Public Art speaks volumes

Clown Soldier - Rensselaer Riverfront Art Park

If you haven't had public art on your mind lately, there are two current reasons that maybe you should. One of them is the 9/11 sculpture commissioned by Saratoga Arts to be made out of World Trade Center steel by two prominent local sculptors, John Van Alstine and Noah Savett, which should have been unveiled last weekend but wasn't (background here). The other is the Living Walls project that also launched last weekend and will be the focus of a broad spectrum of events this weekend in Albany.

Amid all the hubbub surrounding the 9/11 anniversary, there was the unfortunate story of how this significant piece of art has been turned into a political football by various folks in Saratoga Springs, who decided they didn't like either the initially approved siting of the 25-foot-tall abstract memorial, or a second proposed location (for a good overview of the debacle, read Tom Keyser's coverage from the Times Union).

It always galls me when people who otherwise do not involve themselves with art suddenly feel entitled to act against it when they see something they don't like being given prominence in public. A couple of significant examples from the recent past include the removal of a long-standing sculpture, which critics compared to a collapsed staircase, from its spot near a government building in downtown Albany; and the very controversial and expensive removal of a monumental Richard Serra sculpture from a public square in Manhattan.

Tempered by Memory
Noah Savett and John Van Alstine
photo: Lawrence White

In the Saratoga case, the smell is the same - if this were a bronze image of a thoroughbred horse or a ballerina or a heroic firefighter, I am sure there would have been no outcry. But it's not. It's an abstract sculpture made of 9/11 tower steel, and some people are uncomfortable with what it represents to them, so they consider it their right to spontaneously become public art critics.

And so, instead of having been dedicated on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the monument sits in the steelyard where it was made, awaiting its fate. The good news is that the sculpture has been accepted, and a committee appointed by the mayor is set to meet so they can review and recommend sites; the Saratoga City Council will then consider these recommendations and make a final decision on where it will be placed.

Important to note: The funding for this work of art has come entirely from private donations. To everyone who gave money to support this endeavor, I would like to offer thanks for your courage and your generosity. This is not a friendly time for artists and arts organizations, and they need your support like never before.

Meanwhile, all over Albany and near the river in Rensselaer there are crews of local, national, and international street artists producing monumental works of their own on the walls of buildings and the supports of highway ramps. (Street art is the more palatable name now given to graffiti muralists, but these days it means a lot more than spray paint and gangster tags, incorporating stencils, broadsides, stickers, and other materials - even ceramic tile - into the often gigantic works these artists create.)

The Living Walls project writes on its website: Through a series of lectures, performances, and the involvement of some of the world’s great mural artists, we are looking to provide an education into public art. The Living Walls project is intent on creating an open dialogue between the people and city.

Sounds great to me. For more information, go to the website, facebook page, twitter, tumblr, etc., and you will find more events than you can shake a spray can at going on throughout the weekend. And then, for as long as they endure, there will be those walls.

GAIA and Nanook - Livingston Avenue

 

Now that’s more like it! (Sculpture in the Streets)

Rectangles Horizontal Jointed, Big, Thin, Small 1990

A year ago I posted a review of Sculpture in the Streets, a program of the Downtown Albany BID, that was titled For Shame! because I was appalled at the BID’s decision to feature the work of Seward Johnson, an artist with popular appeal but very little else to offer.

It’s a pleasure to report that this year’s installation is a complete turnaround. Five strong pieces by the late, great George Rickey comprise the walking tour, which is in place through next March, augmented by previously existing installations of four other Rickey sculptures in Albany, Colonie, and Troy. The result is an extraordinary opportunity to experience the elements of time and space in the direct way that only the best art can offer, and sculpture in particular above all other media.

Column of Four Squares Excentric Gyratory III, Var II 1990

Rickey worked in nearby Chatham, and his local friends and followers are many – two of them, Matthew Bender and Charles Liddle are among the financial sponsors of this event. They and the other private and corporate sponsors, as well as the project’s planners at the BID, deserve applause for providing this gift to the public. They already know what I hope any newcomer to Rickey’s art who takes the time to follow the walk will soon discover: that his work is worthy of the greatest admiration, and that we are incredibly lucky to have so much of it to enjoy here right now.

Rickey's innovations included the application of sophisticated engineering to the construction of kinetic steel sculpture, by which he created large, heavy objects that easily dance and sway in the slightest wind, always striking unexpected and remarkable feats of balance while changing composition and orientation almost constantly.

Three Squares Gyratory I 1971

His persistent use of stainless steel, finished with the whorls of a handheld grinder on every surface, is another stroke of genius, because it gives his pieces both consistency and an innate subtlety that belies their heft and hardness. This is especially important for two reasons: that the sculptures are rigorously geometric and that they are placed outdoors (except for the ones at the airport and the Albany Institute of History & Art, which are indoors but still exposed to a great deal of natural light).

This swirly finish allows the sculptures to float visually by catching and reflecting light with a level of intensity that blends with the background. And, in the case of the backgrounds seen around the works in this particular installation, there is great variety, making for wonderful appearing-and-disappearing effects.

Here’s some advice for getting the optimal experience when you go to visit these nearly living entities:

1. Allow enough time: While it may be appealing to ride by in a car or pass quickly on foot during lunch or between errands, that won’t work. Even when there’s a good breeze, the sculptures may not do much at first – but, almost as if by magic, when you stop and watch, they will begin to perform.
2. Speaking of that breeze: If the day is still, forget it. The slightest wind will activate these remarkably engineered constructions, but no wind will mean no action.
3. Be sure to move around the sculptures: You’ve done it when confronted with a more traditional statue (say, in marble or bronze), and you must do it with these 360-degree objects as well if you want the full experience.
4. Pay attention to the setting: These pieces have been thoughtfully sited, providing a lot of neat relationships between their shapes and surfaces and those around them. While Rickey himself tended to place his work in natural settings, the city siting suits them particularly well. Kudos once again to the show’s planners for choosing a great location for each piece.
5. Bring a friend: It’s always more fun to share something lively, and this work is lively by design.

A downloadable tour map is available on the BID's site.

Rating: Must See

Four Years of Art Nights!

Art Night Schenectady celebrates four years of events today with an ambitious slate of activities, including a fashion show, an international exhibition, and a new collaboration with the city of Beirut, Lebanon. All I can say is WOW!

The poster reproduced above just shows what's at Proctors ... there are many more venues, shows, events, etc. to celebrate tonight. Congratulations to ANS founder and current organizer Mitch Messmore - and here's wishing for 40 more years of arts action in Schenectady.

Sculpture in the Streets

It's just like a treasure hunt. First, you pick up a map at the Downtown Albany BID office at 522 Broadway, or download it from their website at http://www.downtownalbany.org/; then, pop down on a weekend, or get yourself a nice, long lunch break - and start walking.

Your search is for 16 sculptures recently placed along city streets and in pocket parks by the BID under the guidance of Exhibition Coordinator Janis Keane Dorgan and her trio of curators: Sharon Bates (of the Albany Airport Gallery), Tammis Groft (Albany Institute of History & Art), and Janet Riker (University Art Museum). The installation, which will run through next April, is dubbed Sculpture in the Streets: The Art of Discovery, not only in honor of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's exploration of the river that bears his name, but also in reference to the process of taking the walk.

I, for one, discovered a lot more than art on this little trek. Not being of the downtown worker ilk, my usual experience of the streets between City Hall and the river is of the get-in-and-get-out variety, taking care of errands in a hurry before the parking meter runs out on my car. This time, I came on my bicycle (there's a rack right in front of the BID), and strolled at a leisurely pace.

Among my newfound pleasures were things certainly well-known to downtown workers, mainly the lovely gardens and small parks that dot the zone and make for ideal bag lunch destinations. Of course, they also make pretty good spots to put sculptures, as the BID did from 1998 to 2001 with the insipid bronzes of L. Seward Johnson before taking a four-year hiatus from the project. Now, with three years of support from Kivort Steel, and thanks to the pioneering efforts of Sarah Martinez of Albany Center Gallery, they have become the haunts of the contemporary sort of art we're hunting on this tour.

Beginning at the beginning, right near the steps that lead up and over the river, is a witty piece by Mike Hansel that I first took to be a giant representation of a cow's udder in welded copper - turns out it is an even more hugely enlarged view of hair follicles, as revealed by its title, Male Balding Pattern. As a balding male, I join forces with great numbers of downtowners in the same predicament and congratulate Hansel for making our problem seem humorous - and both much bigger and much smaller than it really is.

Moving on, I opted not to cross the street, and went instead directly to Number 4, a graceful kinetic sculpture in stainless steel called Albany Wind Orchid (pictured at right). George Sherwood's more feminine update of George Rickey's style of highly engineered, wind-powered stabiles is a bewitchingly transporting piece of art that sets a high mark for this year's edition of SITS - it will prove to be a hard act to follow.

My next stop was the most perplexing: Where the heck did they hide Amy Podmore's Untitled #1? After several turns around Tricentennial Park (a really nice spot, and the permanent home of two major bronze sculptures that represent Albany's history both distant and recent), I finally looked up - and then I saw Podmore's oversized teacups, dozens of them, hanging all over the trees. An Alice in Wonderland moment, to be sure.

And so on the tour went. The process of seek-and-find continued to bear the fruits of frustration and surprise. I won't bore you by telling about each and every piece of art along the way - but here are a few more highlights, and maybe a lowlight or two as well.

Zerques - One of two large pieces by Carole Eisner in this group, this one (pictured at the top of this post) is a roller coaster in rolled steel. Was she inspired by her kid brother's Hot Wheels set? Or maybe the nearby ramps of I-787? Either way, it's a great piece of fully three-dimensional art, sited in a way that allows you to move all around it and appreciate its changes.

Corral - Pictured at the bottom of this post, this one by Ann Jon is like a box of Cracker Jack: it has a toy prize hidden inside (but you have to walk across the grass for a closer look to see it).

Same Shapes and Mosaic Tires and Muffler - These two very different pieces by Jason Middlebrook are among my favorites in the show. The latter consists of the titular car parts lovingly embellished in the traditional Middle Eastern manner, with delectable results; the former is a large installation in a garden area of shapes inspired by termite mounds that blend beautifully with the surrounding plant and rock forms. It will be fun to see how they look poking up out of the winter's snows.

Untitled 2 - Jason Karakehian's yellow exclamation point appears to aim for cartoonish delight, but for me it fell flat, not least of all due to the nearby presence of similarly yellow vertical columns that serve as protective barriers against vehicles. In the case of the barriers, form follows function, making Karakehian's piece seem lacking in either one or the other.

Missing Trees - Is it possible for sculpture to be self contradictory? If so, these cutouts by Pat Brentano are - at least as far as the siting goes - because they are surrounded by trees in both settings they occupy here. A case of concept outweighing execution.

A final note I want to add: The brochure/map that the BID created for this project contains some very helpful text (including oddly edited capsules on each sculpture). I was so impressed by their articulate endorsement of public art, as represented by the SITS project and in other art venues around town, that I reproduce it here in its entirety:

Public art is for everyone. It creates a vibrant community and forms a unique identity for Albany’s metropolitan area. Produced by artists with distinctive visions who enjoy working in a public context, these works express a diverse range of themes including environmental, architectural, functional, commemorative and humorous.

The arts are integral to downtown Albany. The impressive 92-piece Empire State Plaza Art Collection, assembled by then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller has been called "the most important state collection of modern art in the country." Don’t miss the special exhibitions focusing on The Quadricentennial Celebration at the Albany Institute of History & Art; view the works of national and regional artists at the New York State Museum; browse the Albany Heritage Area Visitors Center, the Albany Center Gallery, the 1st Friday city-wide gallery openings and the E-Comm square’s abstract sculpture courtyard on South Broadway.

With numerous historical statues and monuments in Albany’s parks and public spaces, our rich environment invites you to discover 400 years of creativity.

That is excellent advice, and true.