, it's designed to look like a computer punch card from the air. A play on the concept of memory in more ways than one, the work was inspired by the punch cards Lin used in an OU computer programming class she took while she was still in high school. Carved into nearby concrete walls are words written by her brother, including references to local eateries and bars, campus buildings, and elements of the landscape. There are also lines of prose connected by a " m a p " that you have to draw with your eyes. Finding and following the narrative requires a willingness to walk, explore, and pick up cues, some of which are more obvious than others. "Sometimes I feel that this is not a map," one section reads, pointing to another section several feet away. "But a way of connecting one thing to a feeling 1 am not having at the moment." -T.Z.T.

FEATURED STATE

James Daugherty, Playhouse Square Murals (one of four panels), 1921-1923, Cleveland Preservationists, theater buffs, and civic activists in Cleveland fought hard in the early 1970s to save a cluster of 1920s movie palaces and vaudeville houses from demolition by a developer who wanted to clear them for a parking lot. Now functioning as one of the largest performing arts complexes in the nation, the restored theaters of Playhouse Square are full of paintings and decorative art, including four fifty-foot murals by the American painter James Daugherty, which adorn the lobby of the State Theater. Conceived as a homage to four major continents, the paintings salute the Spirit of Fantasy in Asia, the Spirit of Pageantry in Africa, the Spirit of Drama in Europe, and the Spirit of Cinema in North America. Painted in a style that blends equal measures of fauvism and art deco, the paintings are a frothy romp through history, populated with pharaohs, samurai warriors, top-hatted millionaires, and sexy flappers. The imagery is wildly politically incorrect by contemporary standards, with men occupying positions of power and women reduced to decorative and submissive roles. But the artist's desire to give pleasure and to have fun is absolutely clear. -S.L.

David Black, Flyover, 1996, Dayton The first task of Dayton's arts commission, formed in the early 1990s, was to commission a gateway piece for the south side of the city's downtown. An international search for a proposal that would honor the city's most famous sons, Orville and Wilbur Wright, yielded Flyover, by prolific public artist David Black. The massive work sails up an embankment that divides Main Street traffic. Despite the fact that the long process of selection and design of the piece was open to public scrutiny, there was some post-installation backlash from people who preferred a more literal homage. But the abstract stainless steel piece does have its literal details. Its large supporting arches measure 120 feet—the approximate length of the Wright's first flight—and the arc is punctuated with a series of crossbars that evoke the wings of a biplane ascending, then coming quickly back to earth. -T.Z.T.

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Two Wings Flyer, 2005, Columbus There's profound weight in Magdalena Abakanowicz's work. Having grown up outside of Warsaw during the German occupation of Poland, she has never shied away from questions about life and death. Her compositions in ink, fiber, metal, wood— often depicting somber crowds of headless human torsos— probe the meaning of human aggression, communication, birth, death, and regeneration. Since all of these issues make their mark on the human psyche, the placement, just this year, of her 2005 piece Two Wings Flyer in the courtyard of Ohio State University's brand-new psychology building seems appropriate. The sculpture's stainless steel pieces are welded into a crazy-quilt pattern with non-linear, fabric-like seams. There are myriad ways to look at the piece, but as a metaphor for growth, change, or difficulty, it seems like the right sort of artwork to be seen from inside the glass walls of a building where thousands of future therapists study. -T.Z.T. JANE DURRELL is a Cincinnati-based writer on the visual arts and on travel for a variety of publications.

STEVEN LITT is the art and architecture critic for The Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio.

TRACY ZOLLINGER TURNER is a freelance writer and editor based in Columbus, Ohio.

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FROM THE HOME FRONT

notes from

FORECAST

Public

Artworks

ABOVE: Randy Walker, Return Journey, Minneapolis. Photo by Norbert Markiin. BELOW: Denise Tennen, Worn Fence, St. Louis Park. Photo by Ken Fox.

ABOVE: Minnesota Center for Book Arts staff and volunteers, World's Longest Booh, Minneapolis. Photo by Monica Saralampi.

All projects took place in Minnesota in 2007.

RIGHT: Les Blank atop his Camera Van at the ArtCar Parade in Minneapolis. Photo by Jack Becker.

Without a doubt, it was a rough summer for folks in Minnesota. First it was the Interstate 35W bridge collapsing into the Mississippi River, and then floods devastating the southeastern part of the state. Yet spirits were lifted occasionally thanks to the efforts of artists and organizations working in the region. The clouds parted for In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre's annual MayDay Parade in South Minneapolis, which featured oversized, socially minded, and utterly creative puppets and floats. Intermedia Arts sponsored its annual B-Girl Be hip-hop symposium, at which another wondrous set of spray-painted murals enlivened the organization's building, followed a month later by Intermedia's wild and whimsical annual ArtCar Parade. On July 28, three days before the bridge collapse, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts sponsored the World's Longest Book as a finale to the organization's 2007 book arts symposium. Using more than 3,500 feet of paper—folded and glued by staff and volunteers—the book was laid upon the walkway of the historic Stone Arch Bridge (just upriver from the I-35W bridge). Its purpose was to show how art serves as a bridge and how the book arts bridge the literary with the visual arts. Nearby, two temporary installations were installed as part of FORECAST'S Spontaneous Storefronts series. Norbert

Marklin's photomontage of schoolchildren's faces filled the second-floor windows of the Stimson Building, illustrating the increasingly diverse demographics in our public schools. Edwin Beylerian's graphic installation in the ground-floor window of a downtown parking garage grew out of collaboration with homeless teens in the Kulture Klub Collaborative, headed by artist Michael Hoyt. The themes explored are inner and outer beauty, patterns in nature, in the city, and in oneself. Two sculptural projects were completed in South Minneapolis neighborhoods, including Heather Doyle's second incarnation of her FORECAST-sponsored SPEAK Project, which engages young people in the surrounding community as participants in a text-based series of small metal sculptures. And in the Longfellow neighborhood, Randy Walker's Return Journey was dedicated on October 6 in Brackett Park. Made from a 1960s-era playground structure in the shape of a rocket that had been removed from the park—against the will of several neighbors—the rocket was returned to the community as an iconic landmark. Organized by FORECAST, with help from the Brackett Rocket Boosters, Return Journey was given as a gift to the city, and joins an impressive public art collection. The newest mural in the Twin Cities is a transportationthemed tableaux on University Avenue in St. Paul. Artist Scott

FROM THE HOME FRONT

TOP: Scott Murphy, Transportation Mural, St. Paul. ABOVE: Edwin Beylerian's storefront installation, Minneapolis.

Photos by Jack Becker.

Jonathan Gomez Whitney's chandelier installation at ARThouse in N e w London. Photo courtesy ARThouse.

Murphy was one of nine artists selected for FORECAST'S annual grant program for emerging artists. His new mural was designed to contribute aesthetic enhancements to the major corridor connecting the Twin Cities, and comment on the coming light rail line scheduled for construction in 2010. In St. Louis Park, an inner-ring suburb with a growing appetite for public art, artist Denise Tennen created a woven fabric mural on a chain link fence surrounding a new development under construction. Recruiting dozens of volunteers, Tennen transformed an otherwise unsightly, yet all-too-familiar scene into a colorful reference to the city's pastoral past. Outside the Twin Cities, two noteworthy projects were completed. In July, Lisa Bergh and Andrew Nordin transformed their residence into ARThouse, an exhibition venue for contemporary art in New London. For their inaugural event, Jonathan Gomez Whitney installed a lit chandelier suspended by helium bags above the two-story home and exhibited other works in the couple's vacated living room-turned-gallery. The artist intended to "illuminate the contrast between a public art space and domestic life, creating an experience that invited viewers to contemplate the space as something in between." And in September, sculptor Christopher Tully completed a sculptural relief for the New Ulm Medical Center, responding

to the center's goal of creating healthy communities. His painted fiberglass figures wrap around an entry column and blend in with its stone surface, giving the retrofitted artwork the appearance of a well-integrated wall relief. Some of the responses included surprise: "Why hadn't I noticed that before?" The latest bit of news from Minneapolis is the controversy that has erupted over a statue of Emiliano Zapata. When a Mexican governor donated a six-foot bronze figure of the revolutionary hero for display in a neighborhood park, the local Mexican-American leaders didn't realize that it's a lot more complicated to erect a statue in a park in Minneapolis than it is back home. The process of giving a gift to the city is complex, including public meetings with the work of art present. To complicate matters, some residents, upon learning of the gift, complained that a figure with a rifle had no business standing in a city park where neighbors are wrestling with crime. "We've had Latino gang wars in the park this summer, and a statue with a rifle at its side doesn't seem right," said Leigh Combs, who lives near the park. "How do you explain to the kids, 'This person is a hero. And yes, he has a gun and bullets.'" Mexican immigrants, mostly from Morelosâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Zapata's home stateâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;still hope to place the statue in a public setting where it could be the centerpiece for community events.

CONFERENCE REPORT

KARIN W O

Native/Invasive: Perspectives on Art and Nature, Culture and Curating Madison, Wisconin • April 20 - 21, 2007

Humans are both deeply attracted to and dependent on the percent of the gross state product and eighteen percent of the forest. Hundreds of years of history have been spent ordering, state's jobs are forest-related. Peter Fischer, the forester who, classifying, harvesting, and bulldozing it. Yet despite human- along with Ritschel, started the project in Hessen, Germany, kind's efforts to inhabit civilized "anti-forests"—cities, towns, that is the prototype of Forest Art Wisconsin, discussed the and suburbs—we have not eliminated our connection to the philosophical foundations—and frequent misinterpretations— forest. Time has merely buried the seed of our primordial affin- of Nachhaltigkeit (sustainability), a term coined by German ity under layers upon layers of culture. Forest Art Wisconsin mining administrator and forester Hans Carl von Carlowitz (FAW) 2007, a series of art and ecological events organized and in 1713. Fischer, who annually leads some 12,000 visitors on curated by cultural anthropologist Ute Ritschel, invited us to tours through the forest in Hessen, stressed that bringing art cultivate that seed. into the forest brings community attention, care, and ultimately From June through September, FAW explored the ideas of involvement, which is a critical component of sustainability. "nativeness" and "invasiveness" from ecological, social, and Environmental artists Kim Gorden and Vera Ming Wong, artistic perspectives. Ritschel, a nontraditional curator from both past participants in the Wisconsin-Minnesota Project Art Darmstadt, Germany, is known for placing artwork in unconfor Nature, questioned the notion that the forest exists for our ventional settings. As part of FAW, she curated an open-air, pleasure and suggested that the ideal forest might be one that in-the-forest exhibition in the Northern Highland-American is protected from further human disruption. Legion State Forest near Minocqua, Wisconsin. To contextualArtists taking part in the exhibition, including Laurie Beth ize the exhibition, Ritschel, with help from project assistant Clark and Aris Georgiades, shared examples of their work and Megan Lotts, invited a diverse group of international artists, stories from past forest art exhibitions in Germany. Curators scholars, and curators to attend "Native/Invasive: Perspectives Amy Lipton (Abington Art Center, Jenkintown, Pennsylvania), on Art and Nature, Culture and Curating," a conference held at Truman Lowe (National Museum of the American Indian, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's arboretum in April. Washington D.C.), and Ernest Daetwyler (Contemporary Art In the heart of the two-square-mile arboretum, panelists Forum Kitchener and Area, Kitchener, Ontario), as well as from disparate backgrounds and perspectives addressed public art consultant Emily Blumenfeld, offered stunning exthe heavy impact of humans on delicate forest ecosystems amples of their curatorial work and research, including images and demonstrated the power of public art to increase public of artwork from Mary Miss, Betsy Damon, Alan Hauser, Cliff awareness. Nancy Langston, Carton, Beverly Pepper, Roy a professor of forest and Staab, and other artists who Forest Art Wisconsin www.forestartwisconsin.c wildlife ecology at U W address the human presence Madison's Nelson Institute within the natural landscape. for Environmental Studies, During the course of two was one of many experts days, more than twenty prewho attempted to briefly senters spoke to the future summarize their disciplines of forests, sustainability, art, so that the audience, mostly and design while displaycomposed of arts professioning a head-spinning array of als, university faculty, and visual images. The magnitude students, could reacquaint of this challenging subject themselves with the mysbecame clear: Regardless of tery of the forest. Langston our individual perspectives, described how Western civilthe future of the forests, and ization's relationship to the therefore the future of huforest has morphed from revmanity, depends on engaging erence to fear and from particthe public in this important ipation to domination. "The The Forest Art Wisconsin exhibition features a series conversation. forest," Langston said, "holds of temporary installations by twenty-eight international ties to our deepest values." artists curated by Ute Ritschel. Each project attempts to visually represent some part of the forest's ecological, Professional forest manKARIN WOLF is the arts social, or historical nativeness and invasiveness. The agers, including Paul DeLong, program administrator for natural environment serves as a laboratory for the artists, the Wisconsin Department the City of Madison Arts who had the opportunity to work with naturalists, forestof Natural Resources' chief Commission. She is involved ers, and biologists on their site-specific projects. state forester, and Raymond with many community orgGuries, from UW-Madison's German artist Jens Meyer's Tornado (above) invades a anizations, supporting the Department of Forest Ecology clearing in the forest, forming an orbiting spiral of white arts and arts education by and Management, emphacloth. The piece offers visitors a calm place inside the establishing film festivals, sized the importance of the rapid movement—the eye of the tornado—for, as Meyer visual arts exhibitions, and forest to Wisconsin's econdescribes it, "contemplation, for stopping and staying, for temporary and permanent omy, explaining that twelve being out of the rush and rotation of everyday-life," public art projects.

UNA TURNER

CONFERENCE REPORT

La Sculpture et I'Espace Urbain Paris, France • March 14, 2007

La Sculpture et I'Espace Urbain (Sculpture and Urban Space) was the title of a conference held in March at the musee du Louvre in Paris, with the support of the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas. An international roster of speakers, including curators, planners, architects, and artists, examined current trends in the siting and landscaping of public sculpture, presenting examples from Europe and the U.S. Genevieve Bresc from the Louvre spoke of the rhythm and symmetry in the layout of sculptures in the Jardin des Tuileries and its strong and deliberate sense of historical continuity. Contemporary sculptures, lacking traditional symbolic or schematic functions, have most often been placed in the gardens of museums as embarrassed appendages, she said. Both approaches provide public art for the public but not by or with the public, who remain passive "clients" of the works and the institutions that present them. But, Bresc noted, the growing European trend toward commissioning art as part of urban renewal has created a greater variety of sculptural genres and increased the potential for sculpture to be an integral component of the urban landscape. Public sculpture commissions within these schemes tend to emphasize collaboration among artists, developers, planners, politicians, and local populations. Conference participants reported on a number of such ongoing projects, of which two are particularly notable. The Spina Centrale (Central Spine) project in Turin, Italy, is a ten-year urban redevelopment project begun in 2000 that focuses on derelict railway land that bisects Turin north to

south. A new boulevard will replace the old railway line and include green spaces and commissioned public artworks such as Work for Turin by Per Kirkeby and Tree Garden by Giuseppe Perone. Mario Merz's Igloo has been adopted as the symbol of the regeneration of the city. In 1995, a scheme to restructure thirty-eight square miles of severely polluted wasteland in the Goitzsche mining region in eastern Germany was inaugurated. The ongoing project includes 1,500 acres of wood and thirty-four miles of trails but also emphasizes the industrial character of the region. Public sculpture commissions are used to involve the local population with the reidentification of the area. Residents expressed strong resistance to the project at first, but after a number of

public meetings, a dialogue was established and support was gained for the art program. Pegelturm und Seebriicke (Water Gauge Tower and Pier), by Wolfgang Christ and Klaus Bollinger, stands in an expanding lake formed by the gradual flooding of a mine, which began in 1999. It is both a symbol of the changing landscape and a local landmark, with an eighty-five-foot tower whose spiral form is based on the shape of mining drills. Another landmark, Claus Bury's colossal arch form Bitterfelder Bogen (Bitterfeld Arch), 92 feet high, 266 feet long, and made from 500 tons of steel, is derived from the form of the giant excavating machines used in mining. French artists Marc Babarit and Gilles Bruni created Eight Hills and Forty-Nine Cones as a memorial to the region's industrial history. It's an artificial hill of gravel, sand, dirt, and rusting metal objects that were found in the area and contributed by local residents. A contrasting memorial, Fluthelferdenkmal—Die lange Bank (Flood-Rescuers Memorial—the Long Bank), by Fitz Heinrich Stadion, is a 216-foot-long bench with plaques celebrating the 1,500 people who built a temporary sand wall on the bank of the river Riickenlehne in 2002 and thereby prevented a disastrous flood. As early as 1929. industrial architects Martin Kremmer and Fritz Schupp wrote, "We must recognize the fact that with its colossal structures, industry is no longer a disturbing feature in our urban or country landscape, but a symbol of work, a monument of the city, which all its inhabitants will want to show to visitors with just as much pride as they would its

LEFT: Mario Merz, Igloo, 2000, Turin, Italy. Details on Turin's redevelopment project are at www.torino-intemazionale.org. RIGHT: Claus Bury, BilteMer

Bogen (Bitterfeld Arch), 2 0 0 6 , Bitterfeld, Germany.

public buildings." The development of European industrial parks, rich in public sculpture, into bona fide tourist attractions as well as symbols of local identity prove Kremmer and Schupp to have been prophetic. GEORGINA TURNER is a freelance

writer based

Paris.

CONFERENCE REPORT

JON SPAYDE

Colorado Art Ranch: Salida Artposium Salida, C o l o r a d o â&#x20AC;˘ M a y 26 - 27, 2 0 0 6

ÂŁ | 1 6 s 2 7 8 76

Although Salida, Colorado, sits near some of the most maTaking part in both the residency and the Artposium were jestic mountains in North America, it's better known locally for Alonzo Davis, a public artist from the Baltimore region, and the river that runs through it, the Arkansas, which is crowded earth artist Gloria Lamson, from Port Townsend, Washington. with kayakers and canoeists on spring and summer weekends. During the residency, Davis installed two sculptures on priThe swift stream has a public art pedigree: It was chosen by vate land in Salida and made initial plans for a large public Christo and Jeanne-Claude for Over the River, a work that, if work that will fashion kayaks into a floral pattern. Lamson creall goes well, will feature a series of translucent fabric panels ated a number of ephemeral outdoor works, including a circle suspended high above the river for nearly six miles, reflecting that seems to float on an intricate and nearly invisible web of its shimmering surface while string. They joined another allowing a view of sky and residency participant, New clouds. York-based book artist MaryThe artists reported on Ellen Campbell, in presentthe progress of Over the River ing overviews of their careers at the Salida Artposium, a to the Artposium audience. gathering of some eighty-five Salida was the first in an artists, writers, and interested ambitious series of themed others from around the U.S. get-togethers to be held in held in Salida's SteamPlant rural Colorado towns twice Theater and Event Center each year. This September, on the bank of the Arkansas. Durango hosted "Mapping Christo and Jeanne-Claude the Arts," an exploration of showed the audience a copy mapping as metaphor and of the 2,029-page design and tool for creative work that planning report that they had featured two public artworks, recently submitted to the fedTex Jernigan's steel sculpture First Street in Salida, Colorado, looking toward the Presidential Mountain Range. eral Bureau of Land ManageOne: Across America and ment office in nearby Canon Shan Wells' Moments Project, City, covering engineering a series of signs commemoand environmental issues, the work's projected effect on transrating vanished buildings and altered landscapes in Durango. portation and tourism, and many other topics. The artists also Steamboat Springs and Estes Park are the 2008 sites. reviewed their joint career and recalled their early years toGiven that the "nomadic" residencies and Artposiums gether in Paris. focus on the relationship of art and locality, the inclusion of Under the heading "A River Runs Through Us," the Salida public art was a natural, though unplanned, element. "We Artposium explored the interrelationship of rivers, creativity, didn't specifically intend to highlight public art," said Art and rural life through lectures, demonstrations, workshops, Ranch executive director Grant Pound. "It just happened, and and walking tours led by local and visiting artists and writ- we are happy it did." ers, including photographer David Goldes and novelist Kent Haruf, a Salida resident. The gathering was a project of Colo- JON SPAYDE, senior editor at Public Art Review, writes on art, rado Art Ranch, an Arvada, Colorado-based nonprofit that also religion, and culture. His book How to Believe: Teachers and ran a one-month residency for artists and writers in Salida just Seekers Show the Way to a Modern, Life-Changing Faith, will prior to the Artposium. be published in February by Random House.

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CONFERENCE REPORT

Americans for the Arts Annual Convention Las Vegas, N e v a d a • June 1 - 3, 2 0 0 7

What happened in Las Vegas at the Americans for the Arts (AFTA) annual convention won't stay in Vegas. More than a thousand attendees met at the Flamingo Hotel-Casino, gambling that the conference, "Risk and Reward: Balancing Acts in Arts and Community," would pay off at home. AFTA, together with this year's hosts, the Las Vegas Office of Cultural Affairs, spared no effort to ensure a flawless conference. Among the welcome amenities: reversible name tags legible from across the room, preassembled handbooks of various presenters' materials, generous flasks of water at check-in, and a cozy central meeting area where participants were well-fed and had plenty of room to talk, check out vendors, peruse the bookstore, and access the internet. This year, AFTA organizers gambled by eliminating preconferences. Instead, they integrated the Advocacy, Education, Economic Development, Leadership, Private Sector, and Public Art sectors into a three-day conference with separate tracks. The new format hit the efficiency jackpot, enabling participants to move easily between interest areas in a way that was previously impossible. Other buzz at this year's conference included the release of the new Arts and Economic Prosperity III study, which centers on the reverberating impact that arts and cultural organizations have on the economy. Liesel Fenner, AFTA's manager of public art, organized a number of useful sessions, including one on the upcoming collaboration between the Public Art Network and Western States Arts Federation's CaFE program, an online, searchable database of public art projects. Year in Review, which consistently presents the best public art from the previous year, wowed the audience with refreshingly avant-garde work selected by Miwon Kwon and Larry Kirkland. In honor of his innovative contributions and tireless commitment to the field, the 2007 Public Art Network (PAN) Award went to Jack Becker and his organization FORECAST Public Artworks in Saint Paul. Minnesota. "Jack Becker helped define the field of contemporary public art," said Robert Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts. Dave Hickey, MacArthur "genius" award winner, author, and former executive editor of Art in America, bedazzled the audience with glittery "badges of failure" that he proudly donned as evidence of his ability to take risks. He also heckled administrators who wish to "inspire, but not offend" and offered curmudgeonly maxims like "public art cannot exist in America, because this is a country that values consensus," and "art is a drug like cocaine; it makes you want more." Rha Goddess, performing artist and social-political activist, urged her audience to be authentic and to put what they find sacred at the center of their work because, as she put it, "if your life isn't poppin' your leadership isn't happenin'." Sir Ken Robinson, author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to Be Creative, called for a rebalancing of education to cultivate divergent thinking. Today's economy, he argued, demands that we quit stamping out innovative thinking in students in order to produce industrial workers and get serious about teaching kids creativity to help them become innovators. The art at this year's conference was over the top—literally. Marina Zurkow, Katie Salen, and Jenny Holzer were commissioned to create public art that was projected onto downtown's

f l

Dave Hickey and Sir Ken Robinson presented at this year's AFTA convention.

Fremont Street canopy. In attendance during the opening-night event were many of the bright young professionals whom AFTA has been concertedly courting through its emerging leaders program, run by Rebecca Borden, manager of professional development. Heather Berlowitz, a Boston University graduate student in arts administration who is currently employed at Arts &• Antiques magazine, told me that she considered the Holzer experience one of the highlights of the conference. Scheduled social events offered a variety of Las Vegas adventures, many held at a distance from the surreality of the strip. Tours ranged from visits to the Neon Boneyard and the Liberace Museum to an intimate tour of the stunningly designed home of Rita Deanin Abbey, a professor emerita of art at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who lives on the desert outskirts of the city. Abbey's large, powerful steel sculptures were displayed throughout the grounds of her home, which the family refers to as Gan Or, Hebrew for "Garden of Light." Her immense studio, across from the house, contained many more impressive works from her prodigious career. After attendees returned from the tours, Robert Lynch and John Abodeely, AFTA's arts education manager, worked the crowd at the After Words Lounge, encouraging networking into the wee hours. Choosing Vegas as the setting for what's billed as the largest gathering of local and state arts leaders in the nation was a dicey proposition. The incessant hum of the slot machines was a reminder of the risks involved in creating and fostering art. (It's not much of a stretch to compare grant writing to a crapshoot. or lobbying legislators on behalf of arts education to betting on the spin of a roulette wheel.) But something about being in Vegas, the ultimate fool's paradise, enhanced the conference attendees' ability to accept risk, to put all their chips on the table and say, "What the hell; let's go for it." KARIN WOLF is the arts program administrator for the Department of Planning and Community and Economic Development of Madison, Wisconsin.

BOOK REVIEW

joni m palmer /

JANE

DURRELL

The Art of Placemaking 111 terpreting Con in ninth Through Public 1/7 and I rban Design

T H E ART O F

PLACEMAKING:

MARY MISS

Interpreting C o m m u n i t y T h r o u g h Public Art a n d U r b a n Design

Ronald Lee Fleming London, New York: Merrell, 2007 384 pages, $49.95 (hardcover)

Mary Miss and Daniel M. Abramson New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004 252 pages, $85 (hardcover)

Ronald Lee Fleming, founder and president of the Townscape Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is not only an eminent urbanist, he's a good storyteller—and that makes this encyclopedic primer on public art and placemaking easily digestible as well as eminently useful. The Art of Placemaking is a well-written and intelligent book that provides a richer mix of material than most books about public art. After a series of project case studies, there is a section on making connections among placemaking, urban design, and public art, followed by a discussion of interpretation and cultural tourism and an overview of public art master planning. The varied and interesting case studies include facts and figures, a brief history of each site, information about the projects and brief profiles of the artists. Funding and the economics of public art are presented in an unintimidating way. Vivid details and anecdotes endear these projects to the reader, and there are artist quotes and thought provoking "tangents" on subjects like racial bias in the art world and the idiosyncrasies of the public art airports. Fine-quality photographs illustrate the text throughout. Of the case-study categories, only the section on murals has an introduction, providing information about mural activity worldwide; the other categories could have used this sort of context. Including plans of each project showing both site and context would have helped the reader gain a better grasp of them and strengthened Fleming's argument for a systems-scale, context-driven approach to public art and placemaking. There are problems in the interpretation and planning sections, too. Fleming fails to connect issues of interpretation with placemaking and public art, and it's not clear why the project examples he offers have been separated from the case studies. The sequencing in the planning section is confusing and distracting, including things—like a series of artists' perspectives on public projects—only tangentially related to planning issues. In an undertaking as ambitious as this book, of course, a few flaws are inevitable. Overall, The Art of Placemaking will play an important role in increasing an interdisciplinary understanding of public art.

For more than thirty years, Mary Miss has been a leader in expanding the role of sculpture to embrace the environment in which it and its viewers live. Her work also makes fruitful use of elements already in place, so it makes sense that a book about her would incorporate reprints of older texts. In this case, though, the result is uneven; Mary Miss is a pretty good book about a very good artist, marred by dangling references to absent images and by repetitions—the expansive scope of Miss' major pieces means there are not many of them, so throughout the book the same works are examined and re-examined from viewpoints that don't widely differ. Art critic Eleanor Heartney opens the discussion with an essay that reminds us how startling Miss' work appeared in the late 1960s. Public art, Heartney says, had become "a neglected byway of the larger art world" and "the last refuge of mediocre artists." She credits Miss as a pioneer in making public art "one of the most intellectually vibrant fields of art endeavor." Architecture critic Joseph Giovannini discusses her indoor constructions and her thoughtful transformations of landscape, and architectural historian Daniel M. Abramson fits her career into the larger scene. After these specialists' reflections, couched in a professional vocabulary, it is a pleasure to come to Miss' own clear prose. She says, of Perimenters/Pavillions/Decoys at the Nassau County Museum in New York (late 1970s), that "the visitor becomes an active participant, engaged emotionally as well as physically," and describes the everyday materials she uses in everyday language. Reprints include an essay by Sandro Marpillero that first appeared with an exhibition called "Mary Miss: Photo/Drawings" at the Des Moines Art Center in 1996. Miss' beautiful manipulated photographs, which she uses to further her own thinking about her work, are a worthy addition here, but the essay makes reference to photographs not reproduced. And Miss' 1984 essay, "On a Redefinition of Public Sculpture," has historic value, but would be of greater interest if she had added some reflections on the essay's relevance today. Sculpture, like any living art, continues to evolve, and surely Miss' thoughts on it do as well. I'd like to know where they are now.

joni m palmer is a Ph.D. student in geography of Colorado at Boulder.

JANE DURRELL writes on the visual arts and on travel for a variety of publications.

at the

University

MELISSA CONSTANTINE

PATRICE CLARK

•

j W m - i

KOELSCH

BOOK REVIEW

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LAND,, A

T - * M

A Cultural Ecology Handbook

CREATIVE T I M E : T h e Book

L A N D , ART: A Cultural Ecology H a n d b o o k

Anne Pasternak, Ruth Peltason, and Lucy Lippard New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007 285 pages, $31.50 (hardcover)

Max Andrews, editor London: RSA, 2006 207 pages, $40.44 (paperback)

For thirty-three years, New York—based Creative Time has been a catalyst uniting artists with unique public sites, negotiating with agencies and partners, and raising funds to make projects happen. Creative Time: The Book is itself a Creative Time project, commemorating the group's struggles and successes under three executive directors and in the face of challenges like the culture wars, arts funding cutbacks, and the increasing regulation of public space. Five themes—"New York City," "People," "Power," "Experiment," and "Surprise"—head the main chapters. Each chapter is authored by a notable public arts professional and friend of Creative Time. Then come essays that elaborate on Creative Time's history, and interviews with each of the organization's directors. Some of the thematic chapters are better than others. "People" is a conversation among three of New York's leading public arts professionals, Tom Eccles, Tom Finkelpearl, and Anne Pasternak (current director of Creative Time), focusing on the practical and philosophical quandaries of running a public arts organization. It's substantial enough to serve as a valuable critical text for anyone in the field. "Power," however, is less impressive. It begins with a brief, interesting essay by David Levi Strauss on the relationship between art and capitalism that invokes art's responsibility to counter regimes of power with acts of free expression. The ruminations by artists that follow, however, are unilluminating—poor illustrations of Creative Time's emphasis on the power and agency of artists. Throughout these pages, Pasternak insists that public art is democracy in action. This point, debatable its own right, is not supported by Creative Time: The Book. While many of the projects chronicled here demonstrate public art's ability to interject oppositional, marginalized, or simply peculiar viewpoints into the urban mainstream, the book takes no notice of the ordinary people who confront and are affected by them. The concept of public art as democracy is a laudable one. and it seems to give Creative Time a good deal of energy. But without an understanding of the dynamic among artist, artwork, and public, it's hard to tell if it's a goal that the organization has actually achieved.

More scrapbook than handbook, this hefty volume is a multicultural smorgasbord of essays, articles, drawings, photographs, and interviews. Developed under the auspices of the Arts and Ecology Programme of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), Land, Art aims "to profile, encourage and support artists in addressing ecological concerns." There's not a lot of "how-to" here, but there is a considerable amount of show and tell. The showing includes photographs of community-based adventure playgrounds in and around Tokyo, documentation of the bureaucratic maze involved in acquiring a private piece of land and placing it in the U.S. public domain, painterly photographic images of small urban wastelands, sketches and notes for a site-specific museum project, and a digital rendering of artificial islands off the coast of Dubai. The telling ranges from conversational to stridently didactic. Paul Schmelzer's interviews with Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, Ojibwe activist Winona LaDuke, and Cameron Sinclair, the founder of Architecture for Humanity, offer ideas to help individuals transform themselves and benefit others. Tiravanija questions the necessity of artistic work and characterizes contentment as a sustainable condition; LaDuke focuses on the depth, complexity, and beauty of relationships that are anchored in a specific place; and Sinclair emphasizes the importance of sensitivity to local resources, awareness of environmental challenges, and respect for traditional aesthetics when designing with and for disenfranchised communities. Not everyone, however, embraces an ethic of respecting diverse perspectives. In "Hot Trends: Climate Change in the Glossies," Bruce Sterling dismisses many longtime environmentalists. "With the possible exceptions of Commie Reds and Nazi Browns," he writes, "Hippie Greens may be the least effectual reformers in history." Interspersed among the thick and glossy pages of Land. Art are seven smaller, slighter pages with graphs and tables from the Worldwatch Institute—hard data on war, population growth, ice melt, economic losses from weather-related disasters, and more. These unassuming pages speak with a simplicity and urgency that rise above self-righteous rhetoric.

MELISSA CONSTANTINE lives and works in St. Paul. Minn. She is interested in architecture and urbanism.

PATRICE CLARK KOELSCH is a Minneapolis-based and critic.

writer

BOOK REVIEW

ROBB

SLEEPWALKERS: D o u g Aitken

Emily Hall, editor New York: Museum of Modern Art (with Creative Time), 2007 176 pages, $39.95 (hardcover) With the Museum of Modern Art, New York sleepwalkers projections in early 2007, Doug Aitken stepped well beyond the limitations of gallery video installations and "video walls." T h e installation included a series of projections on the exterior walls of the museum and required the viewer to circle MoMA's 630,000-square-foot, six-story building in order to take in the entire show. These massive images of a rather idiosyncratic selection of celebrities—actors Tilda Swinton and Donald Sutherland, actor-musicians Ryan Donowho and Seu Jorge, and popster Chan Marshall—caught their subjects sleeping, waking, walking, working, and otherwise moving like ordinary New Yorkers. The enormous color images, however, retained plenty of mass-cultural sheen—it was almost as if Times Square ads for The Gap had mysteriously drifted eastward. It's a project that could have used some incisive analysis and commentary. But such is not forthcoming from this book, published by Creative Time and The Museum of Modern Art. Klaus Biesenback's "Building Images" essay is a case in point. After a perfunctory mention of sleepwalkers, it drifts into a review of Aitken's career and influences and the phenomenology of his work as a whole. (Fortunately, we can get an idea of what the MoMA project actually looked like on YouTube.) The rest of the book's 176 pages are equally unfocused. We get interpretive diagrams of New York, a satellite photo of Nazca Desert in Peru, street graffiti in London, collages of everyday graphic icons-—oh. and a few still frames from sleepwalkers. Added to the mix are marginally relevant conversations between Aitken and artists, architects, writers, taxi drivers, and performers, including Vito Acconci and Elizabeth LaCompte. At one point Aitken characterizes his work as "a much more abstract form of communication. The frame is gone, the screen is broken, and there's almost no cropping at all. The viewer is active, welcome to swim in an open sea of images." Clearly, observations like this are meant to support the sort of fluid, seemingly random documentation that this book represents. However, we're left with a such a fragmented and incomplete correlation of text with work here that we can only carry away a vague idea of what the book is pointing its lens at.

FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES Julie Ault, editor Paris: steidldangin, 2006 400 pages, $85.00 (hardcover) Julie Ault, a friend of Felix Gonzalez-Torres and editor of this compendium of writing and images about him, is suspicious of biography. She quotes Adam Phillips from his study of Freud: "A biography might be like a parodic monument of our wishful relationship to the dead, and to the living. This, Freud seems to say, is what the illusion of knowing another person can turn into; this is what our craving for access to others, especially in their absence, looks like." Phillips' point feels all the more poignant when we remember that it was in 2006—eleven years after his death—that Gonzalez-Torres was picked to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale. Only one other American, Robert Smithson, has been chosen for Venice posthumously. It was the sort of validation the Cuban-born artist had not received when he passed away in 1995. Gonzalez-Torres brought a vivid sense of humor to his explorations of the dark intersection of politics, sex, disease, and political malaise. His conceptual pieces were often joyful and generous in a literal way as they shattered the uptight security protocols of today's galleries and museums. Gonzalez-Torres filled galleries with piles of wrapped candies and encouraged gallery visitors to eat them. Another work was a two- or threefoot stack of black-and-white photo reproductions of ocean waves. Viewers were invited to take the photo sheets home, and provision was made for the museum to replenish the stack as it was depleted. Ault breaks the volume into four sections: writings and lectures by Gonzalez-Torres himself; conversations between him and curators, critics, and other artists; selections from exhibition brochures, catalogues, magazines, and newspapers; and related texts, including writings by Roland Barthes and Bertolt Brecht. Living with AIDS and feeling the weakening of American political ideals, Gonzalez-Torres raised his voice against the apathy that pervaded American society in the 1980s and early 1990s. Today, when apathy has devolved into corruption, profiteering, and government-sponsored hysteria, Gonzalez-Torres' playful but deeply serious call for a return to genuine American values is more meaningful than ever. ROBB MITCHELL has written about art and film in for over twenty years.

Minnesota

HARRY SHEFF / WILLIAM

BRYANT LOGAN

BOOK R E V I E W

Sacred Gardens and Landscapes: Ritual and Agency

P O L I T I C A L A N I M A L S : P u b l i c A r t in A m e r i c a n Z o o s & A q u a r i u m s

S A C R E D G A R D E N S A N D L A N D S C A P E S : Ritual and Agency

Jesse Donahue and Erik Trump Maryland: Lexington Books, 2007 224 pages, $65 (hardcover)

Michel Conan, editor Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2007 306 pages, $35 (paperback)

We go to zoos to see animals, not art, but public art has been a part of zoological gardens for centuries. Political Animals: Public Art in American Zoos and Aquariums follows the evolution of art in zoos, concentrating not so much on the art as the issues behind the art—and the issues are compelling. For much of the twentieth century, zoos allowed human visitors to come surprisingly close to the animals. Cages were small, giant turtles gave rides to children, lions were paraded through zoo grounds. The 1970s brought new animal protection laws as well as changes in tort law that made it easier for employees to sue zoos for injuries sustained while working with animals. Thus began the era of "habitat" enclosures, in which animals are kept in pseudonatural surroundings, far away from visitors. Enter public art in the form of tactile sculpture, an artistic proxy for zoo creatures that brings them closer, at least symbolically. "People wanted to do more than gaze at the animals— they wanted to know the truth about them through touch," write Donahue and Trump. A sculpture like David Turner's mother bear and cubs at the Philadelphia Zoo allows a child not just to get close to the bears, but to climb all over them. Perhaps the primary issue for modern zoos is animal conservation, and here too. art has had its role, helping zoos become places where a few stand for the endangered whole. Jim Hirschfield and Sonya Ishii's The Bird Garden, a set of lanterns along a wooded path in the North Carolina Zoo that illuminate the outlines of extinct birds, is a poignant example. The more empathy that "touchable" art elicits, however, the more tempted visitors are to see the animals as pets or friends, and to question the very existence of an institution that cages them. This is the dilemma zoos face today: How to encourage safe encounters between animals and humans, while arguing that animals are worth saving and loving, and that zoos should be an integral part of that effort. Public art has been self-consciously deployed to accomplish this. Though its stiff academic style may put off some readers. Political Animals is a thorough history of how one cultural institution has negotiated the relationship between its public and its collections, using art as a mediator.

The title of this twenty-sixth volume of the Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture, may suggest a long and twisted trip through 300 pages of theory. Don't be fooled. It's a suggestive and varied anthology of the uses of landscape in the millennial quest to touch the b e y o n d — beginning with a prehistoric Greek alsos, or sacred grove, and ending with the very strange twentieth-century fen landscape of artist-ecologist Marietta Pallis. In between is an astonishing variety of landscape and garden ideas from around the world. In each setting, the key to the space is not just how it is formed—by mapping, cutting, shaping, clearing, building, and planting—but also how it is used. For example, the mysterious oracle of Trophonios at Lebadeia consisted of a rugged site where the person seeking divination would be sequestered in a garden, introduced into an altered life rhythm, and positioned over an entry to the underworld, there to hear the voice of the god. Other rituals described include the decorous, sumptuous processions of medieval Japanese emperors through garden estates, walks that included archery and poetry competitions, mock voyages, music, and dancing. An Aztec desert garden ritual, on the other hand, included smashing the head of a godimpersonating slave four times on a stone and gathering the blood in a natural bowl. (This was supposed to help build a nest for the sun.) To justify writing these inviting and often obsessive pieces—all of which contain a certain amount of academese—the authors usually invoke the ideas of one or more authorities. The most prominent of these is the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep, whose 1909 book. The Rites of Passage, described ritual in terms of a three-stage process: separation from everyday life, the crossing of a threshold into sacred space/time, and the final reintegration of the initiate back into the everyday world. It's a thought-provoking sequence, hardly limited to the garden activities of ancient initiates and emperors. It is lovely to contemplate bringing the consciousness of ritual into our own passages through the landscape, with the idea that our participation might change us, for a moment, for a week, or forever.

HARRY SHEFF is a writer and blogger

who lives in New

York.

WILLIAM BRYANT LOGAN is an arborist and nature writer who lives in New York. His most recent book is Oak: The Frame of Civilization (W. W. Norton. 2006).

RECENT PUBLICATIONS CITY AS A R E S O U R C E : O n e M a n ' s Trash C J Is A n o t h e r M a n ' s T r e a s u r e 111

<2 CJ

— j Buckinghamshire: Shire Publications, 2006

Folke Koebberling and Martin Kaltwasser

PUBLIC ART SINCE 1950 Lynn F. Pearson

R I C H A R D S E R R A : S c u l p t u r e : Forty Years

Q-

Kynaston McShine and Lynne Cooke

New York: The M u s e u m o f Modern Art, 2007

80 pages, £6.99 (paperback)

420 pages, $75 (hardcover)

128 pages, $29.95 (paperback)

A succinct introduction, profusely illustrated

A retrospective, profusely illustrated with

A survey o f Koebberling and Kaltwasser's

in color, to half a century o f public art in

photographs, o f the work o f the influential

recent projects using materials obtained f r o m

Britain, including a selective list o f projects

Minimalist sculptor.

dumpsters and other "cost-free" sources.

by region and city.

WACKELKONTACT/LOOSE CONTACT:

PUBLIC ART A N D T H E P L A N N I N G SYSTEM

Michael Mack, editor

Illuminating the Public Sphere

A N D PROCESS IN E N G L A N D

Goettingen, Germany: SteidlMACK, 2007

CC. Berlin: jovis Verlag, 2 0 0 6

ANTONY GORMLEY

Katharina H o h m a n n

ixia: Public Art Think Tank, 2007

560 pages, $85 (hardcover)

Weimar: Bauhaus University, 2007

43 pages, available free online at:

A comprehensive survey o f the work o f the Minimalist-influenced figural sculptor.

148 pages (paperback)

www.ixia-info.com/research/index.htm

The catalogue o f a February 2007 project in

A report on the last fifteen years o f English

Jena, Germany, in which nineteen young artists

public art policy and its relationship with

A R C H I T E C T U R E O F T H E AIR: T h e Sound and

f r o m fourteen countries used light in various

urban and regional planning.

Light S c u l p t u r e s o f C h r i s t o p h e r Janney

ways to reveal hidden dimensions o f the city.

Beth Dunlop, foreword by Sir George Martin O P E N S P A C E : Art in t h e Public R e a l m

New York: Sideshow Media, LLC, 2006

F R O M T E C H N O L O G I C A L T O VIRTUAL ART

in L o n d o n 1 9 9 5 - 2 0 0 5

175 pages, $40 (hardcover)

Frank Popper

Arts Council England

Cambridge: M I T Press, 2007

Key works o f the innovative public sound artist,

London: Open House, 2007

with an essay by Janney on his influences and

471 pages, $45 (hardcover)

216 pages, £25 (paperback)

trajectory.

A survey o f "new media" artworks, f r o m

Detailed accounts o f the strategies behind,

antecedents like modernist light art to early

and the results of, thirty-six public art

ARTS A N D CULTURE IN T H E M E T R O P O L I S :

computer art to today's interactive digital

projects in London, ranging from sculptures

S t r a t e g i e s for S u s t a i n a b i l i t y

installations.

to process-oriented and performed works.

Kevin McCarthy, Jennifer Novak, and

Elizabeth Heneghann Ondaatje

S U B L I M E SPACES A N D V I S I O N A R Y W O R L D S :

A L O N G T H E W A Y : M T A Arts for Transit

Built E n v i r o n m e n t s o f V e r n a c u l a r Artists

S a n d r a B l o o d w o r t h a n d W i l l i a m Ayres

CJ>

Pittsburgh: RAND Corporation, 2007 102 pages, $25 (paperback)

Leslie Umberger, editor

New York: The Monacelli Press, 2006

A RAND Corporation study that develops a new

New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007

216 pages, $45 (hardcover)

framework for evaluating systems o f support

427 pages, $49.95 (paperback)

A tour o f New York City's "underground

for the arts in communities, then uses the

Lavishly illustrated c o m p e n d i u m o f twenty-two

m u s e u m " : the Transit Authority's collection

scheme to assess the relationship between arts

works by "outsider" artists.

o f artworks in subway stations.

organizations and funders in Philadelphia.

NATURAL ARCHITECTURE

T H E POLITICS O F U R B A N BEAUTY:

N E W CREATIVE C O M M U N I T Y :

Alessandro Rocca

N e w York a n d Its Art C o m m i s s i o n

T h e Art o f C u l t u r a l D e v e l o p m e n t Arlene Goldbard

New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007

Michele H. Bogart

215 pages, $35 (paperback)

Chicago: The University o f Chicago Press, 2006

Oakland, Calif.: New Village Press, 2006

An international survey o f architectural/sculp-

368 pages, $55 (hardcover)

272 pages, $24.95 (paperback)

tural works that employ natural materials found

A scholarly history o f the Arts Commission o f

A comprehensive study o f the theory and

at the site: wood, straw, rocks, mud, grass.

the City o f New York, the body that, since 1898,

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and social change.

SURFACE TENSION: SUPPLEMENT NO. 1 Ken Ehrlich and Brandon LaBelle, editors Los Angeles: Errant Bodies, 2 0 0 6

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William L. Bird, Jr.

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residents o f four Cardiff suburbs were invited

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Published t w i c e annually, each issue is packed with thematic, in-depth coverage and dozens of new + innovative projects.

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t works (left to right): Face Time by Steve Appleton, Sunset & Vine, Los Angeles, photo: Alex Forman; Emerald Laser Lawn by D a n Corson, Huizenga Plaza, Fort Lauderdale, photo: courtesy of lie artist; Community Garden by Andrea Dezso, Bedford Park Boulevard Subway Station, New York City, photo: Rob Wilson.

ARTS

NEWS

W O O D L A N D WATER M U S I C W I N S PRIZE A giant steel horn in King's Wood, Challock, w h i c h collects water and channels the drips t o create m u s i c , has w o n o n e o f the U.K.'s m o s t prestigious art awards. A Score for a Hole in the Ground, created by artist Jem Finer, consists o f a steel h o r n — m o d e l e d o n t h e t r u m p e t o f an old g r a m o p h o n e — r i s i n g seven meters above the g r o u n d a m o n g the beech trees deep in the woods, and a 7-meter-deep, 8-meter-wide chamber. The h o r n amplifies droplets o f falling water in the chamber beneath, p r o d u c i n g a subtle bell-like s o u n d . The award and £ 1 0 , 0 0 0 in prize money, w h i c h will be divided between the artist and Stour Valley Arts, was presented on May 23rd. Leading art critic, a u t h o r and c h a i r m a n o f the j u d g i n g panel, Richard Cork, offered these remarks: "The w o r k has an extraordinary presence... It is a l m o s t as if the

w o o d has discovered its o w n voice and is playing its o w n music. It has a slightly surrealist feeling and is not w h a t you expect t o c o m e across in an English w o o d , but it has w i d e appeal as everyone can grasp it at their o w n level." N o w in its f o u r t e e n t h year, the Rouse Kent Public Art Award is given by Kings H i l l developer Liberty Property Trust U.K. Ltd. (formerly Rouse Kent), Kent County Council, and Arts Council England, South East. [Photo courtesy the artist.]

"ISLAMIC" DESIGN PLAGUES M E M O R I A L Artist Paul M u r d o c h ' s w i n n i n g design for the Flight 93 m e m o r i a l to the Pennsylvania v i c t i m s o f the September 11 attacks, originally n a m e d Crescent of Embrace, came under scrutiny again this August. (In 2 0 0 6 M u r d o c h faced charges BIKERS BACK B E R W Y N

BEHEMOTH

o f a p p r o p r i a t i o n f r o m design c o m p e t i t i o n finalists

D u s t i n Shuler's Spindle, also k n o w n as the

Lisa A u s t i n and M a d i s Pihlak.) T o m

"Car Spike," " c a r - k a b o b , " or " E i g h t Car Pileup,"

GRAFFITI ARTISTS C O T O W O R K

Burnett Sr., w h o finds the crescent design

w i l l be d i s m a n t l e d t h i s fall t o m a k e r o o m for

This A u g u s t , Adidas hired graffiti artist N u r o c

and other features o f the m e m o r i a l offensive

a Walgreen's in the Cermak Plaza in Berwyn,

t o paint a billboard in Melbourne, as part o f

because o f w h a t he referred t o as their " I s l a m i c

Illinois. M a d e f a m o u s by the first "Wayne's

the c o m p a n y ' s new "End-to-End" m a r k e t i n g

s y m b o l i s m , " wants his son's n a m e w i t h h e l d

W o r l d " m o v i e , the l a n d m a r k s c u l p t u r e will

c a m p a i g n . In a d d i t i o n to the billboard, Adidas

f r o m the m e m o r i a l . As a m e m b e r o f the losing

not be destroyed w i t h o u t a fight. C o m m u n i t y

has c o m m i s s i o n e d seven graffiti artists

side o f the m e m o r i a l ' s 2005 selection panel,

activists and Critical Mass cyclists have j o i n e d

f r o m a r o u n d the w o r l d t o design a line o f

Burnett has called for an investigation o f the

forces t o save the artwork. O n July 27, Chicago

sneakers t o be sold in Foot Locker stores.

m e m o r i a l ' s design and symbolic elements.

Critical Mass riders rode f r o m the Picasso

As a result, the c o m p a n y has been branded

A l t h o u g h the artist has already changed the

s c u l p t u r e in Daley Plaza—where they have been

irresponsible, accused o f trying t o legitimize

g a t h e r i n g every m o n t h for the last ten y e a r s —

an illegal activity by Residents Against Graffiti

t o Berwyn, where they rallied w i t h c o m m u n i t y

Everywhere (R.A.G.E.) s p o k e s m a n Steve

activists for preservation o f the sculpture,

Beardon. C o u n t e r i n g the accusations, Adidas

w o r k i n g t o " m a k e c o r p o r a t i o n s and developers

argued t h a t graffiti is a legitimate f o r m o f

a c c o u n t a b l e t o the c o m m u n i t i e s they c l a i m t o

art, and that their c o m p a n y simply wants t o

serve." Friends o f the Spindle, a newly f o r m e d

provide a legal avenue for graffiti artists t o

n o n - p r o f i t o r g a n i z a t i o n , is w o r k i n g t o raise

display their work. See the Adidas c a m p a i g n

f u n d s t o m o v e Spindle t o a p e r m a n e n t new

at w w w . e n d t o e n d p r o j e c t . c o m and read

location. M o r e at w w w . s a v e t h e s p i n d l e . c o m .

m o r e a b o u t R.A.G.E.'s objectives at www.

[Photo by Sean

residentsagainstgraffitieverywhere.com.

Gallagher.]

m e m o r i a l ' s planned shape t o a nearly full circle, in response t o c r i t i c i s m that the m e m o rial h o n o r e d M u s l i m extremists responsible for the September 11 attacks, Burnett still asserts that the ninety-three f o o t tower w i t h w i n d c h i m e s will act as an Islamic sundial, because it will face t o w a r d Mecca. The artist has said that his design simply utilizes c o m m o n design features and fits w i t h the site's topography. Nevertheless, Burnett w o u l d still "like to know how we ended up w i t h this Islamic m e m o r i a l . "

NEWS S O H O "WALL" REVIVED O n A p r i l 24, after sixteen m o n t h s o f negotiations, a m o t i o n t o reinstall Forrest Myers's The Wall (1973) was u n a n i m o u s l y approved by N e w York City's Landmarks Preservation C o m m i s s i o n . The piece will be reinstalled at the 599 Broadway B u i l d i n g in S 0 H 0 , this t i m e raised eighteen feet above its previous level, t o make r o o m for four 18 x 4-foot advertising panels at street level. The reconfigured piece, m a d e w i t h new c o m p o n e n t s , will be illuminated by l i g h t i n g designer Leni Schwendinger. The b u i l d i n g ' s owners, w h o had been seeking t o d i t c h the piece for advertising, were allowed t o remove the piece in 2002, w h e n it was faced w i t h m a j o r structural repairs.

SUBWAY L I G H T PROJECT As a remedy for t h e d o l d r u m s o f s u n l i g h t lessness, a c o n d i t i o n o f w i n t e r or living or w o r k i n g

FORECAST W I N S PAN AWARD A m e r i c a n s for t h e Arts presented t h e 2 0 0 7 Public Art N e t w o r k (PAN) Award t o Jack Becker and FORECAST Public A r t w o r k s on June 3, at its annual m e e t i n g held this year in Las Vegas. Given annually in recognition o f innovative and creative c o n t r i b u t i o n s a n d / o r exemplary c o m m i t m e n t and leadership in the field o f art, the award h o n o r s a generation o f leadership by Becker. "Jack Becker helped define the field o f c o n t e m p o r a r y public art," said Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO o f A m e r i c a n s for the Arts. " H e is an a c c o m p l i s h e d artist and an exemplary leader in c o m m u n i t y arts, creating o n g o i n g m o d e l p r o g r a m s that b r i n g art and artists into c o m m u n i t i e s . His i n n o v a t i o n and dedication has been recognized regionally and nationally in the public art

field."

Becker is f o u n d e r and executive director

"TOPO" FUTURE UNCERTAIN

in unlit buildings, d o c t o r s have often recom-

Dedicated in 1991 and installed in f r o n t o f

m e n d e d f u l l - s p e c t r u m light bulbs that m i m i c

the Charlotte C o l i s e u m in N o r t h Carolina,

the sun. W i t h recent i n n o v a t i o n s in fiber o p t i c

Maya Lin's playful and irreverent e a r t h w o r k

and solar technology, it is actually possible t o

Topo, designed in c o l l a b o r a t i o n w i t h landscape

channel natural light into dark places and cast

architect Henry A r n o l d , is f a c i n g d e m o l i t i o n .

it t h r o u g h a fixture. Parsons The N e w School

In M a r c h o f 2 0 0 6 , city officials sold the

for Design s t u d e n t Caroline Pham success-

Coliseum, a l o n g w i t h Topo. t o a private

fully i n c o r p o r a t e d s u n l i g h t transfer in a public

c o m p a n y t o help f u n d a new u p t o w n area.

art project design for Seattle's Subway Light

The C o l i s e u m was d e m o l i s h e d on June 3,

Project. Her concept, the first prize w i n n e r

2007, and now t h e site-specific e a r t h w o r k sits

in Parsons' 2 0 0 7 Sustainable Design Review,

across f r o m a pile o f rubble o n land planned

w h i c h explores the crossroads o f design,

for a 170-acre mixed-use d e v e l o p m e n t . At

sustainability, and social responsibility, uses

an o r i g i n a l cost o f $ 3 4 0 , 0 0 0 , Topo features

fiber optics and solar collection panels t o channel s u n l i g h t into the enclosed c o r r i d o r s o f the subway. Her design w o u l d use the energysaving t e c h n o l o g y t o i l l u m i n a t e w i n d o w s and s i t t i n g areas, w h i l e i l l u s t r a t i n g elements o f natural and urban landscape integration. Pham is a s t u d e n t in the school's Integrated Design C u r r i c u l u m BFA Program. Second place w i n n e r Hae Jeong Choi, a p r o d u c t design student,

o f the 29-year-old FORECAST Public A r t w o r k s ,

conceived an eco-friendly f o o d v e n d o r cart that

a Twin Cities-based n o n p r o f i t that grew o u t

c o m b i n e s healthy f o o d w i t h s u p p o r t for local

o f t h e CETA p r o g r a m o f the late 1970s into a

farmers. [Photo courtesy Caroline

Pham.]

a i , 6 o o - f o o t s l o p i n g m e d i a n o f sculpted b e r m s and a c o l l e c t i o n o f twelve-foot B u r f o r d holly bushes p r u n e d t o resemble large balls, as if part o f s o m e o u t s i z e d m y t h i c game. The city's public art c o n t r a c t states t h a t t h e city (or its c u r r e n t o w n e r ) c o u l d destroy t h e piece if it notified the artists, after first g i v i n g t h e m a chance t o sell or d o n a t e t h e piece. In order t o avoid d e m o l i t i o n , A r n o l d is currently n e g o t i a t i n g relocation o f Topo w i t h city officials. Needless t o say, the piece is n o t easily m o v e d .

full-service public art agency o f f e r i n g grants, c o n s u l t i n g services, and p u b l i s h i n g Public Art Review. Typically f o c u s i n g on projects that c o n n e c t t h e ideas and energies o f artists w i t h

T A K I N G IT T O T H E STREETS

JOIN THE

the needs and o p p o r t u n i t i e s o f c o m m u n i t i e s ,

Featuring films about art that t r a n s f o r m s

A i m i n g t o create the first publicly s u b m i t t e d

Becker and FORECAST have facilitated n u m e r -

streets into galleries and changes established

c o m p r e h e n s i v e survey o f public art in t h e U.K.

ous o f projects in its region.

ideas about art in public space, the t h i r d

( f r o m small graffiti projects t o c o m m i s s i o n e d

annual Street Art Festival was held A u g u s t 17 at

art and historical m o n u m e n t s ) , the Big Art

conference d u e t o the fact that he was re-

the C o n t e m p o r a r y Club in Trenton, N e w Jersey.

M o b is now underway. As part o f the Big Art

covering f r o m a successful heart t r a n s p l a n t

Produced by A l b u s Cavus in c o n j u n c t i o n w i t h

Project, a TV s h o w t h a t launches in A p r i l 2 0 0 8

operation. Liesel Fenner, Americans for the

NJ Graf, a series o f graffiti/street art events, t h e

o n Channel 4 (see page 54 for m o r e infor-

Arts Public Art Manager, flew t o M i n n e a p o l i s

festival was curated w i t h the goal o f o f f e r i n g

m a t i o n ) , the Big Art M o b is an o n l i n e m o b i l e

on June 18 t o hand h i m the award in person.

audiences a u n i q u e and i n t i m a t e view into the

b l o g g i n g c o m m u n i t y project w i t h a goal t o

Mayor Chris C o l e m a n p r o c l a i m e d the date

life o f c o n t e m p o r a r y street artists and their

record t h e w e a l t h o f artworks in p u b l i c places

"Jack Becker / FORECAST Public Art Day" in

artwork. Because street art is often temporary,

across the U.K. and serve as t h e focus o f a

the city o f Saint Paul. PAR is pleased t o report

damaged, or destroyed before being viewed by

d y n a m i c national conversation. Art-lovers

that Becker is d o i n g well and back t o w o r k full-

the public, the films served b o t h as a critical

across t h e U.K. are invited t o s u b m i t p h o t o s

t i m e . Learn m o r e at www.forecastpublicart.org.

t o o l o f preservation and a rare treat for audi-

f r o m their camera phones. Check o u t the latest

[Photo by Steve

ences. M o r e at albuscav.us/filmfest.

s u b m i s s i o n s at w w w . b i g a r t m o b . c o m .

Becker was unable t o attend this year's

Hansen.]

MOB

NEWS

Y A H O O ABUSE W h e n Yahoo m o v e d its headquarters t o Sunnyvale, California in 2 0 0 2 , it b o u g h t $ 5 0 0 , 0 0 0 w o r t h o f p u b l i c art in order t o "keep peace w i t h local a u t h o r i t i e s . " N e w York artist Sharon L o u d e n was c o m m i s s i o n e d t o install

Reflecting

Tips. O r i g i n a l l y a hit w i t h the selection c o m m i t tee because o f its beautiful subtlety, the piece paired berkeley sedge, a type o f w e t l a n d s grass (chosen for t h e project by Dennis Taniguchi, the landscape architect hired by Yahoo) w i t h clusters o f 2,500 w h i t e wires, t o p p e d w i t h t w o - i n c h reflective squares, in order t o create a landscape that w o u l d m i m i c t h e natural wet-

lands s u r r o u n d i n g Yahoo's b u i l d i n g . The piece b e c a m e t h e subject o f controversy last O c t o b e r w h e n t h e city o f Sunnyvale accused Yahoo o f h a v i n g an " o v e r g r o w n f r o n t l a w n . " In response, Yahoo's crew cut the l o n g

MAYOR ORDERS SCULPTURES

REMOVED

C H I C A G O DROPS PUBLIC PROCESS

This s u m m e r , Ryan M c C o u r t w a s awarded

It has been a d r a m a t i c — a n d c o n t r o v e r s i a l —

$ 1 0 , 0 0 0 t o participate in a year-long o u t d o o r

year for Chicago's Public Art Program (PAP),

s c u l p t u r e exhibition sponsored by the City o f

w h i c h oversees the city's percent-for-art

E d m o n t o n ' s Art and Design in Public Places

projects. W h i l e city cultural officials c l a i m they

Program. Two o f the four sculptures depict

have " s t r e a m l i n e d " t h e art selection process by

Lord G a n e s h — t h e m o s t revered god in the

e l i m i n a t i n g the seventeen-member Public Art

H i n d u r e l i g i o n — d e c a p i t a t e d w i t h a female

C o m m i t t e e and project advisory panels, all o f

breast, male genitalia, and weapons. After

w h i c h included local citizens, others c o n t e n d

receiving a petition f r o m the local H i n d u

the " p u b l i c " has been taken o u t o f public art.

c o m m u n i t y w i t h 7 0 0 signatures protesting

The changes also mean that attorney Scott

the work, E d m o n t o n Mayor Stephen Mandel

H o d e s ' s eight-year crusade to r e f o r m the thirty-

ordered for t h e sculptures' removal. McCourt

year-old, 700-piece PAP has e n d e d — m u c h t o

is u n a p o l o g e t i c and unhappy w i t h the mayor's

the delight o f D e p a r t m e n t o f Cultural Affairs

decision. " M y research led me t o find that there

c o m m i s s i o n e r Lois Welsberg and PAP director

is n o t h i n g offensive a b o u t these sculptures.

Gregory Knight, w h o had become w o r n d o w n

They are totally w i t h i n the bounds o f traditional

by Hodes's legal challenges t o make the

d e p i c t i o n s and the people that are upset about

p r o g r a m m o r e accountable. Since 1999, he

grass w i t h s t r i n g t r i m m e r s , and in t h e process

these works are j u s t a handful o f individuals

has filed a series o f lawsuits against the city

severed a l m o s t h a l f o f t h e wires. A l t h o u g h

that d o n ' t like this artwork." Just prior t o the

over its a d m i n i s t r a t i o n o f the PAP, accusing

Yahoo discussed flying Louden o u t to repair

sculptures' removal on September 22, Mayor

it o f financial m i s m a n a g e m e n t , o f v i o l a t i n g

the d a m a g e , in late M a r c h the c o m p a n y w e n t

M a n d e l was q u o t e d as saying, "I think it's

the O p e n Meetings Act, and o f failing t o post

ahead and replaced the sedge w i t h m a n i c u r e d

i m p o r t a n t t h a t we're cognizant o f t h i n g s we do

notice and m i n u t e s o f meetings as well as t o

green grass, and planted a border o f perennial

t h a t m i g h t have an i m p a c t on the c o m m u n i t y

explain how c o m m i s s i o n s are awarded.

flowers.

w h e n we have public art. At the same t i m e we

L o u d e n ' s lawyer w r o t e , " W h a t r e m a i n s

o f the w o r k m i m i c s n o t h i n g so m u c h as a

d o n ' t w a n t t o be c e n s o r i n g art either so we

m i n i a t u r e g o l f course or t h e m e d i a n o f a shop-

have t o strike a fine balance." See the artist's

p i n g m a l l ' s p a r k i n g lot," and accused Yahoo

w o r k at w w w . t e l u s p l a n e t . n e t / p u b l i c / r m c c o u r t .

o f b r e a c h i n g its a g r e e m e n t w i t h the artist and

an a m e n d e d public art o r d i n a n c e t o t h e City Council, asking that art selection c o m m i t t e e s be d u m p e d and d e c i s i o n - m a k i n g powers

v i o l a t i n g laws, m o s t notably the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) o f 1990, w h i c h p r o h i b i t s

The m o s t recent t u r n o f events began in May, w h e n Mayor Richard M . Daley i n t r o d u c e d

granted t o p r o g r a m staffers. Despite a j u n e 11 T H E GREAT O U T D O O R S

rally attended by 2 0 0 people in Daley Plaza

w i t h o u t t h e artists' p e r m i s s i o n . Yahoo is said t o

Since 1967, N e w York City Parks & Recreation's

organized by activist Paul Klein (whose

be satisfied w i t h t h e new look o f its lawn, and

public art p r o g r a m has hosted m o r e t h a n

c o m p r o m i s e idea o f f o r m i n g an oversight

has refused t o negotiate w i t h the artist, i s s u i n g

1,000 t e m p o r a r y art displays t h r o u g h o u t its

Public Art C o m m i s s i o n was rejected), the new

only a s t a t e m e n t saying, " G i v e n that Yahoo is a

five b o r o u g h s . To c o m m e m o r a t e its forty years

ordinance passed t w o days later (37-11).

c u l t u r e o f i n n o v a t i o n and creativity, we are very

o f art displays, the Arsenal Gallery in Central

s u p p o r t i v e o f local artists and appreciate t h e

Park hosted "The O u t d o o r Gallery: 4 0 Years o f

i n t e n t i o n a l m o d i f i c a t i o n o f public artworks

Meanwhile, on A u g u s t 16, Circuit Court Judge W i l l i a m Maki ruled in favor o f the City in

o p p o r t u n i t y t o display various artworks on o u r

Public Art in New York City Parks" t o com-

Hodes's latest litigation on behalf o f the Better

property." [Photo courtesy the artist and

m e m o r a t e the occasion. R u n n i n g September 25

G o v e r n m e n t Association, w h i c h c l a i m e d the

Kamm/$BE

Oliver

Gallery, New York.]

Installed in 2 0 0 4 , M a r k di Suvero's Isis was d i s m a n t l e d this July and returned t o its owner. The w o r k had been o n loan t o the Port o f San Diego for a year. S t a n d i n g forty-two-feet tall as

an a c r o n y m for the Institute o f Scrap Iron and Steel, w h i c h c o m m i s s i o n e d di Suvero t o make t h e sculpture for its fiftieth anniversary—served as a l a n d m a r k t o m a n y d r i v i n g t o San Diego International Airport.

PAP violated both the O p e n Meetings Act and

as a retrospective overview, i n c l u d i n g forty-

a 2005 settlement agreement f r o m a previous

eight archival p h o t o g r a p h s , original drawings

lawsuit. City lawyers argued that the Mayor's

and models, and m e m o r a b i l i a o f public art

o r d i n a n c e had rendered the case m o o t .

in parks since 1967, i n c l u d i n g items such as

L A N D M A R K RETURNED T O ARTIST

and sixty-three-feet in length, Isis—named

t h r o u g h N o v e m b e r 23, 2007, the show served

original drawings by Christo, T o m Otterness, and Mel Chin; archival p h o t o g r a p h s o f Francis H i n e s ' Washington

Square Arch

Brett Cook-Dizney's Information Democracy

Wrapped, for Peace and

murals, a Mark di Suvero litho-

graph, and preparatory studies by Vito Acconci, Lina Puerta, and Nancy Cohen. In addition, forty works were installed in parks and plazas t h r o u g h o u t the city's five boroughs. A c o m p l e t e l i s t i n g o f works is at www.nycgovparks.org.

Weisberg has said that the public art selection process had been " b o g g e d d o w n w i t h bureaucratic procedures, paperwork and p r o t o c o l s . " A new rule does require that t w o alderman-hosted " p u b l i c f o r u m s " be staged before an artwork is chosen, although the D e p a r t m e n t o f Cultural Affairs has final say. H o d e s d o e s n ' t buy it, telling PAR, "The g o v e r n m e n t c h o o s i n g public art sets a dangerous precedent in a democracy." [Reported by Jeff

Huebner.]

NEWS

art:2i A R T IN T H E T W E N T Y - F I R S T

CENTURY

recent EVENTS From A p r i l 9 t o May 4, inspired by the increasing d i a l o g u e between artists and conservators, t h e C a m b r i d g e (Mass.) Arts

FOUR TIMES TWENTY-ONE Art/27â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Art in the Twenty-First

Council (CAC) s p o n s o r e d an e x h i b i t i o n t o Century was

explore t h e use o f science w h e n m a k i n g

back this fall, w i t h an all-new season on PBS.

" m a t e r i a l c h o i c e s " t o create and conserve

Season four o f the biennial series, w h i c h pre-

c o n t e m p o r a r y , site-specific public art.

m i e r e d O c t o b e r 28, once again gave viewers a

MATERIAL C H O I C E : Conservation, Science

rare, behind-the-scenes g l i m p s e into the w o r l d

& P u b l i c A r t , curated by Rika S m i t h M c N a l l y ,

o f c o n t e m p o r a r y art and into the m i n d s o f

c o n s e r v a t o r at CAC, and Lillian H s u , CAC's

s o m e o f today's m o s t fascinating visual artists.

director, featured six case studies t h a t

Featuring four p r o g r a m s entitled " R o m a n c e , "

illustrate why an o n g o i n g d i a l o g u e between

" P r o t e s t , " "Ecology," and "Paradox," t h i s

artists, p u b l i c art a d m i n i s t r a t o r s , and art

season profiled seventeen w e l l - k n o w n and

conservators is critical in o r d e r t o foresee

u p - a n d - c o m i n g artists, i n c l u d i n g Laurie

w h a t f u t u r e care p u b l i c artworks will require.

S i m m o n s , Alfredo Jaar, Jenny Holtzer, Mark

Case studies and m o r e are online:

Dion, and Robert Ryman. V i s i t w w w . p b s . o r g /

www.cambridgeartscouncil.org/

art2i for a d d i t i o n a l in-depth i n f o r m a t i o n o n the artists, and look s o o n for Art2i's

public_conservation.html

o w n site,

w h i c h will feature educators' guides and o n l i n e

From May 12 t o 13, t h e Cooper U n i o n

t o o l kits (www.art21.org).

School o f Art in N e w York City played host to T H E S I T U A T I O N A L D R I V E : C o m p l e x i t i e s o f Public S p h e r e E n g a g e m e n t , sponsored

BIG TRADE-OFFS IN T O R O N T O Francisco Gazitua's Rosa Nautica

by Creative T i m e and inSite San D i e g o / was installed

Tijuana. O r g a n i z e d by Joshua Decter, t h e

in June in Toronto. The sculpture, w h i c h repre-

conference featured a stellar cast o f p u b l i c

sents a sextant and the masts o f a sailing ship,

art l u m i n a r i e s and e n t h r a l l i n g sessions.

was partly the result o f negotiations by the city

A m o n g the guests were T o m Eccles, M a r y

and developer Concord Adex, w h i c h is build-

Jane Jacob, Krzysztof W o d i c z k o , D o u g

ing about twenty c o n d o towers in Toronto. In

Aitken, Michael Sorkin, Rick Lowe, and

exchange for an a d d i t i o n a l one m i l l i o n square

Dennis A d a m s .

feet o f land (above the five m i l l i o n specified

www.creativetime.org

in the z o n i n g law), the developer provided " c o m m u n i t y benefits," the only way a r o u n d

From September 27 t o 30, t h e conference

t h e province's Planning Act, w h i c h says under

T A K I N G T H E R O A D LESS T R A V E L E D :

Section 37 that a city may approve density and height beyond what's allowed in t h e Official

JESUS I N Y O U R FACE

Plan, in exchange for such "benefits."

Charlie Johnston, one o f Canada's leading

Apparently, m u c h o f the new art on the streets o f T o r o n t o is a result o f similar deal m a k i n g between developers and the city's c o u n c i l and planners. N o t everyone is crazy about the idea o f developers buying public art as their way into the city. Some say the process is " c a p r i c i o u s " and "arbitrary," and call it "let'smake-a-deal p l a n n i n g , " while others m a i n t a i n that the resulting artwork adds culture t o w h a t are otherwise strictly c o m m e r c i a l endeavors. [Photo courtesy Francisco

Cazitua.]

muralists, c o m p l e t e d a m u r a l o f Jesus on the Tabor Baptist Church in W i n n i p e g in early September. He's pleased w i t h the piece, but it's been hell for neighbor Josephine Lloyd. "Even t h o u g h you're not allowed t o erect a billboard on o u r street, you can still paint a thirty-foot high face on a wall," she t o l d PAR. "The c h u r c h people w h o w e n t ahead and c o m m i s s i o n e d this w o r k are certainly n o t the ones w h o have t o look at it every t i m e they o p e n their

Conversations on the Visual Vernacular was hosted by t h e John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, W i s c o n s i n , in c o n j u n c t i o n w i t h the e x h i b i t i o n

Sublime

Spaces <f Visionary Worlds: Built

Environments

of Vernacular Artists (see page 82 for related p u b l i c a t i o n ) . Conference speakers i n c l u d e d curators, collectors, academics and artists f r o m a r o u n d t h e w o r l d . A m o n g t h e m were gallerist Phyllis Kind, critic Erika Doss, visionary artist T o m Every, and collector Dan Dryden. www.jmkac.org

c u r t a i n s . " Her c o m p l a i n t s p r o m p t e d CanStar news t o run a c a r t o o n s h o w i n g M i c h e l a n g e l o

LOCATING PUBLIC ART In July, the Arts Council o f Indianapolis m a d e it easier for you t o visit sixty pieces o f artwork a r o u n d the city, by l a u n c h i n g the Public Art Locator (P.A.L.), a new Internet-based t o o l that features street and satellite maps, categories o f public art for enhanced searching, and p h o t o s w i t h b a c k g r o u n d i n f o r m a t i o n o n the art. P.A.L. was f u n d e d by the Indianapolis Cultural Dev e l o p m e n t C o m m i s s i o n and s u p p o r t e d in part by an award f r o m the N a t i o n a l E n d o w m e n t for the Arts. Other U.S. cities w i t h public art locators include Chicago and H o u s t o n . Visit www. indyarts.org or w w w . p u b l i c a r t i n d i a n a p o l i s . o r g (select Public Art Locator t o launch).

s t a r t i n g w o r k on the Sistine Chapel, w i t h a

From O c t o b e r 15 t o 17, t h e International

bystander objecting: " H o w awful that they are

Sculpture Center (publisher o f Sculpture

m e s s i n g u p that nice w h i t e ceiling!" " G i v e me

Magazine) hosted S C U L P T U R E I N

a break!" says Lloyd, w h o w e n t so far as t o

P U B L I C : Part l, Sculpture Parks a n d

pen a song, The Public Art Blues, for Johnston

G a r d e n s . Inspired by the o p e n i n g o f the

(excerpted here): "Came h o m e one day and t o

O l y m p i c Sculpture Park, the g a t h e r i n g

my surprise, saw a six f o o t nose and t w o f o o t

featured t o u r s a r o u n d Seattle and Tacoma,

eyes. The little w h i t e c h u r c h across the way

panel d i s c u s s i o n s and a key note address

was p a i n t i n g a m u r a l t o m o d e r n i z e . Chorus:

by Ned Rifkin, U n d e r Secretary o f Art at the

O h yes we live in a free country, you can paint

Smithsonian.

your house any colour you please, but w h e n

www.sculpture.org

f r e e d o m and c o m m o n sense get confused, the neighbors get 'The Public Art Blues.'" Johnston takes the c r i t i c i s m in stride. " I t ' s all g o o d news t o me, as an artist's w o r s t enemy is apathy and any o p i n i o n is better t h a n no o p i n i o n . " [Photo by Charlie

Johnston.]

Send your public art N E W S a n d R E C E N T PROJECTS to: info@publicARTreview.org

new art connecting people & places

Microbial Relief, 2007. Pennsylvania slate; 2" x 20" x 38'. Microbial Sciences Bldg., University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wl.

myklebust + SEARS Andrea Myklebust + Stanton Sears - 715.448.2074 - www.myklebust-sears.com

[he G A Y L E G A R N E R R O S K I School of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California

welcomes J O S H U A D E C T E R as the new Director of the Public Art Studies APPLICATIONS FOR T H E MASTER O F PUBLIC ART STUDIES P R O G R A M E M I S S I O N A R E D U E F E B R U A R Y 1,

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2008.

ttp://roski. use. edu/pc; l ISC Gayle Garner Roski School of Fine Arts | W

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LIGHT, WIND & WATER S C U L P T U R E S S U S P E N D E D MOBILES & FOUNTAINS Site-Specific Original Designs and Commissions WWW.RALFCNSC.CCM

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U.K. RECENT PROJECTS

The three twenty-eight-foot portals that make up Donald Lipski's T H E D O O R S , erected in Scottsdale, Arizona, in August, are made o f Brazilian ipe wood and modeled on the doors o f a cathedral in Lima, Peruâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;although, says the artist, "I took liberties in creating the hinges, door pulls, and other details, designing them to look massive and impressive." The interior o f the pyramid-like construction is equally impressive: a giant kaleidoscope made o f mirror-polished stainless steel that offers visitors shifting images as the sun shines through the top o f the structure. The piece is accompanied by a soundscape o f alternating elements (from wind bells to the rush o f a subway) by audio artist Jim Green. This is the first in a series o f artworks aimed at calling attention to Scottsdale's Arizona Canal waterfront and the city's efforts to revitalize downtown. [Photos by Chris Loomis.]

On January l, 2006, the Austrian parliament passed an Alien Law that imposed restrictions on aliens, refugees, and bi-national couples. Artist Martin Krenn and several collaborators responded by developing a unique streettheater project questioning the legislation. On May 5, 2007, the artists staged R I G H T T O STAY, a set o f performances in the Tummelplatz square in Graz, Austria dramatizing the dilemmas posed to individuals by the new law. With a large-format camera, they created images o f the performances that were then turned into two posters and displayed at the same location on the Tummelplatz a month later. "I Fall in Love Boundlessly," said the text (in English, German, Turkish, and Croatian) over images o f police and other authorities harassing a couple, "yet the Alien Law allows bi-national couples to be exposed to examinations by the police." More at www.martinkrenn. net. [Photo courtesy the artist.]

U.K. RECENT PROJECTS

On Rwanda's National Day o f Mourning, April 7, 2007, Philadelphia-based artist and urban designer Lily Yeh and Rwandan partners dedicated the C Y A N Z A N W E M E M O R I A L P A R K in West Rwanda to the approximately 8 0 0 , 0 0 0 people killed in the one hundred days o f genocide that began on April 7, 1994. Yeh designed the memorial over a two-year period, in collaboration with survivors o f the killing fields, and trained ten local people—the Barefoot Artists Team—in making the mosaic tile designs that adorn it. For its part, the Rwandan government designated the park as the district's official Genocide Memorial Site. [Photos by Chris Landy and the artist.]

From July 6 to August 28, 2007, the French

One o f the highlights o f the International

campus o f the Savannah College o f Art and

Nature Art Forum 2007, a gathering o f artists

Design (SCAD) was the site o f A F T E R G L O W ,

and site-specific, nature-themed art works

billed as "an exploration o f light as an

in Licherode, Germany, was the portable

aesthetic, material, conceptual, and poetic

"weather station" set up by the B U R E A U O F

phenomenon." Ghada Amer, Patrick Blanc,

A T M O S P H E R I C A N E C D A T A . The Bureau,

Thanks to Iowa West Foundation, supported

Maja Godlewska, Herve Half, Alfredo Jaar,

a collaboration between artists Christine

by casino and investment income, the City o f

)u-Yeon Kim, and Bill Viola contributed pieces

Baeumler and Beth G r o s s m a n — j o i n e d in

Council Bluffs is being turned into a sculpture

to the exhibition, held on the SCAD campus

Licherode by sound and video artist Cheryl

park o f international stature. Using $9 million

in Lacoste in Provence. Godlewska's painted

Wilgren Clyne—used the station to interview

for the first phase of their new public art pro-

polyester mesh banners, f r o m her Templates of

residents o f the nearby town o f Rotenberg

gram, several new works have been installed or

Clouds series, evoked the ephemeral masses

about climate change—specifically, about how

are underway. In June, the c o m m u n i t y gathered

o f c u m u l o n i m b u s clouds, while Amer's Love

the experience o f winter has changed over

in Bayliss Park to celebrate the completion o f

Park project (1997) celebrated the Provencal

the course o f their lives. Residents shared

W E L L S P R I N G , a 30-foot-tall fountain and its

sunshine by providing conjoined seats for

stories and, sometimes, family photographs

companion performance pavilion O C U L U S by

sunbathing lovers—but seats that embody

illuminating winters past. The artists presented

sculptor Brower Hatcher o f Providence, R.I.

the difficulties o f love by facing in opposite

edited versions o f the stories at an evening

(including benches and bronze squirrels). This

directions and offering each sitter a view o f a

October, sculptor William King, recent recipient

different quote about love's complexity. Viola's

o f a lifetime achievement award f r o m the Inter-

Old Oak (Study) from 2005 is a meditative

national Sculpture Center, installed three new

time-lapse view o f a California oak, and jaar's

sculptures. Iowa West Foundation Executive

video projection Epilogue (1998) illuminates

Director Todd Graham said o f the Bluffs public

an image o f an elderly Rwandan refugee, then

art project, "We do this as a larger strategy to

fades, then returns to brightness in an allegory

revitalize our community."

o f the power o f images to survive and create

[Photo by Mike Whye, courtesy IWF.]

collective memory. [Photo courtesy SCAD.]

gathering outdoors, while Clyne projected her video work Another Kind of

Winter—images

o f flickering s n o w — o n the trees. The stories f r o m Rotenberg have been posted at www. atmosphericanecdata.org, and visitors to the site can share their own observations about weather and climate on a blog. [Photo by Christine Baeumler (image of woman in snow by an anonymous

photographer).]

U.K. RECENT PROJECTS

Manhattan's H u d s o n River Park, at 29th Street, is the setting for T W O T O O L A R G E T A B L E S by the husband-and-wife team o f Ellen and Allan Wexler. One o f the tables is actually a shade pavilion, with thirteen chairs extended to support the "table" eight feet o f f the ground. In the other, the identically positioned thirteen chairs support a table cut jigsaw fashion to allow visitors access to the chairs. "The placement o f the chairs," write the artists, "choreographs the views o f the river, pathways, and landscape." The project was c o m m i s s i o n e d by the H u d s o n River Park Trust. [Photo courtesy the artists.]

They're world globes, they're big, there are 124 o f them, and a different artist embellished each one. But although C O O L G L O B E S : H o t I d e a s for a C o o l e r P l a n e t were inspired by Chicago's

T H E HAYES VALLEY M I N I A T U R E G O L F

The Public Art and Design program in Broward

Cows on Parade and other city-boosting paint-

E X T R V A G A N Z A by the artist team Wowhaus

County, Florida, celebrated its thirtieth anniver-

a-sculpture schemes, the project is more about

(Scott Constable and Ene Osteraas-Constable)

sary on January 25, 2007, in d o w n t o w n Fort

global survival than civic pride. Chicago activist

told the history o f an inner-city San Francisco

Lauderdale's Huizenga Plaza. There were

Wendy Abrams convinced a range o f artists—

neighborhood in nine holes. The first hole

theatrical performances, a marching band, and

including Jaume Plensa and Jim Dine—to

o f the mini-golf course, set up at Patricia's

a ceremony to flip the switch on Seattle-based

decorate the globes with ideas for reducing

Green on several weekends from mid-May to

artist Dan Corson's L I G H T I N G P R O J E C T . The

carbon emissions to halt global warming. The

mid-September, evoked the sand dunes that

permanent light installation, c o m m i s s i o n e d by

five-foot-diameter globes—with titles like Adjust

covered the area before European settlement.

the county's Cultural Council, has two parts:

the Thermostat and Mr. Polar Bear Coes to

Others invited golfers to putt around animal

Luminous Conjunctions, which consists o f low-

Washington—were

tracks and Ohlone Indian camps, Gold Rush

displayed along the Chicago

energy LEDs that illuminate the park's trees

lakefront all summer, then several were auc-

urban developments, a freeway that invaded

when tripped by m o t i o n sensors, and Emerald

tioned o f f to benefit public school conservation

the neighborhood in the 1950s (pictured above), and images that pay tribute to local

Laser Lawn, which shoots motion-activated

clubs and other environmental organizations.

laser light patterns onto the grass o f the park.

See all the designs at www.coolglobes.com.

activists and spiritual leaders.

[Photo by Bill Sanders.]

[Photo courtesy Jasculca/Terman

[Photo by Brian Jones.]

and Associates.]

U.K. RECENT PROJECTS

At first glance, it looked like an ordinary storefront on Maiden Lane in lower Manhattan, right between a Dress Barn and a florist's shop. But Beth Campbell's P O T E N T I A L S T O R E F R O N T S had surprises in store for those who looked more closely at it: enigmatic signs ("Explore Your Inner Self," "Change") and services on offer, including personalized lie detector tests. And strangest o f all, the interior o f the "shop," complete with potted plants, gum stains on the floor and all, repeated itselfâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;with exact detailâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;five times. The little yellow paper note(s) taped to the door(s) that read, "Back in 5" was, it turned out, a literal description. One passerby laughing and cupping her hands around her eyes to stare deep inside declared, "The more you look at it, the more confused you get. Is that the intention?" The dreamlike installation, supported by the Public Art Fund, was on view from May 1 to June 24, 2007. [Photo by Seong Kwon, courtesy Public Art Fund.]

The Carcel de Caseros in Buenos Aires was one o f the most notorious o f the prisons that held criminals and dissidents d u r i n g the dictatorship o f the 1970s. More than 1,600 cells were stacked like chicken coops in a building that admitted so little sunlight that vitamin D deficiency made prisoners' skin turn green and their hair fall out. One section o f the prison contained rooms where the "politicals" were allowed to exercise, and these had grids o f many small windows that admitted d i m light. In 2001 the government slated the Carcel for demolition, and in 2 0 0 6 a young artist f r o m the United States, Seth Wulsin, got permission to create a unique work o f public sculpture Anchored to the remnant o f a gantry crane once used to build and launch barges into the

on its surface. For 1 6 T O N S , Wulsin cut glass

Cumberland River in Nashville, Alice Aycock's sweeping, twisting G H O S T B A L L E T , was dedicated

panes in the windowed section in such a way

on July 26, 2007. Rising from the flats o f the city's East Bank, Ghost Ballet evokes both Nashville's

that the broken and unbroken panes formed

industrial past and its current urban ambitions. "As Nashvillians," says Terry Thacker, chair o f

the "pixels" o f facesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;faces meant to evoke the

the art department at Watkins College o f Art and Design, apropos o f the work, "we want to see

memory o f the prisoners held there. 16 Tons

ourselves as living in a place that's engaging, risk-taking, and imaginative." O f Aycock, Thacker

has struck a nerve a m o n g former political

adds, "[She] began to open the practice o f art to the possibility o f lyricism, allegory, and references

prisoners in Argentina, w h o have, on the

to specific sites and histories. Most artists assume that now, but it was a radical idea in the 1970s."

whole, received less attention than the

The loo-foot-tall, loo-foot-wide, 6o-foot-deep sculpture is the first work created under the Metro

"disappeared" victims o f the former regime.

Nashville Arts Commission's public art program. [Photo by Allison Reeves.]

[Photos by the artist.]

U.K. RECENT PROJECTS Between late June and early October, Boston's Harbor Islands hosted four temporary works under the sponsorship o f the city's Institute for Contemporary Art. In T H E W A T E R C Y C L E , New York artist Ernesto Pujol played the role o f the Water Carrier, a silent pilgrim who made his way to several o f the Harbor Islands, gathered water, and returned to the ICA, where the water was added to an outdoor sculpture. Teri Rueb created Core Samples, an audio piece for Spectacle Island. Visitors obtained headphones at the island's visitors' center, then listened to Rueb's sound design—which included natural and processed sounds—at twelve locations. In a yurt on Lovells Island, Anna Schleit set up Waterside, a display o f models, plans, and artist books proposing two potential works: Intertidal, ten-foot-high mirrorlike walls to be set into the island's intertidal zone, and Sightlines, four large drawings to be etched in glass and set on Fort Standish's four gunemplacements. And Monica Ponce de Leon and Nader Tehrani o f Boston's Office dA created V O R O M U R O for the interior o f Fort Warren's powder storehouse on Georges Island—a semi-transparent sixteen-foot-high acrylic web that suggests both undulating waves and the stone masonry o f the fort. [Top photos by Blaine Anderson and Ernesto Pujol. Bottom photo by John Kennard.j

The Science Center o f Iowa in Des Moines has commissioned three public art projects since it opened in 2005. The most recent, installed in June o f 2007, is an untitled sound installation by Denver-based audio artist Jim Green. As visitors m o u n t the steps and trip m o t i o n sensors, they hear one o f three clusters o f sounds that rotate every few months: gales o f laughter, peaceful rural sounds—including a vintage washing machine—or local kids singing their own names. Green's work joins Minnesotabased Bruce Shapiro's Ribbon Dancer, a kinetic sculpture in which ribbons twirl under the A traffic island in Arlington, Virginia, came alive with environmentally friendly light this summer.

ceiling o f the center's lobby, and T H E B I G

C O 2 L E D , by artist-designers Jack Sanders and Robert Gay o f Austin, Texas, and Butch Anthony o f

Q U E S T I O N by Mags Harries and Lajos Heder

Seale, Alabama, utilized 552 solar-powered LEDs mounted inside plastic drink bottles on flexible

o f Cambridge, Massachusetts—a grass-

rebar poles o f varying heights. The result was a softly undulating "forest" o f gentle light. Produced

covered berm in the form o f a question mark

in conjunction with Planet Arlington, a year-round cultural p r o g r a m m i n g initiative designed to

on the center's outdoor plaza. Although ideal

explore issues o f immigration, globalization and the environment through the lens o f the arts, the

for summer gatherings, the sculpted landscape

project pointed the way to Planet Arlington's second annual World Music Festival, which took place

is designed so that when snow covers the

in September. In its use o f repurposed plastic and energy-efficient LEDs, the project also embod-

plaza, the giant question is visible in relief.

ied the values o f FreshAIRE (Arlington Initiative to Reduce Emissions), a citywide environmental

The Big Question includes a seating group

program calling attention to the role o f carbon emissions in local and global climate change. Both

in the form o f an atom (pictured above) and

groups supported the project, in addition to the Arlington County Department o f Parks, Recreation,

questions sandblasted into the concrete. One

and Cultural Resources. According to Sanders, the project demonstrates the ease o f recycling.

o f the questions asks: " I f you were tiny, could

More information about the project and its team is at www.thoughtbarn.com/CO2LED.

an atom be your universe?"

[Photo by Robert Cay.]

[Photo courtesy the artists.]

U.K. RECENT PROJECTS

In July, seven artists said good-bye to the bus shelters around Madison, Wisconsin's Capitol Square by decorating t h e m before their demolition. D E S T I N A T I O N , was the brainchild o f Melanie Kehoss, and featured her work and that o f Nina Bednarsky, Sean Bodley, Craig Grabhorn, Nick Hartley, Darryl Jensen, and John Riepenhoff (pictured above). The artists had one day—July 1—to complete their embellishments, which remained in place until July 29, when the shelters were torn down to be replaced by newer models. Destination

was

funded by the Madison Arts Commission. [Photo by A. Nicolette, City of Madison.]

O n September 22, 2007, a pair o f British artists and their American collaborators created a fiery

David Rokeby's C L O U D , installed inside the

drama on the bank o f the Mississippi River.

Ontario Science Centre in early March, is a

For the A R T + F I R E project, Diane Gorvin and

constantly metamorphosing kinetic sculp-

Phil Bews, working with local sculptors Andrea

ture made up o f hundreds o f identical acrylic

Myklebust and Stanton Gray Sears, designed

panels, half o f them clear, half painted blue,

and built a wooden sculpture, modeled on a

rotating on one hundred transparent shafts.

Viking longboat, in the town park o f the heavily

As the movement goes in an out o f synchroni-

Scandinavian village o f Stockholm, Wisconsin.

zation following Rokeby's computer program,

A c o m m u n i t y celebration preceded the event,

the piece creates constantly shifting fields and

which included lantern-making leading up to

patterns, playing with the tension between

a parade and live music. Then, at dusk on the

chaos and order, between scientific theory and

22nd, the ship was set ablaze, while fire jug-

human experience, and between objectivity and

glers cavorted and fireworks were ignited. "Fire

subjectivity. Cloud is part o f the center's four-

sculptures bring people o f all ages together for

year Agents o f Change program, which devotes

creative celebration and fun," Gorvin said. "We

sections o f the facility to demonstrations o f

see our works as life-enhancing and specific to

technological innovation, collaboration, and

each o f their varied locations." An exhibit o f the

creativity. For video views o f the work in opera-

previous "fire sculpture" o f Gloucestershire-

tion, visit www.youtube.com/resultsPsearch_

based Gorvin and Bews, who have created

query=Cloud+David+Rokeby. Other recent

temporary and permanent works throughout

projects at the center include Stacy Levy's

Britain and abroad, was mounted at the art

terrace sculpture Lotic Meander and Steven

center in nearby Pepin, Wisconsin, during the

Mann's interactive water sculpture

month o f September. [Photo by Midge Bolt.]

[Photo by Brian Wilier.]

FUNtain.

Miami-based Dara Friedman is a film and video artist w h o likes to blur the boundary between art and life. From September 17 to October 5, she orchestrated a live performance project in m i d t o w n Manhattan that did that in spades. For M U S I C A L , Friedman organized outbursts o f song by ordinary New Yorkers—taxi drivers, doormen, schoolchildren, tourists, and more. Nearly 100 o f these "unexpected musical events and serendipitous urban m o m e n t s " took place daily and nightly, anywhere between Grand Central Station and Central Park South, and Broadway and Park Avenue. [Photo by Amy C. Elliott, courtesy Public Art Fund.]

U.K. RECENT PROJECTS

Graffiti art adorns urban walls in Los Angeles, railway cars in the Midwest, and subway trains on the East Coast. In Scotland, it's transformed a castle into T H E G R A F F I T I P R O J E C T (see www.thegraffitiproject.net). In May o f 2007,

designers Alice and David Boyle, the children o f Lord Glasgow o f Kelburn Castle on Scotland's west coast, persuaded their father to allow a crew o f prominent Brazilian graffitists to spraypaint designs on a section o f the venerable castle whose concrete veneer was scheduled to be stripped off. Artists Os Gemeos, Nina, and Nunca f r o m Sao Paulo joined Scottish collaborators to turn the walls and turret o f the south side o f the structure into a magic kingdom o f urban fantasy art. "As far as I know," Lord Glasgow told an interviewer early in the project, " n o t h i n g like this has ever been attempted in Scotland before, and the clash o f cultures will give the whole enterprise an almost surreal quality." [Photos by Bonny Squair.j

L I F E IS A L A U G H by Brian Griffiths is a quirky sculptural assemblage that first confronted tube riders at London's Gloucester Road Underground station on July 5, 2007. A gigantic British artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey literally "greened" London's National Theatre

panda head, a 70s-vintage recreational trailer, a

building in May when they covered part o f the outside o f the theatre's L Y T T L E T O N F L Y T O W E R .

lamppost, a pair o f painted scaffolding ramps,

an upthrusting section o f the concrete building that houses the stage's curtains and hoistable

a heap o f sand, a stack o f building blocks, a

scenery, with a sheath o f live grass. The artists, aided by twenty-two assistants, coated the highly

pile o f used mattresses, and a bicycle turn the

visible north and west sides o f the tower with clay, then painstakingly planted nearly two billion

subway platform into a giant knick-knack shelf

germinated seeds o f rye grass and creeping red fescue, a grass mix used in parks and soccer fields.

that will be " u p " through May o f 2008, courtesy

The result was an architectural "lawn" watered by runoff collected f r o m the theatre's carpark, then

o f Platform for Art, the London Underground's

allowed to wither and die in an urban growth-and-decay cycle that lasted six weeks.

public art program. More at www.tfl.gov.uk/pfa.

[Photo by Dan

[Photo by Andy Keate.]

Harvey]

U.K. RECENT PROJECTS

From m i d - M a y t o mid-August, the Hayward gallery in London's Southbank Centre m o u n t e d an exhibition o f new work by the figurative sculptor Antony Gormley that extended well beyond the confines o f the gallery itself. A l o n g with new gallery works, visitors took in E V E N T H O R I Z O N , a series o f thirty-one life-size figures, cast f r o m the artist's body and placed on roofs and public walkways t h r o u g h o u t a 5,ooo-square-foot area. The standing

figures,

An egg-shaped section cut f r o m the many-windowed facade o f a derelict building across f r o m

some clearly visible f r o m the Hayward's

Liverpool's Moorfields Station turns out o f alignment, then, quite improbably, rotates on a giant

terrace, and others glimpsed at a considerable

industrial pivot, opening an egg-shaped " w i n d o w " into the interior o f the building. Completed in

distance, linked the gallery with the surround-

June and in place until the end o f 2008, T U R N I N G T H E P L A C E O V E R , by London-based sculptor

ing cityscape. The overall exhibition, entitled

Richard Wilson, converts the former Cross Keys House building into a kinetic work o f art intended

" B l i n d Light," scored as the best-attended

to help celebrate Liverpool's reign as 2008's European Capital o f Culture. For video views o f the

show by a living artist in the thirty-nine-year

work in operation, visit www.youtube.com/results?search_query=turning+the+place+over.

history o f the Hayward, with some 2 1 0 , 0 0 0

[Photo by Alexandra

visitors. [Photo by Kieron

Wolkowicz.]

McCarron.]

From June 4 t h r o u g h 8, 2007, visitors to London's Broadgate Arena were treated t o a three-dimensional audio experience created by American sound artist Stephen Vitiello. T H E S M A L L E S T O F W I N G S was an audio The starting line o f the 2007 Tour de France was in London, and the famed bicycle race passed

e n v i r o n m e n t crafted f r o m field recordings o f

through southeastern England on its way to the Continent. On July 7 and 8, it swept through

bird and m o t h wings made in the A m a z o n ,

Ashford, Kent, where T H E L O S T O , a gathering o f temporary public art projects, was there to greet

Virginia, upstate New York, and other locales.

it. The multi-artist series o f works and events was part o f Breaking Boundaries, a scheme devised

The project's multichannel sound system was

by the Kent County Council to replace Ashford's one-way Ring Road highway with a pedestrian-

housed in a geodesic d o m e in front o f the

friendly, "shared space" roadway. To celebrate and illuminate the road conversion process, an

neighboring Liverpool Street Station. "I try to

international group o f eleven artists presented a variety o f process-oriented projects. Briton Bryony

make people think about their surroundings

Graham lived and worked with road workers; France's Olivier Leroi dressed local kids as trees and

with my work, t o slow t h e m d o w n . " said the

invited them to bow to passing motorists; Canadian Peter Gibson (aka Roadsworth) spray-painted

artist. "I brought these sounds in to penetrate

images on the street, and American artist Brad Downey subtly altered signs to create temporary

the iron and steel o f the city."

disruptions o f urban expectations in Ashford. More at www.losto.org. [Photo courtesy

[Photo by Andrew Cross.]

Photogenic.]

LAST P A G E O A D W A Y

Whmnrmr

U.K. R E N E G A D E S by Francesco

Gavin

REDtORT

'102077395745

www.redlortrurnlturexo.ulL

E i n e has transformed the metal shop shutters o f East London into a giant, city-sized alphabet. His brightly colored letters in a Victorian, circus-style typeface seem to be part o f a giant, unclear sentence. His practice grew out o f graffiti, but by simplifying his use of type he made his work more experimental. His sometimes legal and sometimes illegal work is created with emulsion paints and brushes and has appeared in Newcastle, Stockholm, and Paris. He has also experimented with Styrofoam cups, placing them in fences to form words such as monster, w w w . p i c t u r e s o n w a l l s . c o m

S l i n k a c h u ' s street art may be the smallest in the

child's paddling pool; Westminster Bridge is visited

The C u t U p collective uses advertising to create exceptionally inventive billboard and bus stop interventions. Their mosaic pieces involve tearing down ads, cutting them into squares and re-forming the pixel-like pieces into images of disgruntled youth. Other works involve creating images by punching holes in advertising boards and placing them back in the lit bus stops where they were found. Using the materials of the street is vitally important to the anonymous group, whose approach veers closer to Guy Debord than to graffiti. Their imagery is often about the architecture of the city itself, their pieces aiming

by tiny tourists (see page 11). The artist plays with

to reflect and intercept the chaos and disorder of

the experience of feeling small in a big city, external-

urban space, w w w . c u t u p c o l l e c t i v e . c o m

world. In fact, the pieces are so tiny they can easily be missed—which is part o f their joy. The Londonbased artist creates miniature scenes on the streets using toy figures. Often his dramatic scenes play with the spaces they occupy: a puddle becomes a

"———

ising urban loneliness, l i t t l e - p e o p l e . b l o g s p o t . c o m

All projects featured

in:

Street Renegades: N e w Underground Art Yorkshire artist P a r t 2 creates street installations that initially appear to be three-dimensional. In reality, his cubic takes on graffiti wildstyle are made on pieces o f flat cardboard. He places his artworks in city locations— often against metal fences, stairwells, and other grid-like backgrounds—so that the diagonal lines in his sculptures work against the vertical urban architecture. The works are intentionally lo-fi, created with glue, scissors, cardboard, and photocopies, w w w . p a r t - 2 . n e t

Francesca Gavin L o n d o n : Laurence King, 2 0 0 7 128 pages, $19.95 ( p a p e r b a c k )

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